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him,” Ryder deduced, not trying to hide his irritation with Peter. “He would have killed you quietly, one put-down at time. Why did you accept that as long as you did?”

      She smiled sadly. “Ah. The great put-down. That’s all I’ve ever known.”

      And he vowed right then and there that for as long as their time together lasted, put-downs would never be part of the way he communicated with her. He wanted to snatch back every careless word he had said about her dreams and the inn, but instead, he took her hand, kissed the top of it, a gentleman acknowledging a complete lady. “Their loss,” he said quietly.

      And the way the sun came out in her eyes made him kiss her hand again.

      There was no shortage of work while the road remained closed, and the hard work was as amazing an antidote to his pain as Emma. Until the road reopened and the power came on there was more work to do every day than ten men could have handled. It was back-breaking, hand-blistering work, and it was just what he needed. It was what he had tried to achieve with punishing workouts at the gym and never quite succeeded. Not like this. Exhaustion.

      Utter and complete.

      He crawled onto that mattress at night and slept as he had not slept since the fire.

      To add to that, he had a sense of belonging that he had not had since the death of his brother and then his sister-in-law had ripped his own family apart.

      Tim, Mona, the girls formed an old-fashioned family unit, their love fluid rather than rigid, the circle of it opening easily to include Ryder and Tess, just as once it must have opened to take in Emma. It was a plain kind of love: not flowers and chocolates, not fancy Christmas gifts, or dramatic declarations.

      It was the kind of love where people worked hard toward a common goal, then ate together, laughed over simple board games. It was a love that toted a demanding baby with it everywhere it went, as though there was nothing but joy in that task.

      What had really happened when he had told Emma he was broken beyond healing?

      It was as if the healing had begun right then.

      It was as if he had given Emma permission to love him in a different way—one that did not involve kisses—and that love—steady, compassionate, accepting—was stronger than the kisses could have been. Building a foundation for something else.

      But what? Maybe it was as simple as building the foundation for one perfect day.

      Was there such a thing as a perfect day?

      People thought there was. They tried to find those days on beaches in tropical countries in the winter. They tried to have them on the day they got married. They tried to create that day on Christmas in particular.

      Who would ever have thought a perfect day looked like the one he had had on the second day after the storm? By late afternoon, all of them, Mona, the girls, Emma and Ryder had cleared a ton of broken limbs off the pond, Tim pushing it to them with his tractor shovel, clearing snow in preparation for skating. Tess shouted orders from the little sled they all took turns pulling her in.

      An army emergency team arrived on snowmobiles to let them know they were close to having power restored, and the roads would be reopened within twenty-four hours.

      Ryder did not miss the stricken look on Emma’s face and her quick glance toward him, but he understood perfectly what she felt.

      They had built a world here separate from the world out there and their own realities. They had built a family of sorts, one filled with the things people wanted from family and that he suspected Emma had never had: a sense of safety and acceptance.

      But when the roads opened and the power was restored, they were all, in their own ways, moving on, leaving this place that necessity had created. The sense of belonging and of meaning was going to be hard to leave.

      Especially since Ryder had no idea if he was taking this new sense of peace with him or leaving it here.

      “Enough,” Mona cried, as the light was fading and she dragged one more branch to the fire. “Enough work!”

      Hot dogs rescued from a snow drift appeared and buns, more mugs of hot chocolate were served from the huge canning pot Emma had wrestled from the warming shed down to the side of the pond where they were burning branches.

      After he’d eaten enough hot dogs to put even his teenage self to shame, he noticed Mona sorting through the skates she found in the warming shed. “Come on, girls, let’s go skating!”

      And soon all the Fenshaws, including Tim, were circling the pond, graceful, people who had probably skated since they were Tess’s age. They were taking turns pulling Tess, still, and he could hear her squeals of delight as they picked up speed, as the sled careened around the edges of the pond behind the girls.

      And then Ryder noticed Emma putting away things, stirring the hot chocolate, sending the occasional wistful glance toward the frozen pond.

      “How come you have so many skates?” Ryder asked. “Are you renting them at Holiday Happenings?”

      “No, people are bringing their own. But there will be a few here for people who don’t have them or forget. And the kinds of families who are coming to the Christmas Day Dream probably don’t have skates. I tried to collect as many different sizes as possible, so everyone can skate.”

      “Including your size?” he asked, seeing her cast another wistful look at the pond.

      “Oh, I don’t skate. I’ve never even tried it.”

      Wasn’t that just Emma to a T? Giving everyone else a gift, but not taking one for herself?

      “How is it possible you haven’t tried skating?” he asked. “You must be the only Canadian in history who has never skated.”

      “Ryder,” she said, “not everyone had the childhood you had. My mother didn’t have money for skates.”

      He saw suddenly the opportunity to give Emma a gift, humble as it was. He would teach her the joy of flying across an icy pond on sharp silver blades, give her the heady freedom of it. He would give her something from a childhood she had clearly missed.

      He sorted through the skates, found a pair that looked as though they would fit her.

      She sat on a bench and put them on, and he sat beside her, lacing up a pair that had looked as though they would fit him.

      “No,” he said, glancing at her. “You have to lace them really tight.” And then he knelt at her feet and did up her skates for her.

      Her eyes were shining as he rose and held out his hand to her. She wobbled across the short piece of snow-covered ground from the bench to the pond.

      “You are no athlete,” he told her fifteen minutes later, putting his hands under her armpits and hauling her up off her rear again, but then he remembered she had heard nothing but negatives about herself all her life. “Though I’m sure you have other sterling qualities.”

      “Name them,” she demanded.

      “World’s best giraffe imitation.”

      The laughter in her eyes, true and sweet, the shadows lifting, rewarded him for this gift he was giving her.

      “Hard worker,” he went on, “passable cleaner-upper of baby puke.”

      “Stop! I can’t learn to skate and laugh at the same time.”

      “Smart. Funny. Cute. Determined. Brave. Generous. Compassionate. Wise.”

      “You must stop now. I’m having trouble concentrating.”

      But he could tell she was pleased. It was time for Emma White to have some fun, even if it was true that she had not an ounce of natural-born talent in the skating department. She walked on the skates, awkwardly, her ankles turned in, her windmilling arms heralding each fall.

      “Can you relax?” he asked her.

      “Apparently

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