Snowbound Bride-to-Be (13 page)

“Tess’s mom and dad,” she breathed, shaken. “Oh, no.”

He held up a hand stopping her, stopping her sympathy from touching him.

But he didn’t stop her hand from resting on his chest. She could feel he had started to tremble and that made her want to weep.

“I was there. My brother, Drew, asked me to get Tess out. He was going back in for Tracy. Only, somehow, Tracy was already out, and he was in that inferno looking for her. I had gotten Tess out, and I tried to go back for him. Some neighbors held me. They wouldn’t let me go.”

The trembling had increased under her hand, she pressed harder against his heart.

“I wasn’t strong enough,” he said, his voice cracking. “I just wasn’t strong enough. If I could have shaken them off, I would have gotten him. Or I would have died trying. Either would have been better than what I live with now.”

She wanted to tell him how wrong he was, but she bit her lip and pressed her hand harder against the brokenness of his heart, knowing he
needed
to get this out. This absolute fury with himself, the lack of forgiveness, the sense of failure.

“I loved them,” he said softly, and she heard that love in the fierce note in his voice. “I loved my brother. He was like the other half of me. We did everything together. And I loved Tracy, the woman he had chosen to be his wife.

“I failed them.” The tremble from his heart had moved into his voice. “I failed the people I loved the most. And I failed myself. A long time ago I believed in myself. I believed I focused my physical strength and the strength of my will on what I wanted and it happened.

“Now I know that’s not true, it’s just a lie people tell themselves.”

She said nothing, keeping her hand on his heart, trying to absorb his pain, to take it from him.

But it was so tragically easy to see he could not let it go.

“It took everything I had when they died. Everything. I can’t love anybody anymore. Maybe never again. It tore the heart out of my body.”

She did not tell him she could feel his heart beating in his body, strong, just where it was supposed to be.

Finally, the trembling subsided, and she could feel his breath, deep and even. She spoke, softly.

“It took everything except Tess,” she said, a statement, not a question. Her heart seemed to swell with warmth when she thought of that, that he had found the strength to come out of his pain enough to get Tess.

“Yes, except Tess.”

“I’m so sorry, Ryder.” The words seemed fragile, too small for the enormity of his pain. And yet she felt deeply moved and honored that he had told her this, trusted her with it. And she saw so clearly what he could not see. His strength had not failed him at all, he was coming into his strength in ways he refused to recognize.

“Now that you understand,” he said, grim, distant, picking up the armor he had laid down in those exquisite moments of absolute trust in her, “I’ll take you back to Fenshaws’, and I’ll look after the inn.”

She knew that would be the easiest thing for him, and probably for her, too. He had told her he had nothing to give, and she knew she should believe him.

But it was Christmas.

And if there was one message about Christmas that rose above all the others, holy, it was that one.

The joy in it was not in receiving, but in giving.

That was true of Christmas and of love. He had trusted her with this, and she planned to be worthy of his trust.

And so she said, gently, “No, Ryder, I’m not going back to Fenshaws’.”

R
YDER
frowned at her. He could have sworn she understood. They could not follow the flames of attraction that were burning hot between them. He’d made it clear he had nothing to give her. Nothing.

“Why?” he demanded.

She looked at him and said softly, soothingly, “Because I’m not leaving you alone with this.”

Alone
. The word hung in the air between them. His truth. He had been alone with this for 354 days.

“Understand me,” she said quietly. “I’m not going to talk. I know I cannot do or say anything to change the way you feel, to fix it, but I’m just not leaving you alone with it.”

Others had tried to come into his world. He had not allowed it. But no one else had made this promise—that they would not try to fix it, would not try to make him feel better. Just be there.

He wanted to say no to her. To drop her off at the Fenshaws’ despite her protests. But she had that mulish look on her face and would probably just walk back across the snow, through the moonlit night.

So that he would not be alone.

And suddenly Ryder realized the thought of not being
alone with it, even for one night, eased something in him. He had nothing to give her. But she had something to give him, and he was not strong enough to refuse her gift.

He started the machine, felt her arms wrap around him, her cheek press into the back of his shoulder.

And felt something else, exquisite and warming.

Not alone.

That feeling was intensified an hour later as they lay in the same room, separated only by air and a few feet of space, the fire throwing its gentle golden light over them, crackling and hissing and spitting.

“That’s why the fire bothered Tess this morning,” she said, her voice coming out of the darkness, like a touch, like a hand on a shoulder. “Does it bother you? The fire?”

So many things bothered him. Couples in love, children riding on their daddy’s shoulders, Christmas. But fire?

“No. What happened at Tracy and Drew’s house was a fluke, a short in a Christmas-tree bulb. The tree went up after they’d gone to bed. Their smoke detector had been too sensitive, going off every time they cooked something. Drew disconnected it. He meant to move it to a different location, but he never did.”

