by Cara Colter
“Ah.”
Noelle wondered if she should tell him there might be others coming. But were there? She decided to take her grandfather aside and find out whether, apart from sending money to strangers, he had any other confirmed guests, before setting off alarm bells. Besides, wasn’t there a possibility this was between Aidan and Rufus and she should stay out of it?
Meanwhile she had to satisfy her curiosity about how Aidan Phillips had come to be standing in a field on her grandfather’s property! Handsome men did not just fall from the heavens!
“I must say,” Noelle said cautiously, “that you hardly seem like the type of man who would be searching an online ad site to make your Christmas plans.”
“Oh? What type of man do I seem like?”
“The kind who would have a zillion much more glamorous Christmas options and invitations than this one.”
“That’s true,” he said, with a sigh that could be interpreted as regretful that he had not accepted one of his many other invitations.
“So what brings you to Rufus McGregor’s ranch for Christmas?” she pressed.
Aidan blew out a long breath and ran a gloved hand through his hair, scattering dark wisps that drifted like feathers before they settled obediently back into place. Such a small thing to find so utterly and disconcertingly sexy.
Her ex-fiancé, Mitchell, had been bald as a billiard ball.
It was the novelty of all that silky touchable-looking hair, she told herself firmly. But still, she had noticed. Not just noticed. No, noticed and found it attractive. This had to be nipped in the bud, of course.
Noelle closed her eyes for a moment. She summoned a picture in her mind of a red dress. It hung in her dark closet at home, its color dulled behind a plastic wrapper. It was the most glorious—and the most expensive—item of clothing she had ever owned.
She had bought it for the engagement party that had never happened. Now, she would never wear it. Or get rid of it, either. It would be defense against such things as this—an odd twinge of longing that had attacked without warning, the first such longing since Mitchell had packed a single bag—he’d only needed shorts and T-shirts for his new life, after all—and bid her adieu with undisguised eagerness to be gone.
“Are you all right?”
She opened her eyes. Aidan was looking at her quizzically.
“Yes, of course. I’m fine. You were going to tell me—”
He looked at her, considering. Something softened marginally in his expression. It was probably very obvious her discomfort was authentic, and that if her grandpa had something up his sleeve, she had had no part in it.
“How I came to be here?” he asked, his tone rueful.
She nodded.
“Never tell a five-nearly-six-year-old she can have anything she wants for Christmas.”
CHAPTER THREE
“SHE PICKED THIS?” Noelle asked, shocked. “Your daughter, Tess, could have anything she wanted for Christmas and she picked my grandfather’s old place in the middle of nowhere?”
“Almost anything,” Aidan clarified. “No pony.”
Uh-oh. Did that explain nasty little Gidget’s arrival on the ranch? Her grandfather had said it was the secret he didn’t want let out yet.
“And no puppy,” Aidan added after a moment. “I actually was foolish enough to say, in a moment of utter weakness, that she could have anything else.”
Noelle suspected he had been momentarily so caught up in the guilt of refusing Tess a pony or a puppy that he had caved easily on her request to come here. But why had she wanted to come here?
“And she picked this?” Noelle asked again.
“I’m as flabbergasted as you are.” He regarded her thoughtfully. “What do you think a little girl who could have anything would choose?”
Her opinion really seemed to matter to him. He was looking at her with discomfiting intensity. She hoped he wouldn’t run his hand through his hair again.
“Disneyland?” she hazarded, after a moment’s thought.
He looked disappointed in the answer, and she was annoyed with herself for feeling that she had not wanted to let him down.
“Yes, Disneyland. According to my research staff, the number one wish of children around the world is to visit a Disney resort.”
She had not only disappointed, she hadn’t even been original. Still, if for a moment she didn’t make it all about her, what did it say about him that he had set his research staff on the task of discovering what would make his daughter’s dreams come true?
“So, you took her?”
“Yes. Tess declared, at the top of her lungs, lying on the walkway in the middle of the park, It is not Christmas without snow,” he informed Noelle solemnly. “Even though I explained to her the very first Christmas would not have had any snow, we were, at that point, beyond rational explanations.
“I’m lucky I wasn’t arrested. Fortunately, four-year-old meltdowns are not the unusual in ‘the Happiest Place on Earth.’”
She had to bite back a desire to laugh at the picture forming in her mind of this self-contained man being held hostage by a four-year-old having a tantrum.
He went on, “The holiday transformation of It’s a Small World failed to impress my daughter, despite the addition of fifty thousand Christmas lights, which is also the number of times I think we went through that particular attraction. For weeks after, I had ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘Deck the Halls’ jangling away inside my head.”
“Oh, dear,” Noelle murmured. “Would you like me to take those off the caroling list?”
“There’s to be caroling?” Aidan asked, horrified.
“All part of an old-fashioned Christmas,” she said, deadpan. Of course, she had not planned a single thing for an old-fashioned Christmas. Was it wrong to take such delight in his discomfort? “I think it’s a requirement, as well as snow. You can see we have plenty of that.”
