He frowned. He had never much liked kids and couldn’t see that changing now, when he was thirty-four years old.
“Maybe you could make some snowflakes,” Chloe suggested. “You can’t do anything else while you have a broken leg.”
Andrea tried and failed to hide her wince. “I’m sure Sheriff Bailey has plenty to do without worrying about cutting out paper snowflakes, honey.”
Like what? See how many puzzles he could guess right on Wheel of Fortune or if he could win Final Jeopardy?
That sounded about as pathetic as he felt right about now, so he opted to keep his mouth shut.
“Your dinner just needs to be popped into the microwave when you’re ready,” Andrea informed him. “Is there anything else I can do for you before we leave?”
“I think I’m good. You’ve done more than enough already. I’m not sure the guilt trip Wynona laid on you really required you to decorate my house for the holidays.”
She opened her eyes a little wider. Hers were green like Chloe’s but the soft green of unfurled leaves in spring. “What guilt trip would that be?” she asked, trying to look innocent.
He was a hardened law enforcement officer and knew when someone was innocent and when they weren’t. “I grew up in the same house with Wyn. I know just how adept she can be at emotional blackmail.”
She chewed on her lip, watching her kids as they discussed their decorating plans between them. “If you would rather the children didn’t put up a Christmas tree, I can talk to them later and explain things to them. Don’t feel obligated, really. They’ll be fine. This time of year, they’re easily distracted.”
Marshall knew that’s exactly what he should do—just tell her he didn’t want a Christmas tree.
It had been really sweet of them to make the offer—especially Chloe, who was obviously still nervous around him. If the little girl was willing to do the work to get over her fear, he couldn’t refuse her the opportunity.
“It’s fine. I have to stare at these same walls for the next few weeks, so I guess a little holiday spirit would at least brighten the place up for me.”
Andrea’s relieved smile sent a weird little shaft of warmth through his chest. “That’s very kind of you. Thanks. I never want to discourage my children from doing nice things for others, especially when they come up with the idea on their own.”
“Glad I could be of service,” he said, unable to keep the dry note from his voice.
“Don’t worry about the tree,” she added. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Are you sure? I was planning to trudge up the Mount Solace trail in the snow later so I could cut one down.”
She made a face. “Ha-ha. I’m sure I can find one.”
Andrea glanced out the window, where big, fluffy flakes were beginning to fall like puffs from the cottonwoods along the creek. “Here comes more snow. I heard we’re supposed to get several more inches tonight before it warms up later in the week. I worry about you here all by yourself.”
He didn’t like being the object of anyone’s pity. For reasons he couldn’t have explained, it bothered him more, coming from her. “I’ve got a phone. I should be fine.”
“Have you arranged with anyone to shovel the walks for you?”
He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “No. I’ll call around, see if I can find a service to take care of it for me.”
“Or you could ask a neighbor boy,” she suggested. “Louise and Herm Jacobs have a grandson who probably could use the cash, especially just before the holidays.”
He stiffened at the suggestion. “That might work,” he said slowly, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it himself.
“His name is Christopher. He’s got a...bit of an attitude, but he’s basically a good kid. He’s had a rough time of things lately. His mother died this summer, which is why he’s living with his grandparents. Oh, you probably know that already.”
“Why would I?” he asked.
She looked briefly confused at his tone, which he just realized sounded abrupt and almost angry. “You’re from Haven Point and I know Louise is friends with your mom. You probably knew Christopher’s mom, Nicole, their daughter.”
For a tense, weird moment, he didn’t know how to answer that. “Not well,” he finally said. “She was five or six years older than me.”
“It’s so sad, about her car accident.”
She’d had a blood alcohol level of twice the legal limit and had driven head-on into oncoming traffic. The tragedy was the young couple who had died, as well.
“So do you want me to ask Louise about having Christopher keep your walks clear for the next few weeks?” she asked when he didn’t respond.
That might be easier. He couldn’t imagine picking up the phone and asking for Christopher. He just couldn’t do it.
No. This wasn’t something he wanted to leave to anyone else. “I’ll give her a call.”
“Fine. Well, we’ll be back tomorrow, bearing snowflakes and paper chains and enough Christmas spirit to power all the boats in the Lights on the Lake parade.”
“Can’t wait,” he answered. Much to his surprise, the words weren’t even a lie.
CHAPTER FIVE
“OH, I’M SO GLAD you could make it, Andie.” McKenzie Shaw Kilpatrick beamed at her as she opened the door to her beautiful lakeside house. “Hazel will be so thrilled.”
“Are you kidding? I wouldn’t miss it. I’ve been looking forward to this all week long.”
“And hello, Mr. Will and Miss Chloe. Welcome to my home.”
Chloe giggled at the dramatic greeting and shook McKenzie’s hand solemnly while Will just craned his neck to look behind her.
“Where is Rika?” Will demanded. “I want to give her a great big hug.”
“Hey, no fair.” Kenzie gave a pretend pout as she bent down to his level. “Where’s mine first?”
Will beamed and threw his arms around her neck.
