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His mother probably wasn’t even awake yet.
Rubbing his hand over his face to clear the fog of less than four hours sleep, Jackson leaned back against the pillows.
She could have woken him so that he could walk with her. The fact she hadn’t told him all he needed to know about the way she viewed their relationship.
She’d already pushed it into the history books.
He wondered how she’d react when she discovered he had no intention of stopping at one night.
Jackson smiled.
He wondered if she realized she hadn’t once checked her emails.
CAREFULLY SUPPORTING THE bundle tucked inside her coat, Kayla tapped on the front door of the house.
Just one night, she told herself. Nothing to panic about. Other people did it all the time and then got on with their lives. It didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t a threat to who she was or what she wanted.
So why the knot in her stomach?
The door opened and Elizabeth stood there, her smile welcoming. “I got your text. You didn’t need to bring her back. I could have come and collected her later, dear.”
The endearment made her chest feel tight. She wasn’t used to hearing it.
Yet another reason to stay away from Jackson. It wasn’t just the man who was a threat, it was his whole family.
“I felt like the walk.” Actually she’d felt like running. As fast as she could from the man lying in her bed. This woman’s son. “Did I wake you?”
“I wake early.”
Someone else who couldn’t sleep, Kayla thought. “I’ll bring her blanket over later and I couldn’t find her toy. It might be under the sofa.”
“I didn’t realize she’d spent the whole night with you. I thought Jackson was picking her up.”
“She seemed settled with me.” Kayla gently extracted Maple, who squirmed with excitement and licked her face.
“I hope she wasn’t too much trouble.”
Kayla handed over the puppy, surprised by how much she wanted to keep her and relieved Maple couldn’t talk because she was the only witness to what had happened the night before.
“She slept.”
“When she’s out, nothing will wake her.” Elizabeth stood to one side. “Come on in out of the cold. We’re all in the kitchen.”
“All?”
“Brenna and Élise are here. Élise is making pancakes, although she calls them crepes or something French. All I know is that they taste good, but that girl can’t make anything that doesn’t taste good.”
Kayla hesitated. She should have said no, but the alternative was going back to the cabin where Jackson was still asleep.
“I should work—”
“Brenna’s just made a fresh pot of coffee.”
The word coffee decided it. Kayla stepped inside and was once again enveloped by the welcoming warmth of the house. The delicious smell of coffee mingled with cinnamon and freshly baked rolls. Warm winter smells.
Brenna and Élise were both busy in the kitchen, chatting together as they prepared breakfast.
Kayla greeted them, feeling awkward, while Elizabeth filled a mug with hot coffee.
“So did you even see Jackson last night? I thought he was going to take Maple.”
“I—” Thrown by that unexpected question, Kayla fumbled for an answer. “Yes, he—popped round.”
Brenna sent her a quick look as she removed a box of eggs from the fridge and clutched them against her chest.
Élise extracted them from her grip. “Merde! You’re not supposed to squeeze the box! They are eggs, not boulders. They will break.”
“Sorry. You know I’m not much of a cook. Except for bacon. No one fries bacon like I do.”
Élise rolled her eyes and muttered something unintelligible in French. Then she smiled at Kayla. “So—how was my pizza?”
“It was delicious.” She didn’t tell them that she and Jackson had devoured it cold in the early hours of the morning, sitting naked in front of the warm glow of the fire while the snow fell outside.
“There is nothing better than pizza when you have done lots of exercise and are totally starving.” Her tone innocent, Élise smacked the eggs on the edge of a bowl. “Don’t you agree, Brenna?”
“I do.” Brenna gave up on cooking and picked up her coffee. “And the best thing about pizza? It can be shared. So if other people have been raising a sweat along with you, you can both eat.”
Oh, God, they knew.
She didn’t know how, but they definitely knew.
Kayla bent and made a fuss of Maple, hiding her scarlet face.
