Free A Holiday Romance by Carrie Alexander

inclined his head toward her. “How is your mother?”
    She shook her head.
    “I’m sorry,” he said simply. She felt his light touch on her shoulder, as if a bird had landed there. And then a corresponding solid warmth in the pit of her stomach, like her cat had landed there.
    She felt herself smiling. She’d had an aching sense of loss over the death of her mother, but it was good to know she could still feel pleasure, too.
    “I’m sure you’ve had similar challenges to overcome,” she ventured, wishing she could lure Kyle into talking about himself.
    He shrugged. “Sure.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like employees who undermine my authority with the complicity of the guests.”
    “Baloney,” she said, disappointed. “That’s no obstacle for you. I get the feeling you barely have to lift a foot to squash any rumblings from the minions.”
    “Minions?” His laugh was short but unrestrained. “Am I that over the top?”
    She swept out an arm. “Lord of the manor.”
    He peered more closely at her. “What has my staff been telling you?”
    “I picked up a few clues from the upside-down cake and the steamrollered sugar flowers.”
    “I didn’t cause that. I merely solved it.”
    “No, you finished it. You told the minions to solve it.”
    “Semantics.” One side of his mouth lifted. “I’ll concede the point. But, Alice—” again, he touched her shoulder “— you are not a minion.”
    She felt the glow of warmth in her middle again. “Sometimes I forget. Forgive me.”
    “Nothing to forgive.” His hand moved to the smallof her back. They resumed the walk toward the condos. “I was being needlessly hardheaded about letting you help out. Obstinacy is one of my, let’s say, personal challenges. I’ve got a one-track mind.”
    “A lot of men do.” Her insides tugged toward the press of his hand. “But I prefer that to wishy-washy, um, wishy-washiness.” Her tongue felt like a fish on dry land. “At least you’re direct.”
    “Unlike I’m guessing, your former fiancé?”
    “Yes. No. I mean, he seemed to know his mind very well when he finally got around to admitting that he’d dumped me because I wasn’t ‘there for him.’ Or so he said.”
    “Not true?”
    They’d reached the Spanish portico at the pedestrian entrance to the condo complex. Deep shaded loggias ran along the front of each building. Vines of night-blooming jasmine filled the air with perfume.
    “Technically, yes.” She was reluctant to talk about Stewart’s justifications for his betrayal. “My mother’s illness made it necessary for me to be on the island. It was breast cancer. She’d tried to get along on her own, with a lot of help from me and my brother, but the chemotherapy kept her bedridden with nausea. Jay had a family of his own to look after, so it was up to me to move in with Mom. I didn’t know I’d be there for the next six years.”
    Hearing herself, she put off Kyle’s reply. “Let’s not get into that. I’m on the verge of whining. I don’t want to be a whiner.” She cocked her head to look up at him. “ You’re not a whiner.”
    “Maybe I should have done some whining. Not tried to keep everything to myself.” Abruptly he cut away fromthe tantalizing direction of his thoughts. “I suppose I never saw the point of rehashing. Things are what they are.”
    “Does that mean ‘what will be, will be’?” Alice mused.
    “Definitely not. We make our own choices.”
    “That’s what I’m doing—taking charge of my own life.” She would do better at that tomorrow.
    “Good for you.”
    There was a long silence. Not the kind of silence Alice was comfortable with. Nor the romantic moment she’d fantasized about when she’d dreamed of meeting a dashing stranger on her vacation.
    “It’s not going that great,” she blurted. “So far I’ve choked down a pound of chlorine, developed several blisters from the nature hike and fallen off a horse.”
    In a snap, Kyle reverted to his