by Cara Colter
“Not really.”
“No, because a man like you would only see the right choice, and never even realize there was another one.”
He snorted. “You don’t know me well enough to say that.” But another voice, Tracy telling him the night before she married his brother, You and Drew are the rarest of finds. Good men.
That was before he had failed his brother and her.
Was there anything left of a good man in him? If there was, why would he even consider leaving Emma here, alone, a woman without power?
Self-preservation.
“You must have had the choice to walk away,” Emma said. “I think when you hold that baby, you can’t hide who you really are. That’s what makes you irresistible—”
He looked into her eyes for a moment, almost felt his heart stop beating. If she found him irresistible they were both in deep trouble.
But she finished her sentence, “—in the baby department.”
He felt his heart start beating again, but was warily aware his reaction to how she had finished that sentence was mixed. Part relief, more regret.
He was not sure he liked the way this was going, because if she prodded him now, he had the horrible feeling he would spill all, tell all. He had done enough spilling for one night.
He gulped down the hot chocolate, set it on the table beside him, got up and stretched deliberately.
“I’m done in,” he said, much more polite than saying I’m done talking, since he’d made a mental agreement with himself to have a truce with her.
Emma said, “Quit fighting it.”
For a horrible moment he thought she had read his mind, seen his weakness, but instead, she said, “Go to bed, Ryder.”
It would have been much less awkward if bed wasn’t right there in front of her, but it was what it was. He crawled in between the sheets of his mattress on the floor and was amazed by how comfortable the bed was, how strangely content he felt despite the restless directions his thoughts had taken tonight.
He kept his eyes closed as he heard her settling on the couch, discouraging himself from looking at her and feeling those unwanted desires.
A desire to connect with another human being.
One over the age of two.
Ha, he told himself sternly. He would be ready to reconnect when pigs flew.
“Good night, Ryder,” she said softly. “Sleep well. I’m glad you’re here.”
Was she feeling the illusion of home, too? Despite all her proclamations of independence was she feeling safer having a man in the house with that storm raging outside and no power?
But then she added sleepily, “I would hate to think of you and Tess out in that storm somewhere.”
He didn’t rationalize with her, didn’t point out to her if they were out in that storm somewhere they wouldn’t be here. She would not even have known they existed.
Instead he thought about it: she was glad they were here for them, not for herself. And she was putting on this big Christmas event for others, not for herself.
Who was doing anything for her this Christmas? The homeless and the needy were coming here, what about her own family? Was she as alone as he was?
“You’re not going to be alone, are you?” he asked, even though he had ordered himself not to. “On Christmas?”
“I told you. Fifty-one confirmed guests.”
He heard something, knew she was holding back.
“A guest isn’t family,” he said.
“And my mother is coming.”
“That’s good.” He wanted to probe something, an uncertainty, he’d heard in her voice, but that was enough of tangling his life with hers.
Troubled by those thoughts, way too aware of her proximity and the soft puffs of her breath as she fell asleep, he finally surrendered, too. But he slept like a cat, alert, one eye open, gauging the fire and the storm noises outside.
Finally, relieved, Ryder noticed gray light seeping into the room through the heavy closed drapes. Morning at last. The fire was embers again, and he could tell by the chill in the room the power was still not on.
He sat up and checked the baby, still asleep.
And then his eyes drifted to Emma. She was wrapped up like a sausage in the feather duvet she had brought down from upstairs, her dark hair sticking up in sharp contrast to it.
In her sleep, her brow was deeply furrowed, as if she could not let go of some pressing worry—probably hot dogs, or bathtubs falling through the floor—and Ryder could feel the concern for her aloneness. The sloping kitchen floor and that crack above the window in that room upstairs meant something was going on with the foundation. The door chime hadn’t sounded right, either, and could be an indication of a bigger problem somewhere. This place was obviously too much for her, even before Holiday Happenings—and try as he might he couldn’t quite shrug it off.
Sometime during the night he had cemented his decision to leave here.
Because he had laughed.
Because he had given in, ever so briefly, to the temptation to be a different man. Because you could begin to care about a woman like Emma even if you didn’t want to.
Because he had hoped for something when the word irresistible had tumbled so easily off her lips, and despite the fact she had clarified what she meant, those mist-and-moss eyes had said something else.
He got up quietly, added wood to the fire, went to the window and lifted the drape. For the first time he noticed the difference from last night. It was quiet, now, eerily so, no wind. He noticed the snow and rain had stopped and the horizon was tinged with the indigo blue of a clear day. In the growing light he could see broken branches littering her front yard. A huge limb had missed his vehicle by inches.
The trees dripped blue ice, and the power line coming up to her yard was nearly on the ground it was so heavy with the rain that had frozen on it.
But the storm was over.
He had to go. But where, with all the roads closed?
Anywhere.
Other travelers had to be stranded. Churches were probably offering temporary shelter, recreation centers. Roads never stayed closed for long. He was sure they would reopen today, probably within hours now that the storm was over.
He went into her kitchen, the floor freezing on his bare feet, but he opened drawers until he found a screwdriver. He was fixing the front-door handle when Emma woke up.
“Morning.”
He turned and looked at Emma. She was stretching, her hair sticking straight up.
She pulled back the duvet she had slept under, he could see the pajamas, pink flannel, little pink-and-white angels on them.
“The storm’s over,” he told her.
She cocked her head, listened. “Ah,” she said, “the sweet sensation of survival.”
“Your yard is a mess.”
She came and stood beside him, surveyed the destruction being revealed by the growing morning light. Her shoulders drooped. “The pond probably looks the same way. How am I going to get that cleaned up for Holiday Happenings?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
She looked annoyed. “I was talking to myself, not expecting you to volunteer. And you don’t have to fix the door, either.” She made a grab for the screwdriver, but he held it away from her.
“If you could refill that kettle and put it on the fire, I can heat something up for the baby. Not to mention get a coffee into you. Sheesh. Prickly.”
She turned from him abruptly, and then Ryder noticed it wasn’t angels on her pajamas at all.
Pigs flying.
And then the baby screamed. Not her normal wakeup crabby cry but an animal shriek of pain and panic.
He set down the screwdriver and raced back into the great room, frightened that Tess had tried to climb out of her crib and had fallen.
But she stood at the side of her crib, screaming and jumping up and down, fixated on the fire.
He went and scooped her up, tucked her in tight to his shoulder, swayed with her.
“Shhh, baby,” he said, and then not knowing where the words came from, only that he needed to say whatever would bring her comfort, he said, “Shhh. Mama’s here.”
And for a man who did not believe such things, he did feel as though Tracy was there, in some way, helping him soothe the baby, because Tess quieted against his shoulder, but refused to be put down, and would not even look in the direction of the fireplace.
Would a more sensitive person have realized the fire was going to traumatize the baby?
He felt the burden of his inadequacy, and then he realized Emma was watching him, a tender little smile on her lips and tiny tears sparkling in her eyes.
“I’m leaving,” he said, before she admired him too much, before he became like a junkie, unable to live without that look on her face.
It was a look that erased his insecurities about not being sensitive and not being good with hair, a look that said, as clearly as if Emma had spoken, that she thought he was enough.
He rested in that for a moment, in the relief that someone thought he was enough for this child.
But then he steeled himself, reminded himself Emma did not know the whole story, and said again, more firmly than before. “I’m leaving.”
CHAPTER FIVE
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.