Читать книгу The Complete Christmas Collection - Джанис Мейнард, Rebecca Winters - Страница 75

RYDER told himself he wasn’t just being mean and selfish, either. Tess was terrified of the fireplace and the fire within it, her tiny body trembling against his chest, her fist wrapped in his shirt so he couldn’t get away from her.

He couldn’t stay here with her. Even now, he was being very careful to use his body as a shield, placing it between Tess and the fire.

“Is Tess okay?” Emma asked. “What happened?’

“The fire scared her.”

Thankfully, Emma accepted that explanation without asking him to elaborate. Her eyes went to the window where he’d opened the drape. Sunshine was beginning to spackle the walls.

“Is that wise? To leave? You should at least wait to hear what condition the roads are in. They could still be closed.”

She had no electricity. He wasn’t going to “hear” anything here. But he could tell it was not a rational explanation that she wanted.

Trying to take the screwdriver from him had been a token effort. Emma wanted him to stay, as if she had already formed some kind of attachment to the man who could least be trusted with attachments.

“The roads are never closed for long,” Ryder said. Hopefully. The 1998 ice storm had been called the storm of the century for a reason: such storms happened once a century.

Of course, it was a new century now, and so far his luck had been abysmal.

“It’s not as if you have urgent business,” Emma said, and that furrow in her brow deepened as she turned worried eyes to the baby. “Your cottage isn’t going anywhere.”

But, of course, he did have urgent business. He had to reclaim the bastions that had had cracks knocked into them last night, he had to repair that hole in the wall she had slipped through. Even repaired, it would be a weak place now, and she knew where it was. If he stayed, she might slip through it again.

“I appreciate the shelter from the storm, Emma.”

He appreciated more than that: the refuge, for a moment when he had laughed, and for another when he had remembered Christmas past, from the storms within himself, the glimpse of what it would be to be a different man, to have that feeling of home again.

But he wasn’t ready and there was a possibility he never would be. People could only get hurt if he tried.

“We’ve imposed long enough.”

She looked as though she had something to say about that, but she bit her lip instead.

“If you’ll provide me with a bill, I’ll finish getting Tess ready. I don’t suppose you accept credit cards?”

Breaking it down to a business deal. Reminding her it was a business deal. Despite the mattress thing. Despite him sharing a memory with her of a long-ago Christmas that shone in his memory. Magic.

Despite knowing she had never had a good Christmas.

She looked insulted. “I’m not taking money! Hot dogs for supper and a bed on the floor! No, consider your stay at the White Christmas Inn my gift to you, humble as it was.”

Ryder didn’t want to accept a gift from her. He hated it that she was offering one. Was she intent on giving that Christmas spirit to everyone, even those completely undeserving? Who would not make Santa’s nice list?

But she had that mulish look on her face, and he wasn’t going to argue. He’d mail her a check when he got home after Christmas. No, an anonymous money order because she’d probably be stubborn enough not to cash a check with his name on it.

Even if by after Christmas she’d mortgaged the place to pay for her hot dogs, and her falling-down house, and her fantasy Christmas day for the needy.

So, he’d make sure it was a darn generous check.

“Speaking of hot dogs,” he said. “Don’t forget, if the power stays out much longer, you’ll have to take them out of the freezer.”

What a hero, Ryder told himself cynically, leaving her without power, but making sure to dispense hot-dog-saving advice before departing.

A sound broke the absolute silence of the morning, a high-pitched whining engine noise. A snowmobile.

It was now full light out. The landscape outside the inn looked like a broken fairy tale, trees smashed, lines dangling, but everything coated in a thin shimmering sheet of incredibly beautiful blue-diamond ice.

A snowmobile pulling a sled came around the corner of the house. A man drove the snow machine; the sled had a woman and two little girls in it

“My neighbors,” Emma said, and a smile of pure delight lit her face. “The Fenshaws. That’s Tim driving, his daughter-in-law, Mona, and his two granddaughters, Sue and Peggy.”

