Pretending that nothing had happened just enough to make him mad, but not actually managing to cover that something was up. Basically the worst person a man could ever sneak around with.
And he intended to do a whole lot more sneaking.
Hey, how else would she learn?
“There’s going to be so much testosterone in this house,” Sammy grumbled.
“Hey,” Ryder said. “It culminates in a wedding. I can’t think of anything more estrogen fueled.”
“Really?” Sammy said sweetly. “Was it estrogen that drove you to build me a fairy canopy for our wedding, Ryder?”
“That was love, woman. And you know it.”
That actually did make his stomach turn over. But it wasn’t guilt. No, he had accepted that there wouldn’t be any of that. But there was something... Looking at that, the connection that Ryder and Sammy had, it was enough to make anyone ache.
They’d spent their lives in this makeshift family, doing their best to fill the gaps left by dead or inadequate parents. But that was what it was. Filling gaps. The best that they all could. Ryder and Sammy had somehow found a piece that fit completely. And they’d found it in each other.
Pansy had managed to find it with someone who hadn’t been part of their little clan. And still, they’d found a way to complete each other.
He’d made a lot of decisions in his life, and they’d all served to make sure that he was off in his own corner, licking wounds that the rest of them didn’t even know about. He’d kept distance between himself and the rest of them.
He didn’t regret it. Mostly. What he’d done had all been for good reason. A tangle of reasons that he could barely follow back to the beginning now. But the truth was, it had made him who he was. What he was. And there was no going back from that.
He didn’t mind. Mostly.
Until he saw things like that, like Ryder and Sammy, and he wondered what it might be like to have someone who knew you that way. Who knew all those things about you and wanted you just the same.
He gritted his teeth and turned his focus to his meal.
Rose didn’t say a single word to him. She managed to talk to everyone else, but she didn’t talk to him. And by the time they were finished, he was in a damned foul mood.
“I’m tired,” she announced. “I’m going upstairs.”
She pushed her chair back from the table and took her plate to the sink. He could feel the dare radiating from her body. The triumph. She thought she had escaped him. That she wasn’t going to have to answer to him at all. That was what she thought.
He could read her well enough to know that.
They might not fill all the gaps in each other, but he knew Rose Daniels. Better than just about anybody, he was sure.
And she couldn’t go pulling things like this without him knowing exactly what it was she was doing. Running the hell away from him.
And she figured that if she announced boldly to her family that she was going to bed, he was going to let her do it.
But on the tail of Rose’s departure, dinner ended, and everyone began to disperse. And no one thought anything of him heading upstairs. Ryder wouldn’t have even noticed because a football game had started, and he was basically absorbed by that. Logan had never been into sports in quite the way his friend was. Ryder coached the local high school team now, and when he’d been younger, had been on a path to a college scholarship for football until his parents had died. Then he had to stay in Gold Valley and make sure everyone and everything was taken care of.
Guilt arrived then.
But not over what he’d expected it to. No. This was old guilt. The guilt that lived here in the Christmas season, woven all around him like strands of tinsel. Guilt that he never really thought about. Because it was like the blood in his veins. It was just there. Pumping through him. And he was rarely aware of it. But then, there were moments. Moments like this, when it hit. And then, it tended to hit with the intensity of a gale force wind.
Sammy and Iris were in the kitchen still, having tea and eating cake. So, they weren’t going to notice anything, either. And the fox was in the henhouse. So, he did what any good fox would do.
He played like a gentleman for one moment, knocking on Rose’s door.
“What?”
He took that as permission to enter. He pushed the door open and ignored her wide eyes.
“What are you doing in here?”
“Making sure you don’t forget.”
He closed the door behind him, and then closed the distance between them. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in Rose’s room. At the moment, he couldn’t remember if he ever had been.
It was just like her. Serviceable, but with touches of femininity. Some nice, classic furniture that he assumed had come from her parents. A full-size bed with a whole mound of pillows, mismatched pillowcases, though. But Rose would care a lot less about the pillowcases, and a lot more about having a lot of blankets and a lot of softness all around her.
She was tough. And she worked harder than any man he’d ever known.
But she liked her creature comforts. Didn’t like to be cold.
Instantly, he pictured her with a cherry-red nose and a scowl on her face as she had been the other day, and all the arousal that he’d been holding at bay all evening flooded him.
Because somehow, he wanted this woman almost especially when she was essentially her.
She opened her mouth like she might protest, but he pulled her into his arms and stopped it with his mouth. He kissed her, kissed her with all of the frustration that had been building up inside of him through dinner. Kissed her hard and long and deep. Because
