He smiled down at her, easy and relaxed in contrast to the stifling tension gripping her. “You look as if you’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards. Are you sure you can handle trimming this monster by yourself? It’s nearly ten feet tall, you know.”
“Provide me with decorations and a stepladder, and I’ll manage.”
She always managed—to repress the craving for love that so easily backfired and ended up hurting her, to hide her fear of rejection, to project an air of cool independence. These were the parameters within which she lived and she would do well to remember that, instead of straying beyond them to weave dangerous romantic fantasies around Morgan Kincaid.
“A stepladder I have,” he said, “and you’ll find plenty of decorations in the storage closet under the stairs, though I should warn you that they’ll take some sorting out. Clancy and I just jammed everything into boxes last year without regard for any sort of order. It was the first Christmas after Agnes’s death and postholiday depression struck pretty hard.”
He hadn’t exaggerated. It took her the rest of the afternoon to untangle the lengths of colored lights she found in the first box, and check for burned-out bulbs. Finally satisfied that they were all working, she pulled the stepladder close to the tree and began threading the lights through the branches, becoming so absorbed in the task that she barely noticed the afternoon slipping away.
All her concentration was focused on bringing the tree to light and life before the men came back; to have made a start on creating that Dickensian Christmas card Morgan had talked about.
They finished in the stables earlier than Morgan had expected, mostly because Clancy was still sulking and refused to be drawn into conversation. It had started to snow again, bitter, persistent little flakes that stung Morgan’s face as he tramped back to the house at about a quarter to four.
There was no sound of activity when he let himself in the back door, no sign of dinner being prepared, and he wondered, with a stab of dismay, if she’d been foolhardy enough to ignore his warning about remaining safely indoors.
Moving on silent feet down the hall, he placed the flat of his hand against the living-room door and nudged it ajar. “Jessica?”
He heard her gasp of alarm, saw the swirl of her skirt and a brief flash of thigh as she teetered atop the stepladder, and was across the room in an instant. “Steady,” he murmured, reaching up to anchor her at her waist.
She swayed beneath his touch, and said breathlessly, “Oh, you startled me!”
“Sorry,” he said, despising the weakness that made him want to slide his hands over her hips and down the elegant length of her legs. Until that moment, he had not realized how long and shapely they were. “I thought you’d be done by now.”
“Heavens, no! I’ve only just finished stringing lights.” She stretched up to secure the illuminated silver star that belonged on the top of the tree, and he instinctively tightened his hold on her, this time aware of how tiny her waist was, how delicately rounded her hips. “There, that should do it.”
“Let’s turn them on, then, and see how they look.” He turned away as she stepped daintily down the ladder and wondered just how it had come about that he no longer saw her as a nun-like creature beyond the pale of a man’s unruly appetite.
Dismayed more than he cared to admit by the conflicting emotions she aroused in him, he bent down to plug the electric cord into a nearby outlet and heard her exhalation of pleasure as the room filled with soft light.
“Oh,” she sighed, clasping her hands under her chin in pure delight. “Oh, Morgan, look! It’s magical!”
But he looked at her instead, and what he saw on her face left him speechless. She looked radiant and innocent and young and beautiful and nothing at all like the severe, uptight woman he’d so reluctantly accepted into his home a mere twenty-four hours before.
The lights shimmered in the gleam of her hair, in the depths of her eyes, and painted alluring shadows beneath her cheekbones and down her throat. The plain navy skirt hung in graceful folds about her calves and the tailored white blouse, stained with rainbow reflections from the tree, molded itself to her with an intimacy that left him sour with envy.
“You look pretty magical yourself, Jessica Simms,” he said thickly, his gaze clinging to hers.
It was as well that the back door thumped open just then or he might have made the colossal mistake of touching her. As it was, there came the slither of wet paws down the hall and the next minute Shadow tore into the room, tongue lolling and tail threatening terrible damage to the tree.
“I guess I should start thinking about dinner,” Jessica said, laughingly fending off the exuberant dog.
Morgan cornered the retriever and grabbed her by the collar. “Why don’t I take over kitchen duty tonight,” he suggested, “and leave you to finish what you started in here? It would be nice to have the tree—as well as us—all dressed up for dinner.”
“Your taking over kitchen duty isn’t part of our deal.”
Nor was finding himself embarrassingly aroused by her proximity! “I’ll make an exception just this once—unless you’re willing to settle for eating at the kitchen table again.”
“No.” She spun away from him and surveyed her handiwork thus far. “It won’t take me long to finish the tree now, so...” the lights struck a garish note beside the uncertain sweetness of the smile she angled at him over her shoulder “...if you’re sure you don’t mind taking care of dinner that’ll leave me enough time to finish cleaning the dining room.”
“It’s a deal,” he said, and seized the chance to put the length of the house between them before he made a complete fool of himself.
The decorations were an odd mix. One carton contained a glossy assortment of electric-blue glass balls that shrieked designer choice, another held an artificial tree done up to look like a snow-encrusted fir.