“You ate pizza together?” Elizabeth’s face brightened. “That’s good. Jackson’s been working too hard lately. He needs to relax. He carries so much responsibility on his shoulders. What time did he leave you? It isn’t like him not to answer his phone. Walter is in a state about Darren. He wants to talk to Jackson. I really don’t want him getting so worked up—” Worrying out loud, Elizabeth returned to mixing the ingredients for her cinnamon stars while Kayla kept her head down and tried to think up an answer that wouldn’t reveal the exact whereabouts of her son.
“I—er—didn’t look at my watch—”
“I just had a text from him,” Brenna said smoothly. “He has a few things to do and then he wants to talk to me about the ski program. I’ll tell him to look in on Walter.”
“I had a text from him, too.” Élise walked across the kitchen with a large bag of flour. “We are meeting to discuss the restaurant later. Brenna, you are supposed to be helping me.”
“You keep complaining, so I’ve resigned as your sous-chef or whatever I’m supposed to be.”
“A sous-chef has to be able to cook more than bacon. If you were my sous-chef I would have fired you long ago. You would last less than a minute in my kitchen. Fortunately I now have Elizabeth.” She beamed at Jackson’s mother. “You are the new shining star of my kitchen. So calm. I hear Darren already has a job at a café in the village. It will suit him better I think. Stop stroking the puppy and wash your hands, Kayla. I need your help.”
“I don’t know how to cook.” She noticed that the French girl was pronouncing the h in her words this morning and remembered what Jackson had said about her sounding more French when she was stressed.
“Fortunately I do know how to cook and so does Elizabeth, which is a good thing or we would all starve around here.” Measuring flour, Élise beamed at Kayla. “I will give you directions.”
“And she gives clear directions. I enjoyed myself so much last night. If I’d known what fun it was working in a restaurant I would have done it years ago. And Jackson told me it was your idea, Kayla.” Elizabeth removed a slab of cookie dough from the fridge while Kayla washed her hands, relieved that the subject had apparently moved away from Jackson’s whereabouts.
“It seemed like a logical solution to a problem. What do you want me to do?”
“Sift my flour into a bowl for me. Easy. Here—” Élise handed her the equipment and picked up a whisk and started to beat eggs. “When I was a teenager I used to work in a mountain restaurant in the Alps. It was more of a hut than a restaurant—we sold crepes and vin chaud to skiers as they passed. Perfect skiing food.”
“I had hot spiced apple cider for the first time.” Kayla shook the sieve. “It was delicious.”
Elizabeth shaped the dough. “Alice used to make it with apples from our orchard.”
Élise glanced up. “You’re getting flour on the table, Kayla. Merde, all I ask you to do is sift flour and you are making a mess. You are almost as bad as Brenna.”
The insult warmed her. Ridiculous, but it made her feel included. One of them. “I warned you I couldn’t cook.” But she was smiling and so was Élise.
“This isn’t cooking—” The French girl reached out and grabbed Kayla’s wrist, moving the sieve over the bowl. “Don’t shake so hard. You are covering everything, including Maple.” She blew kisses at the puppy, who wagged her tail happily. “Je t’adore mon petit chouchou. Tu es trop mignon.”
“So you ski, too?”
“Ben bien sûr, of course. Brenna, if I ask you to fetch me maple syrup, could you do it without breaking the bottle? At this rate I could just make the pancakes on the floor. Most of the flour is there.”
“Ignore her,” Brenna advised. “Élise, next time you wipe out on the mountain I’m skiing right over your head.”
“I never wipe out. I am elegant on skis.” Élise added milk to her egg mixture, whisking all the time, the motion of her wrist barely visible. “I skied from the age of four.”
“Four?” Brenna gave a disdainful sniff. “Late starter.”
“I lived for a while in the Alps. I could see Mont Blanc from my bedroom window. And the climate is much better than here.”
Brenna placed a bottle of maple syrup on the table with exaggerated care. “Are you criticizing our Vermont climate?”
“Only the winter—” Élise paused to test the consistency of the mixture “—in the winter it is freezing.” She rolled her rs. “In France it can be cold, yes, but not like this where your eyelashes can freeze to your face.”
“Hey, you could take us to Paris. You still have an apartment there, don’t you?” Brenna grinned. “Girls’ weekend.”
