The One Winter Collection. Rebecca Winters

want to hear something ironic? They built an orphanage in Africa.”

      “And you were practically an orphan.”

      “I didn’t mean to sound like I wanted pity. I had absolutely everything growing up.”

      “You didn’t sound like you wanted pity,” he assured her.

      “So, almost by accident, after Jamey was born, I started this little website on the internet called Baby Bytes. I never even told Edwin, my parents, his parents. It was so precious to me, and I knew I couldn’t handle the put-downs or the patronizing or the criticism or the input.

      “Edwin was killed in an accident very shortly after that. He was coming home from work late. He’d had a few drinks and hit a telephone pole.

      “I feel like my little company kept me going, gave me back an identity when I was suffocating in everyone’s expectations. Their expectations actually felt even more stifling after he died.

      “I was supposed to behave like the grieving widow for the rest of my life. Live with his parents. Gratefully accept their help and their gifts.

      “When the house-sitting opportunity came up, I knew I had to take it. To make the break. Baby Bytes has started to make money, and I know I can take it to the next level.”

      “Tell me about it.”

      She gave him a wary look, as if she was deciding whether or not to tell him the color of her underwear.

      “It’s just a website. It’s free for people to use, mostly young moms. It’s got recipes on it for everything from making bread to making your own baby food. And I put up patterns for clothes and homemade toys. Photography tips. I have little contests for cute baby pictures and best names. Nobody is more surprised than me by the number of people using the site.”

      She ducked her head, as if waiting for him to mock her success.

      “I think that’s great,” he said, and he meant it.

      “It’s kind of like the Martha Stewart of the baby world,” she said, her tone self-disparaging.

      He hated that. When no one else put her down, she did it herself.

      “I like how you are blending different worlds,” he told her. “Using high tech to showcase things you value.”

      He was aware that was what they had been doing for the past few days, too. Blending worlds. Moving back and forth between each other’s worlds with a growing amount of comfort.

      “I started putting out feelers,” she confided shyly, “and a couple of the big baby companies, like Baby Nap, have committed to taking out ads on it. It’s going to give me a very comfortable living within a year.”

      “So you have your parents’ business acumen, too. That’s amazing. You must be very proud.”

      “I’m scared.”

      “No, you’re not. You were scared, but today and yesterday you played with a horse. And now you don’t have to be scared anymore. Not of anything.”

      “Anything?” she whispered. She took a deep breath, and turned, and looked at him with those amazing, beautiful eyes. “How about the fact it’s still snowing?”

      “I think we’ll survive.”

      “It’s the twenty-first of December today. How about the fact I may be spending Christmas with you?”

      “It’s just another day. You can celebrate it however you want when you leave.”

      She looked at him long and hard, as if he was clearly missing the point. She drew in another deep breath.

      He had to have known this was coming. He had to have sensed it in their growing comfort with one another, the effortless way he had become her extra hand, the enthusiastic way she was embracing his world.

      But somehow her next words shocked him completely. Completely.

      “How about the way I’m starting to feel about you, Ty Halliday? How about that?”

       CHAPTER SIX

      TY leaped up off the couch as if he’d accidentally sat on a hot ember. He nearly dumped his plate.

      “Like I said, I’m exhausted. Done in. I have to go to bed.”

      Amy squinted at him narrowly. This was a repeat of when she had kissed him! He was letting her know, in no uncertain terms, he was not interested in her in that way.

      “I’m going to have to figure out a way to get to my dad tomorrow,” he said as if he had to rush off to bed and think hard about that.

      “Your dad?” she asked, astounded.

      “He and his lady friend live on the old Halliday homestead place. It’s a few miles from here. I’d better make sure they’re stocked up.”

      Amy felt shocked. She’d assumed Ty was alone in life. Really alone. As alone as any person she had ever met. But his dad lived a few miles away, and he’d never even mentioned it?

      She suddenly felt embarrassed that she had blurted out her whole life story to him. In fact, over the past three days, she had revealed quite a bit about herself.

      But he hadn’t! She had just assumed they were getting to know each other, but in actual fact he’d been getting to know her.

      Enough to know he wasn’t interested in that way. She watched him take off down the hall to his room, heard the finality in the way the door snapped closed.

      Ty Halliday was telling her to back off and that was his right.

      It was the situation here that had made her feel so instantly enamored with him. It was seeing him laughing with Jamey, frowning over the Scrabble board, kneading bread until his arm muscles rippled, looking after her hand with such tenderness, stepping up to the plate to uncomplainingly shoulder every single thing she couldn’t do because of her injury.

      But the kicker had been to see Ty Halliday on a horse. It went beyond horsemanship.

      It went straight to spirit.

      She had witnessed the grace and the power of man and horse melt into one seamless entity.

      Watching Ty ride was going to that place she had been to so rarely: a place of being fully engaged, fully connected, fully alive.

      And she thought she might as well just die now if she did not learn how to get there, too.

      But it was precisely the same mistake she had made before. She was looking for a hero, someone to rescue her from her life.

      And Ty would certainly fit anyone’s definition of a hero. Seeing him in his element and watching the ease with which he had slipped into hers, given the forced closeness of their circumstances, her total reliance on him, it was natural that she would be feeling things with a strange and sizzling intensity.

      It was not unlike a hostage bonding with their captor.

      And if there was one thing she was done with, it was being taken hostage. She had to take responsibility for her own life. No more waiting to be rescued.

      Knowing exactly what she had to do, she marched into the kitchen.

      The phone was still unplugged from the wall.

      So, despite the physical closeness of his father, Ty really was more alone than most people. She doubted he had even given a thought to his phone being unplugged—him being unable to be reached—since he had pulled that thing from the wall. If he was concerned about his father, why didn’t he phone him?

      None of her business, she told herself firmly. She was in no position to advise Ty on family matters when she had allowed her own to become such a mess.