Читать книгу The Complete Christmas Collection - Джанис Мейнард, Rebecca Winters - Страница 77

RYDER frowned at her. He could have sworn she understood. They could not follow the flames of attraction that were burning hot between them. He’d made it clear he had nothing to give her. Nothing.

“Why?” he demanded.

She looked at him and said softly, soothingly, “Because I’m not leaving you alone with this.”

Alone. The word hung in the air between them. His truth. He had been alone with this for 354 days.

“Understand me,” she said quietly. “I’m not going to talk. I know I cannot do or say anything to change the way you feel, to fix it, but I’m just not leaving you alone with it.”

Others had tried to come into his world. He had not allowed it. But no one else had made this promise—that they would not try to fix it, would not try to make him feel better. Just be there.

He wanted to say no to her. To drop her off at the Fenshaws’ despite her protests. But she had that mulish look on her face and would probably just walk back across the snow, through the moonlit night.

So that he would not be alone.

And suddenly Ryder realized the thought of not being alone with it, even for one night, eased something in him. He had nothing to give her. But she had something to give him, and he was not strong enough to refuse her gift.

He started the machine, felt her arms wrap around him, her cheek press into the back of his shoulder.

And felt something else, exquisite and warming.

Not alone.

That feeling was intensified an hour later as they lay in the same room, separated only by air and a few feet of space, the fire throwing its gentle golden light over them, crackling and hissing and spitting.

“That’s why the fire bothered Tess this morning,” she said, her voice coming out of the darkness, like a touch, like a hand on a shoulder. “Does it bother you? The fire?”

So many things bothered him. Couples in love, children riding on their daddy’s shoulders, Christmas. But fire?

“No. What happened at Tracy and Drew’s house was a fluke, a short in a Christmas-tree bulb. The tree went up after they’d gone to bed. Their smoke detector had been too sensitive, going off every time they cooked something. Drew disconnected it. He meant to move it to a different location, but he never did.”

He wanted to stop, but the new feeling of not being alone wouldn’t let him. “One small choice,” he said, “seemingly insignificant, and all these lives changed. Forever. If only I could have gone back in there, things could have been so different.”

She was silent for so long, he thought she would say nothing. But finally she did.

“But what if the difference was that Tess had been left all alone in the world? What if she hadn’t had even you?”

This was a possibility he had never even considered. Not once. And maybe that was part of what happened when you weren’t alone anymore. The view became wider. Other possibilities edged into a rigid consciousness that had seen things only one way.

Ryder had imagined he could have pitted his will and his strength against the fire that night and saved them all. But Drew had possessed every bit as much strength and will as he had. And he had failed to save himself.

So, what if they had both failed, both died that night, Tracy struggling for life, Tess ultimately left alone? Left to complete strangers who would never understand that her eyes were the exact same shade of blue that her mother’s had been, that that faint cleft in her stubborn chin had come through four generations of Richardsons so far?

And might go on to the next.

Because Tess had survived. And so had he.

“Ryder,” she said quietly, “I know it was a terrible night, more terrible than anyone who has not gone through something like that could ever imagine. I know it is hard to see the miracle.”

“The miracle?” he said, stunned.

“You survived, and because of you, Tess survived. Because you saved her, your brother’s arrow goes forward into the future. Tess,” she said softly, “is the miracle. Tess is the reason it isn’t only a day of sorrow.”

He felt his throat close as he thought of that. It was as if a light pierced the darkness. This whole year had been so fraught with emotion and hardship, with traps and uphill battles, that he had become focused only on the bad things. They had overwhelmed his world and his thoughts so much that Ryder had not once stopped to contemplate the one good thing—Tess.

Tess, who had coaxed laughter out of him when he had thought he would never laugh again. Tess, who had made him go on when he would have given up long ago. If not for her.

His journey in the darkness had been threatened by the dawn ever since he had arrived here at the White Christmas Inn. The first ray of sunshine—full of hope, and celebration—touched him.

