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

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as if a light pierced the darkness. This whole year had been so fraught with emotion and hardship, with traps and uphill battles, that he had become focused only on the bad things. They had overwhelmed his world and his thoughts so much that Ryder had not once stopped to contemplate the one good thing—Tess.

      Tess, who had coaxed laughter out of him when he had thought he would never laugh again. Tess, who had made him go on when he would have given up long ago. If not for her.

      His journey in the darkness had been threatened by the dawn ever since he had arrived here at the White Christmas Inn. The first ray of sunshine—full of hope, and celebration—touched him.

      Tess had lived.

      “Thank you,” he said gruffly to Emma, aware that if you ever allowed yourself to love a woman like her, she would constantly show you things from a different angle. Life could seem like a kinder and gentler place.

      “You know what I would like to do?” she said, after a long time. “I would like to take down every single thing in this house that causes you pain. The trees, the mistletoe, the garlands, the wreaths. Everything.”

      “You weren’t going to try and fix it, remember?” He could not help but be touched that she would give up her vision of Christmas to try and give him peace.

      “Still…” she said.

      He looked over at her to see if the mulish look was on her face, but all he could see was loveliness. The desire to kiss her again was strong, even though he’d sworn off it for the good of them both.

      “No, Emma, I think it would be better for me—and Tess—if I tried to see the miracle. If I tried to see things differently. Before I go.”

      There. The reminder that he was leaving this place. Before he fell in love with Emma.

      But he could not deny that something had already happened. He was a different man from the one who had knocked on her door during a storm such a short time ago. He felt something he had not felt for almost a year.

      Peace. Because he’d gotten things off his chest? Because he was determined to see things differently?

      Or because of the way he was feeling about her?

      “I’m leaving,” he said again. “As soon as I can.” For whose benefit was that tone of voice? Her? Or for him?

      She did not protest or try to talk him out of it.

      Emma just said, quietly, “Ryder, until you go, I won’t leave you alone with it.”

      He knew she meant it, and he knew he was not going anywhere for a while, that he was still at the mercy of the roads. Despite the fact he knew he should fight it, he could not. Instead, he felt an intensified sense of peace, of being deeply relaxed, fill him, and then he slept like a man who had been in battle and who had finally found a safe place to lay down his head and his weapons. A man who didn’t know when the next battle would be, but who appreciated the respite he had been given.

      He awoke the next morning to the arrival of the Fenshaws and Tess. Ryder felt deeply rested.

      New, somehow, especially when he took Tess into his arms and she gave him a noisy kiss on his cheek.

      “Ubba,” she said, and then sang, delighted, “Ubba, Ubba, Ubba,” clearly celebrating the miracle he had not completely recognized until now.

      They had each other.

      “Tess, Tess, Tess,” he said back, and swung her around until she squealed with laughter. His eyes met Emma’s and he felt connected to the whole world. And to her.

      And despite the fact he was stranded, he surrendered to the experience, maybe even came to relish it.

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      Over the next few days Ryder would become aware that telling Emma his darkest secret had consequences he had not anticipated.

      He felt lighter for one thing, as if by sharing he had let go of some need to carry it all by himself.

      Now that Emma knew completely who he was, he felt understood in a way he had not expected. Accepted for who he was and where he was.

      He found himself telling her his history in bits and pieces, about growing up with his brother, the mischief they had gotten into, the gag gifts at Christmas, the competitiveness over girls and sports, how they had helped each other through the deaths of their parents. It was as if he was recovering something he had lost in the fire: all that had been good was coming back to him.

      And slowly, Emma opened up to him. Watching her become herself around him was like watching a rosebud open to the sun.

      She shared, with humor that belied the hurt, the sense of inadequacy she had grown up with, the secondhand clothes, the Christmases with no trees, her mother’s rather careless attitude toward her only child.

      Emma had grown up feeling as if she was a mistake, and she shared how it had made her want desperately to do something good enough to be recognized, how, finally, it had made her vulnerable to a false love.

      She told him about her failed engagement, her last disastrous Christmas.

      “So, there I was, so excited I was wriggling like a puppy as we arrived at Peter’s parents’ house for Christmas day,” she admitted. “I hadn’t met them before, and it felt as if I had passed some huge test that I’d been invited for Christmas.

      “Honestly, the house was everything I could have hoped for. It was like something off a Christmas card—a long driveway, snow-covered trees decorated in tiny white lights. The house was sparkling with more tiny white lights. Inside was like something out of my best dream of Christmas—poinsettias on every surface, real holly garlands, a floor-to-ceiling Christmas tree, so many parcels underneath it that they filled half the room.

      “Everything looked so right,” she remembered sadly, “and felt so wrong. As soon as Peter opened the car door for me there were instructions on what to say and how to say it. Don’t tell them I got the dress on sale. Don’t ask for recipes. Don’t ooh and aah over the house as if I was a hick from the country.

      “His parents were stuffy. His mother asked me questions about what schools I’d gone to and fished for information about my family. His father didn’t even acknowledge it was Christmas and barely seemed to know I was there. He kept leaving the room to check the channel on the television that runs all the up-to-the-minute stock information.

      “We opened gifts before dinner. It was awful. Robotic. These people had everything, what did they care about more? His mother looked aghast at the brooch I’d gotten her, his father was indifferent to the cigars Peter had recommended I get him, Peter hardly glanced at the electronic picture frame I’d filled with pictures of us.

      “And then there were their gifts to me. Peter got me a diamond bracelet. He called it a tennis bracelet, as if anyone would play tennis in something like that! When I saw it, I felt crushed, as if he didn’t know me at all. I never wear jewelry, had told him I didn’t care for it. I got a very expensive designer bag from his mother and father. Nobody had put any thought into anything. It was like an obligation they’d fulfilled.

      “And the worst was yet to come. Dinner. Served by a poor maid, and prepared by a cook. Naturally, I earned the look from Peter when I asked why they were working Christmas day. Then, his mother announced, casually, slyly, that Monique had been calling all day hoping to speak to Peter.

      “I knew that was his old girlfriend. I’d worked in his office while he was going out with her. She was everything I wasn’t. She’d ditched him to go to France.

      “And he didn’t even try to hide how excited he was that she was back.

      “Naturally, when I called him on his excitement later that evening, I was being unsophisticated. I was the hick. He could have friends other than me!

      “Maybe it was the pleasure he took in calling

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