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“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.