“The Christmas before Disneyland we had snow,” he confessed. “My team found a place in the Finnish Lapland. We stayed in a glass igloo and witnessed the Northern Lights. We rode in a cart pulled by reindeer. We visited Santa’s house.”
“That sounds absolutely magical.” Noelle actually was not sure anything her grandfather could offer would compete with such a Christmas.
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, dear, I can tell by your tone—”
He nodded. “Another Christmas fail. She was three at the time. Santa was not as depicted in her favorite storybook. I think creepy is the word she used in reference to him. Cweepy. Rhotacism is perfectly normal until age eight.”
“Rhotacism?” Noelle asked weakly.
“Trading out the R sound for W.”
Which meant he had checked. Or his research staff had. It was all a bit sad, and somehow made him more dangerous than his wisps of dark hair falling gently back into place after he had raked his hand through them.
Before she could reconjure the red dress, he continued. “And the reindeer were a major letdown. Non-fliers. None with a red nose.”
“I guess some elements of Christmas might be best left to the imagination,” Noelle said. It seemed to her that Aidan, in his feverish efforts to manufacture the Christmas experience, might have missed the meaning of that first Christmas entirely.
She saw, again, just a hint of vulnerability in him—the single dad trying desperately to make his daughter happy. Especially at Christmas. Desperate enough to join strangers...
Noelle searched her memory. His wife had been a very famous and extraordinarily beautiful actress. Hadn’t she died around Christmas? Three years ago? The papers had not been able to get enough of that sad little toddler’s face. And then, to his credit, Aidan Phillips had managed to get his daughter out of the limelight and keep her out of it.
She could feel herself softening toward him the ti
niest bit.
“And then you would think you could salvage Christmas with lovely gifts, wouldn’t you?” He sighed with long-suffering.
Again, she felt he was missing the point, but she went along. “Aren’t gifts for little girls easy? Hair ribbons and teddy bears and new pajamas? A jangly bracelet? A miniature oven?”
“Oh, right,” Aidan said, as if Noelle was hopelessly naive.
Of course, his little girl probably got those things as a matter of course, so what did Tess then have to look forward to?
“Doesn’t she tell you what she wants?”
“Yes, a puppy. And a pony. Every other item on her wish list is reserved for Santa. The fat happy Santa at the mall, not the skinny fellow in odd clothes with a real beard in Finland. And it’s a secret. If you tell anyone, then Santa won’t bring it to you, because the hearty laugh and twinkly eyes are just fronts for a mean-spirited old goat that would punish a little girl for telling her dad what she really wants.”
Noelle was struck by an irony here. Aidan Phillips, one of the most wealthy and successful men in Canada, if not the world, was in hopelessly over his head when it came to being a daddy at Christmas.
What had her grandfather just said? That a man who thought money was the only way to be rich was very poor indeed?
Still, it seemed like it should all be fairly easy. Was he the kind of man who could complicate a dot?
“How about that line of dolls that is such a big hit? Millie something?”
“Jilly,” he corrected her. “Jilly Jamjar. And her friends. Corrinne Cookiejar. Pauline Picklejar. They all come with the ‘jar’ they live in.”
“Are you making this up?”
“Really? Do I look like the kind of man who could make up a line of dolls who live in jar houses?”
“No,” she had to admit, “you do not.”
“I wish I was making it up. She already has the first three in the series. But then along came Jerry. Jerry Juicejar.”
It was quite funny listening to this extremely sophisticated man discuss the Jar dolls, fluent in their ridiculous names, but she had the feeling it would be a mistake to laugh.
“The Jarheads—my name for the toy manufacturers, not their own—in all their wisdom, made a limited edition of dear Jerry. There’s a few thousand of him. Period. For millions of children screaming his name in adulation. I swear the Jarheads are in cahoots with the mean-spirited Santa.
“Which brings us to I-Sell. One momentary lapse on my part. Okay, go ahead, see if you can find a Jerry Juicejar on there.”
“You let your five-year-old daughter go on the internet?”
Noelle was treated to a flinty look of pure warning. Do not judge me.
“She’s not five going on six, she’s five going on twenty-one.”
Which Noelle found terribly sad. Really, Tess was little more than a baby, only a year ago being quite capable of throwing a tantrum in the middle of a theme park. Still, she refrained from saying anything. She was beginning to suspect that the do-not-judge-me look she saw in his eyes had something to do with the fact that he had already judged himself with horrendous harshness.
“Plus, she wasn’t by herself. Nana was supervising. I’ve got two acquisitions assistants looking for him full time, and they have not found anyone willing to part with a Jerry. There are some things,” Aidan said with a miffed sigh, “that money can’t buy.”
“There are all kinds of things money can’t buy,” Noelle said firmly.
He looked dubious about that, even after his failed attempts to purchase Christmas happiness for his daughter with lavish holiday plans, research teams and acquisitions assistants.
“Is it possible Tess would like to just stay home for Christmas?” she suggested softly, as gently as she could. “She just wants what any child wants. To be with you. To be with her family.”
“I’m it for family,” he said tightly. “Me and Nana. Another fail in the Christmas department, I’m sure. And we don’t stay home for Christmas.”
