Christmas With A Stranger
Catherine Spencer
FORBIDDEN! Her Christmas fantasy! As an unexpected guest at Morgan Kincaid's palatial home, Jessica planned to turn his Christmas into the best ever. She'd always dreamed of how special this time of year could be, and here at the Kincaid mansion she could indulge herself to the full - with a proper tree, decorations and festive food … and Morgan, the most attractive man she'd ever known.A firecracker in the hearth, there was mulled wine and it was Christmas Eve, a time for magic and fantasies. Morgan was all hers for tonight - and Jessica was determined that by Christmas Day they would no longer be strangers… .When passion knows no reason… . FORBIDDEN!
“I don’t find you plain at all, Jessica. On the contrary, I find you quite irresistibly lovely.” (#u56f88f10-6ef2-5edb-9879-486f8b478a51)About the Author (#u6a913ff8-a7fd-51e7-8568-50913e25e146)Title Page (#u40cd6e8d-32b5-5226-b687-c463523304c7)PROLOGUE (#u27bbf97f-8acd-5057-af0e-69c518ab43fd)CHAPTER ONE (#udad60042-8b18-5f5f-a34c-e4e380611b38)CHAPTER TWO (#ud2097a35-3dd8-57dd-9671-f183966833fe)CHAPTER THREE (#ue510cd88-fa85-5215-9ec4-9ef50a5f7229)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“I don’t find you plain at all, Jessica. On the contrary, I find you quite irresistibly lovely.”
Just for a second everything in the room seemed to hang in frozen tension. The pretty Christmas tree ornaments stopped twirling, the lights ceased their tiny reflective flickerings. Even the flames in the hearth grew still. She held on to that moment as long as she could, then came straight out and asked him, “Are you married, Morgan?”
“Not anymore.”
“And do you find me intimidatingly sensible?”
“I don’t intimidate that easily, Jessica.”
“Then why haven’t you tried to make love to me?”
CATHERINE SPENCER, once an English teacher, fell into writing through eavesdropping on a conversation about Harlequin Romance. Within two months she changed careers and sold her first book to Harlequin in 1984. She moved from England to Canada thirty years ago and has four grown children—two daughters and two sons—plus three dogs and a cat. In her spare time she plays the piano, collects antiques and grows tropical shrubs.
Christmas With A Stranger
Catherine Spencer
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
PROLOGUE
HE WAS on the outside again. On the run. Eventually, of course, they’d catch up with him, and when they did they’d put him away for an even longer stretch. But meanwhile time was on his side. Time in which to carry out the plan he’d spent nine years perfecting. Time to exact punishment for the injustice meted out to him.
Oh, he’d been a model inmate! So clever, fooling all of them with the mealy-mouthed responses they’d wanted to hear. So eager to be rehabilitated, so willing to admit the error of his ways. Oozing humility and remorse enough to make a thinking man’s stomach revolt.
But they weren’t thinking men, they were fools. Fools and tools of the system that had rejected him—except for the man who’d put him behind bars. He was an adversary worth taking on. Outwitting him would be a triumph, something in which to take delight when they caught up with him again.
What else, after all, had he to nourish his soul? No wife, certainly, and a child who called some stranger “Father”. No home, no job. And no future. Model prisoner or not, his past would go with him wherever he went. For the rest of his life.
It was the way things were done these days. Forget all that nonsense about a man having paid for his crimes. He never wrote off the debt because they plastered his face and name on community notice boards and labeled him a dangerous offender, even if he’d been judged guilty of only one crime—and that vindicated in the eyes of God-fearing people.
Vermin, that was what he’d stamped out. A temptation of the devil’s making best wiped off the face of the earth. A cheap flirt dolled up to look like decent folk, preying on a man’s weakness when he was most vulnerable. Reaching across his desk in such a way that he was filled with the scent of her.
It would have been different if he’d been allowed his conjugal rights, but Lynn had refused him ever since she’d almost lost the baby in her fifteenth week. That had left nearly six months during which he’d been denied his husbandly prerogative. Small wonder he’d fallen victim to the other woman’s wiles.
He hadn’t meant to kill her. It had been an accident—a panic reaction. She’d made a scene when he’d told her he wouldn’t leave his wife for her, and threatened to phone his home, to tell Lynn what a louse she had for a husband, and for a few blind moments he’d lost control and it had just...happened.
He might have been acquitted—at worst found guilty of nothing more heinous than aggravated assault resulting in death. The judge had seemed inclined to sympathy at times, and the jury might have found in his favor—if it hadn’t been for Morgan Kincaid.
Kincaid was the one who’d taken everything away and left him with nothing to lose.
Well, Merry Christmas, Mr. Crown Prosecutor!
It was payback time.
CHAPTER ONE
THE snow began in earnest just as darkness fell. Dense, feathery flakes whirling across the beam of her headlights to imprison her in a closed and isolated world.
Jessica hadn’t been comfortable with the driving conditions from the start. She was used to a milder sort of winter on the island, one of west coast sea mist and wind-driven rain, not the breath-freezing cold of the high Canadian interior.
She’d spent last night in a small town tucked between a lake and the highway, in a country inn built to resemble a Swiss chalet. There’d been logs blazing in the fireplace in the lobby and a twelve-foot Christmas tree that filled the air with the scent of pine, and French onion soup smothered in melted cheese for dinner. It had been a warm, safe place now some three hundred miles behind—much too far to merit her turning back.
If she wanted shelter from the weather again tonight, her only option was to tackle the eighty miles of switchback mountain road that lay between her and her next stop on the way to Whistling Ridge.
Smearing a gloved hand across the windshield, she squinted through the swirling snow, her heart lurching as the wheels of the car skidded suddenly to the right. Upright poles planted at intervals to measure the depth of the winter snowfall were all that stood between her and the swift, steep drop to the valley below.
This was insanity and only the fact that Selena had been injured in a ski-lift accident could have induced her to abandon her original holiday plans and embark on such a journey. But then, wasn’t that how it had always been, ever since they were children? With Selena getting into trouble of one kind or another, and Jessica dropping everything to come to the rescue?
Another forty-five-degree bend loomed up ahead. Cautiously, she steered into the turn. Halfway around, she saw the flicker of headlights below her as another driver navigated the road, but more quickly, with an assurance she sorely lacked.
Once on the straight again, she increased her speed. She had little choice. The car behind was gaining rapidly, there was no room to pass and the snow was, if anything, falling more thickly. In great fat clumps the size of footballs, in fact, that rolled down the mountainside and bounced across the road.
Headlights dazzled in her rear-view mirror. A horn blared, repeatedly, furiously. Panic choked her throat. Was the other driver mad? Trying to run her off the road?
All at once, the open mouth of an avalanche shed yawned blackly a few yards in front, offering a brief haven of safety where she could let whoever was in such a hurry behind get past her.
Clutching the steering wheel in a death grip, Jessica pressed down on the accelerator and shot into the shelter with the other vehicle practically nosing her bumper from behind.
And then the air was filled with thunder and the earth seemed to rock beneath her. And the road, which was supposed to run all the way to Whistling Valley ski resort where Selena lay in a hospital bed, came to a sudden end at the far end of the avalanche shed.
At first Jessica didn’t believe it and, pulling as far over to one side as possible to allow the other driver to get by, kept her car idling forward. Until she saw that there was no way out of the shed, that its exit truly was blocked by a wall of snow, and that, far from trying to pass her, her pursuer had drawn to a stop also, and was climbing out of his vehicle and coming toward her.
Incongruously large and implicitly threatening in the light cast by his car’s headlamps, his shadow leaped ahead of him on the concrete wall of the shed. Reaching for the control panel on the console, Jessica snapped the doors locked and wished she could as easily subdue the tremor of apprehension racing through her.
Approaching her window, he stooped and stared in at her. She had the impression of a man perhaps in his early forties; of dark displeasure, well-defined brows drawn together in a scowl, and a mouth paralleling the same vexation. Of wide shoulders made all the more imposing by the bulky jacket he wore, and of masculine power composed not just of sinew but of command, as though he was not inclined to tolerate having his authority thwarted by anyone.
