Christmas at Holiday House - RaeAnne Thayne Page 0,87

and that makes me an arrogant male. Really?”

She knew he was right. If their roles were reversed and she was on the outside looking in, she would consider a man who only wanted sex without commitment an ass.

She knew she was in the wrong. That was what kept her tossing and turning each night since she had come home. She told herself it was jet lag, but she knew better. It was confusion, guilt, pain.

She couldn’t hurt him. That was the overriding emotion taking center stage right now.

“You’re asking the impossible of me, José,” she finally said quietly. “I am not capable of giving you what you want. A commitment. You know the chaos I came from. You saw it from the outside. My parents were a mess. The boyfriends, the girlfriends, marriages and divorces, with new people coming in and out of my life. All because of love. If I had a quarter for every time one parent or the other would tell me he or she was in love, I could buy my own ski resort.”

“Your parents were and still are two childish, irresponsible people who should never have brought offspring into the world. Their core problem is that they have no idea how to be happy, how to think about someone else’s welfare before their own. You and Ethan are not your parents. You don’t use people like they do.”

He circled the desk and sat on the edge of it, legs outstretched and his hands resting on the edge behind him.

“I think you’re using Rick and Terri and the wreck they’ve made of their lives as an excuse. A crutch. I think you know in your heart what you truly want, you’re just afraid to reach for it.”

She wanted to reach for him. The urge to throw her arms around his waist and hold on forever was so powerful she almost gave in.

But then what? He would end up hurt, and she would end up hating herself.

“I think you don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snapped, fumbling behind her for the door lock and stomping out before he could respond.

So much for scintillating conversation, she thought as she hurried back to her temporary office, hot, angry tears burning in her eyes.

She shouldn’t have said anything. She didn’t know how it was possible, but instead of clearing the air between them she had only managed to make everything so much worse.

* * *

“You don’t have to do this,” Ethan said Wednesday afternoon. “I can take him on the lift by myself.”

Abby was so very tempted, her fear ballooning as she looked at the ski lift overhead. “I know. But I’ve come this far. We did fine on the bunny slope. I might as well go on an actual ski run.”

For the past hour, she and Christopher had been receiving private lessons from a man who obviously knew what he was doing on the slopes—and looked gorgeous doing it. He had a lean, natural grace that somehow didn’t surprise her. She was surprised by how much she enjoyed his lessons.

He was patient, encouraging, knowledgeable. Somehow in the space of an hour, Ethan had done a marvelous job of teaching them the basics of skiing—a nervous woman afraid of heights and a five-year-old boy who had never been on a ski hill.

Christopher was a natural. Abby, not so much, but she thought she could possibly make it down the most basic hill without falling more than two or three times.

“I honestly don’t mind taking him by myself,” Ethan pressed. “You can watch from down here or even go into the lodge.”

“I know. But someday, when you’re not around to take us, he might want to go skiing again. I would like to be able to say I had at least tried it.”

He gave her that unreadable look again, the one that made the butterflies jump around like crazy in her stomach. “All right. If you’re sure, we can all ride the lift together.”

They got into the fairly short line and a moment later reached the front. “Okay, just ski to the line and the chair will come and scoop you up. Christopher in the middle. That’s it.”

Somehow she made it on without panicking, but the moment the lift chair headed away from the ground and up the small hill, Abby’s stomach seemed to plummet.

This was insane. Who invented this? No human should ride something like this without seat belts or anything. She was going to fall out. Or, worse,