Christmas With A Stranger_Forbidden

by Catherine Spencer

  Broodingly, he studied the distant valley. “Honesty’s very important to you, isn’t it, Jessica?”

  “Yes, especially where feelings are concerned. I lived with the lie of my aunt’s supposed affection for years, even though she tried hard not to let it show that she really didn’t care much for me.”

  She drew in a deep breath of the crisp air and prayed it would dispel the sudden urge to bare her soul to him. Wallowing in self-pity was unattractive at the best of times and always dangerous. She no more wanted his pity than she did his affectations of love. She’d endured enough of both to last her a lifetime. “I think there is nothing more insulting than to be the recipient of that sort of deceit.”

  “Were you very young when you went to live with her?”

  “Yes.” Jessica pushed back the jacket hood and lifted her face to the pale winter sun. “I was eight at the time and Selena was five. Of course, I had no idea how my aunt felt about taking us in.”

  “How long before you found out?”

  “Quite some time.” Jessica plucked at the fur robe covering her lap. “In her way, she tried very hard to be a good substitute parent, but it was more a question of noblesse oblige than real affection. She and my uncle had elected not to have a family of their own and I think suddenly finding herself stuck with someone else’s small, unhappy children cramped her style terribly.”

  “At least you and your sister had each other.” He took off his gloves and spread one arm along the high cushioned backrest of the seat. “No wonder you were so anxious to get to her when you heard about her accident. You must be very close.”

  “Not really. As we grew older, we found we had very little in common.” She shrugged, burningly conscious of his hand draped over her shoulder. “Selena adapted to her new situation much better than I did. My aunt was a real society matron—gave lots of smart, expensive parties at which she liked to have us put in an appearance so that everyone could commend her for the wonderful thing she was doing. I was a plain, shy child with no social graces at all, but Selena was a party animal from the word go. Pretty, entertaining, amusing. A very easy child to love, even if she didn’t have my feet.”

  “Your feet?” Morgan turned toward her and let out a bark of surprised laughter. “What the hell have your feet got to do with anything?”

  “They’re my finest feature,” Jessica said candidly. “Apart from my brains, they’re the only feature I have that’s worth mentioning, if my aunt is to be believed.”

  “Then your aunt is a damn fool,” he told her, “and so are you if you believe that sort of rubbish.”

  “She did her best in a difficult situation. You have to understand that Selena barely remembered our parents but I did, and I missed them horribly. I didn’t want someone else trying to take their place. I wasn’t affectionate or...or giving, like Selena. She’d hand out kisses and hugs indiscriminately and loved to be dressed up like a doll and paraded before other people, whereas I was....”

  “Yes?” His hand strayed up to stroke her cheek. “What were you, Jessica?”

  “Ungrateful, probably. Standoffish, certainly.” She gave the buffalo robe an irritable twitch, annoyed to hear a faint whine of self-pity in her voice despite her best efforts to prevent it. “How many poor animals died to make this, do you suppose?”

  If he was surprised at the sudden change of topic, he didn’t show it. “I’ve no idea. It was something my great-grandfather gave to my great-grandmother the same year he had this cutter made for her.” Swinging sideways on the seat, Morgan brought his other hand over and covered Jessica’s, capturing it next to the robe and leaving her trapped in the loose circle of his arms. “Until then, people around here thought she was standoffish, too.”

  How was it possible that, with winter all around them, just his touch could leave her flushed with rosy warmth? Studiously avoiding his gaze and certain he must be able to hear the uneven thumping of her heart in the silence, Jessica said, “And was she?”

  “No. Like you, she was simply different. Born in England, one of four children, affluent parents, private governess, debutante, the whole society nine yards. When the First World War broke out, she became a nurse and went to work in a hospital in London. She fell in love with my great-grandfather when he was shipped there to recover from wounds he suffered in France. They were married in 1918, a big society wedding at her family’s country estate, and he brought her home to Canada right after that.”