The way he rapped on her window and ordered, “Open it,” bore out the idea, especially when she found herself automatically obeying the directive and lowering the glass an inch.
“Do you have a death wish?” The question blasted toward her on a cloud of frosty air.
Unvarnished disapproval laced the husky baritone of his voice, leaving her in no doubt that she was alone with a stranger who looked and sounded very much as if he’d like to take her neck between his powerful hands and wring it.
But she wasn’t earning accolades as the youngest headmistress ever appointed to Springhill Island’s Private School for Girls by cowering in the face of incipient trouble. “Certainly not,” she said, as calmly as her thudding heart would allow. “But I imagine you must, if the way you were driving is any indication. You practically ran me off the road.”
For a moment she thought she’d managed to silence him. His jaw almost dropped and he appeared to be at a loss for words. He shook his head, as though unsure that he’d heard her correctly, then recovered enough to say, “Lady, do you have the foggiest idea what’s just happened?”
“Of course.” She gripped the steering wheel more firmly. It was easier to keep her hands from shaking that way. “There has been a bit of a snow slide.”
“There has been a bloody avalanche,” he informed her with a rudeness she would not for a moment have tolerated in her students. “And if you’d had your way we’d both be buried under a load of snow—always assuming, of course, that we hadn’t been swept clear down the mountain.”
Embarrassingly, her teeth started to chatter with shock then, and short of stuffing both gloved hands in her mouth, there was little she could do to disguise the fact except blurt out, “That must be why it’s so cold in here.”
At that, he straightened up and thumped a fist on the roof of her car, sending a clump of snow slithering down her windshield. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” he informed the shed at large, his words echoing eerily. “Is this her way of trying to be funny?”
“Hardly,” she retorted, addressing the zippered front of his down jacket, which was all she could see of him. “I plan to spend tonight in Wintercreek and have quite a few miles still to cover before I get there. I’d just as soon not waste time keeping you entertained with witticisms.”
He bent down to confront her again, squatting so that his face was on a level with hers. “Let me get this straight. You expect to reach Wintercreek tonight?”
“Didn’t I just say as much?” She wished she could see his face more clearly. But everything about him was a little bit distorted in the flare of his car’s headlamps, with one side of his features thrown into dark relief and the other silhouetted in light. Like opposite sides of a coin—or good and evil all wrapped up in one package.
She suppressed a shudder. This was not the time for such fanciful notions. It was a time for positive thought and action. “I have a hotel reservation—”
“I heard you the first time and I hope your deposit’s refundable,” he interrupted curtly. “Because, as they say in the vernacular of these parts, ‘honey, you ain’t goin’ nowhere any time soon’.”
“Are you telling me I’m stuck in here until someone comes to rescue me?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
Her confidence nosedived a little further. “And...um...how long do you think that will take?”
He shrugged. “Hard to say. First light tomorrow, if we’re lucky.”
“But that’s almost twelve hours away!”
“I know.” He braced his hands against his knees and shoved himself upright again. “Better turn off the engine before you asphyxiate us, and resign yourself to sleeping in your back seat. Open the trunk and I’ll hand in your emergency supplies.”
She hadn’t thought it possible for anything to make her heart sink any lower but, to her dismay, he managed it with his last remark. “Emergency supplies?”
“Sleeping bag, candle, GORP.”
“GORP?” she echoed faintly.
“Good old raisins and peanuts. Trail mix, cereal bars, stuff to keep your stomach from folding in on itself—call it what you like; I don’t care. Let’s just get you settled before we both die of exposure.”
“I don’t... I have only a suitcase. With clothes in it,” she added, as if that might mitigate things a little.
It didn’t. Thumping a fist on the roof of her car yet again, he let out a long, irritable exhalation. “I might have known!”
“Well, I didn’t,” Jessica said tartly. “They never mentioned an avalanche on the weather report. If they had, I’d have stayed off the road. And please stop bludgeoning my car like that. Things are quite bad enough without your making them any worse.”
She thought he swore then. Certainly he muttered something unfit to be repeated in mixed company. Eventually, he composed himself enough to order, “Get out of the car.”
“And go where? You already said no one’s likely to rescue us tonight.”
“Get out of the car. Unless you were lying a moment ago and you really do harbor a death wish.”
“I’d just as soon—”
“Get out of the goddamned car!”
It was Jessica’s strongly held belief that a teacher who wished to retain control of her classes should make clear her expectations at the outset. Insubordination ranked high on her list of priorities. Unless it was stamped out at the start, it flourished quickly and completely undermined a teacher’s authority. Related to that were the social graces which, in her opinion, were as important a part of the curriculum as any other subject. She felt it was incumbent on her and her staff to teach by example wherever possible.
Which was why, when she replied to her companion’s incivility, she resisted the temptation to tell him to take a flying leap into the nearest snow bank and, instead, said firmly but politely, “I’ll do no such thing. Furthermore, I don’t like your tone.”
“I don’t like anything about this situation,” he shot back, singularly uncowed. “Believe me, if finding myself stranded overnight was in the cards when I got out of bed this morning, I can think of a dozen people I’d rather keep company with than some ditsy woman who doesn’t have the brains to travel equipped for winter driving conditions.”
“I’m not seeking your company,” Jessica snapped.
“But you’re stuck with it,” he said, chafing his bare hands together to keep the circulation going and turning toward his own vehicle again. “So hop out of the car now, because it’s not big enough for two to stretch out in and I’d like to get some sleep.”
Horrified, Jessica stared at him as the import of his words struck home. “You expect me to spend the night in your car...with you?”
“It beats the alternative,” he said bluntly. “Life’s tough enough without my waking up tomorrow to find a frozen corpse on my hands”
“But—!”
He blew into his cupped palms and, with the first hint of humor he’d shown so far, slewed an alarming leer her way. “Listen, we can debate the propriety of the arrangement once we’re under the covers.”
He was rude and he was outrageous—but, she was beginning to realize, he was right on one score at least. The cold was seeping through the open window to infiltrate her clothing most unpleasantly.
Still, she wasn’t about to cave in to his suggestions without a murmur. “I think I should warn you that I have taken several courses in self-defense.”
“Pity you didn’t start worrying about your safety before now,” he said, his expression at once resuming its former forbidding aspect. “As it happens, I’m harmless, but it would well serve you right if—Oh, what the hell!”
He pushed himself away from her car and seemed to make a concerted effort to rein in the anger suddenly vibrating around him. “You’ve got five minutes to make up your mind. If you’re not out of this car and into mine by the time I’ve got my sleeping bag unfolded, better say your prayers and write out your last will and testament, because, lady...” he blew into his hands again to emphasize his point “...it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”
And with that he marched back to his car and doused the headlamps, leaving only hers to bathe the shelter in their glow. She heard a door slam, another open. Saw an interior light go on as he rummaged around at the back of what appeared to be a large utility vehicle. And knew, as the chill already invading the inside of her car crept deeper into her limbs, that she had little choice about what to do next.
He could be a serial killer, a deranged psychopath, a man intent on choking the living breath out of her, but, if she chose to ignore his less than gracious invitation, she’d wind up dead by the morning anyway.
Swallowing doubts and reservations along with what was left of her pride, she rolled up the window and stepped out of the car. As though crouching in wait for just such an ill-prepared victim, the cold took serious hold, knifing through her mohair winter coat as if it were made of nothing more substantial than silk.
Just as she approached, her reluctant knight jumped down from the tailgate of his vehicle, which turned out to be a Jeep whose heavy winter tires were looped with snow chains. “Smart decision,” he said, shrugging free of his jacket. “Take off your boots and coat, then hop in.”
She liked to think she’d outgrown any tendency toward foolish impulse and indeed spent a good portion of her tenure as headmistress counseling her students to think before they spoke, to temper spontaneity with deliberation. Yet the question was out of her mouth before she could prevent it, gauche and horribly suggestive. “Why do we have to take off our clothes if all we’re going to do is sleep?”
