Morgan slid back the heavy stable door and followed Clancy inside, swatting snow from the brim of his stetson. “The point is, he’s nowhere near here or we’d know about it by now. Which means that as long as we keep an ear out for the news—and I’m counting on you there, Clancy; I don’t want her picking up on anything that might come across on the kitchen radio—we can afford to relax and enjoy the next few days.”
He cast a stealthy glance at his stable hand and chose his next words carefully. “It also means we can be a bit more hospitable to our house guest. No point in arousing her suspicions any more than we already have, nor in causing her more anxiety than she’s already got.”
“Could be you’re right. Don’t fancy having a hysterical woman on our hands should things suddenly go sour.”
“Exactly. And weren’t you the one, yesterday, reminiscing about a woman’s touch at Christmas, and how it used to be when Agnes was still alive?”
Clancy reared up like the stallion that had broken his thigh ten years before and left one of his legs permanently shorter than the other. “Jessica Simms ain’t Agnes!”
“But she can cook and clean, pal, and if this blizzard keeps up, knowing the house is warm and that dinner’s waiting on the table won’t be such a bad thing.”
“She still ain’t Agnes.” Clancy flung the statement over his shoulder, resentment rife in the crooked line of his spine.
Tamping down on the sharp reply begging for air space, Morgan tossed a fresh bale of hay into the nearest manger. Was Clancy getting more obstreperous with age, or was it that his own nerves were more on edge than he cared to admit?
“What do you want me to say? That we’ll gang up on Jessica Simms, just to keep ourselves in shape in case Gabriel Parrish shows up? Because if so you’re going to be disappointed. It’s almost Christmas Eve, for Pete’s sake, and I just don’t have any appetite for waging unnecessary war for the next couple of days. Because, with the best will in the world, the road crews are going to take at least that long to make it up here—”
“Don’t need to wait on no road crews,” Clancy informed him morosely. “You got a perfectly good snowmobile in the garage and could have that woman out of here in less than an hour, if you had a mind to.”
“And do what with her?” Morgan snapped. “Leave her stranded at Stedman’s service station? Use your head, Clancy! Even if her car’s fixed, she won’t be driving anywhere until the highway’s made passable again; nor will anyone else. Can’t you make the best of what’s just as lousy a situation for her as it is for us, or will it give you greater satisfaction to have us all at each other’s throats?”
“Lordy, Morgan Kincaid, you ain’t been this twitchy since your wife upped and left.” Clancy slewed a crafty glance his way. “Don’t like to think what that might mean.”
“Then quit thinking at all! That way you’ll jump to fewer wrong conclusions. A lot of people will tell you I can be a real bastard to deal with at times, and they’re right, especially when it comes to my work, but I’m damned if I’m going out of my way to be unpleasant just to satisfy you. If you can’t extend a bit of Christmas cheer to a stranger, Clancy, you’re welcome to hole up in your own quarters until the weather breaks and Jessica’s out of here.”
“You ain’t spoke to me in that tone in over three years, Morgan,” Clancy complained again. “Not since your ex took you to the cleaners in the divorce court then ran off to Mexico with her lover.”
Like a dentist’s drill coming too close to a nerve, Clancy’s last remark needled home. Morgan braced himself and grew very still, a bad sign to those who knew him in a professional context.
Clancy knew it, too. He sucked in a long-suffering breath and muttered, “But you’re the boss. If makin’ nice is what you’re suddenly payin’ me for, makin’ nice is what you’ll get.” He swung around and started for the mare’s stall at the far end of the stable, his limp more pronounced than usual as though to underline his resentment. “Not that I got to like it any. No, sir, I ain’t got to like it one little bit.”
CHAPTER FIVE
JESSICA took steaks from the freezer and left them to thaw for dinner, prepared ham and mushroom stuffed potatoes for lunch, then spent the remainder of the morning cleaning the house. A couple of hours of straight elbow grease effected a transformation that was only a little less amazing than the utter satisfaction she experienced as she polished and mopped.