Girls’ weekend.
Kayla finished sifting the flour. Maybe she would do that, she thought. Maybe she’d actually take a holiday.
Paris in springtime.
She’d never done anything like that. What surprised her was how appealing it sounded.
Asking herself what a night with Jackson had done to her, she pushed the bowl toward Élise and suddenly realized the other girl was quiet. She wondered if all the talk of Paris had made her homesick. “All done.”
Distracted, Élise stared at the mess around her and opened her mouth, but Elizabeth got there before her.
“Wonderful,” she said quickly, swiftly wiping flour from the surrounding surfaces and the floor. “Maple needed a bath anyway.”
Élise shook her head in despair. “Did you never cook with your mother, Kayla?”
“My mother hated cooking.” Kayla wiped her hands. “In fact she hated being a mother.” She didn’t know who was more surprised by that confession—her or them.
Elizabeth’s eyes were troubled. “I’m sure she didn’t, dear.”
“No, she really did.” Kayla sat down with her coffee. “She had me when she was seventeen. Instead of going to college, she was a mum at home with a screaming baby. She hated every minute of parenthood. Once, on one of the rare nights when we had a conversation, she told me that those years were like doing time with no opportunity for parole.”
There was silence in the kitchen.
Brenna paused with her mug halfway to her mouth.
Élise stopped whisking.
And Kayla sat, wondering why the hell she’d just told them that. It had been bad enough spilling her secrets to Jackson, but to just blurt out really intimate details to these people who she barely knew—she felt naked. Exposed. She wanted to drag the words back and return to hiding under the warm layers of protection she’d wrapped around herself.
Then Elizabeth’s arm came around her shoulder and she was being hugged.
“But you came through it a strong, warm, clever woman who has achieved so much. I’m sure she is proud of you now.”
“We don’t speak. I’m a reminder of the worst years of her life. She moved to New Zealand to ‘start fresh.’”
“And your father?”
Kayla thought of the envelope waiting back in the cabin. “He sends money every Christmas. He’s always been generous financially. He was the one who paid for me to go to boarding school after they split up.”
Another silence followed that statement, and this time it was Élise who broke it.
“Okay, that is truly shit. Are you sure you’re not just telling me this story so that I feel sympathy and let you off cooking? Because it won’t work. If your mother didn’t teach you to boil an egg, then I will. No excuses.”
It was the perfect way to handle it.
Kayla smiled, grateful for the sensitivity that came without sentimentality. “I can boil an egg.”
“I bet you can’t boil it without cracking it.” Back to her old self, Élise measured out more flour. “I need to add some more flour to this or the quantities will be wrong. I didn’t allow for you dropping most of it on the dog. I am going to run cooking classes for you and Brenna. Everyone should be able to cook. If nothing else, it is a useful seduction technique.”
Brenna rolled her eyes. “If I need a seduction technique, I’m not going to pick up a frying pan.”
“This is a good thing because if you cooked, the man would be dead before any sex took place.” Élise finished off the mixture with a flourish.
“I can cook for a man if I have to. I just happen to believe a man should be able to cook for a woman.”
“I agree. Particularly in your case, if you want the relationship to last.”
Elizabeth laughed. “It’s such a treat having you three girls chatting in my kitchen.” She squeezed Kayla’s shoulder and stood up. “I need to go and wrap a few presents before the day starts. You go ahead and eat. Don’t wait for me. I’ll be back in time to eat leftover pancakes and take the biscuits out of the oven. Thanks again for taking Maple, Kayla.”
“Anytime you need puppy sitting, I’m a willing volunteer.” She couldn’t believe she’d said that. Puppy sitting? It was something she wouldn’t have thought of a few days earlier.
She felt a stab of guilt. She wondered if Elizabeth would have been so warm and supportive had she known how Kayla had spent the night.
“So—” As the door closed behind Elizabeth, Brenna planted a fresh mug of coffee in front of Kayla and folded her arms. “Tell us everything. Is he alive, or have you left him naked and unconscious?”
