Читать книгу The Complete Christmas Collection - Джанис Мейнард, Rebecca Winters - Страница 74

“ARE you okay?” Ryder called.

Emma couldn’t answer at first, the wind knocked temporarily out of her.

“Are you hurt?” he asked again. She could hear him trying to get past the mattress that blocked the stairs.

“Fine,” she managed to get out before he made a hole in the wall, bumping against it like that. The walls were admittedly flimsy in an “old wreck” of a house like this.

She couldn’t help it. Emma began to giggle and then to laugh. But he mistook the muffled howls of her laughter for cries of pain and came hurtling down to her. Predictably, he got caught up where the mattress blocked the step, and he crashed down on it beside her.

They lay there, side by side, on the mattress that blocked the staircase. Their legs and feet were up the stairs, their heads and backs on the floor of the foyer. They were only faintly illuminated by the shadows the firelight in the next room was throwing against the wall.

The laughter died in her throat as Emma became aware of how solid he felt beside her, how his presence here in the house during the storm was somehow reassuring.

Even if he was an ass who thought her house was a wreck and who was going to deprive Tess of Christmas.

“Emma, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she assured him again, though as she drank in the scent of him she wondered how true that was. “Are you?”

She felt him get up on his elbow, stare through darkness made only a little less black by the slight light leaching in from the other room.

He lay back down, sighed. “I guess I’m okay. Providing jest for the gods tonight. So, did one of your spirits push you down the stairs?”

“Oh, no, just made sure the mattress was there when I hit the floor.”

“Ah.”

Was his cynicism slightly tempered? Ryder had altered his position slightly, and Emma could feel the solidness of his shoulder touching hers, make out the strong line of his nose, the sensuous curve of his mouth.

“I want you to know I’m not the kind of girl who ends up on a mattress with a guy on such a short acquaintance,” she teased, trying to reduce with humor the tension she felt in her belly.

“I already guessed,” he said softly.

And her humor left her. What did that mean?

“Remember when I said I didn’t think things could get any worse?” Ryder asked softly.

“Yes?”

“Around you they can. And they do.”

“I know,” she agreed, “The White Christmas curse.”

“Maybe it’s not a curse,” he said softly. “Maybe it’s magic, just like you said. And I’m not sure which I’m more afraid of.”

And then he was laughing. It was a rusty sound, self-deprecating and reluctant, as if he had not laughed for a long, long time and did not particularly want to laugh now.

For all that, it was a sound so lovely, so richly masculine and so genuine, that it made her want to stay in this place, on a mattress jammed half on the stairs and half off, with this man beside her for as long as she could, to rest a moment in this place that was as real as any place she had ever been before.

Woman-scorned tsked disapprovingly.

Well, why not laugh, Ryder thought? His situation was absurd. He was trapped at a place dedicated to Christmas corniness, the power was out, the storm raged on. He could hear it rattling the windows and hounding the eaves. He was lying in the pitch darkness on a crashed mattress, with Emma so close to him he could smell the scent of lavender on her skin.

Life was playing a cosmic joke on him, why not laugh?

Why keep fighting this? He was stuck, she was stuck, they were in this together, whether he liked it or not. The powerful surge of intensity he was feeling toward her was only because of the crisis nature of the situation. People in situations like this tended to bond to each other in way too short a time.

He could not act on that. Maturity was being required of him. A certain amount of cooperation was going to be needed to get them through this, but nothing more.

There was no sense railing against the unfairness of life. He’d already done that, and it made no difference. It never changed what was, it only made the experience more miserable than it had to be.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice still light with laughter. “I should have listened to you. I should have taken the bedding off, let you take the mattress, followed meekly behind—”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, “I can certainly picture you in the meek position. Submissive, even. Would that be before or after you strung lights on the roofline and knocked out a wall or two?”

“Hmm,” she said, pretending thoughtfulness. “Let’s make it before. I might be too tired after to be properly meek.”

