Maid Under The Mistletoe. Maureen Child

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      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.

      But none of that mattered at the moment, Joy told herself. She and Holly needed a place to stay for the month, and this housesitting/cooking/cleaning job had turned up at just the right time. Taking Holly’s hand, she headed for the front door, the little girl skipping alongside her, chattering about princesses and castles the whole way.

      For just a second, Joy envied her little girl’s simpler outlook on life. For Holly, this was an adventure in a magical castle. For Joy, it was moving into a big, secluded house with a secretive and, according to Kaye, cranky man. Okay, now she was making it sound like she was living in a Gothic novel. Kaye lived here year-round, right? And had for years. Surely Joy could survive a month. Determined now to get off on the right foot, she plastered a smile on her face, climbed up to the wide front porch and knocked on the double doors.

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