Christmas Knight

by Meredith Webber

  “You don’t go for the knight in shining armor? How about a knight in dusty leathers?”

  Again he held out his arms. “Don’t you know me, Katie? Don’t you remember…?”

  Kate felt embarrassment start way down in her toes and wash upward through her body.

  “Grant? Grant Bell?” Her voice was so faint it was a wonder he heard it.

  “Aha, you do remember!” he said, and she had a feeling his delight stemmed more from the hectic color in her cheeks than from her muttered delivery of his name

  “So! Shall I come in?”

  “No!”

  Kate wasn’t sure why she’d said it so firmly, but Grant Bell had been trouble all his life, and there was no way she was inviting him into her house. Particularly now, when she had the baby to consider.

  And even more particularly now, when bits of her she’d thought would lie dormant forever were reacting, if not to his presence, then to the almost-forgotten memories he’d conjured up.

  Dear Reader,

  As a reader, I love “bad boy” books, but I’d never tried my hand at writing one of them until I was thinking about the characters for this book, and bad boy Grant Bell sprang, fully formed and clad in dusty leathers, into my head. But Grant’s a bad boy with a heart of gold, and he’s just what Kate Fenton needs as she struggles to cope with a new career and a new baby.

  Christmas comes with heat and sudden fierce thunderstorms in outback Australia, but in spite of that, we still follow the English traditions of pine trees, fake snow on windows, roast turkey and all the trimmings—in ninety- to one-hundred-degree heat. Crazy, isn’t it?

  But at least as you read this book, in your winter Christmas wonderland, you’ll get a little taste of Christmas in Australia, and hopefully enjoy celebrating with Grant and the woman he lovingly calls Katie.

  All the very best to all of you in this festive season, and may 2003 bring you good health and great happiness.

  Meredith Webber

  Christmas Knight

  Meredith Webber

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  TROUBLE rode into Testament on a hot sultry summer afternoon. The storm clouds hanging low above the lone motorcycle rider were nearly as black as the full suit of leathers he wore.

  The shiny black and chrome bike tooled slowly up the main street, then turned and came back down.

  ‘Here’s trouble,’ Mrs Ellis, on the stoop outside the newsagent’s, said to no one in particular.

  ‘Trouble if there’s more than one of them,’ Dick Harris, the local police sergeant, muttered to his constable.

  ‘Trouble looking for somewhere to stop!’ old man Carey, who was propping up the table by the window of the pub, told his mate Digger, though Digger showed little interest, continuing to sniff at a greasy spot on the pub floor as if it might offer a new taste sensation.

  The bike slowed outside the pub, and a helmeted head turned towards the building, as if the rider might be tempted to try a cold one, then the motor revved, and the rider continued. Down the street, past the school, then left towards the northern end of town.

  Another tourist passing through.

  Those inhabitants of Testament who’d seen him pass forgot about him, though perhaps with an unidentified sense of regret, as if a little excitement might have brightened up their lives.

  In the big house next door to the hospital, Kate Fenton knew nothing of this. She was in her bedroom, peering down into a crib and giving the little alien who’d so disrupted her life what for!

  ‘The trouble with you is,’ she said, to the now sleepin baby, ‘you’ve got no sense of timing. No understanding of the simple words, Wait just a minute. If we could sort this out, we might get somewhere, but, no, you’re just like your father—demanding instant gratification.’

  She heard her own words, cursed loudly, then added apologetically, ‘I’m sorry for that last remark. I swore I’d never use that “just like your father” phrase. After all, I’m the one who decided to have you, so I can hardly blame him for anything, can I? Particularly not when he’s washed his hands of both of us.’

  The baby moved milk-rimmed lips and slept on, while Kate studied the tiny face, the dark eyelashes like feathery caterpillars against the still crumpled skin, the miniature fingers clenched into fists as if the little scrap was ready to take on the world.

