A family worth staying for…

Brynn Catalano is in Comeback Cove to help her cousin with a relationship crisis and plan an anniversary celebration for the local dairy. Sure, her new landlord, Hank North, is worth a second look…or three! But she’s here only for a short time, and definitely not for romance, especially with a headstrong single dad who says he doesn’t need her help.

Still, she can’t resist Hank’s daughter, Millie. The girl is almost as irresistible as her gorgeous daddy, and Brynn is surprised at how easily their twosome accommodates her…and how much she likes that. Yet when the job and the crisis are over there’s nothing to keep Brynn here. Or is there?

“I need a beer. Care to join me?”

Hank meant to say no—after all, he still had a full night ahead—but what kind of host would he be to say no? Or, for that matter, what kind of guest?

The bottle was halfway to his lips when Brynn made a small sound. “Crap! I always forget. Would you like a glass?”

“No, thanks. This is fine.”

“You’re sure? I’m a horrible hostess, sorry. I never remember the gracious touches.”

It was so unexpected—the organizational queen, forgetting something—that he felt himself relaxing. Maybe even grinning. “You’re feeding me, and you made my kid happy. I can’t think of anything more gracious than that.”

A slight hint of pink rose in her cheeks, spreading down her neck to the creamy bit of skin visible in the V of her jersey. It was an intriguing sight, for sure. He could swear there was a little freckle at the point of the V. Or maybe it was a fleck of sauce. He couldn’t tell. Neither could he pull his gaze away.

Dear Reader,

My mother was one of ten girls, I came from a family of four kids, and I have five or six children of my own, so family is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. Nothing beats a family for intrigue, secrets, politics and shifting alliances, all mixed with need, support and love. There is no stronger system in the world—and no greater source of fodder for a writer.

Mwahahahahaha.

Writing this book took me back to the days of my childhood, when all my best friends were related to me. I remembered sleepovers with cousins. Secrets with siblings. And our family’s famous Beach Days, when as many of us as could make it would trek to Rock Point Provincial Park on the shores of Lake Erie for an afternoon of swimming, barbecuing and togetherness. I remember wanting to trade a burger made by my mother for one from my aunt Verna, who made hers exotic by adding an envelope of onion soup mix to the meat. I remember stopping for ice cream on the drive home and having my first taste of mint chocolate. I remember the way the sand stuck to our skin and the slap of the waves as we jumped through them and the green-and-white pattern of the folding chairs my parents would bring with them. Were those days perfect? Anything but. But it is impossible for me to think of my childhood without my family, for they were my world.

I hope that as you read this book, you, too, will remember close ties with loved ones, and that you will become part of my reading family by visiting my website, www.krisfletcher.com. I’ll save one of Verna’s burgers for you.

Yours,

Kris Fletcher

Dating a Single Dad

Kris Fletcher

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kris Fletcher has never organized a festival or conspired to make someone fall in love, but she is a big fan of dairy products and considered it her duty to learn how to make homemade ice cream as part of the research for this book. Her husband still tears up when he recalls the roasted strawberry-rhubarb with dark chocolate flecks. Oh, the hardship.

A four-time Golden Heart finalist, Kris grew up in southern Ontario, went to school in Nova Scotia, married a man from Maine and now lives in central New York. She shares her very messy home with her husband and an ever-changing number of their kids. Her greatest hope is that dust bunnies never develop intelligence.

Heartfelt thanks and smooches are gratefully bestowed upon:

My children, especially those still living at home, for understanding that the word “deadline” has many different meanings that Mr. Webster never intended.

My husband, Larry, for being on board with easy meals and a messy house, and for making it possible for me to do this job that I love almost as much as him. And for listening to me that time it really mattered. I’m very glad we get to keep you, hon.

The folks at Express Computer Service, who have saved my computer bacon more times than I can count.

The Barenaked Ladies, for Boomerang.

The Purples, for listening to me freak out and reminding me, in the lovingest way possible, that I am a total dork.

My agent, Jessica Faust, for understanding author eccentricities (aka total dorkiness).

My editor, Piya Campana, for not freaking out after reading the early plans and incarnations of this book, even though she had every right to do so.

And my brother Ed for burning my Pop Tarts all those years ago.

Contents

Dear Reader

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EXTRACT

CHAPTER ONE

BRYNN CATALANO HANDED her weeping cousin another tissue from the decimated box and wished for a fat little Cupid to descend from the clouds so she could pop him straight in his twisted kisser.

“Taylor...” What was she supposed to say? She had started the visit braced for an afternoon of Taylor, this month’s Brides magazine and a lively discussion of peplums versus trains. Not that she had any idea what a peplum might be, but hey. Fake it ’til you make it, that’s what she always said.

But those plans had gone out the proverbial window when Taylor walked into Brynn’s cozy basement apartment, burst into tears and announced that she had to break her engagement because she was in love with her fiancé’s brother. Somehow, Brynn doubted that her usual routine of “have a Band-Aid/hug/margarita” would cut it this time.

“Maybe you’re just lonely,” she said gently. “After all, Ian’s been in Tanzania for a long time now.”

“Eight months.” Taylor wiped her eyes. “But, Brynn, come on. Real love wouldn’t change in that amount of time, even without the Carter factor.”

Brynn hooked her little fingers together. This wasn’t the time to point out that Taylor had spent a good part of her life complaining about Carter North and his inability to grow up. In fact, just last year, Taylor had said that Carter made the cast of The Hangover look like models of maturity.

No. It was better to focus on the real relationship. Not the one that only existed in Taylor’s head.

“Listen, hon. You’re absolutely right that true love wouldn’t disappear in a few months’ absence, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t, oh, shift. Change. What you’re feeling is probably nothing more than...I don’t know. Confused hormones. You know. Ian is gone but his brother, who looks and sounds and probably smells like him, is still here. You’re just transferring what you feel for Ian onto Carter.”

Taylor let her head drop against the back of the sofa, looking cool and blonde and elegant even as she stared blankly at the ceiling.

“I wish I could believe that. But you want the truth? I think it was the other way around. I think... I mean, Carter was an idiot for most of his life, I know. But it’s like the seeds of what he is to me now were there all along. I think that what drew me to Ian were the things that I could see in Carter, but they weren’t really there yet, you know? Then he came back from law school and everything had settled into place, he was finally who he is supposed to be, but I was already going out with Ian. And then Ian left. And now I see Carter and I think, oh, dear Lord, this is what I was looking for all along....”

The tears began flowing once again. Brynn handed over another tissue.

“It’s such a mess, Brynn. I feel like I’m living this giant lie, but I can’t do anything about it until he comes home. Every night I pray that I’ll wake up in love with Ian, and every day I go to work and see Carter and boom, it hits me all over again.”

“Wait, Carter works at Northstar, too?”

A watery smile flitted across Taylor’s face. “When they say the dairy is a family business, they aren’t kidding. All the brothers work there. Their parents, too, and even their grandmother. The only one who doesn’t is Hank.”

“Who’s he?”

“The youngest. You know. His little girl was supposed to be my flower girl.”

“Oh, right. The one whose wife ran off someplace out west.” Brynn shook her head free of the extraneous Norths and focused on the only one that mattered at the moment. “Back to you. Does he have any idea how you feel?”

“What? God, no. That’s the last thing I need, for Carter to know that I— No. Nothing.”

“That’s all well and good, but I was talking about Ian.”

“Oh.” Taylor bit her lip. “I don’t think so. I still talk to him as much as ever, and email, and all that. He might have been suspicious when I stopped talking about the wedding, but I said something about waiting until he came home so we could plan it together. That seemed to help.”

Considering that Taylor had been planning her wedding since the moment she was able to say the words I do, her sudden refusal to discuss it should definitely have been a tip-off.

Brynn needed to think, which meant she needed to move. She pushed herself out of Old Faithful, the battered recliner that had accompanied her on every move she’d ever made, stretched and patted Taylor’s shoulder.

“I need a beer. How about you?”

“Do you have any white wine?”

“You’ve been my cousin my whole life and you have to ask me that?”

Taylor sighed and slumped against the sofa once again. “Fine. At least tell me it’s light beer.”

It was so easy to tell that Taylor hadn’t grown up in a house full of brothers.

“Of course it’s light.” Note to self: pour Taylor’s drink into a glass.

Alone in her bright yellow kitchen, Brynn opened the fridge, grabbed a couple of bottles and surveyed the shelves. Taylor was a lightweight, and she’d been crying a lot. She probably needed food. There was that pint of Cherry Garcia... But no. That had met the business end of Brynn’s spoon last week.

Another look, another sigh. She knew how to cook a hearty meal with four ingredients and twenty minutes, but she had never mastered the kind of fluffy food that Taylor preferred.

Nor was she loaded with experience to help her cousin. Unlike Taylor, Brynn had never been swimming in admirers. As a teen she’d been needed at home too much to date. Her family obligations had lightened up over the years but it still seemed there were more crises than relationships. And oddly enough, whenever she did dip her toes back into the social pool, there didn’t seem to be many guys who could keep up with her no-bullshit approach to life.

So no, she didn’t have a lot of personal knowledge of matters of the heart. But she had the desire to help and the ability to make a plan and carry it through. Those, she was sure, were the skills that would go furthest in helping Taylor. They had always worked so far.

Her mind made up, Brynn grabbed a block of cheddar, tossed it on a plate and added a sleeve of crackers. Then, her mother’s admonitions in her head, she removed the crackers from the paper, arranged them in a circle around the cheese and balanced a knife on the side.

Martha Stewart was undoubtedly quivering in her hand-tooled Italian leather boots.

She poured Taylor’s beer into a mug, shoved her own bottle in one pocket of her sweatpants and the opener in the other, grabbed everything with ease—thanks to a college career spent waiting tables—and sailed back to the sofa. The good news was that Taylor had stopped crying. The bad news was that she still looked as wan and lifeless as if she’d been plucked from the mondo snowbank that loomed outside Brynn’s window, pressing against the glass like it was contemplating a career in breaking and entering. Ah, the joys of winter in eastern Ontario.

Spring couldn’t come fast enough.

Brynn set the food and drinks on the old trunk that served as her coffee table, opened her beer and indulged in a long, steadying swallow. Then and only then did she trust herself to respond with the brisk compassion she knew was needed.

“Okay. This is a pickle, no doubt about it, but we can fix it.”

“I can’t think how.” Taylor eyed her beer. “Except maybe with mind-altering drugs.”

“You only wish. The answer is going to be harder, but trust me, it’ll be worth it. All we have to do is make you fall in love with Ian again.”

Taylor choked on her drink. Oops. Maybe that hadn’t been the best timing.

“Haven’t you heard anything I said? I don’t love Ian. I probably never did. I’m in love—”

“With Carter. Yes, I know. But, Tay, come on. Don’t you think it’s suspicious that you never started seeing Carter in this new and dazzling light until Ian was gone?”

Taylor’s eyes reddened, but at least she didn’t start crying again. Nor did she have an answer.

“You said yourself, you think that the things that attracted you to Ian are the parts of Carter that hadn’t bloomed yet. Well, maybe you got it wrong. Maybe the things you liked about Ian are what you were really looking for.”

“I don’t think that made any sense.”

“Of course not. That doesn’t matter. Do you trust me?”

Taylor nodded, though without as much vigor as Brynn would have liked.

“Here’s what we’re going to do. You said you don’t want to break up with Ian while he’s gone, right?”

“It’s not that I don’t want to—not that I do want to, of course—but I can’t do that to him now. He’s doing such good work there helping people start their own businesses, but he’s all by himself. No family, no real friends. I can’t do that to him when he has no one to help him through it.”

Personally, Brynn saw that as a sign that deep down, Taylor wanted to stay with him, but this wasn’t the moment to mention that.

“Totally understandable. When is he coming home?”

“The middle of May.”

“So that gives us four months. I propose we use that time to get you back on track. You think you aren’t in love, but my bet is that you are and it’s just...hibernating.” She waved a hand toward the snow-covered windows. “We just have to wake you up.”

“There’s nothing—”

“Taylor Belle Hunter, stop yourself right there. You can’t tell me you have absolutely no feelings for Ian.”

“Well, of course I do. I might not be in love, but he’s a great guy and I still care about him.”

“Good to his family?”

“Absolutely.”

“Thoughtful and considerate?”

“Definitely.”

