Christmas With A Stranger_Forbidden

by Catherine Spencer

  Good, sound common sense was all very fine, but bringing it to bear on the situation so lamentably after the fact served no purpose at all beyond reminding her that she was a fool and him that she was a temporary diversion.

  “Well,” she said, making tracks for the door and amazed that her voice sounded so thoroughly normal, “goodnight, Morgan. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Jessica?” he said, in a low voice.

  She stopped with her hand on the knob but didn’t turn. She didn’t think she could bear to look on his sleek, male beauty again that night and not grovel at his feet. “Yes?”

  “Merry Christmas. It really was special tonight.”

  It’s not as if I’m expecting company...

  Morgan lay flat on his back in the dark, cursing himself and the careless utterance that had stripped the evening of its magic and left him staring into the ugly face of the reality waiting for him, if not tomorrow, then the next day or the day after that.

  How could he have forgotten it, even for a moment? How could he have allowed himself, besotted imbecile that he was, to become so drawn into the web of attraction she’d spun about him that he’d risked her safety, too?

  He should have listened to his first instinct and left her to fend for herself when they’d been rescued from the avalanche shed. Failing that, he should have listened to Clancy and refused to let her remain in the house. She’d have been safer bunking down on a bench at Stedman’s service station than here with him.

  The damnable thing was, it was too late. A lot too late. No use telling himself he’d known her only three days. Time was relative when emotions interfered. And after tonight it might as well have been a lifetime, because he and Jessica had connected—connected in a way he’d never experienced with Daphne whom he’d known for nearly three years before he’d married her.

  A rising wind moaned low around the house. Indication of another blizzard, perhaps, one that would keep Jessica safe prisoner here another few days? What the hell good would that do, beyond strengthening the bond he’d had no business forging in the first place?

  Morgan sighed and reached for the illuminated dial of his watch on the bedside table. Almost three in the morning. Another five hours and it would be daylight. Christmas Day in the high country. And somewhere out there Gabriel Parrish waited while, across the hall, Jessica lay alone in her bed.

  Cursing again, he sat up and bunched the pillows behind his head and accepted what he could no longer deny. Things had progressed far beyond the point of his offering a stranger the kindness of a roof over her head until the weather improved. He wanted to keep her with him, explore the wider possibilities of the relationship that had sprung up between them. He wanted to protect her, to preserve her air of unsullied purity, her innocence.

  “You want to take on the whole damned world,” his ex-wife had accused him bitterly during one of their endless fights about his work, and in a way she’d been right. He had been too busy fighting other people’s battles to take proper care of his marriage.

  But this went beyond the ordinary range of things and had nothing to do with his commitment to sweeping society clean of its human filth. Jessica touched his heart and made him want to rush out and slay dragons for her, a dangerously quixotic fancy that he could ill afford with the very real threat of Gabriel Parrish hovering.

  Jessica was precisely Parrish’s kind of victim: fragile, vulnerable, gentle. And far from protecting her Morgan had put her smack in the path of danger.

  Of course, he could explain the whole mess to her and hope she’d understand. And then what? Have her cringe every time a twig snapped in the cold? Have her looking over her shoulder the whole time she was alone in his house? Have her despise him more than she already did?

  Because it was obvious that was how she felt and she’d wasted no time letting him know it, after the loving. If he hadn’t heard her cries, felt the helpless contractions of her flesh around his, he’d have thought he’d lost his touch. But just as there’d been no mistaking her climactic response there’d been no mistaking the haste with which she’d departed the scene, once she’d recovered herself, and no misreading the rejection in the erect line of her spine as she’d stood at the door and bid him a cool goodnight.

  Thank you for a pleasant interlude, Mr. Kincaid, but now that it’s over I see very little reason to prolong the evening.

