“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. “Whatjust 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 checkedout 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 forbothof 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?”