“Good in bed?”

“Brynn!”

“Sorry. Couldn’t help it.” She snagged a piece of cheese and popped it in her mouth. “The thing is, he’s an awesome guy, you do have positive feelings for him, and they probably run a lot deeper than you think. All we have to do is rekindle what’s already there.”

“But I—”

“Taylor. What is your plan?”

“Wait until he comes home. Fake my way through a week of hell while he gets back on his feet and the family throws a giant centennial celebration for the dairy. Then tell him the truth, pack my bags and leave town.”

“What about Carter?”

Taylor drew in a long breath that turned into a choking kind of sob. Brynn gaped at her.

“You weren’t going to tell him?”

“What would that accomplish? I’m doing enough damage as it is. I’m not going to rip the family apart that way.”

Brynn sank slowly back into the recliner. She was far too familiar with the hurt that came with families falling apart. Taylor was right.

“What about you?”

Taylor’s shrug didn’t fool Brynn for a minute. “It’s not like I’m the first woman to find herself in love with the wrong man, right?”

Hell and damnation. Brynn hauled herself out of the chair and over to the sofa, where she put an arm around Taylor’s shaking shoulders and pulled her close.

“Oh, sweetie,” she whispered as she rocked Taylor like a child. “Let me help you. Let me make this right for you.”

“I’ve tried, Brynn. I really have.”

“I know you have, honey. I know you don’t want anyone to get hurt. But just...let me try. I don’t know how yet, but I promise you, I will come up with something. All we have to do is make you want Ian again. That’s the key to fixing this mess. To make you love him.”

“I don’t know, Brynn.” Taylor wiped her cheeks. “You’re the queen of organizing and all that, but I don’t think even you can manage emotions.”

Ha. Taylor had no idea that emotions were Brynn’s area of expertise, at least for herself. She had taught herself to ignore fear, fake confidence and feel nothing but a pitying kind of contempt for her own father. Emotions, she knew, had to be controlled, lest they end up controlling you.

But she was willing to concede that it wasn’t that cut-and-dried for everyone else.

“Maybe I can’t. But honestly, sweetie, what’s the worst that could happen? Best-case scenario, you end up happily married to a man you love beyond reason. Worst case...well, I don’t think it could get worse than what you already have planned.”

Taylor hiccupped before nodding—slowly, cautiously, but a nod nonetheless. “You’re right. There’s no way it could be worse.”

“That’s my girl.” Brynn gave Taylor’s shoulders another squeeze, this time a lot more happily, and pulled a pen and small notebook from her pocket. Now they were getting into the parts she liked—less talk, more action, more chances to make things better for people she loved. “Okay. This would be a lot easier if you lived here in Kingston instead of way the hell up there in Comeback Cove, but we have weekends and—”

She stopped as Taylor made an odd little squeak.

“What?”

“I have an idea. To maybe make it so there’s not an hour’s drive between us.”

“You’re going to move here?”

Taylor laughed for the first time since walking into the apartment. “No, you goof. But I might be able to juggle things so you can come to Comeback Cove.”

“If you’re suggesting I quit work and sponge off my brother now that he’s living up there, too...”

“No, no. Relax. But isn’t your job due to end soon?”

“Probably. That’s the thing with temp jobs. They’re always ending soon.” She winked. “Don’t want to wear out my welcome, you know.”

“And you know that’s why you love them.”

True. Let other women search for security and routine. Brynn was all about the next challenge, the next adventure. Or, as was so often the case in her family, the next crisis.

“Do you have your next job lined up yet?”

“Nothing definite.” Brynn raised crossed fingers. “But Paige—remember her? My second cousin on the Catalano side. She’s pregnant again. I filled in for her first maternity leave and it’s ninety percent certain they’ll want me to do it again. That’s not until late June, though, so I have an opening in my incredibly high-demand schedule. What do you have in mind?”

“I have a meeting tomorrow,” Taylor said slowly. “I think, maybe, I can swing something that will work out to everyone’s benefit.”

“And you’re not going to tell me what you’re plotting?”

“Not yet.”

Brynn pointed the pen at Taylor. “This would be a lot easier if you didn’t look exactly the way you did the time you dragged me down to the graveyard to howl at the old folks walking by. I swear I couldn’t sit down for hours after your mom got through with us.”

“Oh, relax. I’m trusting you with my heart for the next four months. You can give me a day.”

When she put it that way—when she grinned the way she used to, the way, Brynn realized with a shock, she hadn’t grinned in months—there was no way to refuse her. Not that Brynn had ever been able to walk away from a family member in need.

She would never wish calamity on her loved ones, but when, life being what it was, it happened—well, it was kind of nice to know that she was the one they trusted to make things better. The one they needed.

“Okay, kiddo. It’s a deal. You work on your nefarious plot and I’ll search the internet for love potions.” She put her pen to the paper. “Operation Sleeping Beauty is officially under way.”

* * *

HANK NORTH LOOKED around the conference room that overflowed with family members—some laughing, some eating, all of them talking and moving and offering up their opinions—and wondered why he bothered wearing earplugs while working with power tools. There wasn’t a chain saw on the planet that could compete with a roomful of Norths.

“For the love of God, people.” His grandmother Moxie, usually the only one who could corral this group, sat at the head of the table with proverbial steam coming out of her ears. At the other end, his dad glanced at Moxie, but continued gesturing with a doughnut while arguing with Carter and Cash about the Leafs’ lousy attempt at defense during the previous night’s hockey game. Hank’s mom was singing a song about cows with Hank’s daughter, Millie. A laptop beside Taylor sat open in readiness for Ian’s Skype call. In short, it was a typical North family gathering—loud, out-of-control and likely to erupt into a complete snort-fest at any moment.

Taylor, though, seemed to be sitting this one out. Usually she would be chatting up Moxie or singing with Millie, but this time she sat in the corner beside Dad with her arms crossed and a funny kind of smile on her face—almost as if she were laughing at some private joke.

Well, at least she was being quiet about it.

Hank pulled his phone from his pocket and checked the time. Ian was due to call in fifteen minutes, and the family had yet to iron out any of the items on Moxie’s list. This wasn’t gonna be pretty.

A loud smack cut through the hubbub, silencing everyone in midsentence—midlyric, in Millie’s case—and caused everyone to swivel their heads to where Moxie stood glaring. The shoe in her hand and a dirt mark on the table were all the evidence needed of the source of the noise.

“Now, listen.” Moxie pointed the loafer at each of them in turn. “We have a festival coming up in four months and none of you are taking this seriously. For pity’s sake, people, we know how to work together. Why are you making this so difficult?”

The silence following her statement would have been encouraging if not for the way Cash nudged Carter and snickered.

“Boys!”

Oh, hell. Now they were in for it. Moxie was about two steps away from a full-fledged snark attack. Hank pushed his chair back a bit, ready to hustle Millie out of the room if needed. She insisted that she was old enough to be part of the meetings now that she had turned seven, but he wasn’t sure he was ready for her to see her uncles quivering in fear when Moxie unleashed the Furies.

“You two,” Moxie began, only to be interrupted by Taylor pushing up from her chair.

“I’m sorry. Could I have everyone’s attention for a minute?”

Well, that got people to shut up. Family lore had it that Carter had interrupted Moxie once, back when he was a kid. Millie had asked him about it a couple of years ago. Hank had never known it was possible for a grown man’s voice to go that high.

Maybe this meeting was going to be worth the drive into town after all.

Taylor turned the laptop to better face the table before drawing a deep breath and giving everyone a nervous smile. Dad cleared his throat and glanced meaningfully at Moxie, who seemed to be gathering thunderclouds in preparation for hurling. Taylor blinked.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have interrupted, but I have an idea that I think could help us. Moxie, could I present it to these folks before Ian signs on and we have to focus on him?”

Ah. Well done. An apology, a reminder of the absent fiancé and the promise of help. Taylor might yet be allowed to live.

Moxie narrowed her eyes. Millie reached for the edge of the baggy white shirt she wore over her jeans and sweater, rubbing the fabric in between the fingers of one hand. Her free thumb popped into her mouth, prompting a nudge from Grandma and a stifled sigh on Hank’s part. Taylor rested one hand on the laptop. Her left hand, he noticed, angled so the big family diamond was winking right at Moxie.

Damn. He never knew Taylor had it in her.

At last, Moxie nodded.

“Thanks.” Taylor smiled. “Everyone, I think it’s no secret that we’re in trouble. We want to do this festival. It’s the perfect way to thank everyone in Comeback Cove for one hundred years of business. But we’re all so busy with our own jobs, running the dairy, and going to school—” she smiled at Millie, who glowed and let the thumb slip from her mouth “—and getting those cabins ready for tourist season, and, well, I think the festival isn’t getting the attention it deserves.”

Ma nodded. She had said almost the same thing to Hank just last week.

“I admit, I’m not sure why this is so much harder for us than running the dairy. Maybe because everyone has been doing that for so long that we all know our roles, but now...” Taylor shrugged and checked the clock. “Anyway. Here’s my point.”

“Amen,” muttered Cash. Carter elbowed him hard.

Taylor continued as if there had been no interruption. “I think we need help with the festival—someone who can make it her top priority and ride herd on us. Someone who is organized and efficient and capable of keeping a bunch of very opinionated people in line.”

Silence descended once more. The other adults in the room looked at Taylor in various degrees of bewilderment, surprise and admiration. Millie had given up on the adult talk and was singing softly to the car that had come with her drive-thru dinner.

Hank tipped his chair back and struggled to keep from laughing out loud as the impact of Taylor’s words sank in. He loved his family, he really did, but they weren’t accustomed to being told they were messing up. Which, in essence, was what Taylor had just said in her ever-so-diplomatic way.

Moxie spoke first. “Are you telling me, missy, that we need an outsider to take charge of our family dairy’s celebration?”

“Yes.”

Good for Taylor. She didn’t even blink.

“Sounds like you have someone already in mind.” Carter’s words were tight and clipped.

“As a matter of fact, I do. My cousin Brynn. Here’s her résumé.” Taylor pulled papers from a folder and passed them to Dad, who took one before handing them to Carter.

Cash whistled. Dad sent him the “shut up” look.

“Taylor. It’s an interesting proposal, and I see why you think we need someone to rein us in, but this is how we work. Everything will come together. We don’t need—”

“I like it.”

Hank let his chair drop to the ground at Moxie’s pronouncement. Judging from the way assorted North jaws were sagging all around him, he wasn’t the only one taken by surprise.

His mother leaned forward and stared at Moxie. “Mom? Did I hear that right? You, of all people, want to turn this over to someone not family?”

“Hell to the yes.” Moxie pulled her shoe off the table at last and tossed it on the carpet with a muffled thud. “Taylor’s right, Janice. We all have too much on our plates already. This festival needs to be special. One hundred years in business is something to celebrate, and it should be done right. The way we’re carrying on, we’re going to come to the weekend of the festival and it’ll be just us standing in the park because Cash forgot to advertise it and Carter didn’t get the insurance. And Mr. Silent over there will spend the whole time playing invisible, then sign Millie up for a soccer game so he doesn’t have to think about it at all.”

Hank’s cheeks burned. Pegged again.

“I’ll give you that.” Ma tapped her pencil against the legal pad in front of her. “But Taylor—your cousin?”

Cash rolled his eyes. “Ma. Come on. Don’t tell us you’re worried about nepotism.”

“Of course not! But I...well...this is a very unique project. Taylor, I know you wouldn’t recommend her unless you believed her capable, but the fact is, family can... Let’s say, you can be surprised by their actions at times.”

Oh, hell. That was directed at him, he was sure of it. Ma still wasn’t happy about his decision to leave the dairy last year. He shifted in his seat and let his hand settle on Millie’s wild mane of hair—a steadying reminder of why he had made his choice.

“You don’t need to worry about Brynn. She’s the most organized person on the planet. And as you can see from her résumé, she has a wide variety of experiences to bring to Northstar.”

“She doesn’t stay in one place very long, does she?” Ma squinted at the paper.

“Brynn loves pushing herself. She prefers to take on special projects, short-term positions, maternity-leave replacements—jobs that will let her try new skills in new places. She also knows how to keep people in line, which I think is what we need most.”

“There’s a challenge if I ever heard one,” Cash muttered.