Relief washed over Ryder. She wouldn’t be alone, after all. She had people who cared about her. Cared about her enough to be here at first light making sure she was all right.

He was free to leave.

The Fenshaws didn’t so much come into the house as tumble in, laden with thermoses and a huge basket wafting the incredible smell of homemade bread. Flurried introductions were made.

The girls, perhaps nine and eleven, spotted Tess and put the baskets they were carrying down.

“A baby,” they breathed in one voice.

The older one, Sue, came and took Tess from him with surprising expertise, put her on her hip, danced across the foyer to her mother.

“Look, Mom. Isn’t she the cutest thing ever? Oh, I can’t wait to comb her hair!”

As tempting as it would be to stay for that, and to sample whatever was in those baskets, now would be the perfect time to make his getaway, leaving Emma amongst all this energy and love.

“Actually, Tess and I were just getting ready to leave,” Ryder said, amazed by his own reluctance, knowing, though, that that very reluctance was telling him it was time to go. He had to bite his tongue to keep himself from reminding her about the hot dogs again.

“Were you now?”

The man, Tim, weathered face and white hair, was kicking off his boots inside the front door. He rounded on Ryder and eyed him, taking in the pajamas and the mattress on the floor in the other room in one sweep of his gaze which was deeply and protectively suspicious.

“We got stranded by the storm,” Ryder said, pleased by the older man’s suspicion rather than put out by it. He was happy Emma had someone this fiercely protective of her, someone to look out for her. It relieved him of a burden he had taken on without wanting to. “But we’re leaving now.”

Tim had one of those faces Ryder could read. Loss was etched there, and yet calm, too, as if Tim had made peace with what was, didn’t even consider asking the world to take back its unfairness and cruelties.

“You think I’d arrive on my snowmobile if the driveway was open?” the man said. “Trees all over the thing.”

Ryder stared at him. He’d been so anxious to go he had not seen what was right in front of him.

“You better have yourself some grub, son, and then we got us some work to do. You look like a city boy. You know how to run a chain saw?”

Ryder wanted to protest being called son. He wanted to rail against fate keeping him here when he was desperate to get out.

“We’ll eat in the living room,” Mona said, as if it was all decided. “It’ll be too cold in the rest of the house.”

“Tess doesn’t like the living room.”

But he was ignored and Tess, clearly enamored of the little girls, only cast a suspicious look at the fireplace before taking her cue from the other children and allowing herself to be put in the place of honor at the very center of the picnic blanket they were laying out on the floor.

The basket was unpacked, and soon they were tucking into homemade bread and jam, steaming mugs of coffee.

The magic seemed to be deepening in this place, as the two little girls fussed over Tess…and over him.

“This is my doll,” Peggy told him, wagging a worn rag doll in his face. “Her name is Bebo.”

“Uh, that’s an unusual name.”

“Do you think it’s pretty?”

It rated up there with Holiday Happenings on his ugly-name list, but he couldn’t look into that earnest face and say that. Considering it practice for when Tess would be asking him such difficult questions, he said, “I think it’s very creative.”

Peggy frowned at him, not fooled. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means pretty,” he surrendered, and shot Emma a look when he heard her muffled laugh.

The attention of the little girls made him feel awkward. Mona said to him, softly, “My husband, Tim junior, is in the Canadian Forces. The girls seem to crave male attention. I’m sorry.”

Ryder was sorry he’d made his discomfort that visible. He was glad he was leaving as soon as the driveway was cleared. He was no replacement for a hero. Not even close. “It must be very difficult for you.”

She lowered her voice another notch, as Tim senior left the room to check the water pipes. “It’s hardest on him. He lost his wife a while back and seems to age a year for every day Tim is gone.”

Losses. Ryder had read the elder man’s face correctly. This family was handling their own fears and troubles.

“Do you have power at your place?” Ryder asked, changing the subject. He tried to sound casual. In actual fact, he hoped the fresh-made bread meant the Fenshaw house had power because he would feel better if Emma went there when he left.

