Chapter 2 MJ #2
“Need it?” she scoffed. “Yes. It’s almost a liability not to have one out here.”
“Then here you go.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys, holding them out to MJ. “I’d say take her for a spin, but you probably want to wait until daytime. Although it has great LED lights.”
Somewhere under her happy shock, a little spark caught and flared—the way he saw what they needed, not because they’d asked but because he’d been paying attention. MJ’s heart tightened in her chest, a mix of gratitude and affection and, God help her, attraction.
There it was. The thing she didn’t want to admit.
“Won’t you come in and let us ply you with treats and maybe some mulled wine?” she suggested. “Please. Some tea and gingerbread cookies. Anything.”
He lifted both palms, apologetic but not evasive. “I’d love to, but not tonight. I’m going into town. But thank you.”
Cindy’s chin tipped a fraction. “Matt, please let us pay you something or…” Her voice faded as though she knew, like MJ, the plea would fall on deaf ears. “We’ll comp your cabin.”
“You will not!” he exclaimed. “I know about the tax money and all.” At Cindy’s look, he chuckled.
“I got a tendency to blend into the background and I’ve been picking this sweet lady’s brain while she tried to cook…
” He smiled at MJ. “I’m aware that you’re swimming against the tide.
Now you can fly right over it on this fine vehicle. ”
“But…”
He shook his head. “Honestly, I really just like it here and this…” He shifted his gaze to the snowmobile, a definite glow in his light brown eyes. “This makes me happy.”
He sighed out those words as if…as if he’d been searching for something to make him happy and somehow that had led him to a snowmobile.
“Well, I call it a Christmas miracle,” MJ said on a laugh, trying to lighten the moment.
He smiled, walking toward the snowmobile. “No miracles, just…good luck.”
“We’re so grateful,” MJ said, hating that she sounded like a breathless teenager and not a woman in her sixth decade of life.
“We really are,” Cindy add. “Grateful and overwhelmed.”
He tapped the headlight casing and smiled down at the beast. He glanced at her again, holding her gaze for a few heartbeats, then nodded. “Happy to hear that. Merry Christmas to the ladies of Snowberry Lodge.”
“Merry Christmas,” MJ whispered. Cindy echoed it, polite and warm, but MJ heard a thin note of worry in her sister’s voice. Maybe not worry…maybe doubt.
They watched him stride toward the high-end SUV he’d parked near the ski shed lot. He popped a hand in the air without turning and slid behind the wheel, and in a minute the taillights disappeared into the dark toward town.
For a long time, MJ and Cindy stood in silence, as though neither one of them knew what to say. As much as MJ wanted to jump up and down on the snow, she just waited for Cindy’s response.
It finally came as a soft laugh. “What just happened, MJ?”
MJ laughed, disbelief bubbling out. “He bought us a snowmobile,” she said, stating the obvious and the impossible. “A beautiful, practical, perfect snowmobile.”
Cindy grunted softly. “I’ve priced these, MJ. This is…whoa. I can’t even wrap my head around it.”
“We needed it, Cin.”
“But what’s the catch? It can’t be free.” She tipped her head. “Two words, sister of mine. Henry Lassiter.”
MJ winced at the mention of the stranger who’d nearly scammed them a few days ago. But MJ had recognized the man and stopped them from making the most expensive mistake in Snowberry’s history.
“I understand you’re scarred from that experience, Cindy. But Matt is nothing like Henry. He’s not asking for anything.”
“I guess,” Cindy conceded, because she was fair and practical and didn’t argue with facts. “But it also raises questions.”
They stood there another minute, but it got cold and the front door opened and Jack stepped outside.
“What is this?” he asked, jogging coatless down the steps. “Where did you get this?”
The two women shared a look.
“Santa Claus,” MJ joked.
“Who isn’t real,” Cindy countered.
Even MJ had to admit something was a little off about this gift—or maybe it was the man who gave it. She didn’t know, and couldn’t understand why she felt like she had to defend this guy she barely knew. And secretly liked.