Tess had lived.

“Thank you,” he said gruffly to Emma, aware that if you ever allowed yourself to love a woman like her, she would constantly show you things from a different angle. Life could seem like a kinder and gentler place.

“You know what I would like to do?” she said, after a long time. “I would like to take down every single thing in this house that causes you pain. The trees, the mistletoe, the garlands, the wreaths. Everything.”

“You weren’t going to try and fix it, remember?” He could not help but be touched that she would give up her vision of Christmas to try and give him peace.

“Still…” she said.

He looked over at her to see if the mulish look was on her face, but all he could see was loveliness. The desire to kiss her again was strong, even though he’d sworn off it for the good of them both.

“No, Emma, I think it would be better for me—and Tess—if I tried to see the miracle. If I tried to see things differently. Before I go.”

There. The reminder that he was leaving this place. Before he fell in love with Emma.

But he could not deny that something had already happened. He was a different man from the one who had knocked on her door during a storm such a short time ago. He felt something he had not felt for almost a year.

Peace. Because he’d gotten things off his chest? Because he was determined to see things differently?

Or because of the way he was feeling about her?

“I’m leaving,” he said again. “As soon as I can.” For whose benefit was that tone of voice? Her? Or for him?

She did not protest or try to talk him out of it.

Emma just said, quietly, “Ryder, until you go, I won’t leave you alone with it.”

He knew she meant it, and he knew he was not going anywhere for a while, that he was still at the mercy of the roads. Despite the fact he knew he should fight it, he could not. Instead, he felt an intensified sense of peace, of being deeply relaxed, fill him, and then he slept like a man who had been in battle and who had finally found a safe place to lay down his head and his weapons. A man who didn’t know when the next battle would be, but who appreciated the respite he had been given.

He awoke the next morning to the arrival of the Fenshaws and Tess. Ryder felt deeply rested.

New, somehow, especially when he took Tess into his arms and she gave him a noisy kiss on his cheek.

“Ubba,” she said, and then sang, delighted, “Ubba, Ubba, Ubba,” clearly celebrating the miracle he had not completely recognized until now.

They had each other.

“Tess, Tess, Tess,” he said back, and swung her around until she squealed with laughter. His eyes met Emma’s and he felt connected to the whole world. And to her.

And despite the fact he was stranded, he surrendered to the experience, maybe even came to relish it.

Over the next few days Ryder would become aware that telling Emma his darkest secret had consequences he had not anticipated.

He felt lighter for one thing, as if by sharing he had let go of some need to carry it all by himself.

Now that Emma knew completely who he was, he felt understood in a way he had not expected. Accepted for who he was and where he was.

He found himself telling her his history in bits and pieces, about growing up with his brother, the mischief they had gotten into, the gag gifts at Christmas, the competitiveness over girls and sports, how they had helped each other through the deaths of their parents. It was as if he was recovering something he had lost in the fire: all that had been good was coming back to him.

And slowly, Emma opened up to him. Watching her become herself around him was like watching a rosebud open to the sun.

She shared, with humor that belied the hurt, the sense of inadequacy she had grown up with, the secondhand clothes, the Christmases with no trees, her mother’s rather careless attitude toward her only child.

Emma had grown up feeling as if she was a mistake, and she shared how it had made her want desperately to do something good enough to be recognized, how, finally, it had made her vulnerable to a false love.

She told him about her failed engagement, her last disastrous Christmas.

“So, there I was, so excited I was wriggling like a puppy as we arrived at Peter’s parents’ house for Christmas day,” she admitted. “I hadn’t met them before, and it felt as if I had passed some huge test that I’d been invited for Christmas.

“Honestly, the house was everything I could have hoped for. It was like something off a Christmas card—a long driveway, snow-covered trees decorated in tiny white lights. The house was sparkling with more tiny white lights. Inside was like something out of my best dream of Christmas—poinsettias on every surface, real holly garlands, a floor-to-ceiling Christmas tree, so many parcels underneath it that they filled half the room.