“No,” Mona said. “I have a great old wood-burning stove, the kind the pioneers had. You can cook on it, it has an oven. It’s fantastic. It heats the whole house, though the house isn’t as large as this one.”

Again, there was the sense of needing to go, the momentary helpless frustration, and then surrender.

He wasn’t going anywhere until they got the driveway cleared. He might as well enjoy the mouthwatering bread, the homemade jams, the hot coffee. He might as well enjoy the innocence of those children, the fact that they liked him without any evidence that they should.

“Would you like to hold Bebo?” Peggy asked him.

He heard Emma laugh again as he tried to think of a diplomatic response, and then she rescued him by saying, “I’d like to hold her, Peggy.”

“Me,” Tess yelled, and Peggy surrendered her doll to the baby even though Tess was covered in jam.

Of course, surrendering to enjoyment was like surrendering to the magic that was wrapping itself around him, trying to creep inside him. Somehow as he filled up on breakfast and giggles, he became aware something was changing. He felt not trapped, somehow. Not ecstatic, either, but not trapped.

“Water’s fine so far. What do you think we start clearing first?” Tim asked Emma, coming back into the room. “Pond or driveway?”

“Driveway,” Emma said.

And Ryder might have appreciated how practical she was being—since no one could even get to the pond without the driveway, except that she looked right at him, and smiled sunnily. “Mr. Richardson is anxious to go.” She didn’t say it, but she might as well have, And we’re anxious to have him leave.

He felt stung. Because for some reason he had thought she was anxious to have him stay. But she wouldn’t look at him, and he remembered he had seen heartbreak in her devotion to this house.

His leaving was what was best for everyone, some sizzle in the air between him and Emma was not going to pass if it was tested by too much time together.

“Let’s see what I remember about using a chain saw,” Ryder said, and got up when Tim moved to the door.

At the door he saw the older man pause, smile at the commotion. “Look at them girls with that baby. It’s like Christmas came early for them.”

Ryder looked back, and his heart felt as though a fist was squeezing it. Tess waddled back and forth between the two girls, Peggy’s doll in a grubby death grip. The girls clapped and encouraged her every step.

The sense of his own inadequacy, from which he had taken a quick break, languishing in the warmth of Emma’s approval, came back with a vengeance.

Ryder felt, acutely, the thing he could not give Tess.

This.

Family. She needed the thing he was most determined not to leave himself open to ever again.

He wondered if Emma was right about there being only one right decision, or if only the most selfish of men would think he could possibly know what was best for that baby, think that he could give her everything she needed.

Not because it was what was best for her. But because he loved her. Hopelessly and helplessly and she was all that was left of his world.

Tess normally kept a sharp eye out for any indication of a good-bye. When he left for work in the mornings, she would arch herself over Mrs. Markle’s arms in a fit of fury. But this morning, covered in jam from her fingers to her ears, she did not seem to notice he was preparing to leave her in the care of strangers.

He was relieved that she was not making a fuss about the fireplace, either, though every now and then she would cast it a wary look, then look to the girls to see if they noticed the fire-breathing monster in the room with them.

It wasn’t really as if he was leaving her with strangers. Somehow in one night Emma was not a stranger, and he seriously doubted the Fenshaws remained strangers to anyone for more than a few seconds.

He turned away from the play of the children and went out to his car to retrieve the boots and gloves he had packed for the cottage because Tess loved to play in the snow. He didn’t even go back in to put them on, refusing to subject himself to the warmth of that scene again. He slid his winter clothes over what he was wearing.

Tim put him to work straight away.

Two huge trees and several smaller ones had fallen over the driveway. Branches littered the entire length of the road.

Ryder soon found himself immersed in the work of cutting the trees, bucking the branches off them. The pure physical activity soothed something in him, much like the punishing workouts he did at the gym.

Plus, working with a chain saw was tricky and dangerous. There was no room for wandering thoughts while working with a piece of equipment that could take off a limb before you blinked.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Emma leave the house and come down the driveway to join them.

