“You said it’s next Saturday?”
“Yes.”
“My family isn’t coming until the following Tuesday. The day before Christmas Eve.”
Too bad he hadn’t known about it earlier or he could have scheduled his family visit differently—though with all the complicated schedules, he wasn’t sure they could have pulled it off, anyway.
“Oh, that’s a shame,” McKenzie said. “It’s a can’t-miss event. But you all should definitely come. I promise, you’ll love it.”
“Sounds fun,” Eliza said. “Thank you for the information. And thank you especially for coming out in the storm to check on me. It was very kind of you. Both of you.”
“We take care of each other here on the lake,” Dr. Shaw said. “You’ll see that after you’ve been here a few months.”
Eliza looked regretful. “I’m afraid I won’t be here that long,” she answered. “I’m only staying here through the holidays to help Mr. Caine with his guests.”
“I understand from Megan Hamilton that you were supposed to start as her new manager today, until the place burned down yesterday,” McKenzie Shaw said.
Eliza made a face. “Yes. Obviously, yesterday was not the best day of my life.”
“No kidding! I’ll keep my eyes open to see if anybody else might be hiring in the area,” she offered.
“Thanks. I appreciate that.”
“Oh, you’re welcome. We love when new people move in,” McKenzie said. She gave him a quick look. “Well, usually.”
He didn’t laugh but was surprised to find he wanted to.
“Kenz, we better go,” her sister said quickly.
“Yeah, you’re right. Places to go, people to see. You know how it is.”
They both hugged Eliza, who seemed surprised and touched by the gesture, then headed out into the softly falling snow.
SHE COULDN’T SLEEP.
Eliza lay in the comfortable bed listening to Maddie’s soft breathing and gazing out through the slats of the blinds to the pearly glow of the moonlight on the snow.
She really hated these nights, when her mind raced in a hundred directions and she just couldn’t get comfortable.
By all rights, she should be snoozing away. This just might be the most comfortable bed she had ever slept in. The mattress was the ideal firmness—not too hard, not too soft. The sheets were high-end Egyptian cotton, at least thousand-thread count. The quilted comforter was warm and cozy without being oppressively heavy.
So why was she wide awake at—she checked the readout on her phone—3:00 a.m.?
Okay, maybe she had a few reasons. So much had happened to her in the past few days, she really hadn’t had a chance to process everything—new job, new responsibilities, a new place to live, the intricacies of forging new working relationships. Underneath, as always, was the unrelenting fear that she wouldn’t be able to take care of this fragile child who depended on her for everything.
She gazed out at that slice of moonlight. For now she had a job, they had a more-than-comfortable place to live, and she had the rare luxury of time to figure out her next step—of course, she also had a great deal to do in the next week and a half.
She had taken a complete tour of the house earlier with the list of family members Aidan had given her, trying to figure out which room would work best for each of them. She found the bedroom suites empty shells containing bare-bones furniture but little else— naked beds, empty dressers and blank walls.
The public rooms of the house—the great room, the media room, the game room—were furnished and decorated, though all of them could use a little more warmth and holiday cheer.
What she had seen of Snow Angel Cove reminded her too much of an elegant hotel, she thought again. That was all fine when someone wanted to stay in an elegant hotel but Aidan’s family was coming to enjoy Christmas together in his home. They didn’t need fancy amenities as much as they needed all the comforting touches that made a place feel like a home—and she had her work cut out for her to deliver it to them given the time constraints.
She wouldn’t be able to do that work if she didn’t get some sleep. She flipped her pillow to the cooler side and rolled over but even that didn’t help her find a comfortable position that eased the ache in her wrist and her back.
Between her discomfort and her racing thoughts, she probably wasn’t going to be able to sleep anytime soon. The last time she took pain relief had been hours before, at lunchtime. Maybe swallowing her stubbornness along with some ibuprofen would be a good first step.
With a sigh, she pushed the comforter down and sat up. Good plan.
She pulled on fuzzy socks and her robe then found the baby monitor she had dug out of one of the boxes Jim and Aidan had brought in after dinner. She hadn’t had time to unpack all of them—and wasn’t sure she would, anyway, since they would only be here for a few weeks—but she had found this while looking for Maddie’s favorite cozy blanket before bedtime.
Some little burst of mother’s intuition had prompted her to include it in the boxes she had brought along to Haven Point instead of leaving it in their storage facility with the rest of their things. She had thought maybe it would come in handy if she were required to work the front desk after hours at the Lake Haven Inn and needed to leave Maddie sleeping for a while in their attached apartment.
Whatever the instinct, she was grateful to have it in this big house where she might not be able to hear her daughter wake up otherwise.
How many times over the past five and three-quarter years had something similar happened to her? One memorable time, she had been compelled to double-check a prescription she had picked up a dozen times before at the pharmacy, one she usually didn’t think twice about. She vividly remembered the cold fear cramping in her stomach when she discovered the pharmacist had made a grave error and given her a much more highly concentrated medication than Maddie’s usual dose.
It could have been a deadly mistake. If she hadn’t followed that sixth sense to check the bottle before giving it to Maddie, the overdose probably would have killed her daughter.
She liked to think Maddie had more than a few angels looking out for her.
After turning on the monitor, she slipped the receiver in her pocket then used the flashlight app on her cell phone to first find the bottle of ibuprofen in her purse and then guide her path through the boxes in the sitting room and out of her rooms toward the kitchen.
The instant she walked into the kitchen, she realized she wasn’t alone. Flames danced in the sitting area’s gas fireplace, sending out warmth and light enough to outline the shadow of someone sitting on the sofa. She felt just an instant’s fear at the unexpected before she recognized Aidan.
Was he asleep?
She started to tiptoe back to her room, not wanting to bother him, but again that instinct stopped her.
“Are you...okay?” she asked.
Her employer shifted to face her and in the shaft of snow-brightened moonlight filtering in through the window, she caught an expression of raw pain on his features before he quickly contained it.
“Fine,” he said, his voice tight.
That was a bald lie if she had ever heard one. She hesitated. It was none of her business. He was her boss, that was it, and