He pushed away the yearning. “You’re on your own in here.”
“I could tell Sue’s cast was bothering her so I strongly encouraged her to put it up for a while, before everyone gets here. She’s in my sitting room with Maddie. I believe they were about to watch a Christmas special.”
“Sue is a little addicted to them.”
“I suspect she may end up sleeping through this one.” She smiled softly as she set another ball of dough in the muffin tin.
“You are truly a miracle worker if you could convince her to rest just before the chaos I call a family descends on Snow Angel Cove. How did you manage to pull that off?”
“I wouldn’t have been successful if her foot wasn’t killing her. Christmas is a terrible time to have a fracture and have to wear a cast.”
Sue had ended up with what doctors called a Lisfranc fracture of the small bones in her foot from the twisting injury of falling off the curb. It hadn’t required surgery but she was now hobbling around with a cast and a small knee walker to keep her weight off it as much as possible.
“Looks like she put you to work before she went to rest. What are you doing? Cloverleaf rolls?”
She gave him a sideways smile that made him hungry for more. “Careful, Aidan. Your culinary experience is showing. Sue might end up putting you to work.”
“She knows I can hold my own if she needs my help.”
“Actually, I think we have everything under control. Sue wanted me to make rolls to go with the turkey tenderloins we’re making for the late lunch. She babysat me through her recipe to make sure I didn’t overwork the dough but trusted me enough to make the balls for rolls on my own.”
“They look great. Good job.”
She made a face. “Thank you for not mentioning all the misshapen circles.”
“I can’t see any from where I’m standing.”
“You must not be looking hard enough,” she said.
He wanted to argue that he could see fine and everything within his view looked perfect but he was afraid that would sound cheesy.
“In my experience, we tend to see our own mistakes and weaknesses far more vividly than other people do,” he said instead.
“Isn’t that the truth?”
The lapsed into silence broken only by the soft music on the sound system, now playing a vibraphone version of “Winter Wonderland.” Did she feel the tensile attraction tug and stretch between them or was it wholly one-sided? He wasn’t sure but by the occasional sidelong glance she sent his way, he suspected the former.
“I know I haven’t said it enough,” he said after a moment, “but thank you again for stepping up to help Sue out with the meal prep. We really would have been sunk without you.”
“I’m glad I was here.”
“Again, let me just say that I’m terribly sorry I ran into you that day and I’m probably going to have nightmares about it forever, but somehow it turned into one of the best things that’s happened to me in a long time.”
“Oh.” The word escaped her on a small breath of sound and she gazed at him, green eyes wide, arrested. It took a great deal of wrestling for him to fight down the urge to lean across the work island and kiss her right there, over the bowl of cloverleaf roll dough.
“I mean it, Eliza. I’m very glad you and Maddie are here—and not only because you’ve been a lifesaver in the kitchen.”
“I am, too,” she said after a moment, and he knew it was a confession she didn’t make easily.
“How long before your family arrives?” she asked, changing the subject quickly.
“Within the hour. Jim and I need to be leaving in a few minutes for the airport pickup.”
“You have the list of room assignments, right?”
“Yeah. I looked it over this morning. It all should be fine.”
“We talked about leaving most of the evening unstructured. We’ll let people settle into their rooms before we put out the late lunch buffet style an hour or so after everyone arrives. Dinner tonight is pizza, which is already prepped, and then we have the sleigh ride on the agenda.”
“Right. Okay.”
He did a little mental reorganizing. He had entertained some vague idea of welcoming his family for a few hours and then going right back to his project but that wouldn’t work. Jim would need his help handling the team of draft horses temporarily on loan for the sleigh ride.
“Do you have a route in mind?” she asked.
“Yes. We won’t go far, just around the road that circles the ranch property and down by the cove.”
“Oh, that sounds perfect. You’ll have a lovely view of the stars and the moonlight down by the lake. Your family will love it.”
“I hope so. You and Maddie will, too. She has been dying to ride in the sleigh ever since she spied it in the barn the other day.”
Her mouth tightened. “We probably would enjoy it, if we were going with you.”
“Of course you’re going! You have to!”
“Is that an order?”
“If it has to be,” he retorted. He hated when she threw the fact that she technically worked for him between them like razor-topped concertina wire.
“How can I go? I’ll be busy cleaning up after twenty people and I don’t feel comfortable sending my child along for someone in your family to babysit.”
“First of all, the primary rule in my family is, if you don’t work, you don’t eat, as I’ve told you before. Everybody will help you clean the kitchen before we leave. Watch. Pop will insist on it. And second of all, you have to come. Fine, consider it an order, if that helps you sleep at night. We both know Maddie’s heart would break if we left her home.”
She was silent, brow furrowed as she concentrated on rolling the last bit of dough into a ball. “Can’t you see how awkward this is for me? I’m a total stranger to your family. A total stranger who works for you! What are they going to think when I just start hanging around, going on sleigh rides and eating dinner with you?”
“They’re going to think the more the merrier. And five minutes after they all show up, you will feel like one of the family. One of my pop’s favorite Irish sayings is, there are no strangers, only friends you haven’t met yet.”
She huffed out her breath. “Do you always manage to get your own way?”
“Not even close,” he murmured. How could she say that, when she came up with excuse after excuse to fight the feelings growing between them?
She gazed at him and her mouth trembled slightly, just enough that he knew he couldn’t go another moment without kissing her. In this, yeah. He insisted on his own way.
As he lowered his mouth, she caught her breath and he saw her pupils dilate, then turned shocked when he only pressed his mouth to that dusting of flour on her cheek.
“You had a little something there,” he said, his voice low.
“Oh.”
Her lashes fluttered down and she leaned into him slightly, almost as if she didn’t realize it. Just before he leaned in to kiss her—really kiss her this time—he heard the mudroom door slam and cowboy boots on the tile.
Jim.