“Ah.”
As he moved closer, a shaft of moonlight pierced the gloomy clouds and she saw that while he might be a little on the lean side, his unadorned blue T-shirt clung to surprising muscles.
He was a tech genius, responsible for dozens of apps and devices dominating the market. She would have expected him have the pudgy, soft frame of someone who spent most of his waking hours staring at a gadget or screen. Instead, he apparently spent some of those hours at a gym.
To her dismay, he perched on the other end of the window seat. Theoretically, there was plenty of room for both of them but she couldn’t help feeling crowded, edgy, especially in light of this extremely inconvenient physical awareness she didn’t want.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Oh, you know. Like I’ve been hit by a truck. I have a feeling I’m going to be saying that a lot from now on.”
He made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I guess that was a stupid question. Let me be more specific. Does anything new hurt?”
“No. I’m fine. Don’t get me wrong, I have aches and pains but they seem fairly generalized right now. Nothing is broken.”
“And your head?”
“Not bad, actually. My wrist hurts more than my head right now.”
“I suppose I should ask you how many fingers I’m holding up, just to make sure you’re not delirious.”
“Four. I promise, I’m not delirious. I know what year it is, who the President of the United States is and my birthday, social security number and email password.”
“That should cover it, then.” He sounded amused. “Definitely not delirious.”
“You didn’t need to check on me but now you can report to Dr. Shaw that I’m fine.”
“Except for feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck.”
“Right.” Because she was already growing a little tired of people asking her how she felt, she quickly changed the subject by gesturing out the window behind her. “That snow is crazy. Have you seen it?”
He shifted around and peered out. His eyes widened behind his lenses. “Wow. I’ve been catching up on some year-end reports and not paying attention. I knew we were supposed to have a storm, but that looks intense. Jim said he thought we would have eighteen inches by morning. When he said it, I thought he was exaggerating. Looking out there, now I wonder if he underestimated things.”
“Makes me glad I’m in here and not out there.” She couldn’t quite bring herself to admit she was grateful he and Dr. Shaw had encouraged her to stay in Haven Point for the night, though she was. She hadn’t been in any shape to drive back to Boise.
“I hope this isn’t the start of an intense weather pattern. I would hate for my family to be trapped here over the holidays in the middle of a storm like this.”
“Your family is coming to Snow Angel Cove for Christmas?”
He stretched out long legs, apparently settling in for a while. So much for demonstrating her mental acuity and then returning to her warm bed. She tucked the blanket more tightly around her shoulders, not minding a little conversation as much as she ought.
“Just about everybody will be here—barring my brother Jamie, who’s in the military and stationed overseas.”
“That will be lovely for you. Do you come from a big family?”
He gave a rough laugh. “You could say that. Five brothers and one sister.”
She blinked. “Seven children. Oh, my. Your mother must have been a saint.”
“She was. The closest thing to it I ever knew, anyway. She died when I was in college. Cancer.”
Though he spoke in an even tone, she sensed an undercurrent of lingering grief that shouldn’t have touched her but somehow did, anyway.
“I’m sorry. My mother died the summer before my junior year of high school.”
Unlike Aidan, she didn’t offer an explanation. Not only did she dislike discussing it but he already considered her an object of pity, the poor widow with the ill child who had lost her job and been hit by a car within minutes. She didn’t need to add to that extremely unappealing picture.
She didn’t consider herself a victim of anything. She preferred to see herself as a survivor, someone who had been through some tough things—and who hadn’t, really?—but who endured with dignity and strength and tried to move through the hard times to the other side.
Yes, it was a little Pollyannaish, maybe, but she liked that narrative better than the pathetic alternative.
“Do you still have your father?” she asked.
He smiled, his teeth flashing white in the dim light. “I do. And a new stepmother, as of a few months ago. She’s quite wonderful.”
Eliza was aware of a twinge of envy. She also had a stepmother but theirs was an awkward, tense relationship—mostly because of her.
“Does your family live close by?” she asked, wondering if that explained why he had purchased Snow Angel Cove.
He shook his head. “My dad and most of my siblings live in a little town in Colorado. Hope’s Crossing.”
So much for that theory. “And yet you chose to buy a house several hundred miles away from them on a remote Idaho mountain lake.”
He was silent for so long, she wondered if her question had been unforgivably rude. After a long moment, he sighed. “I love my family. Don’t get me wrong. We’re all very close and I enjoy being with them. I consider my brothers my best friends. I’m flying the whole crew here for Christmas, aren’t I?”
“But?”
He sighed again. “But when a guy is the middle of seven children, he can sometimes have an overwhelming need to find his own way. Whenever I go to Hope’s Crossing, I’m always Dermot’s boy, the one who invariably had his nose pressed to a computer. There’s something very appealing about the fact that nobody in Haven Point knew me when I had braces on my teeth and bad acne and a crush on the head cheerleader, who was only interested in my younger brother, Jamie the stud—which, by the way, is fairly traumatic to the ego when you’re fifteen and would like to think you’re the stud, despite all evidence to the contrary.”
She couldn’t help a startled laugh, shocked that he would reveal something so personal to her.
“Did I just say that out loud?” he asked ruefully. “I must be more tired than I realized. I don’t believe I’ve ever shared that with another human being on the planet. Or articulated it so clearly, even to myself.”
She knew perfectly well she shouldn’t find the man appealing here in the quiet hush of the night when the rest of the world slept, but this evidence of past vulnerability made him seem less like a mythical, larger-than-life personage and more like someone who had weaknesses and insecurities.
