Christmas With A Stranger

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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?”