LITMIR.BIZ

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      “I haven’t done this in years,” he said. “The Christmas-decorating thing, I mean. Probably since I left home for MIT. My roommate in college used to put up a little tree but I was too busy to bother. After college, it always seemed like too much effort, until I could afford to hire a decorator to do it for me.”

      That sounded pretty pitiful, when he thought about it.

      “Was Christmas a big deal at your house?” she asked.

      “Definitely.” He thought of crazy mornings around the Christmas tree and the frenzy of gifts and ribbons and wrapping paper. The Hope’s Crossing Christmas Eve candlelight ski had always been one of his favorite traditions at home, where they would all bundle up and either gather to watch or strap on skis to participate in the annual tradition, where all the lights on the runs at the ski resort would be extinguished except the small candles each skier carried down the hillside.

      He usually watched with Charlotte and his mom while his brothers took to the mountain. Downhill skiing had never been his favorite winter activity. He loved snowshoeing or cross-country skiing, where he could be all alone on a trail, able to savor the hushed magic of moonlight on thick new snow or watching a nuthatch seek out the last few berries on a currant bush.

      “When I was a kid, decorating the Christmas tree was the best part of the year,” he told her. “We had certain ornaments we all used to fight over, each of us determined to have the privilege of hanging them. And when I say fight, I mean punches were thrown. Seriously.”

      Her laughter was every bit as magical as a dusky evening spent alone on a winter trail. “You’re telling me your family actually came to fisticuffs over Christmas ornaments?”

      “Usually it was Dylan, Jamie and Brendan. They were always the most competitive. As the older two, Andrew and Patrick did their best to stay above the fray and Charlotte would usually burst into tears the minute voices were raised.”

      His childhood had been crazy and chaotic and wonderful. He wouldn’t have changed a minute of it, even if he had sometimes felt like the odd one out.

      “I said it before but it bears repeating. Your mom must have been the most patient woman on earth.”

      He felt the same sharp pang he always did when thinking of Margaret Caine. “She was an amazing person. She gave us all the same love and affection and never once treated any of us differently than the others. Of course, I always knew I was her favorite. We both loved books and music and old movies. The funny thing is, when I talk with my brothers or Charlotte, they say the same things. Every one of us thought she treated us as her favorite.”

      “You still miss her.”

      “Yeah,” he murmured, hanging a little angel with beaded wings and a glittery halo on a bough.

      “You must be very close to your family.”

      He couldn’t argue with that. As far as families went, they were close. He loved them all dearly and knew that he could call on any one of his brothers and they would have his back.

      At the same time, over the years as he had gone first to MIT and then to Silicon Valley, an inevitable distance had widened between them. He only connected in person with his family three or four times a year while everybody else saw each other almost every Sunday, when Pop would host a big noisy family dinner.

      Aidan knew it was his own fault for moving away from Hope’s Crossing, an inevitability, really, but it added to his own sense of...separateness, barring a better word.

      “What about you?” he asked, turning the conversation around. “Are you close to your siblings?”

      “Only child,” she answered with a stiff smile that didn’t fool him for a moment.

      “You said your mom died when you were a teenager.”

      “Yes.” She picked up one of the few remaining angels and hung it on the tree with brisk movements, but not before he saw her eyes cloud with sorrow.

      “And your dad?”

      “He remarried a few years ago and lives in Portland now. His wife has a couple of teenagers from a previous marriage so I have a couple of stepbrothers. I don’t know them well, as we have always lived apart.”

      He sensed more to the story. What was her relationship with her father? And had she planned to spend the holidays with him before Aidan had basically blackmailed her into staying at Snow Angel Cove?

      “My sister sometimes tells me I can be arrogant and insensitive. It’s just occurred to me that asking you to help me with my family might be keeping you from seeing your own family at Christmas.”

      She shook her head. “My father doesn’t have a lot of room at his place and, to be honest, his wife and I have...issues.”

      “Issues. That’s a complicated word.”

      She sighed. “We didn’t get off on the best footing. My fault, mostly.”

      That surprised him. He had a short acquaintanceship with her, true, but Eliza struck him as someone a great deal like his sister, Charlotte, sweet and kind and maybe a little too forgiving for her own good.

      He had hit the woman with his vehicle, for crying out loud, and she still seemed eager to help him create the perfect Christmas for his family.

      “Why do you say that?” he asked, genuinely curious about what she might have done to warrant enmity between her and her stepmother.

      “He married her and moved to Portland right in the midst of everything with Tre—my husband’s death. I was lost and grieving and really needed my dad, you know?”

      She couldn’t even say her husband’s name after three years. The depth of her sorrow gave him that same kick in his gut as he would get from a hard topple off the ladder.

      More evidence of his arrogance. A few minutes ago he had been thinking what a lousy time it was for him to be attracted to a woman, focused only on himself again. Why would he even think for a minute she would return that attraction, when she was obviously still grieving her late husband?

      “I needed him here to help me with Maddie but instead he got married after years of being a widower and packed up everything to move to Portland with Paula and her children. I acted like a spoiled brat, I guess, and I’m afraid I wasn’t the most gracious of new stepdaughters to her. Our relationship since then has been...strained. Which means my relationship with my father is strained, too.”

      Her father should have been less concerned with his own love life and raising some other man’s kids and more concerned about his own grieving daughter who needed him. Why hadn’t he bothered to put his wedding on hold for a few months, just long enough to help his daughter when she needed him?

      People did things for their own reasons, which often eluded Aidan. Usually selfishness, if he had to guess.

      Here was one perfect example of why he preferred to work with computers and code. They did what was required of them. They didn’t cheat, didn’t betray, didn’t wake up one morning with a damned tumor that knocked them to their knees.

      “What about your husband’s side? Does Maddie have paternal grandparents?”

      “No. My husband’s parents died when he was ten or eleven. An older sister raised him. She’s on the east coast. We stay in touch and she’s very kind to Maddie, sending gifts and letters and so forth, but she’s busy with her own children and grandchildren now, which is only natural.”

      So she really had no one in her corner. His family might drive him crazy sometimes and he might lament the inevitable geographic and emotional distance between them over the past few years but they were his and he would be lost without them.

      “Don’t,” she said, her voice a little sharp. “You don’t have to look at me like I’m some lonely little widow with no one. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have a core group of very

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