Free Snowbound Bride-to-Be by Cara Colter Page B

such a wonderful time proved to be a temptation too strong to resist, even as he wondered if he was going to regret this later.
    “You wouldn’t think this would be the best Christmas ever,” he said, slowly, feeling his way cautiously through the territory that had once been his life, “but when I was twelve my dad was out of work, the only time I ever remember that happening while I was growing up.”
    He told her about how his dad and his mom had snuck out every night into the backyard and shoveled and leveled and sprayed the garden hose on sub-zero nights until they had a perfect ice rink to unveil to him and Drew on Christmas morning.
    He and his brother had woken up to secondhand skates thatdidn’t fit, and instead of turkey they’d had a bonfire in the backyard and cooked smokies and marshmallows.
    They had skated all day. Pretty soon all the neighbors had drifted over, the neighborhood boys unanimously voting the Richardson brothers’ skating rink as the best gift of the year. At midnight there had still been people around the bonfire, kids skating, babies sleeping.
    “And then, our neighbor Mrs. Kelly, who sang solos at all the community weddings and funerals started singing ‘Silent Night,’ and everybody gathered at the bonfire and started singing, too.” Ryder’s parents had been dead now for more than a dozen years, but as he talked about them, he could feel their love for him and Drew as if it had all happened yesterday.
    Maybe she had been right about ghosts living here. His parents had always been determined to make the best of everything. Life gives you lemons, you make lemonade , his mother had always said. He wondered what they would think of him, and how he was coping with the lemons life had handed him.
    And suddenly reliving that memory didn’t feel fun anymore and already he felt regret, and felt the shadows pulling at him, trying to take him back.
    Fast forward to spending last Christmas Eve with Drew and Tracy, opening his gift from them. A gag gift, as always, a huge stuffed marlin, possibly the ugliest thing Ryder had ever seen, mocking the deep-sea fishing trip he and Drew had taken off the coast of Mexico earlier in the year. Was that the last time he had laughed, really laughed, until tonight?
    Come on, stay , his brother had said, at the door, “Silent Night” playing on the stereo inside the house. We’ll put you in the guest room. You can watch Tess open her presents tomorrow.
    Since Tess had been a cute and occasionally smelly little lump of a person at the time, incapable of opening her own presents, and probably oblivious to what they contained, Ryder had failed to see the attraction of that. He could clearly see the baby was going to have no appreciation whatsoever for the signed football he had gotten for her.
    But he had stayed, something about the magic of family being stronger than any other kind of magic.
    It was the last night he had ever experienced joy. It was the last time he had laughed. Until tonight.
    And he did not feel ready to invite those kinds of experiences into his life again. He had built his barricades for a reason—he was not nearly done beating himself up for his failure to save them all. But also to keep this out: longing for what could not be, ever again.
    A man had to be whole, unencumbered, to welcome experiences like those into his life. He was not that man. The easygoing young man he had been only a year ago was scarred beyond recognition.
    And knew he would not be that man again.
    Emma seemed to sense his mood shifting, changing, even though she could barely see him. He let go of her hand abruptly. She felt the faint tensing, his energy drawing away from her. She tried to draw him back.
    “Would you like to hear about Christmas at the inn?”
    He wanted to tell her no, to grab back the things he had just told her, but that seemed too sour, even for him, and it seemed to be going against the new spirit of cooperation he had promised, so he