A Cinderella Story: Maid Under the Mistletoe / My Fair Billionaire / Second Chance with the CEO

The whole point of moving here had been to find quiet. Peace. Solitude. Hell, he could go weeks and never talk to anyone but Kaye. Thoughts of her brought him back to the conversation at hand.

“...Anyway,” she was saying, “my friend Joy will be here about ten tomorrow morning to fill in for me while I’m gone.”

He nodded. At least Kaye had done what she always did, arranged for one of her friends to come and stay for the month she’d be gone. Sam wouldn’t have to worry about cooking, cleaning or pretty much anything but keeping his distance from whatever busybody she’d found this year.

He folded his arms over his chest. “I’m not going to catch this one rifling through my desk, right?”

Kaye winced. “I will admit that having Betty come last year was a bad idea...”

“Yeah,” he agreed. She’d seemed nice enough, but the woman had poked her head into everything she could find. Within a week, Sam had sent her home and had spent the following three weeks eating grilled cheese sandwiches, canned soup and frozen pizza. “I’d say so.”

“She’s the curious sort.”

“She’s nosy.”

“Yes, well.” Kaye cleared her throat. “That was my mistake, I know. But my friend Joy isn’t a snoop. I think you’ll like her.”

“Not necessary,” he assured her. He didn’t want to like Joy. Hell, he didn’t want to talk to her if he could avoid it.

“Of course not.” Kaye shook her head again and gave him the kind of look teachers used to reserve for the kid acting up in class. “Wouldn’t want to be human or anything. Might set a nasty precedent.”

“Kaye...”

The woman had worked for him since he’d moved to Idaho five years ago. And since then, she’d muscled her way much deeper into his life than he’d planned on allowing. Not only did she take care of the house, but she looked after him despite the fact that he didn’t want her to. But Kaye was a force of nature, and it seemed her friends were a lot like her.

“Never mind. Anyway, to what I was saying, Joy already knows that you’re cranky and want to be left alone—”

He frowned at her. “Thanks.”

“Am I wrong?” When he didn’t answer, she nodded. “She’s a good cook and runs her own business on the internet.”

“You told me all of this already,” he pointed out. Though she hadn’t said what kind of business the amazing Joy ran. Still, how many different things could a woman in her fifties or sixties do online? Give knitting lessons? Run a babysitting service? Dog sitting? Hell, his own mother sold handmade dresses online, so there was just no telling.

“I know, I know.” Kaye waved away his interruption. “She’ll stay out of your way because she needs this time here. The contractor says they won’t have the fire damage at her house repaired until January, so being able to stay and work here was a godsend.”

“You told me this, too,” he reminded her. In fact, he’d heard more than enough about Joy the Wonder Friend. According to Kaye, she was smart, clever, a hard worker, had a wonderful sense of humor and did apparently everything just short of walking on water. “But how did the fire in her house start again? Is she a closet arsonist? A terrible cook who set fire to the stove?”

“Of course not!” Kaye sniffed audibly and stiffened as if someone had shoved a pole down the back of her sweatshirt. “I told you, there was a short in the wiring. The house she’s renting is just ancient and something was bound to go at some point. The owner of the house is having all the wiring redone, though, so it should be safe now.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” he said. And relieved he didn’t have to worry that Kaye’s friend was so old she’d forgotten to turn off an oven or something.

“I’m only trying to tell you—” she broke off to give him a small smile of understanding “—like I do every year, that you’ll survive the month of December just like you do every year.”

He ground his teeth together at the flash of sympathy that stirred and then vanished from her eyes. This was the problem with people getting to know too much about him. They felt as if they had the right to offer comfort where none was wanted—or needed. Sam liked Kaye fine, but there were parts of his life that were closed off. For a reason.

He’d get through the holidays his way. Which meant ignoring the forced cheer and the never-ending lineup of “feel good” holiday-themed movies where the hard-hearted hero does a turnaround and opens himself to love and the spirit of Christmas.

Hearts should never be open. Left them too vulnerable to being shattered.

And he’d never set himself up for that kind of pain again.

* * *

Early the following day Kaye was off on her vacation, and a few hours later Sam was swamped by the empty silence. He reminded himself that it was how he liked his life best. No one bothering him. No one talking at him. One of the reasons he and Kaye got along so well was that she respected his need to be left the hell alone. So now that he was by himself in the big house, why did he feel an itch along his spine?

“It’s December,” he muttered aloud. That was enough to explain the sense of discomfort that clung to him.

Hell, every year, this one damn month made life damn near unlivable. He pushed a hand through his hair, then scraped that hand across the stubble on his jaw. He couldn’t settle. Hadn’t even spent any time out in his workshop, and usually being out there eased his mind and kept him too busy to think about—

He put the brakes on that thought fast because he couldn’t risk opening doors that were better off sealed shut.