Then they were laughing again, and he noticed her laughter was sweet, uncomplicated, real, like when Tess laughed.

“I’m sorry, too,” he said, finally, “for taking out my frustration at having my plans interrupted on you. And for calling your house an old wreck. It isn’t really. It’s a Victorian, probably built at the very end of the eighteen-hundreds or in the early nineteen-hundreds.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m an architect. Though I have to admit, I avoid old-house projects like the plague. People are never realistic about what it’s going to cost to restore an old building.”

“Don’t you think old buildings are romantic?” she asked.

Given the startling intensity between them, he did not want to discuss anything about romance with her.

“Not at all,” he said. “You get in and the walls aren’t square, the floors aren’t level, the fifty-year-old addition is being held up by toothpicks. I prefer new construction, and my real preference is commercial buildings.”

She was silent for a bit, and he hoped she was contemplating getting out of this old place before it ruined her financially, but naturally that wasn’t what she was contemplating at all.

“We could start over,” she decided.

“Could we? How?”

“Like this.” Her hand found his in the darkness. And shook it. “Hi,” she said, “I’m Emma White, the meek, submissive owner of the White Christmas Inn.”

Her hand was soft in his, and again he felt something when he touched her that went beyond the sizzle of chemistry. Quiet strength. He turned his head to see her in the faint shadows being cast by the fireplace in the other room.

“I’m Ryder Richardson,” he played along, despite the fact he knew this was a somewhat dangerous game, that he was incredibly aware of the loveliness of her hand and her scent.

Still, he was reluctantly amazed by how good it felt to play along with her, to let go of his legendary self-control, just a little bit.

She was silent for a while. “Do you think,” she said hesitantly, “just in this new spirit of cooperation, you could tell me what a really good Christmas feels like? You said you’d had good Christmases. Just so I know exactly what to do for the Christmas Day Dream.”

She was moving him further and further behind enemy lines.

“Come on,” he said, “you have some good Christmas memories.”

Her silence nearly took what was left of his heart.

Ryder was amazed to find his carefully walled world had a hole in it that she had crept through. He was amazed that he wanted to go there, to a good, good Christmas, to share it with her, to make it real for her, but for himself, too. To relive such a wonderful time proved to be a temptation too strong to resist, even as he wondered if he was going to regret this later.

“You wouldn’t think this would be the best Christmas ever,” he said, slowly, feeling his way cautiously through the territory that had once been his life, “but when I was twelve my dad was out of work, the only time I ever remember that happening while I was growing up.”

He told her about how his dad and his mom had snuck out every night into the backyard and shoveled and leveled and sprayed the garden hose on sub-zero nights until they had a perfect ice rink to unveil to him and Drew on Christmas morning.

He and his brother had woken up to secondhand skates that didn’t fit, and instead of turkey they’d had a bonfire in the backyard and cooked smokies and marshmallows.

They had skated all day. Pretty soon all the neighbors had drifted over, the neighborhood boys unanimously voting the Richardson brothers’ skating rink as the best gift of the year. At midnight there had still been people around the bonfire, kids skating, babies sleeping.

“And then, our neighbor Mrs. Kelly, who sang solos at all the community weddings and funerals started singing ‘Silent Night,’ and everybody gathered at the bonfire and started singing, too.” Ryder’s parents had been dead now for more than a dozen years, but as he talked about them, he could feel their love for him and Drew as if it had all happened yesterday.

Maybe she had been right about ghosts living here. His parents had always been determined to make the best of everything. Life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, his mother had always said. He wondered what they would think of him, and how he was coping with the lemons life had handed him.

And suddenly reliving that memory didn’t feel fun anymore and already he felt regret, and felt the shadows pulling at him, trying to take him back.

Fast forward to spending last Christmas Eve with Drew and Tracy, opening his gift from them. A gag gift, as always, a huge stuffed marlin, possibly the ugliest thing Ryder had ever seen, mocking the deep-sea fishing trip he and Drew had taken off the coast of Mexico earlier in the year. Was that the last time he had laughed, really laughed, until tonight?

