TWO HOURS HAD passed since Ella had dumped her past in Noah’s lap.
She’d let her curiosity about Noah get the best of her, let his obstinance and padlocked secrets pry open the door to her past. She hadn’t wanted his sympathy any more than he’d wanted hers. Now they were both embarrassed and tight-lipped. There were at least twelve more hours until daybreak. And what if the storm hadn’t passed by then?
Look at the bright side, Ella. Concierge doctor care for Penny.
That didn’t remove the sting of confession. They’d been cordial through dinner—a tray of lasagna and bacon-roasted brussels sprouts, both defrosted—but things were uneasy between them. She missed Noah’s teasing. She missed his bravado. She missed more warmth. A woodstove in the middle of the cabin was the only heat source.
Both Laurel and Sophie sent texts asking how Penny was doing. Shane sent a message asking for pictures of the cabin. Ella didn’t want to take pictures in front of Noah, but she didn’t want to sneak around behind his back, either. When she didn’t immediately reply to Shane’s text, he sent another. She’d be getting texts all night if she didn’t do something.
Luckily, Noah went into the bathroom, giving Ella the opportunity to take a few photos with her phone. The cabin was a basic rectangle. Exam room in the back corner with a small desk and storage cabinets. The kitchen was located in the opposite corner. A ladder led to a sleeping loft. Everything was outdated—Formica countertops and bland light fixtures. But it had big windows on the front and sides that would let in plenty of natural light. If there’d been any light outside.
Ella sent Shane the photos.
Shane’s response? Market value?
Did the man have nothing else to do but hound her for information?
Dutifully, she tugged a copy of the thin real-estate pamphlet from her diaper bag. She’d picked it up in the Bent Nickel to reference what other properties were selling for. Not that there were many old cabins in remote mountain towns for sale to pull as comps.
“How big is this cabin?” she asked when Noah came out and found her pacing the length of one wall. “Twenty-eight by twenty-eight?”
He looked at her crosswise. “Is this part of your inventory?”
She nodded.
Noah’s eyebrows lowered. “I feel like the rug is about to be yanked out from under my bare-naked butt.”
“Why?”
“I live here, for one.” He held up his gloved hand. “And where else can I practice with this? You’re going to give me more than thirty days’ notice before you evict me, aren’t you?”
“Calm down.” Ella could relate to the discombobulating feeling uncertainty could bring, but she had to put Penny’s needs—and the family’s—first. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to this town at the end of the year. None of us do. The family is divided.” Was that saying too much?
“And waiting on your work to make a decision?”
She nodded.
He stroked his beard, considering her. “I can help with that.”
“How?” That was a big, suspicious “how.”
“I’ve been snowshoeing. It’s a great way to get around town.”
Ella experienced a burst of fear that froze a trail from her head to her toes. She’d never gone snowshoeing and didn’t trust herself not to fall into the snow again. “May I remind you this town is two thousand acres of land? Walking will take forever.” She moved closer to the woodstove.
“Snowshoes are more efficient than you waiting for the snow to melt.” He read her like a much-loved book, because she’d been wondering when the snow would disappear. “I’ll be there if you get into trouble.”
He’d be trouble.
“I’m not going to fall down another snowy slope.” A meager promise, one she couldn’t uphold.
Noah studied her in that way of his, the one that made her feel she had a mysterious illness he was trying to diagnose. “You’ve never experienced the great snowy out-of-doors, have you?”
“I live in Philly.” She sniffed, rubbing her arms. “It snows. A lot.”
“Not as much as here. Let me rephrase. Have you ever gone skiing or snowboarding?”
Ella shook her head.
“Snowshoeing isn’t hard for a woman who clawed her way up a snowy slope.” And there it was. The first grin since he’d flashed his scars.
It warmed Ella back up.
And then he had to ruin things when he added, “Mitch has a snowmobile we can use, too.”
