Читать книгу The Complete Christmas Collection - Джанис Мейнард, Rebecca Winters - Страница 76

EMMA watched with admiration as Mona, unfazed by the lack of electricity, stoked the cookstove, lit coal-oil lanterns, warmed water for washing, set her old coffeepot on the stove and began to get chicken ready to fry in an old cast-iron pan.

The men hauled water, a hard job that left them soaked in their own sweat and the water that sloshed from buckets. When they were done, Mona gave them a scrub basin filled with the warm water, and dry shirts and shooed them into the back porch off the kitchen. She gave Emma a potato peeler and pointed at a mountain of potatoes.

Unfortunately, from where she stood at the table peeling, Emma had a clear view through the open door to the porch. Her mouth went dry as Ryder stripped off his wet shirt. He was one hundred-per-cent-pure man. He had incredibly broad shoulders, his chest was deep and smooth, his pectoral muscles defined, his abdomen a rippled hollow. His pants hung low over the slight rise of his hips.

Emma felt a fire in her belly. Around Peter she had always striven to feel cool and composed. Even their kisses had been stingy and proper.

Nothing could have prepared her for the pure primal feeling she felt now.

How could she be a brand-new woman—totally devoted to her inn and her independent life—with someone like him around?

He’s a temporary distraction, she told herself. But did that mean she could look all she wanted? Was it something like those chocolate oranges that came out only at Christmas? You had to give yourself permission to enjoy them while they were around?

Embarrassed by her own hunger and curiosity, Emma forced herself to focus on the potato she was peeling, but she just had to slide him one more little look. Who knew how long before she would see something like this again?

Ryder Richardson was built as if he had been carved out of marble. The male strength and perfection in every hard line of him was absolute.

He took the washcloth, dipped it in the water, soaped it and then ran it along the hard bulge of his forearm, up his arm to the mound of his biceps.

She hoped she hadn’t made a noise! Because he looked up, caught her looking and his gaze rested on her, heated, knowing. He continued what he was doing, but he held her gaze while he did it. She looked away first, her face feeling as if it was on fire.

She didn’t look up again, scowling with furious concentration at the potato in her hand.

Then he was beside her, filling her senses in yet another way, the soapy scent of him as sensual as silk on naked skin.

“Wow,” he said, his voice husky, “not much left of that potato.”

Despite her attempt at concentration, despite the fact she had not looked away from that spud for a single second, she had whittled away at it until only a sliver of it remained in her hand.

“You should go check on Tess,” she said, throwing that potato in the peeled pile and picking up another, trying to get rid of him. Only he wasn’t falling for it.

“I can hear her laughing. She’s obviously okay.”

He picked up a paring knife, sat on the stool beside her, took off a potato peel in one long coil, his hands amazing on that knife, his movements, despite the strength in those hands, controlled and fine.

It was very easy to imagine hands like those doing things and going places—

“Pay attention,” he said, as if he knew she was looking at his hands, and thinking totally wicked thoughts about where she would like them to be. “Don’t cut yourself.”

She glanced at him, saw a teasing smile playing across his face. The scoundrel knew exactly what effect he was having on her!

Probably because he’d had it on about a million women before her.

“Ouch,” she said. She’d nicked her finger.

“Tried to tell you,” he said smugly. But then he set down his potato and his knife and lifted her hand.

She who had always disdained the word swoon and the kind of woman who would do it—certainly not an independent innkeeper—could feel something in her melt and slide.

“It’s nothing,” she said, trying to take her hand away.

He held fast. “I’ll finish up, if you want to go take care of it.”

“I said, it’s nothing.” Her voice was high and squeaky, and it had an unattractive frantic quality to it. She yanked her hand away, picked up another potato to prove a point, though, at the moment, she was so addled she wasn’t quite sure what that point was.

Her hand was tingling.

He sighed, exasperated. “You’ve got to know when to quit, Emma.”

That was a problem for her, all right. Because she should quit this right now. She should set down her paring knife and go join the girls and Tess in the other room. She could hear them trying to play cards and keep the cards out of Tess’s clutches at the same time.

But good sense did not prevail. She did not quit. Instead she said, boldly, “Maybe I’ll let you take care of it for me later.”

And when he was silent she glanced at him and saw he was now concentrating furiously on his task.

Whatever was going on was mutual.

