Читать книгу The Home Is Where The Heart Is Collection - Maisey Yates - Страница 29
ОглавлениеHIS 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 few hours in an attempt to recharge, and then hadn’t budged from his office chair since 4:00 a.m. trying to nail down the specifics of the project he was working on.
He 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 for the advice. I’m going to put in a few more hours but, I promise, I’ll see you at dinnertime.”
“Just keep in mind what Charles Dickens said.” He tapped the book in his lap. “No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused.”
“I got it. Thanks, Pop. See you at dinner.”
* * *
JUST BEFORE SIX on Christmas Eve, Eliza looked around the heavenly-smelling kitchen. “I think that’s everything. What are we forgetting?”
Sue took in all the dishes and the warmers waiting to be carried into the dining room in a few moments. Though Eliza had helped out where she could in creating the feast—along with most members of the family at one point or another—Sue was quite firmly back in charge in her kitchen. Her foot wasn’t hurting nearly as badly, she claimed. With the little knee walker, she could get around wherever she needed in the kitchen.
“That should be everything. The ham has been glazed, the potatoes are crispy and perfect, the rolls are baking. I think the only thing left to do is for you and I to freshen up for dinner.”
Eliza shifted. “I still feel a little weird crashing their family dinner, don’t you?”
“Not a bit. After all you’ve done to throw this whole house party together this last week and a half, you should be sitting at the head of the table. Everything has gone smoothly because of you.”
That wasn’t even half true but she didn’t want to argue with Sue on Christmas Eve.
“Anyway, Aidan wants you there,” the cook went on.
She thought of that fleeting, charged moment when she had been coming down the stairs with the children and had seen him in the great room talking to his father. The look in his gaze had left her feeling so jittery and off-balance, it was a wonder she hadn’t stumbled over a step.
“Have you spoken with him today?” she asked.
“No,” Sue admitted. “He’s been making himself scarce. I think he’s got some big project he’s working on. He’s been holed up in his office most of the day on those computers of his. I took him a sandwich earlier but I’m not sure he even touched it.”
Eliza frowned. “He has gone to so much trouble to have his family here. You would think he would at least try to spend a little time with them.”
She hated to see him become so obsessed with work that he missed out on this family holiday he had been planning since his surgery.
“Sometimes he gets like this. An idea comes to him and he can’t rest until he figures out how to make it work. It’s just one of his quirks. You learn to live with it.”
She wouldn’t be learning to live with it. She would be leaving Snow Angel Cove within the week and he would be taking his workaholic quirks back to California.
“It’s Christmas Eve. He should let his brain rest for a few hours and enjoy the moment with his family.”
“Maybe someone needs to go remind him of that. Someone whose opinion he cares about.”
Sue gave her a meaningful look that made Eliza flush. It wasn’t her place to offer opinions about anything—not that he would care what she thought.
“Good idea,” she answered smartly. “Let me know what he says.”
The other woman snorted. “You know I meant you, missy. At least go knock on his door and remind him dinner will be ready at seven sharp, whether he’s there or not.”
Eliza wanted to come up with some excuse to avoid the task—but how could she send Sue traipsing down the length of the house, maneuvering around kids and dogs, on her bad foot?
“Sure,” she said, trying to give in as gracefully as possible. “I have to round up Maddie, anyway, in order to change for dinner.”
Outside his office door, she paused for a moment and took a deep breath, willing down the silly butterflies that now seemed to be marching in time to The Nutcracker suite. Just as she reached a hand up to knock, the door opened from the other side and, abruptly, he was there.
He froze, looking confused and disoriented to find her outside his door.
“Oh. Hi.”
She didn’t know how to respond to that intense look in his eyes that made her feel young and giddy and very, very female.
“Sue just sent me to pry you out of your office. It’s nearly time for dinner.”
“Right. I set an alarm to remind myself. I was just heading that way.”
He looked exhausted, she thought, his eyes blurry through those sexy glasses and his hair sticking up as if he had been running his hand through it.
She could clearly see his scar, raw, white and terrifying. Glimpsing this rare vulnerability affected her far more profoundly than it should. If he walked out to see his family now, everyone would see it. Questions would fly like sparks going up the chimney and his big, dark secret would be out.
Should she tell him, or should she let the truth come out? She still believed he was wrong to withhold that information from his family, especially after meeting them and seeing their love for him.
She sighed. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t be sneaky like that. “Before you go out there, you should probably take a minute to, um, do something with your hair.”
“What’s wrong with my hair?”
“Nothing, really. It’s just...it’s sticking up a bit and your scar is showing.”
Telling herself it was no different from helping Maddie, she reached a hand up and pulled the locks gently back in place. He froze at her touch and then, for an almost imperceptible moment, she almost thought he leaned into her hand.