She flushed cold again. “This is where I admit I drive like a sedate grandma and hate roller coasters.” At least roller coasters had rails. Snowmobiles sounded scary. She glanced at Penny, asleep on the couch, unaware that fate could take her mother from her in a moment’s notice. “Snowmobiles are out.”
Noah came to stand next to Ella, so close their arms almost touched. He pretended to be warming his hands—his gloved hands—but he was watching her out of the corner of his eye. “What happened to curiosity and the cat?”
“Snow is wet and cold.” A huff worthy of Gabby was in order. “I think that answers any question about cats you might have.”
He stroked his beard, almost smiling. “How many properties do you need to see?”
“More than fifty.” A daunting amount. Ella turned her back on the stove. “Do you think people will let me in their homes? Maybe Mitch could notify them I’m coming.”
“I’d recommend the element of surprise.” Noah turned with her, gaze intent upon her face.
Did he just sneak a peek at my lips?
Ella completed the circuit and faced the woodstove once more.
Noah followed her lead with a sigh. “Weather permitting, you could see what? Four properties outside the town proper a day? Maybe five depending upon snow conditions?”
Ten days. “You’re depressing me.” By the time she returned to Philadelphia she’d be rushing to pack her things and find a place to live.
“I’m offering options.” Noah went into the kitchen and took a beer from the fridge. He opened it and leaned against the counter to drink. He had the lean body of an athlete.
Not that I care.
Ella tore away her gaze and checked on Penny, but her little darling was sleeping propped up on the couch pillows, exhausted from her day of coughing. Ella wandered around the small living room, wondering what people would think of her coming into their homes. She didn’t want to be nosy, but it was a sure thing she’d look at their family photos when she was in their houses. Speaking of which…
Ella picked up a framed photo of Noah with three other people from the end table. “Is this your family?”
Noah glanced over to her. “Those are the Bishops.” He took a sip of his beer, eyebrows on ground patrol. “My parents and my younger sister.”
She’d been staring at the picture, but the details of what she’d been looking at finally sunk in. “You’re all wearing stethoscopes. Are you… Are you all doctors?”
“It’s kind of a Bishop tradition.” There was an unexpected chill in his words. “A cliché, I know. Some men dream of producing athletes and some mini-mes in scrubs.”
“Aren’t people supposed to want a child as an expression of their love and desire for family?” That was what Penny was for Ella.
Noah shrugged. Obviously, she’d come across another roadblock.
Ella decided to let it go. “No wonder you always wanted to be a surgeon.” And no wonder he was taking his loss of career so hard. “What did your mom have to say about your accident?” And about him not going through physical therapy.
“I thought we were done being curious about each other.” Noah crossed his arms, giving her a look that dared her to reopen the doors to their pasts.
“We didn’t make a formal agreement of it,” Ella mumbled. She brushed a finger down the photo frame. “I’ve always envied people their families. The Monroes were just the family I dreamed of having. Large. Supportive. At least they were until…” He didn’t need to know how small Ian had made her feel.
Noah didn’t pry. At least, not about her dangling sentence. “How did an orphaned daughter of a waitress marry into the wealthy Monroes?”
“How else?” She shrugged, setting the picture back. “I fell in love. It was one of those surreal moments. Our eyes met, and then I couldn’t seem to look away because I knew deep down that he could be important to me.” She didn’t add she’d felt a similar shock when her gaze connected with Noah’s. Whereas she’d felt comfortable immediately with Bryce, what she felt around Noah was more unsettling. It couldn’t be love. “Thank you for dinner. And for doing the dishes.” A treat for a single mother.
Noah hung a dish towel from the stove handle. “Don’t tell Ivy, but I prefer my cooking to a lot of the things she makes.”
“My lips are sealed.” Ella smiled at him, daring the feeling of attraction to rise again. Which it did, forcing her to stare into Woof’s worshipful eyes. “Did you ever figure out what was wrong with Woof’s leg?”
“He needs surgery.”
“And you can’t…” She gestured toward his hand.
