entanglement, not a longing for it.
“Your room? That’s the only television in the house?” The thought of entering her bedroom clearly made him as uncomfortable as it made her.
The very thought of those dark warrior eyes taking in the details of her room made her heart beat a fast and traitorous tempo. Her room matched the theme of Christmas: white, though that was how her room was year-round. The walls were the color of rich dairy cream, there was a thick white duvet on the gorgeous bed, an abundance of white pillows in delicious rich textures and fabrics.
When she walked in, the room always seemed soft to her, as comforting as a feather pillow.
But when she saw it through his eyes, she wondered what he would see. And the thought came to her: virginal.
A warrior and a virgin.
She nearly choked on the renegade thought, told herself she had been reading a few too many of the romance novels, more replacements, so much safer and more predictable than real-life romance. She kept a nice selection in tidy stacks on her bedside table, right beside the much-watched DVDs.
But it would make her feel altogether too vulnerable for him to see that, since he might misinterpret her fascination with a certain style of book and film as longing rather than what it was.
“I’ll go get the television for you. You’d be more comfortable watching it down here than in my room.” And then she blushed as if discussing her room was akin to discussing her panties. Which might be lying on the floor, one of the relaxed slips of the single life.
“I can carry it for you.”
“No, no,” she protested, too strenuously, “it’s tiny.”
“That figures,” he said, still grouchy, having no problem at all being himself. Which was grouchy and cynical and Christmas-hating. It really balanced out the formidable attraction of his good looks quite remarkably.
“Make yourself comfortable.” She handed the sleeping baby back to him, dislodging the cookie from the fist first. “Go into the great room. Through there. I’ll be down in a sec.”
She hoped her room would have the calming effect on her that it always did. But it didn’t. There were no panties on the floor, of course, because she liked the room to look perfect, but even still, instead of being her soothing sanctuary, her sea of textured white softness seemed sensual, like a bridal chamber.
She realized she had been reading too many books, watching too many glorious movies, because totally unbidden her mind provided her with a picture of what he might look like here, lying on that bed, naked from the waist up, holding his arms out to her, his eyes holding smoldering welcome. She shivered at the heat of the picture, at the animal stab of desire she felt.
Your mother was a wild child, Tim had told her sadly, when she had been crushed by Lynelle’s absence at her own mother’s funeral. It was like an illness she was born with. Nothing around these parts ever interested her or was good enough for her.
Peter’s mother had not warmed to Emma when they had finally met on that disastrous Christmas Day last year. Emma had felt acutely that when Mrs. Henderson looked at her, she disapproved of something. Make that everything.
“Stop it,” Emma ordered herself sternly. Just because you had a wild child in you didn’t mean you had to be owned by it, the way her mother had been. It was not part of being herself. In fact, it was something she intended to fight.
So she swept the romance novels off the bedside table and shoved them under the bed. Then, realizing it could just as easily be another symptom of make-yourself-over-so-other-people-will-like-you, as of fighting-the-wild-child, she fished them back out and stood holding them, not sure what to do.
This is what a man did! Disrupted a perfectly contented life. She set the books on the table and planted the DVDs right on top of them.
Ryder Richardson was not coming into this room. Why was she acting as if he would ever see this? He was a stranger, and despite the harsh judgments in Mrs. Henderson’s eyes, and despite her mother’s example, Emma was not the kind of woman who conducted dalliances with strangers, no matter how attractive they were. No matter how attractive their helpless devotion for a baby.
Still, despite the fact Emma was definitely not conducting a dalliance, she quickly divested herself of the long johns under her jeans. They were not making her feel just bulky, but also hot and bothered.
Wait, maybe that was him!
Despite the fact she’d ordered herself not to, she spent a moment more trying to do something with hair made crazier by the Santa hat.
“Tess and I would tie for first place in the bad-hair-day contest,” she told herself, combing some curl conditioner through her hair. The flattened curls sprang up as though she had stuck her finger in a socket, not exactly the effect she’d been looking for.
On the other hand, she was not conducting a dalliance, so the worse she looked the better, right? She was hardly a temptation!
And never had been. When Peter’s old girlfriend, Monique, had reentered the picture, he had gone back to her.
And blamed Emma! Her attention to the inn had caused him to be unfaithful. It hadn’t been his fault, it had been hers.
She left the room, that memory fresh enough that no member of the male species was going to look attractive to her! Then she had to go back for the television she had gone up for in the first place.
Trying to look only composed, indifferent, neither a wild child nor a woman scorned, she moved into the great room, placed the TV on a small rosewood end table and plugged it in.
She needn’t have worried about her hair. Or about being seduced by a warrior. Or about giving in to her own impulses.
A typical man, from the moment that television was plugged in, Ryder was totally focused on it. He made no effort to hide the fact he was appalled by its size.
“That isn’t a TV,” he grumbled. He moved his chair to within a foot of it, the snoozing baby a part of him, like a small football nestled in the crook of his arm. “Oh, wait, it is. Imported from the land of little people, the only place on earth that is known to make a seven-inch screen.” He held out his hand, and Emma slapped the remote into it.
“Nine,” she told him.
He turned on the TV.
“Color,” he commented with faked amazement. “Quite a concession to the times, Emma. Quite a concession.”
Well, at least he hadn’t even noticed the hideous, pathetic effort she had made to fix her hair.
Ryder began grimly switching from channel to channel.
“You should have televisions in the rooms,” he said, not lifting his eyes from the set. “Men like that. A lot.”
“Actually, I know that.”
He gave her a skeptical look, as if somehow she had managed to give him the impression she was the least likely person to know what men liked. A lot.
Her hidden wild child did know. Maybe if she had let that wicked woman out now and then,
