Maid Under The Mistletoe

“Cooking in here was a treat. There’s so much space.” Joy took another sip of wine. “Our house is so tiny, the kitchen just a smudge on the floor plan. Holly and I can’t be in there together without knocking each other down. Plus there’s the ancient plumbing and the cabinet doors that don’t close all the way...but it’s just a rental. One of these days, we’ll get our own house. Nothing like this one of course, but a little bigger with a terrific kitchen and a table like this one where Holly can sit and do her homework while I make dinner—”

Briskly, he got back to business. It was either that or let her go far enough to sketch out her dream kitchen. “Okay, I get it. You need to be here, and for food like this, I’m willing to go along.”

She laughed shortly.

He paid zero attention to the musical sound of that laugh or how it made her eyes sparkle in the low light. “So here’s the deal. You can stay the month like we agreed.”

“But?” she asked. “I hear a but in there.”

“But.” He nodded at her. “We steer clear of each other and you keep your daughter out of my way.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Not a fan of kids, are you?”

“Not for a long time.”

“Holly won’t bother you,” she said, lifting her wineglass for another sip.

“All right. Good. Then we’ll get along fine.” He finished off the pasta, savoring that last bite before taking one more pull on his beer. “You cook and clean. I spend most of my days out in the workshop, so we probably won’t see much of each other anyway.”

She studied him for several long seconds before a small smile curved her mouth and a tiny dimple appeared in her right cheek. “You’re sort of mysterious, aren’t you?”

Once again, she’d caught him off guard. And why did she look so pleased when he’d basically told her he didn’t want her kid around and didn’t particularly want to spend any time with her, either?

“No mystery. I just like my privacy is all.”

“Privacy’s one thing,” she mused, tipping her head to one side to study him. “Hiding out’s another.”

“Who says I’m hiding?”

“Kaye.”

He rolled his eyes. Kaye talked to his mother. To Joy. Who the hell wasn’t she talking to? “Kaye doesn’t know everything.”

“She comes close, though,” Joy said. “She worries about you. For the record, she says you’re lonely, but private. Nice, but shut down.”

He shifted in the chair, suddenly uncomfortable with the way she was watching him. As if she could look inside him and dig out all of his secrets.

“She wouldn’t tell me why you’ve locked yourself away up here on the mountain—”

“That’s something,” he muttered, then remembered his mother’s warning about hermits and muttering. Scowling, he took another drink of his beer.

“People do wonder, though,” she mused. “Why you keep to yourself so much. Why you almost never go into town. I mean, it’s beautiful here, but don’t you miss talking to people?”

“Not a bit,” he told her, hoping that statement would get her to back off.

“I really would.”

“Big surprise,” he muttered and then inwardly winced. Hell, he’d talked more in the last ten minutes than he had in the last year. Still, for some reason, he felt the need to defend himself and the way he lived. “I have Kaye to talk to if I desperately need conversation—which I don’t. And I do get into town now and then.” Practically never, though, he thought.

Hell, why should he go into Franklin and put up with being stared at and whispered over when he could order whatever he wanted online and have it shipped overnight? If nothing else, the twenty-first century was perfect for a man who wanted to be left the hell alone.

“Yeah, that doesn’t happen often,” she was saying. “There was actually a pool in town last summer—people were taking bets on if you’d come in at all before fall.”

Stunned, he stared at her. “They were betting on me?”

“You’re surprised?” Joy laughed and the sound of it filled the kitchen. “It’s a tiny mountain town with not a lot going on, except for the flood of tourists. Of course they’re going to place bets on the local hermit.”

“I’m starting to resent that word.” Sam hadn’t really considered that he might be the subject of so much speculation, and he didn’t much care for it. What was he supposed to do now? Go into town more often? Or less?

“Oh,” she said, waving one hand at him, “don’t look so grumpy about it. If it makes you feel better, when you came into Franklin and picked up those new tools at the hardware store, at the end of August, Jim Bowers won nearly two hundred dollars.”

“Good for him,” Sam muttered, not sure how he felt about all of this. He’d moved to this small mountain town for the solitude. For the fact that no one would give a damn about him. And after five years here, he found out the town was paying close enough attention to him to actually lay money on his comings and goings. Shaking his head, he asked only, “Who’s Jim Bowers?”

