Snow Angel Cove (Hqn) by RaeAnne Thayne Read Free Book Online

I’ve been there for three years, since my husband died.”
    “I’m sorry. About your husband, I mean.”
    “Thank you.” Manners compelled her to acknowledge the condolences, though it felt strange,
wrong
somehow, when they were coming from Aidan Caine.
    She stared straight ahead at the snow blowing against the windshield. When she was a little girl, she used to think the snow reflecting in the headlights looked like stars and she would pretend her dad was piloting a rocket ship through hyperspace.
    That time of imagination and fun seemed a long time ago. Now driving through snow was at best an inconvenience, at worst, an experience fraught with tension and peril.
    “It seems an odd time to start a new job, right before Christmas,” he observed.
    “I suppose. I was actually hired in early November but it took a little time to tender my resignation and end the lease on my apartment.”
    “You really did pack up everything, didn’t you?” He jerked his head to the back, piled high with boxes.
    “Most of our things are in storage. These were only the essentials. Moving to Lake Haven was supposed to be a new start for us. I guess that didn’t work out so well.”
    That panic hovering just beneath the surface since the moment she’d seen that blackened building seemed to bubble up all over again. For a moment, she wanted to just close her eyes and wallow in self-pity. She had pinned such high hopes on this move. Running a hotel in a small town had been her dream since she was just a girl working the front desk at the Seaswept Inn on the Oregon Coast.
    She loved the idea of raising Maddie in this small town, finally putting down roots after Trent had moved them from job to job, opportunity to opportunity, always in search of pay dirt.
    The charming town of Haven Point and the whole Lake Haven area had seemed the perfect location—quiet part of the year, bustling during the summer months, and close enough to Maddie’s specialists in Boise that they could still go to appointments with relative ease.
    She had loved Haven Point on previous visits and had felt welcomed from the first moment she stepped into town.
    She was so tired of disappointments, of constantly being forced to rechart her life’s direction.
    “I’m sorry about your job situation,” Aidan said quietly. “I can only imagine how upsetting that must be for you and for Maddie.”
    What did he know about upsetting job situations? He came from a completely different world and probably had no idea what it was like to struggle, to wonder which bills she could afford to pay off that month and which she would have to make token payments on until a better time.
    “Upsetting. Yes. It certainly is.”
    “If you don’t mind me asking, what are your plans beyond the next few days?”
    She didn’t have a fallback position. Why would she ever have imagined she needed one?
    “I don’t know yet,” she admitted. “I haven’t exactly had a great deal of time to go over my options, considering I’ve been at the hospital since five minutes after I found out the inn burned down.”
    “True enough. Being hit by a car can be such a distraction.”
    “Who knew?” she said dryly, earning a short, surprised-sounding laugh.
    “I will probably try to find a short-term lease on an apartment back in Boise somewhere while I send out resumes,” she finally answered.
    “You don’t have family you could stay with?”
    “No,” she said. To her dismay, her throat started to close at that single harsh word. For a moment, she missed her mother fiercely. It had been sixteen years since her mother went to work and never came home and it still sometimes seemed like yesterday.
    She could drive to Portland and stay with her father and stepmother but she knew just how that would go. They would be squeezed into a sofa bed in the corner of the family room. Her teenage stepbrothers would resent her presence in what they considered
their
home and would complain about having to