Not that she was inept in such a role. Far from it, as the results of her efforts soon showed. But the lifestyle she’d chosen for herself, solitary and painstakingly professional, didn’t call for much in the way of domesticity.
A sense of home and hearth had been a luxury others had denied her as a child and from which necessity had distanced her as an adult. Her residence at the school was entirely self-contained, an austerely elegant little house set in a private section of the grounds, but she spent little time there. In addition to her administrative duties, the endless round of board meetings and other related fund-raising events intruded too frequently to allow for that.
Here, though, she was free to play at what other women took for granted as a routine part of daily life. For however long the weather held her captive, she could create the sort of ambience that had no place in her real life. She could hum carols as she worked, raid the preserves in the pantry and make mince tarts, and plan menus for the next two days.
And she did. With a vengeance. When the men and dogs showed up shortly after noon, the air was filled with the inviting aroma of hot mincemeat tarts subtly underscored by furniture wax and pine-scented floor cleaner.
Morgan and Clancy left their hats and boots in the mud room and she knew that they noticed how the kitchen sparkled from the way they sat gingerly at the gleaming table and sort of examined everything from under lowered brows, but there were no snide comments.
There was no conversation at all, in fact, unless the grunt issuing from Clancy Roper’s tight-lipped mouth was to be taken as appreciation of the food he apparently enjoyed, if the speed with which he wolfed it down was any indication. Instead, a miasma of hostility hung heavily between the two men, creating an even more pervasive and disquieting chill than the weather.
Even the dogs picked up on it, slinking under the table and remaining there throughout the meal. The atmosphere was about as cheery as a wake and so thoroughly destroyed the ambience she had worked hard to create that Jessica couldn’t keep quiet.
Atypically, she was spoiling for a fight, in part because Clancy put her back up in the way that he sniffed his disapproval of her, and in part to prove to herself that she wasn’t in thrall to some misplaced sexual fantasy where Morgan Kincaid was concerned.
It was, she reasoned, impossible to entertain erotic dreams about a man she found thoroughly obnoxious.
“Not that I expect either of you to go overboard with compliments or anything,” she said tersely as the last mince tart disappeared and both men pushed back their chairs, prepared to leave the table as taciturnly as they’d sat down, “but a simple ‘thank you’ would be appreciated. Or is it that, in filling your stomachs with good hot food, you consider I’m merely serving the purpose for which God intended me?”
“I seldom waste time trying to second-guess the Almighty, particularly when it comes to women,” Morgan replied with equal brevity.
As if members of the female sex in general and she in particular were an anomaly sent to try the patience of reasonable men! “Very broad-minded of you, I’m sure,” she spat. “And what time would you like me to serve dinner, master?”
Clancy snickered and Morgan said testily, “For crying out loud, stop acting as if you’re the scullery maid! I thought it was mutually agreed that you’d take care of things on the home front so that we could get through the outside work in reasonable time, but if you think your talents would be better employed in the stables all you have to do is say so.”
“Well...no.” Jessica had the grace to look embarrassed. “I don’t know muc
h about horses and I really don’t mind holding the fort in here.”
“We appreciate that—and the good food. Don’t we, Clancy?”
Clancy inclined his head a fraction and shuffled his stockinged feet. “If you say so.”
Morgan sighed in a way that suggested he was shouldering more troubles than Jessica could begin to understand, then spread his hands in appeal. “I know this isn’t the sort of Christmas either of you had in mind, and it isn’t exactly my idea of a picnic in the park either, but we’re stuck with it and each other. Can we please just try to make the best of it?”
“Yes,” Jessica said in a small voice. It wasn’t like her to be so temperamental. But then, nothing about her behavior had been quite normal since she’d met Morgan Kincaid.
“Okay. It starts to get dark about four, by which time we’ll be done with the animals, so why don’t we plan to eat around seven? That’ll give us time to clean up a bit and do justice to your cooking. We might even go so far as to enjoy a drink before dinner.” He swung another glance at his stable hand that was little short of a challenge. “Right?”