“He and his wife own the bakery.”

“There’s a bakery in Franklin?”

She sighed, shaking her head slowly. “It’s so sad that you didn’t know that.”

A short laugh shot from his throat, surprising them both.

“You should do that more often,” she said quietly.

“What?”

“Smile. Laugh. Lose the etched-in-stone-grumble expression.”

“Do you have an opinion on everything?” he asked.

“Don’t you?” she countered.

Yeah, he did. And his considered opinion on this particular situation was that he might have made a mistake in letting Joy and her daughter stay here for the next month.

But damned if he could regret it at the moment.

Three

By the following morning, Joy had decided the man needed to be pushed into getting outside himself. Sitting in the kitchen with him the night before had been interesting and more revealing than he would have liked, she was sure. Though he had a gruff, cold exterior, Joy had seen enough in his eyes to convince her that the real man was hidden somewhere beneath that hard shell he carried around with him.

She had known he’d been trying to avoid seeing her again by staying late in his workshop. Which was why she’d been waiting for him in the kitchen. Joy had always believed that it was better to face a problem head-on rather than dance around it and hope it would get better. So she’d been prepared to argue and bargain with him to make sure she and Holly could stay for the month.

And she’d known the moment he tasted her baked mostaccioli that arguments would not be necessary. He might not want her there, but her cooking had won him over. Clearly, he didn’t like it, but he’d put up with her for a month if it meant he wouldn’t starve. Joy could live with that.

What she might not be able to live with was her body’s response to being near him. She hadn’t expected that. Hadn’t felt anything remotely like awareness since splitting with Holly’s father before the little girl was born. And she wasn’t looking for it now. She had a good life, a growing business and a daughter who made her heart sing. Who could ask for more than that?

But the man...intrigued her. She could admit, at least to herself, that sitting with him in the shadow-filled night had made her feel things she’d be better off forgetting. It wasn’t her fault, of course. Just look at the man. Tall, dark and crabby. What woman wouldn’t have a few fantasies about a man who looked like he did? Okay, normally she wouldn’t enjoy the surly attitude—God knew she’d had enough “bad boys” in her life. But the shadows of old pain in his eyes told Joy that Sam hadn’t always been so closed off.

So there was interest even when she knew there shouldn’t be. His cold detachment was annoying, but the haunted look in his eyes drew her in. Made her want to comfort. Care. Dangerous feelings to have.

“Mommy, is it gonna snow today?”

Grateful for that sweet voice pulling her out of her circling thoughts, Joy walked to the kitchen table, bent down and kissed the top of her daughter’s head.

“I don’t think so, baby. Eat your pancakes now. And then we’ll take a walk down to the lake.”

“And skate?” Holly’s eyes went bright with excitement at the idea. She forked up a bite of pancake and chewed quickly, eager now to get outside.

“We’ll see if the lake’s frozen enough, all right?” She’d brought their ice skates along since she’d known about the lake. And though she was no future competitor, Holly loved skating almost as much as she loved fairy princesses.

Humming, Holly nodded to herself and kept eating, pausing now and then for a sip of her milk. Her heels thumped against the chair rungs and sounded like a steady heartbeat in the quiet morning. Her little girl couldn’t have been contained in a hotel room for a month. She had enough energy for three healthy kids and needed the room to run and play.

This house, this place, with its wide yard and homey warmth, was just what she needed. Simple as that. As for what Sam Henry made Joy feel? That would remain her own little secret.

“Hi, Sam!” Holly called out. “Mommy made pancakes. We’re cellbrating.”

“Celebrating,” Joy corrected automatically, before she turned to look at the man standing in the open doorway. And darn it, she felt that buzz of awareness again the minute her gaze hit his. So tall, she thought with approval. He wore faded jeans and the scarred boots again, but today he wore a long-sleeved green thermal shirt with a gray flannel shirt over it. His too-long hair framed his face, and his eyes still carried the secrets that she’d seen in them the night before. They stared at each other as the seconds ticked past, and Joy wondered what he was thinking.

Probably trying to figure out the best way to get her and Holly to leave, she thought.

