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“I appreciate it.” Jayne lied with a smile, then put the Jeep into gear. Steve’s personal interest was getting harder to discourage, though she couldn’t help being grateful he’d stepped in this afternoon. Who knew what might have happened if the stranger had kept hold of her?
But he wasn’t a stranger now. He had a name—Chris Hammond, grandson to Charlie Hammond. Neither name seemed the least bit familiar. But he had asked if she grew up in Ridgeville, which implied that the person she resembled had lived here. No one else in town had ever mentioned that she looked like someone they knew. Maybe Mr. Hammond was mistaken. Delusional. Drunk.
No, he hadn’t been intoxicated. She would have smelled alcohol on his breath, they’d been that close. But Chris Hammond had smelled of soap and fresh air. She’d felt his body heat as she stared up at him for that moment, and sensed the strength in his hand. Strangely, she could still feel his touch, like a band of tender skin around her upper arm.
Though he seemed harsh, with his unruly hair and stubbled cheeks, she’d seen something desperate and sad in his eyes. Bedroom eyes, her grandmother would have called them, with those lazy, drooping lids. He had a beautiful mouth. His smile would be intriguing. Irresistible.
She was so caught up in her thoughts she almost missed the school entrance, braking hard to avoid cruising right by.
“Since when do you spend time daydreaming about men?” she asked herself, slowing down for the drive through the forest surrounding the Hawkridge School. “You don’t have time for romance, even the imaginary kind.”
She’d seen three of her teachers fall deeply in love this past year, which probably accounted for the unusual direction her thoughts had taken. As the headmistress of a school housing three hundred girls, each with her own set of problems, plus the staff and faculty required to deal with those students, Jayne rarely had a spare moment to herself. She didn’t waste time wondering about a different life or a family of her own. As far as she was concerned, Hawkridge gave her plenty of family and numerous children to look after. Getting involved with a man would simply mean another set of needs to meet.
And the one commodity she would not run out of anytime soon was needs to be met.
Her secretary accosted her as she walked in the door from the staff parking lot. “They’ve upgraded that snowstorm—we’re in for eighteen inches, at least. Starting tomorrow night.”
Jayne nodded. “E-mail all the parents and advise them to be here early, so they can be out of the mountains by noon. Ask them to reply at once, and call any you haven’t heard from by midnight or can’t reach via the Web.”
One of the kitchen staff knocked on Jayne’s office door before she’d had a chance to take off her coat. “Cook says the market shorted her on the roast beef order. Even accounting for vegetarians, the portions won’t stretch to cover all the girls and teachers.” The traditional Hawkridge end of term dinner featured roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, so this tragedy assumed immense proportions in the kitchen.
Jayne would have settled for a bowl of soup. But she gave the issue a moment’s consideration. “Does she have chicken?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ask her to serve chicken to the head table, and present a platter of chicken to the girls’ tables along with the beef.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Three girls appeared in the outer office, needing to consult with the headmistress over an incident of name-calling and missing bubble bath. Two teachers wanted to discuss a discipline problem. Her secretary returned with the news that one set of parents and one guardian grandfather had called to say they couldn’t possibly pick up their daughters before the snow started, and they’d decided to wait the storm out at a luxury hotel in Asheville, an hour away.
Jayne dropped back into her chair. “Terrific. Two more girls for the break. Who are they?”
“Monique Law and Taryn Gage.”
“Ah.” Monique, a junior, had waged a private war with beer and cocaine since before arriving at Hawkridge two years ago. She managed well as long as she stayed at school, but when she went home, the local crowd and its addictions consumed her. Maybe a snow-enforced vacation at school would help her break the cycle.
Taryn, one of their new students this year, had already been isolated in the infirmary three times as a result of her temper tantrums. The abusive home environment she’d been rescued from explained her rage, but she would have to learn to handle that anger without violence.
Jayne got to her feet as the warning bell for dinner rang. “I might have more of a challenge on my hands than I realized, staying here alone with seven girls. Do you suppose there’s someone else on staff who has no plans for the holiday and would like to help?”
Her secretary pulled a doubtful frown. Jayne nodded. “Right. I didn’t think so. Well, I’ll worry about that later. First, the faculty procession into dinner.”
Standing at the head of the double line of teachers, she allowed herself an appeal for assistance from a higher power. “I could use some backup, here. I can’t do everything myself.” As she passed between the rows of tables in the dining hall, she saw girls eyeing the platter of chicken with doubt.