“They kicked me out. Mona said I can’t even be trusted in a kitchen with full power, but I think the truth is they wanted the baby to themselves. Pigeon convention in full swing.”

It was only a mark of how necessary it was that he leave that he appreciated how carefully she had listened to him last night.

“Oh, and I buried the hot dogs in a snowdrift outside the back door.”

Emma was dressed casually, in a down parka, her crazy hair sticking out from under a red toque. She had on men’s work gloves that made her hands look huge at the ends of her dainty wrists.

“Tess okay with you leaving?” he asked her, idling the chain saw, worried that the incident with the fire could be repeated now that both he and Emma had left the house.

But Emma reassured him. “Tess appears to be having the time of her life. They’ve heated up some water. Mona is showing Sue and Peggy how to bathe a baby. They’re using a huge roasting pan for a tub, in front of the fire. I nearly cooed myself it was so darned cute. I told them to take some pictures for you. I can e-mail them to you. After.”

After. After he was gone. Setting up a little thread of contact, making his leaving not nearly as complete as he wanted to make it. He wanted to leave this place—and all the uncomfortable feelings it had conjured up—and not look back.

“Watch for the ice,” he told her, not wanting to encourage her to send him pictures. “Every now and then it breaks off the wires or the trees and falls down like a pane of glass.”

“You watch out, too,” she said.

“For?”

She scooped up a handful of snow, balled it carefully, hurled it at his head. It missed and hit him square in the chest.

Don’t do it, he ordered himself. Despite her acting as if she was as eager for him to leave as he was to go, she was looking for that hole in his defenses again. Intentionally or not?

Despite his strict order to himself, he set down the chain saw, idling, scooped up a handful of snow, formed it into a solid ball. She was already running down the driveway, laughing, thinking she’d escaped.

He let fly the snowball. It missed. And for a moment, without thought, without any kind of premeditation, without analysis, he was his old self again, just an ordinary guy who couldn’t stand the fact he’d missed. He scooped up another handful of snow, went down the driveway after her. She laughed and scooted off the road, ducked behind a tree. His snowball splatted against it.

“Na, na,” she said. She peeked out and flagged her nose at him.

He let fly again, she ducked behind the tree. Splat. He scooped snow, moved in closer, she darted to another tree. A snowball flew out from behind it, and hit him squarely in the face.

It was a damned challenge to his manhood! He wiped the snow away and made ammunition. When she showed herself again, he let fly with one snowball after another, machinegun-like. He thought she’d run, or better, beg for mercy, but she didn’t. She grabbed an armload of snow, ran right into the hail of his fire and jammed the white fluffy stuff right down his pants!

He burst out laughing. “You know how to put out a fire, don’t you, Emma?”

“Were you on fire?” she asked, all innocence.

No. Not yet. But if he was around this kind of temptation much longer he was going to be.

He shook his head, moved away from her, ordered himself again to stop it. But he didn’t. “Watch your back,” he warned her.

But she just laughed, moved past him down the driveway. He went back to his chain saw, still idling, and stopped for a moment to watch her pulling branches off the road, blowing out puffs of wintry air as she applied herself to the task.

He frowned. She was tackling branches way too big for her.

“Save your breath,” Tim said, following his gaze. “If you tell her it’s a man’s work she’ll be trying to find her own chain saw. Stubborn as a mule.”

But he said it with clear affection.

“It runs in her family.” That was said without so much affection.

Don’t ask, Ryder said. He hoped to begin the process of disengaging himself, but somehow he had to ask.

“What’s her family like?”

“There’s just her and her mother now that her grandmother died.” He hesitated, stared hard at Ryder, weighing something. “Lynelle ain’t gonna be takin’ home the Mama of the Year award.”

“But she’s coming for Christmas, right?” Why did he care? Why did it feel as if it relieved him of some responsibility? He had to get out of here. He was not responsible for Emma’s happiness. How could he be? He couldn’t even be responsible for his own anymore. He was broken. Broken people couldn’t fix things, they could only make them worse.