“No!” He scowled, curling his fingers into loose fists, at least on his right hand. “I can’t grip anything for long, much less a scalpel. And the stress of holding something causes my fingers to convulse.”
He did have some nasty-looking scars, just not as nasty as he seemed to think. “Therapy wouldn’t help?”
His scowl turned thunderous.
“I was just channeling your mother.” Ella picked up the framed photo and turned it his way. “I bet she told you not to give up.” His mother had a no-nonsense air about her.
Noah stalked over, took the picture and shoved it into the end table’s drawer. “Next topic.”
Was there a next topic? Her brain fumbled about as unsteadily as her gaze, which bounced from Noah to the kitchen.
The kitchen. Where Noah kept his food.
“When I’m able,” Ella said firmly, “I’m going to replace the food we ate in your cupboard in case it’s a long winter.”
“I don’t need it.” He walked to the kitchen and opened a cupboard to show her. It was filled with dry goods and cans of food.
She followed him and poked around, lifting the lid on the deep freezer. “You, my friend, are Roy. He claims to have stocked up for the long haul, too.”
“He and Mackenzie, who has the store, advised me, but I have to admit I thought they were being overly dramatic back in July.” He tugged at the hem of his gloves, as if afraid she’d see something she shouldn’t.
“Don’t do that.” She gave a half-hearted swat at the hand doing the tugging. “Let me see your hand again.” When he didn’t immediately comply, she held out her palm. “Come on. I’m feeling like we’re dancing on a line between…friendship—”
“That’s not the line we’re dancing across,” Noah murmured, looking at her lips.
“—and you shoving me out the door as soon as it’s light tomorrow.” Ella might have forgotten to breathe. A kiss? How she missed that.
She drew a much-needed breath.
There will be no kisses.
“I guess you’re not going to give up until I show you again.” Noah stripped the glove off his hand and held it out to her. “I should charge you admission.”
“Stop it.” She looked at his flesh. She guessed a craftsman like himself hadn’t closed him up. Even Odette, rumored to have mad skills in the sewing department, could have done a better job. The scars were deep and jagged, both, she suspected, from the original wound and from the stitches. “You’re lucky to have a hand, much less one in such good condition.”
“Will the compliments never end,” he said.
“Never.” She traced the scar on his index finger with her index finger.
He sucked in a sharp breath and turned his hand over so he could curl his fingers gently around hers. “How can you not be sickened by me?”
“Me,” not “my hand.”
Noah was putting too much importance on what was a small part of him.
“What kind of person would I be if I was sickened?” She frowned, slipping her hand free and returning to her daughter. “The gloves give you a mystique, but I think I prefer you like this, with all your flaws out in the open.”
Woof thumped his tail in agreement.
“You don’t have to put the gloves back on.” She lifted Penny into her lap without waking her, making enough room for them both on the couch. “I see a television in the corner and I’d really like to watch some mindless show that makes me forget I’ve been such a bad guest with all my prying.”
“Good idea.” Noah slid his hand back in the glove, earning a frown from Ella. “Do you like football? Hopefully, the storm hasn’t knocked out the satellite feed.”
“I prefer baseball or a sitcom. Football always puts me to sleep.”
“Football it is.”
* * *
“I DIDN’T MEAN to wake you,” Ella whispered, having turned on the shower and closed the bathroom door, presumably to give Penny a steam treatment.
The little girl was propped between two pillows, snoring softly.
“Did I sleep?” Noah pried open his eyes, having spent the night on the recliner with Woof, since the dog had whined nonstop from the moment Noah climbed into the loft—something that was beginning to feel like routine, but not something he was willing to admit. “My body feels like I’ve been mummified.”
Noah hadn’t shifted near as much as Ella, who’d tossed and turned. He sat up and slid Woof to the floor quietly, trying not to wake his patient.
The sun was making a weak showing through the window. Snow blanketed everything and spilled through the porch railing onto the deck with the postcard-perfect brilliance he was coming to associate with winter in Second Chance. Inside, the world was anything but idyllic, if only because Ella and her probing questions were still here.