A fire, Noelle seemed to remember. In their apartment? Christmas morning? A nation pulled from their Christmas joy to mourn with that very famous family.
“Anyway, she was looking for Jerry Juicejar, and what did she find while her supervisor nodded off on the sofa? An Old-Fashioned Country Christmas.”
“You’re quite lucky that’s all she found,” Noelle said.
Again, she got the flinty look, but underneath it she saw just a flicker of the magnitude of his sense of drowning in the sea of parenting requirements.
“You couldn’t dissuade her?” She deliberately made her tone neutral, vigilantly nonjudgmental.
Not that he seemed to appreciate her effort! He shot her a look. “You’ll soon see how easy it is to dissuade Tess. And I did, very foolishly, promise her she could have anything. A promise is a promise. She’ll be the first to let you know that, too. She has a book by that title that she carries in her hip pocket for reference and reminder purposes. So be very careful what you tell her.”
“I’ve made a note,” she said seriously, and he shot her a suspicious look to see if she was making light of him.
“I had...er...some of my staff make sure your grandfather was legitimate.”
It was faintly insulting, and yet she could hardly blame him.
“And then I spoke to your grandfather on the phone and it all seemed aboveboard. Nice old guy, first Christmas alone. Of course, he neglected to mention Ellie-born-on-Christmas-Day.”
“Maybe your research teams just aren’t that good,” she said drily. “They can’t find out what a little girl wants for Christmas and they totally missed me. I go by Noelle, actually, and being born on Christmas Day was not an indictable offense the last time I checked.”
“Did I say it like it was?”
“You did.”
“It’s just so darn...cute. Most people, of course, would hate having their birthday overshadowed by the ‘big’ day, but I bet you aren’t one of them.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What would make you presume anything about me?”
He lifted a broad shoulder. “Presumptions are a part of life. You made some about me—that I was not the type of man who would need to join strangers for Christmas—and I have made some about you.”
“Do tell,” she said, though in truth she was bracing herself. She was not sure she wanted him to tell at all.
“There’s a look about you. A country girl.”
A country girl? She had lived in the city now for nearly five years. She considered herself fairly sophisticated.
Not that you would know it at the moment. She was dressed in a pink parka and her jeans were stuffed into snow boots. On her hurried way out the back door, she had put her grandpa’s toque back on. Her cheeks were probably pink, and no doubt her nose was, too.
“Not a touch of makeup. Wholesome,” he went on, ignoring the fact that she was looking daggers at him. “Giving. Christmas magic and all that. Hopelessly naive. Probably made a bad choice in a man and Grandpa has stepped in to find you a suitable partner. Right at Christmas. Cue the music.”
He began to hum “White Christmas.”
She hoped it wouldn’t get stuck in her head.
“Are you always so insufferable?” she asked.
“I try...and that’s out of character. Not giving at all. Tut-tut.”
“Let me tell you my presumptions. You hate Christmas. I can tell by your obnoxious tone.” She thought of adding, No wonder you haven’t been able to succeed at giving your daughter a good one, but stopped herself. It would just be mean. And he was, unfortunately, right about the wholesome and giving part of her nature.
“I wondered about an ulterior motive in getting us here,” Aidan said. “Who just invites strangers for Christmas?”
“Well, you can just quit wondering. You will
never—never—meet a man with more integrity than my grandfather. He’s invited strangers for Christmas because he feels he has something to give, not to take anything.”
“Humph,” he said with an insulting lack of conviction.
Was Aidan Phillips annoying her on purpose? Surely her face had softened in sympathy at his vulnerable dad side, as he had revealed each of his Christmas failures? Now, he was successfully erasing that. If he was now trying to make her angry—a defense against her unwanted sympathy—it was working all too well!
“My grandfather might be trying to look after me. I hope not, but he’s old and his heart is in the right place, which I’m sure you figured out when you accepted his generous invitation to spend Christmas at his home. I may be single, but really, you would both be presuming too much by thinking I would be interested in you!”
Of course, there was the momentary lapse over his hair, but he never had to know.
He stopped. It forced her to stop, too. She tilted her chin and glared at him.
“And you wouldn’t be?” he asked, incredulous.
“Oh!” She fought a desire to take off her grandfather’s toque and stuff it in her pocket so she wouldn’t look quite so folksy. “Why would you sound so surprised? Do you have women flinging themselves at you all the time?”
“Yes.” He cocked his head at her.
“I am not some country bumpkin who is going to be bowled over by your charm, Mr. Phillips,” she said tightly.
“I don’t have any charm.”
“Agreed.”
“You’ve had a heartbreak, just as I guessed.”
The utter audacity of the man. It made her want to pick up a handful of snow and throw it in his face.
“There might be other reasons a woman would not fling herself at you,” she suggested tightly. Even though that one happened to be true.
“There might be,” he said skeptically.
But, also true, perhaps a woman would recognize instantly that she was not in the same league as you, she thought to herself. Perhaps she’d recognize she had failed to hang on to a relationship with even a very ordinary guy, so what were her chances of—