“Please,” she murmured, with a harried glance heavenward. “At least make the chicken taste good.”
“DAMN FOOL, that’s what you are, going out in the snow.”
Wrapping a scarf around his neck, Chris smiled to himself. “It’s not snowing yet, Charlie. The weather report says the snow won’t even start till after dark.”
“What do they know? I’ve lived my whole life in these mountains and I tell you it’ll be coming down hard and fast by four at the latest.” Still with a full head of hair, gray now instead of brown, his grandfather scowled at him.
“Well, I should be back here long before the roads get bad. I just want to ask some questions.” He’d told Charlie about yesterday’s encounter.
“You showed me that picture on your phone and, yeah, she does look like Juliet. But don’t you think I would have heard if Juliet Radcliffe had returned? There’s been neither hide nor hair of that girl seen around here since the two of you crashed up on the mountain.” The old man grabbed Chris above the elbow and stared at him through round, rimless glasses. “She died that night, Christopher. You’ve known it for twelve years. Why would you suddenly start doubting?”
Chris patted the chilly fingers. “Because…because I feel it. There’s something in this woman’s face that I know as well as I know my own. And she’s so close to what Juliet might have looked like now. How could that be?”
“They say everybody has a double.” Still as tall as ever but on the thin side, after losing fifty pounds to illness, Charlie looked even older than his seventy-eight years.
“Maybe. But in the same North Carolina mountain town? Not likely.” He grabbed his helmet off the kitchen table and turned to look at his granddad’s worried face. “I’ll be back for dinner. Put that meat loaf I bought at the market in the oven with a couple of potatoes. We’ll have a good meal, a few beers and watch the ball game on TV. Okay?”
Charlie growled low in his throat. “You’re asking for trouble.”
That, Chris thought as he fired up the Harley, was probably true. If this Jayne Thomas wasn’t who he thought, she might call the Ridgeville police on him. Or the sheriff’s department, with Deputy High-and-Mighty. He might end up spending Christmas in jail instead of hanging out with his dying grandfather, storing up memories for when Charlie was gone.
If she was Juliet Radcliffe…well, then he had questions to ask. And he wouldn’t be leaving her alone until he got the answers.
The drive to Hawkridge School took him fifteen miles along winding, two-lane mountain roads bordered by dark evergreens and bare hardwood trees. Heavy, ash-colored clouds blocked the sun, creating an early twilight. True to Charlie’s prediction, snow began to dust the pavement only a couple of miles out of Ridgeville.
Chris grinned as he watched the small white flakes sifting over the surrounding forest. He’d always loved spending Christmas here in the Smoky Mountains with Charlie. Not every Christmas had been a white one, but he recalled streaking down the hill behind Charlie’s cabin on a blue plastic disk sled, hearing Juliet scream as she flew beside him, and then the two of them landing in a tumbled heap in the drifts at the bottom. They’d emerged breathless, crying with laughter, then picked up their sleds and trudged back to the top to do it all over again. Charlie had resorted to bribing them with food to get them inside for even a few minutes.
Chris shook off his memories to realize the snow had picked up and was beginning to coat the road. In the next moment, he saw tall iron gates and a sign flash by—The Hawkridge School.
Damn, he’d missed the entrance.
A set of switchbacks took him farther up the mountain, but then came a long, straight stretch of road suitable for a U-turn. With no traffic in sight, Chris eased the bike around and headed back the way he’d come, slower this time and with his mind on his driving.
The trees along the hairpin curves arched out over the road, blocking most of the snow and also the waning light, until he might as well be driving at night. He’d worn a sweater under his leather jacket, plus a scarf, knit cap and gloves with liners. But even the leather chaps over his jeans didn’t cut the frigid wind. His knees and thighs felt like blocks of ice. Inside heavy boots and wool socks, his toes could have been chipped off with an ice pick.
Because of the cold or the darkness, or both, the entrance again came up faster than he expected. Chris started the turn too late, too sharply, just as the tires slipped on the slick asphalt.
He muttered a single swear word.
The bike tilted, then fell over, sliding sideways with Chris’s leg pinned underneath. Metal screamed, and he got a glimpse of approaching tree trunks on the other side of empty space. He had just enough time to send up a fervent prayer before wood started to splinter. Then the world went black.