“Everything looked so right,” she remembered sadly, “and felt so wrong. As soon as Peter opened the car door for me there were instructions on what to say and how to say it. Don’t tell them I got the dress on sale. Don’t ask for recipes. Don’t ooh and aah over the house as if I was a hick from the country.

“His parents were stuffy. His mother asked me questions about what schools I’d gone to and fished for information about my family. His father didn’t even acknowledge it was Christmas and barely seemed to know I was there. He kept leaving the room to check the channel on the television that runs all the up-to-the-minute stock information.

“We opened gifts before dinner. It was awful. Robotic. These people had everything, what did they care about more? His mother looked aghast at the brooch I’d gotten her, his father was indifferent to the cigars Peter had recommended I get him, Peter hardly glanced at the electronic picture frame I’d filled with pictures of us.

“And then there were their gifts to me. Peter got me a diamond bracelet. He called it a tennis bracelet, as if anyone would play tennis in something like that! When I saw it, I felt crushed, as if he didn’t know me at all. I never wear jewelry, had told him I didn’t care for it. I got a very expensive designer bag from his mother and father. Nobody had put any thought into anything. It was like an obligation they’d fulfilled.

“And the worst was yet to come. Dinner. Served by a poor maid, and prepared by a cook. Naturally, I earned the look from Peter when I asked why they were working Christmas day. Then, his mother announced, casually, slyly, that Monique had been calling all day hoping to speak to Peter.

“I knew that was his old girlfriend. I’d worked in his office while he was going out with her. She was everything I wasn’t. She’d ditched him to go to France.

“And he didn’t even try to hide how excited he was that she was back.

“Naturally, when I called him on his excitement later that evening, I was being unsophisticated. I was the hick. He could have friends other than me!

“Maybe it was the pleasure he took in calling me a hick that made going home to my grandmother so irresistible.”

“I think you just wanted to get away from him,” Ryder deduced, not trying to hide his irritation with Peter. “He would have killed you quietly, one put-down at time. Why did you accept that as long as you did?”

She smiled sadly. “Ah. The great put-down. That’s all I’ve ever known.”

And he vowed right then and there that for as long as their time together lasted, put-downs would never be part of the way he communicated with her. He wanted to snatch back every careless word he had said about her dreams and the inn, but instead, he took her hand, kissed the top of it, a gentleman acknowledging a complete lady. “Their loss,” he said quietly.

And the way the sun came out in her eyes made him kiss her hand again.

There was no shortage of work while the road remained closed, and the hard work was as amazing an antidote to his pain as Emma. Until the road reopened and the power came on there was more work to do every day than ten men could have handled. It was back-breaking, hand-blistering work, and it was just what he needed. It was what he had tried to achieve with punishing workouts at the gym and never quite succeeded. Not like this. Exhaustion.

Utter and complete.

He crawled onto that mattress at night and slept as he had not slept since the fire.

To add to that, he had a sense of belonging that he had not had since the death of his brother and then his sister-in-law had ripped his own family apart.

Tim, Mona, the girls formed an old-fashioned family unit, their love fluid rather than rigid, the circle of it opening easily to include Ryder and Tess, just as once it must have opened to take in Emma. It was a plain kind of love: not flowers and chocolates, not fancy Christmas gifts, or dramatic declarations.

It was the kind of love where people worked hard toward a common goal, then ate together, laughed over simple board games. It was a love that toted a demanding baby with it everywhere it went, as though there was nothing but joy in that task.

What had really happened when he had told Emma he was broken beyond healing?

It was as if the healing had begun right then.

It was as if he had given Emma permission to love him in a different way—one that did not involve kisses—and that love—steady, compassionate, accepting—was stronger than the kisses could have been. Building a foundation for something else.

But what? Maybe it was as simple as building the foundation for one perfect day.

Was there such a thing as a perfect day?

