Maid Under the Mistletoe

by Maureen Child

  Okay, her mind warned sternly, dial it back now, Joy. No point in setting yourself up for that crush.

  “You say no, but your eyes are saying yum.” Deb filled a tray with apple pies no bigger than silver dollars, laying them all out on paper doilies that made them look like loosely wrapped presents.

  “Yum is easy—it’s what comes after that’s hard.”

  “Since when are you afraid of hard work?”

  “I’m not, but—” Not the same thing, she told herself, as working to make a living, to build a life. This was bringing a man out of the shadows, and what if once he was out he didn’t want her anyway? No, that way lay pain and misery, and why should she set herself up for that?

  “You’re alone, he’s alone, match made in heaven.”

  “Alone isn’t a good enough reason for anyone, Deb.” She stopped, snatched another brownie and asked, “When did this get to be about me instead of you?”

  “Since I hate seeing my best friend—a completely wonderful human being—all by herself.”

  “I’m not alone. I have Holly.”

  “And I love her, too, but it’s not the same and you know it.”

  Slumping, Joy leaned one hip against the counter and nibbled at her second brownie. “No, it’s not. And okay, fine—I’m...intrigued by Sam.”

  “Intrigued is good. Sex is better.”

  Sadly, she admitted, “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Yeah, that would be my point.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Joy said wistfully. Then she glanced out the window at the house across the yard where Holly and Lizzie were probably driving Sean Casey insane about now. “I mean, he’s—and I’m—”

  “Something happened.”

  Her gaze snapped to Deb’s. “Just a kiss.”

  “Yay. And?”

  “And,” Joy admitted, “then he got a little more involved and completely melted my underwear.”

  “Wow.” Deb gave a sigh and fluttered one hand over her heart.

  “Yeah. We were arguing and we were both furious and he kissed me and—” she slapped her hands together “—boom.”

  “Oh, boom is good.”

  “It’s great, but it doesn’t solve anything.”

  “Honey,” Deb asked with a shake of her head, “who cares?”

  Joy laughed. Honestly, Deb was really good for her. “Okay, I’m heading back to the house. Even when it’s this cold outside, I shouldn’t be leaving the groceries in the car this long.”

  “Fine, but I’m going to want to hear more about this ‘boom.’”

  “Yeah,” Joy said, “me, too. So are the girls still on for the sleepover?”

  “Are you kidding? Lizzie’s been planning this for days. Popcorn, princess movies and s’mores cooked over the fireplace.”

  Ordinarily, Holly would be too young for a sleepover, but Joy knew Deb was as crazy protective as she was. “Okay, then I’ll bring her to your house Saturday afternoon.”

  “Don’t forget to pray for me,” Deb said with a smile. “Two five-year-olds for a night filled with squeals...”

  “You bet.”

  “And take that box of brownies with you. Sweeten up your hermit and maybe there’ll be more ‘boom.’”

  “I don’t know about that, but I will definitely take the brownies.” When she left the warm kitchen, she paused on the back porch and tipped her face up to the gray sky. As she stood there, snow drifted lazily down and kissed her heated cheeks with ice.

  Maybe it would be enough to cool her off, she told herself, crossing the yard to Deb’s house to collect Holly and head home. But even as she thought it, Joy realized that nothing was going to cool her off as long as her mind was filled with thoughts of Sam.

  Eight

  Once it started snowing, it just kept coming. As if an invisible hand had pulled a zipper on the gray, threatening clouds, they spilled down heavy white flakes for days. The woods looked magical, and every day, Holly insisted on checking the fairy houses—there were now two—to see if she could catch a glimpse of the tiny people living in them. Every day there was disappointment, but her faith never wavered.

  Sam had to admire that even as his once-cold heart warmed with affection for the girl. She was getting to him every bit as much as her mother was. In different ways, of course, but the result was the same. He was opening up, and damned if it wasn’t painful as all hell. Every time that ice around his heart cracked a little more, and with it came the pain that reminded him why the ice had been there in the first place.

  He was on dangerous ground, and there didn’t seem to be a way to back off. Coming out of the shadows could blind a man if he wasn’t careful. And that was one thing Sam definitely was.

  Once upon a time, things had been different. He had been different. He’d gone through life thinking nothing could go wrong. Though at the time, everywhere he turned, things went his way so he couldn’t really be blamed for figuring it would always be like that.

  His talent had pushed him higher in the art world than he’d ever believed possible, but it was his own ego that had convinced him to believe every accolade given. He’d thought of himself as blessed. As chosen for greatness. And looking back now, he could almost laugh at the deluded man he’d been.

  Almost. Because when he’d finally had his ass handed to him, it had knocked the world out from under his feet. Feeling bulletproof only made recovering from a crash that much harder. And he couldn’t even really say he’d recovered. He’d just marched on, getting by, getting through. What happened to his family wasn’t something you ever got over. The most you could do was keep putting one foot in front of the other and hope that eventually you got somewhere.

  Of course, he’d gotten here. To this mountain with the beautiful home he shared with a housekeeper he paid to be there. To solitude that sometimes felt like a noose around his neck. To cutting ties to his family because he couldn’t bear their grief as well as his own.