Taylor’s smile was the kind that a cat might offer up to a mouse in the seconds before pouncing. “I wouldn’t advise it, Cash. I think I might have mentioned my cousin the hockey player, right? The one who was in the NHL and who now lives here in Comeback Cove?”

Hank sat up straighter. The twins exchanged glances—Cash’s worried, Carter’s intrigued.

“You mean that guy who bought Camp Overlook?” Moxie asked.

“That’s her brother,” Taylor said. “I have personally seen her guilt, convince and persuade him and his teammates into doing what she needed them to do. Even the guys who spoke only Russian or Finnish couldn’t get around her.”

More looks were exchanged. Chairs shifted. Papers rustled.

“We wouldn’t need her for as long as most of her projects,” Moxie said. “We’re talking three, maybe four months. Is that enough to make it worth her while?”

Taylor glanced at the laptop. Her smile wavered slightly before she met Moxie’s gaze.

“The one thing Brynn loves more than a new adventure is her family. Half the reason she takes those short-term jobs is because it gives her more flexibility to help them when needed. Working here would be a new experience and let her be close to both me and her brother. Who, I might mention, would be extremely willing to lend extra support to the festival with Brynn at the helm.”

“So you’re saying we’d get someone who could whip these sorry asses into shape, take the bulk of the work off our hands and bring in a bona fide celebrity to fancy up the celebration.” Moxie folded her hands and sat back. “How much will she cost us?”

“She’s not cheap. But I had a thought. Since it’s so short-term, maybe we could offer her a reasonable salary and sweeten the deal by providing housing.”

For the first time since taking the floor, Taylor looked straight at Hank. It took him a second to grasp her meaning. But as every face in the room turned toward him, the lump of dread building in his gut told him he had interpreted her words correctly.

“The hell I will.”

Cash snorted. “And it finally speaks.”

“Cash, leave your brother alone.” Ma drummed her fingers on the table. “You’re right, Taylor. It would make sense to provide housing. But wouldn’t she want to stay with you?”

Millie sent her car zooming across the table. “Daddy says Auntie Taylor’s place is so small, you have to go outside to wipe your—”

“That’s enough, Mills.” Time for another talk about boundaries. Judging from the look on his mother’s face, Hank was going to be on the receiving end of one himself.

As soon as the laughter had died down, Dad piped up. “It’s up to you, Hank.”

No way. Hank had spent his entire life playing catch-up—as a sibling, a husband, a father. This time he wasn’t going to be rushed into something on someone else’s timetable. He was already pushing himself to get the cabins in shape before tourist season kicked in. The last thing he needed was to have to drop everything else to prepare for Wonder Woman.

“I’m not open yet.”

“You’re not charging her,” Taylor pointed out. “It’s not like you have to be officially open and ready to roll.”

“They all need painting. Most have holes in the roofs, and I’m only halfway through replacing the windows.”

“For crying out loud, Hankie,” Carter said. “You don’t need to have all ten cabins ready. Pick the one that’s in the best shape and get it spiffed up. You’ll probably have a couple of weeks, right, Taylor?”

She nodded. “And I can help. Either with the painting or with...um...making sure you have the time to get it done.” She glanced at Millie, who had returned to driving her car in circles.

“You know,” he said mildly, “half the reason I bought the cabins was to have more time with certain people who are pretending to not listen. Not less.”

Moxie rolled her eyes. “Oh, for the love of biscuits. We’re talking two weeks. You live and breathe the child as it is. It’ll do her good to have some space, maybe hang out with Taylor for a bit.”

He wanted to tell Moxie she was off her rocker, but he couldn’t. Because he knew too well that families could become claustrophobic. He didn’t want to do that to her.

And even though he wanted—needed—a little distance between him and his family, the fact was, he did owe them. That was the other reason he had left the dairy and bought the cabins—to stop being a burden on them. To stand on his own two feet. There was no way in hell he would have made it through the years since Millie’s birth and his divorce without his family, but it was time to turn that around.

It would be nice to be the one helping them for a change. He could never repay them completely, but it wouldn’t kill him to do this.

He looked at Millie, clad in the old shirt that she had claimed as a lab coat, her hair a halo of kinks he had never learned to tame, pushing her toy car back and forth. Maybe if they let this Brynn into the cabins, it could be good for Mills. A low-pressure way to learn how to deal with the people who would be coming and going all the time once he opened. A test case, as it were.

“This cousin,” he said to Taylor. “She’s not a diva, is she? Because even if I go full out, the place is going to be rough around the edges for a while. I won’t have time to cater to her.”

Taylor beamed. “Brynn’s idea of a good time is a cold beer and a hockey game on TV. I don’t think you have to worry about her.”

“Let’s do it,” Moxie proclaimed, and as if a switch had been flipped, everyone started talking again.

Hank let the voices rush over him and tried to suppress the feeling that Taylor’s assurances sounded a lot like something that would have been uttered by the captain of the Titanic.

CHAPTER TWO

TWO WEEKS LATER, Hank stood in the middle of the Wolfe cabin and took in the changes with a critical eye. The missing bits in the fieldstone wall had been replaced, the wood floors were free of sawdust and thanks to a stretch of decent weather, he’d been able to open the windows long enough to clear all scents but a faint hint of fresh-cut wood. Taylor had added some throw rugs, ordered him to buy bed linens in some color he called red, but she insisted was cranberry, and hung curtains at the windows.

All in all, the place didn’t look bad. Kind of cozy, actually. And just in time.

Millie rushed in from her observation post on the porch. “She’s here!”

“Already?” Crap. Taylor had promised she’d be on hand for the move-in. Why did Brynn have to be the punctual cousin?

He reached for his phone, ready to tell Taylor to get it in gear, but Millie grabbed his hand. “Come on. We have to go see her.”

“Easy, Mills. Let’s not bowl her over in her first thirty seconds, okay?”

Millie huffed out her impatience with his adult ways. “Daddy. This is important. We have to make her like us. She’s our first guest. Our test...” Her nose wrinkled as she obviously struggled to remember his description.

“Our test subject? Is that what you’re trying to say, my little scientist?”

Her nod sent her glasses sliding down her nose. “Yes. Our first person. So we have to do a really great job with her, so come on, Daddy.” Tiny hands fastened on his behind and pushed. “Let’s go.”

“All right, all right. Take it easy.” It figured. The one time he would have welcomed some company there was none to be found. He would have to muddle through this on his own. The story of his life.

He shrugged on his jacket, took Millie’s hand and headed outside. A little blue hatchback sat at the end of the path he had cleared of snow. Yowzers, he hadn’t seen a car stuffed that full since he moved into his first university dorm.

“Hello.” He kept his voice hearty and brisk as he approached the car. “Welcome to Northwoods Cabins.”

The door creaked open. He spotted reassuringly serviceable boots—no heels, no suede—followed by long jean-clad legs. A head of dark hair followed. At last she emerged, giving him the full picture—one of those Icelandic sweaters the cross-country skiers loved, a hint of curves beneath the intricate design and a smile so dazzling it kind of knocked everything else out of his head.

“Hi!” Her voice was brisk also, a bit lower than he expected and friendly enough to ease Millie’s grip on his fingers. “I’m Brynn. I take it my cousin is late, as usual?”

“Sure looks that way.” He remembered his manners and stuck out his palm. “Hank North. This is my daughter, Millie.”

“Good to meet you.” Her hand closed over his. A flash of something—heat?—made him step quickly back, but she had already abandoned him to crouch in front of Millie.

“Hi. I’m Brynn. I know some people say you have to call adults by their last name, but Miss Catalano is just too long for anyone to say, so I’m good with Brynn. Or if your dad has a rule about that, I can be Miss Brynn, but that makes me feel like a teacher—” she glanced up at him, letting loose that smile once more “—so I hope we don’t have to use it.”

Taylor’s words about this woman coercing Russian hockey players to do her bidding took on a terrifying new significance. When she beamed that way, all warm and accepting and as if what she were asking was the most reasonable request ever made in the history of the world, well, it was easy to see how convincing she could be.

Millie pulled her thumb from her mouth. “Hi, Brynn.” From the way her eyes were shining, he was pretty sure that “Brynn” had become another way of saying “the most perfect person in the universe.”

“Let me guess.” Brynn smiled as she tipped her head to one side, studying Millie. “I think you must be in grade...three. Maybe even four.”

“Two.” Millie’s smile dimmed and her little shoulders hunched. Hank frowned. Was it his imagination, or did she do that every time anyone mentioned school lately?

“Only grade two?” Brynn placed a hand on her chest in mock astonishment. “I could have sworn you were older.”

That, at least, brought the light back to Millie’s eyes.

“So this is the place?” Brynn straightened and looked around. Hank braced himself as her gaze roamed over the snug cabin surrounded by winter-bare trees. She nodded and smiled once more.

“It looks adorable. I can’t wait to see the inside.” She moved toward the back of the car and popped the hatch. “By the way, Hank, Taylor told me you had to do some quick-time work to get ready for me. Thanks so much. I promise I won’t drive you crazy with special requests or anything now that I’m here. My goal in life is to be as low-maintenance as possible.”

She probably intended for her words to reassure, but instead they set off a warning bell. In Hank’s experience, when someone felt obliged to assure him they would never do something, he could expect the precise opposite.

Millie’s first subject might be more of a test than either of them had expected.

Brynn lifted a suitcase from the back. “Millie, could you lead me to my new home?”

They headed down the path, Millie chattering as if she had just been reunited with a long-lost friend, Brynn nodding and asking questions. He grabbed a box from the car and followed. He reached the cabin in time to see Millie grab Brynn’s hand and yank her to the center of the room.

“Mills,” he called, but he might as well have saved his breath.

“Okay. This is the living room, but it’s the kitchen, too, okay? Because see, it’s all one big room, but all the parts are in different corners. Aunt Taylor calls it open something.” Millie shook her head. “I don’t remember. But it sounds good. So here is your couch and here is your table, and here is where you can put your TV if you want one. Daddy says guests don’t get TVs. But you’re not a regular guest, so I think you will want one, because, you know, that’s the only way you can watch MythBusters.”

“Oh, I watch that on my computer,” Brynn said, and Millie froze in place.

“Really?” Her whisper was more reverent than anything he’d ever heard from her in church. “You watch MythBusters?”

“All the time. Did you see the one where they tried walking across banana peels? I laughed so hard.”

“I did! I loved that! And when they did the thing about the guys who escaped from—you know, that place, it was Alacrat—”

“You mean Alcatraz?”

Millie’s expression shifted from hero worship to complete and total adoration. It was time for him to step in.

“Uh, Brynn? If you get Millie going on this topic, you’re never going to have anything resembling a life, if you know what I mean.”

She waved his words away. “Oh, please. Like life would be worth living without MythBusters?” But she must have caught his underlying meaning, because she pointed to the freestanding island he’d installed the week before. “That looks like a great place to cook.”

“Yes. This is your kitchen.” Millie puffed up again and led the way, shrugging off her parka as she walked. Hank tensed when Brynn’s gaze lingered on the ragged fake lab coat—accessorized today with a ruler and a plastic thermometer peeking from the breast pocket—then let out a slow breath when her lips spread in an indulgent smile.

Shirttails flapping, Millie proceeded to open every drawer and cupboard, offering a running narrative of the things Brynn could either find within them or add to them. He sidled over to Brynn and nodded slightly in Millie’s direction.

“Don’t feel you have to encourage her, okay?”

“Not a problem. But you’re the dad. You call the shots.”

It was ridiculous, the way those simple words warmed him. Yeah, he was Millie’s father. Biology said so, and the divorce agreement made it clear that he was her primary caregiver. But just because it was on paper, it didn’t mean everyone agreed. This was a nice change from what usually happened, when folks would ask him for his opinion, then check with his mother when he wasn’t around.

“And now, this way!” Millie flew down the short hallway. Brynn hurried to follow, Hank tagging along with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, praying for Taylor to show up soon.

“There’s the bathroom. I guess you know what to do in there.”

“Millie!”

“Sorry, Daddy. Okay. This is the extra room. Aunt Taylor said you needed an office so we gave you this cabin ’cause it has an extra bedroom, but she helped us find a chair and table and stuff for you so you can work here. Do you like it?”

Brynn stepped into the room. He watched the way her gaze lingered on the furniture, the slight tilt to her lips as she took in the light from the window falling across the table. It seemed the lady liked what she saw.

