LITMIR.BIZ

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want to go find some bedding to make up the couch.”

      “Yes, boss,” she said.

      The temptation rose again. To play along with her. But this time he said nothing in response to her jesting.

      In fact, he made up his mind he was leaving at first light.

      You’d leave a woman alone with no power? a voice inside him asked.

      For her own good, he answered it back.

      But maybe she had been closer to the truth than he wanted to admit when she had called him mean and selfish.

      It was himself he was protecting, not her. Protecting himself from these uncomfortable feelings, something thawing in him that allowed him to see his world as too stark, too masculine. Too lonely.

      But getting to know someone was a minefield that rarely went smoothly, especially now that he carried so much baggage, so many scars, so much damage.

      What started with a curious kiss could all blow up and leave her with another Christmas in shambles.

      Not one good Christmas memory? How was that possible? And yet he could tell she was honest to a fault, and that if she could have dredged one up, she would have.

      He dragged the mattress into the living room, rearranged the bedding, stoked the fire. The thought of sharing this room with her for the night seemed uncomfortably intimate given his vow not to encourage anything between them.

      She came back down the stairs, loaded down with bedding, the duvet a plump eiderdown, whiter than a wedding night and just as sensual.

      “Where’s the woodpile?” he asked, looking everywhere but at her lips, needing a moment’s breathing space.

      She told him, and he put on his shoes and grabbed the flashlight. He went out the back door into the storm to her woodshed. The night, bitter and dark, the flashlight beam, frail against the wicked slant of white sleet, were in sharp contrast to the cozy intimacy inside, but Ryder welcomed the wind, the sharded sleet on his face slapping him back to reality. The sleet was freezing as it hit the ground, forcing him to focus intensely to keep upright, especially once his arms were loaded with wood.

      He made five or six trips to the shed, filling the wood box beside the fireplace. Each time he came in, he would think enough, but the picture Emma made cuddled up on the couch inside her quilt, her hair every which way, would make him think not one good Christmas, as if he could or should do something about it. And that would send him back out the door, determined to cling to his vision of life as a cold and bitter place.

      But going out into the weather again and again turned out to be one of those impulses he should have thought all the way through.

      His clothes were soaked. He made one more trip—out to his vehicle, to bring in the luggage he had not wanted to bring in. Another surrender, he thought, shivering. The old house only had one bathroom, upstairs, and it was already cold. He noticed the tub seemed new, and the flooring around it did, too. He inspected more closely.

      Her tub had fallen through the floor at some point in recent history. This place was way too much for her, and he killed the fleeting thought that she needed someone to help her. He hurried into a pair of drawstring plaid pajama pants, a T-shirt.

      When he came back down, he noticed she was in pajamas now, too, soft pink, with white-and-pink angels on them, flannel, not, thankfully, the least bit sexy. Her blanket was a soft mound of snow on the couch, but she was up doing something at the fire.

      He saw then that she was pouring steaming water from a huge cast-iron kettle she had put in the coals of the fire. She came to him with a mug of hot chocolate.

      It was just a little too much like a pajama party, and he had talked enough for one night. Yet chilled to the bone because of his own foolishness, he could not refuse. He took the mug, wrapped his hands around its comforting heat. He took a chair across from her as she snuggled back under her blanket, one hand coming out of the folds to hold her hot chocolate.

      Home.

      The scene, straight out of a magazine layout for Christmas, had a feeling of home about it: fire crackling, baby sleeping, the pajamas, the hot chocolate, the tree in the background.

      “Is it hard?” she asked softly. “Looking after Tess? How long have you done it for?”

      That was the problem with letting his guard down, telling the one story. For a whole year he had avoided any relationship that required anything of him, even conversation. It was just too hard to make small talk, to pretend to care. Being engaged with another human being felt exhausting and like a lie.

      His failure had killed his brother. Hardly a conversation starter, and yet how long could he know someone before he felt compelled to tell them that? Because that had become the biggest part of him.

      But now that he had confided one deeply personal memory to her, it was as if a hole had opened in the dam that held his loneliness, and the words wanted to pour out of him.

      “I was appointed her guardian three months ago.” Ryder did not want to tell her the circumstances, Tracy’s long fight ending, nor did he want to tell her how hard those first weeks had been. Thinking about them, loneliness and longing threatened to swamp him again.

      But his voice was carefully neutral when he said, “I have a nanny. That helps. She’s an older lady, married, her own kids grown up. She misses children.” So much easier to talk about Mrs. Markle than himself.

      But Emma persisted. “And when she’s not there?”

      “There’s the hair thing,” he admitted. “I do pretty good at everything else. The first few diaper changes I felt like I was scaling Everest without oxygen, but now it makes me feel oddly manly. Like I look at other guys and think, I can handle stuff you can’t even imagine, pal.” He was still aware he was hiding in humor, but Emma’s appreciative chuckle made it seem like a good tactic, so he kept going.

      “Shopping for her is a nightmare. It’s like being at a pigeon convention. You’ve never heard so much cooing. It’s like I’m transformed from six-foot-one of highly-muscled, menacing man to this adorable somewhat helpless teddy bear.”

      “You do have kind of a menacing air about you, Ryder.” Her eyes slid to his arms to check out the muscle part. He was pretty sure she wasn’t disappointed. The gym was one of the places where he took it all, sweated it out, pushed himself to a place beyond thought.

      “A much-needed defense against cooing, not that it works in the baby store. I go in for a new supply of pajamas with feet in them, the entire extent of Tess’s wardrobe, and women come out of the woodwork. I get shown little diaper covers with frills and bows on them, and white dresses that Tess would destroy in thirty seconds flat, and the worst thing of all—hair paraphernalia.”

      “I noticed you bought the little diaper cover.”

      “I know,” he admitted. “I get the hair junk, too, and more ridiculous shoes than you can shake a stick at, too.”

      “Ah, the boots with the penguins.”

      “I learned to just let them load me up, and I can get out of there quicker.”

      “Maybe underneath the menace, they see something else.”

      He could tell her. He could tell this stranger about his last year in hell, leave his burdens here when he walked away. It was pushing away at the damaged dam within him, wanting out.

      Instead he said, coolly, “Something else? Not that I’m aware of.”

      “Hmm,” she said with patent disbelief. He bet if he met up with her in the baby department, she’d be cooing along with the rest of them.

      “Maybe they see a man doing his best in a difficult situation. Maybe they admire the fact you said yes to being put in that situation.”

      “It’s not like I had a choice.”

      “I bet you did,” she

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