Snowbound Bride-to-Be (12 page)

She needed to remind herself what grief felt like and to know that the unfathomable darkness that swam in the man’s eyes promised her more of it.

“I have to go,” she said, leaping to her feet, remembering guiltily her
true
love now, her house. “I have to put more wood on the fire at my place or the water will freeze for sure. But Ryder can stay.”

“No, I’ll go with you.”

Something shivered along her spine. “No, it’s fine.”

“I’m not letting you go over there by yourself.”

Emma could tell Tim approved of that. The independent woman in her was strangely silent.

“Let Tess stay the night here then,” Mona said, as if it were all settled, “there’s no sense waking her up and sending her into the cold.”

Ryder hesitated.

“Okay,” he said, reluctantly, obviously weighing out what was better for Tess.

Emma was newly taken by his tender protective attitude toward Tess. It probably wasn’t good to be heading over there, just the two of them, feeling like this.

So
aware. Her shoulder still tingling from where he’d touched it an hour ago! Woman-scorned told her to go home and throw out every one of those romantic movies she’d been collecting. They had obviously filled her head with nonsense.

“There’s an extra snowmobile in the shed next to the house,” Tim said. “My son’s. Take it over.”

For a moment, all the laughter was gone from the room, and Emma could feel how much this family wished Tim, Jr., home.

“I’ll be over first thing. We can get started on the pond,” Tim decided. “We should at least be able to clear a section of it for skating.”

“I’ll bring breakfast,” Mona said.

And then Emma and Ryder were outside, the moon full and bright above them, the air crystal-cold and clear, the stars sparkling, close enough that she felt she could reach out and put one in her pocket.

Ryder did up his jacket against the brisk breeze that was blowing. “There’s something incredibly admirable about those people. Father, husband, son called to war, power out, roads closed, they just handle everything with a certain calm courage. I admire that.”

“I think you handle crisis about the same way.”

He looked at her. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. He went to the shed, got the snowmobile out of it and then mounted it and patted the seat behind him.

She climbed on, trying to keep the dangerous awareness somewhat at bay by grabbing onto the bar behind her.

“Hold on tight.”

So she did, wrapping her arms around him, burrowing her cheek into the strong curve of his shoulder. Surrendering.

They surged through the night, her hands wrapped around his belly. He opened up the throttle and she was sucked even closer into him.

The cold air, the glory of the night and him.

She felt exhilarated. Free. As if there had been no moment before this one, and there would be none after. Her senses gave her mind, always too busy, a much-needed rest. Her senses dismissed the caution she was trying desperately to resurrect.

And maybe he felt that way, too. Because of what he said next.

“Do you mind if I take the long way home?” he shouted over the roar of the engine.

She honestly didn’t feel that she cared if they ever went home. This felt oddly like home. Being with him. Feeling his warmth and his strength penetrating through his jacket, feeling the play of his muscles as he guided the snowmobile around debris, picked a route that snaked through fallen trees up the ridge behind both her and Tim’s places.

The world was a place of sharp and almost mystical contrasts, the cold sting of night air on her cheeks in contrast to his warmth, the beauty of the moon making the broken trees glitter silver, the forest where she had walked many times damaged now and seeming like a place she had never been before, a place that could hold equally promise or destruction.

He stopped at the crest of the ridge and cut the engine. The silver, black and white vista below them was beautifully silent. They could see the dark silhouette of her inn, Tim’s place looking brighter with the yellow glow from the oil lamps lighting his windows. Beyond that, they could see Willowbrook.

“You could almost imagine it was the little town of Bethlehem,” she said, the town looking so pretty and peaceful.

He snorted but not with the same amount of derision as he would have done so last night.

“The lights are on in the town,” he noticed. “They have power there. And look, you can see headlights moving on the road west of it.”

It could take days for those things to happen here, but it was still a reminder that this was all temporary, an illusion of sorts, that would come to an end.