Unexpected pride warmed him. He’d been more nervous about her reaction than he’d realized.

“See this?” Millie skipped to the wall where Taylor had instructed Hank to mount a giant whiteboard. “Aunt Taylor said you had to have this really bad. It was important. And it works, too. Me and Daddy played tic-tac-toe on it when he put it up there.”

“That was very responsible of you to test it. Did you try out all the stuff?”

Millie sighed. “I wanted to have a sleepover in your bed, but Daddy said that would be wrong.”

God, shoot him now.

“Well, that was very kind of you to offer to try it, and very...um...nice of your dad to protect my privacy.”

“Yeah, but it really is the best bed. Better than mine. Mine has a dumb old plain top, but yours has this curvy thing, like... Wait, let me show you.”

Again, she grabbed Brynn and yanked, this time with a force that pulled a little yip from Brynn’s mouth as she raced to keep up with the child.

“Millie, don’t kill Brynn on her first day here, okay?”

“Right.” Brynn’s voice was breathless but still tinged with laughter. “Let’s wait until I’ve had a night in this gorgeous— Oh, wow.”

They had reached the entry to the main bedroom, where Millie scampered ahead to display the beauty of the cherrywood sleigh bed with all the grace of a pint-size, bespectacled Vanna White.

“See?” She tapped the curve of the footboard. “Isn’t it so pretty?”

“It’s probably the most amazing bed I will ever sleep in.” Brynn smiled at Millie. “It must have been very hard to stay away from it. You get super bonus points for listening to your dad.”

“I’m a very good listener.”

“I bet you are. Now, I brought my favorite chair with me. Could you help me pick out the perfect place for it?”

“Oh, yes!” Without so much as a glance in his direction, Millie grabbed Brynn’s hand and took off down the hall. Voices and hints of laughter floated back to him. For a moment, he let himself enjoy it. He couldn’t remember the last time Millie had been so enthusiastic about something that didn’t involve a magnifying glass or some kind of chemical reaction. It was good to hear her giggling like a regular little kid. Not that he wanted her to be anyone other than herself, but still.

No, it looked like the biggest challenge facing him now wasn’t keeping Ms. Catalano happy, but keeping his daughter from falling head over heels for someone who was going to leave in a few short months.

* * *

BRYNN WASN’T AT ALL surprised that Taylor was late to help with the move-in, arriving well after quiet Hank had hustled his adorable daughter back to their place. She’d been prepared for the tardiness. What did catch her off guard was the thermos of premixed margaritas that Taylor dropped on the counter as soon as she walked in.

“Rough weekend?”

Taylor shook her head. “Rough month, rough day, rough...whatever. Let’s just say, it’s gonna feel good to help you unpack and exert some brute force on some things for a while.”

“Not that I can’t sympathize, but you know, I kind of like my stuff. Maybe I’ll do the heavy lifting and you take care of the ‘getting drunk’ part.”

“Yay, teamwork.” Taylor raised a glass of pale green liquid and downed half of it in one swallow. Brynn took in the shaking of her cousin’s hands, the tightness of her movements, and decided that further questioning could wait until the alcohol had kicked in.

“Actually, Hank already dragged in the worst of it. I tried to convince him he didn’t have to, but he just shrugged and kept hauling. He even carried Old Faithful in all by himself. Is he always so silent and chivalrous?”

“Quiet, yes. But chivalrous?” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ve never thought of it, but yeah. I guess he is, in a way.”

Brynn had a feeling there was a story behind those words, but she wasn’t sure she should hear it. Not when she was going to spend the next few months living in close proximity to the man. Years of short-term jobs had taught her the importance of keeping the work ties loose.

Though when Hank had bent forward to grab a box from the far reaches of the hatchback, she couldn’t stop herself from noticing that the stretch of his jeans had highlighted one very fine hind end. One very fine, very single hind end—which happened to belong to a member of the family that now employed her.

Nope. She wasn’t asking anybody anything about Hank. Wasn’t going to wonder who else in the family had that thick chestnut hair, wasn’t going to ponder how he would look without that faint line of stubble along his jawline. Instead, she crooked her finger and led Taylor down the hall to the bedroom and the suitcases that awaited.

“That Millie’s a sweetie. Chattered nonstop. How long has she been on the science kick?”

“As long as I can— Oh, damn. You didn’t mention your thing about MythBusters to her, did you?”

“She brought it up first. I was just being friendly.”

“You’re never going to get rid of her.”

Brynn shrugged and removed a pile of sweaters from the suitcase. “No hardship there. She’s a cutie. It’s okay with me if she pops in once in a while.”

“Oh, Brynn...”

It wasn’t Taylor’s words that made Brynn look up from the dresser where she was nestling her sweaters. It was the way Taylor hesitated that caught Brynn’s heart.

“What is it?”

“It’s just that... I really like Millie. The whole family. And it’s killing me that I’m going to have to leave them, you know?”

Brynn took an instinctive step, but Taylor shook her head.

“Don’t. I’m barely hanging on as it is. I don’t want to... Having you here is wonderful, don’t get me wrong. But all of a sudden this is real. I’m going to have to go. And I...”

Brynn’s throat tightened.

“If this doesn’t work, and I do have to leave, will you stay on? Do my job for me until they can hire someone else?”

“Oh, right. Because they would want to keep seeing the person who helped pull the wool over their—”

“Brynn, please. This is important. Will you do it?”

On one hand, Taylor was supposed to be thinking positive thoughts, marshaling her focus on the outcome they wanted. On the other hand, if she was thinking about the job, she wasn’t thinking about Carter.

Maybe.

“Sure, hon. If it will make this easier for you, and if they would want me around, then yes. Of course.”

“Thanks.” After a long moment, Taylor blew out a very loud breath and had another slug of margarita. “Anyway. Enough about me. Be careful with Mills, okay? Her best friend moved over Christmas and she’s been having a rough go of it since then. Not that she was ever one of the popular kids, you know?”

“More power to her.”

“Well, yeah, you and I can say that now. But when you’re little...” Taylor shrugged. “She’s not your average second-grader.”

“Yeah, you usually don’t see little kids running around in lab coats.”

“Oh. That.” Taylor ran her finger along the edge of her glass. “Don’t say anything to her about it, okay? Or to Hank. That shirt was Heather’s.”

“Who?”

“Millie’s mom.”

Ooooooh. “I thought Mom’s been gone for a while.”

“Most of Millie’s life, but there are visits. The last one was over Christmas. It takes her a while to get back on track.”

Poor little mite. Brynn had found it hard enough to cope with a family breakup when she was a teenager. She could only imagine the toll it would take on a little one.

“Well, not to worry. When she comes here, she can revel in total accepting geekery. Or, if she wants to try life on the other side, we can do our nails and watch Tangled until we wear out the disc.” Brynn closed the drawer and brushed her hands. “Okay, kiddo. You’re here, I’m here, there’s nobody else around. It’s time to commence making you fall in love again.”

“This is silly. You know that, right?”

“You agreed, Taylor. It’s part of the deal.”

“I know.” She sighed. “Honestly, I don’t have very high hopes. But I promise to give it my best. God knows if there’s a way to avoid the hurt that’s staring me in the face, I’m all for it.”

Well, that was better. Even if Taylor did nothing but follow directions, reluctant or not, Brynn had no doubt that she could make this happen. She’d pulled off harder things in her life than helping a woman fall back in love with a man who used to be the center of her world. Taylor might think it was hopeless, but Brynn was convinced it was a piece of cake. Wedding cake, to be specific.

“Okay. The first step is research. I need to learn all about Ian. More specifically, I need you to tell me everything that ever attracted you to him. What little things does he do to make your heart go pitter-patter? What’s the sweetest thing he ever did? How did you first know you were in love with him? Give me ten words to describe him.”

“Brynn—”

“Taylor.”

“Fine.” With a long sigh, Taylor uncurled from the chair, moved to the bed and stretched out full length.

“Hey! I haven’t even tested that yet. You do not get to be the one to break in my bed.”

“This is serious work, Brynn. Emotionally draining. I need to be supported.”

“Support, my ass,” Brynn said, but she rooted through the box marked Operation Sleeping Beauty and pulled out a notebook and an ancient tape recorder she had liberated from her mother’s basement.

“Is that what I think it is? I haven’t seen one of those in years.”

“Yes, it is, and you seriously don’t want to know how hard it is to find cassette tapes these days. Start talking.”

“Fine.” Taylor wriggled deeper into the pillows, making Brynn grit her teeth in envy. She’d stayed up way too late packing, and that bed was far too tempting. Though if Taylor was on it, Brynn couldn’t sack out and crash, so maybe this was better. “Any particular place you want me to start?”

Brynn glanced down at the notebook full of hastily scribbled ideas. “At the beginning, of course. Your first memory of Ian.”

“Um...let me think. That’s a tough one.”

“Two margaritas shouldn’t lead to this level of impairment, Taylor.”

“Bite me. I just can’t remember a time when he wasn’t in my life. I’ve known him since I was born. My mom and his mom went to high school together.”

“So when you say you’ve known him all your life, you’re not exaggerating.”

“That’s about it.”

Well, this might be a bit more difficult than anticipated. How could she help Taylor pinpoint the magic, when the magic had been with her every day?

“So were you in love with him all your life?”

“No.”

A simple answer, but there was just enough of a twist to the way Taylor drew the word out, almost dubiously, that made Brynn’s ears perk up.

“Elaborate.”

“Well, when we were kids, he was kind of on the outskirts of my circle. We saw each other when our folks got together, but there were two elementary schools, so we weren’t part of each other’s day-to-day lives.”

“You wouldn’t have been anyway, right? Isn’t he a couple of years older than you?”

“Right. He’s Greg’s age. And since you know how much girls like to hang out with their older brothers when they’re growing up...”

Brynn snorted. “Tell me about it. Sam couldn’t decide if he was supposed to protect me or sacrifice me to the hockey gods, so he usually did both.”

“How did he do that?”

She shrugged. “Put me in goal, shot pucks at me, then swooped in with an ice pack when I got hit.”

“Oh, that must have made for a secure childhood.”

“It had its moments.” At least, until it fell apart. But they weren’t supposed to be talking about her. “Okay. So when did you know that things had shifted with Ian?”

“Um...oh, hell. Promise you won’t laugh?”

“I swear.”

“Well...I was seventeen. It was his first year of university, and I hadn’t seen him since the summer, maybe earlier. He walked into church and he looked so...different. It was like he’d been... You know how, in the movies, the king will pull out his sword and tap the dude on the shoulders and say, ‘I dub thee Sir Fancy Pants,’ and they stand up and you could swear the guy’s standing a little taller? It was like that.”

Brynn had to swallow the lump in her throat. “That’s beautiful, Taylor.”

“Yeah, it was a pretty amazing moment.” Her laugh was short. “But, Brynn, I was seventeen. And it turns out that I wasn’t the only one who had been glad to see him come home. His old high school girlfriend had finally slept with him just the night before. So all I was seeing was afterglow.”

“Must you try to kill any hint of romance that ever existed in the world?”

“Well, no. Because like I said, I was a kid. It was all very romantic and magical, and I fell like that.” She snapped her fingers. “The thing is, I don’t think I was falling for Ian the person. I was falling for the whole idea of love and romance. He was just the rack that I hung my dreams on. Not like—”

Taylor bit her lip and Brynn knew what she was going to say: not like with Carter.

“It wasn’t like that with him, was it?”

Taylor shook her head. “But we’re not supposed to be talking about him.”

Brynn sat on the bed, a small corner of her brain noting how utterly sinkable the mattress was beneath her. She couldn’t wait to curl up beneath that fluffy comforter and indulge in an hour of reading when this day was over. “You’re right. Talking about Carter won’t be helpful.” She drew in a deep breath and hoped she wasn’t shooting herself in the foot. “But it might be good for me to know what draws you to him. So for the next ten minutes, you can tell me all about him. Anything. How it happened, how you knew things had shifted, the whole works. We’re going to lay it all on the table so we can deal with it. And then we’re going to stop talking about stupid men and finish off those margaritas and laugh for a while, okay?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Okay. Ten minutes. Go.”

“I won’t need that long.”

This was interesting. Taylor had always needed at least three sentences to say what Brynn could say in one.

“Go on.”

