you.” Manners compelled her to acknowledge the condolences, though it felt strange, wrong somehow, when they were coming from Aidan Caine.
She stared straight ahead at the snow blowing against the windshield. When she was a little girl, she used to think the snow reflecting in the headlights looked like stars and she would pretend her dad was piloting a rocket ship through hyperspace.
That time of imagination and fun seemed a long time ago. Now driving through snow was at best an inconvenience, at worst, an experience fraught with tension and peril.
“It seems an odd time to start a new job, right before Christmas,” he observed.
“I suppose. I was actually hired in early November but it took a little time to tender my resignation and end the lease on my apartment.”
“You really did pack up everything, didn’t you?” He jerked his head to the back, piled high with boxes.
“Most of our things are in storage. These were only the essentials. Moving to Lake Haven was supposed to be a new start for us. I guess that didn’t work out so well.”
That panic hovering just beneath the surface since the moment she’d seen that blackened building seemed to bubble up all over again. For a moment, she wanted to just close her eyes and wallow in self-pity. She had pinned such high hopes on this move. Running a hotel in a small town had been her dream since she was just a girl working the front desk at the Seaswept Inn on the Oregon Coast.
She loved the idea of raising Maddie in this small town, finally putting down roots after Trent had moved them from job to job, opportunity to opportunity, always in search of pay dirt.
The charming town of Haven Point and the whole Lake Haven area had seemed the perfect location—quiet part of the year, bustling during the summer months, and close enough to Maddie’s specialists in Boise that they could still go to appointments with relative ease.
She had loved Haven Point on previous visits and had felt welcomed from the first moment she stepped into town.
She was so tired of disappointments, of constantly being forced to rechart her life’s direction.
“I’m sorry about your job situation,” Aidan said quietly. “I can only imagine how upsetting that must be for you and for Maddie.”
What did he know about upsetting job situations? He came from a completely different world and probably had no idea what it was like to struggle, to wonder which bills she could afford to pay off that month and which she would have to make token payments on until a better time.
“Upsetting. Yes. It certainly is.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what are your plans beyond the next few days?”
She didn’t have a fallback position. Why would she ever have imagined she needed one?
“I don’t know yet,” she admitted. “I haven’t exactly had a great deal of time to go over my options, considering I’ve been at the hospital since five minutes after I found out the inn burned down.”
“True enough. Being hit by a car can be such a distraction.”
“Who knew?” she said dryly, earning a short, surprised-sounding laugh.
“I will probably try to find a short-term lease on an apartment back in Boise somewhere while I send out resumes,” she finally answered.
“You don’t have family you could stay with?”
“No,” she said. To her dismay, her throat started to close at that single harsh word. For a moment, she missed her mother fiercely. It had been sixteen years since her mother went to work and never came home and it still sometimes seemed like yesterday.
She could drive to Portland and stay with her father and stepmother but she knew just how that would go. They would be squeezed into a sofa bed in the corner of the family room. Her teenage stepbrothers would resent her presence in what they considered their home and would complain about having to share a bathroom and about Maddie’s chattering. After a week or so, her father—prodded by Paula—would take her aside and quietly tell her he was afraid things weren’t working out.
She didn’t want to put any of them through that.
“My father lives out of state,” she said. “He doesn’t really have room for us.”
In his house or in his life. Though she didn’t add the words, she acknowledged them with a familiar little pang, then forced herself to focus on the positive.
“I have many friends in Boise and could call several of them in a moment and they would gladly open their homes until I can find a place.”
Her best friend, Joan, had an extra bedroom and had ushered her off tearfully just that morning—Lord, it seemed like a month ago—after extracting promise after promise that Eliza would come back for frequent visits.
He didn’t have a chance to answer, as they had approached a massive carved wooden gate. The gate opened smoothly before they reached it—she had no idea how—and he proceeded up a long driveway.
“It’s like a tunnel,” Maddie exclaimed. Pine trees rose up on either side of the driveway, blocking the view of the house—not that they could have seen much, anyway, through the darkness and the snow that was blowing almost horizontally.
She could see a glow in the distance that gradually took shape as a rambling log home ablaze with lights. The lodge was set on a hill, angled in such a way that Eliza imagined it would have magnificent lake and mountain views during better weather conditions.
“Welcome to Snow Angel Cove,” Aidan said as he pulled into a porte cochere in front of the house.
The moment he opened the driver’s side door, two people hurried out of the house toward the passenger side to open the doors for Eliza and Maddie.
The woman was lean to the point of being scrawny, with lined, leathery features and black and iron-gray hair pulled into a ponytail. She beamed at Maddie as she took her arm to help her from the car.
“Hello, my dears. Oh, you’ve had a time of it. Come inside where it’s warm.”
Maddie, who must have fallen asleep a little in the car without Eliza realizing, gave her a bleary-eyed smile. “I’m Madeline Elizabeth Hayward. I’m almost six years old.”
“Hi, Madeline. I’m Sue Stockton and this is my husband, Jim.”
Maddie waved at him and the man solemnly shook her hand. Jim was just as leathery, just as gray, but with a sweet smile and a bit of a paunch.
She liked them both instantly, though it was one of those snap judgments that had no real basis in reality.
“You must be Eliza,” Sue said. To her surprise, the other woman wrapped her in a warm hug, as if they were old friends reconnecting after a few years.
When Eliza confirmed her identity, Sue said, “Don’t dawdle. Come inside. It’s freezing out here.”
She opened the door wide and ushered them into a massive