Which made a wholesome farm dinner, platters of perfectly browned chicken, wedged potatoes, a simple salad, seem fraught with hidden dangers—the touch of his hand while he passed the salt, his leg brushing hers when he got up to get something that Tess had dropped on the floor.

Ryder’s presence, her aching awareness of him, made her feel as awkward as a teenager on her first date, as if she was just learning to chew food and how to use a knife and fork.

“Mona, you cooked,” Emma said after dinner. “I’ll clean up. You go visit with the girls. Relax.”

I need a break from this man, from the intensity I feel around him, from the awareness of his scent and his eyes and the way his chest rises and falls when he breathes.

“I’ll help,” he said.

Great. Hide the knives.

Why was he doing this? Maybe because he was helpless not to do it, the same as she was? Maybe because he wanted to be close to her, the temptation of the faint but growing sizzle between them a warmth too hard to walk away from if you were chilled from the inside out?

Emma did not miss the look on Tim’s face. Not in the least judgmental as he looked between the two of them, but satisfied somehow.

Alone in the kitchen, Ryder took a tea towel and wiped the dishes she washed.

“Tell me what made Christmas so bad for you,” he said.

“Oh, I wish I had never said that. It was silly. A moment, that’s all.”

A moment of trusting another person with your deepest disappointment.

The truth was the Christmases of her childhood had been chaotic, full of moves, Lynelle’s new men, not enough money, too much adult celebration.

And that shadow seemed to have fallen over the Christmases of her adult life, too.

“One year my new puppy had died, another I ended up in the hospital with pneumonia.”

And then last year, when she had so been looking forward to her first Christmas with Peter’s parents, practically quivering with expectation, she had been devastated by the reality.

Not that she was going there with this man!

“Just normal stuff that happens to everyone,” she said. “I’m too sensitive. Everyone says so. Sorry.” Especially my mother. Repeatedly.

“Emma,” his hand was on her shoulder.

There was that tingling again.

“You don’t have to apologize for being sensitive. The world could use a whole lot more of that. It’s people like you who make everything that is beautiful.”

Emma stared at him, thinking it was the loveliest thing anyone had ever said to her. If she got nothing else for Christmas, would that be enough?

“Hurry up,” Sue said, appearing out of the living room.

Ryder’s hand dropped off her shoulder but the tingle stayed.

“Hurry up. We have enough people to play charades. You two and me on one team, Mom and Grandpa and Pegs on the other. Come on!”

Ryder’s silence made Emma look at him. She could clearly see some battle in his eyes. He did not want to play charades.

He didn’t say, I don’t want to. He said, “I can’t.”

Sue stepped across the floor, took his hand and tugged. She looked up at him with enormous eyes. “Pleeease?” she whispered.

His face looked not as if he were deciding whether to play charades, but as if he was a warrior deciding whether to pick up his weapons or lay them down.

In the end he could not refuse Sue, was incapable of hurting her, and Emma had the sensation of seeing who he really was.

“Who gets Tess?” Ryder asked the little girl, only Emma sensed the surrender, and how hard it came to him.

“We’re letting her think she’s on both teams,” Sue whispered solemnly.

Emma had never played charades, family games not being high on her mother’s list of priorities, but the girls were experts on the game, and took great pleasure in explaining her responsibilities to her.

After several rounds, Tess fell asleep on the couch. It was Emma’s turn. A little nervous, she drew a card from a bowl. Love Story. Okay. Who was the joker who had put that in?

She didn’t want to try and act out anything about love with Ryder in the room. And how was she supposed to get that subject across with only her limited acting abilities?

Reluctantly, she made the motion the girls had showed her.

“Movie,” Sue and Peggy crowed together, Peggy apparently forgetting whose team she was on.

So far so good. Taking a deep breath, Emma crossed her hands over her heart, smiled, and swayed in what she hoped was a swoon, something she was newly experienced at. She blinked her eyes.

“Giraffe?” Sue said doubtfully.

Ryder snickered. Emma glared at him and drew a large invisible heart with her hands.

“Giraffe that has swallowed something large. Like a potato. Only not one Emma peeled,” Ryder suggested.

Everyone seemed to think he was hysterically funny. He was grinning slightly and she saw that once he had been this man: full of mischief and fun. The grin made him look young, made her think how somber he looked most of the time. What had happened to him? Obviously whatever it was made him the worst possible man to feel attracted to. He was wounded. So was she. That was a bad, bad combination.

