Collision of The Heart Read Free Page B

to his future happiness.
    Yet he could not forget how Mia had turned him inside out from the day he had met her and kept him off balance until the day she’d dealt him the blow that toppled his world. He’d rebuilt that world over the past year and a half. One look into her heart-shaped face, framed in some kind of white fur on her hood, should not send him reeling like a man struck on the head. He intended to marry Charmaine Finney, not let Mia tie him into knots again.
    He turned his face to the cold blast of wind. “Let’s get into town. Perhaps we can find that baby’s people there.”
    The sooner he got her into town, the sooner he could forget about his misbehaving heart.
    “There’s no room on the sleigh.”
    “I have a horse.”
    She flashed a glare from beneath her lashes. “You expect me to ride with you?”
    “It won’t be the first time.”
    The reminder was a mistake. Too late, the words spilled out, evoking happier times of summer picnics and winter sledding parties.
    She swung away. “I’ll walk.”
    “Don’t be a fool, Mia.” He slipped his hand beneath her elbow and guided her toward the edge of the thinning crowd along the length of the wrecked westbound train. “You can ride behind me.”
    She would still have to hold on to him somehow, but not as closely as she would if she rode in front of him.
    “It’s less than ten minutes,” he reminded her.
    She said nothing, and simply slogged through the snow with her head bent against the wind. She bent her left arm, hugging that writing case of hers as if it were an infant, except her hand didn’t touch it. Her fingers stood straight out inside the glove, as though they had frozen stiff in that position.
    “Mia?” he asked as they tramped through the snow to his mount. “Is your hand all right?”
    “My hand is perfectly all right, thank you.” Her tone sounded as stiff as her fingers looked.
    “Then let me have it so I can help you mount.”
    She pressed the writing case more tightly against her front. “I can mount once you’re up.”
    “That would be interesting to watch if I were attending a farce. But since this is reality, I’m lifting you up.”
    She took a step back.
    Ayden sighed. “How old are you now? Twenty-six?”
    “January first, yes. Why?”
    “I thought perhaps you’d have outgrown that stubbornness by now.”
    The corners of her mouth twitched upward. “It might be worse.”
    “It’s nothing to be proud of.”
    He sounded like a curmudgeon, as he always did when speaking to his nineteen-year-old sister, Rosalie. A year and a half of persuading students to pay attention to his lectures must have aged him beyond his twenty-eight years.
    “Mia, what are you afraid of?” he asked in a gentler voice.
    “I’m not afraid of anything, Ayden Goswell. I would simply rather not spend more time with you than necessary.”
    “This falls under the necessary category.”
    No longer giving her a chance to protest, he picked her up by her waist, a waist that felt too slender through her thick coat and all the other things ladies wore, and hoisted her onto the back of his chestnut gelding. She never released her hold on that writing case or her handbag. The latter smacked him in the face. The horse, old, a little overweight, and steady, remained motionless through the ordeal of Mia arranging her skirts and then Ayden mounting.
    “Hold on,” he directed.
    A tug on his coat told him she held the fabric and no more. He set the mount to a slow, even pace to accommodate the extra person perched behind him. All the way past stragglers finding their way toward Hillsdale, past the mail cars flaming with their paper contents, Ayden tried not to think about the lady perched behind him. He shoved memories away. He conjured images of Charmaine with her sunshine-yellow hair and big blue eyes. She was as sweet tempered as Mia was stubborn.
    Charmaine did not cradle a writing case against her like it was a newborn or a shield, as Mia