Chapter Two
By midafternoon, the usual bustle in the hallways of the Hawkridge School had dwindled to complete silence. Students, teachers and staff had left the premises as fast as possible, all anxious to be out of the mountains before the snowstorm hit. Only eight individuals remained behind in the mansion—Jayne and the seven girls who had no other place to go.
They’d gathered in a room that students rarely saw, the private library designed for the wife of magnate Horace Ridgely, the builder of Hawkridge Manor. Mrs. Ridgely—Emmeline—had fancied herself a history scholar, and furnished her retreat with comfortably deep leather sofas and chairs surrounded by library tables wide and sturdy enough to hold stacks of books and provide plenty of work space. At each end of the room, walnut bookshelves packed with gold-tooled leather volumes lined the walls from the floor to the fifteen-foot ceiling. On one side, casement windows with diamond panes looked out into a private walled garden where Emmeline might refresh her mind without being disturbed. Across the room, the fireplace could have roasted an ox whole.
The manor had been wired for electricity from the beginning, and the only change made to this room in the last one hundred years was the addition of a discreet mahogany cupboard which, when opened, revealed a large TV screen and all the necessary components for movies and music. As the light failed outside Emmeline’s diamond windows, the girls spent the first afternoon of their winter break sprawled across two sofas and four chairs, swooning over handsome actors and cackling at sly jokes.
Jayne had joined them during the first half of the film, but found her attention more attuned to the weather than the antics of a gang of con artists stealing from Las Vegas casinos. Standing by the window, she pulled her sweater close around her as she watched the snowflakes falling faster and harder as the minutes passed. The wind seemed louder and stronger, too.
“It’s going to be a real storm, isn’t it?” Sarah Minton, a senior who had volunteered to stay and help Jayne with the other girls, came to join her at the window. “It looks kind of scary out there.”
Jayne smiled. “But we’re safe and sound inside, so we don’t have anything to worry about. We’re warm and dry and there’s lots of food. Lots of firewood, too—I asked Mr. Humphries to leave us a good supply within easy reach.” She glanced at the fireplace, where the blaze had gotten low. “Maybe we ought to bring some wood in before—”
“Did you hear that?” Sarah had turned her face toward the garden outside. “It sounded like banging.”
“Probably a loose tree branch in the wind.” Jayne waited, listening, but didn’t hear anything. “I guess—”
The girl held up a hand. “There it is again.” This time, in the quiet, Jayne heard the sound, too—a slow, hard pounding.
It stopped, and they both took a deep breath. Then the noise started again.
“That’s the front entrance.” Jayne crossed toward the door to the hallway. “You stay here with the girls. I’ll return in a few minutes.”
But as she turned into the hallway, Sarah was right behind her. “I don’t think you should go by yourself.”
When Jayne looked back, she saw the six other students had joined them.
“What’s happening?”
“Is it time to eat?”
“Where’re you going, Ms. Thomas?”
Jayne accepted the unlikely possibility of convincing them to stay behind. “Someone is knocking on the front door. Let’s see who’s there.”
As they proceeded toward the main section of the manor, some of the girls jogged, danced and skipped ahead. But Jayne came to a halt before they could reach the double doors into the foyer. “I want you all behind me once I go through those doors. I’m glad to have your company, but I don’t know who is out there, so stay back and out of the way. Understood?”
Seven apprehensive gazes stayed fixed on her face as the girls nodded.
“Good.” Jayne pulled open one of the paneled mahogany doors. “Let’s go.”
She swallowed hard as she crossed the black-and-white marble floor of the huge entrance hall. Past closed doors on the left leading into the dining hall, past the foot of the curved staircase on her right, and the entrance into the administrative office suite just beyond. Finally she stood with her hand on the brass knobs of the double front doors. Taking a deep breath, Jayne squared her shoulders, just as whoever stood outside started pounding again.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Using both hands now, she turned the right knob and jerked the panel back.
She noticed the snow first, whirling and slashing in the light from inside and the lamps on the porch. Then she caught a glimpse of blue eyes in a pale face smeared with red. Paint?
Blood. “Sorry,” the man confronting her muttered. “Can you…” he swayed from side to side “…help?”
Before the word ended, he pitched forward, right into Jayne’s arms.
At her back, several of the girls screamed. Jayne staggered under the man’s weight, reaching out by instinct to hold him. Though she struggled to stay upright, he bore her down to the floor, collapsing with most of her body underneath his. He was sopping wet. And freezing.
