by Cara Colter
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 stubbornness. 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 becaus
e 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.
Strange it would be her. The women he had been attracted to in the past were as superficial as he was. He had liked women who wore clingy clothes, and push-up bras, who glittered with makeup and jewelry, and who intoxicated with expensive scents.
Emma had probably wiggled by his defenses simply because he would have never thought to erect that particular wall against someone like her: makeup-free, tangled hair, lumpy jeans, grandma sweater. And defiantly set on letting him know she believed.
Still, regardless of how she had done it, it had happened. That faint stirring of something, that felt like life. Trying to call him back.
To a place, he reminded himself sternly, that was gone.
He shut down what he was feeling, quickly, but he could not shut down the acknowledgment that it had been a first. He did not feel ready for firsts: to laugh again, to feel again.
Because somehow even contemplating the possibility of firsts, of returning, felt like some kind of betrayal, as if it minimized who Drew and Tracy had been and what they had meant to him. And maybe because it would require him to do what could not be done: forgive himself.
So, in a different lifetime, when he had been a different man, Ryder might have followed that thread of attraction to see where it would lead.
But he already knew Emma was hurt, had already seen secrets in her soft eyes that she probably would rather he not have known.
And the man he was now was so damaged that he knew he could only hurt her more. His hardness felt as though it would take all that was wondrous about her—such as this childlike delight in Christmas—and curdle it, like vinegar hitting milk.
It was all the smells in here, pine and pumpkin, all the decorations, her ridiculous hat making her look like an emissary from Santa, that were bringing up these uncomfortable thoughts. For the most part, Ryder was successful at warding off the worst of it.
Still, that all this had flooded in within moments of entering this place troubled him. He would probably be better off sleeping in his car than taking refuge here.
He’d known as soon as he stepped under the roof of her porch that this place posed a peculiar kind of danger to his armored heart. As if to confirm that suspicion, he had spotted the letters, peeking out from under the boughs of the wreath.
Believe.
The sign had made him want to head back to his car, find shelter elsewhere. Believe in what?
If he’d been by himself, he would have gone back to the car, found a pub, preferably with a pool table and a big-screen TV, to while away the hours in before the road reopened.
But he wasn’t by himself, and the fact that he wasn’t changed his ability to choose.
Every single decision Ryder made had to be run through the filter of what was best for Tess. Obviously it wasn’t a place with a pool table, however comforting he would have found a rowdy male environment.
What was best for Tess? In the long run? He knew people wondered if he could possibly be the best guardian for her. Some of the bolder ones had even hinted that the most loving thing to do would be to find her a real family, a mother who could actually get a comb through her hair, who would enjoy the intricacies of those silly, frilly, small dresses.
But his brother and Tracy had wanted him to have her. He’d been stunned that they’d had a will, that they had appointed him guardian.
Despite the fact he knew himself to be terribly flawed, Ryder could not ever let her go. Tess was what was left of his brother. He was fierce in his protection of her. He hired a nanny who looked after the baby details—hair, baths, clothes—but Mrs. Markle had abandoned him for Christmas to be with her own family.
His initial awkwardness with the baby had quickly given way to absolute devotion. What was left of his heart belonged firmly to that little spark of spirit that represented all that was left of Drew and Tracy’s great love for each other.
“I can show you to a room, or take you through to the kitchen to get something to eat first.”
Tess had nursed a bottle in the car, but could use something solid. But Ryder realized he was also starving. And exhausted from fighting with the roads. If he had something to eat and a nap, he would be ready to leave here the second there was a break in the weather and the roads reopened.
“Something to eat sounds good.” He could feel his own caution, as if even agreeing to have something to eat was tampering with forces he was not ready to tamper with.
“It must have been a nightmare out there,” his hostess said, still lugging Tess, leading him down a narrow hallway that ended in a swinging door. She gave it a push with her hip.
“A nightmare,” he agreed. “Hell, only the
cold version, decorated in white.” Something like her inn.
She didn’t miss the reference to white decorations, and he saw her take his comment like a blow, as a personal insult. Too sensitive. Was that why she’d been hurt?
“Nothing against white decorations,” he said curtly, his insincerity just making everything worse.
Vinegar and milk, he told himself.
He wanted to say he wasn’t hungry, after all. Wanted to retreat to a room, hoping it wouldn’t be too overwhelmingly Chrismasified, but the truth was, now that he was not battling his way through terrible conditions, he was ravenous.
And even if he wasn’t, the baby had to eat something out of one of those little jars of mash he carried with him.
His initial relief that the kitchen was an oasis of “not decorated” evaporated. The smells were intense in this room, as was the atmosphere of country cheer and charm: sunshine-yellow walls, white cabinets, old gray linoleum floors polished to high gloss. But, like the door handle falling off, he could see hints of problems, frost on the inside of the windows, a tap dripping.
A huge plank harvest table dominated the room and was covered in platters and platters of cookies.
On a closer look, there were cookies shaped like trees, and cookies frosted in pink, Santa cookies, and chocolate-dipped cookies, gingerbread men and gingerbread houses.
“You weren’t kidding that you were expecting guests,” he said. “How many?”
“I was hoping for a hundred.”
He shot her a wary look at the disappointment in her voice. “You were expecting a hundred people here tonight?”
“The opening night of Holiday Happenings,” she said, and he did his best to remain expressionless at how horrifying he found that name. She took his silence, unfortunately, as an invitation to go on, even though her voice had begun to wobble.
“There’s a pond out back. There was going to be skating. And bonfires. A neighbor was going to bring his team of horses. Clydesdales.” Something was shining behind her eyes.
He thought, again, of the kind of women he had once dated. Five-star meals, gifts of diamonds, evenings that ended in hot tubs. Not Holiday Happenings kind of women.
