Snowbound Bride-to-Be by Cara Colter

worried eyes to the baby. “Your cottage isn’t going anywhere.”
    But, of course, he did have urgent business. He had to reclaim the bastions that had had cracks knocked into them last night, he had to repair that hole in the wall she had slipped through. Even repaired, it would be a weak place now, and she knew where it was. If he stayed, she might slip through it again.
    “I appreciate the shelter from the storm, Emma.”
    He appreciated more than that: the refuge, for a moment when he had laughed, and for another when he had remembered Christmas past, from the storms within himself, the glimpse of what it would be to be a different man, to have that feeling of home again.
    But he wasn’t ready and there was a possibility he never would be. People could only get hurt if he tried.
    “We’ve imposed long enough.”
    She looked as though she had something to say about that, but she bit her lip instead.
    “If you’ll provide me with a bill, I’ll finish getting Tess ready. I don’t suppose you accept credit cards?”
    Breaking it down to a business deal. Reminding her it was a business deal. Despite the mattress thing. Despite him sharing a memory with her of a long-ago Christmas that shone in his memory. Magic.
    Despite knowing she had never had a good Christmas.
    She looked insulted. “I’m not taking money! Hot dogs forsupper and a bed on the floor! No, consider your stay at the White Christmas Inn my gift to you, humble as it was.”
    Ryder didn’t want to accept a gift from her. He hated it that she was offering one. Was she intent on giving that Christmas spirit to everyone, even those completely undeserving? Who would not make Santa’s nice list?
    But she had that mulish look on her face, and he wasn’t going to argue. He’d mail her a check when he got home after Christmas. No, an anonymous money order because she’d probably be stubborn enough not to cash a check with his name on it.
    Even if by after Christmas she’d mortgaged the place to pay for her hot dogs, and her falling-down house, and her fantasy Christmas day for the needy.
    So, he’d make sure it was a darn generous check.
    “Speaking of hot dogs,” he said. “Don’t forget, if the power stays out much longer, you’ll have to take them out of the freezer.”
    What a hero , Ryder told himself cynically, leaving her without power, but making sure to dispense hot-dog-saving advice before departing .
    A sound broke the absolute silence of the morning, a high-pitched whining engine noise. A snowmobile.
    It was now full light out. The landscape outside the inn looked like a broken fairy tale, trees smashed, lines dangling, but everything coated in a thin shimmering sheet of incredibly beautiful blue-diamond ice.
    A snowmobile pulling a sled came around the corner of the house. A man drove the snow machine; the sled had a woman and two little girls in it
    “My neighbors,” Emma said, and a smile of pure delight lit her face. “The Fenshaws. That’s Tim driving, his daughter-in-law, Mona, and his two granddaughters, Sue and Peggy.”
    Relief washed over Ryder. She wouldn’t be alone, after all. She had people who cared about her. Cared about her enough to be here at first light making sure she was all right.
    He was free to leave.
    The Fenshaws didn’t so much come into the house as tumble in, laden with thermoses and a huge basket wafting the incredible smell of homemade bread. Flurried introductions were made.
    The girls, perhaps nine and eleven, spotted Tess and put the baskets they were carrying down.
    “A baby,” they breathed in one voice.
    The older one, Sue, came and took Tess from him with surprising expertise, put her on her hip, danced across the foyer to her mother.
    “Look, Mom. Isn’t she the cutest thing ever? Oh, I can’t wait to comb her hair!”
    As tempting as it would be to stay for that, and to sample whatever was in those baskets, now would be the perfect time to make his getaway, leaving Emma amongst all