A Miracle for Christmas (Harlequin Romance)

by Grace Green

  ‘Steph...your parents?’

  ‘I haven’t told them. If they knew I was traveling on my own, they’d worry. We can talk once I get there.’

  ‘And the Warmest Fuzzies Toy Store?’

  ‘Joyce’s going to look after the store, and her daughter Gina’s going to help out. Apparently Gina’s expecting a baby in June, and she and her boyfriend are saving to get married, so the extra cash will come in handy.’

  ‘You seem to have everything under control.’ Janey took charge of two of the orange bags and led the way out to the corridor. ‘How long will you be on the road?’ she asked over her shoulder as Stephanie had a last look around.

  ‘Four or five hours.’ Trailing the remaining bags behind her, Stephanie followed her friend along the lobby of the triple decker building. ‘Since it’s the day before Christmas Eve, the traffic will in all likelihood be busy, but there’s been no new snow for the last few days so the roads should be okay...

  ‘With luck, I should reach Rockfield before dark.’

  The day was bright when Stephanie left Boston, but by the time she reached Montpelier, where she stopped at an Esso station to fill her gas tank, the sky had changed ominously from its previous milky blue to a bruised charcoal gray.

  ‘Darkness is settin’ in early today.‘ The strawhaired attendant squinted heavenward as he returned her Visa card. ‘And a bad storm forecast for tonight. Goin’ far?’

  ‘Rockfield.’

  ‘Rockfield, huh? Watch out for them narrow mountain roads once you leave the highway. They can be right tricky this time of year.’

  She gave him a wry smile as she agreed with him. And as he jogged away to attend a waiting truck, Stephanie promised herself she would indeed be very careful as she tackled those ‘right tricky’ mountain roads.

  But when she turned the key in the ignition and a foreboding silence greeted her, she had to ask herself if she would be driving those roads that day at all. And after six increasingly frantic attempts to start the engine, she surrendered to the inevitable. Getting out, she clutched her coat around herself and made for the service bay, her nostrils prickling as they were exposed to the frosty air.

  A mechanic came out and inspected the van’s innards. ‘Yup,’ he said, ‘we can fix ’er, but we won’t get to ‘er till tonight. You can pick ’er up after we close at nine.’

  Nine! Good Lord, how was she going to fill in the time till then!

  The mechanic directed her to a nearby mall, where she browsed aimlessly for a couple of hours, had a burger and then lingered for a long while over several cups of coffee, before taking in a movie. When she came out of the mall at quarter to nine, a gusty wind was whipping along the dark street—an icy cold wind, with the smell of fresh snow in it. Chin tucked into her coat collar, she hurried along to the gas station.

  The van was ready and the repair cost a bundle. But as she headed out to Route 89, she decided that by the time her Visa bill came in, she should be able to meet it.

  At least she had her van... and it was now reliable.

  The blizzard struck after she’d left the highway.

  She was on a side road, and emerging from the shelter of a covered bridge, when it hit with sudden savage force. Snow billowed down over the windshield, blinding her for a few unnerving seconds till she got the wipers going.

  Oh, Lord, she thought, slowing as she peered into the porridge-thick mass and concentrated on keeping to her own side of the road, what have I let myself in for? If only Tony were here—

  Scrub that thought! Anthony Howard Gould III was a fake—all style, and no substance. She needed him like she needed a hole in her head!

  She had been driving for the best part of an hour when she realized to her dismay that somewhere along the way—disoriented by the storm—she had taken a wrong turning.

  She knew that by this time she should have been climbing up the gentle mountain slope leading to Rockfield, not, as she was doing now, going downhill, leading to...?

  With a feeling of growing horror, she noted that the gradient here was fast becoming dangerously steep. She braked, but the van gathered speed, continued to gather speed. Damn! She pressed her foot down on the pedal more firmly, praying the van would slow its pace. It didn’t.

  She panicked. Rammed her foot to the boards.

  The van slewed into a sideways skid.

  With her fingers clawed around the steering wheel, she peered desperately into the dark and swirling storm.