Clancy pasted an ingratiating smile on his weathered old face. “Whatever you say, boss.”
Morgan’s response was edged with steel. “Glad you’ve decided to see things my way.”
“Anythin’ else, Mr. Kincaid, sir, before I get back to what I’m bein’ paid to do?”
“Not a damn thing.” The reply gusted out on a breath of exasperation. “I’ll join you shortly, although if something comes up and you need me sooner you know where to find me.”
Clancy spared Jessica a direct glare for the first time since he’d come in for lunch. “You bet. Ain’t no doubt at all in my mind about where you’ll be.”
“Now what have I done to upset him?” she asked, when the door had slammed shut behind him and Ben.
“More than usual, you mean?” Morgan ran a weary hand through his hair.
Jessica stared at him in surprise. “You’re surely not saying he’s always this...?”
“Cantankerous?” He let out a bark of a laugh. “Not as a rule, no. Maybe it’s just the season. Not everyone likes to make a big deal of Christmas.”
But she didn’t believe him. The tree had been cut and ready to bring into the house when she’d shown up on the scene. “There’s more to it than that. He bitterly resents your letting me stay here, doesn’t he? And not just because I happened to bring out his wife’s best table linen.”
Morgan flexed his shoulders and, hooking his thumbs on his hips, pressed the fingers of each hand to the small of his back. “Don’t take offense, Jessica. It’s not you personally.”
She angled a wry look his way. “I see. He just hates people in general.”
At her sarcasm, the suggestion of a grin lightened Morgan’s expression. “He leads a pretty solitary life. Goes for weeks sometimes with no company other than the dogs and the horses, except for those days when the Wrights are here. That can be hard on a man’s party manners, especially if he suddenly finds himself thrust into the company of a woman.”
“I don’t buy that for a minute!” She scooped up the dirty dishes, piled them in the sink, and began rinsing them. “For heaven’s sake, Morgan, I’m a visitor who’ll be gone in a matter of days and who’s trying to earn her keep in the meantime, not a permanent threat to his lifestyle.”
“I know.”
“Not only that, he was married at one time and I assume from the way he reacted to my touching her things that he holds his wife’s memory sacred and that theirs was a long and happy marriage.”
A grimace passed over his face then, a strange, bitter expression that ironed Morgan’s mouth into an unsmiling seam. “That’s because he was smart enough to choose a woman who loved him enough to accept him for what he was and never tried to change him.”
So that was it! The suspicion she’d entertained last night, that there was a woman in Morgan Kincaid’s life, sharpened to near certainty. His inexplicable shifts of mood, the sudden edge in his voice complemented by a glacial sheen in his eyes found their origin in a marriage gone sour. If she’d guessed right, the question was, how significant a role did the absent wife presently enjoy?
Jessica itched to know and refused to ask. His matrimonial affairs were no more her business than her single status was his. Except that if a wife was lurking in the background, and Jessica could know that for certain, it would be enough to kill her lingering attraction to him. She might be all sorts of a fool where men were concerned, but she wasn’t idiot enough to repeat past mistakes.
“Something wrong, Jessica?”
“No.” She shook her head, as much to dislodge her thoughts as to answer him. “Shouldn’t you be getting back outside to help Clancy?”
“I can spare a few minutes to help you out in here first.”
“I can manage on my own,” she said hastily, more aware than ever that she was afraid to be alone with him. Afraid that the unholy thoughts she’d entertained the night before would return in full force and that, this time, she wouldn’t so easily be able to hide their effect on her.
Even now, she was thoroughly aware of him as he leaned against the edge of the counter and watched her doing the dishes. He had such long legs, such trim hips. He was trim all over, she thought, inspecting him slyly, but with the leanly muscled build of a man who worked off the frustrations of daily life in a gym or on a squash court rather than around horses. In fact, he neither spoke nor looked like her idea of a rancher. But then, most of what she knew she’d learned from movies.