He stood before her, the interior light of the Jeep enhanced by the glow of a candle set in a tin can on the floor under the dashboard. Quite enough illumination for her to take in the powerful breadth of shoulder beneath the heavy jacket and lean, athletic hips snugly clad in blue jeans. Was it also enough for him to detect the sweep of color that flooded her face?
If it was, he chose to ignore the fact, instead pointing out what would have been painfully obvious to anyone of sound mind. “I stand six three in my bare feet. Last time I checked, I weighed in at a hundred and ninety-four pounds. For that reason I bought an extra-large sleeping bag but it’s still going to be a snug fit for two. I no more want your snowy boots in the small of my back than you want mine in yours. As for the coat, you might want to roll it up and use it as a pillow.”
“Of course,” she muttered, chagrined. “How stupid of me.”
“Indeed!” He rolled his eyes and gestured her toward the Jeep with a flourish. “Climb aboard, stash your boots in the corner, and make yourself comfortable.”
Comfortable? Not in a million years, Jessica thought, trying to keep her sweater in place as she slithered into the sleeping bag.
No sooner was she settled than he slammed closed the tailgate and raised the rear window, rather like a jailer securing a prison cell. He then went around to the driver’s door, pulled it closed behind him, shucked off his boots and, tossing his jacket ahead of him, proceeded to crawl over the seat and join her in the back of the Jeep.
Inching into the sleeping bag, he turned on his side so that his back was toward her. Why couldn’t she have left it at that? What demon of idiocy compelled her to try to make pillow talk?
Yet, “This is really quite absurd,” she heard herself remark, in a voice so phonily arch that she cringed.
He sort of shifted his shoulders around and tugged his folded jacket into a more comfortable position beneath his head. “How so?”
“Well, here we are in bed together, and we don’t even know each other’s names.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m Jessica Simms.”
“Are you?” he said indifferently. “Well, goodnight, Jessica Simms.”
As snubs went, that rated a ten. “Goodnight,” she replied huffily, and went to turn her back on him. Except that, now that he was hogging most of the sleeping bag, there really wasn’t room for such maneuvering, a fact he was quick to point out.
“Quit fidgeting and nest up against me,” he said impatiently. “Every time you shuffle around like that, you let in cold air.”
“Nest?” she quavered, refusing to allow the import of “up against me” to take visual hold in her mind.
“Like two spoons, one around the other.”
And just in case she hadn’t understood he reached back one arm and yanked her close so that her breasts were flattened next to his spine and her pelvis cradled his buttocks. Truly a most compromising situation and one she could only be thankful none of her colleagues or students was likely to hear about.
“Thank you,” she said politely. “You’re very kind”
She felt his sigh, rife with exasperation and heartfelt enough that it lifted the sleeping bag and let out a little gust of warm air. “For crying out loud, go to sleep,” he said.
Of course, it was an order impossible to obey—for him as well as for her, at least to begin with. For the longest time, he lay next to her, long, strong and tense as steel. But gradually, as the night progressed, his muscles relaxed, and she must have dozed off herself because the next time she became aware of her surroundings he was sleeping on his stomach with his face turned toward her.
In the steady light of the candle, she saw that he was not as old as she’d first supposed and looked to be only in his late thirties. It was fatigue that etched his face, carving deep lines beside his mouth and between his eyes, and making him appear older.
Even as she watched, he seemed to sink further into sleep, so that the grooves relaxed, then faded away until she had nothing left to look at but his long, silky lashes touching softly against the lean austerity of his cheekbones.
How handsome he was, she thought.
What colour were his eyes?
Dreamy brown? No, he was not the dreamy type.
Icy green? Possibly. Despite the warmth generated by his body, she sensed that he was a cool, reserved man. Cold, even.
Her arm had grown numb from being cramped beneath her. She flexed her fingers and, with excruciating care, slid her wrist out and across her waist. But cautiously, without creating the least little draft, so that not even the candle flame wavered.
His eyes flew open anyway, alert and noticeably blue, and caught her staring.
Was the spark of sexual awareness that blazed briefly between him and her a figment of her imagination?
“What?” he muttered, the word laced with suspicion, and she decided that, yes, it must have been her imagination.
“Nothing. My arm—” She levered the rest of it free and waggled her fingers, wincing at the pins and needles trying to paralyze them. “It went to sleep.”
“Pity you didn’t.” he said, his head with its thick, dark hair lowering again to the makeshift pillow.
As suddenly as he’d woken, he fell asleep again. She shivered, less from the cold air lurking around them than from the stark lack of sympathy she sensed in him. She was inconveniencing him terribly, no doubt about it, and even less welcome in his sleeping bag than a bed bug.
Selena’s latest crisis couldn’t have come at a more inappropriate time, Jessica thought uncharitably. By now she should be lounging beneath a sun umbrella in balmy Cancun and trying to pretend she was more than a lonely, thirty-year-old woman most of whose dreams seemed unlikely to come true, not risking life and limb to be with a sister who had little use for her except when disaster arose.
But the avalanche wasn’t Selena’s fault; nor was it hers. And if her sleeping partner thought their present arrangement was inconvenient, how much worse would he have found it if she’d sped through the shed fast enough to wind up trapped under the snow at the other end? Or would he have left her to her fate and gone calmly about the business of making himself comfortable for the night without sparing her a thought?
Remembering how irritably he’d reacted to her lack of preparedness, she suspected he’d have left her to suffocate. It irked her enough to want to punish him, enough for her to make no attempt at stealth or silence when she struggled to her other side so that she was facing the deep perpendicular embrasures of the snow shed and no longer tempted to look at him.
He reacted with the same ill temper he’d displayed before. “For Pete’s sake settle down,” he grumbled. “You’re worse than a pair of puppies wrestling in a gunny sack.”
And again, just as before, he ensured her compliance by anchoring her in place, but this time so that he was snugly cushioned against her behind, and one of his long, strong legs pinned down hers, and she could feel his breath on the back of her neck.
It was an exceedingly...intimate situation.
Exceedingly!
Her watch showed ten minutes past eight when she awoke to find herself alone in the back of the Jeep. A fresh candle burned in the tin can under the dashboard and the start of another day seeped through the upper sections of the narrow vents on the downhill side of the shed to cast a pale, chill light along its length. Pushing herself into a sitting position and finger-combing loose strands of hair back from her face, Jessica saw him coming toward her from the far end of the tunnel.
Quickly, she shuffled free of the sleeping bag and pulled her clothing into place. By the time he hauled open the tailgate, she had her boots on and looked as respectable as could be expected, given the circumstances.
“Have they come to rescue us?” she asked, putting on her coat.
“No.” He reached under the dashboard on the passenger side of the Jeep and pulled out a small knapsack.
“Then what were you doing at the end of the shed?”
He handed her a foil-wrapped cereal bar and raised his dark, level brows wryly. “Same thing you’ll probably want to do before much longer,” he remarked pointedly.
To say that she blushed at that would have been the understatement of the century. She felt herself awash in a tide of pure scarlet. “Oh...yes—I...um...I...see what you mean.”
“Don’t let modesty get the better of you. The sun’s barely up and I don’t hold out much hope of us being dug out for at least another half hour. Too risky for the highway crew, when they can’t see what the conditions are like up the mountain. And that’s always assuming that there isn’t three feet of snow blocking the road between them and us.”
Jessica’s gaze swung to the nearest embrasure beyond which the narrow strip of sky now showed the palest tint of pink. “And if there is?” She could barely bring herself to voice the question. The thought of being imprisoned another day with him and with such a total lack of privacy didn’t bear contemplating.
“We might be here until mid-morning. Possibly even longer. It’d take a bulldozer to cut a path through anything that deep.” He hitched one hip on the tailgate and swung one long, blue-jeaned leg nonchalantly, as if picnic breakfasts in avalanche sheds were an entirely usual part of his weekly routine. “So, Jessica Simms, want to tell me what persuaded you to drive up here with nothing more reliable than a set of all-weather radials and a road map to get you where you’re going?”
“I’m on my way to visit my sister in Whistling Valley.”
