LITMIR.BIZ

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He didn’t add, on her own, though that was really his question.

      Ryder was an architect. He and Drew had drawn up plenty of plans to restore places like this one. Underneath all the cosmetic loveliness, he was willing to bet the abundance of decorations hid what the falling-off door handle had hinted at. Problems. Large and small. Way more than a little scrap of a woman on her own would be up to.

      “I’m a dreamer,” she said, fiercely unapologetic, and again, in the way she said that, he caught sight of her pride and stubbornness. And her hurt. As if someone—probably a hardhearted jerk like him—had mocked her for being a dreamer.

      Whoo boy. He bit his tongue, because it was obvious to him this house did not need a dreamer. A carpenter, certainly. Likely an electrician. Probably a plumber.

      Despite biting his tongue nearly clear through, his skepticism must have clearly shown on his face because she felt driven to convince him—or maybe herself—that the house needed a dreamer.

      “I actually saw it for the first time when my grandmother got sick. My mother and she had been, um, estranged, but one of the neighbors called and asked me to come home to help care for her. This house was love at first sight for me. Plus, it had been in our family for generations. When Granny died, I inherited, and I had to figure out a way I could afford to keep it.”

      That was a warning, if he’d ever heard one. He did not like women who believed in love at first sight. As a man who lived in the wreckage of dreams, he did not like dreamers nor all their infuriating optimism.

      Aside from that, the words told him an even more complete truth, whether he wanted to know it or not, and he didn’t. He saw the glitter of some defense in her eyes that told him things he would have been just as happy not knowing.

      Hurt. Clues in what she was telling him. Something missing in her family, that had filled her with longing? Despite the happy Christmas costume, there was a reason a woman like that took on a place like this. And he was willing to bet it had little to do with family heritage, and a whole lot to do with a broken heart. She had decided loving a house was easier than loving a person.

      He heartily approved, though he wondered if a dreamer could be pragmatic enough to pull that off.

      This ability to see people more clearly than they wanted to be seen, and certainly more clearly than he wanted to see them, was one of the things Ryder hated since the fire. He sensed things, often seeing past what people said, to some truth about them. It was a cruel irony, since he was desperately trying not to care about anything, that he could see things he had never seen before, things that threatened the walls and armor of the defenses that kept some things in him, and some things out.

      Pre-fire, Ryder had been a typical man, happily superficial, involved totally in himself. Building a business with his brother, hanging out with his buddies, playing in a semi-serious hockey league, and never getting even semi-serious with any one woman. That had been his life: a happy, carefree place. A guy zone of self-centered hedonism.

      He had never been deep. Insensitive probably would have described him nicely, blissfully unaware there was any other way to be.

      Now, he could walk by a complete stranger, and see their tragedies in the lines around their mouths and the shadows in their eyes. It was as if he had become a member of a secret club of sadness. Not seeing had been a blessing he had not appreciated at the time.

      A little more than a year ago, Ryder certainly wouldn’t have ever been able to spot the hurt hiding in the shadows of Emma’s eyes. He realized, uncomfortably, that even with those shadows, her eyes were amazing.

      A part of him, purely masculine, acknowledged that physically Emma was exquisite. Her features were small and perfect, her nose snubbed up a touch at the end, her lips formed plump bows of sensuality. And he was not sure he had ever quite seen that shade of eye color before, soft gray-green, moss and mist.

      Despite the outfit—was it deliberately chosen to hide her assets? Another thing he probably would not have guessed pre-fire—he could see she was delicately curved, unconsciously sensuous.

      Annoyed with himself, he realized it was the first time since the fire he had allowed the faint stir of attraction toward a member of the opposite sex to penetrate his barriers.

      Strange it would be her. The women he had been attracted to in the past were as superficial as he was. He had liked women who wore clingy clothes, and push-up bras, who glittered with makeup and jewelry, and who intoxicated with expensive scents.

      Emma had probably wiggled by his defenses simply because he would have never thought to erect that particular wall against someone like her: makeup-free, tangled hair, lumpy jeans, grandma sweater. And defiantly set on letting him know she believed.

      Still, regardless of how she had done it, it had happened. That faint stirring of something, that felt like life. Trying to call him back.

      To a place, he reminded himself sternly, that was gone.

      He shut down what he was feeling, quickly, but he could not shut down the acknowledgment that it had been a first. He did not feel ready for firsts: to laugh again, to feel again.

      Because somehow even contemplating the possibility of firsts, of returning, felt like some kind of betrayal, as if it minimized who Drew and Tracy had been and what they had meant to him. And maybe because it would require him to do what could not be done: forgive himself.

      So, in a different lifetime, when he had been a different man, Ryder might have followed that thread of attraction to see where it would lead.

      But he already knew Emma was hurt, had already seen secrets in her soft eyes that she probably would rather he not have known.

      And the man he was now was so damaged that he knew he could only hurt her more. His hardness felt as though it would take all that was wondrous about her—such as this childlike delight in Christmas—and curdle it, like vinegar hitting milk.

      It was all the smells in here, pine and pumpkin, all the decorations, her ridiculous hat making her look like an emissary from Santa, that were bringing up these uncomfortable thoughts. For the most part, Ryder was successful at warding off the worst of it.

      Still, that all this had flooded in within moments of entering this place troubled him. He would probably be better off sleeping in his car than taking refuge here.

      He’d known as soon as he stepped under the roof of her porch that this place posed a peculiar kind of danger to his armored heart. As if to confirm that suspicion, he had spotted the letters, peeking out from under the boughs of the wreath.

      Believe.

      The sign had made him want to head back to his car, find shelter elsewhere. Believe in what?

      If he’d been by himself, he would have gone back to the car, found a pub, preferably with a pool table and a big-screen TV, to while away the hours in before the road reopened.

      But he wasn’t by himself, and the fact that he wasn’t changed his ability to choose.

      Every single decision Ryder made had to be run through the filter of what was best for Tess. Obviously it wasn’t a place with a pool table, however comforting he would have found a rowdy male environment.

      What was best for Tess? In the long run? He knew people wondered if he could possibly be the best guardian for her. Some of the bolder ones had even hinted that the most loving thing to do would be to find her a real family, a mother who could actually get a comb through her hair, who would enjoy the intricacies of those silly, frilly, small dresses.

      But his brother and Tracy had wanted him to have her. He’d been stunned that they’d had a will, that they had appointed him guardian.

      Despite the fact he knew himself to be terribly flawed, Ryder could not ever let her go. Tess was what was left of his brother. He was fierce in his protection of her. He hired a nanny who looked after the baby details—hair, baths, clothes—but Mrs. Markle had abandoned him for Christmas to be with her own family.

      His initial awkwardness

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