He wanted to stop, but the new feeling of not being alone wouldn’t let him. “One small choice,” he said, “seemingly insignificant, and all these lives changed. Forever. If only I could have gone back in there, things could have been so different.”

She was silent for so long, he thought she would say nothing. But finally she did.

“But what if the difference was that Tess had been left all alone in the world? What if she hadn’t had even you?”

This was a possibility he had never even considered. Not once. And maybe that was part of what happened when you
weren’t alone anymore. The view became wider. Other possibilities edged into a rigid consciousness that had seen things only one way.

Ryder had imagined he could have pitted his will and his strength against the fire that night and saved them all. But Drew had possessed every bit as much strength and will as he had. And he had failed to save himself.

So, what if they had both failed, both died that night, Tracy struggling for life, Tess ultimately left alone? Left to complete strangers who would never understand that her eyes were the exact same shade of blue that her mother’s had been, that that faint cleft in her stubborn chin had come through four generations of Richardsons so far?

And might go on to the next.

Because Tess had survived. And so had he.

“Ryder,” she said quietly, “I know it was a terrible night, more terrible than anyone who has not gone through something like that could ever imagine. I know it is hard to see the miracle.”

“The miracle?” he said, stunned.

“You survived, and because of you, Tess survived. Because you saved her, your brother’s arrow goes forward into the future. Tess,” she said softly, “is the miracle. Tess is the reason it isn’t only a day of sorrow.”

He felt his throat close as he thought of that. It was as if a light pierced the darkness. This whole year had been so fraught with emotion and hardship, with traps and uphill battles, that he had become focused only on the bad things. They had overwhelmed his world and his thoughts so much that Ryder had not once stopped to contemplate the one good thing—Tess.

Tess, who had coaxed laughter out of him when he had
thought he would never laugh again. Tess, who had made him go on when he would have given up long ago. If not for her.

His journey in the darkness had been threatened by the dawn ever since he had arrived here at the White Christmas Inn. The first ray of sunshine—full of hope, and celebration—touched him.

Tess had lived.

“Thank you,” he said gruffly to Emma, aware that if you ever allowed yourself to love a woman like her, she would constantly show you things from a different angle. Life could seem like a kinder and gentler place.

“You know what I would like to do?” she said, after a long time. “I would like to take down every single thing in this house that causes you pain. The trees, the mistletoe, the garlands, the wreaths. Everything.”

“You weren’t going to try and fix it, remember?” He could not help but be touched that she would give up her vision of Christmas to try and give him peace.

“Still…” she said.

He looked over at her to see if the mulish look was on her face, but all he could see was loveliness. The desire to kiss her again was strong, even though he’d sworn off it for the good of them both.

“No, Emma, I think it would be better for me—and Tess—if I tried to see the miracle. If I tried to see things differently. Before I go.”

There. The reminder that he was leaving this place. Before he fell in love with Emma.

But he could not deny that something had already happened. He was a different man from the one who had knocked on her door during a storm such a short time ago. He felt something he had not felt for almost a year.

Peace. Because he’d gotten things off his chest? Because he was determined to see things differently?

Or because of the way he was feeling about her?

“I’m leaving,” he said again. “As soon as I can.” For whose benefit was that tone of voice? Her? Or for him?

She did not protest or try to talk him out of it.

Emma just said, quietly, “Ryder, until you go, I won’t leave you alone with it.”

He knew she meant it, and he knew he was not going anywhere for a while, that he was still at the mercy of the roads. Despite the fact he knew he should fight it, he could not. Instead, he felt an intensified sense of peace, of being deeply relaxed, fill him, and then he slept like a man who had been in battle and who had finally found a safe place to lay down his head and his weapons. A man who didn’t know when the next battle would be, but who appreciated the respite he had been given.

He awoke the next morning to the arrival of the Fenshaws and Tess. Ryder felt deeply rested.

New, somehow, especially when he took Tess into his arms and she gave him a noisy kiss on his cheek.

“Ubba,” she said, and then sang, delighted, “Ubba, Ubba, Ubba,” clearly celebrating the miracle he had not completely recognized until now.

They had each other.

“Tess, Tess, Tess,” he said back, and swung her around until she squealed with laughter. His eyes met Emma’s and he felt connected to the whole world. And to her.

And despite the fact he was stranded, he surrendered to the experience, maybe even came to relish it.

Over the next few days Ryder would become aware that telling Emma his darkest secret had consequences he had not anticipated.

He felt lighter for one thing, as if by sharing he had let go of some need to carry it all by himself.

Now that Emma knew completely who he was, he felt understood in a way he had not expected. Accepted for who he was and where he was.

He found himself telling her his history in bits and pieces, about growing up with his brother, the mischief they had gotten into, the gag gifts at Christmas, the competitiveness over girls and sports, how they had helped each other through the deaths of their parents. It was as if he was recovering something he had lost in the fire: all that had been good was coming back to him.