“You slept like the dead,” Ella said softly, filling the coffeepot. Sunlight streamed through the front window, brightening her already bright hair and illuminating her subtle freckles. “Which annoyed me since I had trouble trying to get comfortable.”
“I told you the couch was lumpy.” Noah worked the kinks out of his back. “If we do this again, I’ll take Penny and you take the dog.”
Her blue eyes flew to his and for a moment all Noah could think about was nights spent with Ella in his arms and mornings greeted with sweet kisses.
What was he thinking? Beauty only fell for the Beast in fairy tales.
Mood sour, he turned to the door and discovered that Woof hadn’t slept the night through. Noah picked up the shredded remains of Ella’s leather snow boot. “This complicates things.” He held it up for Ella to see.
“What?” She hurried to his side. “How am I supposed to get back to the inn without a boot?”
“As your doctor—”
She made an impatient noise.
“—I’d recommend you don’t attempt the trip barefoot.” A grin tugged at his jaw. “But if you did, it would be a great example for Penny later in life. You could honestly tell her you once walked a hundred yards in ten feet of snow…barefoot.”
She turned away, but not before he saw the beginnings of her smile. “I hate you right now.”
Noah told Woof he was a bad dog before tossing the remains of Ella’s boot in the trash. “I hate to break this to you, boy, but you’re going to have to go outside.” He put on a jacket and boots. “You’re just lucky we’re not making you stay outside in time-out.”
“You’re going out, too?” Ella asked between angry huffs, fiddling with the coffeepot controls.
“Woof likes the company. If I don’t go out with him, he doesn’t go.”
Ella chuckled softly, the sound reaching into Noah’s chest and giving his sour mood a good dose of sweetness, one he ignored.
“You pretend to be coldhearted, Noah, but you’re as caring as a kindergarten teacher.”
What?
A boundary had been breached. Noah growled. It wasn’t as if Woof was going to do it.
Ella wasn’t fazed. In fact, she smiled. “By the way, if you go gloveless, it would better support your villainous image.”
Not since he’d lived at home with his sister had anyone teased him like she did.
Noah took the dog to the porch, and then shoveled a path down the steps, wondering how long it would take him to shovel his way to the road so Ella could go back where she belonged. While he waited for the dog to do his business, he extended and flexed his fingers, testing the elasticity of his scars. For once, he didn’t let the weakness of tissue deter him from trying.
“But what’s the point?” he said to Woof when the dog bounded up the steps, dusted in snow.
Woof had no answer. He used Noah as a drying towel, rubbing the length of his body against Noah’s jeans to remove the snow, and Noah’s dark mood along with it.
Chuckling, Noah returned to the warm cabin and the welcome smell of coffee brewing. “It must have dumped six feet last night.”
“On top of the three we had the other day. Yikes.” She was holding Penny and staring at the trim above the door. “Is that a date?”
He brushed off the layer of dust. “Eighteen ninety-five, Lee.” Carved into the wood above the door.
“Do you think that’s when it was built and the family name?”
Noah shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“I just didn’t think any of these cabins were that old. This one seems so well-preserved.”
“They told me Roy rechinked it before I got here.”
The coffeemaker spit the last drops of caffeine into the pot with a gasp.
“At last.” Ella put down Penny and hurried over to the kitchen. “Do you want some?”
“Mom!” Penny wailed in a hoarse, snot-filled voice from the floor.
Ella walked backward. “You know Mom needs her morning coffee, Pen.” Her tone was chipper. “It’s my one thing.”
“Mo-om!” Penny stood in rigid indignation, breathing raggedly, green eyes filling with tears, as upset as if she’d been denied ice cream.
Instinctively, Noah bent to pick her up, sliding his hands under her arms. A few feet above the floor, his right grip gave way and he nearly dropped her. He managed to swing Penny to his hip using his wrist, drawing her close, more to reassure himself than her that she was safe.
