Christmas With A Stranger_Forbidden

by Catherine Spencer

  “You’re shouting at me and there’s no need,” Jessica said. “I happen to agree with you. You don’t have to convince me.”

  “But what if you were married to me? Could you handle the occasional hate mail, the vicious, anonymous phone calls that would find our home no matter how often we changed to another unlisted number? Could you survive hearing the insults hurled at your husband by a man facing a prison term? Because Daphne couldn’t. ‘No woman should have to live with this kind of harassment,’ she told me, when she finally bowed out of the marriage.”

  “Didn’t you try to talk her out of it?”

  “No,” he said. “By then I no longer cared enough to try. So don’t tell me that love means acceptance or the pledge that it will survive, no matter what, because I’m here to tell you it doesn’t always work out like that.”

  Jessica felt a profound sadness then, for him, for them. He might profess to be falling in love with her but how did they stand a chance of finding happiness if, from the outset, he expected they’d fail? He seemed so strong, so confident, and yet he was as lonely and isolated in his way as she was in hers. When had he stopped believing he deserved some satisfaction for a job well done?

  “Doesn’t anyone ever take the time to tell you you make a difference?” she asked him. “Or that the world is a better place for having men like you in it?”

  “Oh, I have my fans,” he said wryly, “but the people I’m most likely to hear from are those who feel I’ve ruined their lives. Gabriel Parrish is a case in point and I wish I could tell you he’s the last, but I can’t. The world is full of wing nuts, sweetheart, and the best I can promise any woman is that I’ll stand between her and danger whenever I see it headed our way, but that’s hardly a guarantee likely to inspire her to making a lifetime commitment to me.”

  Could she, if he were to ask her? Jessica looked down at her hands, knotted together in her lap, evidence that the trauma of the last few hours still lingered.

  She hadn’t coped very well tonight. She didn’t think she’d ever cope well with that kind of situation. What if he was right and the odds were against her? Did either of them need the burden of another failed relationship?

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said, when the silence grew too oppressive.

  She gave a little shrug and sighed. “I think we’re making a mistake even discussing the possibility of such a commitment when we’ve known each other so short a time and clearly have much more to learn.”

  He smiled. “Well, you’re a lot more sensible than Daphne ever was; that I have to admit.”

  Sensible. The word had dogged her from childhood and she hated it. But it was hard to shake off its influence after so many years and follow a different course.

  She wanted to go to him, to have him sweep her up in his strong arms and carry her up to his room. She wanted him to strip away her clothes and cover her with kisses. She wanted him to unleash her sexuality again and make her forget every other consideration but that they needed each other in a way that defied sensible or proper or logical.

  She took a deep breath and screwed up her courage to tell him so. But how? What were the right words? Where were they? “May I stay here tonight?” she said, praying he’d hear what she was really asking.

  He searched her face, then looked away to the moonstreaked darkness beyond the window. “Yes,” he said. “Of course. Your room’s still here and it’s much too late for you to think of driving any further tonight after all that’s happened. You’ll face the journey much better in the morning when you’ve had some rest.”

  “I suppose.” Still, she lingered, longing for him to argue her point, to convince her that time didn’t count when two people shared something as rare and beautiful as they’d found.

  But he didn’t. Instead he looked at her with a wealth of sadness in his eyes, as though he could read exactly what lay in her heart.

  “You have a life, Jessica,” he said. “A nice, ordered life, with everything laid out and run according to rule. I don’t. I never know what tomorrow will bring and, to be honest, I’m not sure I want to. I’d like to tell you I can change, that I’m ready for something less hairraising than what happened here tonight, but I’m not sure I can do that, either.

  “I’m falling in love with you. I’d like to think we have a future together. But I have no right to try to sell you a bill of goods until I know for sure exactly what it contains, so please don’t ask me to do that. You deserve better. You’ve been cheated enough.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  WINTER dragged its heels into a late spring and Jessica went through the motions of running her school. But the routine that had sustained her for so many years had lost its power to heal. She was the custodian only of her students; they were not really hers to love, and even if they had been they would not have eased the ache in her heart.

  Only Morgan, whose memory refused to fade, could have accomplished that and he, apparently, had no urge to do so. He had let her walk out of his house and out of his life and made no attempt to stop her.

  Selena had been scandalized when she’d heard. It had been her considered opinion that only a complete nincompoop would allow such a “stud muffin” to escape, and that the only thing left to do was go back and fight for him.

  Jessica hadn’t thought herself capable of finding anything amusing just then, but hearing Morgan described as a stud muffin had elicited a smile. However, she’d refused to follow her sister’s advice, determined that, as long as Morgan was the one with all the doubts, he must also be the one to resolve them.

  She would not go begging for love again. Actions spoke louder than words and he was the one who’d talked about their finding a future together. If he was serious, he must come to her.

  But the days had become weeks and now it was April, with the magnolias in the academic quadrangle in early bloom, and not once in all that time had there been a word from Morgan.

  She stared out of her office window, watching as the last few students left by family car for the Easter break, and could have wept all over again for what she had let slip through her fingers.