“Humph,” Tim said crankily, “Emma’s mother, Lynelle, doesn’t give a lick about this place, never will.”

“It’s not about the place,” Ryder said, aggrieved. “It’s about her daughter.”

Tim looked troubled, and Ryder could clearly see in his face he wasn’t sure if Lynelle gave a lick about her daughter, either, though he stopped short of saying that.

“Ah, well,” Tim said. “You can’t choose your family.”

Since Tim clearly didn’t feel that way about his own family, it was a ringing indictment of Emma’s. Ryder had fished for more information about Emma, but now he was sorry for what he’d found out. She was as alone as he was. Maybe more so. She didn’t have Tess.

Tim’s revelations made Ryder see Emma’s need to make a perfect Christmas in a new light. It was as if she thought that if she could create enough festive atmosphere, help enough people, she could outrun her own pain and loneliness.

In a way, he and Emma were doing the very opposite things to achieve the same result.

Troubled, he focused on the tasks at hand, but despite working steadily they had made almost no headway on the driveway by noon. A bell rang, and Ryder realized Mona was calling them for lunch, and that he was famished.

“Mama!” Tess crowed when she saw him. She was seated in her high chair in front of the fire, both little girls standing on chairs beside her, patiently working combs and gentle fingers through Tess’s wet hair. She had obviously had a bath, been dressed in fresh onesies from her baby bag, and was proudly sporting a pure white Christmas bow in the center of her chest.

Emma came in behind him stomping snow off her boots.

“Isn’t that cute?” she asked. “She looks like a pint-sized queen commanding her attendants.”

He kicked off his own boots, walked in and inspected Tess’s ’do. The worst of the tangles were out of her hair. Experimentally, he reached out and touched.

Tess screeched.

The older girl said sternly, “Tess, that is enough of that!”

And Tess stopped, just like that. He touched her hair again, and the baby gave her captors a sly look and made a decision. She cooed, “Mama.”

“He’s not your mama, silly,” the older girl, Sue, said again. “Papa.”

“I’m her uncle.”

“Uncle,” the child said, not missing a beat, pointing at him. “That’s your uncle, Tess.”

“Ubba.”

Three months he’d been trying to coax his niece to call him anything but Mama.

And he hadn’t been able to.

Girls, women, knew these things. They knew by some deep instinct how to deal with babies. How to raise children. What did he know of these things? How could he ever do this job justice?

Really, in the end he just wanted to know he was doing a good enough job, and for one moment Emma had made him feel that way. Made him feel that he didn’t have to be an exquisite baby hairdresser, or nominated for guardian of the year.

In Emma’s eyes in that moment this morning when he had rescued Tess from her fire-breathing dragon, he had felt certainty. His love for the baby was enough.

Or was it? What about moments such as these that his brokenness, his unwillingness to reengage in the risky business of loving others would deprive Tess of?

And he wondered, even if he never gave Emma his e-mail address, just how completely he was going to be able to leave this behind.

Peggy, the smaller of the girls, approached him while they ate.

“Would you like to see my drawing?”

“Uh, okay.”

She handed it to him. A little blobby baby, obviously Tess because of the hair, smiled brightly in front of a Christmas tree.

“That’s very nice,” he said awkwardly. “I like the way you did Tess.”

“It’s before we fixed her hair.” Peggy beamed at him as if he had handed her a golden wand that granted wishes. As if he was enough.

Then he had to admire Sue’s drawing, too. Sue had drawn a picture of a man in a uniform in front of a Christmas tree.

“That’s my dad,” she said.

Something about the way she said it—so proud, so certain her dad could make everything right in her world—made him ache for the moment he had not made right and could never bring back. It made him ache for the moments of fatherhood his brother was never going to have, for the moments Tess was never going to have. His sorrow fell over the moment like a dark cape being thrown over light.

It was light that Emma, with her innate sense of playfulness, her ability to sneak by his defenses with falling mattresses and flying snowballs was bringing to his world.

