Snowbound With The Single Dad

“And then I spoke to your grandfather on the phone and it all seemed aboveboard. Nice old guy, first Christmas alone. Of course, he neglected to mention Ellie-born-on-Christmas-Day.”

“Maybe your research teams just aren’t that good,” she said drily. “They can’t find out what a little girl wants for Christmas and they totally missed me. I go by Noelle, actually, and being born on Christmas Day was not an indictable offense the last time I checked.”

“Did I say it like it was?”

“You did.”

“It’s just so darn…cute. Most people, of course, would hate having their birthday overshadowed by the ‘big’ day, but I bet you aren’t one of them.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What would make you presume anything about me?”

He lifted a broad shoulder. “Presumptions are a part of life. You made some about me—that I was not the type of man who would need to join strangers for Christmas—and I have made some about you.”

“Do tell,” she said, though in truth she was bracing herself. She was not sure she wanted him to tell at all.

“There’s a look about you. A country girl.”

A country girl? She had lived in the city now for nearly five years. She considered herself fairly sophisticated.

Not that you would know it at the moment. She was dressed in a pink parka and her jeans were stuffed into snow boots. On her hurried way out the back door, she had put her grandpa’s toque back on. Her cheeks were probably pink, and no doubt her nose was, too.

“Not a touch of makeup. Wholesome,” he went on, ignoring the fact that she was looking daggers at him. “Giving. Christmas magic and all that. Hopelessly naive. Probably made a bad choice in a man and Grandpa has stepped in to find you a suitable partner. Right at Christmas. Cue the music.”

He began to hum “White Christmas.”

She hoped it wouldn’t get stuck in her head.

“Are you always so insufferable?” she asked.

“I try…and that’s out of character. Not giving at all. Tut-tut.”

“Let me tell you my presumptions. You hate Christmas. I can tell by your obnoxious tone.” She thought of adding, No wonder you haven’t been able to succeed at giving your daughter a good one, but stopped herself. It would just be mean. And he was, unfortunately, right about the wholesome and giving part of her nature.

“I wondered about an ulterior motive in getting us here,” Aidan said. “Who just invites strangers for Christmas?”

“Well, you can just quit wondering. You will never—never—meet a man with more integrity than my grandfather. He’s invited strangers for Christmas because he feels he has something to give, not to take anything.”

“Humph,” he said with an insulting lack of conviction.

Was Aidan Phillips annoying her on purpose? Surely her face had softened in sympathy at his vulnerable dad side, as he had revealed each of his Christmas failures? Now, he was successfully erasing that. If he was now trying to make her angry—a defense against her unwanted sympathy—it was working all too well!

“My grandfather might be trying to look after me. I hope not, but he’s old and his heart is in the right place, which I’m sure you figured out when you accepted his generous invitation to spend Christmas at his home. I may be single, but really, you would both be presuming too much by thinking I would be interested in you!”

Of course, there was the momentary lapse over his hair, but he never had to know.

He stopped. It forced her to stop, too. She tilted her chin and glared at him.

“And you wouldn’t be?” he asked, incredulous.

“Oh!” She fought a desire to take off her grandfather’s toque and stuff it in her pocket so she wouldn’t look quite so folksy. “Why would you sound so surprised? Do you have women flinging themselves at you all the time?”

“Yes.” He cocked his head at her.

“I am not some country bumpkin who is going to be bowled over by your charm, Mr. Phillips,” she said tightly.

“I don’t have any charm.”

“Agreed.”

“You’ve had a heartbreak, just as I guessed.”

The utter audacity of the man. It made her want to pick up a handful of snow and throw it in his face.

“There might be other reasons a woman would not fling herself at you,” she suggested tightly. Even though that one happened to be true.

“There might be,” he said skeptically.

But, also true, perhaps a woman would recognize instantly that she was not in the same league as you, she thought to herself. Perhaps she’d recognize she had failed to hang on to a relationship with even a very ordinary guy, so what were her chances of—

She stopped her train of thought because he was still watching her way too closely and she did not like the uneasy feeling she had that Aidan Phillips, astute businessman, could read her mind.

“It would be very old-fashioned to think a woman’s main purpose in life is to find herself a mate,” she told him primly.

“And yet here we are at an Old-Fashioned Country Christmas.” He tilted his head at her, his eyes narrow and intent again. “Recent?”

“What?”

“The heartbreak?”

“I’m beginning to take a dislike to you.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“That I dislike you?”

“That women fling themselves!”

“You’re handsome and you’re wealthy and you’re extremely successful and perhaps somewhat intelligent, though it’s a bit early to tell.”

“I used rhotacism in a sentence!”

She ignored him. “Women fling themselves at you. You’ve become accustomed to it. They probably find the fact that you are a single dad bumbling through Christmas very endearing. Oh, boo-hoo, Mr. Phillips.”

It occurred to her that her sarcasm might be coming more from a deep well of resentment that Mitchell was, at this very moment, surrounding himself with bikinis on a beach in Thailand than at Aidan Phillips, but she would take all the protection the shield of sarcasm could give her. Aidan was exactly the kind of man a woman needed to protect herself from. And worse, he knew it.

“Bumbling through Christmas?” he sputtered. “You call Christmas at the Happiest Place on Earth and at Santa’s original place of residence bumbling?”

“Failures by your own admission,” she said, with a toss of her head, “and should you have doubt, ask your daughter.”