Read Online Snowbound Bride-to-Be by Cara Colter - Free Book Online Page A

on,” he said.
    So do I, but the way my luck is running, I doubt it . “I’ll show you where the crib is.”
    Moments later, Emma, holding the sleeping baby, was watching him take the crib apart. Despite her resolve that they be nothing more than strangers, she couldn’t help but admire how comfortable he was with tools, the man-thing.
    It had taken her the better part of an afternoon to put that crib together, studying instructions, putting A into B. He had the whole thing dismantled and downstairs in a matter of minutes.
    While he was reassembling the crib, Emma went back upstairs to get a mattress off the bed in the room closest to the staircase.
    “Tess didn’t even know I’d moved her,” he commented, coming up behind her.
    “She sleeps like a log.”
    “I’m envious,” he said. A man who carried burdens so heavy they affected his sleep?
    Don’t pursue it , she told herself.
    “It’s already chilly up here,” he said.
    “Well, you know these old wrecks. The insulation is in about the same shape as the foundation.”
    “I said I was sorry.”
    “No,” she said firmly. “I have a tendency to be way too sensitive. I know there’s lots wrong with the old place. It’s foolish to love her anyway.”
    “What do you have for insulation?”
    A pragmatic question. He didn’t want to know anything about what she loved. She didn’t blame him. She didn’t want to know what he loved, either.
    A lie. She did. Despite all her resolve, both wild-child and woman-scorned were supremely interested in what a man like him loved.
    The baby was obvious, of course.
    She stuck to her resolve and the relatively safe topic of her old house. “ I found old newspapers in the walls when I redid the bathroom.” She didn’t mention how the tub falling through the floor had necessitated the renovation before she really had the funds to do it. “New insulation is on my to-do list.”
    “Big list?” he asked, conversationally.
    But Emma already felt foolish enough for blurting out about her Christmases. She was saying nothing else to him that could be interpreted as self-pitying.
    The insulation fell into that category. If she was going to borrow money, wouldn’t that have been the sensible choice? New insulation? A new roof?
    Oh, no, dreamer that she was she had been spending money on gifts for needy families, and redoing this bedroom in preparation for her mother’s visit.
    Was she still trying to prove herself worthy? Emma shut the thought off fast and focused on problems she could solve.
    If she didn’t become more prudent, next year she would probably be heading the “needy” line, not jetting off to Hawaii!
    She had gambled everything on the success of HolidayHappenings. How many days of her Christmas moneymaker could she lose before she was in real trouble?
    “Oh,” she said, breezily, not letting any of those concerns leach into her voice, “it’s a big list, but nothing I can’t handle.”
    She was trying to regain ground as a complete professional.
    They were in the room at the top of the steps that she called the green room. Once it had been her grandmother’s, stuffed from top to bottom with clutter, a dusty-rose wall-to-wall carpet covering the beautiful aged hardwoods.
    Now, in preparation for her mother’s arrival, it was the most beautiful room in the house. The carpet had been ripped out, the faded layers of wallpaper stripped. The room had been restored to historical correctness and decorated in her mother’s favorite color. It was her loveliest room, and Emma felt it not only showcased her abilities as a competent and professional innkeeper, but would convince her mother that White Pond was not such a bad place.
    And that her daughter isn’t such a bad person?
    Where were these thoughts coming from? Still, she glanced at Ryder to see if he was suitably impressed, and saw he was looking at a huge crack in the wall that was opening above the window. That figured.
    She really didn’t want to