REALLY, AIDAN THOUGHT, the right thing to do at the moment would be to hand Noelle her phone and leave her up here by herself. He had obviously interrupted a very private moment. Had she been crying? It was hard to tell in the dim light.
Still, when Noelle made a grab for the phone, Aidan could clearly see, in its faint glow, that her cheeks had little streaks down them. Definite tear tracks remained despite her efforts to scrub them away with her sleeve. He found himself holding the phone out of her reach, unable to not look at what had caused her such distress.
An ordinary-looking chap was on a beach with a girl who looked way too young for him. He had posted something about snorkeling and living life to the fullest.
“Friend of yours?” He carefully stripped his voice of the anger he was feeling that somehow this man had made her cry.
“Ex. Ex-friend, I mean.” The truth rode heavy in her tone. Aidan watched her with narrow eyes as she swallowed hard.
Her ex was putting up a seemingly endless series of posts? Gloating about his new life? He held the phone still out of her reach, continuing to study the picture.
“He wanted adventure,” Noelle said faintly, reluctantly, almost apologetically.
Aidan remembered, sickened at himself, how he had needled her—could it possibly be just yesterday—about a recent heartbreak. As if it was somehow all about him.
But in such a short time, he had seen the truth of her. Or maybe it was just this setting, but somehow Noelle seemed pure in a world that was tainted, innocent in a world that was sinfully excessive in every way. It was the very purity of her that had to be guarded against, the part of her that called to some forgotten place in him and tempted him to play, to be carefree, to let go a bit.
He had to protect himself from the unexpected sizzle she made him feel, not because of her wholesomeness, but in spite of it. He had to ward that awareness off, not just for his sake, but her own.
He’d already disappointed one woman who was far more worldly than Noelle!
Still, he could not stop himself from trying to say something that would make her feel better. “Well, if you call getting a sunburned head an adventure, I’d say he’s got it. That’s going to hurt like hell.”
“We can only hope,” she muttered, and he laughed and handed her her phone, which she turned off and put in her pocket.
“For what it’s worth,” he said softly, “he’s missing the greatest adventure of all.”
Now where had that come from? His implication was that sharing a life with her would be the greatest adventure of all.
Her mouth opened. And shut. And opened again. Finally a sound squeaked out.
“I’m apparently a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. A controller.” She hiccupped. “Even my grandfather said it was true. That’s why he didn’t tell me about anyone else coming for Christmas. Because he thought I would have tried to wreck it before he even got it off the ground.”
“Would you have?”
“Yes.”
“Just for his own good,” he said gently.
“He said if I wasn’t careful I’d end up all rigid and shrieking and wanting everyone to follow my rules.”
“Ouch.”
“I need to quit meddling. I told you there was no cell service here for your own good, too.”
“Not just to be mean?” he teased. He realized he liked teasing her. He liked throwing snowballs at her. He liked making gingerbread houses with her.
“I thought I knew what was best for Tess,” Noelle said wistfully. “I thought she needed your undivided attention, without distractions from work. None of my business, right? I’m so certain I know what’s right for everyone that I’ll lie! It’s disgusting.”
There was a little trickle of tears sliding down her cheeks again. Couldn’t she see how much it meant to him that she cared about Tess like that?
He touched her shoulder. It was so slight under his hand. It made her seem exactly as she was—small, vulnerable, needing him in some way.
To validate her, to protect her, to see her. “You have a good, good heart, Ellie McGregor.”
Embarrassed, she tried to slide out from under his touch. But he would have none of it. Instead of letting her by, he blocked her way.
When she tilted her head up at him, looking askance, he touched her chin with the tip of his pointer finger and looked at her face.
The fight seemed to leave her. She looked back at him. She looked at him in a way he was not sure he’d ever been looked at before, deeply and intently, as if she was divining secrets about him he did not even know himself.
It felt as if she was turning the tables on him, giving him what he had intended to give her.
He dropped his finger from her chin.
He ordered himself to go, to get away from her. He warned himself he could not be trusted with this kind of innocence, this kind of purity.
But instead of leaving, he put his arms around her and tugged her into his chest, closed his hands on the small of her back and held her tight.
A small mew of protest came from her, followed swiftly by a sigh of surrender. She snuggled into his chest. And then she let go. She wept.
Finally, when the front of his jacket was pretty much soaked, she pulled away from him.
“I’m so sorry. It’s been a hard few months. First, my grandfather sold the land. Then my grandmother died. Then Mitchell ended our engagement.”
And despite the fact that it had been a hard few months, she had overcome his initial rudeness to her to embrace the needs of his daughter. He thought of how she was working at creating the perfect Christmas, her devotion to it almost fierce.
Aidan Phillips felt something he had not felt for a long, long time. The shame of self-recognition.
He had become a self-centered jerk!
“I should go in,” she said uncomfortably, swiping again at her face with her sleeve.
“Don’t rush off,” he said. “Let’s sit for a minute. Look at those stars tonight. I don’t remember the last time I paused to look at things. To really see them.”
He lowered himself in the hay, and after a moment she sat down beside him, and they looked out the loft door at the humbling largeness of a star-studded universe.
“It’s one of the things I always love about coming here,” Noelle said. “Life seems simpler, I feel as if I notice small things more—the smell of wood smoke, the feel of the dog’s fur under my fingertips, the stars at night.”
The quiet of the night, Noelle at his side, the expanse of the universe all stirred in him a stunning desire.
Just to be a better man. Maybe not forever, but for this moment.
“So,” he asked her softly, “what do you think made you want to fix all that is wrong in the world? In my experience, people who are like that usually have a reason.”