Well, that wasn’t going to happen. She turned to the coffeemaker and poured him a cup. “Black?”

He accepted it. “How’d you guess?”

She smiled. “You look like the no-frills kind of man to me. Just can’t imagine you ordering a half-caf, vanilla bean cappuccino.”

He snorted, but took a long drink and sighed at the rush of caffeine in his system. Joy could appreciate that, since she usually got up a half hour before Holly just so she could have the time to enjoy that first, blissful cup of coffee.

“What’re you celebrating?” he asked.

Joy flushed a little. “Staying here in the ‘castle.’”

Holly’s heels continued to thump as she hummed her way through breakfast. “We’re having pancakes and then we’re going skating on the lake and—”

“I said we’ll see,” Joy reminded her.

“Stay away from the lake.”

Joy looked at him. His voice was low, brusque, and his tone brooked no argument. All trace of amusement was gone from eyes that looked as deep and dark as the night itself. “What?”

“The lake,” he said, making an obvious effort to soften the hard note in his voice. “It’s not solid enough. Too dangerous for either of you to be on it.”

“Are you sure?” Joy asked, glancing out the kitchen window at the frigid world beyond the glass. Sure, it hadn’t snowed much so far, but it had been below freezing every night for the last couple of weeks, so the lake should be frozen over completely by now.

“No point in taking the chance, is there? If it stays this cold, maybe you could try it in a week or two...”

Well, she thought, at least he’d accepted that she and Holly would still be there in two weeks. That was a step in the right direction, anyway. His gaze fixed on hers, deliberately avoiding looking at Holly, though the little girl was practically vibrating with barely concealed excitement. In his eyes, Joy saw real worry and a shadow of something darker, something older.

“Okay,” she said, going with her instinct to ease whatever it was that was driving him. Reaching out, she laid one hand on his forearm and felt the tension gripping him before he slowly, deliberately pulled away. “Okay. No skating today.”

“Moooommmmmyyyyy...”

How her daughter managed to put ten or more syllables into a single word was beyond her.

“We’ll skate another day, okay, sweetie? How about today we take a walk in the forest and look for pinecones?” She kept her gaze locked on Sam’s, so she actually saw relief flash across his eyes. What was it in his past that had him still tied into knots?

“Can we paint ’em for Christmas?”

“Sure we can, baby. We’ll go after we clean the kitchen, so eat up.” Then to Sam, she said, “How about some pancakes?”

“No, thanks.” He turned to go.

“One cup of coffee and that’s it?”

He looked back at her. “You’re here to take care of the house. Not me.”

“Not true. I’m also here to cook. For you.” She smiled a little. “You should try the pancakes. They’re really good, even if I do say so myself.”

“Mommy makes the best pancakes,” Holly tossed in.

“I’m sure she does,” he said, still not looking at the girl.

Joy frowned and wondered why he disliked kids so much, but she didn’t ask.

“Look, while you’re here, don’t worry about breakfast for me. I don’t usually bother and if I change my mind I can take care of it myself.”

“You’re a very stubborn man, aren’t you?”

He took another sip of coffee. “I’ve got a project to finish and I’m going out to get started on it.”

“Well, you can at least take a muffin.” Joy walked to the counter and picked a muffin—one of the batch she’d made just an hour ago—out of a ceramic blue bowl.

He sighed. “If I do, will you let me go?”

“If I do, will you come back?”

“I live here.”

Joy smiled again and handed it over to him. “Then you are released. Go. Fly free.”

His mouth twitched and he shook his head. “People think I’m weird.”

“I don’t.” She said it quickly and wasn’t sure why she had until she saw a quick gleam of pleasure in his eyes.

“Be sure to tell Kaye,” he said, and left, still shaking his head.

“’Bye, Sam!” Holly’s voice followed him and Joy was pretty sure he quickened his steps as if trying to outrun it.

* * *

Three hours later, Sam was still wishing he’d eaten those damn pancakes. He remembered the scent of them in the air, and his stomach rumbled in complaint. Pouring another cup of coffee from his workshop pot, he stared down at the small pile of blueberry muffin crumbs and wished he had another one. Damn it.

