furnace is electric.”
Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness. The firelight flashed gold, on the perfect planes of his face. Wild-child sighed.
It took him a moment to get what she meant.
“Are you saying the only source of heat in this falling-down old wreck is that fireplace?”
“Falling-down old wreck?” she breathed, incensed, pleased that woman-scorned was taking charge, getting the upper hand. “How dare you?”
It felt so good to say that! To stand up for herself! She wished she would have said that to Peter, at least once.
But no, not even when he’d told her, so sheepishly, while still making it her fault he and Monique had been seeing each other, what had she said?
I understand.
“Your front bell sounds broken, the door handle did come off in your hand, there’s frost on the inside of the windows, and when I dropped the baby’s bottle it rolled down the floor.”
“Which means?” she asked haughtily.
“Probably your foundation is moving. The floor isn’t level.”
All her work on creating pure Christmas charm, and he was seeing that?
“Do you always focus on the negative?” she snapped. How much did it cost to fix a moving foundation, anyway?
“I do,” he said without an ounce of apology, even though he followed up with, “Sorry.”
“You aren’t sorry,” Emma breathed. “You’re a miserable selfish man who is intent on spoiling Christmas not just for yourself, but for your niece and anyone else who has the misfortune to cross paths with you.”
“Well, aren’t you glad I won’t be around to spoil it for you?” he said smoothly, completely unabashed by his behavior.
“Huh. With my record, you probably will still be around Christmas Day. Spoiling things.”
Silence, the light softening something in his features, an illusion, nothing more. But when he spoke, there was something softer in his voice.
“What does that mean, with your record?”
Don’t tell him, she ordered herself. Don’t. But another part of her, weary, thought Why not? What difference does it make?
“It means I’ve never had a Christmas that wasn’t spoiled. So why should this one be any different?”
Silence. She’d left herself wide open to his sarcasm, so thank God he was saying nothing.
Only when he did speak, she wished he’d chosen sarcasm.
“You’ve never had a good Christmas?” He seemed legitimately astounded. And legitimately sorry, for the first time. But then his customary skepticism won out. “Come on.”
She remembered last year, excited as a small child, arriving at Peter’s parents’ home. No, not a home. A mansion. A picture out of a splendid movie. The trees on the long drive lit with white lights, every window of the house lit, she could see the enormous tree sparkling through the window.
And that had been the beginning of a Christmas that looked exactly like the Christmases she had dreamed as a little girl, but that felt like an excursion into hell.
“Have you?” she asked Ryder, tilting her chin proudly, knowing his answer. There was only one reason people hated Christmas, wasn’t there? They’d given up trying to make it something it could never be.
Maybe it was time for her to surrender, too, to forget trying to change her fortunes, to abandon that little girl who wanted something so badly. Maybe it all was just an illusion. Christmas had become a corny, commercial package, a dream that no one could ever make a reality.
Maybe the truth was that it was a terrible time of year, laden with too much stress and far too many expectations. Maybe it would be a good time to plan a vacation to Hawaii. It probably would have been a whole lot easier to talk her mother into celebrating Christmas in Hawaii than it had been to convince her to come here.
A trip to Hawaii would be possible after a successful year of business. Maybe I’ll give in and add televisions, after all. If the foundation doesn’t collapse.
After a long time, he surprised her by saying, quietly and with obvious reluctance. “Yes, I have. Had good Christmases.”
She could feel him shifting in the dancing light of the fireplace flames. He came way too close, and peered down at her.
He shifted the baby into the crook of his elbow, and with his free hand he did the oddest thing.
He touched her hair.
“We’ll be out of your hair in no time,” he said solemnly, as if he had touched it only to make that point. “I won’t wreck your Christmas, Emma.”
She saw something desolate in his eyes, and was taken aback by the realization that he was trying to protect her from that.
“If you’ve had good Christmases, don’t you want that for Tess?” she asked, quietly. “I had a mother who thought Christmas was a nuisance. It was awful.”
And maybe it wasn’t just Christmas, but parenthood in general, that her mother had found bothersome.
That’s what had made Emma so eager to please, to prove somehow she was a good person. Worthy. Was she still trying to prove that? Was that what Holiday Happenings and Christmas Day Dream were really about?
She hated that she was questioning the purity of her motivations.
“Emma, I’m doing my best,” he said quietly. “Just leave it.”
But she couldn’t. “And what if your best just isn’t good enough?”
“Don’t you think I ask myself that every day?”
She studied him, saw the torment in his face, went from being angry with him and with herself and with Peter and her mother and the world, to feeling something far more dangerous. Empathy.
“If you’ve had good Christmases, why do you hate it so much now?” she asked him.
The pause was very long, as if he considered telling her something, fought with it, won.
“Emma, I’m just passing through. I’m not leaving my burdens here when I go.”
He said it almost protectively, as if they would be too heavy for her to handle. He was right. They were strangers.
That was not changed by the fact he had touched her hair.
Or by the fact that he had an adorable baby.
It was not changed by the fact that they were marooned here by the storm, like shipwreck survivors on a desert island.
He had his baggage and she had hers, and he was right not to share it, to keep his boundaries