  And didn’t even see the snowbank till she was in it.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DAMIAN MCALLISTER groaned, and with a feeling of utter despair, buried his stubbled face deep into his pillow.

  ‘Go away.’ His muffled entreaty came out hoarsely. ‘For God’s sake...go away and leave me alone...’

  The hammering and the bell-ringing—loud, persistent, demanding—continued unabated... perhaps even with renewed vigor...and the bell shrill enough to waken the dead. Which was exactly what he wished he was...

  At first he’d thought the sounds existed only in his head, another torture inflicted on him by the flu that had grabbed him by the throat the day he left Boston and had brought him to his knees, literally, when he reached his destination and staggered from his car to the front door.

  And now that door, he surmised with another, deeper groan, was going to crash in at any moment. Whatever his visitor wanted, it was patently obvious he had no intention of leaving till he got it.

  Better get up and get it over with.

  It took him a few minutes to crawl out of bed, find a pair of jeans, drag them on, zip them up, with curses erupting all the while. Keeping himself vertical by grabbing one piece of furniture after the next, he stumbled to the bedroom door. Descending the stairs might present more of a challenge, he acknowledged grimly. But he made it, though by the time he got to the last step, he was more than ready to call it a day. Or a night? He’d left all the lights on when he arrived on Tuesday, and now he could see blackness pressing in through the ground-floor windows.

  He lurched across the hall and fell against the front door, hitting it with his shoulder. As he dragged back the dead bolt, the bell shrilled again, paining his eardrums.

  ‘Hang on,’ he croaked. ‘Don’t be so damned impatient.’

  He flung open the door.

  And two things happened at once.

  Firstly, an arctic wind blasted his naked chest with a brutality that sucked the air from his lungs.

  And secondly, he saw that his visitor was not a man.

  He stared disbelievingly at the woman gazing back at him with eyes that were as wide and startled as his own. Her clothes were partially snow-encrusted, but in the light from the overhead lamp, even with the snowflakes whirling around her, he could see her coat was bright red; her boots were black; her rakishly tilted toque was red with white trim...

  And the small sack slung over her shoulder was leather. Creamy white leather. Butter soft. Crammed full. And in it...dear God, over her shoulder, from the top of the sack, peered a...teddy bear?

  The stranger said, in a husky voice, breathless and more than a bit shaky, ‘Oh, thank heavens!’ She swung die sack down and rested it on the stoop. ‘I was beginning to think there was no one home!’

  Santa Claus...

  Female version.

  Ho, ho, ho!

  But shouldn’t she have come down the chimney?

  Damian shuddered. His legs wobbled and he grabbed the edge of the door to keep himself upright. He felt every inch of his bare flesh shrink from the icy air.

  ‘Go away,’ he croaked. ‘You’ve come to the wrong place. I don’t do Christmas.’

  The creature swayed toward him as he started to close the door. Her eyes were pleading. And as she cried ‘Wait!’ he noticed something else. Those eyes—as green as pine and exquisitely fringed with silky brown lashes—were dark with exhaustion...and redrimmed, as if she’d been crying.

  He hesitated. A voice of caution whispered in so
me sane but distant part of his brain—

  ‘May I please come in and use your phone?’ she begged. ‘You see I’ve had an accident. My van’s stuck in a snowbank at the end of your drive—’

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Bumped. Winded. Shocked. But thankfully not hurt. I just need to call for a tow truck for my van. Then I’ll be out of your way...honestly...as soon as I possibly can.’

  Van? Shouldn’t it have been...reindeer? Damian tried to hold onto the voice of caution but in the face of the stranger’s desperate pleading, it faded away.

  With a sigh of surrender, he swept a hand sideways.

  She kicked the snow off her boots and walked past him, bringing in with her a flurry of snowflakes, and the faint scent of French perfume.

  He slammed the door, and with a tilting gait, followed her into the living room.

  ‘Your phone?’ she asked.