Useless, useless hand.
Noah bit back a string of curses.
He and Penny exchanged wide-eyed stares.
Now what?
If she’d been older, she might have tattled on him. If he’d been wiser, he might have put her back down. As it was, neither one of them said or did a thing. They both turned to Ella, who’d poured steaming coffee into mugs and was searching the fridge for milk.
Only when she’d doctored her coffee to her liking and had cradled her mug with both hands did she turn to them, smiling warmly at the pair. “When do you think we can get out of your hair? I’d hate to eat all your frozen lasagna and drink all your coffee.”
Noah opened his mouth to speak when three things silenced him.
Penny snuggled against Noah’s neck with a snot-filled sigh, probably upset that she’d had to settle for her doctor’s arms rather than her mother’s.
Woof sat on his foot and leaned against his leg with a put-out sigh, probably upset that he had to settle for Noah’s foot, not his lap.
Taking them in, Ella’s expression softened, making Noah want to sigh.
Time crawled to a halt. Noah shifted to a different dimension, one where he was a much-loved family man with a wife who looked past all his flaws, not just the hideous one at the end of his arm. She wasn’t fazed by his temper, his pessimism or his snark.
And then life blinked, rebooting the clock.
Penny sneezed and rubbed her nose clean on his T-shirt. Her sneeze startled Woof—tough canine that he was—off Noah’s foot. The dog scrambled and shifted his leg in a way that hurt. He yelped. The yelp and sneeze startled Noah, and he tightened his grip on Penny, who pushed against his chest and tested the limits of his injured hand wrapped around her hip.
Ella was there before anything bad happened, soothing the dog, the child and Noah. She took back Penny, leaving Noah’s arms feeling empty.
Sentimental mush, Dr. Bishop quipped, proverbial nose in the air.
“I think we all need breakfast,” Ella said in a bright voice.
Dr. Bishop rolled his eyes. Noah’s bad-tempered alter ego hadn’t realized cynicism was no match for nothing-fazes-me Ella Monroe.
Noah didn’t execute an eye roll. He moved past Ella to the refrigerator. “We are not having salad. Kibbles and waffles, coming right up.”
Being painted with toddler mucus has softened you.
Ella came to stand next to Noah, doing a good one-armed job of getting Penny a glass of water and then encouraging her to drink. “Kibbles and waffles. That sounds tasty.”
“To Woof.” Noah removed a box of waffles from the freezer. “Get out of my kitchen.”
“I can help. You wouldn’t let me last night.”
Helping, he acknowledged, was what drove Ella. Helping made her feel a connection and one of the family, just like her curiosity. “Get out of my kitchen.”
“Regardless, you’re spoiling us.” She carried her child and her coffee and went to sit in his recliner. “And we’re eating all your food.”
“Not hardly.” He put waffles in the toaster.
“When do you think we can get out of here?” she asked again.
Noah’s jaw ticked. “I’m beginning to think you can’t wait to leave.” All her talk about his scars making no difference must have been just that—talk.
“You know… It’s just… I need…”
“What?” Why wouldn’t she just spit it out?
Ella’s voice dropped to a low, scratchy whisper. “I need to go because there’s this unnamed thing between us and it makes me uncomfortable.”
Wasn’t that just like Ella to lay all her cards on the table?
“Really?” Noah’s chest swelled with masculine pride.
“But don’t worry. I’m not going to do anything about it. I’ve got enough problems on my plate.”
He was a problem? “As soon as you see Roy cross the road you can go. He’s the bellwether of safe road conditions.” Noah poured kibbles in the dog’s bowl. “But if it snows again, you’re stuck here.”
With the Beast.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw fresh flakes falling.
Ella’s brow wrinkled. “What if I can’t get out until tomorrow? Or the next day?”
“Would that be so bad?” Dr. Bishop huffed in disgust. “What are you? Afraid you can’t keep your hands off me?”
Her silence spoke volumes.