  ‘Damn, but you’re useless!’ she muttered, swearing for the second time in as many minutes. If she didn’t stop this habit right now, the ‘damn’ word would be the first the baby said.

  And that thought made her say it again, though she did promise herself it would be the last—the very last—time! ‘Jeez Louise’, her favourite expression of despair back when she was a student, still living at home, might work. Though it would mean dicing Louise from the ‘perhapses’ for a name.

  A rumbling outside made her glance towards the French doors, open to catch the slightest hint of breeze. The storm must be closer than she’d thought. Though the next sound, footsteps across the front veranda followed by a pounding on the front door, suggested the rumbling noise might have been something else.

  She cast one final and now worried glance at the baby, then walked, soft-footed, to the bedroom door, closing it behind her. Her stomach cramped with the anxiety that had been such a totally unexpected consequence of giving birth, she doubted she’d ever get used to it.

  Given the heat, the front door was also wide open, so, as she stepped into the hall, she saw the tall, dark-clad figure looming in the square of light, and beyond it, on the drive, a hulking black and silver monster of a motorbike. Her anxiety turned to panic.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she said, moving quickly as if speed might somehow lessen any risk to the baby.

  ‘Dr Fenton?’

  There was so much doubt and disbelief in the deep male voice that Kate found herself checking her body to make sure she was dressed. These days, if there’d been no morning surgery, she was just as likely to be in her night-attire at midday.

  But today she was OK—her post-pregnancy tummy squashed into old jeans, and a reasonably milk-free cropped top ending somewhere near her midriff.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, stepping more cautiously towards him now.

  ‘Katie Fenton, the bank manager’s daughter?’

  The ‘d’ word reverberated in her head again, but she managed to keep it internal, while peering at the leather-clad colossus leaning negligently on her doorjamb.

  Was she supposed to know him? Was it someone with whom she’d been at school?

  ‘You’re supposed to be pregnant!’ he said, in such accusing tones she almost apologised, but by now she could see his face more clearly, and a vague stirring of memory, more sensory than mental, was shifting her emotions to a new level of disquiet.

  ‘Pregnancies aren’t permanent, you know,’ she told him, telling herself it couldn’t possibly be Grant Bell. The Bells had all left town when the bank had foreclosed on their property—her father’s bank, in fact. She herself had heard Grant say no one would ever see him in Testament again—words which, at the time, had broken her heart…

  ‘You mean you’ve already had the baby? When? Where is it? You did keep it, I assume. And how the hell have you been handling the practice, childbirth and a new baby all on your own?’

  He sounded cross, but not nearly as cross as she was becoming, standing here in her own hall, being berated by a stranger—wheth
er he was Grant Bell or not.

  ‘With a great deal of difficulty, if you must know,’ she told him, hoping the ice she’d managed to inject into her voice might stop him asking personal questions. ‘Now, if you want to see me professionally, the surgery, which is through the side entrance to the yard, will open at six.’ Then she remembered it was Sunday. ‘No, it won’t, but you can go to the hospital and if they need me they’ll call.’

  She moved forward, intending to shut the door, then realised he was leaning against the hinged side of it.

  He must have guessed her intentions for he stepped backwards, but put up a hand.

  ‘It’s too darned hot to shut it. Anyway, I’m coming in.’

  He began to strip off his leather jacket as he spoke, peeling it away like a second skin, to reveal a lurid Hawaiian shirt, printed with unlikely flowers in shades of red, green and purple. Then, as the leather jacket was slung on a chair near the door, he started on the trousers, unzipping them, then easing them down over blue board shorts and long, solid legs with a sheen of dark hair slicked to them by the leather.

  Kate dragged her eyes away from the legs for long enough to recall his final sentence.

  ‘There’s no surgery today but the hospital is just next door,’ she repeated, because ‘no, you can’t come in’ would have sounded rude to a stranger. Certainly to a stranger bigger and stronger than she was.

