Trent had been wonderful in the beginning. The perfect boyfriend. She wouldn’t have married him if she hadn’t been sure she could lean on him. She could honestly say the first two years of their marriage had been everything she wanted.
But gradually things began to shift. The minute that plus sign showed up on the pregnancy test, it seemed as if everything had changed.
Financial success became the only thing that mattered to him, to the point of obsession—and not just financial success, but instant financial success. He had pursued one get-rich-quick scheme after another. Day trading, direct sales, real estate flips.
If someone else had made a dollar at something, Trent had been determined to make a thousand.
After Maddie was born with a heart defect, achieving success had become almost a compulsion.
She would have been thrilled with a steady paycheck, decent health insurance, but he wouldn’t listen.
“This is it, babe. The big payoff. I swear it.”
How many times had he said those words to her? At first, she had been stupidly proud of him for working so hard to support their family. Gradually, that had become the only thing that mattered to him. Not her, not Maddie. Just adding more zeros to their bank balance.
His last grand idea had actually been a good one, surprisingly enough. He had come up with the concept for a revolutionary new productivity app and had begun working with a developer friend of his from college.
He had been determined to sell the idea to one of the big Silicon Valley companies—and of course, Caine Tech had been his first choice for their forward-thinking products and phenomenal success rate.
Somehow through a friend of a friend, he had finagled a meeting. Not with Aidan, she knew that. Trent had called her after leaving the company, ranting about how he had been fobbed off on a couple of lower management flunkies who didn’t have the imagination or brains to see the genius of his idea.
After a few moments, the rant had turned despondent and she had spent a few moments trying to play the supportive wife while inside she had been completely exhausted and wondering how much longer she could do this.
He had told her he was going to stop off for a drink. Just one, he’d said, because he deserved it after that complete waste of time.
Two hours later, he was dead in a single-car accident—or at least she hoped it was an accident. She would never know if he had hit that barrier intentionally or just been too impaired after six drinks.
For a man obsessed with providing for his family, Trent had been remarkably shortsighted. He had racked up thousands in debt—and had missed their life insurance payment three months before his death.
She released a long breath now, trying not to think about that terrible chapter in her life. She had grieved for her husband and the life she had once imagined for them together and his death had reinforced that Eliza could only truly depend on herself.
* * *
LONG AFTER ELIZA returned to her room, Aidan sat in the dark kitchen trying to analyze what the hell had just happened.
He wanted to blame a hundred different things. The warm, seductive intimacy of the quiet kitchen, the pain medicine he hated that seemed to make him act in strange ways.
The hard truth of the matter was that he had ached to kiss her, quite fiercely. As he looked back on the past few days, he realized this attraction had been simmering inside him almost since the beginning.
The attraction part he fully comprehended. Eliza was a beautiful woman, with that silky spill of honey-streaked hair, the green eyes flecked with gold, the little smattering of freckles across her nose. Hers was a soft, understated beauty, fragile and sweet and deeply appealing.
This aching hunger inside him might be a normal, perfectly understandable physiological reaction to a beautiful woman—especially considering he had been living like a monk for the last three months.
Acting upon it was a completely different story.
She worked for him! He had a firmly held personal policy not to become entangled emotionally with the people who worked for him. He tried not to be cold or harsh about it, only resolute.
While he cared deeply for long-term employees like Sue and Jim, Louise, a few others in his trusted circle, he had learned not to combine romantic relationships and business. They created a toxic mix for everybody involved, as he had learned from bitter experience early on when a few overambitious women had tried to take advantage of him—including one miserable lawsuit he would prefer to forget.
Eliza worked for him, which automatically made her completely off-limits to anything like heated kisses in the early morning hours. Yes, her employment was temporary and maybe a bit unorthodox but that didn’t change the underlying philosophy.
Beyond that, Eliza was not his usual sort of woman. He typically was drawn to sophisticated, urbane women after the same sort of relationship he wanted—casual, easy, uncomplicated.
A young widow with a medically fragile child—however adorable Maddie might be—didn’t strike him as someone who would be amenable to a quick fling.
The reminder served as the same bracing shock he would have gotten from sticking his face in the snow.
So. Lesson learned. He had to avoid intimate conversations with her in seductively quiet rooms. He could do that. Now that he was aware of his attraction to her, he would just have to be careful to keep out of situations where it might become an issue.
He had always been able to compartmentalize easily and had learned to shove aside the unimportant in order to focus on higher priorities.
He knew people thought him cold and emotionless. Even his siblings accused him of it. He wasn’t. He felt things just as deeply as everyone else—maybe even more deeply—but his long and difficult grieving process after his mother’s death had one good side effect in that he had learned through it how to put aside fears and hurts and loss and distill his concentration toward meeting his goals.
He considered his single-minded focus one of his greatest strengths—and he would simply apply the same principle to the quandary of Eliza Hayward.