Taylor pulled a pillow onto her lap and hugged it close. “Ian is a wonderful, wonderful guy. Honestly, if anyone were to put him and Carter together and rate them on their amazingness, Ian would probably win, hands down. He’s more classically attractive, he’s great with kids, he’s more outgoing and charismatic. He’s got this air about him that makes people just, you know, like him.”

“And yet?” Brynn twisted her fingers and waited. Whatever this was, it was key. If she wanted to help her cousin find her happy ending, it was important to have all the facts.

“It’s like this. Ian is like a suit you put on for work. You can feel comfortable in it, powerful and happy and all those good things. But at the end of the day, you still want to come home and put on the clothes that call to you. Sweats. Jammies. The ones that are so soft and comfortable that you barely notice them.” She looked up. “Ian is the most amazing suit I will ever wear, Brynn. But it’s finally becoming clear to me that I’m not a suit person.”

Brynn reached for the margaritas. This cake might not be so easy to slice after all.

CHAPTER THREE

ON THE WEDNESDAY MORNING after her arrival, Brynn took a deep breath and walked into Taylor’s office in preparation for her first meeting with the entire North clan. She had been in and out of the office over the past couple of days and been introduced to all the players, but this would be her first real test. Her stomach danced a slow jig of anticipation. She’d gone over all the materials given to her by Taylor and had pulled together some ideas that she knew were solid. The hard part would be convincing the family members that she wasn’t trying to get rid of their plans, but rather wanted to focus on the best ones.

The really hard part would be to get through this meeting without being a total bitch to Carter. Logically, she knew that none of this was his fault, and that he was unaware of Taylor’s dilemma. But logic didn’t keep her from thinking that everything would be fine if he would just get lost. Or maybe meet someone and run off to Vegas. Or do something so devoid of morals that Taylor would never again look at him with anything other than disgust.

That was Brynn’s personal favorite scenario. After all, it had taken just one act of supremely selfish moral cowardice to shred her love for her father. Imagine what such an act could do to a mere crush?

Taylor was alone. She sat behind her desk with a faraway look on her face, barely stirring when Brynn walked in.

“Morning,” she said softly. Taylor merely blinked.

“Hello? Taylor?” Brynn waved her hand in front of her cousin’s face, grinning at the way Taylor startled. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

“Sorry. I was...”

“Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away?”

“Something like that.”

The words were light. The misery in Taylor’s eyes was not.

“Hey.” Brynn glanced into the hall, but seeing no one approaching, she took the chance of slipping around the desk and giving Taylor a light squeeze around the shoulders. “We’ll get through this. I won’t leave you, I promise.”

Taylor smiled faintly and poked at the papers in front of her. “I know. I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Me, too.” Even though she hated the circumstances, she wanted—needed—to be here. Wait and see were not words she could live by, at least not when it came to her family. She had to help.

Her father used to tell her that the world would keep spinning if she sat down, but she never quite believed him. Maybe because he usually followed it up with, Get out of here, Brynn. You’re not needed. And a laugh that never quite struck her as funny.

She shook away the memory and pulled a flash drive from her pocket. “Here you go. The next step in Operation Sleeping Beauty.”

Taylor shook her head but smiled as she took it. “What is it, a how-to manual?”

“Music. The songs you associate with him, plus some from when we were silly romantic teens for good measure.”

“Thanks.” But there was little enthusiasm in Taylor’s voice as she dropped the device into her purse.

This wasn’t good. Brynn knew her efforts wouldn’t be an overnight success, but she had hoped for a slightly more encouraging reaction.

“While we have a minute, I need some more info. Tell me about food.”

“Brynn, I really don’t think this is going to—”

“Taylor, you promised to give this your all. So all up, kid. What foods?”

“Well...he’s a pretty typical guy. Steak. Shrimp. Pasta.”

Brynn shook her head. “Deeper. What foods did you prepare for him? Where did you go to eat? Did he ever feed you cotton candy or kiss chocolate off your mouth or anything like that?”

“Isn’t this just a little bit kinky?”

“Oh, yeah. I really get off on hearing the details of my cousin’s sex life, you betcha.” When Taylor blushed, Brynn hurried on. “Look, I know this isn’t comfortable for either of us. But food is highly associated with romance, so if I’m going to do my job, I need to know what kinds of things you—”

“Hot chocolate.”

“Sorry?”

“Hot chocolate. I’m always cold in the winter and he made it for me.”

Brynn stole a piece of paper from Taylor’s desk and began scribbling notes. “Homemade or from a mix?”

“Homemade, mostly. With a little almond syrup in it. Half and half.” She sighed. “He really does make it better than anyone else.”

“Did you have a special mug?”

“Mmm, no. Just whatever was handy.”

“Marshmallows or whipped cream?”

“Whipped—” she began, then broke off in another blush. Brynn assessed her over the rims of her half-glasses.

“Seriously?”

Taylor’s shrug was as fluid and graceful as everything else she did. “What can I say? He would make a big bowl of whipped cream, and there was always tons left over, and, you know, waste not, want not.”

“I think I get the picture.” And now she would never be able to get it out of her mind, unfortunately.

“Um...Baileys Irish Cream has some pretty potent associations, too.”

“Okay, I think that gives me plenty of material.” But Taylor was in her own world again.

“Kung pao chicken. And doughnuts. How did I forget those? Oh, yeah. Ian has a real fondness for doughnuts. But only ones with a hole in the middle, if you get my—”

She stopped abruptly. Brynn looked up from her notes, ready to give thanks to whatever deity had brought this rush of Too Much Information to a halt, but stopped when she saw the look of utter horror on Taylor’s face as she stared at the door.

Say it isn’t so.

When she turned to follow Taylor’s gaze, Brynn saw exactly what she had feared most: the doorway was filled with Norths, covering the whole spectrum of emotions. Moxie sported a sly smile, Carter had his eyes closed as if in agony, and Hank—Hank wasn’t looking at Taylor but at Brynn. His face was carefully blank, but there was a glint of intense curiosity in his eyes. It was almost as if he had been waiting for her to chime in with stories of her own creative uses for food.

A small sound from the other side of the desk brought Brynn’s attention back to where it was supposed to be: Taylor, the job, making a professional impression on these people who had entrusted her with their celebration.

Silence hung over them. No one seemed capable of speech. Brynn realized that if anyone was going to get them through this, it had to be her.

Long months of caring for her two younger brothers while their mother was sick had taught her that a bright smile and brisk attitude conveyed confidence that usually reassured others, if not herself. She shoved the paper in her pocket and turned to the door. Big smile. Breezy confidence. Play the part.

“Mrs. North. Good to see you again. You, too, Carter, Hank. Taylor has told me about your thoughts for the festival, and they sound fabulous. I’m looking forward to bringing them to life. Now, I know you were thinking of horse-and-buggy rides, but did you have any specific...”

She continued chattering while guiding them into the conference room where the rest of the family waited. By the time everyone was seated, Taylor’s face was only slightly pink instead of horror-movie white, and Moxie had stopped breaking out in unnerving snickers. Carter still wouldn’t look up, but Hank—Hank was watching her again.

Quickly, so fast that she almost thought she imagined it, he winked at her from across the table.

Forget keeping herself from being a bitch to Carter. The real challenge here would be making it through the meeting without sinking through the floor.

* * *

WEDNESDAYS WERE HANK’S night off. When he’d bought the cabins and moved himself and Millie out of the home he had shared with his folks and Moxie, his mother had made him swear on her future grave that he would bring Millie back at least once a week. Usually they grabbed a quick bite together, then he was pushed out the door with orders to see a movie or “be social.” Ma said that it was so they could spoil Millie silly without him protesting. He suspected it was really part of her ongoing quest to see him remarried, or at least going out on a regular basis. Subtlety had never been one of her strengths.

As he walked to the sprawling old Victorian and yelled to Millie to slow down before she slipped on the ice, he braced himself for what he was sure was going to be another round of lectures. Tonight’s installment, however, was strictly his own fault. He knew he’d made a mistake the moment he let himself wink at Brynn during the meeting.

It wasn’t the gesture itself that he regretted. She deserved something after getting them through Awkward Central without anyone wanting to bleach their brains. She’d put on some cute little librarian half-glasses, talking about nothing like her life depended on it, and he saw why Taylor had said she was all about family. She’d been willing to make an idiot of herself if necessary to help her cousin.

Yeah, she had definitely earned a wink. If only he’d been smooth enough to wait until Ma was looking the other way....

Sure enough, no sooner had he and Millie walked into the house and hung their coats in the hall closet than his mother took him by the arm.

“Moxie, can you amuse Millie for a while, please? Henry and I are going to the laundry room for a little chat.”

Ah, hell. She’d called him Henry and invoked the laundry room. That was the spot Janice North reserved for the worst transgressions, the ones usually punished by a serious dressing-down and manual labor.

“Moxie, no. Save me. You know what she’s like when she gets talking.”

Moxie grinned and tugged on the collar of Millie’s lab coat. “Come on, sprite. Let’s get out of your grandma’s way while she knocks some sense into your daddy’s head.”

“Can I watch?”

Great. Even his kid was abandoning him.

Resigned to his fate, he preceded his mother into the room and boosted himself up to sit on the dryer—an instinct from childhood. It was harder to be spanked if his mother couldn’t reach his bottom. “Okay. Let’s hear it.”

“Henry William North. Before you and Millie moved out, you and I had a little talk, remember?”

“And here it is, your once-a-week dinner as promised.”

“There was more to it than that, and you know it. You agreed with me that you were well and truly over the divorce and ready to move on. Start dating. Start having a life again.”

Very true. ’Course, he’d had his fingers crossed when he said it, but come on. That was self-preservation.

“You know, Ma, most folks your age are starting to have trouble remembering things. Why is it that your memory is just getting sharper? Are you part of some secret government experiment to steal memory cells from one person and transfer them to another?”

“Be serious for a minute, will you? I know it took a while to get over Heather, and I understand. You had a lot thrown at you very fast, and you needed time. But it’s been long enough. You bought the cabins, you and Millie are settled there, you’re building the life you wanted all those years ago, back before things got knocked off track.”

Hank snorted. Knocked off track? More like knocked up.

“In any case, I’m getting worried about you. You haven’t shown much interest in a woman in heaven knows how long.”

“Hey, hey, hey.” He raised his hand. A man could only listen to so much before he had to defend himself. “Not true. In fact, the only reason I saw the last Batman movie was because it had—”

“Anne Hathaway in a catsuit. I know.”

“You do?”

“Honestly, Hank. You think your brothers never tell me anything?”

Ian was lucky he was out of the country. Carter and Cash, on the other hand, were dead meat.

“Be that as it may,” she said with a pat on his arm, “it’s time for you to stop fixating on Catwoman and start looking at the flesh-and-blood women around you.”

Wait for it...

“That Brynn... She certainly seems nice.”

Could he call them or what? “Drop it, Ma.”

“Why? She’s smart and funny, and Millie certainly seems to like her.”

“Plus, she’s living in my backyard, which would make things kind of awkward if it didn’t work out, don’t you think? Not to mention that she’s working for us. Did you even listen to that sexual-harassment training we had to sit through?”

“You’re not at the dairy anymore.”

And this conversation was a great reminder of another reason why he had left: to be his own boss. To not have his family telling him what to do, in one form or another, 24/7.

“No, Mom. Just...no.”

She narrowed her eyes at him before smacking his feet. “Move your legs.”

He did it on autopilot, realized how easily he’d slipped, and groaned. Lucky for him there was no punishment on the horizon. Just the squeak of the dryer door as she pulled it open and pulled out a clean undershirt.

“Hank...” She folded the shirt in half, her actions automatic after decades of male laundry. “I know you’re reluctant to think about trying again, but life is hard enough as it is, especially when you’re a parent. Millie is going to take more from you than you realize. Things are easier when you don’t have to go through everything by yourself. And no, I’m not talking about the chores, okay? I’m talking about having someone in your corner. Someone to hold you up. Everyone deserves that, Hank. Even people who had a lousy marriage the first time around. Maybe even more so.”

Hell and damnation, how was he supposed to respond to that? Janice North didn’t put her heart on the line very often. For her to talk to him so openly, so honestly...she really must be worried.

“Okay, Ma. Total truth here. I wouldn’t mind finding someone someday, maybe even get married again. But it has to be on my terms. And my terms include not chasing someone who’s only here for a few months.”

