The Complete Christmas Collection - Rebecca Winters Mills & Boon e-Book Collections

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      “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’.”

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      RYDER 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

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