People thought there was. They tried to find those days on beaches in tropical countries in the winter. They tried to have them on the day they got married. They tried to create that day on Christmas in particular.

Who would ever have thought a perfect day looked like the one he had had on the second day after the storm? By late afternoon, all of them, Mona, the girls, Emma and Ryder had cleared a ton of broken limbs off the pond, Tim pushing it to them with his tractor shovel, clearing snow in preparation for skating. Tess shouted orders from the little sled they all took turns pulling her in.

An army emergency team arrived on snowmobiles to let them know they were close to having power restored, and the roads would be reopened within twenty-four hours.

Ryder did not miss the stricken look on Emma’s face and her quick glance toward him, but he understood perfectly what she felt.

They had built a world here separate from the world out there and their own realities. They had built a family of sorts, one filled with the things people wanted from family and that he suspected Emma had never had: a sense of safety and acceptance.

But when the roads opened and the power was restored, they were all, in their own ways, moving on, leaving this place that necessity had created. The sense of belonging and of meaning was going to be hard to leave.

Especially since Ryder had no idea if he was taking this new sense of peace with him or leaving it here.

“Enough,” Mona cried, as the light was fading and she dragged one more branch to the fire. “Enough work!”

Hot dogs rescued from a snow drift appeared and buns, more mugs of hot chocolate were served from the huge canning pot Emma had wrestled from the warming shed down to the side of the pond where they were burning branches.

After he’d eaten enough hot dogs to put even his teenage self to shame, he noticed Mona sorting through the skates she found in the warming shed. “Come on, girls, let’s go skating!”

And soon all the Fenshaws, including Tim, were circling the pond, graceful, people who had probably skated since they were Tess’s age. They were taking turns pulling Tess, still, and he could hear her squeals of delight as they picked up speed, as the sled careened around the edges of the pond behind the girls.

And then Ryder noticed Emma putting away things, stirring the hot chocolate, sending the occasional wistful glance toward the frozen pond.

“How come you have so many skates?” Ryder asked. “Are you renting them at Holiday Happenings?”

“No, people are bringing their own. But there will be a few here for people who don’t have them or forget. And the kinds of families who are coming to the Christmas Day Dream probably don’t have skates. I tried to collect as many different sizes as possible, so everyone can skate.”

“Including your size?” he asked, seeing her cast another wistful look at the pond.

“Oh, I don’t skate. I’ve never even tried it.”

Wasn’t that just Emma to a T? Giving everyone else a gift, but not taking one for herself?

“How is it possible you haven’t tried skating?” he asked. “You must be the only Canadian in history who has never skated.”

“Ryder,” she said, “not everyone had the childhood you had. My mother didn’t have money for skates.”

He saw suddenly the opportunity to give Emma a gift, humble as it was. He would teach her the joy of flying across an icy pond on sharp silver blades, give her the heady freedom of it. He would give her something from a childhood she had clearly missed.

He sorted through the skates, found a pair that looked as though they would fit her.

She sat on a bench and put them on, and he sat beside her, lacing up a pair that had looked as though they would fit him.

“No,” he said, glancing at her. “You have to lace them really tight.” And then he knelt at her feet and did up her skates for her.

Her eyes were shining as he rose and held out his hand to her. She wobbled across the short piece of snow-covered ground from the bench to the pond.

“You are no athlete,” he told her fifteen minutes later, putting his hands under her armpits and hauling her up off her rear again, but then he remembered she had heard nothing but negatives about herself all her life. “Though I’m sure you have other sterling qualities.”

“Name them,” she demanded.

“World’s best giraffe imitation.”

The laughter in her eyes, true and sweet, the shadows lifting, rewarded him for this gift he was giving her.

“Hard worker,” he went on, “passable cleaner-upper of baby puke.”

“Stop! I can’t learn to skate and laugh at the same time.”

“Smart. Funny. Cute. Determined. Brave. Generous. Compassionate. Wise.”

“You must stop now. I’m having trouble concentrating.”