  “Home being here, at the house?” So drawn in by the story that she forgot to worry about the effect of how close Morgan was sitting or how snugly his arm had closed around her shoulder, Jessica swung around to face him.

  “Not quite. He built the lodge over the next several years. To begin with, they lived in a cabin with no running water or indoor plumbing.”

  “Good grief, talk about culture shock!”

  “Exactly.” Morgan nodded. “My great-grandmother was homesick and lonely. She gave birth to her first child, my grandmother, in that cabin, with no one to help her, no relatives to fuss over her, none of the comforts she’d been brought up to expect. She had nothing in common with other wives in the area and no friends. Her only contact with the outside world came through the letters she received from home and by the time they arrived the news they contained was months old. Her entire life took place within those four walls with her baby and my great-grandfather who, during the summer especially, spent nearly every waking hour working the ranch.”

  “She must have loved him very much.”

  “She did, but even so the marriage almost fell apart when her second baby was stillborn. She was alone at the time and was convinced the child could have been saved had there been someone there to help her.”

  “I cannot imagine the pain that must have brought her, to lose a child.”

  “It’s not something I would wish on my worst enemy,” Morgan said, with such feeling that, if he hadn’t already told her there’d been no children, Jessica would have wondered if he and his wife had lost a son or daughter.

  “What saved the marriage?” she asked, as much to alleviate the sudden darkening of his mood as to hear the rest of the story.

  “She told him she was going home again and taking their surviving child with her, because she couldn’t stand the isolation a day longer. Her son lay buried within sight of the house and her daughter was growing up a prisoner of the wilderness, learning none of the social graces that would have been part of her life if she’d grown up in England.”

  Jessica studied Morgan’s profile and thought that, if the old man had been one iota as handsome or one tenth as skilled a lover as his great-grandson, no woman could have walked away from him. “But he talked her out of it?”

  “No, he hitched the horse to the buggy, drove her into town and bought her a ticket so that she could catch the next train heading east. But when it came right down to it she couldn’t leave him. She had her bags on the train and one foot on the step, ready to climb into the carriage, and then made the mistake of looking down into his big, dumb face, and supposedly said, ‘After everything we’ve been through together, are you just going to stand there and let me walk out of your life, you stupid fool?”’

  “Oh,” Jessica said, blinking furiously as the silly tears threatened, “I’ve always been a pushover for happy endings.”

  “Well,” Morgan said, his eyes scouring her face, “it didn’t quite end there. Of course, she came back here with him, but the shock of what had almost happened made them take stock. They both realized she needed contact with other people, and a purpose beyond simply being a wife and mother. So, that Christmas, he presented her with the cutter, and she started visiting the other ranchers’ wives. Before long, word got around that she’d been a nurse and the next thing she was being called on to help deliver babies, and by the following summer, when the foundations for the house were being built, she’d become something of a legend up here.”

  He paused for breath and grinned at her. “W
hat was your original question again, Jessica?”

  “I asked about the buffalo robe.”

  “Ah, yes. Well, now you know.”

  “So tell me the rest.”

  “There’s not much to tell. My grandmother went away to school but came home one summer and fell in love with a neighboring rancher. They married and had only one child, my father. He moved to the coast when he went to university, met my mother there, and settled in Vancouver where I was born. The ranch dwindled, with some of the land eventually being sold off after my grandparents died, and the property lay more or less neglected until I took an interest in it.”

  “And your sister?” Jessica asked. “You haven’t mentioned her except in passing.”

  “She married a Frenchman and lives in Marseilles. We keep in touch, of course, but we’re not close the way we once were.”

  Jessica turned her hand palm up so that her fingers curved around his. “I’m sorry, Morgan.”

  “Yeah, well....” He blew out a long breath that curled foggily in the still air. “I guess that happens when another man enters a woman’s life.”

  “That must hurt. Selena can be a pain at times, but she’s the only family I have left. I want to be there for her whenever she needs me.”

