Housekeeper Under The Mistletoe. Cara Colter

office while mopping the floor and polishing the door handle, chattering about her Sam. Husband. Mickey and Dorian. Children. Sylvester and Tweety. Bird and cat.”

      Suddenly it occurred to Jefferson, he was being the chatty one. This stranger standing at his door—whom he had absolutely no intention of hiring—certainly did not need all of this information.

      Maybe it was a sign of too much time alone—three failed housekeepers not withstanding—that he just kept talking.

      “I barricaded myself inside my office for three days, but Clem showed no sign of moving on to other parts of the house. To avoid discussion, I finally shot a generous check and a nice note about how I really didn’t need her anymore under the door. It achieved exactly what I hoped—blessed silence.”

      He had managed to stop talking before he revealed Clementine’s real fatal flaw. She had one divorced stepdaughter and three single nieces, all of whom she thought he should meet.

      Brook’s lips twitched. That hint of a smile deepened Jefferson’s awareness of her as what he wanted least in his house: the distraction of an attractive woman. But that tentative smile also made him aware of the fine lines of tension in her—around her shoulders and neck, around her eyes, around her lips.

      “It must have been hard to fire a friend of your grandmother’s.”

      “You have no idea,” he said.

      But, looking at her, he had the uneasy feeling she did have an idea.

      “Why the sudden search for a housekeeper? Are you replacing a housekeeper you were quite satisfied with?”

      He scowled at her. Who was interviewing whom, here?

      “No, I’ve never felt the need of one before.”

      “And now?”

      He sighed. “In a moment of weakness, I agreed to allow an architectural magazine to photograph the house.”

      She glanced past him. “A moment of weakness? The house is extraordinary. You must be very honored at their interest.”

      “I may have been when it was all just an idea. But as soon as a date was set, I realized the house would need attention, which, six weeks later, I am no closer to giving it.”

      “When is the photo session scheduled?”

      “Two weeks.” He was aware he was engaging with her, and it didn’t seem to be bringing him any closer to getting rid of her.

      “I can have your place completely ready for a photo shoot in two weeks. I promise.”

      Jefferson contemplated that. It was a weakness to contemplate it. But he did need someone to get the place ready, and the date of the photo shoot was creeping up far more rapidly than he could have believed. And he suspected, from the lack of applicants now, that word had spread far and wide through this tight-knit region of the Kootenays that he was impossible to work for.

      So, the young woman in front of him could be considered a godsend, if one was inclined to think that way, which Jefferson Stone most definitely was not.

      No, Nelson Brook, or Brook Nelson, or whatever her name was, just wasn’t going to work out, despite the fact no one else had responded to his blunt posting that had laid out exactly what he needed. He would just have to postpone Architecture Now indefinitely. He was aware of feeling relieved at that possibility.

      He reached for the door. He was going to gently shove on it until she moved her foot.

      But then a crow cawed loudly and raucously in the tree the prospective housekeeper had parked her car under. It dropped a pinecone out of its beak onto the roof of her car, and both sounds, the cawing and the sharp plunk of the cone on her car roof, were loud and unexpected in the drowsy quiet of the afternoon.

      She gasped and jumped forward, and she smashed against him. For the second time, in the space of just a few minutes, she was touching him.

      Only this time, it wasn’t her hands splayed across his chest, which had been disconcerting enough. This time he could feel the press of the entire length of her body against his, and he was acutely aware of the sweet softness of her. He was acutely aware of hesitating a fraction of a second too long before putting her away from him.

      “I’m so sorry,” she stammered, but he caught the look on her face as she swiveled her head and glanced over her shoulder. It was the frantic look of a deer being startled by wolves. When she turned back to him, despite the fact she was trying hard to school her features, he could see the pulse pounding in the hollow of her throat.

      Tension trembled in the air around her, and her muscles had gone taut. It made him notice there were shadows under her eyes and an edginess about her that was far from normal.

      Her car door, he noticed, looking beyond her, was open, as if she had planned what to do if she needed to make a quick getaway.

      Brook Nelson, or whoever she was, was terrified of something.

      What shocked Jefferson was how her fear pierced the armor around his heart. It was as if a little sliver of light found its way to a place that had been in total darkness.

      Inside himself was some nearly forgotten sense of decency, some sense of being connected to a human family he’d managed to ignore for three whole years, much to the dismay of the people of Anslow.

      Jefferson stood very still. For a moment, he thought of the grandparents who had raised him, in a house not far from here. They had been old-fashioned people, who were decent to the core and kind to a fault. They would have never turned someone in need from their door, and no one had benefited from their generosity of spirit more than him. He could almost imagine the look of disapproval on both their faces if he shut the door now.

      Jefferson took a deep breath and looked into the pleading eyes of the woman who had landed, uninvited, on his doorstep.

      Was this who he had become? So embittered by the death of his wife, Hailey, that he could turn a woman, so obviously terrified, away from his door?

      “Jeez,” Jefferson muttered under his breath. He was a man who made decisions every day. That was what he did for a living. The decisions he made altered the courses of entire cities, impacted huge companies and global corporations. His decisions often had millions of dollars and the livelihoods of thousands of people riding on them.

      And yet, this decision, this split-second decision, about what kind of man he would be, felt bigger than all of those.

      Jefferson Stone stepped back marginally from his door.

      It was all Brook Nelson needed. She catapulted over his threshold and into his house.

      Into his life, he told himself grimly.

      “Thank you,” she breathed.

      “Nothing has been decided,” he told her gruffly, though somehow he knew it had been. And she knew it, too. She was beaming at him.

      “It’s not going to be a walk in the park,” he said. He was already annoyed that his decision had been based on a moment of pure emotion, not rationale. He had to get things back on track and make sure she was aware this was a professional arrangement. “The finer aspects of housekeeping have been neglected for a long time.”

      He fully intended to tell her that if she didn’t put them right he would not tolerate her presence any longer than he had her predecessors. But she spoke before he could get the grim warning out.

      “I could tell that from this door that things have been slightly neglected,” she said, tapping the front door. “It needs polishing. You probably use something special for it, do you?”

      “I have no idea. That’s your job, not mine.” He was trying to make up for his moment of weakness in letting her in, but she didn’t seem to notice uninviting his tone.

      “Do you have an internet connection here?”

      “Not one that housekeeper