Her mother didn’t look nearly as enthusiastic, but Aidan figured he would have all night to make Eliza glad she had agreed to go.
“YOU HAVE YOUR mittens, right?”
“Yep.” Maddie thrust out her hands to prove it. “And my hat and my scarf and I have on two pairs of socks under my socks. I’m going to be warm enough to bake beans.”
Eliza gaped at her. “Where on earth did you hear that?”
“That’s what Jim said yesterday when I helped him feed the horses. I asked if they were cold in the wintertime and he said their hide keeps them warm enough to bake beans.”
Her daughter was going to come out of this sojourn at Snow Angel Cove with quite an education. Eliza had to smile. Both Jim and Sue treated her with such kindness. She was going to miss them both so much when the holidays were over and she and Maddie moved on.
Aidan’s family would be arriving in just a few days. A little burst of panic fluttered through her. Twenty-something strangers, and she was charged with making sure they all enjoyed themselves—and she had to help Aidan keep a fairly significant secret from them, information she didn’t believe should be withheld.
She had to put it from her mind. No need to panic. She had played host to plenty of strangers while working at the Diamond Street Inn. This wasn’t any different, only perhaps on a more intimate level.
She had more immediate concerns, anyway—like how she was going to get through the evening in her employer’s company without turning into even more of an idiot around him.
How could she have been stupid enough to argue with him about his own family? She still didn’t think it was right for him to keep his brain surgery a secret from them, but he was absolutely right. That decision was his alone to make and her job was simply to honor his wishes, as she would do for any other employer.
At least the disagreement had served as a much-needed reminder of her place here at Snow Angel Cove. She was his employee, not his advisor or his confidante—or anything else that might involve heated kisses she still couldn’t shake from her memory.
“All right. Let’s do this.” She gave the ends of Maddie’s purple-and-pink scarf a little tweak, picked up her purse and walked with her daughter out into the kitchen, which she had quickly realized was the real heart of Snow Angel Cove.
Aidan sat alone in the sitting area in front of the fireplace, reading something on his ubiquitous tablet. When he spotted them, he closed the cover and rose.
“Are you two ready for a boat parade?”
“Yes!” Maddie beamed.
“Let’s go. I brought the ranch Suburban around the front of the house.”
“Are we picking up Sue and Jim at the foreman’s cottage?” she asked.
He shook his head. “They already left. Jim needed to pick something up at the farm implement store before it closed so I told them to go ahead. We’ll try to meet up with them.”
She drew in a sharp breath. That changed everything. She had been counting on the older couple to provide a buffer between her and Aidan. Now she was going to have to be alone with him except for Maddie, at least during the short drive to town.
“Let’s go! I can’t wait to see the boats!” Maddie exclaimed.
He smiled down at her. “Okay, Miss Maddie. You’ve got it.”
Whatever her disagreements with the man and her self-protective instincts, she couldn’t deny he was wonderful with her daughter. How was she supposed to keep any emotional barriers in place around him when he could be so sweetly patient with a five-year-old girl?
This ridiculous crush was one thing. Yes, it was mortifying—especially if he ever figured it out—but she could at least tell herself it was just a normal physiological reaction to a gorgeous-looking man who happened to kiss like he had written a doctoral thesis on effective technique.
It would be a disaster of a completely different nature if she let herself fall for him.
Eliza let out a breath. She couldn’t seem to shake the idea that she was standing next to a railroad track watching a train race merrily along toward the inevitable plummet into the abyss.
She couldn’t do this. Her mind raced, searching for some way to jump the track before it was too late and everyone onboard was doomed.
She could always say she wasn’t feeling well, that her head was pounding or her stomach hurt. She could fake-sneeze a few times and pretend to be coming down with something.
At the thought, she rolled her eyes at herself. How pathetic. What kind of mother would deprive her child of a greatly anticipated treat, a festive holiday event, because she didn’t trust herself to control her wayward feelings?
Couldn’t she simply enjoy herself for the evening without falling head over heels for the man?
Absolutely. She hadn’t taken enough time over the past few years to simply have fun.
“Let’s go,” she said, resolving to live in the moment and not worry about a million things at once. “We should probably hurry if we want to make sure we have a good spot to see the boats.”
“Great. Let’s go.”
Maddie chattered from her booster seat in the backseat the entire drive to downtown Haven Point about everything and nothing. Eliza tried not to think how surreal it was that the CEO of a Fortune 500 company didn’t seem the least bit bored.
Aidan actually seemed to be enjoying her daughter’s conversation about everything from the movie she watched that morning about two cute elves to a book Eliza had read her the other night to a robot toy her friend Rodrigo in her Boise kindergarten class was going to ask Santa Claus to bring him.
The lake gleamed a brilliant blue in the fading sunlight as they reached the outskirts of town.
“Oh, look at the big Christmas tree at that house, Mad,” she said, pointing out the window, just as her daughter was gearing up to start into a conversation about how she went to see Santa Claus at the mall, only he wasn’t very fat.
Maddie allowed herself to be distracted. “It’s pretty,” she said. “But not as pretty as ours. And not as big, either.”
She winced a little, wishing she could remind Maddie the Snow Angel Cove tree wasn’t theirs. They had their own smaller tree in the sitting room of the cook’s quarters that would be more than sufficient for their needs.
Maddie had become rather territorial about Aidan’s house. She wondered if he noticed. Eliza had even reminded her that morning they wouldn’t be staying there long, only through the holidays. “I know, Mama,” she had answered. “But when we have a house, I want it to look just like this one and I want to have a barn with six horses, too.”
She didn’t have the heart to tell her daughter they would