  His hand cupped her face, sweetly, familiarly. “I guess you’ll be glad when the roads reopen and you can be on your way again.”

  Three days ago she’d have welcomed the idea, but now.... “Yes,” she said weakly, “I can hardly wait.”

  “It hasn’t been much of a Christmas for you so far, has it?”

  “It’s been....” A change from the usual, unexpected, novel: the trite responses lined up in her mind, waiting to see which one best fit the occasion, because Miss Jessica Simms, headmistress, charted her life by just such conventions. But she hadn’t counted on her gaze slipping to his mouth, so near to hers, so incredibly sexy. “Wonderful,” she finished on a sigh.

  His breath, sweet as mountain air, fanned her face. His fingers, cool against her suddenly fevered skin, traced a line from her cheek to her jaw and slid around her neck. His head obscured the waning sun as he narrowed the last few inches separating her from him. “It has, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, and closed her eyes as he lavished kisses on her mouth, first at one corner and then the other, and, finally, full on her waiting lips. Beneath his artful persuasion, she opened herself to him and wondered, as his kiss deepened to claim her soul yet again, how she’d ever bring herself to say goodbye to him when the time came for her to leave.

  “I think,” he murmured huskily, at last dragging his lips from hers, “that we’d better stop while we’re ahead. This isn’t making-love weather, even with buffalo robes to keep out the cold.”

  She didn’t know why not. She was on fire for him. But should she say so? Could she even begin to scrape up the courage to tell him that, for her, things had changed, that she wasn’t the same hidebound woman he’d rescued just a few days before, that she’d fallen in love with a man because of the gentleness that underlay his strength, because of the humor and passion that marked his life in ways they’d never touched hers?

  Of course not! Because, at heart, she hadn’t changed. That she was hankering for all the traditional trappings of commitment and happy-ever-after romance to validate what they’d both agreed would be a passing affair was proof enough of that. “I agree,” she murmured, with admirable restraint. “And we should be getting back to the house. Clancy will be wondering what we’re up to.”

  “I suspect he’s figured it out pretty accurately,” Morgan said ruefully, sliding back to his side of the seat and stuffing his hands into his gloves before picking up the reins. “But you’re right—we should be heading back. I should give him a hand settling the horses for the night and you’ve got dinner to prepare.”

  Why did she allow it to hurt her that, despite the intimacies they’d shared, he was able so easily to assign her to the position of housekeeper again? He’d never promised her a different or more permanent role, after all, and hadn’t caring for others and making sure things were done right always been the part that suited her best?

  Face it, Jessica, she scolded herself, drawing the hood up over her head again, you’ve never been the type that men want to die for. Be grateful for the brief happiness you’ve found here and let it be enough. Don’t spoil it by wishing for the impossible.

  And yet, despite knowing all that, she heard herself say, “Why, if this time we’ve shared has been so wonderful for both of us, does it have to end with my leaving here, Morgan?”

  He turned Jasper in a wide circle and waited until they were headed back along the ridge toward the house before he answered. “Because,” he said, “I can’t commit beyond this time. What you see here, what you think you know, is only part of the man I am.”

  “And the other part?” she asked, recognizing the absolute truth of what he said. “What about him?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “That’s the part that worries me.”

  “You’ve been honest with me and that’s what matters.” The words burned themselves into his brain the entire time he was putting the cutter away in the unused barn behind the stables.

  The problem was not just that he hadn’t told her about Parrish; that could easily be remedied. It was the more difficult truth he was having difficulty with, the one which extended to admitting that he was falling in love with her, that he wanted her to remain in his life after these few days were over. And the hardest truth of all was facing the fact that he had no right to ask that of her.

  “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you out here again today,” Clancy observed sourly when Morgan led Jasper back into the stable. “Kinda thought you’d be so plumb wore out you wouldn’t be much use to anyone, seeing as how you didn’t get near enough sleep last night.”

