hair was a little rumpled on the left side, as if he had run his fingers through it while on his phone call.
She had actually called him a sexy geek. Where was a conveniently placed snowdrift to dive into when she needed one?
“Hi, Mr. Aidan. Do you like it?” Maddie asked.
“I think it’s the most beautiful tree I’ve ever seen, too. The two of you did a great job.”
“You helped! We couldn’t have reached the top without you.”
“Not unless one of those angels swooped in and carried you up to the top.”
She laughed, delighted at the image, as Eliza heard a rattling of pans in the kitchen, followed by muffled swearing.
Aidan glanced in that direction. “I guess Sue must be feeling better.”
“She says she is.”
“What about you?”
She still ached, she couldn’t deny that. Even now, she had to fight the urge to knead her fist into her throbbing lower back, but she firmly believed staying in motion had been the best possible medicine. By this time tomorrow, she expected even those aches and pains would dissipate.
“Almost back to normal,” she answered.
“Good.” He gave her one of those irresistible smiles and for a moment she was once more in his gleaming kitchen with the electricity snapping and sizzling between them.
He was the first to look away. “The snow seems to have finally stopped. Feel like getting some air? I thought maybe we could bundle up and walk out to the barn to check on the horses.”
“Yes!” Maddie answered instantly, before Eliza even had a chance to think. “Can we, Mama? Oh, please!”
She didn’t want to spend any more time with him than she had to but maybe the best way to deal with her mortification would be to wade straight through it. After snowfall all day, the temperature would undoubtedly be icy. A nice walk in a blizzard might be just the thing to cool down her overheated imagination right about now.
“Sure. A little fresh air would be nice. Maddie, why don’t you work on straightening up in here while I go find our coats?”
“Okay!”
Maddie eagerly scurried around underneath the tree picking up extra hanging wire and stray clumps of paper towel someone had used to wrap around some of the ornaments in storage.
She was such a sweet girl, always so earnest and ready to please. With a heart full of gratitude, Eliza hurried to the guest bedroom. She hadn’t had time to move their things to the cook’s quarters off the kitchen yet but planned to do that before dinner.
She shrugged into the wool peacoat she’d bought on clearance two winters before and picked up Maddie’s pink-and-purple parka. When she returned to the great room, she found Maddie and Aidan, heads bent together as they looked at something on the Christmas tree.
She paused and watched them, a funny little ache in her chest. The only men in Maddie’s life were her doctors and Eliza’s dear friends Sam and Julio, a gay couple who had lived in the apartment across the hall.
“This is my favorite ornament on the whole tree,” Maddie declared.
“It’s a nice one,” he answered, “but why is this particular ornament your favorite? There have to be hundreds of angels on the tree.”
“Because it’s a boy angel, just like my daddy. See?”
He bent his head to see it better and Eliza couldn’t help craning her neck for a closer look. She remembered hanging that one earlier. The porcelain angel had looked antique to her so she had been extra careful with it and had let Maddie look but not touch. It did indeed have slightly masculine features, she recalled, though they looked nothing like Trent’s.
“Mama says Daddy is watching over us from heaven. Whenever I have to go to the hospital, she tells me he’s there helping the doctors know what to do.”
“I’m sure he is,” Aidan murmured. He must have sensed her presence because he looked up and met her gaze. His eyes were filled with compassion and a warmth she didn’t want to see.
Something inside her seemed to soften and stretch like caramels left out in the sun.
Don’t read anything into it, she warned herself. He only felt sorry for the poor widow with the sick little girl.
“Here you are, honey,” she said, her tone more abrupt than she intended as she handed Maddie her coat. She didn’t look at him as she helped her daughter stick her arms through the sleeves and then her hands into the mittens.
“Let’s go through the mudroom. My coat is there,” Aidan said when Maddie was bundled up. He led the way toward the kitchen, where Sue was rolling out what looked like pastry dough.
“It smells de-lish-ous in here!” Maddie exclaimed. Eliza had to agree as the comforting smell of carrots and onions and chicken seeped into the air.
“Oh, trust me, it will be,” Sue declared. She seemed to be back to her old self. Her features had lost that wan, pinched look of earlier when her migraine had attacked. “I’m making my famous chicken pot pie. Seemed just the thing for a snowy day and it’s always been one of Aidan’s favorites.”
“Yours is even better than my pop’s, but if you tell him so, I’ll deny it to my dying breath.”
She rolled her eyes. “As if I would ever say such a thing to that sweet Dermot!”
“What did I tell you about my pop and women? Doesn’t matter if they’re seven or seventy,” Aidan said to Eliza, startling a smile out of her.
“I’ll have to get his recipe when he’s here,” Sue said, pretending not to hear the exchange. “Never hurts to try something a new way.”
“Why mess with perfection?” Aidan countered as he headed into the mudroom. He emerged a moment later, shrugging into the sheepskin-lined leather ranch jacket she had seen him in earlier.
Sexy Geek with a side of cowboy. How was a girl supposed to resist that?
“Are you ladies ready?” he asked.
“Yes! I can’t wait to see the horses!” Maddie declared.
When they walked outside, the air didn’t feel as cold as she might have expected, maybe because of the cloud cover and because the wind had died down. The lake shone blue, a vivid contrast to the snow all around. From here, she could clearly see the shape of the nearby cove, just like its eponymous snow angel.
Through her research on the area before deciding to take the job at the inn, she had learned that Lake Haven rarely froze completely because of its depth and because of all the geothermal activity in the area feeding warm water into it. The minerals in the water gave it the lovely color.
Whatever the reason, it made for a beautiful scene in the twilight.
From
