Christmas With A Stranger

“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.