  He glanced up from reefing his boots off his feet, and as he grinned at her, she realised it might, indeed, be Grant Bell.

  ‘I’ve not come as a patient, but as your knight in shining armour.’ He straightened and spread his arms wide as if presenting himself for inspection. ‘Do you still read fantasy romances, Katie Fenton?’

  ‘Kate, not Katie,’ she said in her most professional tones, then she realised her name wasn’t the point—his was! ‘Who are you?’

  Her visitor grinned, his blue eyes gleaming in his suntanned face.

  ‘You don’t go for the knight in shining armour? How about a knight in dusty leathers?’ Again he held out his arms. ‘Don’t you know me, Katie? Don’t you remember the boy who—?’

  Kate felt embarrassment start way down in her toes and wash upward through her body, so her thighs and breasts and cheeks all burned with it.

  ‘Grant? Grant Bell?’ Her voice was so faint—forget the voice, she was so faint—it was a wonder he heard it.

  ‘Aha, you do remember!’ he said, and she had a feeling his delight stemmed more from the hectic colour in her cheeks than from her muttered delivery of his name.

  ‘So! Shall I come in?’

  ‘No!’

  Kate wasn’t sure why she’d said it so firmly, but Grant Bell had been trouble all his life, and there was no way she was inviting him into her house. Particularly now, when she had the baby to consider.

  And more particularly now, when bits of her she’d thought would lie dormant for ever were reacting, if not to his presence then to the almost forgotten memories he’d conjured up.

  ‘No!’ she said again, frowning at him to reinforce the word, while he was studying her, if not with a frown then with a definitely puzzled look in his eyes.

  ‘But—’ he began.

  ‘No!’ she said again, then, right on cue, a thin wail rose above the distant rumble—this time it was thunder—and Kate knew it was only a matter of seconds before the wail became a demand and, seconds past that stage, a furious complaint.

  ‘The baby’s crying.’ Grant stated the obvious while Kate hesitated, wanting to shut the door, to shut him out, but knowing every other door onto the veranda was open so shutting this one was no guarantee of keeping him out. ‘How old is it? Was it premmie, or did you have your dates wrong?’

  He grinned as he asked the last question, and once again hot flushes of embarrassment flooded her body, as more memories returned to mortify her.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she gabbled at him, and now she did shut the door.

  As the noise had reached demand stage, she went straight to the bedroom, lifted the red-faced mite from the bassinet and held the tiny form against her shoulder, patting her gently on the back and murmuring soothing nothings to her.

  The baby obliged by burping sickly-sweet-smelling milk onto Kate’s shoulder, so she felt the dampness seep through her cotton top to her skin—skin which was still hot with memories of Grant Bell, explaining the facts of life to her, though using cattle as examples so her knowledge of sex, at twelve, was badly skewed.

  A mistake not sorted out in spite of sex education classes, until she was sixteen, when he’d demonstrated how it worked with humans, down by the creek, one hot and humid summer afternoon, two days before her father had foreclosed on Grant’s parents’ property and a month before the family had left the district for ever.

  ‘Didn’t you know I was coming? Didn’t Aunt Vi tell you?’

  The cause of her embarrassment walked through the French doors.

  ‘The baby looks as if it’s gone back to sleep. Is it a girl or a boy? What did you call it?’

  He’d never waited for an answer to his questions, Kate remembered, as she set aside the last series to concentrate on the first.

  ‘Tell me what?’ she demanded. ‘What was Vi supposed to tell me?’

  Once again, Grant spread his arms wide.

  ‘That I was coming,’ he said, so obviously pleased with himself Kate wanted to throw something.

  But all she had to hand was the baby, so that wasn’t a good idea.

  She settled the little one back into the bassinet, then, knowing for sure that Grant Bell on her veranda was better than Grant Bell in her house, she walked towards him, put one hand on his chest and pushed him back out the door.

  Well, she pushed and he backed up. Had he not wanted to move she doubted whether he’d have gone anywhere.