He got up quickly, without looking at Emma, went outside and back to the soothing balm of hard, physical, mind-engaging labor.

“No Holiday Happenings again tonight,” Emma said, as they finally reached the base of her driveway. They had spent the whole afternoon clearing it. It was now late in the day, the sun low in the sky, a chill creeping back into the air.

She was so aware of Ryder, the pure physical presence of the man, as he stood beside her surveying her driveway where it intersected with the main road. The sun had been shining brilliantly up until a few minutes ago, and he had stripped down to his T-shirt. His arm muscles were taut and pumped from the demands of running that chain saw. She could smell something coming off him, enticing, as crystal-clear and clean as the ice falling off the tree branches and telephone wires.

From the way he’d been dressed when he arrived last night, she had assumed he was a high-powered professional, and he had confirmed that when he had told her he was an architect. But seeing him tackle the mess in her driveway, his strength unflagging, hour after grueling hour, she had been awed by the pure masculine power of the man.

The way he worked told her a whole lot more about him than his job description. Even Tim, whose admiration was hard-won, had looked over at Ryder working and when Emma went by with a load of branches, had embarrassed her by saying, a little too loudly, “That one’s a keeper.”

So she’d said just as loudly, “And what would you keep him for?” But then she’d been sorry, because Tim missed his son, and could have used another man around to help him with his own place, never mind all that he had taken on at hers.

Ryder was leaving as soon as he could. And that was wise. She realized he was right to want to leave. She realized it was in her best interests for him to go. Something was stirring in her that she thought she had put away in a box marked Childish Dreams and Illusions after the devastation of Peter’s fickleness.

Now she stared up the main road. It was as littered with debris, broken boughs and fallen trees as her driveway had been. In the far distance, she listened for the sounds of rescue, chain saws or heavy equipment running, but she heard absolutely nothing.

“I guess Tess and I aren’t going anywhere today,” Ryder said.

She cast a look at his face. He looked resigned, like a soldier who had just been told he had more battles to fight. It wasn’t very flattering.

But the way his gaze went to her lips was, except that he took a deep breath and moved away from her.

Emma watched him go, and despite the fact she was exhausted after the hard day of physical labor, she felt a little tingle of pure awareness that made her feel alive, and as though her life was full of possibilities.

Stop it, she ordered herself. Be despondent! No Holiday Happenings for the second night in a row? And the road closed. For how long? She needed to get that bus ticket to her mother.

It was a disaster! A harbinger of another Christmas disaster.

And yet, despite the fact this year was shaping up about the same way, the road to her inn obviously impassable, something inside her was singing! And it wasn’t wild-child, either, though she had definitely perked up at the way Ryder had looked at her lips moments ago.

No, it was another part of her, singing because of flying snowballs and the way he had looked so awkward and adorable studying the girls’ drawings.

The rational part of her knew that saying good-bye would be the best thing, but how quickly her own life—Holiday Happenings, even her Christmas-day celebrations—were taking a backseat to rationality.

That was her weakness, and it ran in the family. After watching her mother toss her life to the wind every time a new and exciting man blew in, Emma had done the very same thing with Peter! She had tried to make herself over in the image Peter Henderson had approved of.

She had been amazed when Peter—wealthy, handsome, educated, sophisticated—a doctor and her boss, had asked her out. To her, he had been everything she dreamed of—stable, successful, normal, from a stellar family.

Only, it hadn’t been very long before she discovered that keeping up with appearances, which, admittedly, had impressed her at first, was an obsession with him. His shoes had to be a certain make, his ties were imported, his teeth were whitened. Looking good, no matter how he was feeling on the inside, was a full-time job for him.

And it hadn’t taken very long for him to turn his critical eye on her. You’re not going to wear that are you? Or It would have been better, when you met Mrs. Smith, if you said you enjoyed your Christmas charity work instead of telling her that dreadful story about the homeless man.

And Emma had gone overboard trying to please him, worn herself out, lived for the praise and approval that never came.

Despite his pedigree, it had all started to remind her a little bit of her relationship with her mother: she was looking for things the other person never intended to give her.