“You give the best hugs of any four-year-old boy I know, sir,” Kenzie said. “Let me take your coats, and then you can go find Rika and Hondo. They’re hanging out with the kids back in the den.”
“Yay! Hondo looks scary, but he’s not at all.”
“You’ve got his number, don’t you? That guy is nothing but a big old softy.”
Until that summer, Will had been terrified of big dogs after he’d been bitten by one in the neighborhood. Thanks to Wynona and her gentle dog, Young Pete, Will had been able to lose his fear and now he embraced all things canine—especially the little Havachon they had rescued from the shelter before Thanksgiving.
“Just head down that hall and you’ll find dogs and kids and toys. Maddie Hayward is here and so are Ty and Jazmyn Barrett. I do believe there might be a movie playing, if you want to watch it.”
“Can we, Mama?” Chloe asked. Though she wasn’t typically nervous around Kenzie, large groups could bring out her anxiety—at least until she found her friends and settled in.
“Sure. You guys have fun. I’ll be right here.”
Will raced down the hall and Chloe followed at a more subdued pace. She watched them, her heart pinching with worry for her sweet little girl.
“Don’t worry. You know Jenna, the high school girl who works for me at the shop after school? I asked her to come out and keep an eye on the kids so the moms can enjoy the party in exchange for my help decorating for her birthday party in January.”
McKenzie thought of everything. It was what made her a good businesswoman and a dedicated mayor of Haven Point. “Thank you. I’ll still worry, but probably a little less, knowing that. Call me when the birthday party comes around and I’ll help you decorate.”
“I just might take you up on that.”
“Not that you need my help.” She looked around at the entryway, dec
orated in glittering white, blue and silver. She particularly admired a trio of thick candles spearing up from an elaborate arrangement of twigs, berry picks and pinecones, all spray-painted to match the color theme. “Your house looks beautiful. It should be in a home decor magazine.”
“Ben calls it Christmas on crack,” she said with a smile.
“Hey. I only said that once.”
Both she and Kenzie looked up when Ben Kilpatrick spoke from the doorway. He wore a leather jacket and had car keys in his hand.
“You did,” Kenzie said. “But it was memorable.”
“I love our house. It’s my favorite place in the world,” he said. “Hi, Andrea.”
He leaned in to give her a quick kiss on the cheek, then stepped quickly away, making her face heat. Ben was always so careful with her, treating her like those delicate ornaments hanging in the front window. It was clear he didn’t want to crowd her or make her feel threatened—or maybe he was that way with everyone and she was looking for layered subtext where none existed.
She would have greatly preferred that no one in Haven Point had ever found out what happened to her, but Rob Warren had made that impossible.
“You look lovely tonight, as always,” he told her.
“Thank you. I hope we’re not chasing you away.”
“Not really—though I’d like to think I’m smart enough to duck and run when the Helping Hands are around.”
McKenzie gave him a mock scowl. “You love the Helping Hands.”
“I do. Everyone knows the Helping Hands are really the heart of Haven Point. Without you, this town would be a cold, sad, cheerless place.”
“Don’t you forget it.”
“You would never let me, darling,” he said with a laugh, then kissed her forehead.
“I’m actually heading over to Snow Angel Cove,” he told Andie, then pitched his voice lower and looked around as if checking for eavesdroppers. “I’m helping Aidan with a Christmas present. I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention anything to Eliza or Maddie. They think I’m heading over to watch a basketball game.”
She twisted her fingers as if locking her lips and tossed the pretend key over her shoulder, which earned her one of Ben’s rare but devastating smiles.
“Good luck to both of you, then,” she said.
“Thanks.” He waved at her, then leaned in once more to kiss his wife of only a few months. When he walked out the door, McKenzie’s lipstick was smeared and her hair a little rumpled, but that rather dazed smile indicated she didn’t really mind.
For one small, selfish moment, envy poked at Andie with sharp, merciless claws, leaving behind a trailing sadness. Oh, she missed that. Jason had been gone for two years and there were times she ached most of all at the loss of those casual little touches. His fingers brushing the back of her neck as he passed by, his arm draped across her while he slept, his hand on her knee as they sat together on the sofa watching a favorite television show.
All those small, tender physical reminders that oiled the sometimes creaky and contrary machinery of a marriage.
Her children gave her hugs and kisses all day, which she adored. She tried to tell herself it was enough. Deep in her heart, on those nights she couldn’t sleep because the bed felt too big, she knew it was a lie.
On those nights, she would wrap herself in a blanket, curl up in the window seat and read long into the night to push the loneliness away.
But this was a party and she wasn’t going to waste time feeling sorry for herself. “Is the guest of honor here yet?” she asked.
“Yes. Hazel and Eppie were the first ones here. You know how Ronald Brewer is. If they show up ten minutes early, he considers them all late. Everyone’s back in the family room.”
Andrea continued to look at the various unique holiday decorations throughout the house as McKenzie led the way, until they reached a sprawling room off the kitchen dominated by glass windows that overlooked the lake.
The room was filled with most of her favorite people in the world. Andie smiled and greeted friends as she headed straight for Hazel Brewer.