But he could tell she was pleased. It was time for Emma White to have some fun, even if it was true that she had not an ounce of natural-born talent in the skating department. She walked on the skates, awkwardly, her ankles turned in, her windmilling arms heralding each fall.

“Can you relax?” he asked her.

“Apparently not,” she shot back, and then she dissolved into giggles, and the arms windmilled and she fell on her rump again.

He got her up, glanced at the shore of the pond. They had moved all of fifteen yards in as many minutes.

“Watch the girls,” he told her sternly. “Watch how they’re pushing off on one leg, gliding, then pushing with the other leg.”

She pushed tentatively, fell.

“We’re going to go,” Mona said. The sun had completely gone from the sky, the ice on the pond was striking as it reflected the light of the huge brush fires they had lit around it. “We’ll take Tess home again for the night. Brrr, it’s getting too cold out here for her.”

And then the giggles and shouts and laughter faded as they moved further and further away until Ryder and Emma were completely alone.

He didn’t feel cold at all. He felt warmer than he had felt for nearly a year.

“You want to take a break?” he asked Emma. She had to be hurting.

“No.”

There it was. That fierce determination that let him know that no matter what, she would be all right. When he left.

The road was going to be open tomorrow.

And knowing that, and that it was his turn to give to her, something in him that had held back let go. Enough to tuck his arm around her waist and pull her tight into him.

It was time for her to skate. He thrust off on one leg, and then the other, steadying her, holding her up, not allowing her to fall. There was something so right about holding her up, about lending her his strength, about the way she felt pressed into his side.

“Oh,” she breathed, “Ryder, I’m doing it.”

She wasn’t. Not at first. He was doing it for her. But then he felt the tentative thrust of her leg, and then another.

“Don’t let me go.” The end of the pond was rushing toward them. “How do I turn? Turn, Ryder!”

And he did, taking her with him, flying across the ice, feeling her growing more confident by the second.

“We’re like Jamie Salé and David Pelletier,” she cried, naming Canada’s most romantic figure-skating duo.

He laughed at her enthusiasm. “This year, White’s Pond—2010, Whistler,” he said dryly. “You might have to learn to lace up your own skates, though.”

She punched his arm. “I can’t believe I’m still on the ground. How can you feel like this without flying? Let me go, Ryder, let me go.”

And he did. She took her first tentative strokes by herself.

He watched her moving slowly, and then with growing confidence. At first he called a few instructions to her, but then he let her go completely. She had about as much grace as a baby bear on skates, falling, skidding, picking herself back up almost before she had stopped, then going again, arms akimbo, blades digging into the ice.

And then, just like that, joy filled him. It came without warning, sneaked up on him just as those memories did. Only this time he felt young again, and carefree, like that boy he had once been on his mother and father’s backyard rink.

He whooped his delight, thrust hard against the ice, surged forward. He flew down the length of the pond, raced the edges of it, skidded to a halt in a spray of white ice, turned, skated backwards at full speed, crossed his legs one over the other, and then raced around the pond the other way in a huge, swooping circle.

He moved faster than a person without wings or a motor should be able to move, delighted in his strength and the clear cold and the freedom. He delighted in knowing her eyes followed him.

He knew he was showing off for her, did not care what it meant. He raced down the ice to where she stood, swooped by her, snatching her toque off her head, challenging her new skills.

Game as always, Emma took off after him, those curls gone crazy. He teased her unmercifully, skating by her, making loops around her, swooping in close, holding out the hat, and then dashing away as she reached for it.

And then she reached too far, and slammed down hard. She lay on the ice silent and unmoving.

“Emma?”

Nothing. He rushed over to her, knelt at her side. What if he had hurt her? What if he had pushed her too hard? She was brand new to this, and if she was hurt badly there was no place to take her.

They weren’t wearing helmets. And she wasn’t tough. Her skull could be cracked open. She could be dying. He, of all people, knew how it could be all over in a blink. How you could be laughing about a stuffed marlin or a snatched toque one minute, and the next minute life was changed forever. Over.

