Snowbound With The Single Dad

“Whatever.”

“Oh, Grandpa!”

“With his little girl, who lost her mommy.”

“Grandpa! Tell me you didn’t send anyone any money.”

“Well, I did send somebody money. Not the typhoon, someone else. They wanted to come to my Old-Fashioned Country Christmas, but my goodness, them people have had a run of bad luck. Couldn’t even put together the money for a tank of gasoline.”

Noelle felt sick. How far had this gone? How many people had duped him out of his money? Her hopes for a healing Christmas were evaporating.

Her grandpa was an absolute innocent in the high-tech world. All kinds of people out there were just waiting to prey on a lonely old man; all kinds of villains were trolling the internet to find the likes of her grandfather. She hoped he hadn’t spouted off to anyone else about having more money than he could use.

“Grandpa,” she said gently. “It’s a hoax. If the tycoon hasn’t asked you for money yet, he will. You’re probably being scammed…”

Her grandfather was scowling at her. “It ain’t like that.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they sent me this.” He produced a piece of paper from a heap of papers leaning off one of the counters. Noelle took it and stared at it. It appeared to be specs for building a rudimentary helicopter pad.

“Oh, no, Grandpa,” she said. This was how easy it was to fool an old man. The drawing could have been done by a child.

Her grandfather cocked his head.

“Hear that?” he asked triumphantly.

She stared at him. She heard absolutely nothing. She felt the most heartbreaking sadness. What a year of losses. The land. Her grandmother. Then, weeks after her grandmother had passed, her fiancé announcing he just wasn’t “ready.” To commit. To live in one place. Apparently to hold down a job in the oil industry that had employed them both. Mitchell had gone off to Thailand to “find himself.”

If his favorite social media page was any indication, he seemed to be being helped in this pursuit by a bevy of exotic-looking, bikini-clad beauties who had made Noelle newly aware of her lack of boldness—she had never worn a bikini—plus her own plainness and her paleness.

So, she had lost her family ranch, her grandmother and her fiancé. It was true she had held on to hope for a ridiculously long period of time that Mitchell would come to his senses and come back, even after his final betrayal.

But now, this felt as if it would be the final blow, if she was losing her grandfather, only in quite a different way. His mind going, poor old guy. She’d heard of this before. Moments of lucidity interspersed with, well, this.

He had pushed back from the table and was hurrying to the door.

“I can’t not be there when they land,” he said eagerly. “And I better throw some hay at that pony, so she’s on the back side of the barn. Don’t want that secret out yet.”

Even the dog looked doubtful, and not very happy to be going back outside.

“Grandpa,” she said soothingly, getting up, “come sit down. You can help me take my suitcase up. Maybe we’ll go find a tree this afternoon, put up some decorations—”

Her grandfather was ignoring her. He laced up his boots and went out the door, the reluctant dog on his heels. Moments later his side-by-side all-terrain vehicle roared to life and pulled away, leaving an almost eerie silence in its wake.

And then she heard it.

The very distinctive wop-wop-wop of a helicopter in the distance.

She dashed to the back porch, put on her grandfather’s toque, grabbed her jacket, shoved boots on her feet and raced out the door.

CHAPTER TWO (#u43ab6e6a-dc9b-58bf-afd9-ff3cab34d8b4)

“KEEP BACK FROM IT!” her grandfather shouted over his shoulder.

Noelle arrived at the landing pad, breathless from running. The blades of the helicopter were throwing up so much snow that for a moment Noelle lost sight of her grandfather, the dog and the helicopter.

And then the engines died, and the snow settled, and it was very quiet. She peered at the helicopter. It was a burnished gold color, wrapped in a word, Wrangler.

Behind the bubble of a window, she could see a man doing something at the controls. He had a shock of dark hair falling over his brow, a strong profile and aviator-style sunglasses. From this distance she couldn’t make out his features, and yet, somehow she knew—perhaps from his chosen entry—that everything about this man would be extraordinary.

As she watched, he took off the earphones he was wearing and the sunglasses, which he folded into his front breast pocket. He got out his door with an easy leap. He acknowledged Noelle and her grandfather with a slight raise of his hand and then moved to the passenger door.

He was wearing a brown distressed-leather pilot’s jacket lined with sheepskin. His shoulders appeared impossibly broad, and dark slacks accentuated the long lines of powerful legs. He moved with the innate grace of a man extremely confident in himself.

Noelle could see now his hair was more than dark, black and shiny as a raven’s wing. His features were strong and even, with the faintest hint of whisker shadowing on the hollows of his cheeks and on that merest hint of a cleft at his chin. He glanced toward her, and she felt the jolt of his eyes: electric blue, cool, assessing.

And ever so vaguely familiar. Noelle stared at his face, wondering where she had seen him before, and then stunned recognition dawned. Why wouldn’t he be confident in himself?

Aidan Phillips was even more of a presence in real life than he was in pictures. And there were plenty of pictures of him.

Less so now than a few years ago, when he and his wife, Sierra, had been unofficially crowned Canadian royalty, he an oil industry magnate, and she a renowned actress. Every public second of their romance and subsequent marriage had been relentlessly documented, photographed and commented on, as if their coming together was Canada’s answer to a real-life fairy tale.

Without, sadly, the happy ending.

“Do you know who that is?” she asked her grandfather in an undertone.

He lifted a shoulder.

“He’s one of the richest men in Canada.”

“I told you,” Rufus said, triumphantly. “A typhoon. Though it’s a poor man, indeed, who thinks all it takes to be rich is money. Ask her.”

“Ask who?”

“Her.”

Noelle turned back to see Aidan lifting a little girl out of the helicopter passenger seat. Of course, she knew he was a widower, and she knew there was a child, but he used his substantial influence to protect his daughter from any kind of public exposure.

The little girl was gorgeous—wild black curls springing from under a soft pink, very fuzzy hat that matched her jacket and leggings and snow boots. The cutest little pink furry muff dangled from a string out the sleeve of her jacket. She had the same electric blue eyes as her father. Noelle guessed her to be about five.

Aidan Phillips set the child down in the snow, and she looked around. Smiley ambled over, and the little girl squealed with delight and got down on both chubby knees, throwing her arms around the dog.

“Don’t let him lick your face,” a shrill voice commanded.

A third passenger was being helped out of the helicopter, an elderly woman with a pinched, forbidding expression.

“Well,” Grandpa said, too loudly. “There’s a face that would make a train take a dirt road.”