Wasn’t it enough that Joy’s face kept surfacing in his mind? Did she have to be such a good cook, too? And who asked her to make him breakfast? Kaye never did. Usually he made do with coffee and a power bar of some kind, and that was fine. Always had been anyway. But now he still had the lingering taste of that muffin in his mouth, and his stomach was still whining over missing out on pancakes.

But to eat them, he’d have had to take a seat at the table beside a chattering little girl. And all that sunshine and sweet innocence was just too much for Sam to take. He took a gulp of hot coffee and let the blistering liquid burn its way to the pit of his sadly empty stomach. And as hungry as he was, at least he’d completed his project. He leaned back against the workbench, crossed his feet at the ankles, stared at the finished table and gave himself a silent pat on the back.

In the overhead shop light, the wood gleamed and shone like a mirror in the sun. Every slender grain of the wood was displayed beautifully under the fresh coat of varnish, and the finish was smooth as glass. The thick pedestal was gnarled and twisted, yet it, too, had been methodically sanded until all the rough edges were gone as if they’d never been.

Taking a deadfall tree limb and turning it into the graceful pedestal of a table had taken some time, but it had been worth it. The piece was truly one of a kind, and he knew the people he’d made it for would approve. It was satisfying, seeing something in your head and creating it in the physical world. He used to do that with paint and canvas, bringing imaginary places to life, making them real.

Sam frowned at the memories, because remembering the passion he’d had for painting, the rush of starting something new and pushing himself to make it all perfect, was something he couldn’t know now. Maybe he never would again. And that thought opened up a black pit at the bottom of his soul. But there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing that could ease that need, that bone-deep craving.

At least he had this, he told himself. Woodworking had given him, if not completion, then satisfaction. It filled his days and helped to ease the pain of missing the passion that had once driven his life. But then, he thought, once upon a time, his entire world had been different. The shame was, he hadn’t really appreciated what he’d had while he had it. At least, he told himself, not enough to keep it.

He was still leaning against the workbench, studying the table, when a soft voice with a slight lisp asked, “Is it a fairy table?”

He swiveled his head to the child in the doorway. Her blond hair was in pigtails, she wore blue jeans, tiny pink-and-white sneakers with princesses stamped all over them and a pink parka that made her look impossibly small.

He went completely still even while his heart raced, and his mind searched for a way out of there. Her appearance, on top of old memories that continued to dog him, hit him so hard he could barely take a breath. Sam looked into blue eyes the exact shade of her mother’s and told himself that it was damned cowardly to be spooked by a kid. He had his reasons, but it was lowering to admit, even to himself, that his first instinct when faced with a child was to bolt.

Since she was still watching him, waiting for an answer, Sam took another sip of coffee in the hopes of steadying himself. “No. It’s just a table.”

“It looks like a tree.” Moving warily, she edged a little farther into the workshop and let the door close behind her, shutting out the cold.

“It used to be,” he said shortly.

“Did you make it?”

“Yes.” She was looking up at him with those big blue eyes, and Sam was still trying to breathe. But his “issues” weren’t her fault. He was being an ass, and even he could tell. He had no reason to be so short with the girl. How was she supposed to know that he didn’t do kids anymore?

“Can I touch it?” she asked, giving him a winsome smile that made Sam wonder if females were born knowing how to do it.

“No,” he said again and once more, he heard the sharp brusqueness in his tone and winced.

“Are you crabby?” She tilted her head to one side and looked up at him in all seriousness.

“What?”

Gloomy sunlight spilled through the windows that allowed views of the pines, the lake and the leaden sky that loomed threateningly over it all. The little girl, much like her mother, looked like a ray of sunlight in the gray, and he suddenly wished that she were anywhere but there. Her innocence, her easy smile and curiosity were too hard to take. Yet, her fearlessness at facing down an irritable man made her, to Sam’s mind, braver than him.

“Mommy says when I’m crabby I need a nap.” She nodded solemnly. “Maybe you need a nap, too.”

Sam sighed. Also, like her mother, a bad mood wasn’t going to chase her off. Accepting the inevitable, that he wouldn’t be able to get rid of her by giving her one-word, bit-off answers, he said, “I don’t need a nap, I’m just busy.”