And slowly, Emma opened up to him. Watching her become herself around him was like watching a rosebud open to the sun.

She shared, with humor that belied the hurt, the sense of inadequacy she had grown up with, the secondhand clothes, the Christmases with no trees, her mother’s rather careless attitude toward her only child.

Emma had grown up feeling as if she was a mistake, and she shared how it had made her want desperately to do something good enough to be recognized, how, finally, it had made her vulnerable to a false love.

She told him about her failed engagement, her last disastrous Christmas.

“So, there I was, so excited I was wriggling like a puppy as we arrived at Peter’s parents’ house for Christmas day,” she admitted. “I hadn’t met them before, and it felt as if I had passed some huge test that I’d been invited for Christmas.

“Honestly, the house was everything I could have hoped for. It was like something off a Christmas card—a long driveway, snow-covered trees decorated in tiny white lights. The house was sparkling with more tiny white lights. Inside
was like something out of my best dream of Christmas—poinsettias on every surface, real holly garlands, a floor-to-ceiling Christmas tree, so many parcels underneath it that they filled half the room.

“Everything looked so right,” she remembered sadly, “and felt so wrong. As soon as Peter opened the car door for me there were instructions on what to say and how to say it. Don’t tell them I got the dress on sale. Don’t ask for recipes. Don’t ooh and aah over the house as if I was a hick from the country.

“His parents were stuffy. His mother asked me questions about what schools I’d gone to and fished for information about my family. His father didn’t even acknowledge it was Christmas and barely seemed to know I was there. He kept leaving the room to check the channel on the television that runs all the up-to-the-minute stock information.

“We opened gifts before dinner. It was awful. Robotic. These people had everything, what did they care about more? His mother looked
aghast
at the brooch I’d gotten her, his father was indifferent to the cigars Peter had recommended I get him, Peter hardly glanced at the electronic picture frame I’d filled with pictures of us.

“And then there were their gifts to me. Peter got me a diamond bracelet. He called it a tennis bracelet, as if anyone would play tennis in something like that! When I saw it, I felt crushed, as if he didn’t know me at all. I never wear jewelry, had told him I didn’t care for it. I got a very expensive designer bag from his mother and father. Nobody had put any thought into anything. It was like an obligation they’d fulfilled.

“And the worst was yet to come. Dinner. Served by a poor maid, and prepared by a cook. Naturally, I earned the
look
from Peter when I asked why they were working Christmas day. Then, his mother announced, casually,
slyly
, that Monique had been calling all day hoping to speak to Peter.

“I knew that was his old girlfriend. I’d worked in his office while he was going out with her. She was everything I wasn’t. She’d ditched him to go to France.

“And he didn’t even try to hide how excited he was that she was back.

“Naturally, when I called him on his excitement later that evening, I was being unsophisticated. I was the hick. He could have friends other than me!

“Maybe it was the pleasure he took in calling me a hick that made going home to my grandmother so irresistible.”

“I think you just wanted to get away from him,” Ryder deduced, not trying to hide his irritation with Peter. “He would have killed you quietly, one put-down at time. Why did you accept that as long as you did?”

She smiled sadly. “Ah. The great put-down. That’s all I’ve ever known.”

And he vowed right then and there that for as long as their time together lasted, put-downs would never be part of the way he communicated with her. He wanted to snatch back every careless word he had said about her dreams and the inn, but instead, he took her hand, kissed the top of it, a gentleman acknowledging a complete lady. “Their loss,” he said quietly.

And the way the sun came out in her eyes made him kiss her hand again.

There was no shortage of work while the road remained closed, and the hard work was as amazing an antidote to his pain as Emma. Until the road reopened and the power came on there was more work to do every day than ten men could have handled. It was back-breaking, hand-blistering work, and it was just what he needed. It was what he had tried to achieve with punishing workouts at the gym and never quite succeeded. Not like this. Exhaustion.

Utter and complete.

He crawled onto that mattress at night and slept as he had not slept since the fire.

To add to that, he had a sense of belonging that he had not had since the death of his brother and then his sister-in-law had ripped his own family apart.

Tim, Mona, the girls formed an old-fashioned family unit, their love fluid rather than rigid, the circle of it opening easily to include Ryder and Tess, just as once it must have opened to take in Emma. It was a plain kind of love: not flowers and chocolates, not fancy Christmas gifts, or dramatic declarations.

It was the kind of love where people worked hard toward a common goal, then ate together, laughed over simple board games. It was a love that toted a demanding baby with it everywhere it went, as though there was nothing but joy in that task.

What had really happened when he had told Emma he was broken beyond healing?

It was as if the healing had begun right then.

It was as if he had given Emma permission to love him in a different way—one that did not involve kisses—and that love—steady, compassionate, accepting—was stronger than the kisses could have been. Building a foundation for something else.