“That’s another seven hours’ drive away. You’d better stop in Sentinel Pass and get yourself outfitted with a set of decent tire chains if you seriously want to get there in one piece.”
“Yes.” She squirmed under his scrutiny, aware that while he seemed to be learning quite a bit about her she knew next to nothing about him. “You haven’t told me your name yet.”
“Morgan. If you knew you were coming up here for Christmas, why the hell didn’t you plan ahead? BCAA or any travel agency could have warned you what sort of conditions to expect.” He took another bite of his breakfast bar, then added scathingly, “Maybe then you’d have chosen clothing more appropriate than that flimsy bit of a coat and those pitiful excuses for winter boots you’re currently wearing.”
He was worse than a pit bull, once he got his teeth into something. Clearly, he found her apparent incompetence morbidly fascinating. “I didn’t have time to plan ahead, Mr. Morgan. This trip came about very suddenly.”
“I see.” He crushed the wrapping from his breakfast into a ball, tossed it, backhanded, into the open knapsack and unearthed a bottle of mineral water.
She shook her head as he unscrewed the cap and offered her a drink. She wasn’t about to let a drop of liquid past her lips until she was assured of more civilized washroom facilities. It was all very well for a man to make do but for a woman....
“Some sort of family emergency?”
“What?”
“This sudden decision to visit your sister, was it—?”
“Oh!” She tucked her hands into the pockets of her coat and hunched her shoulders against the cold, which seemed even more pervasive than it had been the night before. “Yes. She hurt her back in a ski-lift accident and at first it seemed that her injuries were serious.”
“But now that you’re up to your own neck in trouble they don’t seem so bad?”
“No,” Jessica retorted, bristling at the implied criticism. “I phoned the hospital again before I left the hotel yesterday and learned her condition’s been upgraded to satisfactory.” She sighed, exasperation adding to the tension already gripping her. “It’s just that Selena’s always been prone to getting herself into difficulties of one kind or another.”
“Must run in the family,” he said mockingly, and took another swig of the water.
She was spared having to field his last observation by the rumble of a heavy engine outside the east end of the shed.
He shoved away from the tailgate and recapped the bottle. “Sounds as if the rescue squad have made it through already. Couldn’t have been much of a slide, after all.”
They were heaven-sent words.
“Thank goodness!” She scrambled down after him. “And thank you, Mr. Morgan. You undoubtedly saved my life and I’m very grateful.”
“I undoubtedly did, Miss Jessica, and you’re welcome.”
“Have a very merry Christmas.”
She thought perhaps a shadow crossed his face then, but all he said was, “No need to race back to your car. It’ll take a while before they clear a way out for us.”
“It’s a miracle to me that they even knew where to come looking.”
“They have sensors strung all along the vulnerable stretches of highway. The minute one gets wiped out, they know there’s been a slide and they usually don’t waste much time getting to it.”
“I see.” She pulled the collar of her coat more snugly around her neck. “Well, I think I’ll wait in my car, just the same. The cold’s making its presence felt again.”
“As you like.” He closed the tailgate and raised the rear window of the Jeep. “Just don’t fire up your engine until we see daylight. Wouldn’t want to die from carbon monoxide poisoning when we’ve made it this far, would we?”
“I’m well aware of the danger from exhaust fumes, Mr. Morgan,” she said loftily, resenting his confident assumption that, because she’d been ill prepared to cope with an avalanche, she must be some sort of congenital idiot.
Half an hour later, however, she was half convinced his assessment might not be far wrong. By then enough passage had been cleared for one of the road crew to come into the shed to check on its occupants.
“Start her up, ma’am,” he said kindly, stopping at her window. “You’ll be on your way in about ten minutes, but you might as well be warm while you wait.”
After a bit of coaxing, her car sputtered to life and shortly after she heard the roar of the Jeep’s engine. Outside, she could see that although the sun had not yet risen above the surrounding mountains the sky was such an intense blue that its reflection trapped hints of mauve in the snow heaped up along the road.
Perhaps if she hadn’t been so mesmerized by the sight of freedom she’d have noticed sooner that her troubles were far from at an end. Only when one of the road crew waved her forward did she switch her attention to her car and see the red warning light on her dashboard.
Instinct led her to do exactly the right thing and switch off the car’s ignition immediately. The damage, however, was already done, as evidenced by the puff of steam escaping from under the hood.
Behind her the Jeep’s horn blasted impatiently, but even a fool could have seen that her car wasn’t going anywhere.
With mounting dismay, Jessica watched as her sleeping companion jumped down from the Jeep, exasperation and resignation evident in every line of him, and, in a dismaying rerun of last night’s fiasco, approached her window.
“Don’t tell me,” he jeered, coming to a halt beside her. “Either you’ve forgotten how to take your foot off the brake or your damned car’s broken down.”
CHAPTER TWO
ANY hopes Jessica might have entertained that the extent of the problem was not too serious the almighty Mr. Morgan quickly put to rout.
He surveyed her engine, which continued to puff out little clouds of steam like a mini-volcano on the verge of erupting. “It figures,” he drawled, rolling his eyes heavenward, and beckoned the road crew to come see for themselves the latest misfortune she’d brought down on her hopelessly inept head.
“Release the hood,” one of them called out to her, and, after they had it propped open, they clustered around the innards of her car with the rapt attention all men seemed to foster for such things. There followed a muttered discussion to which Jessica, still slumped disconsolately behind the steering wheel, was not privy.
Eventually, the Morgan man came back and leaned one elbow on the roof. “Might as well face it, Jessica Simms,” he announced conversationally, his voice floating through the window which she’d opened a crack. “The only way this puddle-hopper’s going to move is hitched to the back end of a tow truck.”
She could have wept, with disappointment, frustration, and rage. “I suppose,” she said, hazarding what seemed like a reasonable guess, “that my radiator’s overheated?”
“On the contrary, it’s frozen. Better phone your sister and tell her not to expect you at her bedside any time soon. Sentinel Pass is the nearest place you’ll find a service station and they’re working around the clock to keep emergency vehicles on the road. Types like you go to the bottom of their list of priorities.”
He bent down and pinned her with a disparaging blue stare. “Of course, all this could have been avoided if you’d used the brains God gave you and taken your car in for winter servicing.”
“I intended to,” she spat, terribly afraid that if she allowed herself a moment’s weakness she’d burst into tears instead. “The moment school was out for the holidays I planned to go over to the mainland and have it attended to. Normally, it’s something I take care of earlier, but we’ve had such a mild winter so far this year—”
“Ah, well,” he interrupted, with patently insincere sympathy, “they do say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, don’t they?”
“Oh, put a sock in it!” she retorted, consigning good manners to perdition, along with any remnant of seasonal goodwill toward him that she might have been inclined to nurture.
If Satan had chosen that moment to take human form and torment a woman past endurance, he would have smiled exactly as Mr. Morgan smiled then. With devastating, dazzling delight.
A couple of the road crew joined him at the window. “We’re about ready to head back to Sentinel Pass, Mr. Kincaid, so if you want a hand pushing the car over to the side...?”
“I’d appreciate it,” he said. “Get Stedman’s to phone once they’ve towed it in and had a chance to assess the damage, will you? As for you,” he barked, stabbing an imperious finger in Jessica’s direction, “we’ve frozen our butts off long enough on your account. Into the Jeep, fast, and don’t bother to argue or complain!”
She had no inclination to do either. Her most pressing need was to find a washroom in the not too distant future, so the sooner they arrived at wherever he was taking her the better. But he offered not a word of explanation of where that might be as he drove out of the snow shed and, some five miles further along the highway, turned north onto a narrow road that twisted snakelike up the side of the mountain.
As warmth from the heater blasted around her ankles, however, the frozen dismay of Jessica’s situation began to melt enough for her to venture to ask, “Where are we going?”
“To my lair in the hills where I plan to have my wicked way with you,” he said. “And if you don’t like that scenario I’m willing to settle for driving you to the top of the hill and shoving you over the edge.”
“Very funny, I’m sure,” she said, refusing to let him rattle her, “but if that’s all you have in mind you could have finished me off last night.”