Come on, stay, his brother had said, at the door, “Silent Night” playing on the stereo inside the house. We’ll put you in the guest room. You can watch Tess open her presents tomorrow.

Since Tess had been a cute and occasionally smelly little lump of a person at the time, incapable of opening her own presents, and probably oblivious to what they contained, Ryder had failed to see the attraction of that. He could clearly see the baby was going to have no appreciation whatsoever for the signed football he had gotten for her.

But he had stayed, something about the magic of family being stronger than any other kind of magic.

It was the last night he had ever experienced joy. It was the last time he had laughed. Until tonight.

And he did not feel ready to invite those kinds of experiences into his life again. He had built his barricades for a reason—he was not nearly done beating himself up for his failure to save them all. But also to keep this out: longing for what could not be, ever again.

A man had to be whole, unencumbered, to welcome experiences like those into his life. He was not that man. The easygoing young man he had been only a year ago was scarred beyond recognition.

And knew he would not be that man again.

Emma seemed to sense his mood shifting, changing, even though she could barely see him. He let go of her hand abruptly. She felt the faint tensing, his energy drawing away from her. She tried to draw him back.

“Would you like to hear about Christmas at the inn?”

He wanted to tell her no, to grab back the things he had just told her, but that seemed too sour, even for him, and it seemed to be going against the new spirit of cooperation he had promised, so he grunted instead.

She took the grunt as interest, and she told him about Holiday Happenings and her neighbors helping her get ready, about the skating and the sleigh-riding, the craft sales, the wreaths, the amount of food they hoped to sell.

“I hope it’s as wonderful as the night you just described to me,” she said, “if it happens. What am I going to do with four thousand hot dogs if it doesn’t?”

“Four thousand?”

“I always think big,” she said ruefully. “I was thinking if a hundred people showed up every night for ten days and each ate two hot dogs, I would need two thousand. And then I started thinking, what if two hundred people showed up every night? Or what if a hundred and fifty showed up, but a few of them were teenage boys?”

Her math and her hopeless optimism were giving him a headache. Or maybe that was the thinly disguised worry in her voice.

“You already bought everything?” he asked. Despite the fact he’d commanded himself not to encourage her with interest, to stop this, he hated that she’d apparently invested more than she could afford to lose in singlehandedly bringing the Christmas spirit to Willowbrook.

Now, no one was coming.

At least not tonight. “You still have nine days to recoup your losses,” he said. But he wasn’t sure if he believed it. What if the storm lasted longer, or if it was like 1998 and the Atlantic seaboard was shut down for days? What if the power didn’t come back on for weeks?

Just because he was stranded here with her, lying on a mattress with her, that didn’t make it his problem.

He didn’t care. No, that wasn’t the whole truth. He didn’t want to care.

“Where are the hot dogs now?” he asked reluctantly.

“Freezer.”

“If the power doesn’t come on by tomorrow, you could put them in a snowbank.”

She said nothing.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. Hey, he’d get home and send her a check to cover her hot dogs.

“It has to be,” she said, and he didn’t like what he heard in her voice one little bit. As if her whole life depended on Holiday Happenings working out.

“What do you mean it has to be?” Ryder knew from experience you had to be careful about throwing challenges like that at fate. It had a way of never giving people what they thought they wanted.

She told him about inviting the needy families, the gifts under the tree, the perfect Christmas Day she had planned for them.

He could feel himself closing his eyes, trying to steel himself against her goodness.

Suddenly she went silent. “Look at me chattering on and on,” she said, embarrassed, probably figuring out that being stranded gave the illusion of camaraderie, but it didn’t really make him worthy of hearing her dreams, sharing her confidences.

Why had he allowed himself to be sucked into this?

Not just alone, a voice answered him, lonely.

He hated that admission, the weakness of it. He had failed his brother and his sister-in-law. He deserved to feel the way he felt.

Still, something in him that was still human said to her, and meant it, “It’s good that you believe.”

