felt stung. Because for some reason he had thought she was anxious to have him stay. But she wouldn’t look at him, and he remembered he had seen heartbreak in her devotion to this house.
His leaving was what was best for everyone, some sizzle in the air between him and Emma was not going to pass if it was tested by too much time together.
“Let’s see what I remember about using a chain saw,” Ryder said, and got up when Tim moved to the door.
At the door he saw the older man pause, smile at the commotion. “Look at them girls with that baby. It’s like Christmas came early for them.”
Ryder looked back, and his heart felt as though a fist was squeezing it. Tess waddled back and forth between the two girls, Peggy’s doll in a grubby death grip. The girls clapped and encouraged her every step.
The sense of his own inadequacy, from which he had taken a quick break, languishing in the warmth of Emma’s approval, came back with a vengeance.
Ryder felt, acutely, the thing he could not give Tess.
This.
Family. She needed the thing he was most determined not to leave himself open to ever again.
He wondered if Emma was right about there being only one right decision, or if only the most selfish of men would think he could possibly know what was best for that baby, think that he could give her everything she needed.
Not because it was what was best for her. But because he loved her. Hopelessly and helplessly and she was all that was left of his world.
Tess normally kept a sharp eye out for any indication of a good-bye. When he left for work in the mornings, she would arch herself over Mrs. Markle’s arms in a fit of fury. But this morning, covered in jam from her fingers to her ears, she did not seem to notice he was preparing to leave her in the care of strangers.
He was relieved that she was not making a fuss about the fireplace, either, though every now and then she would cast it a wary look, then look to the girls to see if they noticed the fire-breathing monster in the room with them.
It wasn’t really as if he was leaving her with strangers. Somehow in one night Emma was not a stranger, and he seriously doubted the Fenshaws remained strangers to anyone for more than a few seconds.
He turned away from the play of the children and went out to his car to retrieve the boots and gloves he had packed for the cottage because Tess loved to play in the snow. He didn’t even go back in to put them on, refusing to subject himself to the warmth of that scene again. He slid his winter clothes over what he was wearing.
Tim put him to work straight away.
Two huge trees and several smaller ones had fallen over the driveway. Branches littered the entire length of the road.
Ryder soon found himself immersed in the work of cutting the trees, bucking the branches off them. The pure physical activity soothed something in him, much like the punishing workouts he did at the gym.
Plus, working with a chain saw was tricky and dangerous. There was no room for wandering thoughts while working with a piece of equipment that could take off a limb before you blinked.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Emma leave the house and come down the driveway to join them.
“They kicked me out. Mona said I can’t even be trusted in a kitchen with full power, but I think the truth is they wanted the baby to themselves. Pigeon convention in full swing.”
It was only a mark of how necessary it was that he leave that he appreciated how carefully she had listened to him last night.
“Oh, and I buried the hot dogs in a snowdrift outside the back door.”
Emma was dressed casually, in a down parka, her crazy hair sticking out from under a red toque. She had on men’s work gloves that made her hands look huge at the ends of her dainty wrists.
“Tess okay with you leaving?” he asked her, idling the chain saw, worried that the incident with the fire could be repeated now that both he and Emma had left the house.
But Emma reassured him. “Tess appears to be having the time of her life. They’ve heated up some water. Mona is showing Sue and Peggy how to bathe a baby. They’re using a huge roasting pan for a tub, in front of the fire. I nearly cooed myself it was so darned cute. I told them to take some pictures for you. I can e-mail them to you. After.”
After. After he was gone. Setting up a little thread of contact, making his leaving not nearly as complete as he wanted to make it. He wanted to leave this place—and all the uncomfortable feelings it had conjured up—and not look back.
“Watch for the ice,” he told her, not wanting to encourage her to send him pictures. “Every now and then it breaks off the wires or the trees and falls down like a pane of glass.”
“You watch out, too,” she said.
“For?”
She scooped up a handful of snow, balled it carefully, hurled it at his head. It missed and hit him square in the chest.
Don’t do it, he ordered himself. Despite her acting as if she was as eager for him to leave as he was to go, she was looking for that hole in his defenses again. Intentionally or not?
Despite his strict order to himself, he set down the chain saw, idling, scooped up a handful of snow, formed it into a solid ball. She was already running down the driveway, laughing, thinking she’d escaped.
He let fly the snowball. It missed. And for a moment, without thought, without any kind of premeditation, without analysis, he was his old self again, just an ordinary guy who couldn’t stand the fact he’d missed. He scooped up another handful of snow, went down the driveway after her. She laughed and scooted off the road, ducked behind a tree. His snowball splatted against it.
“Na, na,” she said. She peeked out and flagged her nose at him.
He let fly again, she ducked behind the tree. Splat. He scooped snow, moved in closer, she darted to another tree. A snowball flew out from behind it, and hit him squarely in the face.
It was a damned challenge to his manhood! He wiped the snow away and made ammunition. When she showed herself again, he let fly with one snowball after another, machinegun-like. He thought she’d run, or better, beg for mercy, but she didn’t. She grabbed an armload of snow, ran right into the hail of his fire and jammed the white fluffy stuff right down his pants!
He burst out laughing. “You know how to put out a fire, don’t you, Emma?”
“Were you on fire?” she asked, all innocence.
No. Not yet. But if he was around this kind of temptation much longer he was going to be.
He shook his head, moved away from her, ordered himself again to stop it. But he didn’t. “Watch your back,” he warned her.
But she just laughed, moved past him down the driveway. He went back to his chain saw, still idling, and stopped for a moment to watch her pulling branches off the road, blowing out puffs of wintry air as she applied herself to the task.
He