“Don’t think the idea didn’t occur to me,” he warned, and swung left up an even narrower road so suddenly that her suitcase, which he’d flung in the back of the Jeep, rolled onto its side and landed with a thud against the wheel well.
“I think we would both much prefer it if I spent the day at the nearest hotel,” she replied. “Perhaps where my car’s going, and while it’s being fixed I could freshen up and—?”
“There isn’t any accommodation to be had in Sentinel Pass. It’s a truck stop, not a tourist spot, and they’re busy enough without having you underfoot all day. The closest town of any size is Wintercreek which you already know lies two hours east of here, so, like it or not, we’re stuck with each other’s company until you’ve got wheels again.” He drew an irate breath. “Which will hopefully be later this afternoon.”
Jessica swallowed a sigh and stared through the windshield. Thick stands of pine hemmed the road; directly ahead a snow-covered peak reared majestically into the clear sky. “Do you really have a home up here?” she asked doubtfully, afraid that, unless they arrived very soon, she was going to have to suffer yet another indignity and request that he pull over so that she could make a trip behind a tree. “It seems a very isolated place.”
“That’s what gives it its charm, Jessica. No nosy neighbors, no TV, just peace and quiet in which to do whatever I please—as a rule, that is.”
“But you do have a phone service. I heard you tell the men who dug us out that whoever repairs my car should phone you when it’s ready.”
“We have the bare necessities,” he allowed.
We? “So you don’t live alone, then?”
“I don’t live alone.”
“I noticed,” she said, when he showed no inclination to offer any further details, “that the road crew called you Mr. Kincaid, but you told me your name was Morgan.”
“It is,” he said. “Morgan Kincaid.”
She swiveled to face him. “Then why did you let me make a fool of myself calling you Mr. Morgan?”
He flung her another satanic grin and she couldn’t help noticing that, loaded with unholy malice though it was, it showcased a set of enviably beautiful teeth. “Because you do it so well, with such strait-laced gullibility.”
He wasn’t the first man in her life to have realized that, she thought grimly. Stuart McKinney had beaten him to it by a good seven years, and made a bigger fool of her than Morgan Kincaid could ever hope to achieve. “Then I’m happy I was able to provide you with a little entertainment,” she replied. “It eases my guilt at having caused you so much inconvenience.”
He swung the Jeep around a final bend and, approaching from the west, drove up a long slope which ended on a plateau sheltered by sheer cliffs at its northern edge. On the other fronts, open land sloped to a narrow valley with a river winding through, but it was not the view which left Jessica breathless so much as the house tucked in the lee of the cliffs.
Built of gray stone, with a steeply pitched slate roof, paned windows, chimney pots and verandas, it sprawled elegantly among the fir and pine trees, a touch of baronial England in a setting so unmistakably North American west that it should have been ludicrous, yet wasn’t. It was, instead, as charming and gracious as it was unexpected.
To the left and a little removed from the main house stood a second building designed along complementary lines; a stable, Jessica guessed, whose upper floor served as another residence if the dark red curtains hanging at the windows were any indication. Smoke curled from the chimneys of both places and hung motionless in the still air, tangible confirmation that Morgan Kincaid hadn’t lied when he’d claimed not to live alone.
“Okay, this is it,” he said, drawing to a halt at the foot of a shallow flight of snow-covered steps in front of the main house.
Grabbing her suitcase, he led the way up to a wide, deep veranda and into a narrow lobby where he stopped and removed his boots. Jessica did likewise, then followed him into the toasty warmth of a vaulted entrance hall. Directly in front of her a staircase rose to a spindled gallery which ran the length of the upper floor.
“Go ahead, Jessica,” Morgan Kincaid invited, his voice full of sly humor as he gestured up the stairs. “The bathroom’s the first door to the right at the top. Take a shower while you’re in there, if you like. You’ll find towels in the corner cupboard next to the tub.”
Beast! Fuming, Jessica grabbed her suitcase and scuttled off as fast as her stockinged feet would allow on the smoothly polished pine floorboards.
He waited until she’d disappeared before letting himself out of the house again and turning to the stables. Clancy was there, mucking out the stalls. Inhaling the pleasantly familiar scents of hay, fresh straw and horses, Morgan stood in the doorway and watched.
Without shifting his attention from the task at hand, Clancy spoke, his voice as rusted as an old tin can left out too long in the rain. “’Bout time you got here, Morgan. Expected you yesterday.”
“I know,” Morgan said, a picture of Jessica Simms’ narrow, elegant figure rising clear in his mind. “I ran into a bit of trouble.”
“Oh?” Clancy planted his pitchfork in a fresh pile of straw, rested one hand on the side of the stall and massaged the small of his back with the other. “How so?”
“Wound up spending the night in the avalanche shed just west of Sentinel Pass—with a woman. Her car’s out of commission and she needs a place to stay until it’s fixed, so I brought her here.”
The smirk that had begun to steal over Clancy’s weathered features at the start of Morgan’s revelation disappeared into a scowl of alarm. “Lordy, Morgan, you got to get rid of her. This ain’t a safe place for a woman right now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Reckon you ain’t been listening to the radio today, or you wouldn’t be askin’. Reckon you ain’t seen the mail I left in the main house, either. You got another Christmas card, Morgan. From Clarkville Penitentiary.”
“The card I’ve come to expect,” Morgan said, refusing to acknowledge the unpleasant current of tension that sparked the length of his spine at the mention of Clarkville, “but what do you mean about the news?”
“Gabriel Parrish broke out of jail late yesterday afternoon. Heard it on the seven o’clock broadcast this morning.”
The tension increased perceptibly, although Morgan didn’t let it show. “I’m surprised he’s considered interesting enough to make the headlines.”
“Heck, Morgan, there ain’t a soul alive in British Columbia that don’t remember his trial or the man who put him away. Reckon we’d see your face plastered right next to his on the TV, if we had one.” Clancy cast him a speculative glance from beneath bushy brows. “How much you want to bet that he’ll come lookin’ for you, Mr. Prosecutor?”
“He’d be crazy to do that.”
“There weren’t never no question about his bein’ crazy, Morgan. Real question is, is he crazy enough to come lookin’ for revenge, and in my mind there ain’t much doubt about it.”
“Clarkville’s hundreds of miles from here. The police will catch up with him soon enough, if they haven’t already done so. He’s no threat to me, Clancy.”
“Get rid of the woman anyway, Morgan, unless you want to risk having her used for target practice.”
“You spend too much time alone reading bad westerns,” Morgan said. “Parrish isn’t fool enough to come to the one place people might be expecting him. He’s served nine of a twenty-five-year sentence. With time off for good behavior—and he’s been a model prisoner by all accounts—he’d be eligible for parole in another six. He wouldn’t blow everything now just to come after me.” Morgan shook his head, as much to convince himself as Clancy. “No, he’s looking for freedom, not a longer stretch behind bars.”
“And what if he’s got a different agenda, one that involves settling an old score? What then?”
“If it’ll ease your mind any, I’ll put in a call to the local police and let them know I’m spending Christmas here, just in case he shows up in the area.” Morgan passed a weary hand across his eyes. “Beyond that, all I’m looking for is a hot shower, something rib-sticking to eat, and a nap. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Do tell,” Clancy squawked. “And wouldn’t that just curdle your ex’s cream if she knew you’d found someone else to keep your feet warm in bed?”
“Don’t let your imagination get the better of you,” Morgan advised him sourly. “There’s nothing going on between me and Jessica Simms, I assure you. She’s too much an uptight copy of Daphne and I like to think I’m smart enough not to fall for the same type twice.”
“Praise the Lord! Because, escaped con on the loose or not as the case may be, this ain’t no place for a woman like that, Morgan, any more than you’re the marryin’ kind. Too wrapped up in your work, too short on patience and too damned opinionated is what you are. Women don’t like that in a man.”
“You ought to know,” Morgan said, laughing despite the anxiety and irritation fraying the edges of his pleasure at being back at the ranch for the holidays. “Agnes took on all three when she married you, and spent half her life trying to cure you of them.”