  ‘Over there.’ He cleared his raspy throat, gestured vaguely toward the massive oak coffee table, shivered and wrapped his muscled arms around his chest. ‘Help yourself.’

  She put the sack down; it hovered, and fell over. The bear looked up unblinkingly as the stranger whisked off her toque and shook out a tumbled mass of glorious curls that were the same rich silky brown as Belgian chocolates. Her brow was sweet, her nose pert, her chin dimpled. She unbuttoned the coat and glancing at him, she murmured, ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll take this off otherwise I’ll feel the cold terribly when I go out again.’ She crossed to the fireplace, shook the snow into the empty hearth and draped the garment over a wing chair adjacent to the fire. She was wearing a ribbed red sweater, he noted vaguely, and—tucked into her boots—a pair of neatly fitting cream slacks that revealed a very attractive—

  ‘Where am I?’ She looked around at him, and he saw that her lips were curved in a wry smile. ‘When I tell the tow truck people to come, I’ll have to tell them where.’

  The fever was burning him up. The chills were making him shiver. Her words were echoing in his head in a diminishing spiral. Suddenly all he could think of was getting back to bed, burying himself under the covers.

  ‘Tell them it’s the McAllister place on the Tarlity side road,’ he growled. ‘Look, I’ve got this damned flu and I’m not in any state to entertain. Make yourself at home till the truck comes—phone book’s under the table. Call Grantham Towing—Bob’s the only game in town, but he’s reliable.’ Groggily he tipped two fingers to his brow in a salute, and wheeling around in a quick move that made his head swim, he made his way unsteadily to the stairs.

  When he was halfway up, he heard the riffle of pages and guessed she was hunting the phone book for the number. By the time he reached the landing, she was talking to someone.

  He swung the bedroom door shut behind him, and it closed with a loud click. Reeling across the room, he plunged into bed, fumbled for the duvet and pulled it up over his marble-cold shoulders.

  But even as he told himself he’d never sleep nor ever in this life get warmed up again, he went out like a light.

  ‘I’m sorry, miss. We can’t possibly make it tonight.’

  ‘Are you absolutely sure? Thing is, Mr. Grantham, I’m stranded at the back of beyond with a complete stranger.’ Stephanie lowered her voice and went on, in little more than a whisper, as she glanced furtively at the stairs. ‘For all I know, the man might be a serial killer—’

  A hearty laugh came across the line, making her jump. ‘You said you were calling from the McAllister place?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Hell, I’ve known McAllister for years. The man’s a loner but he’s no more a serial killer than I am—’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Take my word for it. Gotta go—the switchboard’s lit up like a Christmas tree! I’ll send somebody out tomorrow for sure...depending, of course, on the weather.’

  And with that, the owner of Grantham Towing hung up.

  At her end, Stephanie dropped the telephone onto the cradle. Well, she challenged herself, what am I to do now!

  There was only one answer to that. She would have to ask the growly McAllister man if she could spend the night. No, not ask. She would have to tell him she was going to have to spend the night.

  Tugging off her boots, she made for the stairs with reluctant steps, shivering though the house was quite warm.

  Certainly Mr. Grantham of Grantham Towing had vouched for her host, but after all, she had no proof that the man upstairs was McAllister. The tall stranger wearing nothing but a scowl and a pair of tight blue jeans—her shiver intensified—could, of course, be McAllister. Or—and she felt her heartbeat take a flying leap into space—he could be an ax murderer who had already slain McAllister and was at this moment lying in wait upstairs for his next victim.

  When she reached the upstairs landing, she saw four doors. Three were open. Feeling like Goldilocks, she tiptoed around the landing and peeked in the open doors. The rooms were unoccupied. She moved to the fourth door.

  Turning the handle quietly, she pushed, inch by silent inch. In the dim light filtering in from the landing, she could make out a king-size bed, with a puffy plaid duvet. Under the duvet she saw the sprawled shape of a man, whose black hair formed a dark shadow against a white pillow.

  ‘Mr. McAllister—’ she addressed him in a hiss, from just inside the door ‘—are you awake?’

