LITMIR.BIZ

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and had spent that first year feeling cherished. Adored, even.

      And then had come her unexpected pregnancy. They had talked about children but not yet, not until he was more settled in his job as a financial planner. When they discovered she was pregnant despite birth control, everything changed.

      She understood it on an intellectual level. He had spent most of his childhood far below the poverty line, as his older sister, barely out of her teens herself, had been forced to work menial labor jobs just to keep them afloat after his mother died. He had craved security above all else and discovering he was about to be a father for the first time had sent that need into overdrive.

      By the time Maddie was born and the doctors first diagnosed her heart condition, Trent had become obsessed with making money, however he could.

      “Actually, be prepared for a lot of lovey-dovey stuff,” Aidan went on, and Eliza jerked her attention away from the difficult memories and back to the warm, comfortable kitchen at Snow Angel Cove.

      “Sure. Okay,” she said.

      “You’ll have three sets of newlyweds in the group. Pop and Katherine, my brother Dylan and his wife, Genevieve, and our sister, Charlotte, and her husband, Spence. All of them married within the last six months.”

      She suddenly realized she was going to have to do a better job of keeping track of them all than just her memory.

      “Sorry. You lost me. Hold on.”

      “I know. We can be overwhelming.”

      “No. I just need to grab something to write down the names.”

      She grabbed a pad of paper from a small desk Sue must use to organize recipes and grocery lists and carried it back to the work island.

      “Okay. Start over from the top.”

      He chuckled. “My oldest brother, Patrick, is a banker. He’s married to Christine, a pediatrician. They live in Denver and have three kids, Maggie and the twins, Josh and Jake.”

      She jotted down the names. “Check. Go on.”

      “Andrew is next in the pecking order. He’s an attorney. He and his wife, Erin, live in Hope’s Crossing, where she teaches at the elementary school. Their kids, Ava and Ben, are both teenagers.”

      What was she going to do with a house full of young people? The game room was well-equipped with a pool table, old-fashioned pinball machine and foosball. That would do, for starters. Her tour of the house earlier had also revealed a luxurious media room with a massive flat-screen television, also something the teenagers would enjoy.

      She would have to see what equipment the lodge had for outdoor activities, like ice skates and toboggans.

      “Brendan comes next. He’s the Hope’s Crossing fire chief and is a widower who lost his wife and unborn baby a couple of years ago.”

      “Oh, how terrible!”

      “It was tough on everyone. Jessie had a heart condition that went undiagnosed until their third pregnancy. Bren has two great kids, Faith, who’s eight, and Carter, who’s six. Maddie’s age.”

      “Oh, the poor things.”

      “They had a rough couple of years but they’re finding their way. Brendan is actually dating again. He’s pretty serious with a woman who worked for me for about five minutes. Lucy Drake. She’ll be coming along for the holidays.”

      “Brendan, Lucy, Faith and Carter. Right.” She wrote those down and circled them to indicate they were a unit.

      “I’m next in birth order—smack dab in the middle—and just younger than me is Jamie. I don’t think he’ll be able to make it, so you don’t have to worry about him. Then you have Dylan and his wife, Genevieve.”

      “Got it.”

      He paused, sudden shadows in his eyes. “Since you’re creating a dossier here, I should probably tell you, Dylan was badly injured in Afghanistan a few years back and almost died. He lost an arm and an eye because of his injuries.”

      The Caines certainly had seen their share of hardship. Cancer, heart conditions, war injuries. No family escaped pain and sorrow. Sometimes it ripped them apart but she sensed Aidan’s family had drawn even closer together.

      “That must have been difficult for all of you,” she murmured.

      “He had a pretty rough time coming back from it for a while there. I’m not sure where he might have ended up if not for Gen. She’s surprised all of us—a society belle who ended up seeing past the scars and the anger to the good man still somewhere inside there.”

      Intrigued and looking forward to meeting the woman—along with the rest of his family—she wrote down the two names with another circle.

      “And finally Charlotte.”

      “The lone sister who had to put up with all of you boys.”

      He smiled again as he rose and carried his plate to the sink. “Exactly. Poor thing. She’s the other newlywed, as I mentioned. She married Spencer Gregory this summer.”

      The familiar name made her stare. “Not Spencer Gregory, the baseball pitcher?”

      “The same. He grew up in Hope’s Crossing, too, and hung out with all of us, especially Dylan and Jamie. You a baseball fan?”

      For a moment, she was back to being a teenage girl, trying to connect with the father who had been a somewhat distant, unapproachable figure, a quiet, introverted man who always seemed tired after his twelve-hour days working as a road crew supervisor.

      “Baseball was one of the few places where my dad and I could connect, especially after my mom died. He was a big Portland Pioneers fan. We used to drive from our house in Lincoln City to watch them whenever we could. I saw Smokin’ Hot Spence Gregory pitch his very first game in the big leagues.”

      She had also had a bit of a celebrity crush on him her last year of high school and into college and had followed his career with interest even after she married. The supermodel wife, endorsements, the records he continued to break.

      His plummet into disgrace and scandal had come right around the time of Trent’s death and had struck her like one more personal blow.

      Over the past year, Spence had been vindicated, the drug-dealing charges against him revealed to be a fabrication and cover-up. He was now respected, vaunted, on track once more to be entered into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

      Again, she had taken his redemption in the public eye far more personally than she should have, finding a much-needed ray of hope in watching him rehabilitate his public image.

      It seemed silly, she knew. She’d never even met the man. Now he was coming here, to Haven Point—and he was apparently married to Aidan’s sister. Oh, she was going to be such a dork around him and probably wouldn’t be able to string two words together. Perhaps she could at least manage to tell him how grateful she was as a true-blue fan for the many hours of enjoyment he provided her and her father and how happy she was that he had been able to turn things around.

      Or maybe she would just stand there like a tongue-tied idiot when she finally met him.

      “Spence has a daughter from his first marriage, Peyton,” Aidan went on. “She’s now about fourteen and good friends with Maggie and Ava.”

      She wrote that all down, trying not to be overwhelmed at the task ahead of her. “It’s probably going to take me a few days to figure out who’s who. Most likely, I’ll make a few embarrassing mistakes and mess up names.”

      “Don’t worry about it. Everyone is pretty easygoing. I have pictures of the whole family from Pop’s wedding. I’ll print out a couple for you and tag everybody so you can start putting names with faces.”

      “Great idea! That would be very helpful. Thank you.”

      “You’re welcome.”

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