  He’d known a violent urge to argue the point, an unprecedented occurrence for him. He didn’t chase after reluctant women; they weren’t worth the effort, not when so many others were willing. And heaven could attest to the fact that he wasn’t in the market for a longterm affair. Nor, for that matter, was she. A brief encounter they could handle. A dalliance. Something that wouldn’t scratch below the surface of their separate lives.

  A waltz with a stranger—lilting, briefly and engagingly intimate—but no more permanent than the ice on the frozen lake.

  When had the rules changed for him?

  A sound penetrated the silence, a creaking that was probably nothing more than the house settling its old bones into the winter night, but which could equally well be a stealthy footfall announcing the arrival of an intruder.

  Morgan raked exasperated fingers through his hair. For crying out loud, that was all he needed: to have his imagination run any wilder than it already was!

  But once planted the suspicion refused to die. What if Parrish had tracked him down despite the weather and was even now inside the house, searching for his archenemy? What if he opened the wrong door by mistake and discovered Jessica?

  Cold sweat broke out along Morgan’s spine.

  Flinging back the covers, he swung out of bed and pulled on his robe, his feet silent on the floor. Cautiously, he inched open his door.

  Nothing. No darting, furtive shadow, no sense of evil lurking, just the quiet hum of the oil furnace and the dim fragrance of the Christmas tree stealing up the stairs.

  Across the hall, the door to Jessica’s room stood closed. Was she inside, safely sleeping, or had the sound that had alerted him wakened her, too? His outstretched hand froze mere inches from the doorknob.

  Hell, Kincaid, he jeered silently, who’re you trying to fool? You’re just itching to find a reason to go in there and pretending there’s a bogeyman haunting the place is about as feeble an excuse as you can get.

  But what if...? The spectre of Parrish rose again to haunt him. Grasping the knob, he quietly opened her door and stepped into the room.

  Moonlight splashed across the floor and over the bed. She lay in the middle of the mattress, so straight and still that for one wild, irrational moment he wondered if he’d left it too late, wondered if Parrish had found her and she was already dead. And then she turned her head and he saw that her eyes were wide open and watching him.

  “Morgan?” Her voice swam across to him, soft, misty, full of yearning. Like her eyes as they tracked his progress toward the bed.

  She held out her arms, silvered with moonlight, and with that simple, eloquent gesture flattened any hope he’d entertained of staying away from her. He could love this woman, he realized despairingly. Love her in ways he hadn’t known how to love when he’d married Daphne.

  With a muffled groan, he swept aside the covers and strode back to his room, cradling her next to his heart.

  They fell on the bed together, mouths devouring each other, hands tormenting, limbs tangling. She was hot and damp and sleekly alluring. Their mating was swift and too frantic to allow for any pretense at finesse or responsibility.

  Her body welcomed him, closed around him, caressed him. In vain he tried to hold back, to distance himself just enough to prolong the pleasure for both of them, but it was too late. Without warning she climaxed in a flight of ripples that had him flooding within her in shocking, sudden release.

  She was so ready to love, he thought sadly, cradling her sleeping body. So ready to be loved. Why had it been he who’d found her? Why not some man whose soul was intact, whose heart ha
d not grown black and bitter, whose energies were bent on something other than a crusade that left him with so little to offer a woman?

  Jessica didn’t awake until nine on Christmas morning, and even then she might have slept another hour had the sun not crept through the window to shine full on her face.

  She was alone in the bed with only the faint warmth where Morgan had lain beside her as proof that she hadn’t dreamed the night before. That and her pleasurably aching body.

  By the time she was showered and dressed, any hope she’d entertained of trying to pretend this morning was no different from the others she’d spent at the lodge had evaporated. The men were back at the house already, their early chores at the stables completed. “O Come All Ye Faithful” floated up the stairs from the old record player in the living room, along with the smell of frying food from the kitchen.

  Securing her hair in its usual smooth loop at her nape, Jessica took a deep, calming breath and prepared to face Morgan, wishing that she could have done so without Clancy there as witness.