Clancy pulled his worn old stetson down over his brow and came to stand next to Morgan in the doorway. “Had a little chat with her this mornin’,” he murmured, nodding to the enclosure atop a small rise beyond the near meadow, where the ashes of his wife of forty-eight years lay scattered. “Told her I’d put up a Christmas tree in the main house, just like always. Remember all the bakin’ she used to do, Morgan, and the knittin’ she tried to hide, and all that business of hanging up a row of socks, as if we was still kids believin’ in Santa Claus?”
“Of course I remember.” Morgan slung an arm over his shoulder, a gesture of affection which the hired hand suffered reluctantly. “On Christmas Eve we’ll light the fire in the living room, raise a glass to her, and you’ll play the organ. She’d like to know we’re keeping to the traditions that meant so much to her.”
“Always assumin’ we ain’t been murdered in our beds by then,” Clancy said gloomily. “I’m tellin’ you, Morgan, Gabriel Parrish is gonna come lookin’ for you. I feel it in my bones. And he ain’t gonna knock at the front door and announce himself all nice and polite.”
Jessica heard the phone ring as she was toweling dry her hair. Heard, too, the muffled sound of Morgan Kincaid answering, although his exact words weren’t clear.
When she came down the stairs a few moments later, she found him seated behind a heavy oak desk in a room which clearly served as some sort of office-cum-library, judging by the bookshelves lining the walls.
“The mechanic from the garage in Sentinel Pass just called,” he said, bathing her in a glower. “Not only is your car radiator frozen solid, you’ve also got a cracked block.”
There was no need to ask if he considered that to be bad news; his face said it all. “I gather it won’t be fixed today, then.”
“Not a chance,” he said. “The earliest you’ll be on your way is tomorrow—if you’re lucky.”
In Jessica’s view, it was about time her luck changed for the better, but it didn’t sound as if it was going to happen soon enough to please either of them. “And if I’m not? How long then?”
“It depends when they can get around to working on your car and how difficult it is to access the trouble If they have to take out the engine....” His shrug sent a not unpleasant whiff of mountain air and stables wafting toward her. “You could be facing another day’s delay.”
“But that takes us right up to Christmas Eve! I can’t possibly impose on you and your wife’s hospitality for that length of time. No woman wants a stranger thrust on her at such a busy time of year. And my sister needs me.”
“Your sister’s going to have to get along without you a while longer,” he declared, rolling the chair away from the desk and pacing moodily to the window. “And I don’t have a wife.”
“But you said....”
“I said I didn’t live alone.” He spun around to face her, his face a study in disgruntlement. “I did not say I was married.”
“All the more reason for me to find some other place to stay, then,” she blurted out, horrified to find her thoughts straying from the very pertinent facts of her dilemma with the car to the vague realization that she was afraid to be alone with this man.
He spelled danger, though why that particular word came to mind she couldn’t precisely say. It had something to do with his sense of presence that went beyond mere good looks. Whatever it was, it had expressed itself in the middle of the night before and she knew it was only a matter of time before it would do so again. He exuded a complex and undeniable masculinity that she found... sexy.
An uncomfortable heat spread within her at the audacity of the admission. She did not deal with sexy; it had no relevance in her life. “I’m afraid,” she said, “that you’ll just have to drive me to Wintercreek yourself.”
“Forget it,” he said flatly. “Even if it didn’t involve a three- or four-hour round trip for me, what good will it do you to be in one place when your car’s in another, eighty miles away?”
Once again, he was so irrefutably right that, illogically, Jessica wanted to kick him. Curbing any such urge, she said, “In that case, I’ll endeavor not to cause you any more trouble than I already have.”
“You can do better than that,” he said, and jerked his head toward a door at the far end of the main hall. “You can make yourself useful in the kitchen back there and set the table. There’s a pot of chili heating on the woodstove which should be ready to serve by the time I get cleaned up. Maybe a hot meal will leave us both more charitably inclined toward the other.”
Confident that she’d obey without a qualm, he loped off, long legs moving with effortless rhythm up the stairs. Refusing to gaze after him like some star-struck ninth-grade student, Jessica made her way to the kitchen, which would have been hard to miss in a house twice as large.
Big and square, with copper pots hanging from the beamed ceiling and the woodstove he’d mentioned sending out blasts of heat, it could easily have accommodated a family of ten around the rectangular table in the middle of the floor, yet Morgan Kincaid clearly had the house pretty much to himself.
There’d been only one toothbrush in the bathroom, only one set of towels hanging on the rail, and an unmistakable air of emptiness in the row of closed doors lining the upper hall. Did he perhaps have a housekeeper who occupied the rooms above the stables? Was that what he’d meant when he’d said he didn’t live alone?
If so, Jessica decided, taking down blue willow bowls and plates from a glass-fronted cabinet, she’d prefer spending the night with her, even if it meant sleeping on the floor. The favor of Morgan Kincaid’s reluctant hospitality was no favor at all.
She was stirring the pot of chili set on a hot plate hinged to the top of the woodstove when a man of about seventy, accompanied by a pair of golden retrievers, came into the kitchen from a mud room off the enclosed porch at the back of the house.
Short, stocky and unshaven, his appearance was what one could most kindly call weathered. “You must be the woman,” he observed from the doorway, unwinding a long, knitted scarf from around his neck and opening the buttons on a sheepskin-lined jacket.
Not quite sure how to respond to that, Jessica murmured noncommittally, replaced the lid on the chili pot, and bent to stroke the head of the smaller dog, who came to greet her before curling up in one of the two cushioned rocking chairs near the woodstove. The other animal remained beside his master and it was hard to tell which of the two looked more suspicious.
“You made any coffee?” the man inquired, in the same semi-hostile tone.
“Yes. May I pour you a cup?”
“Cup?” His gaze raked from her to the table and came to rest in outrage on the hand-sewn linen place mats and napkins she’d found in a drawer. “What the hell—? Who gave you the right to help yourself to Agnes’s Sunday-best dishes and stuff?”
Compared to the acerbic dwarf confronting her now, Morgan Kincaid’s personality suddenly struck Jessica as amazingly agreeable. She made no attempt to hide her relief when he, too, appeared and stood surveying the scene taking place, although she could have done without his smirk of amusement.
“Lookee, Morgan,” the old buzzard with the dog spluttered furiously, “we got ourselves a woman with a nestin’ instinct taking charge. Makin’ herself right at home and pawin’ through our private possessions as if she owns the place. Better watch yourself, or she’ll be warmin’ your bed again come nightfall.”
“Put a lid on it,” Morgan ordered him affectionately. “Jessica Simms, meet Clancy Roper, my hired hand. He looks after the horses when I’m not here, and keeps a general eye on the place. The dog in the chair is Shadow, the other’s Ben. Clancy, this is the person I told you about whose car is being repaired.”
“I didn’t figure on her bein’ the tooth fairy,” Clancy returned. “How long you plannin’ to keep her around, nosin’ through the house and ferretin’ out things that ain’t any o’ her concern?”
“Not a moment longer than necessary,” Jessica informed him shortly, then pointedly addressed her next remark to Morgan. “In addition to taking the unpardonable liberty of laying the table, I found a loaf of bread and put it to warm in the oven. I hope that doesn’t also violate some unwritten rule of the house?”
“No,” he said, a hint of apology merging with the amusement dancing in his eyes. “And the table looks very nice.”
“In that case, if you’re ready to eat I’ll be happy to dish up the food.”
“I’m starving, and so must you be.” He held out a chair for her with a flourish that drew forth another irate snort from the hired hand. “Have a seat and I’ll take over. We’re used to doing for ourselves here, though not quite as elegantly as this any more. Clancy, quit sulking and sit down.”
“The dogs needs feedin’, or don’t that matter now that you got a woman trippin’ you up every time you turn round?”
“The dogs won’t mind waiting.” Unperturbed by the irascible old man, Morgan set about serving the chili and slicing the loaf of bread. “You want coffee with your meal, Jessica, or would you prefer to have it afterward?”