  He gulped down a swallow of hot coffee and relished the burn. He stared out the shop window at the relentless snow and listened to the otherworldly quiet that those millions of falling flakes brought. In the quiet, his mind turned to the last few days. To Joy. The tension between them was strung as tight as barbed wire and felt just as lethal. Every night at dinner, he sat at the table with her and her daughter and pretended his insides weren’t churning. Every night, he avoided meeting up with Joy in the great room by locking himself in the shop to work on what was under that tarp. And finally, he lay awake in his bed wishing to hell she was lying next to him.

  He was a man torn by too many things. Too twisted around on the road he’d been walking for so long to know which way to head next. So he stayed put. In the shop. Alone.

  Across the yard the kitchen light sliced into the dimness of the gray morning when Holly jerked the door open and stepped outside. He watched her and wasn’t disappointed by her shriek of excitement. The little girl turned back to the house, shouted something to her mother and waited, bouncing on her toes until Joy joined her at the door. Holly pointed across the yard toward the trees and, with a wide grin on her face, raced down the steps and across the snow-covered ground.

  Her pink jacket and pink boots were like hope in the gray, and Sam smiled to himself, wondering when he’d fallen for the kid. When putting up with her had become caring for her. When he’d loosened up enough to make a tiny dream come true.

  Sam was already outside when Holly raced toward him in a wild flurry of exhilaration. He smiled at the shine in her eyes, at the grin that lit up her little face like a sunbeam. Then she threw herself at him, hugging his legs, throwing her head back to look up at him.

  “Sam! Sam! Did you see?” Her words tumbled over each other in the rush to share her news. She grabbed his hand and tugged, her pink gloves warm against his fing
ers. “Come on! Come on! You have to see! They came! They came! I knew they would. I knew it and now they’re here!”

  Snow fell all around them, dusting Holly’s jacket hood and swirling around Joy as she waited, her gaze fixed on his. And suddenly, all he could see were those blue eyes of hers, filled with emotion. A long, fraught moment passed between them before Holly’s insistence shattered it. “Look, Sam. Look!”

  She tugged him down on the ground beside her, then threw her arms around his neck and held on tight. Practically vibrating with excitement, Holly gave him a loud, smacking kiss on the cheek, then pulled back and looked at him with wonder in her eyes. “They came, Sam. They’re living in our houses!”

  Still reeling from that freely given hug and burst of affection, Sam stood up on unsteady legs. Smiling down at the little girl as she crawled around the front of the houses, peering into windows that shone with tiny Christmas lights, he felt another chunk of ice drop away from his heart. In the gray of the day, those bright specks of blue, green, red and yellow glittered like magic. Which was, he told himself, what Holly saw as she searched in vain to catch a glimpse of the fairies themselves.

  He glanced at Joy again and she was smiling, a soft, knowing curve of her mouth that gleamed in her eyes, as well. There was something else in her gaze, too—beyond warmth, even beyond heat, and he wondered about it while Holly spun long, intricate stories about the fairies who lived in the tiny houses in the woods.

  * * *

  “You didn’t have to do this,” Joy said for the tenth time in a half hour.

  “I’m gonna have popcorn with Lizzie and watch the princess movie,” Holly called out from the backseat.

  “Good for you,” Sam said with a quick glance into the rearview mirror. Holly was looking out the side window, watching the snow and making her plans. He looked briefly to Joy. “How else were you going to get into town?”

  “I could have called Deb, asked her or Sean to come and pick up Holly.”

  “Right, or we could do it the easy way and have me drive you both in.” Sam kept his gaze on the road. The snow was falling, not really heavy yet, but determined. It was already piling up on the side of the road, and he didn’t even want to think about Joy and Holly, alone in a car, maneuvering through the storm that would probably get worse. A few minutes later, he pulled up outside the Casey house and was completely stunned when, sprung from her car seat, Holly leaned over and kissed his cheek. “’Bye, Sam!”

  It was the second time he’d been on the receiving end of a simple, cheerfully given slice of affection that day, and again, Sam was touched more deeply than he wanted to admit. Shaken, he watched Joy walk Holly to her friend’s house and waited until she came back, alone, and slid into the car beside him.

  “She hardly paused long enough to say goodbye to me.” Joy laughed a little. “She’s been excited by the sleepover for days, but now the fairy houses are the big story.” She clicked her seat belt into place, then turned to face him. “She was telling Lizzie all about the lights in the woods and promising that you and she will make Lizzie a fairy house, too.”

  “Great,” he said, shaking his head as he backed out of the driveway. He wasn’t sure how he’d been sucked into the middle of Joy’s and Holly’s lives, but here he was, and he had to admit—though he didn’t like to—that he was enjoying it. Honestly, it worried him a little just how much he enjoyed it.

  He liked hearing them in his house. Liked Holly popping in and out of the workshop, sharing dinner with them at the big dining room table. He even actually liked building magical houses for invisible beings. “More fairies.”

  “It’s your own fault,” she said, reaching out to lay one hand on his arm. “What you did was—it meant a lot. To Holly. To me.”

