Snowbound With The Single Dad

It’s like they all somehow knew his secret failing, including this one marching ahead of him with her nose in the air.

The truth was, he’d had his reservations about the Old-Fashioned Country Christmas. And so had Nana. For once, he had overruled her, wanting something so desperately and not knowing how to get there.

Wanting his daughter to experience something he’d never had, not even when he had shared the Christmas season with his wife. He wanted her to have that joyous Christmas that was depicted in every carol and every story and every TV show and every movie.

Crazy to still believe in such things.

But the unexpected McGregor granddaughter did. Somehow, he knew Noelle believed. In goodness. And probably miracles. The magic of Christmas and all that rot. He hated it, and was drawn to it at the very same time.

Oh, boy. She was the kind of see-through-to-your-soul person that a guy like him—who had given up on his soul a long, long time ago—really needed to watch himself around.

* * *

If there was a palpable tension between Aidan and herself, Noelle noted things were not going much better in the house.

She dispensed with the toque immediately—she could not help feeling it contributed to the country bumpkin look—but her hair was flyaway and hissing with static underneath it. Aidan looked entertained by her efforts to pat it down, so she stopped, stomped the snow off her feet and left him in the porch.

Nana and her grandfather were having a standoff in the kitchen.

“Surely you don’t think these filthy things belong on the counter?”

“Don’t touch those. There are not filthy, they’re greasy. There’s a difference. They’re engine parts. They’re in order!”

“They don’t belong in the kitchen!”

“It’s my kitchen!”

“But I won’t eat food that’s been prepared on that.” She waved a hand at the mess.

“It looks as if you could stand to miss a few meals.”

“Oh! I never!”

“That’s obvious, you dried-up old—”

“Grandpa.”

In the back of her mind Noelle was thinking, food. Had her grandfather laid in enough food for guests? Had he planned for three meals a day for at least five people, plus snacks that would interest a five-year-old? And what about the rooms? Had he freshened them up? Laundered sheets and put out good towels? Most of the rooms in this large house had not been used in years.

The logistics of it, not to mention the squabbling, were beginning to give Noelle an awful headache, which worsened when Aidan came into the kitchen.

Underneath his jacket, he had on an expensive shirt, pure white and possibly silk, not the kind of shirt you generally saw on the ranch. He exuded a presence of good grooming and good taste and subtle wealth that made the room seem too small and somewhat shabby.

This whole idea was so ill conceived, Noelle decided desperately. Couldn’t she just announce the Old-Fashioned Country Christmas was a terrible mistake and send them all home? At the moment it seemed everyone, including her grandfather, the instigator, would be more than pleased by such a turn of events!

“She told Tess the stove was dangerous,” her grandpa reported furiously. “You know how many kids we’ve had through this house without a single burn victim?”

Yes, everyone would be more than pleased if an old-fashioned Christmas was canceled, except for Tess. Noelle’s eyes were drawn to her stillness.

The little girl, in her candy-floss-pink outfit, with her gorgeous curls and pixie features, was standing off to the side, frozen as a statue, her hand resting on Smiley’s head, her wide eyes going back and forth between her Nana and Noelle’s grandfather.

“That’s quite enough,” Noelle said quietly, making a small gesture toward Tess.

All the adults in the room looked at the little girl.

Noelle remembered the orphaned child she had been, and she reminded her grandfather of that with a glance and a loudly cleared throat.