Christmas With A Stranger

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.