The truth was that she’d been glad when her grandmother had needed her, glad that she had a place to go, glad to escape from the demands of the role she had to play for him.

When she’d finally invited Peter to White Pond Inn, halfway through the renovation, thinking he would love it and see what a beautiful summer place it could make for them once they were married, he had hated it. He had told her, snobbishly, with hostility, that she was trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

That was something else he had in common with her mother, who hated this place so much she hadn’t even come back for Granny’s funeral.

And then the final blow—by telephone, the coward! Monique was more suited to his world. It was Emma’s own fault for going to the inn. For putting her interests ahead of his.

How had the love of her life, the man who was her dream, turned out to be a snobby version of her mother? To both of them, their interests came first. They didn’t even hesitate to divest themselves of anyone or anything that asked something of them, that wanted a return on an investment. And Emma had bought into it for so long, telling herself real love didn’t ask for anything. It only gave, never took, exhausting and unrewarding as that was.

Why did Emma think Lynelle would come for Christmas when she hadn’t even come to her own mother’s funeral?

She’ll come, Emma told herself. She said she would come. But a promise in her mother’s world was not always something you could take to the bank. The doubt was going to be there until the moment her mother stepped off the bus.

And Emma felt guilty about her lack of faith in Lynelle.

“Emma, Emma, Emma,” her mother had said, annoyed, the last time they’d spoken and Emma had pressed for an answer about Christmas. “Where do you get that sentimental streak from?”

As if somehow Emma was in the wrong for wanting her to come.

“Okay, okay, okay,” Lynelle had finally said, irritated. “I’ll come. Send the damned ticket. Are you happy now?”

“Hey,” Ryder said. When had he come back beside her? “Don’t take it like that. The road could be open tonight.” And then, softer, “Please don’t cry.”

Which was when she realized she was crying! She swiped at her cheeks with a mittened hand. “I’m not crying,” she said stubbornly. “I poked myself in the eye with a branch.”

She held out a branch to show him, but he looked right past it and right past the words.

He cupped her chin in his gloved hand, slipped the glove off his other hand with his teeth, brushed the tear from her cheek. She saw the struggle in his face, knew he wanted nothing more than to walk away from her pain.

And she knew she was seeing something he tried to hide when he didn’t walk away, or couldn’t.

“Come on,” he said, throwing a casual brotherly arm over her shoulder, guiding her away from the road, “you’ll have a good Christmas this year. Meanwhile, let’s see what that miracle worker Mona has planned for supper.”

As soon as he walked in the door, Sue and Peggy, who had apparently lugged Tess around all afternoon, were on him as if he were a favored uncle. They handed over Tess, who now sported several more bows, somewhat reluctantly.

“Mama,” she said.

“No, Tess,” Sue said sternly.

“Ubba?” Tess guessed.

“Yes!” The gleeful girls danced around as if Tess had scored a touchdown. Ryder stroked Tess’s combed hair, and Tess didn’t even howl a protest.

“Me preffree,” she declared to her uncle. “Har.”

“She means she’s pretty,” Sue translated officiously. “’Cause of her hair.”

“Pretty,” Ryder said thoughtfully. “No, I don’t think so.”

All three girls looked shattered at his pronouncement, but the smiles started when he said, “Um, no, pretty isn’t good enough. Lovely?” He seemed to think it over, regarded Tess, then shook his head. “Gorgeous. Beautiful. Stunning. Dazzling.”

“Creative!” Sue crowed, and he smiled.

And then he lifted his niece up with that easy masculine grace, dangled her over his head, her little legs waggling with glee, and then he swooped her down and blew a kiss onto her belly.

Emma could have watched him play with the baby forever. But even thinking that word in close proximity to him seemed to be inviting danger, so she deliberately turned her back on the scene and went in search of Mona. Mona was on the back porch, assembling the bundles of balsam and fir and spruce that went into wreaths.

“The road’s not open,” Emma said, glad to have this moment alone with Mona. “I’m not sure we need any more of those. We probably won’t be able to sell what we have.”

