they were treading so lightly, realizing the only thing they had to share was how to get through a night without electricity.
She sighed. “If the power stays out, in very short order this room will be the only truly warm one in the house. I have a crib upstairs, and we can haul a mattress down here for you. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“I hope the power is going to come back on,” he said.
So do I, but the way my luck is running, I doubt it. “I’ll show you where the crib is.”
Moments later, Emma, holding the sleeping baby, was watching him take the crib apart. Despite her resolve that they be nothing more than strangers, she couldn’t help but admire how comfortable he was with tools, the man-thing.
It had taken her the better part of an afternoon to put that crib together, studying instructions, putting A into B. He had the whole thing dismantled and downstairs in a matter of minutes.
While he was reassembling the crib, Emma went back upstairs to get a mattress off the bed in the room closest to the staircase.
“Tess didn’t even know I’d moved her,” he commented, coming up behind her.
“She sleeps like a log.”
“I’m envious,” he said. A man who carried burdens so heavy they affected his sleep?
Don’t pursue it, she told herself.
“It’s already chilly up here,” he said.
“Well, you know these old wrecks. The insulation is in about the same shape as the foundation.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“No,” she said firmly. “I have a tendency to be way too sensitive. I know there’s lots wrong with the old place. It’s foolish to love her anyway.”
“What do you have for insulation?”
A pragmatic question. He didn’t want to know anything about what she loved. She didn’t blame him. She didn’t want to know what he loved, either.
A lie. She did. Despite all her resolve, both wild-child and woman-scorned were supremely interested in what a man like him loved.
The baby was obvious, of course.
She stuck to her resolve and the relatively safe topic of her old house. “ I found old newspapers in the walls when I redid the bathroom.” She didn’t mention how the tub falling through the floor had necessitated the renovation before she really had the funds to do it. “New insulation is on my to-do list.”
“Big list?” he asked, conversationally.
But Emma already felt foolish enough for blurting out about her Christmases. She was saying nothing else to him that could be interpreted as self-pitying.
The insulation fell into that category. If she was going to borrow money, wouldn’t that have been the sensible choice? New insulation? A new roof?
Oh, no, dreamer that she was she had been spending money on gifts for needy families, and redoing this bedroom in preparation for her mother’s visit.
Was she still trying to prove herself worthy? Emma shut the thought off fast and focused on problems she could solve.
If she didn’t become more prudent, next year she would probably be heading the “needy” line, not jetting off to Hawaii!
She had gambled everything on the success of Holiday Happenings. How many days of her Christmas moneymaker could she lose before she was in real trouble?
“Oh,” she said, breezily, not letting any of those concerns leach into her voice, “it’s a big list, but nothing I can’t handle.”
She was trying to regain ground as a complete professional.
They were in the room at the top of the steps that she called the green room. Once it had been her grandmother’s, stuffed from top to bottom with clutter, a dusty-rose wall-to-wall carpet covering the beautiful aged hardwoods.
Now, in preparation for her mother’s arrival, it was the most beautiful room in the house. The carpet had been ripped out, the faded layers of wallpaper stripped. The room had been restored to historical correctness and decorated in her mother’s favorite color. It was her loveliest room, and Emma felt it not only showcased her abilities as a competent and professional innkeeper, but would convince her mother that White Pond was not such a bad place.
And that her daughter isn’t such a bad person?
Where were these thoughts coming from? Still, she glanced at Ryder to see if he was suitably impressed, and saw he was looking at a huge crack in the wall that was opening above the window. That figured.
She really didn’t want to hear what that meant, so she directed the flashlight beam to the focal point of the room, a beautiful antique four-poster with a lace canopy, layered with luxurious silk bedding and pillows in subtle shades of green.
“Nice piece of furniture,” he said. Trying to gain ground for his “old-wreck” remark? Not wanting to let her know what the crack meant, either? Feeling sorry for her because she had never had a good Christmas?
She had shown dozens of guests to their rooms and never felt like this before.
As if the bed was a strangely intimate piece of furniture, and she was tempting something to be in here alone with him.
“It’s not really a nice piece of furniture,” she said, trying to sound as if she was not strangling. “The first night I put guests in it, it broke.”
She had meant it to sound funny but it sounded pathetic, lost her any ground she had gained at presenting herself as a competent professional. Instead, she felt her own failing.
But he didn’t notice. “Hmm. That sounds interesting. What were they doing?”
That strangling sound in her throat intensified. She refused to answer him or even look at him. Wild-child had a few ideas about what they might have been doing, but Emma was ignoring wild-child. She redirected the flashlight beam and hurried to the bed.
“Do you think we can just leave it made up?” She didn’t wait for her answer, lifted a corner of the mattress, struggled to swing it off the bed frame and retain her grip on the flashlight.
“Stop it,” he said. “You take the bedding and light the way for me. I’ll get the mattress.”
“I can clearly see if I let you get away with bossing me around once, you’ll turn into a complete horror.”
“As if I’m not already,” he muttered. “Emma, I’m being reasonable. The mattress is too big for you.”
“You are looking at a woman who refinished every inch of flooring in this place by herself. I’ve knocked down walls. I’ve repaired plumbing. I’ve been up on the roof. I’ve—” failed to pay the bills, failed to impress my mother, lost my fiancé over this place…
He held up his hand before she could rush on with her list. “Stop,”
