picked up a couple of empty nut bowls from the table, careful not to meet anyone’s gaze. “He loves his family very much. I think he just wanted a chance for everyone to be together.”
That was as much as she was willing to say. Much to her relief, Maddie came galloping in with Carter and Faith close at her heels. As Aidan had predicted, the three of them had become immediate friends and Maddie appeared to be having a wonderful time with children close to her age.
“Mama, when is the sleigh ride? We want to go now.”
“I don’t know, honey. Soon, I’m sure.”
“We’re going to sit together and sing ‘Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer’ and ‘Jingle Bells’ and ‘Way in a Manger.’”
Aidan had been right about this, too. She couldn’t have separated her child from the family activities. Maddie would have been devastated at being excluded. She was already having the time of her life and his family hadn’t even been here half a day.
“Why don’t you children go find your coats and hats and scarves so we don’t have to look for them later?” Erin said in what was obviously her best schoolteacher voice. “I’ll try to find out where things stand with the sleigh ride.”
“And I need to take care of these,” Eliza said, gesturing to the dishes in her hands. She hurried away from the women, grateful she had escaped what she feared would have soon become an interrogation.
His family had already been so kind to her. He had been right, they had absorbed her into their circle from the first moment, as if she had always been part of it.
She loved watching their interaction—the teasing of his brothers with each other, their careful respect for Dermot, the affectionate touches between husbands and wives. This was a family overflowing with love.
Half a day and she already felt as if the women could become good friends to her—if she could only keep from spilling secrets that weren’t hers to share.
She delivered the dishes to the kitchen. The men had finished cleaning up—sort of. They had left a jumbled pile of soaked dish towels on the counter. She picked them up and carried them to the laundry room off the mudroom to add to the pile left over from the lunch cleanup. Hoping to save a little time later, she threw them in the washing machine and was adding laundry soap when she heard someone come in.
“Eliza. What are you doing in here?”
Her traitorous heart gave that silly little skip it did whenever Aidan was close. She looked up with a shrug. “We’re already running low on dishcloths. I guess that’s what happens when you have eight or nine people helping in the kitchen after every meal.”
He laughed as he pulled on his coat, sending a ridiculous shiver down her spine.
Smokin’ Hot Spence Gregory was great-looking, sure, and she could admit she still had a little bit of an embarrassing celebrity crush on him—but he had nothing on Aidan, with those lean chiseled features, vivid blue eyes behind his sexy geek glasses and that slow smile that made her feel like her nerves were stuck on some permanent agitate cycle.
“I warned you how it would be,” he said. “Crazy and chaotic. The noise level from this house alone might be an avalanche danger for the surrounding mountains.”
“They’re wonderful,” she said quietly. “If everything else you ever had was stripped away tomorrow, you would still be the most fortunate man I know. I am absolutely green with envy, Aidan. I wish they were mine.”
His eyes softened. “El.”
He stepped closer and she was mortified at the sudden burn of tears that sprang up out of nowhere. She had no way to protect herself when he called her that, like a sweet and private endearment.
She cleared her throat and pushed them away. “A word of warning. I was just cornered by the women of your family. They’re quite formidable as a group, by the way.”
“Tell me about it. They scare the hell out of me.”
She smiled a little and busied herself by reaching into the dryer for a load of extra bath towels she had left there earlier. “Yes, well, they know something is up with you. You’re acting very out of character, apparently, sending up red flags all over the place. Buying this house, inviting everyone here for the holidays, reading to the little ones. Everyone is very suspicious of your odd behavior.”
“Did you tell them anything?”
She snapped a towel out between them, filling the air with her annoyance along with the sweet scent of laundry soap. “What do you think?”
He sighed. “I think it’s probably not fair for me to ask so much of you.”
Why did he have to make it so tough to stay annoyed with him? “It’s not. You’re a terribly cruel boss. I should complain to someone.”
He laughed. “Take it up with Sue. She probably has a raft of complaints.”
“Oh, yes. I’m sure. That you pay her too much and don’t eat enough of her snickerdoodles.”
He grinned down at her just as Dermot came in carrying a few more towels.
He stopped in the doorway and studied the pair of them. “Oh. Sorry to interrupt.”
Eliza could feel herself flush. “You’re not interrupting anything, Mr. Caine,” she said swiftly. “We were just discussing the, um, fabric softener. Your son is very particular about what he wants, you know.”
“Oh, yes. He always has been.”
After a slight pause, he smiled. “If we don’t go on a sleigh ride soon, I’m afraid there are some children out there who might start staging a revolt.”
Aidan seemed to collect himself. “Jim should be bringing the sleigh around to the front right now. Eliza, grab your coat.”
“Yes, my dear,” his sweet father added in that irresistible Irish accent. “And don’t forget your gloves, will you? It’s a bit nippy out there.”
Eliza headed for her coat on the hook, aware there would be no point arguing with either one of them.
HIS FAMILY APPARENTLY had disappeared.
Christmas Eve afternoon, Aidan emerged from his office to a house that seemed to echo with emptiness.
Where was everyone? The great room fireplace was on but the room appeared to be vacant.
How did twenty rambunctious people vanish into thin air?
He looked around, a little bleary-eyed from the three hours of sleep he’d had the night before—and about the same the night before that.
After the perfect moonlit sleigh ride the night before, which his family had loved, he had escaped to his office to work until the early hours in the morning, had crashed on the sofa there for a