He turned and looked back at her, and then he took off the thick snowmobile glove and scraped his thumb across her lip.

She leaned into it, something flashed through his eyes and he moved his hand away, faced forward, put the glove back on.

He shook his head, and his voice was remote. “I think for both our sakes I should take you back to Fenshaws’. I can look after things at your place by myself tonight.”

“You go back and stay at Fenshsaws’,” she said, thinking
I’m as bad at this as I am at charades
. How could he not understand what she wanted? Or worse, understand exactly what she wanted and reject her?

“You can drop me off,” she said stiffly. “The inn is my responsibility and I’m not turning it over to you.”

“If you knew how badly I wanted to kiss you right now,” he said softly, “you’d go back to Fenshaws’.”

She totally forgot that good sense was her middle name.

“Would I?” she challenged him.

“Yeah,” he said roughly, “you would.”

“I think you’re wrong. I think I’d kiss you back.”

He sighed, his breath harsh, impatient. “Emma, let’s not complicate things.”

He was right. He would be a terrible complication in the world she was building for herself. It was too soon for this. He was being the reasonable one.

But that’s not how she acted. Instead, she got off the snowmobile and went around to the front of it, facing him. She leaned into him, took his face in her gloved hands, pulled his face to hers and brushed his lips with her own.

The first time she had seen him, last night, under the mistletoe, she had wondered what his lips would taste like. Now she knew, and they did not disappoint. Like the other contrasts of tonight, his lips were like ice and fire, steel and silk.

For a split second the force of his will was enough to resist her. And then it collapsed, and his lips accepted the invitation of hers, his hand curled behind her neck and pulled her deeper into him.

To Emma, it felt as though the stars fell from the sky, as if the snow around them turned to fire, as if her heart had been bound in chains and broke free of them.

She had a moment of intense clarity, as if she had lived in a fog, and the sun shone through.

It felt as though every experience of her entire life had led her to this moment, had made her ready for this moment. It felt as if every bad thing and every betrayal had made her deeper and stronger, building her into a woman capable of understanding what she tasted in him. He was not the remoteness in his eyes, nor the coolness in his demeanor. He was not his shields and not his armor. The touch of his lips told her what was behind those things.

He was the man who tackled those endless physical jobs that had to be done as a result of the storm with the inner toughness and fortitude that gave glimpses of the true spirit she had just tasted.

He was the man who said yes to a little girl who wanted him to play charades even though the part of him that guarded his own preservation had wanted to say no.

He was the man who braved the baby department of a store out of a capacity to love that that ran so deep and so true it made her shiver with awe and longing.

He was a man who could make a woman who knew better question what she knew and hope she was wrong.

“Why
not
complicate things?” she whispered against the softness of his lips, amazed at her own imprudence, but so certain of what she had felt, glimpsed, tasted.

His truth.

“Because,” he said, his voice hoarse, “I’m not a man who can give anything to anyone. You need to know the whole truth before you decide whether or not to complicate things.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said, because she knew the truth in him that she had just tasted. “I’ve seen what you give to Tess.” She touched her lips to his again, but he turned his face from her.

“Please,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“Trust me with the whole truth, Ryder.”

Silence.

“Is there someone else?” she asked, shocked at how devastated that possibility made her feel. Of course he had someone else. Look at her history. Look at Peter!

No, look at him! He’d probably met someone in the baby department.

“No, there’s no one else.”

Relief, pure and exhilarating, shot through her.

“It’s something. Not someone.”

“You can tell me, Ryder. Trust me.”

He was silent for so long, she thought he might not speak, that he would refuse her the gift of his trust, that he would just start the snow machine and go.

He was obviously having some kind of battle with himself. And she was amazed when he lost.

His voice low, he said, “Emma, I can’t love anyone, anymore. Not ever again.”

She was tempted to say she wasn’t asking him to love her. She wanted a kiss on a moonlit night. But there was something about the ravaged look on his face that stopped her. She needed to hear what he had to say.

