The One Winter Collection. Rebecca Winters

me?”

      “No one with a truly jaded soul would offer me money for a phone call I wouldn’t even know you made for a month. And no one truly fed up with life arrives at a new home and makes it their first priority to put up a Christmas tree,” he said.

      “Oh.”

      “I don’t even know where you found this stuff. The tree is obviously too big to have arrived in your shrimpy little car.”

      That shrimpy little car was the first major purchase she had ever made on her own. Her mother-in-law, not aware that Baby Nap had just signed up to be a sponsor on the website, had not thought it was a sensible use of funds.

      “I prefer to think of it as sporty,” Amy said proudly. The car was part of the new independent her!

      “Sporty. Shrimpy. There is no way a Christmas tree arrived in the trunk of it.”

      “The tree was in your basement.”

      He turned and scanned her face, looking for a lie. “This tree was in my basement?”

      “Along with all the decorations and lights and such.”

      “No kidding.” He whistled, long and low. “Who would buy an artificial tree when there are a million real ones two steps out the back door?”

      “So you usually have a real tree?” she asked.

      He snorted. “We’ve never had a tree up in this house.”

      “But why?” she whispered, horrified by his revelation.

      He looked at her and shook his head. “You want me to believe you’re cynical when you cannot imagine a world with no Christmas tree, a world without fluffy white kittens, a world without fresh baked chocolate chip cookies?”

      “Is it for religious reasons?” she asked solemnly.

      He threw back his head and laughed then, but it was not a nice laugh.

      “Religion is as foreign to this house as Christmas trees. And now, Miss Cynical, you look like you took a wrong turn and ended up in the devil’s den.”

      At least he had dropped the Mrs.

      Amy was aware she should let it go. And couldn’t. “I just can’t believe you never had a Christmas tree. Why?”

      “It wasn’t a big deal. My mom left when I was about the same age as your little guy. It was just me and my dad. Christmas was just another day, filled with hard work and the demands of the ranch.”

      She felt appalled, and it must have shown on her face.

      “Don’t get me wrong. The neighbors always had us for dinner.”

      That did not make her feel any less appalled. “Your mom left you?” She knew she shouldn’t have asked, but she couldn’t help it. She thought of what it would take to make her leave Jamey.

      And the only answer she could come up with was death.

      He was irritated by her question, and it was clear he had no intention of answering her. He rolled his shoulders, and she could tell he hated that he had said anything about himself that might be construed as inviting sympathy. She offered it nonetheless.

      “I guess I’m not the only one life has been unfair to,” she said softly into his silence.

      He wouldn’t look at her. He shook free of Jamey, again and moved over, looked in one of the boxes. He shuffled through some old ornaments and a Christmas tree star.

      And then he took his hand out and stared at it.

      He was holding a packet of letters, yellow with age, tied with a blue ribbon. He swore, his voice a low, animal growl of pain.

      Amy froze, stared at him wide-eyed.

      “Sorry,” he muttered, and rubbed his brow with a tired hand. “Sorry.”

      “What’s wrong?” she asked, and she knew instantly, from the way his expression closed, that he couldn’t bear it that she could see something was wrong.

      He shoved the letters into a deep pocket on his jacket.

      “I’ve just come home from a real devil of a day to find my house invaded by a lamp-wielding stranger with a baby who wants to call me Papa. What’s wrong? Why, nothing!”

      “I’m sorry,” Amy said. “I really am. I’m leaving as fast as I can.”

      And she meant it.

      There was something about him that was so alone it made her ache. It made her want to lay her hand on the thickness of that powerful wrist and say to him, Tell me.

      But if he did, if he ever confided in her, she knew instinctively it would change something irrevocably and forever.

      Like her plan for a new life.

      Still, looking into his closed face, she knew she was in no danger from his confidences.

      He kept things to himself.

      He did not lean.

      He did not rely.

      He was the last of a dying breed, a ruggedly independent man who was entirely self-sufficient, confident in his own strength to be enough to get him by in an unforgiving environment.

      He was totally alone in the world, and he liked it that way.

      She was leaving. She did not need to know one more single thing about him.

      He moved to the window, away from Jamey’s relentless pursuit. He looked out and sighed.

      “I don’t think life is quite done being unfair to either one of us,” he said, his voice deep, edged with gravel and gruffness.

      “What do you mean?”

      “Come and see for yourself.”

      Amy moved beside him and was stunned to see that while she had been decorating the tree, oblivious, a storm had deepened outside the window. The snow was mounding on his driveway, like heaps of fresh whipped cream. Already the gravel road that twisted up to the house was barely discernible from the land around it.

      His eyes still on the window, not looking at her, he said, “Mrs. Mitchell?”

      “Amy.”

      “Whatever. You won’t be going anywhere tonight.”

      “Not going anywhere tonight?” Amy echoed. But she had to. She had to correct her mistake, hopefully before anyone else found out.

      The urgency to do so felt as if it intensified the moment he said she wasn’t going anywhere.

      If there was one thing Amy Mitchell was through with, it was being controlled. It was somebody telling her what to do. It was being treated as an inferior rather than an equal.

      And she fully intended to make that clear to Mr. Ty Halliday. He wasn’t going to tell her what to do.

      “I have to go,” she said.

      “This isn’t the city. Going out in that isn’t quite the same as going to the corner store for a jug of milk. If you get in trouble—”

      “And you think I will.”

      “—and I think there’s a chance you might, it can turn deadly.”

      She shivered at that.

      “There’s not a lot of people out here waiting to rescue you if you go in the ditch or off the road, or get lost some more or run out of gas.”

      “I’m a very good driver,” she said. “I’ve been driving in winter conditions my whole life.”

      “Urban winter conditions,” he guessed, and made no effort to hide his scorn. “I don’t think that’s a chance you want to take with your baby.”

      “You’re