She took a deep breath, “I appreciate you and Tim and the girls spending the day, but I’m not sure about tomorrow. If Holiday Happenings doesn’t happen soon, I’m not going to be able to pay you.”

Mona gave her an insulted look. “We came as your neighbors and your friends today, not as your employees, and we’ll be here as long as you need us.”

Emma could feel those awful tears burning in her eyes again.

“Besides, you know how I love this house and it’s good to keep busy. It keeps all of us from thinking about Tim. Two more Canadian soldiers were wounded yesterday.”

And then Mona’s eyes were full of tears, too, but she quickly brushed them aside. “Let’s have supper at my place. I can cook on the wood burner. I took out chicken this morning. Plus the whole house will be nice and warm from the woodstove.”

The thought of so much warmth—physical and emotional—was more than Emma could refuse.

But Ryder refused with ease, closing something in himself that had opened during the snowball fight. “Tess and I will stay here,” he said. “I’ve got food for her. I can have a hot dog for supper.”

Emma knew something about all this bothered him: the children, the family, the moments of playfulness, the togetherness. She could see that he deliberately planned to turn his back on it. She refused to beg him to come, which woman-scorned was very pleased about. Emma knew he was posing a danger to her. She could see that by coming to the inn she had deliberately removed herself from all those things that, after Peter, she was ill-equipped to handle.

But Mona was having none of it. “You are not having a hot dog for supper after the kind of work you did today.”

Ryder still looked stubborn.

Peggy came and took his hand, shook it vigorously to make sure she had his full attention. “Tess has to come to my house. I want to show her my dollhouse that my daddy made.”

“I could use another man,” Tim said, clearly having to overcome his pride to ask. “The pump won’t be working, and I’ll need to haul water from the creek.”

Emma was not sure which of those arguments won him over, but she was aware of the sweet sensation within herself of wanting to be with him and to spend more time with him, and being glad she didn’t have to reveal any of that by convincing him herself.

Somehow they all managed it in one trip, Mona on the snowmobile behind her father-in-law, Ryder, Emma, girls and baby squashed onto the sled.

Ryder went in first, Emma between his legs, the baby on her lap. She had to push hard into his chest to make room for Sue and Peggy, who squeezed in practically on top of her and the baby.

The extremely crowded ride the short distance to the Fenshaws’ should have been uncomfortable. Instead, it felt incredible. It wasn’t just because she was so close to him, though she could feel his heart beating through his jacket, feel the steel of his strong legs where they formed a V around the small of her back. It was the whole picture, the baby and the girls shouting with laughter as their grandfather picked up speed, the snowmobile cutting a smooth path through the snow.

It was the party atmosphere the Fenshaws insisted on creating, as if closed roads and downed power lines were exactly the excuse they’d been looking for to spend some time together.

It was the feeling of family that Emma had yearned for her entire life.

The house Mona had come to share with her father-in-law when her husband was away was as old as Emma’s but more rustic. Inside was as humble as out; it was a true farmhouse, more about function than fashion, especially since Tim had lived here on his own after the death of his wife.

Wall art ran to framed school photos of the girls, and a large picture of Tim, Jr., in his military uniform, smiling shyly at the camera.

There was nothing “up-country” about the Christmas decorations, either; they were a happy mishmash of fake silver and gold garlands, a scrawny tree nearly falling over under the weight of pine-cone decorations obviously made by Sue and Peggy, the table centerpiece a skinny Santa Claus made out of a paper towel roll and cotton batten.

And yet, the feeling of Christmas and of family was perfect.

Peter would have hated every single thing about this house, and he would have called the decorations tacky.

But when she slid Ryder a glance to see how he was reacting, she saw him take in the humble home, something reluctant and oddly vulnerable in the dark of his eyes.

How could it be, that just twenty-four hours ago when she had seen him those dark, dark eyes had made her think the devil had come to visit?

Could he have changed that much in twenty-four hours? Or had she?