Forgetting that intense kiss wouldn’t be an easy task but he would just have to force himself to try in order to return things between them to a professional level.
She would only be here for a few weeks. How difficult would it be to shove down his inconvenient attraction for that time, especially since he would no doubt be distracted once his family arrived?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“ARE YOU SURE you don’t mind running to the grocery store for me, too?” Sue asked Friday.
Eliza shrugged into her coat. “Not at all. It’s right on my way after I pick up the new lamps.”
“I told you, Jim can do all of that for you. I’m not sure you should be carrying those big boxes to the car. I know you say you feel fine now but I still worry about you.”
The other woman’s concern warmed her heart. After several days of working closely with Sue, Eliza had come to consider her a dear friend.
“I’m perfectly fine, I promise.” She still had a lingering twinge in her wrist and shoulder but even that was fading. “I have to go to the pharmacy, anyway, for Maddie and to be honest, I’m looking forward to finally seeing a little more of Haven Point.”
The past week had been so busy, she hadn’t even had a chance to leave the ranch. It was hard to have cabin fever in a vast twelve-thousand-square-foot lodge complete with all the amenities of a small resort but a change of scenery would certainly be welcome.
“You said you needed cream of tartar?” she asked.
“That’s right. How can I make snickerdoodles without cream of tartar?”
“Excellent question. I’ll be happy to pick some up for you. How much do you need?”
“Better get me at least four of the biggest spice containers they have. Aida
n has always loved my snickerdoodles and he assures me his family will, too.”
“Because you make the best snickerdoodles in the whole wide world,” Maddie declared from her elbow.
Sue smiled down at her, rubbing her head. The two of them had become fast friends, too, these last few days. Sue clearly adored Eliza’s daughter and treated her like a beloved granddaughter. Her quiet, darling husband did the same.
In their many conversations over the past few days, Eliza had learned that Sue and Jim had found each other late in life, too late to start a family. Sue had confessed that being with Maddie made her ache for the children and grandchildren she never had.
“Wait until you try my cut-out sugar cookies, darlin’,” she said now to Maddie. “I promise, you’ll be in cookie heaven.”
Maddie giggled. “There’s no such thing!”
“You say that because you haven’t tried my cookies yet.”
Eliza smiled. “Okay, cream of tartar. Anything else?”
“Let me check.”
Sue pulled down the notebook she used to organize menus and shopping lists for the party. “I think that should be everything. Aidan is supposed to be bringing some of the specialty items I can’t find locally.”
“And he’s coming home tonight?” she asked, trying for a casual tone even as her pulse hitched up a notch.
“Tonight or tomorrow. When he called this morning, he still didn’t know when his meetings would be done.”
Against her will, Eliza’s gaze shifted to the sofa in the kitchen sitting area, where they had shared that stunning kiss.
Try as she might, she couldn’t seem to shake the memory. She had started to avoid sitting down on that particular sofa because she could swear the clean, deliciously masculine scent of him still drifted in the air.
After six days she should be over this ridiculous and completely embarrassing crush she had developed—especially since she hadn’t even seen the man since that kiss.
The day after their early-morning conversation and embrace, he had made himself scarce, spending his time either outside helping Jim clear away the fresh snow or holed up in his office on phone calls. She knew, because every time she walked past his office toward the other rooms she was working on in that area of the house, the muted murmur of his voice through the closed door seemed to shiver through her as if he had trailed a finger down her spine.
The next morning, Tuesday, she found out after breakfast that he was gone, ostensibly to handle urgent, last-minute negotiations for a company Caine Tech wanted to acquire.
She was grateful he was gone, she told herself. Without his presence, some of the fine-edged tension under her skin seemed to dissipate and she could really go to work making his house into a warm and welcoming haven.
“Looks like we’re running low on baking powder,” Sue finally said. “Why don’t you pick up more of that and maybe some of that local artisanal cheese they carry in front of the store?”
“Got it. Cream of tartar, baking powder and cheese. Okay, find your coat, Mads.”
“Why don’t you leave the little one here?” Sue suggested. “I can sure use a little help decorating the sugar cookies.”
Maddie’s eyes widened. “Oh, can I, Mama? I want to decorate sugar cookies! You know I love putting on the sprinkles.”
She smiled. “That does sound like fun. You always have been an extrasprinkles girl, haven’t you?”
“Can we make some angels with silver wings?” Maddie suggested to Sue.
“I do think I might have a cookie cutter in the shape of an angel. We’ll see what we can do.”
Though Eliza was torn about leaving her daughter, she didn’t feel like she could deprive her of this fun. “Thank you,” she said to Sue. “I know you have plenty to do without babysitting, too.”
“Are you kidding? I’m not babysitting her, she’s helping me. Anyway, I love the company. Take all the time you need. There are a few nice shops in town you should check out while you’re there, especially if you need anything else on your Christmas list.”