Despite knowing that, she went from feeling reluctant and awkward to wanting to make him laugh. She threw herself into her performance, going on bended knee before him, clasping her hands in front of her, blinking dreamily.

“A giraffe with eye problems,” Ryder said.

“Would you forget the giraffe?” she cried.

“You’re not allowed to talk, Emma!” Sue reprimanded her.

“Yeah,” Ryder said. “Whoever heard of a giraffe that talks?”

Emma was exasperated that he would get a talking giraffe out of her practically prostrating herself in front of him with love.

Could she fall in love with him? Given time? Luckily they didn’t have time. Then again, how much time would you need to fall hopelessly in love with a man like him? And it would be hopeless. The remoteness that never quite left his eyes, not even when he laughed, was warning her off, trying to tell her something.

Still, he’d walked into her life twenty-four hours ago, and his appeal was, unfortunately, outweighing the warning, swaying her against her will. She thought of the exquisite tenderness on his face when he had soothed Tess this morning, when he had said to the baby, Mama’s here. She thought of his clumsy awkwardness with the girls, of the way he pitched in to help, of the seamless way he had joined in with the Fenshaws and with her. Emma thought of him telling her about his best Christmas, the light that had come on in his face, she thought of him chasing her down the driveway armed with snowballs. Did all this mean that if he stayed another day she would lose her good sense completely?

“Good sense is my middle name,” she muttered a reminder to herself.

“You’re not allowed to talk!” Sue reminded her, hands on her hips, frowning.

Emma got off up her knees. Naturally she didn’t expect Sue to get her acting out love, but he was being deliberately obtuse. Despite the fact that good sense was her middle name, Emma skipped across the living room, a woman obviously in the throes of love, picked an imaginary daisy, tore imaginary petals off it, he loves me, he loves me not.

“The Birds,” Ryder suggested dryly, though he was obviously enjoying himself at her expense!

She glared at him, blinked again, blew him a kiss, wrapped her arms around herself and hugged, doing her best dreamy look.

“You love him!” Sue crowed.

And Emma felt herself turn bright red. Of course she didn’t love him. She barely knew him! And the little she did know did not bode well for loving him. But she thought of the way he’d been unable to refuse Tim’s request for help or Sue’s plea for him to play the game with them, and she wondered about herself and her strength and the temptations of another twenty-four hours.

Though surely in these circumstances, seeing how people coped with disaster and with life being wrested out of their control, you knew a lot more about them sooner than under normal circumstances.

Emma decided she better move on before she embarrassed herself completely. She motioned that she was doing the second word, pretended to be turning the pages of a book.

“You’re reading,” Sue guessed. “A book. A story.”

Emma clapped her hands, thrilled to have gotten that part over with so fast.

“Love Story,” Ryder guessed, and then gave a shout of laughter, as if his own enthusiasm had taken him by surprise.

Emma realized, staring at him, that what she needed to do was not think about the future or project her romantic nature onto it. She needed to remember the past, and how her ability to fill in the blanks had brought her nothing but grief. With Peter. And with her mother.

She needed to remind herself what grief felt like and to know that the unfathomable darkness that swam in the man’s eyes promised her more of it.

“I have to go,” she said, leaping to her feet, remembering guiltily her true love now, her house. “I have to put more wood on the fire at my place or the water will freeze for sure. But Ryder can stay.”

“No, I’ll go with you.”

Something shivered along her spine. “No, it’s fine.”

“I’m not letting you go over there by yourself.”

Emma could tell Tim approved of that. The independent woman in her was strangely silent.

“Let Tess stay the night here then,” Mona said, as if it were all settled, “there’s no sense waking her up and sending her into the cold.”

Ryder hesitated.

“Okay,” he said, reluctantly, obviously weighing out what was better for Tess.

Emma was newly taken by his tender protective attitude toward Tess. It probably wasn’t good to be heading over there, just the two of them, feeling like this.

So aware. Her shoulder still tingling from where he’d touched it an hour ago! Woman-scorned told her to go home and throw out every one of those romantic movies she’d been collecting. They had obviously filled her head with nonsense.

“There’s an extra snowmobile in the shed next to the house,” Tim said. “My son’s. Take it over.”

For a moment, all the laughter was gone from the room, and Emma could feel how much this family wished Tim, Jr., home.

“I’ll be over first thing. We can get started on the pond,” Tim decided. “We should at least be able to clear a section of it for skating.”