There was that word again, creeping around the edges of his life, looking for a way to sneak past his guard and into his heart.

So it would be ready to break again.

I don’t think so, he said to himself.

“Oh,” she said, and laughed self-consciously. “I didn’t mean to sound like that. Saint Emma.”

“Don’t forget—of the meek and submissive school of saints.” Giving in, just a little bit, to that temptation to play with her.

But giving in a little bit was probably just a forerunner to giving in a lot. And in the end she was going to get hurt. He needed to pull back from this now, not just to protect himself. To protect her.

He got to his feet, hesitated, and then reached back a hand for her when the mattress was thwarting her efforts to get up. The momentum of that tug pulled her into the length of him. He could feel her slightness, her softness, the delicious hint of curves. The enveloping lavender scent of her that would make it so easy to lose his head.

The devil told him not to bother being a better man, not to bother protecting her. It told him to outrun the terrible loneliness reliving his memories had stirred up inside him.

She was an adult. Kiss her. See what happened.

He could almost taste her lips when he thought of that. A wanting, compelling, tempting, tantalizing, swept through him.

More than a year since he had connected with another human being.

But not her, he told himself sternly. You could not kiss a girl like Emma White without thinking it all the way through. Following an impulse could have far-reaching ramifications.

Emma wanted to be fiercely independent, knocking down walls and climbing all over the roof by herself. She wanted to send the message, I don’t need a man.

But she struck him, with her Christmas fantasies, with her wistfulness, with her desire to bring something to others, as not just old-fashioned and decent, but romantic. Emma was the type of woman who might think a casual kiss meant things it did not mean. She might think that he wanted to get to know her better or was looking for a mommy for little Tess, a future that involved her.

The truth was Ryder Richardson did not look to the future at all.

Ryder just got through every day to the best of his ability. And that, he told himself sternly, did not involve doing damage to others. And how could he not damage someone like her? Vinegar and milk, he reminded himself.

“I’ll get the mattress pulled into the great room, if you want to go find some bedding to make up the couch.”

“Yes, boss,” she said.

The temptation rose again. To play along with her. But this time he said nothing in response to her jesting.

In fact, he made up his mind he was leaving at first light.

You’d leave a woman alone with no power? a voice inside him asked.

For her own good, he answered it back.

But maybe she had been closer to the truth than he wanted to admit when she had called him mean and selfish.

It was himself he was protecting, not her. Protecting himself from these uncomfortable feelings, something thawing in him that allowed him to see his world as too stark, too masculine. Too lonely.

But getting to know someone was a minefield that rarely went smoothly, especially now that he carried so much baggage, so many scars, so much damage.

What started with a curious kiss could all blow up and leave her with another Christmas in shambles.

Not one good Christmas memory? How was that possible? And yet he could tell she was honest to a fault, and that if she could have dredged one up, she would have.

He dragged the mattress into the living room, rearranged the bedding, stoked the fire. The thought of sharing this room with her for the night seemed uncomfortably intimate given his vow not to encourage anything between them.

She came back down the stairs, loaded down with bedding, the duvet a plump eiderdown, whiter than a wedding night and just as sensual.

“Where’s the woodpile?” he asked, looking everywhere but at her lips, needing a moment’s breathing space.

She told him, and he put on his shoes and grabbed the flashlight. He went out the back door into the storm to her woodshed. The night, bitter and dark, the flashlight beam, frail against the wicked slant of white sleet, were in sharp contrast to the cozy intimacy inside, but Ryder welcomed the wind, the sharded sleet on his face slapping him back to reality. The sleet was freezing as it hit the ground, forcing him to focus intensely to keep upright, especially once his arms were loaded with wood.

He made five or six trips to the shed, filling the wood box beside the fireplace. Each time he came in, he would think enough, but the picture Emma made cuddled up on the couch inside her quilt, her hair every which way, would make him think not one good Christmas, as if he could or should do something about it. And that would send him back out the door, determined to cling to his vision of life as a cold and bitter place.