Scowling, he stared out the front window at the cold, dark day. The steel-gray clouds hung low enough that it looked as though they were actually skimming across the tops of the pines. The lake, in summer a brilliant sapphire blue, stretched out in front of him like a sheet of frozen pewter. The whole damn world seemed bleak and bitter, which only fed into what he felt every damn minute.

Memories rose up in the back of his mind, but he squelched them flat, as he always did. He’d worked too hard for too damn long to get beyond his past, to live and breathe—and hell, survive—to lose it all now. He’d beaten back his demons, and damned if he’d release them long enough to take a bite out of him now.

Resolve set firmly, Sam frowned again when an old blue four-door sedan barreled along his drive, kicking up gravel as it came to a stop in front of the house. For a second, he thought it must be Kaye’s friend Joy arriving. Then the driver stepped out of the car and that thought went out the window.

The driver was too young, for one thing. Every other friend Kaye had enlisted to help out had been her age or older. This woman was in her late twenties, he figured, gaze locked on her as she turned her face to stare up at the house. One look at her and Sam felt a punch of lust that stole his breath. Everything in him fisted tightly as he continued to watch her. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she stood on the drive studying his house. Hell, she was like a ray of sunlight in the gray.

Her short curly hair was bright blond and flew about her face in the sharp wind that slapped rosy color into her cheeks. Her blue eyes swept the exterior of the house even as she moved around the car to the rear passenger side. Her black jeans hugged long legs, and her hiking boots looked scarred and well-worn. The cardinal-red parka she wore over a cream-colored sweater was a burst of color in a black-and-white world.

She was beautiful and moved with a kind of easy grace that made a man’s gaze follow her every movement. And even while he admitted that silently, Sam resented it. He wasn’t interested in women. Didn’t want to feel what she was making him feel. What he had to do was find out why the hell she was there and get her gone as fast as possible.

She had to be lost. His drive wasn’t that easy to find—purposely. He rarely got visitors, and those were mainly his family when he couldn’t stave off his parents or sister any longer.

Well, if she’d lost her way, he’d go out and give her directions to town, and then she’d be gone and he could get back to—whatever.

“Damn.” The single word slipped from his throat as she opened the car’s back door and a little girl jumped out. The eager anticipation stamped on the child’s face was like a dagger to the heart for Sam. He took a breath that fought its way into his chest and forced himself to look away from the kid. He didn’t do kids. Not for a long time now. Their voices. Their laughter. They were too small. Too vulnerable.

Too breakable.

What felt like darkness opened up in the center of his chest. Turning his back on the window, he left the room and headed for the front door. The faster he got rid of the gorgeous woman and her child, the better.

* * *

“It’s a fairy castle, Mommy!”

Joy Curran glanced at the rearview mirror and smiled at the excitement shining on her daughter’s face. At five years old, Holly was crazy about princesses, fairies and everyday magic she seemed to find wherever she looked.

Still smiling, Joy shifted her gaze from her daughter to the big house in front of her. Through the windshield, she scanned the front of the place and had to agree with Holly on this one. It did look like a castle.

Two stories, it spread across the land, pine trees spearing up all around it like sentries prepared to stand in defense. The smooth, glassy logs were the color of warm honey, and the wide, tall windows gave glimpses of the interior. A wraparound porch held chairs and gliders that invited visitors to sit and get comfortable. The house faced a private lake where a long dock jutted out into the water that was frozen over for winter. There was a wide deck studded with furniture draped in tarps for winter and a brick fire pit.

It would probably take her a half hour to look at everything, and it was way too cold to simply sit in her car and take it all in. So instead, she turned the engine off, then walked around to get Holly out of her car seat. While the little girl jumped up and down in excitement, pigtails flying, Joy grabbed her purse and headed for the front door. The cold wrapped itself around them and Joy shivered. There hadn’t been much snow so far this winter, but the cold sliced right down to the bone. All around her, the pines were green but the grass was brown, dotted with shrinking patches of snow. Holly kept hoping to make snow angels and snowmen, but so far, Mother Nature wasn’t cooperating.

The palatial house looked as if it had grown right out of the woods surrounding it. The place was gorgeous, but a little intimidating. And from everything she’d heard, so was the man who lived here. Oh, Kaye was crazy about him, but then Kaye took in stray dogs, cats, wounded birds and any lonely soul she happened across. But there was plenty of speculation about Sam Henry in town.

Joy knew he used to be a painter, and she’d actually seen a few of his paintings online. Judging by the art he created, she would have guessed him to be warm, optimistic and, well, nice. According to Kaye, though, the man was quiet, reclusive to the point of being a hermit, and she thought he was lonely at the bottom of it. But to Joy’s way of thinking, if you didn’t want to be lonely, you got out and met people. Heck, it was so rare to see Sam Henry in town, spotting him was the equivalent of a Bigfoot sighting. She’d caught only the occasional rare glimpse of the man herself.