“I’ll bring breakfast,” Mona said.

And then Emma and Ryder were outside, the moon full and bright above them, the air crystal-cold and clear, the stars sparkling, close enough that she felt she could reach out and put one in her pocket.

Ryder did up his jacket against the brisk breeze that was blowing. “There’s something incredibly admirable about those people. Father, husband, son called to war, power out, roads closed, they just handle everything with a certain calm courage. I admire that.”

“I think you handle crisis about the same way.”

He looked at her. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. He went to the shed, got the snowmobile out of it and then mounted it and patted the seat behind him.

She climbed on, trying to keep the dangerous awareness somewhat at bay by grabbing onto the bar behind her.

“Hold on tight.”

So she did, wrapping her arms around him, burrowing her cheek into the strong curve of his shoulder. Surrendering.

They surged through the night, her hands wrapped around his belly. He opened up the throttle and she was sucked even closer into him.

The cold air, the glory of the night and him.

She felt exhilarated. Free. As if there had been no moment before this one, and there would be none after. Her senses gave her mind, always too busy, a much-needed rest. Her senses dismissed the caution she was trying desperately to resurrect.

And maybe he felt that way, too. Because of what he said next.

“Do you mind if I take the long way home?” he shouted over the roar of the engine.

She honestly didn’t feel that she cared if they ever went home. This felt oddly like home. Being with him. Feeling his warmth and his strength penetrating through his jacket, feeling the play of his muscles as he guided the snowmobile around debris, picked a route that snaked through fallen trees up the ridge behind both her and Tim’s places.

The world was a place of sharp and almost mystical contrasts, the cold sting of night air on her cheeks in contrast to his warmth, the beauty of the moon making the broken trees glitter silver, the forest where she had walked many times damaged now and seeming like a place she had never been before, a place that could hold equally promise or destruction.

He stopped at the crest of the ridge and cut the engine. The silver, black and white vista below them was beautifully silent. They could see the dark silhouette of her inn, Tim’s place looking brighter with the yellow glow from the oil lamps lighting his windows. Beyond that, they could see Willowbrook.

“You could almost imagine it was the little town of Bethlehem,” she said, the town looking so pretty and peaceful.

He snorted but not with the same amount of derision as he would have done so last night.

“The lights are on in the town,” he noticed. “They have power there. And look, you can see headlights moving on the road west of it.”

It could take days for those things to happen here, but it was still a reminder that this was all temporary, an illusion of sorts, that would come to an end.

He turned and looked back at her, and then he took off the thick snowmobile glove and scraped his thumb across her lip.

She leaned into it, something flashed through his eyes and he moved his hand away, faced forward, put the glove back on.

He shook his head, and his voice was remote. “I think for both our sakes I should take you back to Fenshaws’. I can look after things at your place by myself tonight.”

“You go back and stay at Fenshsaws’,” she said, thinking I’m as bad at this as I am at charades. How could he not understand what she wanted? Or worse, understand exactly what she wanted and reject her?

“You can drop me off,” she said stiffly. “The inn is my responsibility and I’m not turning it over to you.”

“If you knew how badly I wanted to kiss you right now,” he said softly, “you’d go back to Fenshaws’.”

She totally forgot that good sense was her middle name.

“Would I?” she challenged him.

“Yeah,” he said roughly, “you would.”

“I think you’re wrong. I think I’d kiss you back.”

He sighed, his breath harsh, impatient. “Emma, let’s not complicate things.”

He was right. He would be a terrible complication in the world she was building for herself. It was too soon for this. He was being the reasonable one.

But that’s not how she acted. Instead, she got off the snowmobile and went around to the front of it, facing him. She leaned into him, took his face in her gloved hands, pulled his face to hers and brushed his lips with her own.

The first time she had seen him, last night, under the mistletoe, she had wondered what his lips would taste like. Now she knew, and they did not disappoint. Like the other contrasts of tonight, his lips were like ice and fire, steel and silk.

For a split second the force of his will was enough to resist her. And then it collapsed, and his lips accepted the invitation of hers, his hand curled behind her neck and pulled her deeper into him.

To Emma, it felt as though the stars fell from the sky, as if the snow around them turned to fire, as if her heart had been bound in chains and broke free of them.

She had a moment of intense clarity, as if she had lived in a fog, and the sun shone through.