  ‘What’s with you?’ he complained, grasping her by the shoulders to stop her pushing him any further. ‘Why the antagonism? If anyone should be feeling leftover anger, it’s me, Angel-Face. After all, it was your father who tossed my family off the property.’

  ‘It was the bank that foreclosed. My father was just the instrument they used. He hated doing it,’ Kate told him, then she added, a little late and with far too little venom, ‘And don’t call me Angel-Face.’

  Broad shoulders lifted in a shrug and a cheeky smile that had, if anything, improved with the years stretched his lips.

  ‘Sorry, Katie,’ he said softly, and she had to step away from him before she could reply.

  ‘And don’t call me that either! Katie’s a kid’s name and, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m all grown up now.’

  Eyes as blue as summer skies skimmed across her body, scorching where they touched.

  ‘Oh, I’d noticed,’ he murmured, and the way he said it made her conscious of her untoned stomach, overly large breasts and the damp, smelly milk stain. ‘So, what do I call you? Katherine? Dr Fenton?’

  ‘You don’t have to call me anything, because you won’t be seeing any more of me. It would have been great to catch up, and I hope you enjoy your visit to Vi, but right now I’m flat out, what with the baby and the practice and all, so we might as well say goodbye and you can get on your bike and ride off into the sunset.’

  It was a pretty good speech, she thought, then her brain, which hadn’t been working well for months and seemed to have lost even more usable cells since she’d given birth, prompted her to add, ‘My friends call me Kate.’

  His smile finally faded, which made looking at him slightly easier, though now she could see past its attraction to the little lines fanned out from his eyes, the faint furrows in his forehead, the fine creases that smile had pressed into his cheeks.

  Grant Bell—all grown up!

  All grown up into a ruggedly handsome man.

  ‘Katie,’ he said, speaking slowly as if he realised her brain cells were dying by the million, ‘I’m here to stay. I’m your locum. Didn’t Vi explain? The woman who was to come took up a permane
nt position, and the agency was scrabbling to find someone. Vi knew I was at a loose end for a couple of months, so she got in touch and here I am.’

  He did the hands-outstretched thing again, as if offering himself to her as the answer not only to her problems but to all the troubles of the universe. Just so had he held his arms when, as a sexy, hormonally charged teenager, he’d offered himself to most of the girls in high school. Back then the gesture had meant ‘Hey, take me, I’m yours.’ And most of them probably had!

  Right now, Kate didn’t know what it meant, though she did know she shouldn’t even think about it.

  Grant Bell was trouble. He’d been trouble back then, and he was still trouble now. Just the way her body warmed to his gaze, and reacted to his grin, told her that. And now she was a mother, with an infant daughter to consider, someone like Grant Bell gave a whole new dimension to the ‘t’ word.

  She frowned at him, set aside, with difficulty, the ‘trouble’ thing and considered the words that had accompanied his gesture.

  ‘You’re here because my locum couldn’t make it?’ she said. She’d obviously lost far more brain cells than she’d realised. ‘But I need a doctor, not a—’ her eyes took in the lurid shirt and board shorts ‘—beach bum!’

  He managed to look hurt, but he’d been able to do that since she’d first met him when he’d pulled one of her ringletty curls in church, then had denied being the culprit when she’d turned to glare at him.

  ‘Beach bum?’ he echoed, with such incredulity it had to be false. ‘I’ll have you know I was on holiday when Aunt Vi’s summons came, and I left the waves at Byron Bay to come racing to your rescue.’ He grinned again. ‘The knight thing, you know.’

  ‘I think I’d better sit down,’ Kate muttered, while telling herself giving birth couldn’t possibly have killed all her brain cells.

  Ever the gentleman, Grant used his foot to hook a chair towards her, then, as she sank gratefully into it, he propped himself against the railing, folded his arms and gave the impression of a man willing to wait for ever, if she needed that long.