The air between them seemed to thicken, heavy with awareness, tension, all the unspoken emotions between them.
“Thank you,” he murmured. In his blue eyes, she saw gratitude and clear awareness. He knew she was helping him cover up something she thought should already be out in the open.
She dropped her hand quickly to her side. “I hope you would do the same for me, if I had a brain surgery scar I was foolishly trying to keep from my family.”
His laugh was low and rusty-sounding. “You know I would.”
“Of course, here’s another good way to keep secrets from them,” she said pointedly. “Invite them all to spend the holidays at your lovely home but then just hide out the whole time in your office. They’ll never suspect a thing.”
He looked rueful. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s been a crazy couple of days. I’ve got a last-minute project I’m trying to wrap up but I’m almost done.”
“Well, we told everyone seven for dinner. It’s close to that. Sue wanted me to let you know.”
“Thanks.”
She should walk away. Her time was not her own, after all. She still had to find Maddie and change her clothes and her daughter’s, run a comb through her hair, maybe add a little lipstick, and then help Sue set out the dishes for the Christmas Eve feast. On a subconscious level, she knew all that. Still, she couldn’t seem to make herself move away from him and the seductive warmth in those tired blue eyes.
“El. I need to—” he started to say but the doorbell rang before he could finish the thought.
“Probably a last-minute delivery,” she said, grateful for the distraction. “Those poor drivers, having to be out on Christmas Eve. I’ll grab one of the gift bags of cookies for him.”
She picked one up off the console table in the hallway where she kept extras and pulled open the door.
It wasn’t a delivery driver. It was a man in a uniform, looking handsome and friendly and delighted to be there.
“Jamie!” Aidan exclaimed. The happiness on his face as he spotted his brother just about took her breath away.
The other man just had time to give Eliza a flirtatious grin before Aidan grabbed him hard in a bear hug.
“You always have to make an entrance, don’t you? Last I heard, you couldn’t get leave.”
The guy extricated himself and picked up his suitcase to come inside. “It was a last-minute thing. I didn’t know until late last night, so I’ve spent all day catching stand-by flights.”
“You should have called! I could have sent transportation for you.”
Jamie—just younger than Aidan, she remembered—gave a cheeky grin. “Then it wouldn’t have been a surprise, right?”
She could tell right away this one was a troublemaking charmer. Good thing her heart was no longer available.
“Your father is going to be over the moon,” Eliza predicted with a smile.
Jamie turned to her and aimed all that mojo her direction. “Hello, there. I don’t think we’ve met. I’m James. Younger brother to Geek Boy, here.”
“I’m Eliza Hayward,” she said with a polite smile. “Aidan’s housekeeper. For the sake of the family, I’m glad you’re here. But you have no idea how hard it’s going to be to find a bed for you.”
Jamie raised an eyebrow. “Do you know, I believe that’s the first time any woman has ever said that to me before.”
He was obviously a player, an uncomplicated flirt—at least on the surface. Because she caught just a glimpse of deeper layers beneath the lightheartedness—and because Aidan was so obviously thrilled to have his entire family intact and at his home—she decided to like the man.
“I’m not picky,” he said. “I can sleep on an unused sofa or a couple of blankets on the floor. Even a pile of hay would work. Wouldn’t be the first time somebody in a pinch had to make do with that on Christmas Eve.”
“I think we can probably manage to keep you out of the stable,” she said dryly.
He grinned and draped an arm over his brother’s shoulder. They went in search of the rest of the family while Eliza hurried off to add another place setting and make arrangements for one more guest.
* * *
“THIS IS GREAT, AIDAN. Really great.”
The rare sentiment coming from Dylan as they looked at the packed table touched him. He loved seeing his youngest brother smile again after so many months when they weren’t sure he would survive his injuries sustained in an ambush in Afghanistan.
His stomach growled. “Everything looks delicious, doesn’t it?”
“Hope there’s enough to go around now that Jamie rolled in. I would hate to have to fight you for the last piece of ham.”
“You know you would lose, brother. I have no mercy and I fight dirty.”
Dylan grinned. “You always did, which is one of the things we love about you.”
The rest of his family had started to gather in small groups and take seats at the big dining table. Everyone looked so happy that his heart seemed to expand in his chest—just like the Grinch in the book he had read to the little ones the other day.
Down at the other end of the table, he saw Eliza sit down with Maddie sandwiched between her and Charlotte.
With all the in-laws and grandchildren, his family didn’t fit all together anywhere else, even in Pop’s big house in Hope’s Crossing. Usually the children complained about having to be separated into another room. He had purposely had a huge table made from planed hickory logs so that he could have everyone together—though it was still tight, he had to admit. He might have to commission a second table to go next to it, at the rate the Caines were growing.
When everyone sat down, he turned to his father, whom he had seated at the head of the table out of respect. “Pop, do you want to say a few words before we eat?”
