was close. He could feel it. He wasn’t sure he would be able to pull it off in time but if he failed, he would at least know he had brought his A game.
But he was completely exhausted, too. Apparently a man of thirty-seven couldn’t run a marathon on a few hours of sleep as if he were still in his twenties—though still being trapped in recovery mode from brain surgery might have something to do with his fatigue.
“Looking for someone, are we?”
His father’s brogue sounded from deep in one of the wing chairs by the huge Christmas tree.
“Hey, Pop.” He really must be tired if he hadn’t even noticed Dermot there.
He headed over as Dermot set his book down on the table beside him. A Christmas Carol, he noted. His father had reread Dickens every Christmas season Aidan could remember.
“Where is everyone?” he asked.
“Oh, here and there. If I’m not mistaken, your brothers and the teen crowd took those snowmobiles in the garage out for a test ride around the meadow behind the house. Katherine and the girls went into town for a little last-minute shopping. I believe the little ones are up in the game room working on a special surprise with the lovely Eliza. I keep hearing random giggles floating down the stairs.”
“Ah.”
Just hearing her name made his heart give that funny little helpless tug.
He pictured her as he had seen her last, on the sleigh ride with his family, her cheeks pink from the cold and her face lifted to the moonlight.
Despite all the arguments she had mustered against going with them, he knew she and Maddie had both enjoyed themselves when their turn to ride the sleigh had come around.
“And where have you been keeping yourself all day?” Dermot asked.
Yeah, he was just about the worst host in the world. He had lost a house full of twenty guests, hadn’t he?
He sat down now on the sofa next to his father. “Working,” he answered. The fire felt lovely. A few snowflakes fluttered down outside and beyond the trees, the lake was a vast, peaceful blue.
“It is Christmas. You remember that, don’t you?”
“I know. I just have something I have to wrap up. It’s taking more energy than I expected, that’s all.”
Dermot sniffed. “I won’t tell you that you work too hard. We’ve had that argument more than a few times over the years, haven’t we?”
“Yes.” Aidan stretched out his legs, certain that if he sat here long enough he would fall asleep. “I still find the lecture quite ironic, coming from a man who has been known to spend every waking hour at his café.”
“Only after your mother died,” Dermot pointed out. “She insisted I keep to regular hours while you children were at home. I tried my best. I’m afraid the last few years I did spend more time than I should have at the Center of Hope, with all of you gone. The silence at home, you know. Sometimes it was more than I could bear.”
The honest admission touched a chord deep inside him. Yes. That was it. The fundamental shift in himself he had been trying to pinpoint. He had always been content with silence. He wasn’t an introvert, as he loved his family and his few close friends like Ben Kilpatrick, but he had always been perfectly content on his own with a book or a computer.
Being the middle child in a large family and always feeling the odd one out had taught him to be independent and self-reliant, both good things.
He didn’t want to be alone anymore. He wanted laughter and music and heady kisses.
He wanted Eliza.
“Everyone is having a wonderful time being together. What a gift you’ve given us, son.”
He managed a smile. “I’m glad.”
“Perhaps you should stop hiding out in your office so you can see for yourself.”
“I only need a few more hours and then I’ll be done. I’m sorry I interrupted your book. Go ahead and read, if you want—though don’t you have it memorized by now?”
“Everyone should read Dickens once a year to remember the message in it. That we only find joy when we’re giving of ourselves to others.”
Dermot picked up the book again. Aidan sat on the sofa and closed his eyes, thinking this wasn’t at all a bad way to spend Christmas Eve, drawing on his father’s constant, steady strength while the snowflakes drifted down outside and the flames danced in the fireplace.
He might have fallen asleep just for a moment—or perhaps longer, he didn’t know—but the sound of giggles woke him. He looked up and spotted Eliza and the children coming down the stairs. She was holding Faith’s and Maddie’s hands while Carter and a couple of the little dogs scampered ahead of them.
For one glittery moment, their gazes met. Her smile slid away and she gave him a solemn look then hurried into the kitchen, pulled along by the children.
“She’s a darling,” Dermot said, looking over his bifocals as the group disappeared down the hallway.
“Maddie? Yeah, she’s a great kid.”
“Maddie, yes. Her mother, as well. You could do far worse,” Dermot observed.
“I know, Pop. Believe me. I know.”
“You care about her, don’t you?”
He thought about passing off a trite answer but didn’t see much point. Dermot had always been entirely too perceptive. When they were kids, they could never try to slip a fib past him without those blue eyes picking out the truth.
Care was a mild word for this yearning, this thick ache in his chest. He loved her. She was everything he never realized he wanted.
“Yes,” he finally answered. “I care about her. Very much.”
Just saying the words seemed to free something clogged inside him, as if he had lifted a fallen tree trunk out of a riverbed to let the water flow freely.
He loved her. He needed her in his life, rather desperately. And Maddie, as well, with her generous smile and sweet courage. Now he only needed to convince Eliza that perhaps she might need him, too.
“Well, then,” Dermot said, looking stunned and pleased at the same time. “Well, then.”
“She doesn’t want me. She told me as much. She thinks we come from different worlds. I’m not sure how to prove her wrong.”
“You’ll figure it out, son,” his father said, with a perfect confidence he found humbling. “It’s what you do, isn’t it? Take a puzzle and work it through? But you might want to keep in mind that you can’t win the girl when you’re sitting at your computer.”
He rose, reinvigorated to return to his project. In this case, he was hoping his father was wrong.
“Thanks