She tossed the shirt into the hamper and grabbed a fresh one. “You can’t let that stop you. I saw the way you looked at her during the meeting today.”

Someday, he would learn. “Yes. I like Brynn. The whole, oh, thirty minutes of interaction I’ve had with her over the past three days have all been pleasant. But as you said yourself, Millie likes her.”

“And that’s bad?”

“Yeah, it is. Mills already asked me when she could get her ears pierced just like Brynn. She’s going to have a hard enough time saying goodbye when the time comes. Can you imagine if she saw me going out with Brynn? Hell, she had me married off to her friend Tish’s mom a dozen times before they moved. One dinner with Brynn, and Millie would be planning the wedding. I’m not gonna do that to her.”

There. She couldn’t argue with that one.

For a moment, it looked like he had won. She folded the shirt silently, let it drop into the hamper, grabbed a handful of socks and spread them across the top of the washer. With expert speed, she began matching them.

“All right, then,” she said at last. “Forget Brynn. But you need to make an effort, Hank. It’s past time.” She swept the paired socks into the hamper and picked up two singletons, one pink and one brown, dangling them in his face. “Because if you don’t wake up and get moving, my boy, this is how you and Millie are going to end up.”

* * *

ON FRIDAY NIGHT, Hank pulled into the driveway leading to the cabins, killed the engine and tried to muster up the energy to get out of the truck and walk into the house. When he picked Millie up from after-school care she had announced that her backpack wouldn’t zip anymore, her shoes were too tight and she needed a white T-shirt for tie-dye day on Monday. His choice had been to try to cram the store run into an already packed weekend, or get it out of the way immediately. He’d opted for door number two. Not a bad choice, but now it was dinnertime, they were both tired and grumpy and he’d forgotten to pull something out of the freezer that morning.

Great. Another Friday night of Kraft Dinner and ketchup with a side of guilt.

Compounding his frustration was the fact that, while Millie was more than happy to tell him about the items she needed, she had spent the entire shopping trip tap-dancing around any discussion of school itself. He knew better than to ask a simple What did you do today? He drew instead on his mother’s ancient lines: Did you read any good books? Who did you play with at recess? What did you draw in art?

Nothing.

Well, not a total nothing. She gave an animated reenactment of Curious George’s antics. But all other questions were met with shrugs, silence or sudden declarations that she wanted a telescope.

His mother said that Millie had too many other interests to think about school when she wasn’t there. Her report cards said she was attentive and contributed to classroom discussions. But his gut told him something was wrong.

“Hey, Mills. I was thinking—do you want to have a friend over this weekend?” Maybe she was just lonely, what with her best friend moving away. Maybe he could juggle the jobs, let Millie have an hour or two, maybe do some eavesdropping in case she let something slip with a classmate. “We could get a pizza and you could invite—I don’t know. Who do you like to play—”

“Daddy! Is there another car at Brynn’s place?”

He peered through the dying bits of daylight, unsure if this was a true question or an attempt at distraction. But sure enough, there was a second shape in front of the Wolfe cabin.

“Guess she has company. But about this week—”

“Oh! Maybe it’s Casey! She told me Casey was coming!”

“Who is Casey, and when were you talking to Brynn about him? Her? Whatever.” More important, might this Casey be a potential playmate?

“You know. Casey is her little boy. Not her little boy, but her... What’s that word? Not like uncle, or cousin, but...”

“Nephew?”

“Yes! That’s it! He’s her nephew. And he lives at a camp but he likes to play with her, and she was going to see him a whole lot while she’s living here, because the camp is... I don’t remember. Somewhere close.”

“And when did you get all this information?”

But his words were lost in a burst of movement as Millie opened her door, scrambled out of the truck and took off.

“Brynn!” She raced down the path between the trees. “Hey, Brynn! Can I come see Casey, please?”

“Millie,” he called helplessly. So much for that attempt at conversation. With a curse he slammed his way out of the truck and followed his daughter.

Millie barely avoided smacking into the man walking away from the cabin. “Whoa, kiddo.” The man laughed and stepped off the path. “Careful. You don’t want to slip.”

Millie nodded and scooted around him, aiming for Brynn, who was standing in the doorway with a kid in her arms. Millie crashed into her legs, causing Brynn to stoop and hug Millie to her. Hank groaned. He was never going to get her home now.

The man who had almost been Millie’s punching bag caught Hank’s eye. “Let me guess. That’s Millie, and you’re Hank.” He extended his hand. “Sam Catalano, Brynn’s brother. Good to meet you.”

Hank nodded and stuck out his hand, wishing he’d thought to pull on his gloves. His hands were probably like ice. Of course, if this guy was the hockey player, he was probably used to that. “Sorry about my daughter’s manners. She’s on a quest to set a new speed record from my place to here.”

“She’s off to a great start.” He grinned. “So, has my sister made your life a living hell yet?”

“Yeah, I’ve had to call the cops three times for her wild parties.”

“Excuse me?” Brynn said. “Hank, it was only one party. And Sam, remember, your night out with your wife depends on me babysitting, so you should watch your mouth, mister.”

“Oh, hell, she’s right. I’d better get out of here before I say something wrong and piss her off. Nice meeting you, Hank.”

“You, too,” Hank said, but his attention was already on the scene in front of him. Brynn’s nephew was squealing on her hip and Millie was chattering at top volume, yet Brynn still radiated calm while smiling at him. Nothing extraordinary. Just two adults sharing a moment in the midst of some kiddie insanity. But something about it felt so warm, so welcoming, that he was hit by the most ridiculous sense of longing he’d had in ages. It was almost like he was seeing the Ghost of Should-Have-Beens.

But that was ridiculous. And probably due to the amazing smells tickling his nose as he drew near.

“Hi, there.” He pointed toward Millie, but spoke to Brynn. “Sorry. She saw the car out front and figured that was her own personal invitation.”

“Well, of course it is. I told Millie to pop in anytime, and I meant it. That is, assuming it’s okay with you,” she added quickly.

“Please, Daddy? Please? Can I have a visit, oh, please, oh, please, oh, please?”

He wanted to say yes. Millie needed friends, true. But they should be her age, and local. Permanent. He couldn’t let her start thinking that everyone who stayed in the cabins was there purely for her enjoyment. She had to learn—they both had to learn—how to be friendly and helpful while maintaining the boundaries they needed to make this work for everyone involved.

“Mills,” he said gently. “We have to have dinner.”

“Why don’t you join us?” Brynn nodded at the toddler clinging to her like a monkey. “It’s just me and Casey, and I’m sure he would rather play with another kid than with his decrepit old auntie.”

She didn’t look decrepit, not that he could say that to her face. In a Leafs jersey that hung midthigh and something that looked like the leggings Millie wore beneath her lab coat, Brynn looked casual and relaxed and limber.

Dangerously limber.

“That’s a great offer, but—”

“Oh, Daddy, please!”

“Mills, come on. You have homework, and I’m in the middle of some things, and we have—um—plans.”

Brynn shook her head. “But you have to eat anyway, right? And seriously, you’d be doing me a favor. I learned how to cook by feeding hungry males, and I still don’t know how to make anything less than army quantities. If you don’t stay I’ll be eating spaghetti and meatballs for the next two weeks.”

Ah, hell. They did have to eat. If he didn’t have to spend time cooking, he might be able to work ahead a bit, freeing up that hour or so he wanted to give to Millie and a playmate. And since he would be helping Brynn...

“Okay.” He raised a hand to stifle Millie’s squeals. “But I wasn’t kidding—we have to be rude and scoot fairly quickly. Duty calls, and all that crap.”

Brynn gave him the kind of assessing look that made him feel distinctly uneasy, as if she had other plans that couldn’t be revealed yet, but she nodded quickly and stepped back to allow him entry. “You’re right. That’s horrifically rude. You’ll have to apologize by coming again another time when you can stay longer.”

Millie clapped her hands. “Oh, yes! We can do that. Right, Daddy?”

“We’ll talk,” was all he said as he stepped inside and shrugged free of his jacket, hanging it from the wall pegs already sporting a bright red parka and a tiny blue snowsuit. He looked from the suit to Millie and shook his head.

“Hard to believe she was ever that small.”

“And Casey’s a big guy. Right, squirt?”

Casey nodded slowly. Big blue eyes checked Hank out from head to toe. Apparently satisfied, he patted Brynn’s cheek.

“Casey blocks. Pease.”

“Good manners, bud. Millie, there’s a bunch of toys in the bedroom. Could you take Casey in there and show him around?”

The smile on Millie’s face was bright enough to ease his worries, at least for the moment. “Oh, yes! Come on, Casey!” She held out her hand. Miracle of miracles, Casey grabbed hold and followed her down the hall while Millie talked about the rooms, the work and whether they might be able to make something explode that night.

As her voice faded, Hank realized that, thanks to his own weakness, he was now alone with Brynn and would have to make conversation. Dammit. Ian could talk about anything, Carter and Cash put Millie to shame, but the small-talk gene had skipped him.

Still, he needed to say something.

“This, uh, really is nice of you,” Hank said as Brynn headed back to the kitchen area.

“My pleasure. And, like I said, army quantities.” She lifted the lid of a slow cooker and gave a stir. He caught sight of deep red sauce, inhaled the warmth and felt like he’d walked into a sixties sitcom. “Without help, I’d be eating this three meals a day for a week. No hardship, but my jeans wouldn’t be too happy about it.”

He couldn’t help it. That was a comment that begged a man to check out the curve of her hips. She might not be wearing jeans at the moment, but he remembered the way they’d fit her on move-in day, the way they had hugged as she lifted and hauled, and he had to agree that any action that spoiled that view would indeed be a sin.

“So are you settling in okay? Have everything you need?” He glanced around the space, which already felt cozier. “You’re kind of our test case for this cabin-rental thing, so if I messed up anything, let me know. Don’t be shy.”

Oh, that was rich—him telling her to not be shy. Pot, meet kettle.

She laughed as she opened the refrigerator. “My brothers would tell you that shyness is the least of my issues. Everything is great so far. This place really is adorable—not just my cabin, but all of it. How long have you been here?”

“A few months. My sort-of uncle Lou finally admitted he couldn’t keep up with things anymore and let me buy it off him.”

“So it’s been in the family a while.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s so cool. We moved a lot when I was little, and my brothers were more into taking things apart and destroying them than preserving them.” She pulled grated cheese and salad ingredients from the shelves and handed them to him. He took them automatically. “It’s nice to see things being passed down through a family. Traditions, heirlooms. Things that last.”

He couldn’t hold back the snort. “The only things that were lasting around here were the river, the rocks and the foundations. Lou should have admitted defeat years ago. I still don’t know if I’ll have everything up and running by May.”

“Given what I’ve seen of your work thus far, I have no doubt that you’ll do just fine.”

“Thanks.”

“Total truth.” She held out a bottle. “I need a beer. Care to join me?”

He meant to say no—after all, he still had a full night ahead—but what kind of host would he be to refuse? Or, for that matter, what kind of guest?

The bottle was halfway to his lips when she made a small sound.

“Crap! I always forget. Would you like a glass?”

“No, thanks. This is fine.”

“You’re sure? I’m a horrible hostess—sorry. I never remember the gracious touches when I’m off-duty.”

It was so unexpected—the organizational queen forgetting something—that he felt himself relaxing. Maybe even grinning. “You’re feeding me and you made my kid happy. I can’t think of anything more gracious than that.”

A slight hint of pink rose in her cheeks, spreading down her neck to the creamy bit of skin visible in the vee of her jersey. It was an intriguing sight, for sure. He could swear there was a little freckle at the point of the vee. Or maybe it was a fleck of sauce. He couldn’t tell. Neither could he pull his gaze away. Because even though he couldn’t see it, he was suddenly very aware that the opening of the jersey was a few tiny millimeters above the sweet line of cleavage, a part of the female anatomy he had always found highly alluring.

She turned slightly to grab a bubbling pot from the stove, breaking his concentration and making him realize, with embarrassment, that he’d been staring a bit too intently for a little too long at a particularly dangerous zone.

And he’d been worried about Millie overstepping her bounds.

“Did your brother play for the Leafs?” Okay, lame line, but it sort of excused his blatant perusal.

