Snowbound Bride-to-Be (8 page)

Why had he allowed himself to be sucked into this?

Not just alone
, a voice answered him,
lonely
.

He hated that admission, the weakness of it. He had failed his brother and his sister-in-law. He
deserved
to feel the way he felt.

Still, something in him that was still human said to her, and meant it, “It’s good that you believe.”

There was that word again, creeping around the edges of his life, looking for a way to sneak past his guard and into his heart.

So it would be ready to break again.

I don’t think so
, he said to himself.

“Oh,” she said, and laughed self-consciously. “I didn’t mean to sound like that. Saint Emma.”

“Don’t forget—of the meek and submissive school of saints.” Giving in, just a little bit, to that temptation to play with her.

But giving in a little bit was probably just a forerunner to giving in a lot. And in the end she was going to get hurt. He needed to pull back from this
now
, not just to protect himself. To protect her.

He got to his feet, hesitated, and then reached back a hand for her when the mattress was thwarting her efforts to get up. The momentum of that tug pulled her into the length of him. He could feel her slightness, her softness, the delicious hint of curves. The enveloping lavender scent of her that would make it so easy to lose his head.

The devil told him not to bother being a better man, not to bother protecting her. It told him to outrun the terrible loneliness reliving his memories had stirred up inside him.

She was an adult. Kiss her. See what happened.

He could almost taste her lips when he thought of that. A wanting, compelling, tempting, tantalizing, swept through him.

More than a year since he had connected with another human being.

But not her, he told himself sternly. You could not kiss a girl like Emma White without thinking it all the way through. Following an impulse could have far-reaching ramifications.

Emma wanted to be fiercely independent, knocking down walls and climbing all over the roof by herself. She wanted to send the message,
I don’t need a man
.

But she struck him, with her Christmas fantasies, with her wistfulness, with her desire to bring something to others, as not just old-fashioned and decent, but romantic. Emma was the type of woman who might think a casual kiss meant things it did not mean. She might think that he wanted to get to know
her better or was looking for a mommy for little Tess, a future that involved her.

The truth was Ryder Richardson did not look to the future at all.

Ryder just got through every day to the best of his ability. And that, he told himself sternly, did not involve doing damage to others. And how could he not damage someone like her?
Vinegar and milk
, he reminded himself.

“I’ll get the mattress pulled into the great room, if you want to go find some bedding to make up the couch.”

“Yes, boss,” she said.

The temptation rose again. To play along with her. But this time he said nothing in response to her jesting.

In fact, he made up his mind he was leaving at first light.

You’d leave a woman alone with no power?
a voice inside him asked.

For her own good
, he answered it back.

But maybe she had been closer to the truth than he wanted to admit when she had called him mean and selfish.

It was himself he was protecting, not her. Protecting himself from these uncomfortable feelings, something thawing in him that allowed him to see his world as too stark, too masculine. Too lonely.

But getting to know someone was a minefield that rarely went smoothly, especially now that he carried so much baggage, so many scars, so much damage.

What started with a curious kiss could all blow up and leave her with another Christmas in shambles.

Not one good Christmas memory? How was that possible? And yet he could tell she was honest to a fault, and that if she could have dredged one up, she would have.

He dragged the mattress into the living room, rearranged the bedding, stoked the fire. The thought of sharing this room
with her for the night seemed uncomfortably intimate given his vow not to encourage anything between them.

She came back down the stairs, loaded down with bedding, the duvet a plump eiderdown, whiter than a wedding night and just as sensual.

“Where’s the woodpile?” he asked, looking everywhere but at her lips, needing a moment’s breathing space.

She told him, and he put on his shoes and grabbed the flashlight. He went out the back door into the storm to her woodshed. The night, bitter and dark, the flashlight beam, frail against the wicked slant of white sleet, were in sharp contrast to the cozy intimacy inside, but Ryder welcomed the wind, the sharded sleet on his face slapping him back to reality. The sleet was freezing as it hit the ground, forcing him to focus intensely to keep upright, especially once his arms were loaded with wood.

He made five or six trips to the shed, filling the wood box beside the fireplace. Each time he came in, he would think
enough
, but the picture Emma made cuddled up on the couch inside her quilt, her hair every which way, would make him think
not one good Christmas
, as if he could or should do something about it. And that would send him back out the door, determined to cling to his vision of life as a cold and bitter place.

But going out into the weather again and again turned out to be one of those impulses he should have thought all the way through.