But then she found another box on another shelf containing treasures that went back fifty years or more. Delicate spun-glass ornaments spangled with stars, cranberry velvet bows sewn with tiny seed-pearls, hand-crocheted snowflakes so light and fine they’d drift in the air just like the real thing. And lengths of silver bells joined to each other by silver beads which awoke in Jessica a memory of a time she seldom allowed herself to think of any more, when her parents were alive and she was about four, and they’d all gone to her maternal grandmother’s for Christmas and that house, too, had been filled with silver bells and beads and a tall, fragrant tree.
Discarding all the others, Jessica took this last box into the living room and set to work. Some ornaments she dangled precariously from the very tips of the pine’s branches, others she hid closer to the trunk where they winked shyly among the lights.
Satisfied at last that the tree was as close to perfect as she could make it, she arranged a few remaining blownglass items in a crystal bowl and set them on the coffee table where they picked up the light from the fire and flung it back in blazing prisms of burgundy and gold.
She polished the tarnish from silver candlesticks in the dining room and fitted them with tall white candles she found in a drawer. She washed the dust from the beveled glass doors and left them open so that the fresh piny scent of the tree could filter through from the living room.
She swabbed cobwebs from the fine brass chandelier above the long oak table, and vacuumed the rugs back to life. And when all the furniture in both rooms glowed from her efforts she searched through the linen drawer in the bottom of the sideboard and found a big white damask cloth and a set of matching serviettes.
“It’s quitting time. Jessica. Put your dust mop away and—” Morgan poked his head around the door just as she finished laying out the heavy silver she’d discovered in the silver chest. But when he saw the transformation that had taken place in the two rooms he stopped and stared, and said quietly, “Well, I’ll be damned!”
Somewhat apprehensively, she said, “Is it all right?”
He shook his head wonderingly. “It’s
a lot better than all right.” Then, raising his voice, he called out, “Clancy, come in here and take a look at what’s happened!”
Jessica heard the stable man’s footsteps coming down the hall and braced herself for the silent scorn he’d level at her. But when he, too, saw what she’d done his jaw went slack with amazement and, although she couldn’t be certain, she thought that his eyes filmed with tears. “You brought out all Agnes’s things,” he said huskily. “All the little bits and pieces she made over the years that the other one shoved to one side.”
Jessica glanced at Morgan, wondering if she’d inadvertently committed another unforgivable sin, but he shook his head reassuringly as Clancy slowly crossed to the tree and touched one of the crocheted snowflakes with a calloused fingertip.
“Made one of these every year, she did,” he said, half to himself. “Used to say they were for the babies God never gave her.”
“She’d be glad to see them brought out again.” Morgan went to stand beside him and slung an arm over his shoulder.
Clancy ignored him and switched his rheumy gaze to Jessica. “What else you gone and found, woman?”
“I...um...nothing.” She indicated the table in the dining room and sent another uncertain glance winging Morgan’s way. “Except for the table linens and the sterling. But if you’d rather—”
“Best get the good china out, then,” Clancy declared, any trace of emotion firmly under control again. “Ain’t no point doing things half-assed.”
But Morgan insisted she’d done enough for one day and sent her upstairs to take a shower. When she came down again in a fresh skirt and clean blouse, the table was set, and the men were sprawled in armchairs beside the fire with the dogs at their feet, and chatting amiably. Whatever tension had sprung up between them that morning seemed long gone and they were friends again.
Morgan offered her sherry while Clancy piled another log on the fire. “Shoot, why not?” he said, dusting off his hands on the seat of his pants and accepting the glass of rye whisky Morgan had poured for him. “Reckon we’re going to celebrate Christmas whether we ought to or not, so we might as well enjoy it.”
The way he said “ought” struck a vaguely discordant note, as though there was something wrong with what they were doing, but Jessica wasn’t about to question him on it. It was enough that he’d called off his private vendetta against her. He even unbent far enough to help clean up after dinner—“since you’re so persnickety about not leaving a mess behind, woman,” he said, with the closest thing to a smile yet to cross his face.
He left and took the dogs to his own quarters shortly after, going out by the front door for a change. Morgan and Jessica stood in the lee of the veranda, watching until they saw lights go on in the windows above the stables.
It had stopped snowing by then and a cold moon shone over the land, leaving the air so crystalline that it almost chimed. “Breathtaking, isn’t it?” Morgan said, gazing out at the frozen grandeur spread before them.
“Yes.” Jessica hunched her shoulders against the chill penetrating the thin fabric of her blouse.
He noticed and pulled her into the shelter of his arm, in an unselfconscious, brotherly sort of way that nevertheless sent a thrill of excitement charging through her. “You and your damned wardrobe,” he grumbled, but there was no real annoyance in his tone any more.
“If I’d known I was going to be moon-watching in minus thirty-degree weather, I’d have brought along my full-length furs,” she said, unable to control her chattering teeth.
He swung her around and led her back inside the house. “You don’t own any furs,” he said confidently, steering her toward the hearth.
She crouched before the fire and held out her hands to its leaping warmth. “What makes you so sure?”
“No woman who sees Rudolph on her plate instead of venison stew would stoop to wearing animal skins on her back,” he said, selecting a bottle from one of the sideboard cupboards and pouring an inch of cognac into two snifters.