The slight quirk to her eyebrows told him how much she bought it. But instead of giving him the lecture he deserved, she simply dumped pasta into the colander in the sink.

“No,” she said. “He was all over the place for a while, but didn’t really hit his stride until he landed in Detroit.”

“So you wear that to harass him?”

She turned back, her face twisted in a mix of humor and chagrin. “I wear it for me. Because try as I might, I can’t stop rooting for them.”

A feeling he knew well. “A sucker for the underdog, huh?”

“It’s pathetic. If they’re playing lousy and I try to cheer for another team, I feel like a traitor, but if they actually do a good job, I can’t walk away because this might be the year they turn it around.”

“I’m sorry.”

She laughed and gave the colander a shake before swishing her hands at him, a motion he recognized as a request to step back. “Sometimes I think about forming a support group—Diehard Leafs Fans Anonymous—but then I wonder if anyone would be willing to admit to it.”

“Well, winters can get pretty long around here. Time it right and it could be the biggest excitement to hit town in years.”

She laughed again, dumped the drained pasta back into the pot and added a heaping ladle of the sauce. The smell of all that beef and garlic was getting to him. It was the only way to account for the slight light-headedness that was taking him over. It had to be the food. Maybe the beer on a mostly empty stomach.

God help him if it was the woman.

CHAPTER FOUR

BRYNN HAD ALWAYS felt that Sunday afternoons in winter were meant for curling up with a good book and a bottomless cup of peppermint tea, but she could count on one hand the number of times that life had decided she’d earned that reward. Which was undoubtedly why she was spending this particular Sunday talking about work and men—not necessarily in that order—with Taylor.

“I stopped at the park on my way over,” she said as Taylor frowned at the pile of Ian’s clothes spread across her bed. “Something about it doesn’t feel right to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know it’s the center of town and everything, but I don’t think it’s right for the festival. This is all about the dairy. It should be held someplace with a Northstar connection.”

Taylor shrugged and plucked a sweater from the stack. “Well, we could hold it in the parking lot beside the offices, but I think the park has nicer ambiance.”

“There has to be something.” Brynn frowned at the collection of clothes and grabbed an old sweatshirt emblazoned with a Northstar Dairy crest. “Here. Wear this.”

“Not that. It won’t make me think of Ian.”

“Why not? It’s his, it’s got his smell on it—”

“And it’s for the dairy, which is where I work with Carter.”

Oh. Good point.

“Anyway,” Brynn continued, “if you have any legitimate suggestions for another venue, I’m all ears.”

“I’ll think about it, but Brynn, we have the permits already and the flyers and ads are almost ready to print. Changing now would be a pain in the patoot.”

“So? I’m the queen of pain.” She grabbed a navy fleece that sported the word Coach in gold letters. “How about this one?”

Taylor glanced at it, appeared to think, then shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Ian used to coach peewee hockey. But his assistant was—”

“Don’t say it.” Those damned North brothers were freakin’ inseparable. Hank seemed to be the only one who didn’t share their pack mentality.

Brynn ran her finger over the lettering on the fleece and remembered, just for a second, that moment when she caught Hank checking her out. She wasn’t used to quiet men. In her experience, all males were a walking assortment of bad jokes, clumsy—if sweet—gestures and copious amounts of gas, so it had almost been a relief when she caught him staring at her boobs. Nice to know he was capable of the Neanderthalesque qualities she associated with most men. And, if she were being totally honest, it was nice to know that he had been trying to scope out what was beneath her loose jersey.

Not that she planned to act on his apparent interest. She had two jobs here, and neither would be made easier by indulging in anything with a member of the family that was involved in both those endeavors.

Still, she hadn’t quite been able to stop herself from brushing her arm against his shoulder when she passed him the salad, sending the loveliest vibrations running through her....

With a start, she realized that Taylor was talking.

“...Moxie dropping hints about weddings.”

“Oh. Wow.” Hoping to hell she’d given an appropriate response, she plucked blindly from the pile, emerging with a cranberry-colored sweater so soft it begged to be fondled. “How about this one?”

Taylor’s nose wrinkled and she backed away. “Crap! How did that get in there?”

“What?” Brynn rubbed the luxurious softness between her fingers. “Is it poison?”

“Bad memories. Turns out I’m allergic to cashmere.” She shuddered. “A very nice night ended up being a whole lot less pleasant.”

“Damn. The color would be great on you.”

“Yeah, but it would clash horribly with the hives.” Taylor ran a hand over the pile of clothes on the bed, patting them almost wistfully. “Brynn, I don’t know if this is going to work. It’s getting so I can hardly be in the same room as Carter without falling apart, and since I see him all day, you can imagine how well that’s going. I think he knows something is wrong.”

“Of course he does. Your fiancé is away and has been gone for months. That’s all he knows.”

“I don’t know.... Sometimes I get this feeling that he’s watching me. Not in a creepy way, but like...like the way I know I look at him when no one else is around.”

Brynn’s hands froze despite the fleece surrounding them. “You think he might— Oh, Taylor. No. Don’t say you think he feels it, too.”

“I hope to God I’m wrong. But it’s... I don’t know. Maybe I’m reading things into it that are totally wrong. You know, projecting my own secret wishes and all that Psych 101 crap.”

“Look. You have that social marketing conference coming up in spring, remember? He’s not going. That will give you days and days away from him, and when you come back, it will be just a few more weeks until Ian comes home. Once he’s here, you’ll remember how much you love him and everything will be wonderful again.”

Taylor shook her head. “I hope you’re right,” she said softly. Then she looked at the fleece in Brynn’s hands and smiled sadly. “Not that one, either.”

Brynn didn’t dare ask.

“Carter has the same one. Their mom gave them all matching fleeces for Christmas last year.” She ran her hand over the fabric. “It’s what he was wearing when I realized I wanted him instead of Ian.”

* * *

HANK PULLED INTO his parking space at Northstar Dairy, killed the engine on his old pickup and let out a sigh that was equal parts frustration and anticipation.

“Stupid damned meetings.”

The frustration was easy to figure out. Hauling Millie out of bed, having to abandon the wiring job he’d been working on when he realized he was going to be late, driving through February snow... The morning had been a perfect storm of irritation, and it was only a little past ten.

But he would rather focus on his annoyance than on the little jolts running through him at the thought of watching Brynn marshal them through another session. Or, more accurately, the thought of watching her in her business clothes while remembering how she had looked with her jersey dipping and the spaghetti steam making her hair curl around her face. He’d been trying to push the picture from his memory since Friday night. Thus far it had insisted on staying there, which annoyed him all the more.

And now he had to sit through a meeting with his mother doing her best eagle imitation. Son of a—

A muffled bang to his right caught his attention. Carter was climbing out of his Saab. Huh. Carter was never late.

Hank grabbed his gloves and his files, opened his door and winced as a metallic skreeeek cut through the snowy silence. Oops. He had planned to take care of the door last night. And the night before, come to think of it.

Sure enough, the noise was enough to draw Carter’s attention.

“You ever gonna give up that bucket of bolts and drive something that can be seen in public?”

Hank shrugged. “Look who’s talking—a man who drives a compensation-mobile. At least my truck has character.”

Carter snorted. “Sure it does. A character that’s begging for a serial killer to come and put it out of its misery.”

Hank fell into step beside Carter, both of them bending slightly forward against the bitter wind swirling snowflakes around their heads.

“I can’t believe they had school today. Millie was pissed.”

“Can’t say I blame her.”

Saying that Millie had been reluctant to get on the bus that morning was like saying that snow was a little cold. It had been getting progressively more difficult to drag her out of bed each day. Her teacher assured him that all the kids were tired. His mother reminded him that when he was a kid, she had to wake him by firing stuffed animals from the other side of the room, because he woke up smacking at anything he could reach. All of which reassured him until the next time he saw the dread on Millie’s face as she mounted the steps of the big yellow bus, and his gut told him there was more at play here than simple fatigue or loneliness.

Especially today, when, at the last minute, she had yanked off her lab coat and tossed it on the floor. He should have counted it a victory. He’d been telling her to leave it at home for weeks now. But the vicious way she had tugged at it left him suspicious that his suggestions had nothing to do with her last-minute abandonment.

He would talk to her again tonight. Maybe this time, he’d find the magic words to get her to open up.

“Hello? Earth to Hank?”

He looked up in surprise. Carter’s fist hovered in front of his face, undoubtedly ready to do the old knock-knock on the forehead.

“Sorry. I was distracted.”

“No shit, Sherlock. I asked you the same question three times. You sure you’re awake?”

“Right. Because if this was a dream, of course I’d plop us in the middle of a blizzard.”

The doors to the office building were dead ahead, shining like the pearly gates. He couldn’t wait to slip inside their warmth. Just a few steps to go.

“So what were you asking?”

“Forget it.”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’ve got a lot on my mind these days.”

By way of apology, he held the door for Carter.

“Age before beauty,” he quipped. A guy had to take his fun where he could find it.

“So.” Carter stamped snow from his feet. “How is it having Brynn in the cabin?”

“Fine.”

“Just fine? I thought I’d get more of a reaction than that.”

“Why?”

Carter shrugged. “Because, blind one, she’s a good-looking woman.”

Hank stopped midstomp. “Did Ma put you up to this?”

“To what?”

Pointing out Brynn’s assets and proximity. Pushing me to start dating. Reminding me that I’m turning into a grumpy old man and I’m not even thirty.

“Nothing.”

“God, aren’t you all sunshine and flowers this morning.”

Hank waved to the receptionist and hustled down the hall toward the conference room. “You earned it fair and square when you burned the last Pop-Tart.”

“What the— That was twenty years ago, Hankie.”

“Yeah, but you did it on purpose because we were out of your blueberry ones, so you didn’t want me to have any, either. And they were strawberry-frosted, man. With sprinkles. Best Pop-Tarts ever.”

“You know, most people let go of the past at some point.”

“Lucky I don’t have that problem.”

Carter snorted and shook his head. “You keep telling yourself that, bro.”

Hank pulled open the door to the conference room and deliberately walked in ahead of Carter this time. He subjected everyone to the kind of look he would give Millie when she pushed him beyond his limits and dropped into his seat without once making eye contact with Brynn.

All he could say was that it was a damned good thing he loved his family.

* * *

BRYNN WATCHED THE assorted Norths carefully as they straggled into the room, trying to gauge the emotional climate of the group before she started. She could and had handled hostile, indifferent and present-in-body-only groups in the past, but each situation required a different approach. Last week the Norths had been mostly curious. This week would be the real test of how they felt about working with her.

As expected, Moxie arrived first. She nodded at Brynn, took her seat at the head of the table and launched into a loud recap of that week’s Dancing with the Stars. Janice and Cash entered next, deep in a discussion of schedules. They barely glanced at her, but a wave and a quick smile let her know that they were on board. Mr. North—“Call me Robert”—trailed behind with his typical bemused look, as if he had been dragged from his research and had yet to reenter the real world, but he was the first to actually talk to her, asking how she was doing and if she needed anything. She had a feeling his genes were the ones that had asserted themselves when it came time to mold Hank’s personality.

Taylor scuttled in on the dot of ten. The worry lines on her forehead gave Brynn pause, but her cousin tugged on the collar of the shirt peeking out from beneath her argyle sweater and winked. Brynn recognized both items as ones that belonged to Ian and her happy meter zipped up a couple of notches.

Carter and Hank walked in together, five minutes late. Correction: Carter walked in, paused to survey the room and slipped into the empty chair beside Moxie. Brynn breathed a small sigh of relief. She had feared he would take the seat next to Taylor.

Hank stalked into the room with a chip on his shoulder so huge, she could almost see an indentation mark.

Oh, hell. He was not going to be happy by the time this meeting was over.

“Sorry,” Carter said. “Someone went into the ditch right in front of me. I had to give him a push.”

Moxie waved a hand, which Brynn interpreted as something along the lines of a papal dispensation. Taylor shot him a quick smile that made Brynn’s stomach clench, then reached up and rubbed her collar. Whew.

All eyes turned to Hank. He met them without blinking.

“I was late. So fire me.”

Moxie sighed. Janice gave him the kind of stern, one-fingered point that Brynn recognized as a universal gesture of motherly reprimanding. Cash rolled his eyes.