  There was no answer.

  Biting her lip, she took six tentative steps forward, and heard a rhythmic snoring, half-muffled by the pillow. She took another six steps, and was now close enough to touch him. Which she did. A light pressure, with the tips of her fingers, on what looked to be his rump. ‘Mr. McAll—’

  The figure jerked spasmodically, erupted in a groan and croaked, ‘Go away!’ and burrowed deeper under the duvet.

  ‘I have to stay the night.’ Stephanie said the words clearly, but the hammering of her heart made them vibrate. ‘I just thought I ought to let you know. Is it all right?’

  She thought he hadn’t heard her. She waited for a long moment. Then, as she was about to turn away uncertainly, his right arm came flailing out. The thumb, she saw in the glimpse she got before his arm dropped limply over the edge of the bed, was turned up.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and crept away, closing the door softly behind her.

  Going into the nearest bedroom, she dragged the duvet off the bed, and along with a pillow, took it downstairs to the living area.

  A quick reconnaissance of the main floor in search of a bathroom revealed a modern kitchen; a dining room adjacent to the living area; an invitingly cosy TV room; and—she was just about to give up hope when she found it—a powder room.

  It took her only a few minutes to get washed and ready to turn in. Then, clad in her red T-shirt nightie, with her hair in a ponytail, she turned off all the lights save the one on the table by the sofa she’d chosen for her bed.

  Before she cuddled down under the duvet, she reached out to switch off the lamp—and paused nervously as she noticed how the lone light cast eerie shadows around the room... over the Oriental rugs, over the tall bookcases, over the plump cushions on the low-slung seating...and over a massive oil painting whose spooky atmosphere gave her the creeps. Gothic, she thought with a shiver, very Gothic!

  And as she fell into a fitful sleep, her last conscious thought...more of an apprehensive prayer, actually, than a thought...was that if the man upstairs was not McAllister but an ax murderer, his weapon would be sharp and her end mercifully quick.

  What a helluva night it had been!

  Damian McAllister rolled over onto his back, and stared bleary-eyed at the ceiling. Hallucinations were one thing—he’d had them a few times before when a bad flu had driven his temperature to abnormally high levels—but hallucinations like those he’d experienced over the past few hours were something else. They’d seemed as real to him as the mattress under his back.

  Of course he was used to having nightmares around Christmas time—he’d been torm
ented by them since he was a kid...though they had, of course, become much worse during the past five years, since—

  He swiped a shaky hand over his eyes.

  Don’t think about that.

  With an effort, he dragged his thoughts from the past.

  Sweeping the duvet aside, he swung himself off the bed, and on legs that threatened with every step to give way under him, made his way across to the ensuite bathroom.

  Once there, he planted his palms on the counter and stared starkly at his reflection in the mirror.

  ‘Ye gods!’ The man staring back at him looked like a criminal from an America’s Most Wanted poster. Black hair sticking up every which way, jaw scruffily bearded, eyes shot with blood—the red striations on the whites forming a lurid contrast to the steel blue irises.

  He needed a shower and a shave...desperately needed a shower and a shave...but he was pretty sure he’d keel over if he tried to stand upright in the shower stall. First he had to get something in his stomach. And a cup of coffee would hit the spot.

  He closed his eyes. Coffee. He wanted it so damned badly he could swear he smelled the fragrance in the air, aromatic and devilishly tantalizing...

  ‘...and the storm that hit northeastern Vermont late yesterday, shows no signs of letting up...’

  Damn! Stephanie frowned as she snapped off the Sony ghetto blaster she’d clicked on when she’d come through to the kitchen ten minutes earlier. Pouring herself a mug of coffee from the six-cup pot, she crossed to the patio doors facing what was possibly the back of the house. She stared out, though she might as well have saved herself the bother, she thought bleakly. There was nothing to be seen but white. And Grantham Towing, she surmised as she took the first sip of her coffee, would be as likely to send someone down the treacherously steep Tarlity side road in this blizzard as they would send one of their trucks to the moon.