He was the man who said yes to a little girl who wanted him to play charades even though the part of him that guarded his own preservation had wanted to say no.
He was the man who braved the baby department of a store out of a capacity to love that that ran so deep and so true it made her shiver with awe and longing.
He was a man who could make a woman who knew better question what she knew and hope she was wrong.
“Why not complicate things?” she whispered against the softness of his lips, amazed at her own imprudence, but so certain of what she had felt, glimpsed, tasted.
His truth.
“Because,” he said, his voice hoarse, “I’m not a man who can give anything to anyone. You need to know the whole truth before you decide whether or not to complicate things.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said, because she knew the truth in him that she had just tasted. “I’ve seen what you give to Tess.” She touched her lips to his again, but he turned his face from her.
“Please,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Trust me with the whole truth, Ryder.”
Silence.
“Is there someone else?” she asked, shocked at how devastated that possibility made her feel. Of course he had someone else. Look at her history. Look at Peter!
No, look at him! He’d probably met someone in the baby department.
“No, there’s no one else.”
Relief, pure and exhilarating, shot through her.
“It’s something. Not someone.”
“You can tell me, Ryder. Trust me.”
He was silent for so long, she thought he might not speak, that he would refuse her the gift of his trust, that he would just start the snow machine and go.
He was obviously having some kind of battle with himself. And she was amazed when he lost.
His voice low, he said, “Emma, I can’t love anyone, anymore. Not ever again.”
She was tempted to say she wasn’t asking him to love her. She wanted a kiss on a moonlit night. But there was something about the ravaged look on his face that stopped her. She needed to hear what he had to say.
And more importantly, he needed to tell it, it was a demon that ate him from the inside out.
“You want more than I could ever give you,” he said roughly. “You deserve more than I could ever give you.”
“How do you know what I want?”
“Don’t even try to tell me you’re the kind of girl who could ever kiss a man lightly, without knowing exactly where it was going and what happens next.”
“I’m not a girl,” she said, but her protest sounded halfhearted. “I’m a woman. An independent business woman.”
“Don’t even try to tell me you aren’t the kind of woman who dreams of a man and of babies of your own.”
“I have my inn,” she said. “That’s enough for me.”
“No, it isn’t, Emma. You want a place like that one down there,” he nodded toward Fenshaws’, “and you want to fill it to the rafters with laughter and love.”
“I don’t,” she said stubbornly, trying to ignore the longing his words caused in her, the pictures that crowded her mind. How quickly a woman like her could put a man like him in the center of each of those pictures.
“If you don’t, you should, because that’s what you deserve, Emma.”
“It’s not what I want,” she said, trying for a firm note.
“Uh-huh,” he said skeptically.
“I gave up on the romantic fantasies,” she insisted.
“When?”
She hesitated. “I had a broken engagement last year.”
“If you tell me it happened at Christmas, I’m going to believe the curse.”
She actually smiled a little, until he said, “I figured as much. A broken heart somewhere in the recent past.”
“Excuse me?” How pathetic was that? That she was telegraphing her broken dreams to every stranger who showed up at the door?
“No single woman takes on a place like the inn without having had romance problems.”
No, not every stranger, just a man who saw everything. Right from the beginning she had known that about him. And now he saw she was falling for him, even before she’d completely admitted it to herself. And he seemed to be seeing that, too.
It was humiliating. “I did,” she said. “I gave up all my romantic illusions. I gave my life to the inn.”
“Like a nun giving her life to the church,” he said dryly.
“Yes!”
“Except for the kissing part.”
She was silent.
He laughed, but it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “No, you didn’t give up your longings, Emma. You just wanted to. Your dreams shine in your eyes in unguarded moments, like tonight when you were part of that family down there. They will come right back when the right man comes into your life. Was your fiancé a jerk?”
“He was a doctor.”
“I didn’t ask what he did,” Ryder said sharply, “I asked what he was. I’ve met lots of doctors who were jerks and lots of construction workers who weren’t.”
“Okay,” she said, miffed, “he was a pompous, full-of-himself jerk, who thought he could mold a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks into perfect wife material. And I was supposed to be grateful for it! Of course, when perfect wife material, pre-made, reappeared in his life, he ditched me.”
She was astounded she had said that, and astounded by the clarity with which she could suddenly see her relationship with Peter.
“He never saw you at all, did he?” Ryder asked softly. “He missed it all. The determination, the love of life, the mischief, the generosity. Not to mention a not-bad giraffe impression.”
“He would have hated every minute of tonight, and especially the undignified giraffe impression. I didn’t realize it at first, but he never saw me, he saw what he wanted me to be. He saw that I didn’t use my fork correctly, and that I wore white slacks after Labor Day, but that I had the potential to be fixed.”
“Oh, Emma.”
“But at least he never refused to kiss me!” Unsatisfying as that experience had been—Peter’s kisses perfunctory and passionless—Ryder didn’t have to know!
“I’m going to tell you why I won’t kiss you. Not because I don’t want to—Lord knows I want to—but because there is a hole in me nothing can fill, Emma. Nothing, not even the sweetness of your kisses.”
He took a deep breath, shuddered, closed his eyes and after a very long time he spoke, his voice ragged.
“A year ago,” he said, “on Christmas day, my brother died in a fire. His wife Tracy was badly injured, she died three months ago.”
It was as if every ounce of beauty had drained from the night, and left only the cold.
“Tess’s mom and dad,” she breathed, shaken. “Oh, no.”
He held up a hand stopping her, stopping her sympathy from touching him.