“My God, he’s heavy.” As Sarah moved to shut the door, Jayne pulled her arms free and braced herself against the hard floor with her hands behind her. She could hardly budge, pinned as she was with the man’s head on her chest and the rest of him draped over her.
She struggled to organize her thoughts. “Sarah, take Taryn and Yolanda up to the infirmary and bring back the stretcher. You may use the elevator coming down,” she called as they went running up the stairs. “Just hurry!”
A glance at the agitated faces of the other girls told her she had to get them out of the way and occupied. “You four are the dinner crew.”
When the moans died down, she continued. “Let’s keep it simple, since we’ve got an emergency to deal with. Haley and Monique, make grilled cheese sandwiches. At least twelve of them. Selena and Beth, heat up soup in a big pot on the stove. We’ll need some hot tea, too, for Mr. Two Tons, here.”
She tried to shift, and groaned at her lack of success. The girls gave nervous laughs. “Just make something we can eat when we get this guy settled. That’s all I ask.”
They returned the way they’d come, and Jayne let her head fall back, trying to ease the tension in her neck and shoulders. “Hurry,” she murmured to Sarah, Taryn and Yolanda. “Or I may never walk again.”
As if in answer, wheels squeaked somewhere beyond the top of the grand curved staircase. “We’re on our way,” Sarah called. “Had some trouble figuring out how to operate the stretcher. Be there in a minute.”
“Whew.” Jayne sighed in relief, then gasped as the body lying on top of her moved.
“What the hell…?” His words were slurred, his voice hoarse. “Where am I?” He jerked to the side, off of her, then propped himself on one elbow and stared at Jayne. Comprehension dawned in those sky-blue eyes. “Did I pass out on top of you? Are you okay?”
Before she could answer, he tried to lift his other hand to his head. Swearing, he fell backward instead, and lay flat on the floor, his face twisted in pain.
Jayne shifted to her knees beside him. “What’s wrong? Is your arm broken?”
“Dislocated,” he growled between bared teeth. “Shoulder.”
The squeak of wheels announced the arrival of the stretcher.
“What can we do?” Sarah asked, breathing hard.
Jayne considered the white-faced man on the floor. “Yolanda and Taryn, you two go down to the staff kitchen and see if the girls there need help with supper. Sarah and I can manage here.”
“But—” Yolanda started.
Looking up, Jayne lifted an eyebrow. “Surely you’re not going to argue. I believe I made the rules clear at our meeting this afternoon.” She used her quietest, most intimidating headmistress voice.
“Yes, ma’am.” Haley Farrish, a ninth-grader, elbowed the other girl in the side. “Come on. We can get some chips. I’m starving.”
Yolanda Warner hesitated, her lower lip stuck out in a pout. As a junior, she probably thought she should be allowed to help. But when the man on the floor groaned and struggled to sit up, panic chased away her self-importance. In the next moment, she and Haley disappeared through the office doorway.
Jayne scrambled to her feet and motioned for Sarah to come to the man’s uninjured side. “Let us help you up,” she told him. “We’ll lift under your arms—”
“God, no.” Holding his injured left arm against his side with his other hand, he had somehow managed to maneuver himself to his knees. “Just give me a second.” He stayed there for much longer than a second, head bowed, his harsh breaths the only sound in the immense space of the entry hall.
Then his right knee jerked up, he planted his foot against the marble floor and drove himself to stand. He swayed, and Jayne stepped closer, arms out. Sarah, on his other side, did the same.
But this time he didn’t collapse. Blowing out a deep breath, the man turned slowly to face Jayne.
His eyes were bloodshot, his hair hanging in wet tangles, his face frozen in lines of agony. For the first time, though, she recognized her stalker from the previous day in town.
“Remember me? I’m Chris Hammond,” he said, his voice still ragged. “I came here to find out where you’ve been the last twelve years.
“And why the hell you’re lying about who you are.”
THE HEADMISTRESS DROPPED her jaw till Chris could practically see her tonsils. Her dark, straight brows drew together over eyes the exact hazel color he remembered. He would swear he knew the shape of every freckle on her nose. Oh, yeah, she was lying, all right.
“Well?” He dragged in a breath against the agony searing his shoulder. “What’s with the fake name?”
She gave her head a quick shake. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