And more importantly, he needed to tell it, it was a demon that ate him from the inside out.

“You want more than I could ever give you,” he said roughly. “You deserve more than I could ever give you.”

“How do you know what I want?”

“Don’t even try to tell me you’re the kind of girl who could ever kiss a man lightly, without knowing exactly where it was going and what happens next.”

“I’m not a girl,” she said, but her protest sounded halfhearted. “I’m a woman. An independent business woman.”

“Don’t even try to tell me you aren’t the kind of
woman
who dreams of a man and of babies of your own.”

“I have my inn,” she said. “That’s enough for me.”

“No, it isn’t, Emma. You want a place like that one down there,” he nodded toward Fenshaws’, “and you want to fill it to the rafters with laughter and love.”

“I don’t,” she said stubbornly, trying to ignore the longing his words caused in her, the pictures that crowded her mind. How quickly a woman like her could put a man like him in the center of each of those pictures.

“If you don’t, you should, because that’s what you deserve, Emma.”

“It’s not what I want,” she said, trying for a firm note.

“Uh-huh,” he said skeptically.

“I gave up on the romantic fantasies,” she insisted.

“When?”

She hesitated. “I had a broken engagement last year.”

“If you tell me it happened at Christmas, I’m going to believe the curse.”

She actually smiled a little, until he said, “I figured as much. A broken heart somewhere in the recent past.”

“Excuse me?” How pathetic was that? That she was telegraphing her broken dreams to every stranger who showed up at the door?

“No single woman takes on a place like the inn without having had romance problems.”

No, not every stranger, just a man who saw everything. Right from the beginning she had known that about him. And now he saw she was falling for him, even before she’d completely admitted it to herself. And he seemed to be seeing that, too.

It was humiliating. “I did,” she said. “I gave up all my romantic illusions. I gave my life to the inn.”

“Like a nun giving her life to the church,” he said dryly.

“Yes!”

“Except for the kissing part.”

She was silent.

He laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “No, you didn’t give up your longings, Emma. You just wanted to. Your dreams shine in your eyes in unguarded moments, like tonight when you were part of that family down there. They will come right back when the right man comes into your life. Was your fiancé a jerk?”

“He was a doctor.”

“I didn’t ask what he did,” Ryder said sharply, “I asked what he
was
. I’ve met lots of doctors who were jerks and lots of construction workers who weren’t.”

“Okay,” she said, miffed, “he was a pompous, full-of-himself jerk, who thought he could mold a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks into perfect wife material. And I was supposed to be grateful for it! Of course, when perfect wife material, pre-made, reappeared in his life, he ditched me.”

She was astounded she had said that, and astounded by the clarity with which she could suddenly see her relationship with Peter.

“He never saw you at all, did he?” Ryder asked softly. “He missed it all. The determination, the love of life, the mischief, the generosity. Not to mention a not-bad giraffe impression.”

“He would have hated every minute of tonight, and especially the undignified giraffe impression. I didn’t realize it at first, but he never saw me, he saw what he wanted me to be. He saw that I didn’t use my fork correctly, and that I wore white slacks after Labor Day, but that I had the potential to be
fixed
.”

“Oh, Emma.”

“But at least he never refused to kiss me!” Unsatisfying as that experience had been—Peter’s kisses perfunctory and passionless—Ryder didn’t have to know!

“I’m going to tell you why I won’t kiss you. Not because I don’t want to—Lord knows I want to—but because there is a hole in me nothing can fill, Emma. Nothing, not even the sweetness of your kisses.”

He took a deep breath, shuddered, closed his eyes and after a very long time he spoke, his voice ragged.

“A year ago,” he said, “on Christmas day, my brother died in a fire. His wife Tracy was badly injured, she died three months ago.”

It was as if every ounce of beauty had drained from the night, and left only the cold.