“I wondered about an ulterior motive in getting us here,” Aidan said. “Who just invites strangers for Christmas?”
“Well, you can just quit wondering. You will never—never—meet a man with more integrity than my grandfather. He’s invited strangers for Christmas because he feels he has something to give, not to take anything.”
“Humph,” he said with an insulting lack of conviction.
Was Aidan Phillips annoying her on purpose? Surely her face had softened in sympathy at his vulnerable dad side, as he had revealed each of his Christmas failures? Now, he was successfully erasing that. If he was now trying to make her angry—a defense against her unwanted sympathy—it was working all too well!
“My grandfather might be trying to look after me. I hope not, but he’s old and his heart is in the right place, which I’m sure you figured out when you accepted his generous invitation to spend Christmas at his home. I may be single, but really, you would both be presuming too much by thinking I would be interested in you!”
Of course, there was the momentary lapse over his hair, but he never had to know.
He stopped. It forced her to stop, too. She tilted her chin and glared at him.
“And you wouldn’t be?” he asked, incredulous.
“Oh!” She fought a desire to take off her grandfather’s toque and stuff it in her pocket so she wouldn’t look quite so folksy. “Why would you sound so surprised? Do you have women flinging themselves at you all the time?”
“Yes.” He cocked his head at her.
“I am not some country bumpkin who is going to be bowled over by your charm, Mr. Phillips,” she said tightly.
“I don’t have any charm.”
“Agreed.”
“You’ve had a heartbreak, just as I guessed.”
The utter audacity of the man. It made her want to pick up a handful of snow and throw it in his face.
“There might be other reasons a woman would not fling herself at you,” she suggested tightly. Even though that one happened to be true.
“There might be,” he said skeptically.
But, also true, perhaps a woman would recognize instantly that she was not in the same league as you, she thought to herself. Perhaps she’d recognize she had failed to hang on to a relationship with even a very ordinary guy, so what were her chances of—
She stopped her train of thought because he was still watching her way too closely and she did not like the uneasy feeling she had that Aidan Phillips, astute businessman, could read her mind.
“It would be very old-fashioned to think a woman’s main purpose in life is to find herself a mate,” she told him primly.
“And yet here we are at an Old-Fashioned Country Christmas.” He tilted his head at her, his eyes narrow and intent again. “Recent?”
“What?”
“The heartbreak?”
“I’m beginning to take a dislike to you.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“That I dislike you?”
“That women fling themselves!”
“You’re handsome and you’re wealthy and you’re extremely successful and perhaps somewhat intelligent, though it’s a bit early to tell.”
“I used rhotacism in a sentence!”
She ignored him. “Women fling themselves at you. You’ve become accustomed to it. They probably find the fact that you are a single dad bumbling through Christmas very endearing. Oh, boo-hoo, Mr. Phillips.”
It occurred to her that her sarcasm might be coming more from a deep well of resentment that Mitchell was, at this very moment, surrounding himself with bikinis on a beach in Thailand than at Aidan Phillips, but she would take all the protection the shield of sarcasm could give her. Aidan was exactly the kind of man a woman needed to protect herself from. And worse, he knew it.
“Bumbling through Christmas?” he sputtered. “You call Christmas at the Happiest Place on Earth and at Santa’s original place of residence bumbling?”
“Failures by your own admission,” she said, with a toss of her head, “and should you have doubt, ask your daughter.”
Aidan glared at her, though when he spoke, his voice was carefully controlled, milder than his glare. “I think I’m beginning to take a dislike to you, too.”
“Good!”
“Good,” he agreed. He continued, his voice softly sarcastic, “It’s setting up to be a very nice quiet Christmas in the country, after all.”
“Emphasis on quiet, since I won’t be speaking to you.”
“Starting anytime soon?” he asked silkily.
“Right now!”
“Good,” he said again.
She couldn’t resist. “Good,” she said with a curt nod. They strode along the path back to the house in a silence that bristled.
She watched out of the corner of her eye as he yanked his cell phone from his pocket and began scrolling furiously, walking at the same time. It took him a few seconds to realize it wasn’t going to work. He stopped.
“Is there cell service?” he asked tightly.
“We’re not speaking.”
“That’s childish.”
“You didn’t seem to think so a few minutes ago.”
“It’s just a yes or no,” he said.
“No.” She should not have felt nearly as gleeful about the look on his face as she did. Clearly the thought of not being joined to his world, where he was in control of everything and everybody—with the possible exception of his daughter—was causing him instant discomfort.
“Will there be cell service at the house?”
“No.”
“I’m expecting an important email. I have several calls I have to make.”
“Did you get cell service in the Finnish Lapland?”
“Actually, they take pride in their excellent cell service all across Finland.”
He managed to make that sound as if they had managed to be more bumpkin here than in one of the most remote places in the world.
Noelle had the sudden thought Tess’s string of Christmas disappointments might, at a level she would not yet be able to articulate—despite being five going on twenty-one—have had a lot more to do with her father’s ability to be absent while he was with her than the inadequacies of Disneyland or the Northern Lights.
“You can make the calls from his landline in the house,” she said, maybe more sharply than she intended. “And I guess you could go to the library in the village and check emails. That’s what my grandfather does. Mind you, he has to drive. You could take your helicopter. You could be there in minutes. Maybe even seconds! But it would cause a sensation. There would probably be that unwanted publicity involved.”
“You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?” He sounded hopeful. He was holding his phone out at arm’s length, squinting at it, willing service to appear.
“Do I look like