The One Winter Collection. Rebecca Winters

in giant puffs, with a certain rapt attention, as if it was all miraculous.

      “There’s absolutely no chance I’m going to get away before Christmas, is there?” she asked, worried.

      Maybe she was getting it after all, figuring out she was going to be spending Christmas with him, and that he was hard-hearted and a Christmas grinch, and it wasn’t going to be much fun at all.

      “It doesn’t look like it,” he said.

      “Then I have a lot to do to get ready,” she said. “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve!”

      He saw he had misread her worry. It wasn’t about having Christmas with him. It was about making Christmas what she wanted it to be. She was determined to have Christmas wherever she was.

      “Don’t get too uptight about it,” he said. “It’s just another day.”

      “No, Ty,” she said firmly. “It isn’t.”

      He dropped her off at the house, carrying the baby in for her. And then he took the horses down to the barn. It didn’t take him long to get them unharnessed, and to do his evening chores.

      It didn’t take him long at all, and yet when he came back the transformation of his house had already started.

      “Ty, before you take your coat off, could you go cut me some boughs? I’d love to bring the scent in here. I can make a simple centerpiece for the table with tree boughs and a candle.”

      Tell her no, Ty ordered himself. But he found he couldn’t. It wasn’t as if it was her choice to be here. She was stuck here. She wanted to make the best of it. For her baby.

      Heaving a big sigh, Ty went back outside and began cutting boughs.

      “I didn’t need that many,” she said when he came back in.

      Nonetheless, she looked delighted as she spread out the boughs on the kitchen counter and began to sort through them.

      “Do you smell them, Ty?” she asked, smiling over her shoulder.

      “Yeah.”

      “Take off your coat. Come help me. Darn this burned hand. I can’t do anything.”

      Again, he knew he should say no. For his own self-preservation, it seemed imperative.

      But he didn’t want to be the one to put out the light in her face. And it was true. She was going to need his help.

      If she had enough time with him, he would eventually manage to snuff out her light, he was sure. But for right now, why not just be the better man? Reach deep inside and make it not about him, but about her and Jamey?

      “Okay,” he said gruffly. “Show me what to do.”

      And as she showed him, something in him relaxed. He allowed her enthusiasm to touch him. And then, he gave himself over to it.

      They decorated the house with boughs until the scent filled every corner. Then they ate, bathed the baby, read bedtime stories together, the baby between them on the narrow bed in the guest room grabbing at pages.

      When Jamey was finally in bed, she started ticking things off on her fingers. “So, Christmas Eve. I want to make a gingerbread house. I want that to be one of Jamey’s and my traditions. His grandmother, Cynthia, makes the most gorgeous gingerbread creations. Last year, we did a little village together. Maybe I should start the gingerbread tonight.” She glanced at the clock, worried that she was running out of time.

      “I am pretty sure there is nothing in my kitchen to make a gingerbread house, never mind a gingerbread village.”

      “Oh, I brought everything I need.”

      “Where the heck did you hide the trailer you must have hauled behind that car to get all your stuff here?”

      “I’m very organized. I have a talent for spatial relationships. I bet I could figure out how to get an elephant inside that car if I had to.”

      “Let’s hope you never have to,” he said deadpan.

      “We could be done in an hour. The cookie part. And then it will be cool enough to cut it and make the house tomorrow.”

      “I don’t want to make gingerbread.” A man had to put his foot down, or he’d be swept up in her world before he quite knew what had hit him. The truth was, he didn’t want to make gingerbread tonight. Or tomorrow, either. A gingerbread village? No thanks to that much Christmas hokiness.

      “I could probably do it myself,” she said, but doubtfully, glaring down at her wrapped hand with accusation. “I will do it myself.”

      “Oh, never mind. I’ll give you a hand.” It was a surrender.

      “You will?”

      “One house. No village.” But not a complete surrender.

      They were not done in an hour. His cranky oven burned the first batch of gingerbread black. Finally, the gingerbread, perfect and golden-brown, was cooling on his kitchen counter.

      “There,” Amy said, satisfied. “I’m out of your hair. Do whatever you would normally do. Pretend I’m not here.”

      Good idea. He went into the living room, settled in his chair and picked up his book.

      His house smelled overpoweringly of pine boughs and gingerbread. There was a Christmas tree in his living room. And baby toys all over the floor.

      And then there was Amy, sitting across from him, looking out the window. “Still snowing.”

      “Uh-huh.” He scrunched lower in his chair, furrowed his brow. But try as he might, he could not pretend she wasn’t there. And who knew when he might have an opportunity like this again?

      “What the heck is a dactylic hexameter?”

      She looked thoughtful. “I have no idea.”

      And then they were both laughing.

      “I always read two books at once,” he told her. “One that’s really hard, and one for pure enjoyment.”

      She came and sat beside him, and he read a few passages of the epic poem to her.

      She wrinkled her nose. “Could we try the pure enjoyment one?”

      “I’m so happy you asked,” he said, and then he went and got Lonesome Dove and read her his favorite part of that. And somehow they were talking and talking and talking, and they fell asleep on the couch with her head nestled against his chest.

      He woke up to her stirring against him.

      She opened her eyes, looked at him groggily, and then smiled the most beautiful smile he had ever seen.

      “It’s Christmas Eve,” she said, as round-eyed and full of wonder as a child.

      “Technically, that would be tonight.”

      She thumped him on his chest with her small fist, a good-natured reprimand.

      “We have so much to do! We have to make the gingerbread house. Jamey will love helping with that.” Suddenly, she went very still. “Do you have a turkey? That should come out of the freezer today.”

      “I don’t have a turkey. Sorry.”

      “A chicken, then?”

      “Sorry, my freezer is full of what I raise, which is beef.”

      “Somehow I can’t imagine a big steak for Christmas dinner,” she said.

      “I can.”

      He got the thump again. Funny, the things that could make a man realize he was losing control.

      He went out and did the chores. When he came back in, Jamey was awake and needing tending, and Amy was champing at the bit to get her gingerbread house made.

      Then with her instructions,