  It was a far worse experience than she’d anticipated. Morgan sat at the kitchen table, his hands wrapped around his coffee mug. Clancy stood at the stove, swishing something around in the large, cast-iron frying pan, and it was clear from the scowl he shot her way that he’d deployed the last of his Christmas spirit the night before.

  “Well, lookee what the cat drug down,” he declared evilly.

  Jessica resisted the urge to fidget with the collar of her blouse. “I’m afraid I overslept.”

  “Do tell.” He shoveled the contents of the frying pan onto three plates and slapped one down in front of her.

  She looked at the greasy mess and swallowed. Chunks of ham floated among half-cooked eggs, alongside hashbrowned potatoes swimming in a sea of grease.

  Looking up, she found Morgan studying her. “Good morning,” he said, a faintly conspiratorial smile warming his eyes. “I hope you’re hungry.”

  Sweet heaven, yes—but not for what stared up from her plate! Picking up her fork, Jessica speared a morsel of ham that glistened with fat. “Not very,” she said, suppressing a delicate shudder. “I think I’ll just have toast.”

  “Ain’t made toast, and idlers can’t be choosers,” Clancy informed her sourly. “You choose to lollygag in bed when any decent, self-respectin’ woman’d be at the kitchen stove where she rightly belongs, then you put up with what lands on your plate or else go hungry.”

  “That’s enough, Clancy,” Morgan warned quietly, keeping his gaze trained on her. “Jessica doesn’t need your permission to sleep in. I wasn’t up at the crack of dawn myself.”

  Clancy flicked a knowing glance from her to Morgan and back again. “Hah! Ain’t that a coincidence and a half!”

  Jessica felt a slow burn climb up her neck to inflame her face and wished she could fall through a crack in the floor. “Well,” she said, deciding this was not the time to take issue with Clancy’s chauvinistic views on women and their rightful role in society, “I’m sure this is delicious, whatever it is.”

  And to prove the point she valiantly scooped a forkful into her mouth. Across the table, Morgan continued to watch her, his hands still wrapped around his coffee mug.

  Memories floated over, of those same hands covering her breasts, measuring her waist, parting her thighs, stilling her eager hips. “I don’t understand myself,” she’d confessed, pressing herself to him and reveling in the knowledge that, regardless of what he might be trying to tell her, a certain portion of his own anatomy had an actively rebellious mind of its own. “It’s as if I’ve got an attack of polar fever or something.”

  “Or something.” His words had slid into her mouth along with his tongue, wreaking delicious devastation.

  She’d felt her barriers disintegrating again, melted by the moist heat swirling the length of her and flooding warmly against him, there, in that most private place that he’d touched and stroked and incited to ecstasy.

  How embarrassing to remember it now! How shameless!

  The color flooded her face anew, so fiercely that it wouldn’t have surprised her too greatly to find her forehead emblazoned with a large scarlet WH for Wanton Hussy.

  The food in her mouth rebelled furiously and threatened to choke her. Morgan pushed back his chair, picked up her plate, scraped the contents into the garbage can under the sink, then popped two slices of bread in the toaster.

  “Coffee?” he asked her, lifting the coffee pot from its spot on top of the woodstove.

  She nodded gratefully. “Thank you.”

  “How about you, Clancy? Ready for a refill?”

  Eyes darting observantly back and forth, Clancy grunted acceptance.

  Morgan topped up his own mug, too, replaced the pot on the stove and, leaning his hips against the counter, drummed a soft tattoo on the back of his chair as he waited for the toast to brown.

  Covertly, Jessica studied him. He had the tall, sculpted build of a telemark skier, she thought dreamily. Sharply defined, clear-eyed. Sexy. She leaned toward him, drinking in the sharp, clean fragrance of him.

  The toast sprang up, startling her. Morgan turned to attend to it.

  “Lordy, woman,” Clancy drawled, sotto voce, “eat him up whole, why don’tcha?”