Cursing his own foolishness, not just for playing with her, but for letting himself care this much again, he leaned close to her, felt her breath warm on his cheek.

And knew, from the panic that hammered a tattoo at his heart he had come to care about her way, way too much. And he also knew he could not survive another loss. That was why he had built such strong walls around himself.

Because he knew. He could not survive if he lost one more person that he loved.

And, as he contemplated that, her eyes popped open and, with an evil laugh, she reached out and snatched her toque from his hand, slammed it back on her head, and managed to grab his before she clambered to her feet and skittered away, taking advantage of the fact he was completely stunned by the revelation he had just had.

He wanted to be angry at her for frightening him, and for the realization he had just had. But how could you be angry with her when the laughter lit her eyes like that, when her cheeks glowed pink?

“I’m laughing so hard I can barely skate,” she shouted at him.

Give yourself to it. One night. To carry these memories deep within you once it’s gone. “I hate to break it to you, but you could barely skate before.”

“Not true,” she said, spreading her arms wide and doing a particularly clumsy stumble down the ice. “Jamie Salé, move over.”

“Somehow, I don’t think Jamie has anything to worry about!”

He caught her with ease, tugged at her wrist, turning her around to face him on the ice.

Was it that momentary fear that she had been hurt that made him so aware of how he felt?

Not saying a word, for some things were without words, he let the laughter between them fade and the mood between them soften until it glowed as golden as the pond reflecting the firelight.

One night.

“Though if you want to be Jamie, you have to learn how to do this.”

And then, he laced one hand with hers and put the other on the small of her back, pulling her in close to him. He danced with her. He, a hockey player who had never danced on ice in his life, took to it as if he had been born for this moment.

To the music of the crackling bonfire, and blades scraping ice that had turned to liquid gold, he danced with her. Her initial uncertainty faded as she just let him take her, gave herself over to it, surrendered to his lead.

They covered every square inch of that pond, his eyes locked on hers, and hers on his.

And then it was over, the fire dying to embers, the chill of the night penetrating the sense of warmth and contentment they had just shared.

It was time to end it. Not just the dance, either.

He pulled her hard to him, kissed her forehead where her curls had popped out of her toque and whispered to her, “Thank you, Emma.”

She looked at him, stricken, and he knew she had heard not thank you, not heard thank you at all.

Emma had heard what he had really said. That all this was too scary for him. What he had really said was good-bye.

He could see that she wanted the road open tomorrow—indeed, her business needed the road open. And she wanted the road closed, this cozy world kept intact.

The magic had been building every day that road was closed, and it had culminated in this: for a few short days he had felt young again, carefree, as if the world held only good things.

For a while, here at the White Christmas Inn, Ryder had been free from that place of pain he had lived in. At first he’d been free for minutes, and then for whole hours at a time. Today, he had experienced a day that had been nearly perfect, from beginning until end.

Ever since Ryder had told Emma the source of his deepest pain, everything had felt different between them. He had revealed the brokenness of his soul to her. He had done so out of absolute necessity, and he had done so to back both of them off from the attraction they were feeling.

He was not available. As not available as a man who was married. In a way, he was married to his sorrow. It was his constant companion, particularly with all things Christmas reminding him, triggering memories and his overpowering sense of failure.

He had come a long way, but he did not feel he had come nearly far enough to accept what he saw in her eyes. She was falling in love with him.

He found himself looking at her now, on that skating rink with the firelight dying around them, the way an art lover would look at a painting. With a kind of tender appreciation for who she was and what she did.

When had he stopped hoping for, planning his escape? When had he started dreading the opening of the road, because he was committed to a decision he’d already made?

The decision never to love again.

And, despite that decision, and despite the fact this was good-bye—or maybe because of it—he could not stop himself from tasting her lips one last time, as if he could save something of her, hold it inside himself, a secret source of warmth when he returned to a world of coldness.