  It seemed that frivolous Selena, who’d barely managed to scrape through high school, won more prizes where men were concerned than her supposedly clever sister could ever hope to acquire. Pride, Jessica had come to appreciate, was a poor substitute for love.

  Squaring her shoulders, she turned to the paperwork waiting for her on her desk. But scholarship grants and budget restraints held no fascination for a mind morbidly curious to know if another woman had leaped at the chance to fill the spot she’d so foolishly vacated.

  Was it worth the risk of further heartache to find out?

  Yes, she decided. Anything was better than living in a vacuum of uncertainty. Of waiting for the phone to ring, for the mailman to deliver a letter, for a sign, however small, that Morgan had not found he could live very well without her. There had to be closure, one way or the other.

  She glanced at the clock above the fireplace and reached a decision. If she put her mind to it, she could finish up what had to be done here and still make the five-thirty ferry sailing to the mainland.

  There was no putting things off any longer. Real love didn’t conveniently go away. It refused to die, no matter how firmly one ignored it. That much she’d learned over the last three and a half months and if Morgan hadn’t, it was time she taught him.

  The daily grind of upholding justice regardless of personal cost went on, but the spark, the drive, the caring commitment had grown dim. For years Morgan had successfully looked outside himself to find fulfillment but now, when he needed it the most, satisfaction eluded him. Without her he felt only half alive.

  “For a guy who’s a shoo-in for promotion, you’re looking pretty grim these days,” one of his colleagues observed, the week before Easter.

  He wasn’t the only one to notice the change. “What’s curdlin’ your cream?” Clancy inquired, when Morgan phoned to say he’d chang
ed his mind about spending the long weekend at the ranch. “Time was you couldn’t wait to drag your sorry hide up here.”

  “I have other plans,” Morgan said, arriving at a decision he should have reached weeks ago.

  He cleared his appointments by eleven the next morning and arrived at the ferry terminal shortly before noon. It was a fine day with light winds and too few clouds to obscure the sun.

  As the stretch of water between the boat and the mainland grew wider and the low-rising hills of the islands took on more distinct shape, he paced an isolated section of the ferry’s upper deck, rehearsing what he’d say to her.

  He still wasn’t sure he’d got it right, even when the announcement came over the loudspeaker that the ferry was approaching Springhill Island and those passengers disembarking there should return to their vehicles.

  He was a man used to being in charge, a man who acted and got things done. The nervousness gripping him now was so foreign to him that he hadn’t the foggiest clue how to go about dealing with it.

  Impatiently he waited for the long line of cars ahead of him to move out of the cavernous hull of the boat. At length he was waved forward and emerged into the sunshine again.

  Even as his deck was being cleared, a lower deck was already loading vehicles leaving the island. Just as he left the ramp and pulled onto the road a sleek blue bus with the words “Springhill Island Private School” scrolled on its side inched its way down toward the belly of the boat.

  Ahead of him a traffic light turned red. Slowing to a stop, he took down the sunglasses clipped to the visor above the windshield and studied the map on the seat beside him. The school lay about thirty miles away, at the southern tip of the island.

  He settled back for the drive, the blood which had moved so sluggishly through his veins in the last weeks pumping with tense anticipation. He passed farms, golf courses, yacht basins, old inns and gracious country houses. Offshore, the neighboring islands snoozed in the afternoon sun.

  At any other time, he would have found the spectacle delightful. Today, he was too preoccupied trying to control the nervous tension, the like of which not even the most hardened criminal had ever managed to promote in him.

  Suddenly, the split rail fence of a dairy farm to the left gave way to a high stone wall and at last—too soon—he was there, passing between iron gates bearing the same gothic scroll as the bus, and following a curving drive lined with flowering dogwoods.

  Occasionally, beyond the trees, he caught glimpses of a lake, playing fields, several small houses, and finally came upon the school itself, a dignified ivy-covered Victorian building.

  The domed foyer was empty but he could hear women’s voices coming from the door marked “GENERAL OFFICE” and also from several of the classrooms surrounding a central courtyard. Feeling oddly out of his element, he approached the office door.

  It swung open before he could knock. “Oh!” the pretty young woman facing him exclaimed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to run you down.”

  “That’s okay,” he said, and had to clear his throat before he could continue. “I—er—I’d like to speak to....”

  He stumbled to a halt, too far removed from his own milieu to feel comfortable, too out of sync with the stomach-churning state of nerves in which he found himself to project his usual air of authority.

  This was Jessica’s turf. Here, she wasn’t the woman who’d filled his life and his bed too briefly but who’d stolen his heart for ever. She was the boss, the one in charge. She could—and might—have him thrown out.

  “Yes?” The woman with the books was staring at him, clearly wondering if she had some sort of lunatic on her hands.

  Jeez, Kincaid! Get it together!

  “I’d like to see the headmistress.”

  “I didn’t know she had another appointment today. Is she expecting you?”

  “No,” he said apologetically, and wondered how in hell a man of his years and experience could suddenly regress to the maturity level of a boy hauled up on the carpet for breaking the rules. “No, I’m afraid she isn’t.”

