Snowbound Bride-to-Be (3 page)

“Tess,” he provided.

“Hello, Tess,” she crooned. “Welcome to the White Christmas Inn. I’m Emma.”

“The White Christmas Inn?” the man said, “you aren’t serious, are you?”

“Didn’t you see the sign on the driveway?” Just this morning, she had placed the word
Christmas
over the word
Pond
, the letters of
Christmas
just the teensiest bit squished to make them fit.

“I saw a sign, I assumed it was for the inn, but most of it is covered in snow and ice.”

“The White Christmas Inn. Seriously.”

He groaned, softly.

“Is there a problem?”

His answer was rhetorical. “Do you ever feel the gods like to have a laugh at the plans of human beings?”

Even though he obviously expected no answer, Emma responded sadly, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

The White Christmas Inn.

Ryder Richardson had no doubt the gods
were
enjoying a robust laugh at his expense right now. When he had headed out on the road tonight, he’d had one goal: to escape Christmas entirely. He had packed up his niece, Tess, and that amazing mountain of things that accompanied a traveling baby, with every intention of making it to his lakeside cottage by dark.

The cottage where there would be absolutely no ho-ho-ho, no colorful lights, no carols, no tree, no people and especially no phone. He had deliberately left his cell phone at home. Ryder Richardson could make Scrooge look like a bit player in the bah-humbug department.

He was not ashamed to admit to himself he just wanted to hide out until it was all over. Until the trees were shredded into landscape pulp, the lights were down, there was not a carol to be heard, and he could walk along a sidewalk without hearing bells or having complete strangers smile at him and wish him a Merry Christmas.

Ryder looked forward to the dreary days of January like a man on a ship watching for a beacon to keep him from the rocks on the darkest night.

In January there would be fewer reminders and fewer calls offering sympathy. The invitations to holiday parties and
dinners and events designed to lure him out of his memories and his misery would die down.

In his luggage, he had made a small concession to Christmas. Ryder had a few simple gifts to give Tess. He had a soft stuffed pony in an implausible shade of lavender, new pink suede shoes, for she already shared a woman’s absolute delight in footwear, and a small, hardy piano-like toy that he was probably going to regret obtaining within hours of having given it to her.

He had not brought wrapping paper, and probably would not give Tess the gifts on December twenty-fifth, taking advantage of the fact that at fourteen months of age his niece was not aware enough of the concept of Christmas to know the difference.

This would be his year of reprieve. Next year, Tess would be two at Christmas. It wouldn’t be so easy to pretend the season didn’t exist. Next year, she would probably have grasped the whole concept of Santa, would
want
things from Ryder. Would he be able to give them to her?

As he turned back from the coat rack, through the open archway from the foyer into the living room, he caught sight of the fire burning brightly in the hearth at the White Christmas Inn, the huge tree glowing, top to bottom, an ethereal shade of white.

Despite steeling himself against all things Christmas, the scene called to him, like the lights of home calling a warrior back to his own land. For a disturbing moment he felt almost pulled toward that room, the tree, the promise it held.
Hope
.

H
OPE
. The word burned in Ryder’s heart for a second or two, not bright and warm, but painful. Because that was what he was intent on quashing in himself. He was a warrior who had glimpsed the lights of a home he could never go back to.

The socks that hung from the mantel, cheerful, were what triggered the memory.

Without warning—for the memories always came without warning, riding in on a visual clue or a scent or a sound he could not control—a picture flashed in his mind of different socks on a different mantel nearly a year ago. Those socks, bright red, with white fur cuffs, had names on them.

Drew. Tracy. Tess.

Ryder could see his brother, standing in front of those socks, holding the tiny baby way above his head, bringing her down, her round belly to his lips, blowing, the baby gurgling, and Drew looking as happy as Ryder had ever seen his brother look.

A shudder rippled through Ryder, and he looked deliberately away from the socks that hung on the mantel of the White Christmas Inn, picked up the baby bag that he had dropped on the floor, shrugged it over his shoulder.

In a few days, a year would have passed, and Ryder’s pain
had not been reduced. A reminder about the danger of hope. There was no sense hoping next year would be better. There was no sense hoping life could ever be what it had been before the fire that had swept through his brother’s house early Christmas morning.

“Get the baby,” Drew had cried to him, as he’d stumbled out of the guest room, “I’ll get Tracy.”

Anyone who had not been in a fire could not understand the absolute and disorienting darkness, the heat, the smoke, the chaos intensified by the roar and shriek of it, as if the fire was a living thing, a monster, a crazed animal.

Somehow, Ryder had found the baby, and gotten her outside. Tracy had already been out there, in bad shape, burned, dazed, barely coherent. At first Ryder thought that meant his brother was safe. But then he’d realized Drew was still in there, looking for his wife, not knowing she was out here.