After Jack checked out the machine and made suitably male comments about things like horsepower and torque, they gathered at the kitchen table.
While MJ made cocoa, she and Cindy told him everything.
“Well, that’s, uh, quite a gift,” he said. “He must like you, MJ.”
“Stop it.” She set his cocoa in front of him with an exaggerated scowl.
He grinned at her in that brotherly way she used to always love during the years they shared as in-laws. MJ and Jack had a connection all their own, and it felt good to have his warmth and wry humor back in their lives.
After MJ sat across the table from them with her own mug of hot chocolate, Cindy sighed noisily.
“What?” MJ said, squirming under the pragmatic and sensible gaze of her level-headed sister.
Cindy’s brows flicked. “Why don’t you share everything you know about Mr. Matt Walker?”
“Oh, here we go,” MJ groaned. “The inquisition.”
“Mary Jane Starling McBride,” Cindy said, not laughing. “You know as well as I do that two sixty-year-old women who co-own twenty-five acres of prime real estate on the outskirts of Park City are like a couple of sitting ducks. We have to be careful.”
MJ sighed, shaking her head but unable to disagree with that. “I just don’t have that feeling about him,” she said. “I sniffed out that Lassiter character the minute you mentioned his deal.”
Cindy made a face. “Which just proves it’s easy for both of us to get snookered.”
“No one is getting snookered,” Jack said, putting a calming hand on Cindy’s back. “But I would like to know more about the guy, MJ. What has he shared?”
“Not much,” she admitted, hating that the words made Cindy lift a dubious brow. “He’s from Florida.”
“Where in Florida?” Jack asked.
She shrugged, chuckling. “Just…Florida. I don’t know Miami from Orlando, Tampa, or…name another city there. Honestly, it’s like another country to me, one I’ve never visited. Obviously, it’s sunny and warm because he’s tan.”
“And staying in an obscure mountain resort for the entire holiday season,” Cindy said. “All by himself.”
“That doesn’t make him a serial killer, Cin,” MJ shot back. “Or a con artist.”
“I know, I know,” Cindy assured her, her voice softening with Jack’s touch. “What else has he told you?”
She thought about it. “He’s retired.”
“From?”
MJ grimaced. She had no earthly idea. “He owned a business. Don’t ask what because he didn’t tell me. But I didn’t ask. It would have seemed like I was…”
“Like you were what?” Cindy pressed.
“I don’t want him to think I’m, you know…interested.”
“Asking him about his business isn’t flirting,” Jack told her.
“But I understand,” Cindy said sweetly, putting a hand on MJ’s. “You’re very friendly with every person who stays here, and a single man might take that the wrong way from an attractive woman like you.”
She snorted. “Attractive? Now you’re stretching it.”
“MJ!” Cindy leaned in. “With all that gorgeous hair you try to keep in a bun and glowing skin from natural joy and the prettiest blue eyes for miles? You’re in shape, you’re happy as a clam, and your cooking could bring a man to his knees.”
“I agree,” Jack chimed in. “You’re a catch.”
“A catch?” She looked from one to the other and almost laughed out loud. “If you’re fishing for a sixty-two-year-old widow, maybe.”
“We don’t know what he’s fishing for,” Cindy said.
“Well, he simply hasn’t shared a lot about himself, but I guess I can ask. I mean, now that he’s bought us a snowmobile.”
“We could do a little digging,” Jack said slowly. “People’s lives are all over the internet.”
MJ drew back. “No! That really feels intrusive. He’s a paying guest.”
“In cash,” Cindy said, dragging the word out like it was a federal indictment.
“People pay in cash,” MJ said. “We’ve had plenty of cash guests.”
“But not one who gave us a brand-new snowmobile.”
So true. “I definitely get the sense that he has some…wealth,” MJ said, thinking about the small clues she’d picked up.
“Not that he’s flashy or anything, but he did have dry cleaning delivered, and when I grabbed the hangers from the door, I noticed very expensive labels.
