Read Snowbound Bride-to-Be for Free Online

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