She tilted her head back, met him halfway, and his lips touched hers. He was not sure what kind of kiss he intended—sweet farewell, perhaps—but he did not have the kind of control to execute that kind of kiss.

From the instant of contact, when he tasted her hunger, felt the passion that lurked just below her calm surface, something in him unleashed. The part of him that wanted things he could not have rose up to greet her, urgent and fierce. Instead of having an experience he could save, he found himself having an experience he did not want to end.

Instead of the kiss saying a chaste good-bye, her answering fire consumed him and filled him. His hands tangled in her short hair—he knew a startled ah of satisfaction that it felt exactly as he had known it would—and his lips claimed her and branded her, even as hers claimed him and branded him. He found his hand at the back of her neck, pulling her closer, wanting to go deeper, wanting more.

Her tongue danced with his lips, the edges of his teeth, tangled with his tongue, and he thought he would melt from the inferno she was creating. It felt as if the ice could be banished, as if he could be alone no more—

He pulled away from her, but it took every ounce of power he had left. His armor, made of steel, had melted like butter before her.

And he didn’t want her ever to know that.

“We should go back to the house. I’m going to go start packing my stuff—” His voice was rough with determination that hid his weakness from her. “—tonight, so that Tess and I will be ready to go as soon as the road opens tomorrow.” He hoped to slip out quietly, no long-drawn-out good-byes.

“Stay,” she said quietly. “Ryder, stay for Christmas.”

“Your neediest family?” he said sourly, trying to be what he had been before, a man who could chase others away with his bitterness, trying not to let her see what had just happened to him.

She said nothing.

“I don’t need your pity,” he said sharply, trying again.

“In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I don’t pity you,” she said just as sharply. “If you can’t do this for yourself, do it for Tess.”

“No.” He kept it short. If he engaged her in discussion she might think she could convince him to stay. “I have to go.”

Even without the heat of kisses, the ice was melting from around his heart. Deciding to give into her had been his undoing. How could you not care about her?

Despite his every attempt not to, he was falling as in love with Emma White as she was with him.

Ryder Richardson knew that was impossible. He knew that you could not fall in love with someone in such a short period of time.

But he also knew that love was not logical, and that it defied the rules people tried to make around it.

How could this be happening to him? He who knew the exact price of love, he who knew he would be destroyed if he rolled those dice again and lost?

Better not to take a chance at all than to risk so much.

There was Tess to think of, too. How could he ever be what Tess needed if he left himself open to being destroyed by the fires of love again?

He had to go now. While he still had the strength. Before the magic took him completely and did the worst thing of all.

Made him believe.

Just as the letters buried in her wreath had promised that first day.

The next day, the road opened before it was light out.

Emma listened to the snowplow down on the main road. Ryder had packed up the night before, just as he had said he would.

Now, as Ryder tried to get her ready to go, Tess was having a full-blown melt-down, struggling against the implacable strength of her uncle’s arms.

It would serve him right, Emma thought, if she just stepped back and let him deal with it. But she couldn’t. She had to try and ease Tess’s distress, and that of Sue and Peggy. The Fenshaws had arrived with Tess and their baskets of food and their hearts full of good cheer, just as Ryder was packing the car to leave.

Now they were all in the front doorway of her house, except Tim, who had taken one look at Ryder’s packed bags, sent him a look of disgust and stomped off.

“Shh, sweetie,” Emma said, trying to get the hat on Tess’s head, “please don’t. It’s going to be all right. Everything will be fine.”

In her heart she felt this was patently untrue.

Sue and Peggy were both sobbing quietly, clutching their mother.

“I don’t want Tess to go,” Peggy cried, a little girl who had already said good-bye to her father this year, and was having trouble with one more good-bye. But it was obvious Ryder and Tess were going. Ryder’s face remained impassive and determined.

He took the hat from Emma’s hand, stuffed it into his own jacket pocket.

“Let’s not drag this out,” he suggested, cool and remote, once again the man who had arrived on her doorstep with his devil-dark eyes and wearing his cynicism like a cloak.