Italian.” She swallowed. “That doesn’t make him a… swindler.”
Cindy nodded, thinking as she ran her finger along the rim of her cup.
“He spends a lot of time with you,” Cindy said.
“He’s comfortable in a kitchen, I think,” MJ replied. “He asks about recipes, about the lodge, about our history. He is always offering to help, too. He doesn’t act rich.”
“He gifts rich,” Cindy murmured.
“He acts like a working man,” MJ continued. “Like, have you ever noticed his hands?”
“No, but apparently you have,” Cindy teased.
“They’re working hands. Not office hands. He’s done something in his life that involved building or fixing or hauling.”
“So he could haul our lodge right out from under us,” Cindy said, only half kidding.
“Cindy.” MJ plopped her elbows on the table. “You can’t think that every man who shows an interest in this place is Henry Lassiter, out to take our money and legacy.”
“You’re right,” she agreed. “I’m traumatized because I almost handed a complete stranger fifty thousand dollars.”
“But you didn’t,” MJ said. “I don’t think we have anything to worry about with Matt, and I really don’t want to run off and hire a PI because the man uses cash and is generous.”
Jack snorted. “I was thinking Google, not…Hercule Poirot.”
Cindy and MJ smiled at that.
“He hasn’t asked for anything,” MJ said.
“People who want something don’t always announce it,” Cindy said. “Sometimes they start by finding the heart and coming in that way. He already knows we’re in financial trouble.”
“We haven’t tried to hide it.” MJ picked up her mug, wondering how much she had told him in those easy conversations at the kitchen island.
“Will you at least talk to him?” Cindy asked. “Maybe learn a little more? Find out where he lives in Florida. What he used to do. Whether Matt Walker is his real name.”
“Cindy.”
“He could be a novelist traveling under a pen name,” Cindy said, raising both hands to make her point. “He could be the world’s nicest con man. He could be in witness protection. I don’t know. I just…don’t want to be na?ve again.”
MJ nodded. “I will, I promise. But it has to happen naturally. I’m not going to grill him or Google him. And neither will you.”
“I won’t.” Cindy nodded and reached out, her touch on MJ’s arm as binding as a handshake. “I promise.”
MJ nodded. They were as close as sisters could be, and when they made a promise, they kept it.
Then Cindy stood and came around to kiss her cheek. “And I’m sorry to be the Grinch.”
“You’re not the Grinch,” MJ said into her sister’s hair that grazed her cheek. “I promise I’ll find out more about him.”
“Good,” Cindy said, looking at Jack. “Weren’t we going to take a moonlight walk in the snow about an hour ago?”
“Walk?” he scoffed. “Woman, there’s a shiny new snowmobile out there waiting for us. It’s a total upgrade from the sleigh or the UTV.”
Her face brightened. “Can we?” Cindy asked MJ.
She laughed. “Unless you think he put a tracker on it and will follow you and kill you in the woods.”
Cindy gasped.
“The keys are on the counter,” MJ said. “Go fly through Snowberry and make out like a couple of teenagers.”
They looked at each other like that was exactly what they had planned, laughing as they put on their coats and boots and found the keys.
“Love you, Mary Jane!” Cindy called out as they left.
MJ smiled at the name only Cindy used in their closest of moments. Then, she sat very still at the table, listening for the rumble of the snowmobile as it started. She heard it in a few minutes, a low growl of muscle and power.
After a minute, it faded in the distance and left her in the utter quiet of her kitchen on Christmas night.
Getting up, MJ finished her breakfast preparation, cleaned the cups in the sink, and wiped down the counters until they gleamed, humming her favorite Christmas song.
“All I want for Christmas,” she whispered, stopping at the window to look out at the snow, “is…the truth.”
She sighed. Cindy was right. There was a place for optimism and the benefit of the doubt, but that gift was over the top and she hoped she could find out why.
And really hoped that she liked the answer.