Hazel—still trim and fit and always fashionably dressed—beamed a welcome smile at her, which widened when Andie showed her the gift she and the children had made.
“For me? Oh, honey. You shouldn’t have. I don’t know what it is about all of you who can’t read your invitations. It clearly said to make a donation to the library instead of bringing a gift.”
Andie added the wrapped present to a small but growing pile on the table next to her. “I know. And I did that. But this is something the children and I made for you. They wanted to do it and I couldn’t tell them no, could I? Happy birthday, my dear.”
Andie leaned in to kiss Hazel’s wrinkled cheek.
“Thank you. Whoever would have thought a grumpy old cuss like me would live to such a ripe old age?”
“I can only say I hope the next eighty are just as amazing.”
Hazel made a face. “I’m not sure I have the energy for eight more decades. Maybe just four or five.”
“If that’s your plan, you better work on finding yourself another husband,” her sister Eppie said. “I don’t know if Ronald will be willing to drive you around for another fifty years.”
Andie laughed and hugged Eppie, as well. Eppie and Hazel were sisters fourteen months apart who had ended up marrying twin brothers. Andie had learned at her first Helping Hands meeting in McKenzie’s storeroom that Hazel’s husband had died of cancer two decades earlier. Since then, Eppie’s patient and long-suffering husband, Ronald, had taken his wife and her sister everywhere they needed to go.
Andie adored them all. Eppie and Hazel were kind and warm, always full of pithy observations and sly humor—exactly the kind of women she had always wished the grandmother who virtually raised her could have been. Instead, Damaris Packer had been a weak, self-effacing woman who would hardly say boo to a goose, forget about her loud, demanding, opinionated husband.
Andie was afraid she leaned more on her grandmother’s side of the personality scale, with a tendency to shrink away from any confrontation. Since coming to Haven Point, she wanted to think she’d learned a thing or two about being strong and capable—in no small measure because of the other women in this room.
“The caterer tells me they’ve just about finished setting dinner out. Let’s eat first and then we can open gifts.”
“What’s this we business?” Hazel said. “It’s my birthday, my gifts. I get to open them.”
“You mean the gifts you insisted you didn’t want?” Eppie said tartly.
“Just wait until you’re eighty, then you’ll see life is too short to waste it pretending you don’t like being the center of attention.”
Andie heard a muffled cough and looked over at Devin Shaw, who was fighting a grin.
With the skill of a consummate leader, McKenzie ushered the group into her elegant dining room, where a beautiful feast was laid out.
“Wow, this looks fantastic,” Julia Winston, the town librarian, exclaimed.
“I can’t believe you spent all this money to cater a meal,” Linda Fremont grumbled. “Why couldn’t we have just done potluck, like we always do?”
“An eightieth birthday requires something special, I believe,” McKenzie said. “And anyway, Ben insisted. This is our gift to Hazel but also our gift to the rest of you. And since he’s got more money than God, I try not to argue with him when he wants to do something special for my friends.”
“Why doesn’t Ben have any brothers?” Samantha Fremont complained. The normally effervescent Sam seemed subdued tonight, but then she had been down ever since her best friend—Marshall and Wynona’s sister, Katrina—had caught a wild hair after a breakup that summer and took off to see the world.
“Ben is one of a kind,” his m
other, Lydia, said with a fond smile.
“He is, indeed,” McKenzie said. “Don’t think about it. Just sit back and enjoy the fabulous food. Serrano’s went above and beyond with this one.”
The food was, indeed, delicious. Andie was nibbling on a plate of fabulous spinach lasagna when Eliza Caine sank into the chair beside her.
“Hi, Andie. You’re just the person I need!”
Andie instantly set down her fork. “Please tell me you’re looking for somebody to hold that sweet little boy of yours!”
Eliza laughed. “Well, that wasn’t what I meant, but sure.”
She carefully handed over tiny Liam Dermot Caine, born just before Thanksgiving. Andie took the bundle-wrapped infant and nestled him in her arms, falling in love all over again with his shock of dark hair like his father’s and the big blue eyes she hoped would stay that color.
“Oh, he’s precious,” she murmured.
“Isn’t he?” Eliza beamed.
Liam made a little squawk of a sound and managed to tug his fist out of the bundling so he could suck on the edge of it.
“He loves that fist. I don’t know what it is,” Eliza said. “It’s funny—Maddie did the very same thing.”
“When my kids were little, I never wanted to do anything but sit and hold them.”
“It’s the best part of being a new mom, isn’t it? I’m with you on that, but when Aidan’s anywhere around, I usually have to arm wrestle him for the chance. He’s completely enamored with being a father.”
She was charmed to the core at the idea of the sexy genius CEO behind Caine Tech losing his heart to his infant son.
“Aidan and Liam aren’t exactly what I wanted to talk to you about, though.”
“Oh?”
“I need a favor.”
“Sure,” Andie said. She was feeling so warm and content right about now with adorable Liam in her arms, she would have agreed to just about anything.
She had the random stray brainstorm that warring parties ought to take note and consider passing around sleepy, cuddly babies during complicated negotiation sessions. It would make the world a much more gentle place.
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