He turned and walked out the door and down to his car, the engine already running, the ice and snow scraped off it.

The sad little entourage followed him outside. Tim, who had been standing on the porch, his hands thrust into his pockets, rejoined them, held out his hand.

“Good luck, son,” he said quietly, his eyes searching Ryder’s face. He seemed to find something there that gave him something to believe in, because he nodded. But he was the only one who found it, because as Ryder and the baby reached the car, Peggy broke away from her mother and thrust Bebo into Tess’s hands.

Emma, hanging on by a thread, bit her lip at the act of selfless generosity from one so young.

The screaming stopped for a blessed second, and then started more intensely than before. Tess threw Bebo, previously beloved to her, on the ground, and arched herself over her uncle’s arm with such fury that anyone less strong might have been taken off guard and dropped her.

Emma found something to believe, too.

That another Christmas would be ruined. No matter what happened now—if Holiday Happenings had a thousand people a night show up, if the Christmas Day Dream was a complete success, if her mother showed up beaming more love than the Madonna, it felt as if it didn’t matter, it couldn’t erase this horrible scene and it couldn’t even touch the place going cold inside her.

Because he was leaving. And if he was leaving—his heart hard to Tess’s shrieks of protest and the heart-wrenching tears of Peggy and Sue—he was not looking back once he left here.

It would be so much easier to accept that if she had not laughed on that mattress with him, held his broken heart under her fingertips on that moonlit night, if she had not given so much of herself into his keeping, if she had not seen his soul last night when they had skated, danced across that golden ice connected to one another, free, joyous.

All that was gone from his face now, as if he regretted what he had allowed himself to feel as much as she had rejoiced in it.

“Good-bye, Emma.” With finality.

She wasn’t giving him the satisfaction of saying goodbye.

“Thank you for teaching me to skate,” she said, instead. It took every ounce of her pride to choke out the words without crying.

And, for a moment, some regret did touch his eyes, but then he turned from her and put the baby in her car seat, ignoring her flailing fists and feet and her cries.

“Tess NOT go.”

Sue picked up Bebo off the ground, wiped a smudge of snow tenderly from the triangle nose and then reached in the open door and shoved the doll back into Tess’s arms. She stepped back from the car and wailed.

Emma watched in a daze as Ryder shut the door, glanced at Tim, accepted Mona’s quick hard hug, and then turned and looked at her.

What did she expect?

Nothing.

Expectations were clearly her problem, the reason she always ended up disappointed by Christmas. And by life. And by men.

He did not even hug her. He had said his good-bye to her last night on that skating rink.

He lifted a finger to his brow, a faint salute, his eyes met hers and he looked quickly away.

No sense thinking she had seen anguish there. No sense at all.

“I hope your mother comes for Christmas,” he said, and then his eyes went to Tim, who had taken a sudden interest in scraping the snow away from his feet with the toe of his boot. He frowned.

As if her mother coming for Christmas would absolve Ryder of something.

“She’ll be here Christmas Eve. Now that the roads are open, I can send her the bus ticket this afternoon.”

He nodded, relieved. She glanced at Tim who was now looking into the far distance, hands in his pockets, rocking on his heels.

Right until the moment his car turned at the bottom of the driveway that he had helped to clear, and then slipped from view, Emma could feel herself holding her breath, hoping and praying he would change his mind.

“Emma,” Tim said uncertainly, “I don’t think you should get your hopes up about—”

She held up a hand. She didn’t want to hear it. Don’t get your hopes up. About Holiday Happenings. About your mother. About him.

That was her curse.

Not Christmas.

Those damn hopes, always picking themselves up for one last hurrah, even after they’d been dragged through the mud and knocked down and shredded and stomped upon.

Emma turned and walked away from the Fenshaws, her shoulders stiff with pride. It wasn’t until she saw the damned Believe letters in the wreath that she closed the door, sagged against it and cried like a child.