  The woman smiled kindly, the way a nurse might before handing over a patient to a sadistic dentist. “Hang on, and I’ll see if she’s still here. She did say something about catching the last ferry to the mainland.”

  “When does that sail?” Morgan asked, deciding that if he and Jessica had passed in the lineup of cars at the terminal the gods were definitely having a good laugh at his expense.

  “Five-thirty.” She dumped an armful of books on a nearby chair and poked her head inside the office again. “Has Jessica left yet?”

  “No,” an unseen voice replied. “She’s in her office as far as I know.”

  “You’re in luck.” The pretty woman turned back to him and smiled again. “I’ll warn her she’s got a visitor. I’m Deirdre Bayliss, grade ten home room teacher and head of the math department, by the way. Whose father are you?”

  “I’m not,” he said.

  Ms. Bayliss’s eyes narrowed slightly and her smile wasn’t quite as warm when she asked, “Then who shall I say is calling?”

  To his disgust Morgan realized his palms were sweating and his shirt collar choking him. “Um...I’d like to surprise her. Pleasantly,” he added hastily, at the suspicious glance this aroused. “I’m her...friend. She spent Christmas at my place.”

  She’d probably kill him for making that little tidbit of news public knowledge, but he’d geared himself up to come here and confront her, was putting himself through hell now he’d arrived, and he wasn’t about to be thwarted at this late stage by being refused permission to see her.

  “Well, I’m not sure....”

  “I know. In this day and age, you can never be too careful.” Reaching into his wallet, he withdrew a business card and offered it for her inspection, along with his most winning smile. “I’m harmless, as you can see, but you’re welcome to stick around and see for yourself if it’ll make you feel better.”

  He knew Jessica well enough to realize she’d walk barefoot over hot coals before she’d air her private life in front of any member of her staff. If he could just get a foot in her door, she’d allow him to stay and say his piece, no matter how much she might want to kick him out on his rear.

  “Well,” pretty Deirdre Bayliss allowed, visibly impressed to find herself talking to the senior crown prosecutor of the lower mainland, “I’ll see you to the door at least. Follow me.”

  The budget proposals were read, the mid-term reports signed and her desk was clear. Apart from a couple of minor items she was finished, and should make it to the ferry terminal in plenty of time.

  She was at her filing cabinet, with her back to the door, when it opened. “A gentleman to see you, Ms. Simms,” Deirdre Bayliss announced, her use of Jessica’s surname indicating that the visitor was not someone either expected or known.

  Probably another well-heeled parent wanting to see his daughter pushed to the head of the admissions waiting list, Jessica decided resignedly, sneaking a glance at her watch. He’d pretend otherwise, of course, dangling the offer to underwrite a scholarship or contribute vast sums to the construction of a new wing, but there’d been too many such bribes in the past, usually occurring with a new term about to begin, for her to expect anything different this time.

  Well, she’d give him exactly five minutes before she showed him the door. Expression neutral, blood pressure normal, emotions under control, she turned to greet the visitor.

  He filled the doorway to the extent that Deirdre had to stand on tiptoe and peer over his shoulder to catch Jessica’s eye. And suddenly, after months of hoping and wanting and, finally, of despairing, she was face to face with Morgan again.

  Astonishment left her swaying on her feet. She felt the blood drain from her face, bleaching her features with shock. This wasn’t happening the way she’d planned! She needed time to prepare herself, to decide how best to approach him.

  “Would you like me to stay, Ms. Simms?” Deirdre said
, alarm threading her voice.

  She feared her knees would give out under her. How she heard the question over the roaring in her ears defied explanation. “No,” she said weakly. “That’s quite all right, Ms. Bayliss.”

  He smiled at Deirdre, who looked far from reassured, and practically shut the door in her face. Jessica wobbled to her desk and virtually collapsed into her chair. “Well, Morgan,” she squeaked, with a pathetic lack of originality, “it’s you.”

  “In the flesh,” he said, his gaze swinging around the room to take in the mahogany furnishings, the credentials hanging on the wall, the magnolia framed in the French windows that led to the quadrangle, and coming to rest finally on her.

  Oh, in the flesh, indeed! Every gorgeous, formal inch of him! No blue jeans today, no stetson, no leather boots, but a tailored navy blazer, grey pants, white shirt and ultra-conservative burgundy tie. The dark, unruly hair was combed into submission, the jaw freshly shaven. And the face, the eyes, the mouth....

  Jessica swallowed helplessly and pressed her knees together so hard that the little bones on the inside of her ankles ground painfully against each other. “Well,” she said again, and followed that up with the most inane question of all time. “Are you here to register your daughter?”

  He subjected her to a long, level stare. “No. To the best of my knowledge, I don’t have a daughter—or a son, either.”

  “Of course not,” she said. “I remember now you told me there were no children from your marriage.”

  “Is that all you remember about me, Jessica?” he asked gently.

  “No,” she whispered, the same old awareness arcing between them again, a high-voltage wire dangerously alive. “I remember everything. Everything. Especially your fear that commitment to your work would prove an insurmountable obstacle to our finding happiness together.”