She hesitated. Aidan could tell she didn’t share private things. She was reserved. He was practically a stranger. And yet the invitation of that bejeweled night sky, of a larger world, seemed to be working on her, too.
“My mom and dad died when I was twelve,” she said. “That’s when I came here to live with Grandma and Grandpa.”
“I’m so sorry. How?”
“A car wreck. It was springtime. It seemed as if good weather had come. A freak storm came out of nowhere, and they slid into a truck. They died instantly, which people told me was a blessing.
“And people told me they loved each other so much—which I already knew, of course—and that they had chosen to be together for eternity.”
“That’s a very thoughtless thing to say,” he said gruffly.
She turned to him, her eyes wide.
“Why would you say that?”
“Obviously your mother and father loved you that much, too. They would have never chosen to leave you. What utter clap-trap.”
She sighed and leaned into him. “Thank you for saying that.”
“I heard it all, too, when Sierra died. People mean well, but honestly, the things they say sometimes! She’s in a better place? What better place is there than with your baby? God needed another angel? Her little girl needed a mommy.
“Tess was barely two when her mother died, and I saw how it affected her and still does. The loss of both your parents must have been devastating for you.”
“Yes.”
Some deep bond of understanding grief connected them.
Then, seemingly randomly, his phone began to ping, as service kicked in and one by one his messages arrived.
He fought a desire to take his phone out of his pocket and hurl it into the night.
“Haven’t heard that sound for a while. I can’t say I missed it. I thought I would. But I haven’t. Amazingly, the world turned without me.”
“I think that’s what my grandfather was trying to tell me tonight—that life will unfold, whether I have a stranglehold on it or not. Go ahead,” she said. “See what’s unfolded.”
“Not just yet,” he said quietly. “Not just yet.”
And she leaned her head against his shoulder, and he put his arm around her, and they experienced the glory of the night. But it was cold, and he felt her, after a while, shiver against him.
“Let’s go in,” he suggested.
“Check your messages first. You never know when you might get another opportunity. The stars have to line up just so.”
It seemed to him the stars had lined up just so tonight, and it had nothing to do with receiving cell service. Still, he did have obligations, and people were counting on him to meet those. He pulled his phone out, reluctant to join the world, liking this one, with its quiet and simplicity and connection, just fine. He scanned the messages very quickly, dismissively.
“Work. Work. Work. Christmas Enchantment Ball. Work. Work.”
“The Christmas Enchantment Ball?” she asked.
He scrolled back to the annual ball held each year, always the evening before Christmas Eve, to honor those who gave to charities. “Tomorrow night. The theme this year is Silver Bells.”
“I think it’s still the biggest event on Calgary’s social calendar,” Noelle said. “My mom and dad were invited once. It was one of the highlights of my mom’s life. She got the invitation because she’d been the top fund-raiser for the children’s hospital that year. How do you rate a ticket?”
His company was highly philanthropic, and they were always given a block of tickets. There would probably be thirty people from Wrangler there this year.
“Never underestimate the power of charm and good looks,” he said, waggling his eyebrows wickedly at her.
That earned him a smack in the arm, which he rubbed dramatically. She shivered again and he got up and extended his hand to her. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet.
He looked at her. She looked back at him. The stars all seemed to be lining up... She leaned in. He leaned in.
And then his phone pinged, a small sound that sounded like an alarm going off. They leaped back from each other as if Tess had happened upon them.
He looked at his phone, an excuse not to look at her, not to wonder what on earth her lips would taste like. Would they taste as sweet as they looked, like plump dew-encrusted strawberries, fresh from the plant?
He stared intently at the incoming message, at first not even registering what it said. But when it did penetrate, he lifted his shocked eyes to hers.
“Noelle, they found one.”
“One what?”
“Guess.”
“Jerry?”
“That’s it! They found a Jerry Juicejar.”
She laughed, sharing his delight and his incredulous disbelief. “It’s a Christmas miracle,” she teased him. “Of all those messages, even the one about the Christmas Enchantment Ball, that’s the one that means the most to you, isn’t it?”
“You have no idea,” he said, and gave a whoop of pure happiness. “I’ll fly in tomorrow and pick him up, then he’ll be under the tree waiting for Tess on Christmas morning.”
And then it occurred to him. He was being given an opportunity, not just to pick up Jerry Juicejar.
No, maybe it wasn’t about that at all.
He was being given an opportunity to be a better man. Not to put his guard up but to let it down, just for a little bit, and just for one shining moment to put her needs ahead of his own. He thought of the wistfulness in her voice when she had mentioned the Christmas Enchantment Ball. He thought of how hard she had been working to make Christmas divine for his thus-far-disappointed-in-the-festivities daughter, despite her own year of losses.
He thought he had just come up with the best Christmas surprise ever. Even the importance of Jerry Juicejar paled in comparison.
“Why don’t you come?” he asked softly.
“What? Me?”
He made a point of looking around the empty hayloft and then back at her. “Sure. Don’t you have any last-minute Christmas shopping to do? We could pick up Jerry, do a bit of shopping and go for lunch.”
Then I can surprise her with the ball.
She was silent, struggling.
“To be honest, I’m a little afraid of the helicopter,” Noelle said, finally. “I hope you won’t think I’m hopeless, but I’ve never flown anywhere, never even been on an airplane. I think it’s one of those control things. You can probably see why Mitchell left for greener—”
“Stop it,” he ordered her firmly, and then more softly, “You can trust me, Noelle.”
Her eyes, as green as moss, as soft as a caress, rested on his face.
It felt as if all those stars in the sky, not to mention his heart, stood still, waiting to decide if he was worthy to give the gift he had just offered.
And was he worthy? Could he be trusted with someone like her? Not if he thought lecherous thoughts about pillaging her lips!