“Shall we begin with a rousing chorus of ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’?” The words were out of Brynn’s mouth before she realized it, the rote reply born of years jollying her brothers through marauding catastrophes. Just in time, she stopped herself from wincing over the blunder. Better to have everyone think she’d said it on purpose.

Fake it ’til you make it.

Hank stared at her like he couldn’t believe what she had said. The disbelief slowly faded into something resembling respect mixed with humor, laced with chagrin. Underlying it all was a hint of something else, something that brought a flush to her cheeks.

He quickly resumed the bland-indifference act, but now she saw it for what it was.

Hank was trying to fake out someone, and it wasn’t her. She probably shouldn’t be curious. And he definitely wasn’t going to like what she was about to propose.

But she had to admit that things had just become a lot more interesting.

“Let’s hear how everyone has progressed this week. Mrs. North?”

“Dammit, girl. I told you to call me Moxie.”

Reports were given. Items were checked off the agenda. Brynn filled them in on her progress, noting with satisfaction the looks of approval being sent her way. There were few things she loved more than attacking a to-do list and bringing order out of chaos. Another week and she would have this group purring like a finely tuned kitten.

There was just one bump in the road to navigate first.

“Okay folks, we’re making excellent progress. There’s one last item I want to raise. You might not agree with me. That’s fine. But I feel very strongly that the festival should not be held in the village park, charming as it is, but someplace with stronger ties to the family.” She offered her best smile, feigning a confidence she sure as hell didn’t feel as she looked straight over her glasses at Hank. “I propose that the festival be held at the Northwoods Cabins.”

The color drained from his face. So did any traces of warmth.

“Are you out of your ever-loving mind?”

“Quite probably,” she said with all the cheer she could carry off. “But it’s still on the table.”

“What, uh, what brought you to this conclusion?” Janice glanced at Hank.

Brynn ticked off the points on her fingers. “A stronger family connection. A gorgeous location, filled with trees and the river and plenty of places to park. The cabins would make perfect staging areas for the activities—there can be a kids’ cabin with face-painting and games, a craft cabin for the milk-bag crocheting, a history cabin, et cetera. If it rains we won’t need a tent because the activities are already inside. We can do the closing fireworks over the river and use the central area for the stage and picnic tables.” She smiled again. “Plus, it would be a fabulous grand opening for the cabin business.”

“I don’t need—” Hank stopped, seeming to struggle to collect himself before continuing. “Look. It sounds really great, I know, but I— No. Just no.”

“It sounds pretty good to me, Hank.” Moxie sent him the evil eye. “What’s your problem?”

“Other than the fact that Millie and I have to live there while all these strangers traipse through our front yard?”

“You mean the way they’ll be doing once you are officially in business?” Robert’s quiet comment brought a halt to the whispers and mutters that had begun.

Hank looked slightly taken aback, but only for a moment.

“That will be different.”

“How?” Janice spoke with the authority that only a mother could muster. “I think this would be an excellent way to get you accustomed to the comings and goings.”

“I don’t—” He stopped again. Brynn waited. She could convince him to do this, but it had to come from him.

Moxie spoke up. “Henry, when your great-uncle built that house and those cabins, he was as proud of them as he could be. He used to have the whole family out there every year for Halloween. He’d fill the woods with ghosts and pumpkins, have a bonfire, make it a party place. We loved going there.” She shook her head. “Then your uncle Lou took over and it all went to hell. Used to break my heart to see how he let it go to pot. Me, I’m mighty proud to see you bringing it back to life. Lou would have been too dumb and lazy to grab this chance. You’re not either of those. So for the love of Pete, boy, don’t pretend you are.”

Hank closed his eyes. Brynn saw the lines in his face, saw the way his fingers tightened on his pen, and felt a flash of guilt. Was she asking too much?

“Fine.” He pointed the pen at Moxie. “I’ll do it. But you have to swear you’ll have everything and everyone out of there within two days of it being over. I have folks checking in Thursday night and I’ll need time to get ready.”

“I’ll help with that.” Brynn spoke quickly. “I’d be happy to do it. And anything else you might need.”

He arched an eyebrow in her direction. “Gee, thanks, Brynn. But I think you’ve done plenty already.”

* * *

SATURDAY MORNING FOUND Hank exactly where he’d been for days: in the Carleton cottage, pounding the hell out of floorboards that needed replacing and sending dark thoughts in the direction of the Wolfe cabin, home of the woman who had made it necessary for him to speed up his timetable by a full week. More, really, since folks would need to get into the cabins ahead of time to set up.

His schedule was a mess. His mood had been launched into permanently foul. He was juggling catch-up and Millie care. And, because life wasn’t exciting enough, his daughter seemed determined to do everything in her power to make his job even more time-consuming.

Like taking off when his back was turned.

“Millie?” He poked his head into every room of the cottage, even though he’d checked each space twice already. It wasn’t like there were many places to hide. Remembering one of her favorite tricks from toddlerhood, Hank opened all the cupboards, hoping to hell he’d hear her familiar giggle with each creak of the hinges.

No go. She wasn’t in the cottage. And since she would have told him if she were simply running home to grab a new toy, he had a pretty good idea where to find her.

He shoved his hands in his pockets as he tramped through the piles of rapidly melting snow toward Brynn’s. He’d been avoiding her since Wednesday’s meeting, not certain he could look at her without his blood boiling. Or, worse, without wanting to take her up on her offer of help. Not because he needed it. Or because he wanted to spend time with her. Just because...well, because she should see, firsthand, the extra work she was causing him.

Yeah, that was it.

He rapped sharply on the door, ready to dispense dire warnings and punishments to his offspring and anyone else who might deserve it. All of the words died on his tongue the minute Brynn opened the door.

She was in a bathrobe. Not a serviceable terry-cloth robe, but a thin one made of something purple and shiny, dotted with red lips, that hugged and clung in so many places that she might as well have been naked. She must have been dripping wet when she yanked it on.

And, God help him, he wanted to yank it off her, right then and there.

He felt like someone had kidnapped all his senses, stripped them of every other memory or association and replaced them all with Brynn. He saw nothing but her curves and the damp patches on her chest where her hair dripped on her robe. He smelled nothing but a slight hint of orange. He felt only the heat surrounding her, tasted nothing but his own sudden lust and heard nothing but—

But his daughter’s muffled squeak.

Millie. Crap, for a minute there he’d forgotten his own kid.

He shook himself like the dog he was and scraped up something that resembled a brain cell. “Hi. Sorry to interrupt—” that was a lie if ever he’d told one “—but I couldn’t find Millie.”

“Funny thing, that.” She stepped back and walked into the room, which he took as an invitation to follow her. Not that he had much choice in the matter. She was the Death Star and he was caught in the tractor beam that was the picture of everything he imagined beneath that purple haze. “It just so happens that I found a Millie. I was about to text you and ask if you were looking for her.”

He glanced at his daughter, huddled on the corner of the sofa, looking like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to burst into tears or celebrate her rebellion. All of a sudden he dreaded her adolescence in a way he never had before.

“Mills? What’s going on?”

She stuck out her bottom lip. “I wanted to play with Brynn.”

“I know, but you can’t take off like that, kiddo. Do you have any idea how scared I was when I couldn’t find you?”

Yeah, you were terrified until you caught one gander at Brynn in her robe and your brain took a hike south. Real Father-of-the-Year material there, North.

“I’m sorry,” she said, but he could tell she was mostly sorry she’d been caught.

“Sorry alone doesn’t cut it, Mills. You need to...” What? He had no idea where to start. He couldn’t tell if he was simply out of his league, or if his thought patterns had been scrambled even worse when Brynn sat on the edge of the couch and her robe parted, giving him a glimpse of knee and calf and, holy shit, was that her thigh?

She pinched her robe closed and sat straighter, the picture of primness. “You only missed her by a little while, at least as far as I can tell. She wasn’t here when I got in the— I mean, she’s only been here a few minutes.”

Wait a minute. Something wasn’t being said here, probably because Brynn didn’t want to get Millie in any more trouble than she already was. But parenting was a job that quickly taught a man how to read between the lines.

“Don’t tell me she let herself in while you were in the shower.”

Brynn bit her lip, sighed and nodded. “I’m afraid so.” Her cheeks flamed almost as red as the lips decorating her robe. “And, I’d better tell you up front, I wasn’t expecting company when I walked out of the bathroom, so Millie might have received a bit of an anatomy lesson.”

He closed his eyes, but it was too late. His brain was doing an excellent job of filling in the blanks. Worse was the fact that he was suddenly and intensely jealous of his misbehaving daughter.

“Millie,” he said. “Did you let yourself into Brynn’s cabin?”

“I knocked first.”

“Oh, good to know you remembered something. So you knocked and then waltzed on in?”

“No, Daddy. I knocked again. A lot. But I was cold and she didn’t open the door and I knew she was home because her car was right there, so I opened up the door and I waited.” She glanced down, eyes hidden behind her glasses. “But then I had to pee.”

If he got through the next ten minutes of his life, he could get through almost anything.

“Please tell me you didn’t march into Brynn’s bathroom while she was in the shower.”

“You know, maybe I’ll put on some clothes while you guys talk about this.” Brynn rose but Hank slowed her flight.

“Hang on. We’ll get out of here. Millie, you need to apologize. Now.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “I really had to go, Daddy.”

“Mills, it’s more than that. Tell Brynn you’re sorry you let yourself into her place and invaded her privacy. Now.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. Tears ran down her cheeks. But she said nothing.

He glanced at Brynn, who was watching them with a mix of compassion and embarrassment that struck him as so endearing that he was brain-dead once again. Or maybe that was because the top of the robe had gaped a bit when she stood, and now he could see a lot farther down. The top of the sweet hollow between her breasts was plainly visible.

Forget Millie. He was the one who needed to get out of there fast.

“Mills. Say you’re sorry and let’s go.”

“But I’m not.” The words were barely more than a whisper, clogged with tears and thick with emotion, but they came through loud and clear.

“Amelia Jacobs North—”

“I told you I was bored, Daddy.” Her voice cracked. “But you didn’t talk to me. You just kept working. So I left. Because I wanted someone to play with me.”

“It’s not Brynn’s—” he began, but a movement from the other side of the room caught his attention. Brynn was waving in a universal time-out motion.

“Could I talk to you for a moment?” She jerked her head toward the back of the cabin. “In private?”

He probably should make Millie speak before he left her, but on the other hand, this way she’d have more time to feel guilty. Stewing in her own juices, as his mother would say.

’Course, he couldn’t remember a single time when that had worked on him, but maybe it was different for girls.

He was so filled with irritation at his daughter that he barely registered the fact that Brynn had led him down the short hall. They stood in the small alcove between two doors. One stood open. The one to the bedroom, of course, with the giant sleigh bed draped with clothing—probably the things she’d planned to don when she came out of the shower. He caught a glimpse of jeans, something blue and sparkly and a bit of blue lace that he knew had to be a bra.

He closed his eyes, but that which had been seen could never be unseen.

She tugged the door closed, her cheeks pink once again, but her gaze was steady as she looked at him.

“I might be way out of line here, but I have a proposition for you.”

He couldn’t help it. She said proposition, and his mind jumped to the precise place it had no business going. Lucky for him, Brynn seemed to have a lot more class than he did. She continued talking as if she hadn’t said some of the most provocative words he’d heard in years.

“I know you’re insanely busy, mostly because of me. I meant it when I said I’d like to help. Since I’m right here, and Millie seems to like me—which is totally mutual, by the way—well, instead of repeating this scenario, why don’t we set up something official. Have scheduled times when she can hang here with me so you can work without interruption.”

Her words worked the miracle he’d thought impossible as his interest went from sixty to zero in no time flat.

“No.”

“Why not?”

He would have barked out something about not needing help, being fine, coping on his own—but she wasn’t accusing, he could see. She was genuinely curious.

That was a new one. His family brushed off his need to do things himself as Youngest Child Syndrome. To have someone actually want to know his reasons—well, it made a difference. Almost as much as the fact that she had crossed her arms and now her breasts were pushed higher and there was more cleavage visible at the opening of her robe and if he didn’t look away in the next three seconds he was going to do something really insane instead of merely stupid.

“When I said that you’re our test case, I wasn’t kidding. Millie needs to learn boundaries. That won’t happen if she’s visiting you all the time. You might have no problem with it, but the next person to stay here might not be as understanding.”

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