  The warmth of her touch seeped down into his bones and quickly spread throughout his body. Something else he liked. That jolt of heat when Joy was near. The constant ache of need that seemed to always be with him these days. He hadn’t wanted a woman like this in years. He swallowed hard against the demand clawing at him and turned for the center of town and the road back to the house.

  “We’re not in a hurry, are we?” she asked.

  Sam stopped at a red light and looked at her warily. “Why?”

  “Because, it’s early, but we could stay in town for a while. Have dinner at the steak house...”

  She gave him a smile designed to bring a man to his knees. And it was working.

  “You want to go out to dinner?” he asked.

  “Well,” she said, shrugging. “It’s early, but that won’t kill us.”

  He frowned and threw a glance out the windshield at the swirls of white drifting down from a leaden sky. “Still snowing. We should get up the mountain while we still can.”

  She laughed and God, he loved the sound of it—even if it was directed at him and his lame attempt to get out of town.

  “It’s not a blizzard, Sam. An hour won’t hurt either of us.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Sam muttered darkly. “You like talking to people.” The sound of her laughter filled the truck and eased his irritation as he headed toward the restaurant.

  * * *

  Everybody in town had to be in the steak house, and Joy thought it was a good thing. She knew a lot of people in Franklin and she made sure to introduce Sam to most of them. Sure, it didn’t make for a relaxing dinner—she could actually see him tightening up—but it felt good to watch people greet him. To tell him how much they loved the woodworking he did. And the more uncomfortable he got with the praise, the more Joy relished it.

  He’d been too long in his comfort zone of solitude. He’d made himself an island, and swimming to the mainland would be exhausting. But it would so be worth the trip.

  “I’ve never owned anything as beautiful as that bowl you made,” Elinor Cummings gushed, laying one hand on Sam’s shoulder in benediction. She was in her fifties, with graying black hair that had been ruthlessly sprayed into submission.

  “Thanks.” He shot Joy a look that promised payback in the very near future. She wasn’t worried. Like an injured animal, Sam would snarl and growl at anyone who came too close. But he wouldn’t bite.

  “I love what you did with the bowl. The rough outside, looks as though you just picked it up off the forest floor—” Elinor continued.

  “I did,” Sam said, clearly hoping to cut her off, but pasting a polite, if strained, smile on his face.

  “—and the inside looks like a jewel,” she continued, undeterred from lavishing him with praise. “All of those lovely colors in the grain of that wood, all so polished, and it just gleams in the light.” She planted one hand against her chest and gave a sigh. “It’s simply lovely. Two sides of life,” she mused, “that’s what it says to me, two sides, the hard and the good, the sad and the glad. It’s lovely. Just lovely.”

  “All right now, Ellie,” her husband said, with an understanding wink for Sam and Joy, “let’s let the man eat. Good to meet you, Sam.”

  Sam nodded, then reached for the beer in front of him and took a long pull. The Cummingses had been just the last in a long stream of people who’d stopped by their table to greet Joy and meet Sam. Every damn one of them had given him a look that said Ah, the hermit. That’s what he looks like!

  And then had come the speculative glances, as they wondered whether Sam and Joy were a couple, and that irritated him, as well. This was what happened when you met people. They started poking their noses into your life and pretty soon, that life was open season to anyone with a sense of curiosity. As the last of the strangers went back to their own tables, he glared at Joy.

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  In the light of the candle at their table, her eyes sparkled as she grinned. “I could try to deny it, but why bother? Yes, I am. It’s good to see you actually forced to talk
to people. And Elinor clearly loves your work. Isn’t it nice to hear compliments?”

  “It’s a bowl.” He sighed. “Nothing deep or meaningful to the design. Just a bowl. People always want to analyze, interpret what the artist meant. Sometimes a bowl is just a bowl.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “You can’t fool me. I’ve seen your stuff in Crafty. Nothing about what you make is ‘just’ anything. People love your work, and if you gave them half a chance, they’d like you, too.”

  “And I want that because...”

  “Because it’s better than being a recluse.” Joy leaned forward, bracing her elbows on the table. “Honestly, Sam, you can’t stay on the mountain by yourself forever.”

  He hated admitting even to himself that she was right. Hell, he’d talked more, listened more, in the last couple of weeks than he had in years. His house wasn’t empty. Wasn’t filled with the careful quiet he normally knew. Kaye generally left him to his own devices, so he was essentially alone, even when his housekeeper was there. Joy and Holly had pushed their way into the center of his life and had shown him just how barren it had been.

  But when they left, his life would slide back onto its original course and the silence would seem even deeper. And God, he didn’t like the thought of that.

  * * *

  Sam frowned. “Why are we really here?”

  “To eat that amazing steak, for one,” Joy said, sipping at her wine. Interesting, she thought, how his facial expressions gave hints to what he was thinking. And even more interesting how fast a smile from him could dissolve into the more familiar scowl. She’d have given a lot in that moment to know exactly what was running through his mind.

  “And for another?”

  “To show you how nice the people of Franklin are. To prove to you that you can meet people without turning into a pillar of salt...” She sat back, sipped at her wine again and kept her voice lighter than she felt. “Admit it. You had a good time.”