Christmas at Holiday House - RaeAnne Thayne Page 0,48

So not only had she managed to persuade him to take Abby and Christopher sledding, she had also somehow thrown his attendance at dinner into the mix without giving him a chance to tell her whether that worked for him or not.

He shook his head, wondering what his grandmother might be up to. She sounded positively gleeful, which raised about a hundred caution flags in his head.

Winnie was known for being high-handed but this was a new level, even for her. Had she somehow gotten wind of his kiss with Abby? He wouldn’t put it past her. Winnie seemed to know everything.

If she continued with this kind of thing, he would simply have to sit her down and tell her what she wanted was impossible and that she should turn her matchmaking efforts elsewhere.

He wasn’t in the market for another relationship. Not now and probably not ever. He had learned his lesson well.

Oh, he couldn’t say his heart had been irreparably damaged by the end of his engagement to Brooke.

Or damaged at all, really, if he were honest.

That had been her entire reason for giving him back the ring. He didn’t love her like she loved him, and she had come to accept that he never would.

He had tried to protest that he wouldn’t have asked her to marry him if he didn’t care about her. He had believed that at the time.

One year out, he could certainly see her point.

If he had loved her, he surely would have been shattered when she walked away.

Mostly, he had just been annoyed at the inconvenience of the whole thing and the questions people still sometimes asked him about her.

He missed some things about his relationship with Brooke. Having someone to talk to at the end of each day had been wonderful, and Brooke had been funny and creative and a great hostess when he needed her. He wanted to think he had given her what she needed, too. He had been attentive and loyal, trying to show her daily how much he enjoyed having her in his life.

He had cared about her. He wouldn’t have asked her to marry him if he hadn’t. In the past twelve months of reflection, he had come to realize she had been right. He had cared for her more like a valued business associate who held a cherished position in his life, not with the kind of passionate, all-consuming love she needed.

Was he even capable of that kind of love or had his parents’ endless romantic drama ruined that for him? That was the question he had been asking himself since his engagement ended.

His sister had made it clear since she was about ten or eleven that she wasn’t ever going to fall in love. Love was a joke and only made otherwise rational people behave in humiliating and demeaning ways. So far she had kept to that vow.

Ethan wouldn’t go that far. He wanted a partner, someone he could share his life with and be a partner to in turn. He had seen enough happily married couples to know it was possible, and he yearned for that kind of connection.

He had to wonder if maybe he was missing something in him, either because of nature or nurture, that made him incapable of that.

Abby had it. She had glowed when she talked about how much she loved her late husband. Hearing her had left him feeling a little envious. Not because he was jealous of Kevin Powell and what they had shared but because Ethan had wondered if he would ever love anyone like that.

He shook his head. Winnie had to get any ideas about him and Abby out of her head right now.

When she had known a love like that, why would Abigail Powell settle for a man simply because he didn’t make her feel sick to her stomach when they kissed?

* * *

“That’s the way. Just keep pressing down with the cookie cutter. Yes, like that.”

“Can we do a dump truck cookie?”

Abby smiled at her son, who loved all things mechanical right now, especially dump trucks. “They’re not very Christmassy. I’m also not sure if Winnie has a dump truck cookie cutter. We might have to stick with ornaments and angels for now.”

“Okay. Can we find a dump truck cookie cutter sometime?”

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” she promised.

He was cutting out a row of circles to be decorated as ornaments when Winnie hobbled into the kitchen. While she was getting around so much better