sorry,” she said, her voice still light with laughter. “I should have listened to you. I should have taken the bedding off, let you take the mattress, followed meekly behind—”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, “I can certainly picture you in the meek position. Submissive, even. Would that be before or after you strung lights on the roofline and knocked out a wall or two?”
“Hmm,” she said, pretending thoughtfulness. “Let’s make it before. I might be too tired after to be properly meek.”
Then they were laughing again, and he noticed her laughter was sweet, uncomplicated, real, like when Tess laughed.
“I’m sorry, too,” he said, finally, “for taking out my frustration at having my plans interrupted on you. And for calling your house an old wreck. It isn’t really. It’s a Victorian, probably built at the very end of the eighteen-hundreds or in the early nineteen-hundreds.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m an architect. Though I have to admit, I avoid old-house projects like the plague. People are never realistic about what it’s going to cost to restore an old building.”
“Don’t you think old buildings are romantic?” she asked.
Given the startling intensity between them, he did not want to discuss anything about romance with her.
“Not at all,” he said. “You get in and the walls aren’t square, the floors aren’t level, the fifty-year-old addition is being held up by toothpicks. I prefer new construction, and my real preference is commercial buildings.”
She was silent for a bit, and he hoped she was contemplating getting out of this old place before it ruined her financially, but naturally that wasn’t what she was contemplating at all.
“We could start over,” she decided.
“Could we? How?”
“Like this.” Her hand found his in the darkness. And shook it. “Hi,” she said, “I’m Emma White, the meek, submissive owner of the White Christmas Inn.”
Her hand was soft in his, and again he felt something when he touched her that went beyond the sizzle of chemistry. Quiet strength. He turned his head to see her in the faint shadows being cast by the fireplace in the other room.
“I’m Ryder Richardson,” he played along, despite the fact he knew this was a somewhat dangerous game, that he was incredibly aware of the loveliness of her hand and her scent.
Still, he was reluctantly amazed by how good it felt to play along with her, to let go of his legendary self-control, just a little bit.
She was silent for a while. “Do you think,” she said hesitantly, “just in this new spirit of cooperation, you could tell me what a really good Christmas feels like? You said you’d had good Christmases. Just so I know exactly what to do for the Christmas Day Dream.”
She was moving him further and further behind enemy lines.
“Come on,” he said, “you have some good Christmas memories.”
Her silence nearly took what was left of his heart.
Ryder was amazed to find his carefully walled world had a hole in it that she had crept through. He was amazed that he wanted to go there, to a good, good Christmas, to share it with her, to make it real for her, but for himself, too. To relive such a wonderful time proved to be a temptation too strong to resist, even as he wondered if he was going to regret this later.
“You wouldn’t think this would be the best Christmas ever,” he said, slowly, feeling his way cautiously through the territory that had once been his life, “but when I was twelve my dad was out of work, the only time I ever remember that happening while I was growing up.”
He told her about how his dad and his mom had snuck out every night into the backyard and shoveled and leveled and sprayed the garden hose on sub-zero nights until they had a perfect ice rink to unveil to him and Drew on Christmas morning.
He and his brother had woken up to secondhand skates that didn’t fit, and instead of turkey they’d had a bonfire in the backyard and cooked smokies and marshmallows.
They had skated all day. Pretty soon all the neighbors had drifted over, the neighborhood boys unanimously voting the Richardson brothers’ skating rink as the best gift of the year. At midnight there had still been people around the bonfire, kids skating, babies sleeping.
“And then, our neighbor Mrs. Kelly, who sang solos at all the community weddings and funerals started singing ‘Silent Night,’ and everybody gathered at the bonfire and started singing, too.” Ryder’s parents had been dead now for more than a dozen years, but as he talked about them, he could feel their love for him and Drew as if it had all happened yesterday.
Maybe she had been right about ghosts living here. His parents had always been determined to make the best of everything. Life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, his mother had always said. He wondered what they would think of him, and how he was coping with the lemons life had handed him.
And suddenly reliving that memory didn’t feel fun anymore and already he felt regret, and felt the shadows pulling at him, trying to take him back.
Fast forward to spending last Christmas Eve with Drew and Tracy, opening his gift from them. A gag gift, as always, a huge stuffed marlin, possibly the ugliest thing Ryder had ever seen, mocking the deep-sea fishing trip he and Drew had taken off the coast of Mexico earlier in the year. Was that the last time he had laughed, really laughed, until tonight?
Come on, stay, his brother had said, at the door, “Silent Night” playing on the stereo inside the house. We’ll put you in the guest room. You can watch Tess open her presents tomorrow.
Since Tess had been a cute and occasionally smelly little lump of a person at the time, incapable of opening her own presents, and probably oblivious to what they contained, Ryder had failed to see the attraction of that. He could clearly see the baby was going to have no appreciation whatsoever for the signed football he had gotten for her.
But he had stayed, something about the magic of family being stronger than any other kind of magic.
It was the last night he had ever experienced joy. It was the last time he had laughed. Until tonight.
And he did not feel ready to invite those kinds of experiences into his life again. He had built his barricades for a reason—he was not nearly done beating himself up for his failure to save them all. But also to keep this out: longing for what could not be, ever again.
A man had to be whole, unencumbered, to welcome experiences like those into his life. He was not that man. The easygoing young man he had been only a year ago was scarred beyond recognition.
And knew he would not be that man again.
Emma seemed to sense his mood shifting, changing, even though she could barely see him. He let go of her hand abruptly. She felt the faint tensing, his energy drawing away from her. She tried to draw him back.
“Would you like to hear about Christmas at the inn?”
He wanted to tell her no, to grab back the things he had just told her, but that seemed too