Jessica smiled. “Perhaps you know me better than I thought.”
He handed her a cognac then lowered himself into his chair again, legs stretched out so that his feet almost touched her. “But not as much as I’m beginning to think I’d like to know you.”
When she didn’t reply, he nudged her with his toe. “Don’t go all coy on me, Jessica. I’ve never enjoyed playing twenty questions.”
“There’s nothing much to tell.” She shrugged and cradled the cognac snifter in both hands. “I have a sister, which you already know. I’m gainfully employed. I have no known allergies, don’t smoke, only drink socially and then not much.”
“And you’re single.”
“Yes,” she said, and seized the chance to satisfy the most burning question she had for him. “Are you?”
He smiled lazily. “We’re not talking about me and you’re not going to wriggle off the hook by trying to change the subject. What line of work are you in?”
“I’m the headmistress of a private girls’ school on Springhill Island in the Gulf of Georgia.”
“I should have guessed!” His burst of laughter cut her to the quick. “It suits you to a T!”
Deciding she’d rather eat worms than let him see the wound he’d inflicted, she said, “Doesn’t it just? Strait-laced spinster schoolmarm all the way, that’s me.”
He sobered, as though he’d heard something more than the words she’d tossed out so airily. “That’s not exactly how I see you, Jessica.”
“Why ever not?” She turned her face away from his probing stare and concentrated on the flames leaping up the chimney. “Everyone else does. I’m the plain sister, the intimidatingly sensible one. If glamor and excitement were what you’d hoped to find to brighten the season when you so kindly rescued me, I’m afraid you chose the wrong woman.”
“I wasn’t looking for any kind of woman,” he said, leaning forward to capture her shoulders and pull her back against his knees. “But now that you’re here I can’t say I regret having found you.”
“Because I’m such a good housekeeper,” she said, despising the quaver of self-pity she heard in her voice. What a pathetic creature she was, practically begging for his approval.
She felt his breath ruffle her hair, the weight of his chin rest on the crown of her head. “Why do you persist in selling yourself short all the time, Miss Simms?”
Why did he persist in asking questions? In talking, instead of taking advantage of the situation? They were a man and a woman alone in a house for the night, with Christmas lights spilling magic into the room and the scent of freshly cut pine in the air.
It was the perfect setting, the perfect opportunity. If Selena had been the one taking refuge in his house, he’d have kissed her by now. Probably done a lot more than kiss her, in fact. “I’m realistic, that’s all. And it’s not as if you were overjoyed to have me land on your doorstep.”
“No,” he murmured, lifting the heavy loop of her hair and caressing the back of her neck. “But that was then and this is now. As for finding you plain....”
He left the sentence dangling, which was almost worse than if he’d ended it by allowing that she couldn’t help how she looked. But then, when she’d just about decided she couldn’t take his ambiguous silence a moment longer, he finished, “I don’t find you plain at all, Jessica. On the contrary, I find you quite irresistibly lovely.”
Just for a second everything in the room seemed to hang in frozen tension, in the same way that a concert hall filled with breathless suspense as the conductor raised his baton. The pretty Christmas tree ornaments stopped twirling, the lights ceased their tiny reflective flickerings. Even the flames in the hearth grew still, their crackle silenced and their heat quite unequal to the task of outshining the sudden fire in her blood.
She held onto that moment as long as she could, then came straight out and asked him, “Are you married, Morgan?”
“No,” he replied in a low voice, leaving one less hurdle
between them. “Not any more.”
She took a deep breath. “And do you find me intimidatingly sensible?”
“I don’t intimidate that easily, Jessica.”
She dared then to turn her head and look at him, because she had to read the truth in his eyes as she asked him the one question that she simply had to know the answer to. “Then why haven’t you tried to make love to me?”
CHAPTER SIX
MORGAN was blown away, by the question, certainly, and the honesty that inspired it, and by the leap of arousal with which his flesh responded to it, but most of all what moved him was the utter devastation he saw in Jessica’s eyes as she waited for his answer.
“Do you think the idea hasn’t crossed my mind a dozen times?” he said.
She lowered her eyes then and would have turned away from him, but he forestalled her by holding her chin firmly between his thumb and finger. “No,” she whispered, a delicate wash of color flooding her face. “I didn’t think you’d even noticed me, except as an inconvenience that suddenly managed to make itself useful.”
He looked at her helplessly, at a loss to explain how she’d grown on him over the last forty-eight hours. Could he match truth for truth and tell her that, at first, he’d seen her just as she saw herself, plain and uninteresting? Or that he’d soon recognized that she was simply shy and that, under the somewhat forbidding facade behind which she tried to hide the fact, she possessed a cool beauty, subtle as perfume skilfully applied, and just about as elusive?
He cleared his throat and wished he could as easily subdue the rest of his body. “There is every reason in the world for me not to take advantage of you,” he said huskily, “and I’m probably every sort of fool to point it out, but—”
“It’s all right.” She closed her eyes in humiliation. “I had no right to ask. I don’t know what came over me.”
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