LITMIR.BIZ

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his tongue to keep himself from reminding her about the hot dogs again.

      “Were you now?”

      The man, Tim, weathered face and white hair, was kicking off his boots inside the front door. He rounded on Ryder and eyed him, taking in the pajamas and the mattress on the floor in the other room in one sweep of his gaze which was deeply and protectively suspicious.

      “We got stranded by the storm,” Ryder said, pleased by the older man’s suspicion rather than put out by it. He was happy Emma had someone this fiercely protective of her, someone to look out for her. It relieved him of a burden he had taken on without wanting to. “But we’re leaving now.”

      Tim had one of those faces Ryder could read. Loss was etched there, and yet calm, too, as if Tim had made peace with what was, didn’t even consider asking the world to take back its unfairness and cruelties.

      “You think I’d arrive on my snowmobile if the driveway was open?” the man said. “Trees all over the thing.”

      Ryder stared at him. He’d been so anxious to go he had not seen what was right in front of him.

      “You better have yourself some grub, son, and then we got us some work to do. You look like a city boy. You know how to run a chain saw?”

      Ryder wanted to protest being called son. He wanted to rail against fate keeping him here when he was desperate to get out.

      “We’ll eat in the living room,” Mona said, as if it was all decided. “It’ll be too cold in the rest of the house.”

      “Tess doesn’t like the living room.”

      But he was ignored and Tess, clearly enamored of the little girls, only cast a suspicious look at the fireplace before taking her cue from the other children and allowing herself to be put in the place of honor at the very center of the picnic blanket they were laying out on the floor.

      The basket was unpacked, and soon they were tucking into homemade bread and jam, steaming mugs of coffee.

      The magic seemed to be deepening in this place, as the two little girls fussed over Tess…and over him.

      “This is my doll,” Peggy told him, wagging a worn rag doll in his face. “Her name is Bebo.”

      “Uh, that’s an unusual name.”

      “Do you think it’s pretty?”

      It rated up there with Holiday Happenings on his ugly-name list, but he couldn’t look into that earnest face and say that. Considering it practice for when Tess would be asking him such difficult questions, he said, “I think it’s very creative.”

      Peggy frowned at him, not fooled. “I don’t know what that means.”

      “It means pretty,” he surrendered, and shot Emma a look when he heard her muffled laugh.

      The attention of the little girls made him feel awkward. Mona said to him, softly, “My husband, Tim junior, is in the Canadian Forces. The girls seem to crave male attention. I’m sorry.”

      Ryder was sorry he’d made his discomfort that visible. He was glad he was leaving as soon as the driveway was cleared. He was no replacement for a hero. Not even close. “It must be very difficult for you.”

      She lowered her voice another notch, as Tim senior left the room to check the water pipes. “It’s hardest on him. He lost his wife a while back and seems to age a year for every day Tim is gone.”

      Losses. Ryder had read the elder man’s face correctly. This family was handling their own fears and troubles.

      “Do you have power at your place?” Ryder asked, changing the subject. He tried to sound casual. In actual fact, he hoped the fresh-made bread meant the Fenshaw house had power because he would feel better if Emma went there when he left.

      “No,” Mona said. “I have a great old wood-burning stove, the kind the pioneers had. You can cook on it, it has an oven. It’s fantastic. It heats the whole house, though the house isn’t as large as this one.”

      Again, there was the sense of needing to go, the momentary helpless frustration, and then surrender.

      He wasn’t going anywhere until they got the driveway cleared. He might as well enjoy the mouthwatering bread, the homemade jams, the hot coffee. He might as well enjoy the innocence of those children, the fact that they liked him without any evidence that they should.

      “Would you like to hold Bebo?” Peggy asked him.

      He heard Emma laugh again as he tried to think of a diplomatic response, and then she rescued him by saying, “I’d like to hold her, Peggy.”

      “Me,” Tess yelled, and Peggy surrendered her doll to the baby even though Tess was covered in jam.

      Of course, surrendering to enjoyment was like surrendering to the magic that was wrapping itself around him, trying to creep inside him. Somehow as he filled up on breakfast and giggles, he became aware something was changing. He felt not trapped, somehow. Not ecstatic, either, but not trapped.

      “Water’s fine so far. What do you think we start clearing first?” Tim asked Emma, coming back into the room. “Pond or driveway?”

      “Driveway,” Emma said.

      And Ryder might have appreciated how practical she was being—since no one could even get to the pond without the driveway, except that she looked right at him, and smiled sunnily. “Mr. Richardson is anxious to go.” She didn’t say it, but she might as well have, And we’re anxious to have him leave.

      He felt stung. Because for some reason he had thought she was anxious to have him stay. But she wouldn’t look at him, and he remembered he had seen heartbreak in her devotion to this house.

      His leaving was what was best for everyone, some sizzle in the air between him and Emma was not going to pass if it was tested by too much time together.

      “Let’s see what I remember about using a chain saw,” Ryder said, and got up when Tim moved to the door.

      At the door he saw the older man pause, smile at the commotion. “Look at them girls with that baby. It’s like Christmas came early for them.”

      Ryder looked back, and his heart felt as though a fist was squeezing it. Tess waddled back and forth between the two girls, Peggy’s doll in a grubby death grip. The girls clapped and encouraged her every step.

      The sense of his own inadequacy, from which he had taken a quick break, languishing in the warmth of Emma’s approval, came back with a vengeance.

      Ryder felt, acutely, the thing he could not give Tess.

      This.

      Family. She needed the thing he was most determined not to leave himself open to ever again.

      He wondered if Emma was right about there being only one right decision, or if only the most selfish of men would think he could possibly know what was best for that baby, think that he could give her everything she needed.

      Not because it was what was best for her. But because he loved her. Hopelessly and helplessly and she was all that was left of his world.

      Tess normally kept a sharp eye out for any indication of a good-bye. When he left for work in the mornings, she would arch herself over Mrs. Markle’s arms in a fit of fury. But this morning, covered in jam from her fingers to her ears, she did not seem to notice he was preparing to leave her in the care of strangers.

      He was relieved that she was not making a fuss about the fireplace, either, though every now and then she would cast it a wary look, then look to the girls to see if they noticed the fire-breathing monster in the room with them.

      It wasn’t really as if he was leaving her with strangers. Somehow in one night Emma was not a stranger, and he seriously doubted the Fenshaws remained strangers to anyone for more than a few seconds.

      He turned away from the play of the children

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