  “Here’s your toast,” Morgan said, placing a fresh plate in front of her. “Hurry up and eat, then get your coat. I’ve got a surprise waiting outside.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  AS CURIOUS to discover what Morgan had in store for her as she was eager to escape Clancy’s too observant eye, Jessica literally bolted through her breakfast. Nothing, however, could have prepared her for the sight that met her eyes when she stepped out onto the front veranda.

  At the foot of the steps stood a sleek red sleigh with a high padded seat clearing the runners by a good two feet. Jasper waited patiently between twin wooden shafts, silver bells gleaming from his harness.

  “Thought you might like to go for a spin,” Morgan said, coming up beside her. “You’ve been kind of housebound lately.”

  “Yes.” Jessica stood transfixed, as thrilled as a child. “Morgan, what an absolutely gorgeous sleigh!”

  “Isn’t it?” He stroked a proud hand over the painted side and swung open the little door. “Hop aboard and let’s get going while the sun’s still high.”

  She climbed up the two narrow steps and settled into the red leather seat. There were hot bricks wrapped in flannel for her feet and a marvellous fur lap rug to keep the chill out.

  “Buffalo robes,” Morgan explained, when she asked. “Guaranteed to cut the wind, no matter how cold it gets.”

  He climbed up beside her, gathered up the reins and clicked his tongue, a signal that had Jasper moving over the snowed-in driveway to the open country beyond.

  The scene unrolled like something from Dr. Zhivago. Seated beside Morgan, her face framed by the fur-trimmed hood of her jacket, her knees covered by buffalo robes, her feet toasting gently on the hot bricks, Jessica gazed around, eager not to miss a thing as they followed a course along the ridge to the west of the house.

  To either side the land dropped away, remote and empty save for the occasional group of snow-laden trees. Ahead, the razor-backed mountains reared up, their winter load dazzling against the deep blue sky.

  Except for the soft squeak of the sleigh runners and the jingle of bells on Jasper’s harness, the silence was profound to the point of being almost somnolent.

  “That married man you mentioned,” Morgan said suddenly, the sound of his voice flowing into the still air as smoothly as the hot rum sauce had rolled over the ice cream dessert she’d made the night before, “the one you had the affair with, were you in love with him?”

  “Stuart?” Jessica blinked. What had Stuart to do with anything? “Yes. I was very hurt when he ended things between us.”

  “And now?”

  She flung Morgan a questioning stare and found him concentrating fiercely on his driving. “Now?”

 
His glance flicked briefly over her, then focused on the scene ahead again. “Do you still care about him?”

  “No!” she exclaimed. “If I did, I’d never have made love with you last night.”

  “The two don’t necessarily cancel each other out, you know.”

  “They do for me. I’m not the type to play musical beds.” She paused and hazarded another sidelong glance at him. His profile was almost as remote as the countryside. “Are you trying to tell me you are, Morgan?”

  “No.” He hauled on the reins and brought Jasper to a halt in the lee of a belt of trees. “I like to be able to live with myself the morning after.”

  The easy relaxation between them when they’d first started out seeped away suddenly, leaving behind a tension as fragile as crystal shimmering in the bright white sunshine. “Then why did you bring up the subject in the first place?”

  He sighed and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I guess I’m wondering where we go from here. Yesterday, I thought I knew. Today, I’m not so sure.”

  It was an admission that might have charged her with elation had the darkness in his tone not indicated such a wealth of regret on his part for the fact that they’d made love.

  “Well,” she said, rushing to fill the silence with an admission more easily borne coming out of her mouth than his, “what happened between us...well, it was a purely physical thing—at least for me.”

  “Was it?” She could feel his gaze boring into her, seeking to discover truth and fearing, quite rightly, that he’d find only lies. “Then why do I feel like pond scum this morning? As if I’ve let both of us down and hurt you in the bargain?”

  “You haven’t hurt me,” she said staunchly, because the other option, to burst out crying for something he clearly couldn’t give her, would be more humiliation than she could abide. “You’ve been honest with me and that’s what matters.”