He’d raced back for the door, uncaring that flames roared out of it like it was the mouth of hell. He’d almost made it, too, back in there to find his brother.

But neighbors had pulled him back, four men, and then six, holding him, dodging his fists, absorbing his punches, their urgency to keep him out of there as great as his to go back in. He still woke in the night sometimes, coated in sweat, his heart beating hard, screaming his fury.

Let me go. You don’t understand. Let…me…go
.

When Ryder thought of that the fury was fresh. If anything, he added to it as time went on. How could he have failed so terribly? How could his strength have failed him when he needed it most? If he could have shaken off those men, made them understand…

Then, just three months ago, more heartbreak, an intensified sense of failure, as Tracy, all out of bravery, had quit fighting her horrible injuries.

If there was a feeling Ryder hated more than any other it was that one:
powerlessness
. He’d been as powerless to save Tracy as he had been to break free of the men who had kept him from his brother.

Ryder shuddered again. He had put a wall around himself, and instead of letting it come down as time passed, brick by brick he made it stronger. He was ravaged by what had happened, destroyed by it. He could function, but not feel.

He hated it that his armor felt threatened by the fact that, ever so briefly, he had
felt
what the room had to offer. Heard the word.
Hope
. And seen that other word on her front door.

Believe
.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately cold, protecting the coating of ice that shielded what was left of his heart.

No, he wasn’t. He had tried to keep Christmas, its association with his greatest failure, at bay. Instead, at the caprice of fate, here he was at a place that appeared to have more Christmas than the North Pole. If there were no baby to think of, he would put his coat back on and take his chances with the storm.

But then, if there were no baby to think of, he was pretty sure he would have self-destructed already.

“You looked like you saw a ghost,” Emma said. “Apparently we have them here, but I haven’t seen one yet.”

She actually sounded envious that he might have spotted one.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said curtly. Did she notice the emphasis on
believe?
Because that was the first in a long list of things he did not believe in. He hoped he would not be here long enough to share the full extent of his disillusionment with her.

“Well, I do,” she said, a hint of something stubborn in her
voice. “I think there are spirits around this old house that protect it and the people in it. And I think there is a spirit of Christmas, too.”

And then, having made her stand, she blushed.

He looked at her carefully. Now that she had taken the hat off, he felt much less inclined to ask to speak to her mother. How old would she be? Early twenties, probably. Too young to be running this place, and too old to be believing nonsense.

He replayed her words of earlier.
I usually don’t operate as an inn in the winter. I don’t charge extra for the rustic charm.

I
not
we
.

She ran a hand through the dark, wild hair revealed by the removal of the awful Santa hat, a gesture that was self-conscious. Her blush was deepening.

Despite the shard of the memory stuck in his heart like broken glass, her hair tried, for the second time, to take down a brick, to tease something out of him. A smile? Only Tess made him smile. Though her hair was worse than Tess’s, which was saying something. His hostess’s hair, dark and shiny, was a tangle of dark coils, flattened by the hat, but looking as if they intended to spring back up at any moment.

He was shocked by the slipping of another brick—an impulse to touch her hair, to coax the curls up with his fingertips. He killed the impulse before it even fully formed, but not before he pictured how encouraging the wild disarray of her hair would make her sexy, rather than the adorable image the red socks and red sweater projected.

She was looking at him like a kitten ready to show claws if he chose to argue the spirit of Christmas with her, which he didn’t.

If the way she held Tess and crooned to her was any indication, she was exactly as she appeared; soft, wholesome,
slightly eccentric, a
believer
in goodness and light and spirits protecting her house and Christmas. Not his type at all.

Even back in the day, before
it
had happened, when he cared about such things, he’d gone for flashier women, whitened teeth, diamond rings, designer clothes. Women who would have scorned this place as hokey, and his hostess for being so naive.

Except, last year, a spectator to the domestic bliss his brother had found, Ryder had thought, briefly,
maybe I want this, too
.

But now he knew he didn’t want anything that intensified that feeling of being powerless, and in his mind that’s what being open to another person would do, make him weak instead of strong, slowly but surely erode the bricks of his defenses. What was behind that wall was grief and fury so strong he had no doubt it would destroy him and whoever was close to him, if and when it ever came out.

For Tess’s sake, as well as his own, he kept a lid on
feelings
. He knew he had nothing to give anyone; somehow he was hoping his niece would be the exception, though he had no idea how she would be.

“You don’t run this place by yourself, do you?” he asked, suddenly needing to know, not liking the idea of being alone with all this sweetness, not trusting himself with it, especially after that renegade impulse to tease something sexy out of her hair.

He hoped, suddenly, for a family-run operation, for parents in the wings, or better yet, a husband. Someone to kill dead this enemy within him, the unexpected sizzle of attraction he felt. Someone he could talk hockey with as the night dragged on, to keep his mind off how little he wanted to be here, and how little fate cared about what he wanted.