“Whatever you’re used to is fine with me.”
“We usually have it with, especially during the winter when the days are so short. We start bringing in the horses around four in the afternoon, which doesn’t allow much time for a leisurely lunch.”
“Ain’t waitin’ that long today,” Clancy muttered, practically swiping his flannel-shirted arm across the end of Jessica’s nose as he reached over to help himself to bread. “Not only ain’t the company the sort that makes a man want to hang around, the sky’s cloudin’ up from the north-east pretty damn fast. Reckon we’ll be seein’ snow again before the day’s out.”
Morgan aimed a glance Jessica’s way. “Just as well you’re not planning to drive all the way to Whistling Valley today, after all, or you might be spending another night on the road and leaving yourself at the mercy of the next person who happens to come along.”
“I’m really rather tired of your harping on about last night,” she said, the note of reprimand in his remark really grating on her nerves. “I’ve already told you why I wasn’t as well prepared for the weather as I would have been had circumstances been different, and I don’t feel I owe you any further explanation or apology.”
“Right grateful little vixen, ain’t she, Morgan?” Clancy Roper said gleefully. “Reckon that’ll teach you not to go pickin’ up strange women off the side of the highway.”
“Doesn’t it occur to you that you were lucky I was the one you found yourself trapped with?” Morgan lectured her, ignoring Clancy. “Or that you have a responsibility to yourself and society at large not to take that sort of risk with your safety?”
“I don’t make a habit of expecting the worst,” Jessica retorted. “Most people behave decently, I find, given the chance.”
He spread long, lean fingers over the table top and shook his head. “Then you’re kidding yourself. Good Samaritans are pretty thin on the ground these days, and just because it’s Christmas doesn’t mean you can afford to indulge in the wholesale belief that all men are full of goodwill.”
“Reckon we just might find that out the hard way,” Clancy put in with a scowl, “if Gabriel—”
But before he could elaborate further Morgan cut him off with a meaningful glare and a brusque, “Shut up, Clancy. Let’s not get into that again.”
They ate the rest of the meal in strained silence. Once they were done, Morgan nodded to Clancy. “Feed the dogs while I bring in another load of wood,” he said, heading for the back porch, “then we’ll get back to the stables.”
Feeling thoroughly superfluous, Jessica said, “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Not unless you’re used to working horses.”
“Just got to look at her to see she wouldn’t know the hind end of one if it was starin’ her in the face,” Clancy said, shoveling dog food into two bowls.
“You’re right,” Jessica informed him. “But I’m perfectly able to wash dishes and from the way you’ve managed to splatter chili all over yours it’s just as well. I’m also capable of producing an acceptable evening meal.”
“Lordy, Lordy,” the old curmudgeon sneered back. “Ain’t never before heard a woman spit out such a mouthful of hoity-toity words in one breath.”
“Considering we’re both lousy cooks,” Morgan told him, “I think you’d be smart to button your lip. Jessica, feel free to take over the kitchen. There’s a freezer full of stuff in the mud room, and sacks of potatoes and other vegetables. Oh, and help yourself to the phone in the office if you want to call the hospital again.”
She did, and afterward almost wished she hadn’t bothered. Selena, it turned out, had received a relatively minor injury to her spine-mostly bruising which, though painful, was not expected to create any lasting complications.
Jessica would have thought that was cause enough for any reasonable person to celebrate, but Selena was not famous for being reasonable. Thoroughly put out by the number of Christmas parties she was missing and the fact that the hospital restricted the number of visitors she was allowed, she devoted most of the conversation to a litany of complaint.
Patience stretched to the limit, Jessica finally cut short the call with the suggestion that since there was little Selena could do to change things she might as well make the most of them.
Such excellent advice, Jessica decided, hanging up the phone, also applied to her. She found an apple pie and a package of some kind of stewing meat that looked like beef in the freezer, and potatoes, carrots and onions in the vegetable bins. The refrigerator yielded up butter, cheese, eggs, and a slab of back bacon. Jars of dried herbs and such filled the shelves of a wooden spice rack.
By the time the snow that Clancy had predicted began to fall, shortly after four, the kitchen was filled with the rich aroma of meat and vegetables simmering in the oven, the lunch dishes had been washed and returned to their hallowed place in the glass-fronted cabinet, and Jessica was left with nothing more pleasant to do than await the return of her unwilling host and his uncivil hired hand.
“Hardly the ideal dining companions,” she commented to Shadow, who lifted her head sympathetically from her spot in the rocker, then tucked her nose more snugly under her tail.
The men came back about half an hour later. Their footsteps clumped onto the back porch, followed shortly thereafter by the door to the mud room being flung open and the sound of something being dragged across the floor.
“It’ll dry out a bit overnight, and we’ll put it up tomorrow,” she heard Morgan Kincaid say. “Hang up your jacket, and let’s get inside where it’s warm.”
“Where the woman is, you mean,” came the disagreeable reply.
“Well, Clancy,” his employer drawled, in that husky, come-hither sort of voice of his, “I’m willing to put up with her company for another night if it means our coming in to find a good hot meal waiting on the table, and after the sort of afternoon we’ve both put in I’d think you would be too.”
“Speak for yourself,” Clancy snapped, clearly put out by any such suggestion. “I’ll make do the same as usual when we ain’t busy puttin’ on our party hats for company we ain’t asked for. A can of stew’s good enough for me—in my own quarters with just Ben for company,” he finished, “and where I don’t have to worry ’bout strangers pickin’ through my stuff the minute my back’s turned. See you in the mornin’, boss.”
A low laugh rolled out of Morgan Kincaid. Low and, to a woman’s ears at least, sexy. Jessica put both hands to her cheeks but was unable to control the flush of annoyance conjured up by yet another unwelcome interpolation of that word.
“Gee, thanks!” he said. “I’ll remember this the next time it’s my turn to do you a favor, old man. You know full well having her here isn’t my idea of a good time, either.”
Pure anger left Jessica rooted to the spot. What did they think? That she wanted to be stranded here? Or that she was either too deaf to overhear their remarks or too stupid to understand them?
Well, Morgan Kincaid might like to think he knew what sort of evening lay in store for him, but he was about to discover it was going to be a lot worse than anything he could begin to imagine!
CHAPTER THREE
MORGAN betrayed not a scrap of embarrassment when he came into the kitchen to find Jessica standing by the woodstove and well within earshot of anything said in the mud room. “Guess you heard that Clancy won’t be joining us for dinner,” he said, casually batting a few snowflakes from the inside of his collar where they must have strayed when he’d removed his jacket.
“That and a few other choice bits of conversation,” Jessica replied stonily. “You’ve got a lot to learn about being a gracious host, Mr. Kincaid.”
“Doubtless, but I’m not interested in taking a lesson right now.” He nodded to the enamel coffee pot sitting on the stove top. “Any fresh coffee in there?”
“Find out for yourself,” she said, amazed and shocked to hear his surliness rubbing off on her. “And, before you subject me to another homily on your munificence in having rescued me from a plight of my own making, allow me to point out that I have spent the afternoon trying to make up for some of the inconvenience I’ve put you to. There’s fresh wood in the stove, dinner is ready whenever you are, the kitchen is clean—which is more than it was before—and all you have to do is relax and enjoy the evening.
“And,” she concluded on a final, irate breath, “just in case I inadvertently say or do something to spoil the occasion, I’ll be happy to take a tray up to whatever room you assign to me so that you’re not forced to endure my unwelcome company a moment longer than necessary.”
“Self-sacrifice doesn’t suit you, Jessica,” he snorted. “As for your being unwelcome, let’s face it, you’re no more happy to be stranded here with me than I am to be saddled with you. This is my retreat, a place I enjoy specifically because it’s nothing like...” he hesitated, and a grimace of distaste rippled over his expression “...the sort of world you undoubtedly prefer. I’m used to doing as I please up here, whenever it pleases me to do it.”
Jessica sniffed disparagingly. “And what’s that, exactly?”