  “Can it, Clancy. I’ve got enough on my mind without you adding your two bits’ worth.”

  “That sweet woman’s falling for you, Morgan,” Clancy persisted, undaunted, “and I want to know what you plan to do about it.”

  “What the hell do you expect me to do?” Frustrated, Morgan stabbed viciously at the nearest bale of straw with the pitchfork.

  “Speakin’ the truth wouldn’t be a bad place to start.”

  As if he hadn’t already figured out that much! “And tell her what? That she’s welcome to bunk down here until the weather breaks but that there’s a madman out there somewhere gunning for me and she could end up being murdered in her bed?”

  “T’ain’t what Gabriel Parrish might do to her in her bed that’s worryin’ me at this precise moment, it’s you. I don’t plan to stand by and watch her dismissed as if she weren’t nothing more than a servant around here when it’s plain—”

  “I thought you wanted her gone!”

  “Of course I did, you dad-blamed fool! I wanted her as far away as she could get. Far enough that she wouldn’t get splattered with the dirt that follows you around, but you fooled around too long and left it too late.” He drew an irate breath. “So help me, Morgan Kincaid, if that woman gets herself hurt at this stage because you were too damned selfish to keep your drawers done up, I’ll—”

  “You’re out of line, Clancy! Furthermore—”

  The sudden shrilling of the telephone hanging on the wall near the door blasted the rest of his sentence into oblivion. For a second, he and Clancy glared at each other in frozen silence.

  “Well,” Clancy finally said, after the third ring, “which one of us is goin’ to answer that, Morgan? Or are we just goin’ to stand here gapin’ at it till the damn thing rings off the wall?”

  The ducks were in the oven, stuffed with wild rice and basted with a cranberry glaze. The sparkling white burgundy Morgan had set aside for dinner cooled in a silver ice bucket. The tree glowed in the living room, its light augmented by the flames flickering in the hearth. The table was decked out with the fine family silver and crystal.

  Stepping i
nto the shower, Jessica let the hot water pelt over her hair and down her body, welcoming the stinging spray. She had never felt more alive, or more complete.

  “I guess I’m wondering where we go from here,” he’d said that afternoon, and she’d sensed the same bewildered hunger in him that ate at her. “Yesterday, I thought I knew. Today, I’m not so sure.”

  Tipping shampoo into the palm of her hand, she scrubbed at her scalp, glad she’d have time enough to dry her hair and leave it lying soft and loose around her face instead of taming it into its usual loop while it was still damp.

  Regretfully she thought of the elegant midnight-blue dinner dress she’d worn to the board of governors’ Christmas cocktail party and wished she had it with her now. But how could she have known, last week when she’d crammed things into her suitcase before flinging it into the back of her car and setting out on the long drive to Whistling Valley, that she’d be wanting to dress up for a man she’d yet to meet? That was Selena’s sort of scenario, not hers.

  Would he come to her again tonight? Would they make love again? Was she crazy to believe that perhaps their relationship didn’t have to end when she left the ranch?

  Tilting her head to one side, she squeezed the excess water from her hair and swathed it in a towel. Already it was dark outside, and another night full of stars and promised moonlight upon them. Christmas night, and the most special she’d ever known.

  Humming to herself, she patted her body dry. Powdered and perfumed it, and slipped into the ribboned black satin lingerie with its rich edging of French lace. Rolled cobweb-fine silk stockings up her legs and gave an involuntary shiver of pleasure at the remembered touch of Morgan’s hands, the first time he’d touched her bare thigh.

  The black silk blouse, the straight black velvet skirt, a cameo that had belonged to her mother and the pearl ear studs without which she was seldom seen, and she was ready, except for putting the finishing touches to her hair.

  Over the whine of the hairdryer, she thought she heard the back door slam open, signaling Morgan’s return. He’d want to shower, too, before they sat down to dinner. Fluffing the last damp curl into place, she swept a final glance at herself in the full-length mirror and left the room.