Picking up a dish towel, he began drying the cutlery she’d stacked on the draining board. “No need to tackle it alone when an extra pair of hands will cut the job in half,” he said.
“I like to keep busy,” she replied, disturbingly aware of his shoulder mere inches from hers, of his elbow brushing her arm as he reached for the soup spoons.
“And you will, if you’re serious about our using the other rooms over the holiday. I don’t think they’ve seen the working end of a dust rag in the better part of a year.”
“Shame on you,” she said lightly, concentrating on the dishes in the sink, which were a much safer subject than his physique. “You should make your regular housekeeper earn her money.”
He finished drying the last of the cutlery and flung down the dish towel. “You’ve rinsed those plates to within an inch of their lives,” he chided her, tucking the tail of his shirt into the narrow waist of his blue jeans. “If you’re determined you’re not going to let me help you finish them, then leave them to drip dry and let’s get out of this kitchen.”
“You mean I’m allowed to put my feet up for half an hour?”
“Hell, no.” He grinned at her, suddenly seeming younger and more carefree than he had at any time since he’d found her in the avalanche shed. “We’re going to light those fires you were asking for, and bring in the Christmas tree. Then I’m going to get my hide outside before Clancy nails it to the wall, and you’re going to get busy turning this place into a Dickensian Christmas card.”
But although the fires started easily enough the tree wasn’t quite so cooperative. Despite Morgan’s best efforts, it wouldn’t stand straight in the big brass planter he hauled in from his office. In the end, Jessica had to support the trunk while he jammed pieces of firewood around the base to hold it firmly in place, and by the time that was accomplished she had pine needles in her hair and down her neck, another half hour had passed, and he was swearing fluently.
“Damned thing!” he muttered, finally crawling out from under the lower boughs. “Why couldn’t Clancy have cut something smaller?”
But Jessica, stepping back to take in the general effect, was overawed by the graceful symmetry of the branches and the way the top of the tree almost brushed the high ceiling. “It’s perfect!” she breathed. “Morgan, it’s the most beautiful Christmas tree I’ve ever seen.”
He grimaced at the pine sap staining his hands. “I find that hard to b
elieve. You don’t strike me as the type who’d ever settle for anything less than perfection.”
“That just goes to show how little you know about me,” she said, recalling the sterile silver foil imitation of the real thing that had been Aunt Edith’s idea of Christmas decor. “Tacky clichés aren’t my style, dear,” she’d sneered, the one year Jessica had dared ask for the kind of traditional tree she remembered from the days when her parents were alive.
“True.” Morgan gave the trunk a last nudge to make sure it was standing firm. “We are, as you’ve already pointed out, virtual strangers, yet here we are playing house together, so don’t you think it’s time we got to know each other a little better?”
Playing house. That was it exactly. They’d been forced into taking part in a charade, but none of it was real. In a few days she’d be on her way, their separate lives would pick up where they’d left off, and a week from now he’d have erased her from memory. The tree would be tossed outside and discarded, its purpose served. And she would never see this place or him again.
Jessica found the thought profoundly depressing.
“Aren’t you going to gratify my curiosity?”
Realizing that he was observing her closely, she sought to distract him by plucking at a strand of dead grass clinging to a lower limb of the tree. “I thought you were in a hurry to get back to the stables.”
He watched her a moment longer, then said, “You’re right. The story of your life will have to wait until later.”
Fascinate him with tales of her hopeless inability to inspire others to love her as they always so easily loved her sister? Hardly!
“The story of my life,” she told him firmly, “isn’t exactly the kind of thing that makes for riveting dinner conversation.”
Unexpectedly, he reached out and smoothed his hand over her hair, removing several stray pine needles as he did so. “Let me be the judge of that.”
The contact, though brief, was electrifying. She had a sudden insane urge to imprison his hand against her face, to turn her head and press her mouth to his resin-stained palm. Instead, she shook herself free of him.
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