But going out into the weather again and again turned out to be one of those impulses he should have thought all the way through.

His clothes were soaked. He made one more trip—out to his vehicle, to bring in the luggage he had not wanted to bring in. Another surrender, he thought, shivering. The old house only had one bathroom, upstairs, and it was already cold. He noticed the tub seemed new, and the flooring around it did, too. He inspected more closely.

Her tub had fallen through the floor at some point in recent history. This place was way too much for her, and he killed the fleeting thought that she needed someone to help her. He hurried into a pair of drawstring plaid pajama pants, a T-shirt.

When he came back down, he noticed she was in pajamas now, too, soft pink, with white-and-pink angels on them, flannel, not, thankfully, the least bit sexy. Her blanket was a soft mound of snow on the couch, but she was up doing something at the fire.

He saw then that she was pouring steaming water from a huge cast-iron kettle she had put in the coals of the fire. She came to him with a mug of hot chocolate.

It was just a little too much like a pajama party, and he had talked enough for one night. Yet chilled to the bone because of his own foolishness, he could not refuse. He took the mug, wrapped his hands around its comforting heat. He took a chair across from her as she snuggled back under her blanket, one hand coming out of the folds to hold her hot chocolate.

Home.

The scene, straight out of a magazine layout for Christmas, had a feeling of home about it: fire crackling, baby sleeping, the pajamas, the hot chocolate, the tree in the background.

“Is it hard?” she asked softly. “Looking after Tess? How long have you done it for?”

That was the problem with letting his guard down, telling the one story. For a whole year he had avoided any relationship that required anything of him, even conversation. It was just too hard to make small talk, to pretend to care. Being engaged with another human being felt exhausting and like a lie.

His failure had killed his brother. Hardly a conversation starter, and yet how long could he know someone before he felt compelled to tell them that? Because that had become the biggest part of him.

But now that he had confided one deeply personal memory to her, it was as if a hole had opened in the dam that held his loneliness, and the words wanted to pour out of him.

“I was appointed her guardian three months ago.” Ryder did not want to tell her the circumstances, Tracy’s long fight ending, nor did he want to tell her how hard those first weeks had been. Thinking about them, loneliness and longing threatened to swamp him again.

But his voice was carefully neutral when he said, “I have a nanny. That helps. She’s an older lady, married, her own kids grown up. She misses children.” So much easier to talk about Mrs. Markle than himself.

But Emma persisted. “And when she’s not there?”

“There’s the hair thing,” he admitted. “I do pretty good at everything else. The first few diaper changes I felt like I was scaling Everest without oxygen, but now it makes me feel oddly manly. Like I look at other guys and think, I can handle stuff you can’t even imagine, pal.” He was still aware he was hiding in humor, but Emma’s appreciative chuckle made it seem like a good tactic, so he kept going.

“Shopping for her is a nightmare. It’s like being at a pigeon convention. You’ve never heard so much cooing. It’s like I’m transformed from six-foot-one of highly-muscled, menacing man to this adorable somewhat helpless teddy bear.”

“You do have kind of a menacing air about you, Ryder.” Her eyes slid to his arms to check out the muscle part. He was pretty sure she wasn’t disappointed. The gym was one of the places where he took it all, sweated it out, pushed himself to a place beyond thought.

“A much-needed defense against cooing, not that it works in the baby store. I go in for a new supply of pajamas with feet in them, the entire extent of Tess’s wardrobe, and women come out of the woodwork. I get shown little diaper covers with frills and bows on them, and white dresses that Tess would destroy in thirty seconds flat, and the worst thing of all—hair paraphernalia.”

“I noticed you bought the little diaper cover.”

“I know,” he admitted. “I get the hair junk, too, and more ridiculous shoes than you can shake a stick at, too.”

“Ah, the boots with the penguins.”

“I learned to just let them load me up, and I can get out of there quicker.”

“Maybe underneath the menace, they see something else.”