She walked into the workshop, less tentative now. Clearly oblivious to the fact that he didn’t want her there, she wandered the shop, looking over the benches with tools, the stacks of reclaimed wood and the three tree trunks he had lined up along a wall. He should tell her to go back to the house. Wasn’t it part of their bargain that the girl wouldn’t bother him?

Hell.

“You don’t look busy.”

“Well, I am.”

“Doing what?”

Sam sighed. Irritating, but that was a good question. Now that he’d finished the table, he needed to start something else. It wasn’t only his hands he needed to keep busy. It was his mind. If he wasn’t focusing on something, his thoughts would invariably track over to memories. Of another child who’d also had unending questions and bright, curious eyes. Sam cut that thought off and turned his attention to the tiny girl still exploring his workshop. Why hadn’t he told her to leave? Why hadn’t he taken her back to the house and told Joy to keep her away from him? Hell, why was he just standing there like a glowering statue?

“What’s this do?”

The slight lisp brought a reluctant smile even as he moved toward her. She’d stopped in front of a vise that probably looked both interesting and scary to a kid.

“It’s a wood vise,” he said. “It holds a piece of wood steady so I can work on it.”

She chewed her bottom lip and thought about it for a minute. “Like if I put my doll between my knees so I can brush her hair.”

“Yeah,” he said grudgingly. Smart kid. “It’s sort of like that. Shouldn’t you be with your mom?”

“She’s cleaning and she said I could play in the yard if I stayed in the yard so I am but I wish it would snow and we could make angels and snowballs and a big snowman and—”

Amazed, Sam could only stare in awe as the little girl talked without seeming to breathe. Thoughts and words tumbled out of her in a rush that tangled together and yet somehow made sense.

Desperate now to stop the flood of high-pitched sounds, he asked, “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

She laughed and shook her head so hard her pigtails flew back and forth across her eyes. “I go to pre-K cuz I’m too little for Big-K cuz my birthday comes too late cuz it’s the day after Christmas and I can probably get a puppy if I ask Santa and Mommy’s gonna get me a fairy doll for my birthday cuz Christmas is for the puppy and he’ll be all white like a snowball and he’ll play with me and lick me like Lizzie’s puppy does when I get to play there and—”

So...instead of halting the rush of words and noise, he’d simply given her more to talk about. Sam took another long gulp of his coffee and hoped the caffeine would give him enough clarity to follow the kid’s twisty thought patterns.

She picked up a scrap piece of wood and turned it over in her tiny hands.

“What can we make out of this?” she asked, holding it up to him, an interested gleam in her eye and an eager smile on her face.

Well, hell. He had nothing else to work on. It wasn’t as though he was being drawn to the kid or anything. All he was doing was killing time. Keeping busy. Frowning to himself, Sam took the piece of wood from her and said, “If you’re staying, take your jacket off and put it over there.”

Her smile widened, her eyes sparkled and she hurried to do just what he told her. Shaking his head, Sam asked himself what he was doing. He should be dragging her back to the house. Telling her mother to keep the kid away from him. Instead, he was getting deeper.

“I wanna make a fairy house!”

He winced a little at the high pitch of that tiny voice and told himself that this didn’t matter. He could back off again later.

* * *

Joy looked through the window of Sam’s workshop and watched her daughter work alongside the man who had insisted he wanted nothing to do with her. Her heart filled when Holly turned a wide, delighted smile on the man. Then a twinge of guilt pinged inside her. Her little girl was happy and well-adjusted, but she was lacking a male role model in her life. God knew her father hadn’t been interested in the job.

She’d told herself at the time that Holly would be better off without him than with a man who clearly didn’t want to be a father. Yet here was another man who had claimed to want nothing to do with kids—her daughter in particular—and instead of complaining about her presence, he was working with her. Showing the little girl how to build...something. And Holly was loving it.

The little girl knelt on a stool at the workbench, following Sam’s orders, and though she couldn’t see what they were working on from her vantage point, Joy didn’t think it mattered. Her daughter’s happiness was evident, and whether he knew it or not, after only one day around Holly, Sam was opening up. She wondered what kind of man that opening would release.