His clothes were soaked. He made one more trip—out to his vehicle, to bring in the luggage he had not wanted to bring in.
Another surrender
, he thought, shivering. The old house only had one bathroom, upstairs, and it was already cold. He noticed the tub seemed new, and the flooring around it did, too. He inspected more closely.

Her tub had fallen through the floor at some point in recent history. This place was way too much for her, and he killed the fleeting thought that she needed someone to help her. He hurried into a pair of drawstring plaid pajama pants, a T-shirt.

When he came back down, he noticed she was in pajamas now, too, soft pink, with white-and-pink angels on them, flannel, not, thankfully, the least bit sexy. Her blanket was a soft mound of snow on the couch, but she was up doing something at the fire.

He saw then that she was pouring steaming water from a huge cast-iron kettle she had put in the coals of the fire. She came to him with a mug of hot chocolate.

It was just a little too much like a pajama party, and he had talked enough for one night. Yet chilled to the bone because of his own foolishness, he could not refuse. He took the mug, wrapped his hands around its comforting heat. He took a chair across from her as she snuggled back under her blanket, one hand coming out of the folds to hold her hot chocolate.

Home
.

The scene, straight out of a magazine layout for Christmas, had a feeling of home about it: fire crackling, baby sleeping, the pajamas, the hot chocolate, the tree in the background.

“Is it hard?” she asked softly. “Looking after Tess? How long have you done it for?”

That was the problem with letting his guard down, telling the one story. For a whole year he had avoided any relationship that required anything of him, even conversation. It was just too hard to make small talk, to pretend to care. Being engaged with another human being felt exhausting and like a lie.

His failure had killed his brother. Hardly a conversation starter, and yet how long could he know someone before he felt compelled to tell them that? Because that had become the biggest part of him.

But now that he had confided one deeply personal memory to her, it was as if a hole had opened in the dam that held his loneliness, and the words wanted to pour out of him.

“I was appointed her guardian three months ago.” Ryder did not want to tell her the circumstances, Tracy’s long fight ending, nor did he want to tell her how hard those first weeks had been. Thinking about them, loneliness and longing threatened to swamp him again.

But his voice was carefully neutral when he said, “I have a nanny. That helps. She’s an older lady, married, her own kids grown up. She misses children.” So much easier to talk about Mrs. Markle than himself.

But Emma persisted. “And when she’s not there?”

“There’s the hair thing,” he admitted. “I do pretty good at everything else. The first few diaper changes I felt like I was scaling Everest without oxygen, but now it makes me feel oddly manly. Like I look at other guys and think,
I can handle stuff you can’t even imagine, pal
.” He was still aware he was hiding in humor, but Emma’s appreciative chuckle made it seem like a good tactic, so he kept going.

“Shopping for her is a nightmare. It’s like being at a pigeon convention. You’ve never heard so much cooing. It’s like I’m transformed from six-foot-one of highly-muscled, menacing man to this adorable somewhat helpless teddy bear.”

“You do have kind of a menacing air about you, Ryder.” Her eyes slid to his arms to check out the muscle part. He was pretty sure she wasn’t disappointed. The gym was one of the places where he took it all, sweated it out, pushed himself to a place beyond thought.

“A much-needed defense against cooing, not that it works in the baby store. I go in for a new supply of pajamas with feet in them, the entire extent of Tess’s wardrobe, and women come out of the woodwork. I get shown little diaper covers
with frills and bows on them, and white dresses that Tess would destroy in thirty seconds flat, and the worst thing of all—hair paraphernalia.”

“I noticed you bought the little diaper cover.”

“I know,” he admitted. “I get the hair junk, too, and more ridiculous shoes than you can shake a stick at, too.”

“Ah, the boots with the penguins.”

“I learned to just let them load me up, and I can get out of there quicker.”

“Maybe underneath the menace, they see something else.”

He could tell her. He could tell this stranger about his last year in hell, leave his burdens here when he walked away. It was pushing away at the damaged dam within him, wanting out.

Instead he said, coolly, “Something else? Not that I’m aware of.”

“Hmm,” she said with patent disbelief. He bet if he met up with her in the baby department, she’d be cooing along with the rest of them.

“Maybe they see a man doing his best in a difficult situation. Maybe they admire the fact you said yes to being put in that situation.”

“It’s not like I had a choice.”

“I bet you did,” she said.

“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?