He could tell her. He could tell this stranger about his last year in hell, leave his burdens here when he walked away. It was pushing away at the damaged dam within him, wanting out.

Instead he said, coolly, “Something else? Not that I’m aware of.”

“Hmm,” she said with patent disbelief. He bet if he met up with her in the baby department, she’d be cooing along with the rest of them.

“Maybe they see a man doing his best in a difficult situation. Maybe they admire the fact you said yes to being put in that situation.”

“It’s not like I had a choice.”

“I bet you did,” she said.

“Not really.”

“No, because a man like you would only see the right choice, and never even realize there was another one.”

He snorted. “You don’t know me well enough to say that.” But another voice, Tracy telling him the night before she married his brother, You and Drew are the rarest of finds. Good men.

That was before he had failed his brother and her.

Was there anything left of a good man in him? If there was, why would he even consider leaving Emma here, alone, a woman without power?

Self-preservation.

“You must have had the choice to walk away,” Emma said. “I think when you hold that baby, you can’t hide who you really are. That’s what makes you irresistible—”

He looked into her eyes for a moment, almost felt his heart stop beating. If she found him irresistible they were both in deep trouble.

But she finished her sentence, “—in the baby department.”

He felt his heart start beating again, but was warily aware his reaction to how she had finished that sentence was mixed. Part relief, more regret.

He was not sure he liked the way this was going, because if she prodded him now, he had the horrible feeling he would spill all, tell all. He had done enough spilling for one night.

He gulped down the hot chocolate, set it on the table beside him, got up and stretched deliberately.

“I’m done in,” he said, much more polite than saying I’m done talking, since he’d made a mental agreement with himself to have a truce with her.

Emma said, “Quit fighting it.”

For a horrible moment he thought she had read his mind, seen his weakness, but instead, she said, “Go to bed, Ryder.”

It would have been much less awkward if bed wasn’t right there in front of her, but it was what it was. He crawled in between the sheets of his mattress on the floor and was amazed by how comfortable the bed was, how strangely content he felt despite the restless directions his thoughts had taken tonight.

He kept his eyes closed as he heard her settling on the couch, discouraging himself from looking at her and feeling those unwanted desires.

A desire to connect with another human being.

One over the age of two.

Ha, he told himself sternly. He would be ready to reconnect when pigs flew.

“Good night, Ryder,” she said softly. “Sleep well. I’m glad you’re here.”

Was she feeling the illusion of home, too? Despite all her proclamations of independence was she feeling safer having a man in the house with that storm raging outside and no power?

But then she added sleepily, “I would hate to think of you and Tess out in that storm somewhere.”

He didn’t rationalize with her, didn’t point out to her if they were out in that storm somewhere they wouldn’t be here. She would not even have known they existed.

Instead he thought about it: she was glad they were here for them, not for herself. And she was putting on this big Christmas event for others, not for herself.

Who was doing anything for her this Christmas? The homeless and the needy were coming here, what about her own family? Was she as alone as he was?

“You’re not going to be alone, are you?” he asked, even though he had ordered himself not to. “On Christmas?”

“I told you. Fifty-one confirmed guests.”

He heard something, knew she was holding back.

“A guest isn’t family,” he said.

“And my mother is coming.”

“That’s good.” He wanted to probe something, an uncertainty, he’d heard in her voice, but that was enough of tangling his life with hers.

Troubled by those thoughts, way too aware of her proximity and the soft puffs of her breath as she fell asleep, he finally surrendered, too. But he slept like a cat, alert, one eye open, gauging the fire and the storm noises outside.

Finally, relieved, Ryder noticed gray light seeping into the room through the heavy closed drapes. Morning at last. The fire was embers again, and he could tell by the chill in the room the power was still not on.

He sat up and checked the baby, still asleep.

And then his eyes drifted to Emma. She was wrapped up like a sausage in the feather duvet she had brought down from upstairs, her dark hair sticking up in sharp contrast to it.

