“No, Tess,” Sue said sternly.
“Ubba?” Tess guessed.
“Yes!” The gleeful girls danced around as if Tess had scored a touchdown. Ryder stroked Tess’s combed hair, and Tess didn’t even howl a protest.
“Me preffree,” she declared to her uncle. “Har.”
“She means she’s pretty,” Sue translated officiously. “’Cause of her hair.”
“Pretty,” Ryder said thoughtfully. “No, I don’t think so.”
All three girls looked shattered at his pronouncement, but the smiles started when he said, “Um, no, pretty isn’t good enough. Lovely?” He seemed to think it over, regarded Tess, then shook his head. “Gorgeous. Beautiful. Stunning. Dazzling.”
“Creative!” Sue crowed, and he smiled.
And then he lifted his niece up with that easy masculine grace, dangled her over his head, her little legs waggling with glee, and then he swooped her down and blew a kiss onto her belly.
Emma could have watched him play with the baby forever. But even thinking that word in close proximity to him seemed to be inviting danger, so she deliberately turned her back on the scene and went in search of Mona. Mona was on the back porch, assembling the bundles of balsam and fir and spruce that went into wreaths.
“The road’s not open,” Emma said, glad to have this moment alone with Mona. “I’m not sure we need any more of those. We probably won’t be able to sell what we have.”
She took a deep breath, “I appreciate you and Tim and the girls spending the day, but I’m not sure about tomorrow. If Holiday Happenings doesn’t happen soon, I’m not going to be able to pay you.”
Mona gave her an insulted look. “We came as your neighbors and your friends today, not as your employees, and we’ll be here as long as you need us.”
Emma could feel those awful tears burning in her eyes again.
“Besides, you know how I love this house and it’s good to keep busy. It keeps all of us from thinking about Tim. Two more Canadian soldiers were wounded yesterday.”
And then Mona’s eyes were full of tears, too, but she quickly brushed them aside. “Let’s have supper at my place. I can cook on the wood burner. I took out chicken this morning. Plus the whole house will be nice and warm from the woodstove.”
The thought of so much warmth—physical and emotional—was more than Emma could refuse.
But Ryder refused with ease, closing something in himself that had opened during the snowball fight. “Tess and I will stay here,” he said. “I’ve got food for her. I can have a hot dog for supper.”
Emma knew something about all this bothered him: the children, the family, the moments of playfulness, the togetherness. She could see that he deliberately planned to turn his back on it. She refused to beg him to come, which woman-scorned was very pleased about. Emma knew he was posing a danger to her. She could see that by coming to the inn she had deliberately removed herself from all those things that, after Peter, she was ill-equipped to handle.
But Mona was having none of it. “You are not having a hot dog for supper after the kind of work you did today.”
Ryder still looked stubborn.
Peggy came and took his hand, shook it vigorously to make sure she had his full attention. “Tess has to come to my house. I want to show her my dollhouse that my daddy made.”
“I could use another man,” Tim said, clearly having to overcome his pride to ask. “The pump won’t be working, and I’ll need to haul water from the creek.”
Emma was not sure which of those arguments won him over, but she was aware of the sweet sensation within herself of wanting to be with him and to spend more time with him, and being glad she didn’t have to reveal any of that by convincing him herself.
Somehow they all managed it in one trip, Mona on the snowmobile behind her father-in-law, Ryder, Emma, girls and baby squashed onto the sled.
Ryder went in first, Emma between his legs, the baby on her lap. She had to push hard into his chest to make room for Sue and Peggy, who squeezed in practically on top of her and the baby.
The extremely crowded ride the short distance to the Fenshaws’ should have been uncomfortable. Instead, it felt incredible. It wasn’t just because she was so close to him, though she could feel his heart beating through his jacket, feel the steel of his strong legs where they formed a V around the small of her back. It was the whole picture, the baby and the girls shouting with laughter as their grandfather picked up speed, the snowmobile cutting a smooth path through the snow.
It was the party atmosphere the Fenshaws insisted on creating, as if closed roads and downed power lines were exactly the excuse they’d been looking for to spend some time together.
It was the feeling of family that Emma had yearned for her entire life.
The house Mona had come to share with her father-in-law when her husband was away was as old as Emma’s but more rustic. Inside was as humble as out; it was a true farmhouse, more about function than fashion, especially since Tim had lived here on his own after the death of his wife.
Wall art ran to framed school photos of the girls, and a large picture of Tim, Jr., in his military uniform, smiling shyly at the camera.
There was nothing “up-country” about the Christmas decorations, either; they were a happy mishmash of fake silver and gold garlands, a scrawny tree nearly falling over under the weight of pine-cone decorations obviously made by Sue and Peggy, the table centerpiece a skinny Santa Claus made out of a paper towel roll and cotton batten.
And yet, the feeling of Christmas and of family was perfect.
Peter would have hated every single thing about this house, and he would have called the decorations tacky.
But when she slid Ryder a glance to see how he was reacting, she saw him take in the humble home, something reluctant and oddly vulnerable in the dark of his eyes.
How could it be, that just twenty-four hours ago when she had seen him those dark, dark eyes had made her think the devil had come to visit?
Could he have changed that much in twenty-four hours? Or had she?
EMMA watched with admiration as Mona, unfazed by the lack of electricity, stoked the cookstove, lit coal-oil lanterns, warmed water for washing, set her old coffeepot on the stove and began to get chicken ready to fry in an old cast-iron pan.
The men hauled water, a hard job that left them soaked in their own sweat and the water that sloshed from buckets. When they were done, Mona gave them a scrub basin filled with the warm water, and dry shirts and shooed them into the back porch off the kitchen. She gave Emma a potato peeler and pointed at a mountain of potatoes.
Unfortunately, from where