“Whatever takes my fancy—going about unshaven and spending all day ankle-deep in horse manure, or rolling around naked in the snow if I feel like it, without having to worry that some puritanical biddy is going to go into cardiac arrest at the sight.” He shrugged his big shoulders and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his wool shirt in what struck Jessica as a highly suggestive fashion, considering his last remark. “I find you a most inhibiting presence, Miss Simms.”
Why, instead of reassuring her, did his words carry a sting that left her feeling drab and sexless? He was perfectly right, after all. She might be only thirty, but she typified the quintessential schoolmarm heading straight into cloistered spinsterhood, and wasn’t that exactly the path she’d chosen for herself?
“I won’t apologize for being who I am,” she said briskly. “You’ll simply have to control your unconventional urges until tomorrow when I’m gone. In the meantime, I’d appreciate your showing me to a room where I can spend the night.”
“Oh, hell,” he said, his husky drawl threaded with impatience, “help yourself to whichever one you please, as long as you don’t choose mine.”
As if having to share a bed with her two nights in a row was more than any red-blooded man should have to stomach! As if he’d rather sleep with a corpse!
Well, she’d known since she was sixteen that she was no femme fatale. “Poor thing, your feet are your best feature,” Aunt Edith had declared wearily, and had turned her attention as well as her affection on the far prettier Selena.
Did some of that old feeling of rejection seep through the indifferent facade Jessica had learned to present to the world? Was that what prompted Morgan Kincaid to add, with more kindness than he’d shown thus far in their relationship, “Hey, listen, I don’t mean to come across as such a bear. I’m a bit preoccupied with other things, that’s all. The room above the kitchen’s the warmest, so why don’t you throw your suitcase in there, then come down and join me for dinner? Go on,” he urged, when she hesitated. “Whatever you’ve got cooking smells great and I promise I won’t bite you by mistake.”
It would have been churlish to refuse. Churlish, silly, and immature. Which explained why she nodded her agreement and made her way up the stairs to the room he’d singled out. Because she prided herself on being a mature, intelligent adult. It was one of the reasons why she’d achieved so much, so soon, in her career.
But how then did she justify the adolescent way she hurried to the mirror above the carved mahogany dressing table at the foot of the matching double bed and pulled the clasp out of her hair so that it flowed thick and full over her shoulders? As if such a simple change were enough to render her glamorous and alluring!
“You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” Aunt Edith had maintained, and it was true. Men did less than look twice at thin, thirty-year-old women with slightly wavy brown hair and plain gray eyes; they didn’t see them at all!
Jessica found her brush and drew it systematically through her hair until every strand lay smooth against her skull. With one hand she folded the customary loop at the nape of her neck, then with the other anchored it in place with a plain tortoiseshell barrette. She tucked her blouse more neatly into the waist of her navy pleated skirt and adjusted the starched points of her collar so that they paralleled the row of buttons aligned down the front of her meager chest.
She might not look better, but she looked familiar. And that left her feeling secure enough to brave an evening with Morgan Kincaid.
She walked with the upright, flowing grace of a nun, Morgan decided, his gaze remaining fixed on the doorway leading to the front hall long after she’d disappeared through it. Dressed like one, too, in sober, neutral colors designed along straight, concealing lines. The only piece missing from the picture was the sweet charity of soul one might reasonably expect in a woman of the cloth, but Jessica Simms was a vinegary bit of a thing whose habit of giving a nostril-pinching little sniff of suspicious disapproval around men spoke volumes.
Not that he necessarily held that against her. On the contrary, he applauded her for it. He’d seen enough tragedy resulting from people, particularly women and children, choosing to ignore their self-protective instincts where men were concerned.
Abruptly, he grabbed the empty wood basket and, with Shadow at his heels, strode through the mud room and out into the night, welcoming the sting of the still falling snow against his face, the bite of the wind funneling up from the valley. Anything to distract him from the memories too ready to leap out of his professional past—some of which would, he suspected, haunt him till the day he died.
It was Christmas, for Pete’s sake—a time for families to come together in celebration. The trouble was, he’d seen too many ripped apart by violent crime and nothing he’d been able to do in the way of exacting justice had managed to heal them. Not chestnuts roasting, not plum puddings ablaze with rum, not children hanging stockings. Especially not children hanging stockings.
For a while, during the married years with Daphne, he’d hoped she’d become pregnant. He’d needed to know he could look after his own family, even if he couldn’t always protect others’. He’d wanted his parents to know the joy of grandchildren. But the children hadn’t come, Daphne hadn’t stayed, and his parents had died within six months of each other.
So here he was, thirty-seven, with more money than he knew what to do with, a career that promised to elevate him to the Bench before he turned fifty, and spending another Christmas alone, except for Clancy and a woman he felt he should address as Sister!
Flinging enough wood into the basket to keep the stove well stoked until morning, he retraced his steps from the shed to the house. Already, the prints he’d made when he’d come out were powdered with a fresh layer of snow. It was going to be a classic white Christmas, the kind shown on nostalgic cards where women in fur muffs shepherded families to church and children gazed, wide-eyed, through square-paned windows draped in icicles.
Families, children.... Despite his best attempts to shut it out, the whole memory thing came full circle again, threatening to blanket him more thoroughly than the snow.
He shook his head impatiently. He should have stayed in Vancouver where it was probably raining, and those dim-witted ornamental cherry trees along the boulevards and seafronts were bursting with pale pink blossom in anticipation of a spring still three months away. Where he had friends who gathered in exclusive private clubs to nibble on Russian caviar and sip champagne. Where the women adjusted their sleek designer gowns and watched him with a certain hunger that, for a little while, he could return.
Instead, he was snowbound with the very proper Miss Simms who probably wouldn’t know sexual appetite if it jumped up and bit her on the nose. Damn!
He kicked open the outside door and dumped the wood basket on the floor next to the tree Clancy had brought in at noon. On the other side of the wall, he could hear her puttering around the stove, opening the oven door, rattling cutlery.
She froze when he came into the kitchen, as if she’d suddenly come face to face with an intruder bent on unspeakable mischief. She stood on the far side of the table, knives and forks cradled in her graceful nun’s hands, her big gray eyes all wide and startled, and it irritated the hell out of him.
“What’s with the nervous tic?” he inquired.
She stared at him, the way a cornered kitten might. “Is it all right to do this?”
He frowned. “Do what?”
“Prepare the table for dinner.”
“Of course it’s all right,” he snapped, his irritation boiling over. “Why on earth wouldn’t it be?”
“It upset your hired hand, when he came in for lunch. He seemed to think I was interfering.”
“Oh, that.” Morgan selected a bottle of wine from the rack built next to the Welsh dresser and found a corkscrew. “It wasn’t you so much as the memories you stirred up. Beyond making sure the plumbing doesn’t freeze when I’m not here, he doesn’t spend much time in the main house since his wife died. I guess coming in and seeing the place looking the way it did when she was alive took him aback, especially with it being so close to Christmas.”
“I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
“No reason you should.” He took down two wine glasses. “Will you join me, or don’t you drink?”
“A little red wine with dinner would be nice.”
A little red wine with dinner would be nice, she said, mouth all ready to pucker with disapproval. Oh, brother, it was going to be a long evening!
While she served the food, he filled the glasses and wondered unchivalrously if his getting roaring drunk might pass the time more pleasantly. She sat across from him and shook out her serviette, her movements refined, her manners impeccable, as if she’d been born with a silver spoon in her mouth and a flock of servants on hand to do her slightest bidding. And yet the meal she’d turned out suggested a more than passing familiarity with the working end of a kitchen.
They had cream soup made from carrots and flavoured with ginger, followed by stew with dumplings and rich brown gravy, and he had to admit the food went a good way toward improving his mood.
“These dumplings,” he said, spearing one with his fork, “remind me of when Agnes, Clancy’s wife, used to do the cooking. She always served them with venison, too.”
“Venison?” Jessica Simms echoed, managing to turn rather pale even as she choked on her wine.
“Deer,” he explained, thinking she hadn’t understood.
She pressed her serviette hurriedly to her mouth and mumbled, “I was afraid that was what you meant.”
“Why, what did you think you were eating?”
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