In her sleep, her brow was deeply furrowed, as if she could not let go of some pressing worry—probably hot dogs, or bathtubs falling through the floor—and Ryder could feel the concern for her aloneness. The sloping kitchen floor and that crack above the window in that room upstairs meant something was going on with the foundation. The door chime hadn’t sounded right, either, and could be an indication of a bigger problem somewhere. This place was obviously too much for her, even before Holiday Happenings—and try as he might he couldn’t quite shrug it off.

Sometime during the night he had cemented his decision to leave here.

Because he had laughed.

Because he had given in, ever so briefly, to the temptation to be a different man. Because you could begin to care about a woman like Emma even if you didn’t want to.

Because he had hoped for something when the word irresistible had tumbled so easily off her lips, and despite the fact she had clarified what she meant, those mist-and-moss eyes had said something else.

He got up quietly, added wood to the fire, went to the window and lifted the drape. For the first time he noticed the difference from last night. It was quiet, now, eerily so, no wind. He noticed the snow and rain had stopped and the horizon was tinged with the indigo blue of a clear day. In the growing light he could see broken branches littering her front yard. A huge limb had missed his vehicle by inches.

The trees dripped blue ice, and the power line coming up to her yard was nearly on the ground it was so heavy with the rain that had frozen on it.

But the storm was over.

He had to go. But where, with all the roads closed?

Anywhere.

Other travelers had to be stranded. Churches were probably offering temporary shelter, recreation centers. Roads never stayed closed for long. He was sure they would reopen today, probably within hours now that the storm was over.

He went into her kitchen, the floor freezing on his bare feet, but he opened drawers until he found a screwdriver. He was fixing the front-door handle when Emma woke up.

“Morning.”

He turned and looked at Emma. She was stretching, her hair sticking straight up.

She pulled back the duvet she had slept under, he could see the pajamas, pink flannel, little pink-and-white angels on them.

“The storm’s over,” he told her.

She cocked her head, listened. “Ah,” she said, “the sweet sensation of survival.”

“Your yard is a mess.”

She came and stood beside him, surveyed the destruction being revealed by the growing morning light. Her shoulders drooped. “The pond probably looks the same way. How am I going to get that cleaned up for Holiday Happenings?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

She looked annoyed. “I was talking to myself, not expecting you to volunteer. And you don’t have to fix the door, either.” She made a grab for the screwdriver, but he held it away from her.

“If you could refill that kettle and put it on the fire, I can heat something up for the baby. Not to mention get a coffee into you. Sheesh. Prickly.”

She turned from him abruptly, and then Ryder noticed it wasn’t angels on her pajamas at all.

Pigs flying.

And then the baby screamed. Not her normal wakeup crabby cry but an animal shriek of pain and panic.

He set down the screwdriver and raced back into the great room, frightened that Tess had tried to climb out of her crib and had fallen.

But she stood at the side of her crib, screaming and jumping up and down, fixated on the fire.

He went and scooped her up, tucked her in tight to his shoulder, swayed with her.

“Shhh, baby,” he said, and then not knowing where the words came from, only that he needed to say whatever would bring her comfort, he said, “Shhh. Mama’s here.”

And for a man who did not believe such things, he did feel as though Tracy was there, in some way, helping him soothe the baby, because Tess quieted against his shoulder, but refused to be put down, and would not even look in the direction of the fireplace.

Would a more sensitive person have realized the fire was going to traumatize the baby?

He felt the burden of his inadequacy, and then he realized Emma was watching him, a tender little smile on her lips and tiny tears sparkling in her eyes.

“I’m leaving,” he said, before she admired him too much, before he became like a junkie, unable to live without that look on her face.

It was a look that erased his insecurities about not being sensitive and not being good with hair, a look that said, as clearly as if Emma had spoken, that she thought he was enough.

He rested in that for a moment, in the relief that someone thought he was enough for this child.

But then he steeled himself, reminded himself Emma did not know the whole story, and said again, more firmly than before. “I’m leaving.”