Silly question, he knew. Dermot was Irish. He always had something to say.
His father stood and smiled at his progeny. “Only this. What a year we have had.”
He smiled at Katherine, elegant and graceful. She blushed and smiled back and Aidan couldn’t help thinking how perfect they were. Their courtship had taken more than a decade but perhaps that only made it all the sweeter.
“Three weddings and another in the New Year. Our table is more crowded every year, just as it should be.”
“Get your elbow out of my plate,” Jamie teased to Charlotte, who made a face.
Dermot smiled at his squabbling children, then grew serious again. “Every family goes through struggle. Alas, nobody escapes pain in this world, like it or not. We are no different. We have suffered loss and sorrow, sometimes so great we didn’t know how to get through it. But we are the stronger for our pain. It is our trials that bind us together. They remind us we must walk through the dark times so we can fully appreciate the light. The joy and love and miracles around us. I hope we never lose sight of how much we need each other, in good times and bad. Slàinte.”
Everyone toasted each other. As he looked around the family at his brothers, at Charlotte, at their spouses and children and stepchildren, Aidan suddenly knew what he had to do. I hope we never lose sight of how much we need each other, in good times and bad. He had lost sight of that. Eliza was right. He had been selfishly confident he could handle anything life threw at him.
He had been so wrong.
He stood up quickly. “Before we eat, I...need to say something, as well.”
Carter, the kid who was always hungry, made an impatient little sound but was quickly shushed by Lucy.
Everyone looked at him with expectant faces. His gaze traveled the table and finally stopped on Eliza, watching him with a curious expression on her lovely, calm features.
“Thank you all for coming. I know it’s a little different having the holidays somewhere besides Hope’s Crossing.”
“Different but wonderful,” Charlotte assured him.
“Right. Well, I just wanted to say how happy I am that you all took time out of your busy lives to come here at my request. Also...I owe you an apology. In retrospect, this might not be the appropriate moment for it when Carter there is ready to gnaw through the table but I don’t know when I can get everybody together, sitting still. It will only take a second, I promise.”
Eliza watched him with dawning awareness in her gaze.
He cleared his throat. “Something happened to me this year, something tough I thought I could handle alone. It’s recently come to my attention that by keeping it to myself and not letting my family know when I was going through a rough patch, I was being selfish and maybe even thoughtless and insensitive.”
“What is it, son?” Dermot asked. “What’s happened?”
This was a mistake. He should have waited until after the holidays, maybe tomorrow evening after the burst of Christmas excitement had passed. He didn’t want to ruin dinner. If he hadn’t been so fatigued, he might have thought this through a little better and made a different choice. Or maybe he would have chickened out and not said anything at all.
Whatever, it was too late to back down.
He glanced at Eliza again. She gave him an encouraging smile and he felt almost light-headed from the approval there. A thought that had been playing through his mind for the past few days, random and scattered, seemed to coalesce into one clear realization. Loving someone—truly loving them—meant exposing your weaknesses to them, not only projecting your strengths.
With a sigh, he parted his hair to show the scar, his most glaring sign of weakness. “I had a brain tumor removed in September, the week after Pop and Katherine got married.”
There was an almost audible collective indrawn breath and then the dining room erupted into a dozen different questions.
Everyone looked shocked, his father most of all, and he was suddenly profoundly sorry for shutting them out.
“Don’t worry, it was benign,” he assured them quickly. “The surgery went well and they were able to remove the whole thing. I’m doing fine now, just some lingering fatigue and headaches once in a while and a little double vision if I’m at the computer too long.”
“Aidan. Why didn’t you say anything?” Charlotte exclaimed. “A brain tumor. I can’t believe this! And you didn’t want your family to help you?”
“I had what I thought were good reasons. The timing of the surgery, for one thing, just days after Pop’s wedding while he was on his honeymoon. The distance between us, with the surgery in California and you all in Colorado. And,” he admitted, “a good part of it was pride. I’m...not good at allowing myself to need other people. I’m learning, though. I invited you all here for the holidays, right?”
“Just goes to show that even smart guys can sometimes be idiot assholes,” Dylan said gruffly.
He tore his gaze away from Eliza, who was smiling softly at him now, he saw, and maybe even wiping a tear or two away with her napkin.
“True enough. It was wrong of me to keep it from you. I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Contrary to what I would like to think, I do make them. This particular mistake won’t happen again. We can talk about this later but for now, let’s eat before all this delicious food is too cold to enjoy. Pop. Do you want to say grace or pick somebody?”
“It’s your home, son. Seems to me you should do the honors, since you have more than most to be thankful for today.”
Damn right. And he wasn’t about to forget it.
With a nod, he reached for Charlotte’s hand on one side and his niece Maggie’s on the other and bowed his head.
