Snowbound Bride-to-Be. Cara Colter

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      If the way she held Tess and crooned to her was any indication, she was exactly as she appeared; soft, wholesome, slightly eccentric, a believer in goodness and light and spirits protecting her house and Christmas. Not his type at all.

      Even back in the day, before it had happened, when he cared about such things, he’d gone for flashier women, whitened teeth, diamond rings, designer clothes. Women who would have scorned this place as hokey, and his hostess for being so naive.

      Except, last year, a spectator to the domestic bliss his brother had found, Ryder had thought, briefly, maybe I want this, too.

      But now he knew he didn’t want anything that intensified that feeling of being powerless, and in his mind that’s what being open to another person would do, make him weak instead of strong, slowly but surely erode the bricks of his defenses. What was behind that wall was grief and fury so strong he had no doubt it would destroy him and whoever was close to him, if and when it ever came out.

      For Tess’s sake, as well as his own, he kept a lid on feelings. He knew he had nothing to give anyone; somehow he was hoping his niece would be the exception, though he had no idea how she would be.

      “You don’t run this place by yourself, do you?” he asked, suddenly needing to know, not liking the idea of being alone with all this sweetness, not trusting himself with it, especially after that renegade impulse to tease something sexy out of her hair.

      He hoped, suddenly, for a family-run operation, for parents in the wings, or better yet, a husband. Someone to kill dead this enemy within him, the unexpected sizzle of attraction he felt. Someone he could talk hockey with as the night dragged on, to keep his mind off how little he wanted to be here, and how little fate cared about what he wanted.

      Ryder’s eyes drifted to her ring finger. Red nail polish, a bit of a surprise, but probably chosen in the spirit of the season, to match the socks. How could he possibly be finding this woman, who stood for everything he was trying to run away from, attractive?

      There was no ring on her finger, so he knew the answer to his question even before she answered.

      “It’s all mine,” she said, and her chin lifted proudly. “I inherited the house from my grandmother, restored it, named it the White Pond Inn, and have been operating it on my own ever since.”

      “I thought it was the White Christmas Inn,” he reminded her dryly.

      “Christmas transforms everything,” she said with grave dignity, “it makes all things magic, even my humble inn.”

      Well, she obviously believed.

      “Uh-huh.” He didn’t want to get into it. He truly didn’t want to know a single thing more about her. He didn’t want to like the fact that despite her corkscrew hair waiting to pop into action, and despite her falling-off doorknob, she was trying so hard to keep her dignity.

      Show me to my room. Please. But somehow, instead, Ryder found himself asking, “What makes a young woman tackle a project like this?” He didn’t add, on her own, though that was really his question.

      Ryder was an architect. He and Drew had drawn up plenty of plans to restore places like this one. Underneath all the cosmetic loveliness, he was willing to bet the abundance of decorations hid what the falling-off door handle had hinted at. Problems. Large and small. Way more than a little scrap of a woman on her own would be up to.

      “I’m a dreamer,” she said, fiercely unapologetic, and again, in the way she said that, he caught sight of her pride and stubbornness. And her hurt. As if someone—probably a hard-hearted jerk like him—had mocked her for being a dreamer.

      Whoo boy. He bit his tongue, because it was obvious to him this house did not need a dreamer. A carpenter, certainly. Likely an electrician. Probably a plumber.

      Despite biting his tongue nearly clear through, his skepticism must have clearly shown on his face because she felt driven to convince him—or maybe herself—that the house needed a dreamer.

      “I actually saw it for the first time when my grandmother got sick. My mother and she had been, um, estranged, but one of the neighbors called and asked me to come home to help care for her. This house was love at first sight for me. Plus, it had been in our family for generations. When Granny died, I inherited, and I had to figure out a way I could afford to keep it.”

      That was a warning, if he’d ever heard one. He did not like women who believed in love at first sight. As a man who lived in the wreckage of dreams, he did not like dreamers nor all their infuriating optimism.

      Aside from that, the words told him an even more complete truth, whether he wanted to know it or not, and he didn’t. He saw the glitter of some defense in her eyes that told him things he would have been just as happy not knowing.

      Hurt. Clues in what she was telling him. Something missing in her family, that had filled her with longing? Despite the happy Christmas costume, there was a reason a woman like that took on a place like this. And he was willing to bet it had little to do with family heritage, and a whole lot to do with a broken heart. She had decided loving a house was easier than loving a person.

      He heartily approved, though he wondered if a dreamer could be pragmatic enough to pull that off.

      This ability to see people more clearly than they wanted to be seen, and certainly more clearly than he wanted to see them, was one of the things Ryder hated since the fire. He sensed things, often seeing past what people said, to some truth about them. It was a cruel irony, since he was desperately trying not to care about anything, that he could see things he had never seen before, things that threatened the walls and armor of the defenses that kept some things in him, and some things out.

      Pre-fire, Ryder had been a typical man, happily superficial, involved totally in himself. Building a business with his brother, hanging out with his buddies, playing in a semi-serious hockey league, and never getting even semi-serious with any one woman. That had been his life: a happy, carefree place. A guy zone of self-centered hedonism.

      He had never been deep. Insensitive probably would have described him nicely, blissfully unaware there was any other way to be.

      Now, he could walk by a complete stranger, and see their tragedies in the lines around their mouths and the shadows in their eyes. It was as if he had become a member of a secret club of sadness. Not seeing had been a blessing he had not appreciated at the time.

      A little more than a year ago, Ryder certainly wouldn’t have ever been able to spot the hurt hiding in the shadows of Emma’s eyes. He realized, uncomfortably, that even with those shadows, her eyes were amazing.

      A part of him, purely masculine, acknowledged that physically Emma was exquisite. Her features were small and perfect, her nose snubbed up a touch at the end, her lips formed plump bows of sensuality. And he was not sure he had ever quite seen that shade of eye color before, soft gray-green, moss and mist.

      Despite the outfit—was it deliberately chosen to hide her assets? Another thing he probably would not have guessed pre-fire—he could see she was delicately curved, unconsciously sensuous.

      Annoyed with himself, he realized it was the first time since the fire he had allowed the faint stir of attraction toward a member of the opposite sex to penetrate his barriers.

      Strange СКАЧАТЬ