It felt as though every experience of her entire life had led her to this moment, had made her ready for this moment. It felt as if every bad thing and every betrayal had made her deeper and stronger, building her into a woman capable of understanding what she tasted in him. He was not the remoteness in his eyes, nor the coolness in his demeanor. He was not his shields and not his armor. The touch of his lips told her what was behind those things.

He was the man who tackled those endless physical jobs that had to be done as a result of the storm with the inner toughness and fortitude that gave glimpses of the true spirit she had just tasted.

He was the man who said yes to a little girl who wanted him to play charades even though the part of him that guarded his own preservation had wanted to say no.

He was the man who braved the baby department of a store out of a capacity to love that that ran so deep and so true it made her shiver with awe and longing.

He was a man who could make a woman who knew better question what she knew and hope she was wrong.

“Why not complicate things?” she whispered against the softness of his lips, amazed at her own imprudence, but so certain of what she had felt, glimpsed, tasted.

His truth.

“Because,” he said, his voice hoarse, “I’m not a man who can give anything to anyone. You need to know the whole truth before you decide whether or not to complicate things.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said, because she knew the truth in him that she had just tasted. “I’ve seen what you give to Tess.” She touched her lips to his again, but he turned his face from her.

“Please,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“Trust me with the whole truth, Ryder.”

Silence.

“Is there someone else?” she asked, shocked at how devastated that possibility made her feel. Of course he had someone else. Look at her history. Look at Peter!

No, look at him! He’d probably met someone in the baby department.

“No, there’s no one else.”

Relief, pure and exhilarating, shot through her.

“It’s something. Not someone.”

“You can tell me, Ryder. Trust me.”

He was silent for so long, she thought he might not speak, that he would refuse her the gift of his trust, that he would just start the snow machine and go.

He was obviously having some kind of battle with himself. And she was amazed when he lost.

His voice low, he said, “Emma, I can’t love anyone, anymore. Not ever again.”

She was tempted to say she wasn’t asking him to love her. She wanted a kiss on a moonlit night. But there was something about the ravaged look on his face that stopped her. She needed to hear what he had to say.

And more importantly, he needed to tell it, it was a demon that ate him from the inside out.

“You want more than I could ever give you,” he said roughly. “You deserve more than I could ever give you.”

“How do you know what I want?”

“Don’t even try to tell me you’re the kind of girl who could ever kiss a man lightly, without knowing exactly where it was going and what happens next.”

“I’m not a girl,” she said, but her protest sounded halfhearted. “I’m a woman. An independent business woman.”

“Don’t even try to tell me you aren’t the kind of woman who dreams of a man and of babies of your own.”

“I have my inn,” she said. “That’s enough for me.”

“No, it isn’t, Emma. You want a place like that one down there,” he nodded toward Fenshaws’, “and you want to fill it to the rafters with laughter and love.”

“I don’t,” she said stubbornly, trying to ignore the longing his words caused in her, the pictures that crowded her mind. How quickly a woman like her could put a man like him in the center of each of those pictures.

“If you don’t, you should, because that’s what you deserve, Emma.”

“It’s not what I want,” she said, trying for a firm note.

“Uh-huh,” he said skeptically.

“I gave up on the romantic fantasies,” she insisted.

“When?”

She hesitated. “I had a broken engagement last year.”

“If you tell me it happened at Christmas, I’m going to believe the curse.”

She actually smiled a little, until he said, “I figured as much. A broken heart somewhere in the recent past.”

“Excuse me?” How pathetic was that? That she was telegraphing her broken dreams to every stranger who showed up at the door?

“No single woman takes on a place like the inn without having had romance problems.”

No, not every stranger, just a man who saw everything. Right from the beginning she had known that about him. And now he saw she was falling for him, even before she’d completely admitted it to herself. And he seemed to be seeing that, too.

It was humiliating. “I did,” she said. “I gave up all my romantic illusions. I gave my life to the inn.”

“Like a nun giving her life to the church,” he said dryly.

“Yes!”

“Except for the kissing part.”

She was silent.

He laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “No, you didn’t give up your longings, Emma. You just wanted to. Your dreams shine in your eyes in unguarded moments, like tonight when you were part of that family down there. They will come right back when the right man comes into your life. Was your fiancé a jerk?”

“He was a doctor.”

“I didn’t ask what he did,” Ryder said sharply, “I asked what he was. I’ve met lots of doctors who were jerks and lots of construction workers who weren’t.”