Christmas. It always seemed like such an abstract concept until it started getting this close. The holiday was just around the corner, only five more days—this was Friday and Aidan’s family would be arriving the following Tuesday, the day before Christmas Eve.
She still had so much to do but as she walked through the house on her way to the garage, she couldn’t help admiring what she had accomplished so far.
She was far from an interior decorator but she did know the little touches that warmed up a room and made a guest feel welcome. A beautiful home wasn’t necessarily a gracious one and she wanted his family to remember how comfortable they felt at Snow Angel Cove.
To that end, she had made sure every bedroom had extra blankets, house slippers and fuzzy socks in various sizes, water carafes for the bedside tables, little baskets full of designer toiletries she had ordered rush delivery from the same supplier she had used at the hotel. She had carefully selected books and magazines for each room according to what she knew about his family and had worked late into the night making basic instruction manuals that explained in simple terms how to work the electronics, the wi-fi passwords and the gas fireplaces.
To make each room more festive, she and Maddie had spent a wonderful afternoon cutting boughs and glossy red winterberries from the abundant forested areas around the house and then arranging them on mantels and in containers on side tables. They had used extra to make wreaths to hang on some of the doors. Each room also contained a small four-foot Christmas tree, decorated with the individual guests in mind.
Would he like the little touches or would he think she had overstepped?
She supposed she would find out when he returned. If he had been here, she could have asked his opinion and at least had a little direction. Sue had approved of everything she had done, so Eliza had to hope she was on the right track.
If he hated everything, she could strip the house back to the cool, impersonal shell it had been four days ago.
A few moments later, she was pulling her SUV out of the garage and driving toward the town of Haven Point, some two miles away, feeling strange to be without Maddie.
The setting was spectacularly beautiful, with those commanding snow-covered mountains rising almost directly up from the other side of the brilliant blue lake.
With all this splendor to distract the eye, she didn’t know how people kept from driving off the road. Somehow she managed to make it to Haven Point without incident and drove down the appealing main street that curved around the lake.
She felt a pang as she passed the burned-out remains of the inn. How was Megan doing? she wondered. And what was she planning to do with the inn? She made a mental note to check in with her before she left Lake Haven.
She could have made a good life here with Maddie. Maybe they would have attended that charming little church on the lakeshore, with its Gothic stained glass windows and honey-gold brick. Maddie might have gone to the elementary school that rested on a hill overlooking the town and the lake. Eliza might have been on a first-name basis with the old-timers she saw talking to each other with elbows propped on the hood of a pickup truck in front of the feed store.
Maybe here she could have found the sense of belonging she and Maddie both needed.
In a perfect world, she would have been able to find another job here but she had scoured the online classified section of the community’s weekly newspaper and had come up with nothing but a few part-time, minimum wage retail jobs and a live-in companion to an elderly woman that specified Absolutely No Children, with several exclamation points.
She would figure something out. She had a couple of promising leads back in Boise already from some email inquiries she had sent out.
It only took a moment to pick up the two extra bedside lamps s
he had ordered for one of the guest suites that somehow didn’t have any, then she drove back to the small commercial center of Haven Point.
From what she could tell, McKenzie Shaw’s shop would be her best option for a few last-minute Christmas gifts.
She parked down the street and walked toward Point Made Flowers and Gifts, which was housed in a historic-looking redbrick building.
Chimes rang out like jingle bells as she pushed the door open. She was immediately greeted by a welcoming warmth and the cozy smell of cinnamon and apples, scents that conjured up home and hearth and old-fashioned Christmases.
Oh, this looked like just her kind of place, packed to the brim with clever little hard-to-find items. Oddly, the store appeared to be empty—except for a ginger-colored dog who rose to greet her.
The dog—a standard poodle wearing a bandana printed with gleaming green-and-gold Christmas ornaments—walked gracefully over to her, planted its haunches a few feet away and held up a hand just like a department store greeter.
“Hello. Are you in charge today?” she asked the dog, who seemed to give her an uncanny sort of grin.
Okay, strange. Where was McKenzie?
“Hello?” she called.
A moment later, a door in the back of the store popped open and McKenzie peeked her head around the frame. “Oh. I thought I heard the bell. Hi, Eliza! Great to see you! Welcome to Point Made.”
“Thanks. I’m in love with your shop.”
“Oh, thanks! I’m pretty crazy about it, too.”
“I finally found a minute to get away from Snow Angel Cove for a bit and take care of a little of my Christmas shopping.”
“This is the place for it. No Maddie today?”
Eliza shook her head. “I left her making sugar cookies with Sue.”
“Lucky girl. A sugar cookie would be fabulous right about now.”
“I’ll have her save you a few and we’ll drop them off next time we come to town.”
Snow Angel Cove Page 16