Ryder’s eyes drifted to her ring finger. Red nail polish, a bit of a surprise, but probably chosen in the spirit of the season, to match the socks. How could he possibly be finding this woman, who stood for everything he was trying to run away from, attractive?

There was no ring on her finger, so he knew the answer to his question even before she answered.

“It’s all mine,” she said, and her chin lifted proudly. “I inherited the house from my grandmother, restored it, named it the White Pond Inn, and have been operating it on my own ever since.”

“I thought it was the White Christmas Inn,” he reminded her dryly.

“Christmas transforms everything,” she said with grave dignity, “it makes all things magic, even my humble inn.”

Well, she obviously
believed
.

“Uh-huh.” He didn’t want to get into it. He truly didn’t want to know a single thing more about her. He didn’t want to
like
the fact that despite her corkscrew hair waiting to pop into action, and despite her falling-off doorknob, she was trying so hard to keep her dignity.

Show me to my room. Please
. But somehow, instead, Ryder found himself asking, “What makes a young woman tackle a project like this?” He didn’t add,
on her own
, though that was really his question.

Ryder was an architect. He and Drew had drawn up plenty of plans to restore places like this one. Underneath all the cosmetic loveliness, he was willing to bet the abundance of decorations hid what the falling-off door handle had hinted at. Problems. Large and small. Way more than a little scrap of a woman on her own would be up to.

“I’m a dreamer,” she said, fiercely unapologetic, and again, in the way she said that, he caught sight of her pride and stub
bornness. And her hurt. As if someone—probably a hardhearted jerk like him—had mocked her for being a dreamer.

Whoo boy
. He bit his tongue, because it was obvious to him this house did not need a dreamer. A carpenter, certainly. Likely an electrician. Probably a plumber.

Despite biting his tongue nearly clear through, his skepticism must have clearly shown on his face because she felt driven to convince him—or maybe herself—that the house
needed
a dreamer.

“I actually saw it for the first time when my grandmother got sick. My mother and she had been, um, estranged, but one of the neighbors called and asked me to come home to help care for her. This house was love at first sight for me. Plus, it had been in our family for generations. When Granny died, I inherited, and I had to figure out a way I could afford to keep it.”

That was a warning, if he’d ever heard one. He did not like women who believed in love at first sight. As a man who lived in the wreckage of dreams, he did not like dreamers nor all their infuriating optimism.

Aside from that, the words told him an even more complete truth, whether he wanted to know it or not, and he didn’t. He saw the glitter of some defense in her eyes that told him things he would have been just as happy not knowing.

Hurt
. Clues in what she was telling him. Something missing in her family, that had filled her with longing? Despite the happy Christmas costume, there was a reason a woman like that took on a place like this. And he was willing to bet it had little to do with family heritage, and a whole lot to do with a broken heart. She had decided loving a house was easier than loving a person.

He heartily approved, though he wondered if a dreamer could be pragmatic enough to pull that off.

This ability to
see
people more clearly than they wanted to be seen, and certainly more clearly than he wanted to see them, was one of the things Ryder hated since the fire. He sensed things, often seeing
past
what people said, to some truth about them. It was a cruel irony, since he was desperately trying not to care about anything, that he could see things he had never seen before, things that threatened the walls and armor of the defenses that kept some things in him, and some things out.

Pre-fire, Ryder had been a typical man, happily superficial, involved totally in himself. Building a business with his brother, hanging out with his buddies, playing in a semi-serious hockey league, and never getting even semi-serious with any one woman. That had been his life: a happy, carefree place. A guy zone of self-centered hedonism.

He had never been deep.
Insensitive
probably would have described him nicely, blissfully unaware there was any other way to be.

Now, he could walk by a complete stranger, and see their tragedies in the lines around their mouths and the shadows in their eyes. It was as if he had become a member of a secret club of sadness.
Not
seeing had been a blessing he had not appreciated at the time.

A little more than a year ago, Ryder certainly wouldn’t have ever been able to spot the hurt hiding in the shadows of Emma’s eyes. He realized, uncomfortably, that even with those shadows, her eyes were amazing.

A part of him, purely masculine, acknowledged that physically Emma was exquisite. Her features were small and perfect, her nose snubbed up a touch at the end, her lips formed plump bows of sensuality. And he was not sure he had ever quite seen that shade of eye color before, soft gray-green, moss and mist.

Despite the outfit—was it deliberately chosen to hide her assets? Another thing he probably would not have guessed pre-fire—he could see she was delicately curved, unconsciously sensuous.

Annoyed with himself, he realized it was the first time since the fire he had allowed the faint stir of attraction toward a member of the opposite sex to penetrate his barriers.