“Okay,” she said, miffed, “he was a pompous, full-of-himself jerk, who thought he could mold a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks into perfect wife material. And I was supposed to be grateful for it! Of course, when perfect wife material, pre-made, reappeared in his life, he ditched me.”

She was astounded she had said that, and astounded by the clarity with which she could suddenly see her relationship with Peter.

“He never saw you at all, did he?” Ryder asked softly. “He missed it all. The determination, the love of life, the mischief, the generosity. Not to mention a not-bad giraffe impression.”

“He would have hated every minute of tonight, and especially the undignified giraffe impression. I didn’t realize it at first, but he never saw me, he saw what he wanted me to be. He saw that I didn’t use my fork correctly, and that I wore white slacks after Labor Day, but that I had the potential to be fixed.”

“Oh, Emma.”

“But at least he never refused to kiss me!” Unsatisfying as that experience had been—Peter’s kisses perfunctory and passionless—Ryder didn’t have to know!

“I’m going to tell you why I won’t kiss you. Not because I don’t want to—Lord knows I want to—but because there is a hole in me nothing can fill, Emma. Nothing, not even the sweetness of your kisses.”

He took a deep breath, shuddered, closed his eyes and after a very long time he spoke, his voice ragged.

“A year ago,” he said, “on Christmas day, my brother died in a fire. His wife Tracy was badly injured, she died three months ago.”

It was as if every ounce of beauty had drained from the night, and left only the cold.

“Tess’s mom and dad,” she breathed, shaken. “Oh, no.”

He held up a hand stopping her, stopping her sympathy from touching him.

But he didn’t stop her hand from resting on his chest. She could feel he had started to tremble and that made her want to weep.

“I was there. My brother, Drew, asked me to get Tess out. He was going back in for Tracy. Only, somehow, Tracy was already out, and he was in that inferno looking for her. I had gotten Tess out, and I tried to go back for him. Some neighbors held me. They wouldn’t let me go.”

The trembling had increased under her hand, she pressed harder against his heart.

“I wasn’t strong enough,” he said, his voice cracking. “I just wasn’t strong enough. If I could have shaken them off, I would have gotten him. Or I would have died trying. Either would have been better than what I live with now.”

She wanted to tell him how wrong he was, but she bit her lip and pressed her hand harder against the brokenness of his heart, knowing he needed to get this out. This absolute fury with himself, the lack of forgiveness, the sense of failure.

“I loved them,” he said softly, and she heard that love in the fierce note in his voice. “I loved my brother. He was like the other half of me. We did everything together. And I loved Tracy, the woman he had chosen to be his wife.

“I failed them.” The tremble from his heart had moved into his voice. “I failed the people I loved the most. And I failed myself. A long time ago I believed in myself. I believed I focused my physical strength and the strength of my will on what I wanted and it happened.

“Now I know that’s not true, it’s just a lie people tell themselves.”

She said nothing, keeping her hand on his heart, trying to absorb his pain, to take it from him.

But it was so tragically easy to see he could not let it go.

“It took everything I had when they died. Everything. I can’t love anybody anymore. Maybe never again. It tore the heart out of my body.”

She did not tell him she could feel his heart beating in his body, strong, just where it was supposed to be.

Finally, the trembling subsided, and she could feel his breath, deep and even. She spoke, softly.

“It took everything except Tess,” she said, a statement, not a question. Her heart seemed to swell with warmth when she thought of that, that he had found the strength to come out of his pain enough to get Tess.

“Yes, except Tess.”

“I’m so sorry, Ryder.” The words seemed fragile, too small for the enormity of his pain. And yet she felt deeply moved and honored that he had told her this, trusted her with it. And she saw so clearly what he could not see. His strength had not failed him at all, he was coming into his strength in ways he refused to recognize.

“Now that you understand,” he said, grim, distant, picking up the armor he had laid down in those exquisite moments of absolute trust in her, “I’ll take you back to Fenshaws’, and I’ll look after the inn.”

She knew that would be the easiest thing for him, and probably for her, too. He had told her he had nothing to give, and she knew she should believe him.

But it was Christmas.

And if there was one message about Christmas that rose above all the others, holy, it was that one.

The joy in it was not in receiving, but in giving.

That was true of Christmas and of love. He had trusted her with this, and she planned to be worthy of his trust.

And so she said, gently, “No, Ryder, I’m not going back to Fenshaws’.”