“I can show you to a room, or take you through to the kitchen to get something to eat first.”
Tess had nursed a bottle in the car, but could use something solid. But Ryder realized he was also starving. And exhausted from fighting with the roads. If he had something to eat and a nap, he would be ready to leave here the second there was a break in the weather and the roads reopened.
“Something to eat sounds good.” He could feel his own caution, as if even agreeing to have something to eat was tampering with forces he was not ready to tamper with.
“It must have been a nightmare out there,” his hostess said, still lugging Tess, leading him down a narrow hallway that ended in a swinging door. She gave it a push with her hip.
“A nightmare,” he agreed. “Hell, only the cold version, decorated in white.” Something like her inn.
She didn’t miss the reference to white decorations, and he saw her take his comment like a blow, as a personal insult. Too sensitive. Was that why she’d been hurt?
“Nothing against white decorations,” he said curtly, his insincerity just making everything worse.
Vinegar and milk, he told himself.
He wanted to say he wasn’t hungry, after all. Wanted to retreat to a room, hoping it wouldn’t be too overwhelmingly Chrismasified, but the truth was, now that he was not battling his way through terrible conditions, he was ravenous.
And even if he wasn’t, the baby had to eat something out of one of those little jars of mash he carried with him.
His initial relief that the kitchen was an oasis of “not decorated” evaporated. The smells were intense in this room, as was the atmosphere of country cheer and charm: sunshine-yellow walls, white cabinets, old gray linoleum floors polished to high gloss. But, like the door handle falling off, he could see hints of problems, frost on the inside of the windows, a tap dripping.
A huge plank harvest table dominated the room and was covered in platters and platters of cookies.
On a closer look, there were cookies shaped like trees, and cookies frosted in pink, Santa cookies, and chocolate-dipped cookies, gingerbread men and gingerbread houses.
“You weren’t kidding that you were expecting guests,” he said. “How many?”
“I was hoping for a hundred.”
He shot her a wary look at the disappointment in her voice. “You were expecting a hundred people here tonight?”
“The opening night of Holiday Happenings,” she said, and he did his best to remain expressionless at how horrifying he found that name. She took his silence, unfortunately, as an invitation to go on, even though her voice had begun to wobble.
“There’s a pond out back. There was going to be skating. And bonfires. A neighbor was going to bring his team of horses. Clydesdales.” Something was shining behind her eyes.
He thought, again, of the kind of women he had once dated. Five-star meals, gifts of diamonds, evenings that ended in hot tubs. Not Holiday Happenings kind of women.
Emma’s disappointment was palpable. He hoped, uneasily and fervently, she wasn’t going to cry. Nothing felt like a threat to him as much as a woman’s tears. Tess already knew, and used it to her advantage at every opportunity.
“Sorry,” he said, gruffly, whether he meant it or because he hoped saying something—anything—could curb her distress, he wasn’t sure.
“Things will be back to normal by tomorrow,” she said, “Holiday Happenings is going to happen.”
This was said fiercely as if she was challenging him—or the gods—to disagree with her. He wasn’t going to, but the gods seemed to enjoy a challenge like that one.
It was Tess who took Emma’s mind off her weather woes. Apparently the baby was tired of looking at the embarrassment of riches around her, and tired of the adult chatter.
She began squealing and pointing at various cookies and nearly wiggled herself right out of Emma’s arms.
“WA DAT.”
“Want that?” Emma guessed, mercifully distracted. “She’s hungry.”
“Or could squeeze in a cookie after demolishing a ten-course meal,” he said, thanking Tess for evaporating the tears that had shone so briefly behind those eyes.
“Can she have one, daddy? Or does she have to have healthy stuff first?”
He frowned. Let it go? He wasn’t going to be here long enough for it to matter, was he? Correcting her meant revealing something more of the private life, fresh with tragedy, that he kept so guarded.
On the other hand, revealing the fact he was not Tess’s father seemed safer than returning to the possibility the weather could ruin her plans for Holiday Happenings.
If he never heard the words Holiday Happenings again, he would be just as happy. It was worth it, even if it revealed a little of himself.
He realized he had not introduced himself.
“I’m Ryder Richardson,” he said, not trying to disguise his reluctance, “I’m Tess’s uncle. Her guardian.”
“Oh.”
It asked questions, none of which he intended to answer. He stuck out his hand, a diversionary tactic to stall questions and to keep her mind off her failed evening.
She juggled the baby, and took his hand. As soon as he felt her hand in his, he knew he’d made a mistake. Her hand slipped inside his, a perfect fit, softness intermingled with surprising strength.
He felt the zing of the physical contact, steeled himself against it.
She felt something, too, because she froze for a moment, stared up into his eyes, blinked with startled awareness. And then she pulled her hand away, rapidly.
His eyes went to her lips. Once upon a time, a long time ago, when he was a different man in a different life, he had known other diversionary tactics. Most of them involved lips. His and hers.
Now as profoundly committed to taking his wandering mind off lips as he was to taking Emma’s mind off personal questions and the weather, he held out his arms, and Emma gave Tess back to him.
Babies were the grand diversion when it came to women. One look at Tess’s hair should take Emma’s mind irrevocably off her crushed hopes for the evening, and maybe off that sizzling moment of awareness that had just passed between them.
He propped Tess on the edge of the plank table, removed the blanket, pulled Tess’s little limbs from the car coat he’d had her in. Last he fumbled with the ridiculously hard-to-reach snap on the stupid snow hat that he had put on the baby out of a sense of wanting to do the responsible thing before they left on their road trip.
That was the worry part. A snow hat inside the car. In case. Well, that, and to cover the mess of her hair in case they stopped anywhere along the way. The cop might have even looked at him differently if he had spotted the baby’s hair.
If you can’t even look after her hair, how can you be trusted with the larger picture?
“I hate this hat,” he muttered, though what he really hated was that question.
“Why’s that?”
“It never seems to go on right.”
“Ah.” It was a strangled sound.
Ryder shot her a look. She was smiling, biting back a giggle.
He glared at her. He disliked merriment nearly as much as Christmas, especially when it was at his expense and made him feel self-conscious about his baby skills. “Is something funny?” he asked, annoyed.
She held up a finger, letting him know that soon she would be