LITMIR.BIZ

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How many days of her Christmas moneymaker could she lose before she was in real trouble?

      “Oh,” she said, breezily, not letting any of those concerns leach into her voice, “it’s a big list, but nothing I can’t handle.”

      She was trying to regain ground as a complete professional.

      They were in the room at the top of the steps that she called the green room. Once it had been her grandmother’s, stuffed from top to bottom with clutter, a dusty-rose wall-to-wall carpet covering the beautiful aged hardwoods.

      Now, in preparation for her mother’s arrival, it was the most beautiful room in the house. The carpet had been ripped out, the faded layers of wallpaper stripped. The room had been restored to historical correctness and decorated in her mother’s favorite color. It was her loveliest room, and Emma felt it not only showcased her abilities as a competent and professional innkeeper, but would convince her mother that White Pond was not such a bad place.

      And that her daughter isn’t such a bad person?

      Where were these thoughts coming from? Still, she glanced at Ryder to see if he was suitably impressed, and saw he was looking at a huge crack in the wall that was opening above the window. That figured.

      She really didn’t want to hear what that meant, so she directed the flashlight beam to the focal point of the room, a beautiful antique four-poster with a lace canopy, layered with luxurious silk bedding and pillows in subtle shades of green.

      “Nice piece of furniture,” he said. Trying to gain ground for his “old-wreck” remark? Not wanting to let her know what the crack meant, either? Feeling sorry for her because she had never had a good Christmas?

      She had shown dozens of guests to their rooms and never felt like this before.

      As if the bed was a strangely intimate piece of furniture, and she was tempting something to be in here alone with him.

      “It’s not really a nice piece of furniture,” she said, trying to sound as if she was not strangling. “The first night I put guests in it, it broke.”

      She had meant it to sound funny but it sounded pathetic, lost her any ground she had gained at presenting herself as a competent professional. Instead, she felt her own failing.

      But he didn’t notice. “Hmm. That sounds interesting. What were they doing?”

      That strangling sound in her throat intensified. She refused to answer him or even look at him. Wild-child had a few ideas about what they might have been doing, but Emma was ignoring wild-child. She redirected the flashlight beam and hurried to the bed.

      “Do you think we can just leave it made up?” She didn’t wait for her answer, lifted a corner of the mattress, struggled to swing it off the bed frame and retain her grip on the flashlight.

      “Stop it,” he said. “You take the bedding and light the way for me. I’ll get the mattress.”

      “I can clearly see if I let you get away with bossing me around once, you’ll turn into a complete horror.”

      “As if I’m not already,” he muttered. “Emma, I’m being reasonable. The mattress is too big for you.”

      “You are looking at a woman who refinished every inch of flooring in this place by herself. I’ve knocked down walls. I’ve repaired plumbing. I’ve been up on the roof. I’ve—” failed to pay the bills, failed to impress my mother, lost my fiancé over this place…

      He held up his hand before she could rush on with her list. “Stop,” he said dryly. “I’m having a heart attack thinking about it.” But he was obviously thinking about it, because that familiar scowl creased his brow. “I hope you didn’t put those Christmas lights on the peak of the roof yourself.”

      Tim had already given her a very thorough lecture about that. She wasn’t listening to another one.

      “I’m just making the point—I can handle my end of the mattress.” She turned the flashlight beam on the floor so he couldn’t see her face, which was blushing as if she had said something about sex. Couldn’t I have worded that differently?

      “Why do I have a feeling that what you think you can handle and what you really can handle are two entirely different things?”

      “Because you’re a chauvinist pig?” she asked, keeping her voice deliberately sweet, glad he couldn’t see her face because his statement could sum up her knowledge of sex, too.

      “Gee, and a minute ago I was worried you were going to fall down the steps and have the mattress and me land on top of you. Now I’m thinking if you fell, could you at least bite your tongue? Preferably off.”

      “You charmer, you.”

      Was a desert-island camaraderie developing between them? Wild-child was jumping up and down at the desert-island possibilities.

      “At least let me take the end that’s going down the stairs first.”

      “No,” she said stubbornly. Woman-scorned, who didn’t need a man taking charge of anything, took over. She picked up the foot of the mattress and began dragging it along the floor, leaving him with no choice but to pick up the other end. She was trying not to grunt as they headed for the stairs, but the mattress was an awkward bundle, hard to get a grip on, heavier than she had thought it would be.

      As it turned out, he’d been right about the bedding, too. They should have made two separate trips. Because as they neared the middle of the stairway, the silk caught in the holly on the railing.

      She paused to untangle it before it pulled the whole garland down or tore the silk. She dropped the flashlight, and they were in darkness.

      It happened fast after that.

      “Wait a sec—” she cried as she felt the mattress pressing against her. But it was too late. The mattress squeezed by her, sweeping her along with it. Emma grabbed a fistful of something before being plunged downward into complete darkness.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      “ARE you okay?” Ryder called.

      Emma couldn’t answer at first, the wind knocked temporarily out of her.

      “Are you hurt?” he asked again. She could hear him trying to get past the mattress that blocked the stairs.

      “Fine,” she managed to get out before he made a hole in the wall, bumping against it like that. The walls were admittedly flimsy in an “old wreck” of a house like this.

      She couldn’t help it. Emma began to giggle and then to laugh. But he mistook the muffled howls of her laughter for cries of pain and came hurtling down to her. Predictably, he got caught up where the mattress blocked the step, and he crashed down on it beside her.

      They lay there, side by side, on the mattress that blocked the staircase. Their legs and feet were up the stairs, their heads and backs on the floor of the foyer. They were only faintly illuminated by the shadows the firelight in the next room was throwing against the wall.

      The laughter died in her throat as Emma became aware of how solid he felt beside her, how his presence here in the house during the storm was somehow reassuring.

      Even if he was an ass who thought her house was a wreck and who was going to deprive Tess of Christmas.

      “Emma, are you okay?”

      “I’m fine,” she assured him again, though as she drank in the scent of him she wondered how true that was. “Are you?”

      She felt him get up on his elbow, stare through darkness made only a little less black by the slight light leaching in from the other room.

      He lay back down, sighed. “I guess I’m okay. Providing jest for the gods tonight. So, did one of your spirits

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