It was just as well Mia was temporary. If he loved her he wouldn’t be able to let her leave. That he was willing to say goodbye was just further proof that she didn’t mean that much to him.
“Are you going to rip that open yourself?” Her question startled him.
He looked down at the package in his hands, realized he gripped it so tightly, his fingers tore holes in the cheery wrapping paper. He forced himself to relax as he moved around the sofa and set the gift in her lap. “Merry Christmas.”
She held out a roll of paper tied with a length of purple yarn. “No fancy gift wrap, I’m afraid.”
Recognizing the paper as a sheet from her sketch pad, he guessed she’d given him a drawing. He swung onto the sofa beside her. “You go first.”
She bent her head to the package, plucking at the curled green ribbon until she untied the knot. Once she’d loosened the ribbon, she carefully ran a thumbnail through each piece of tape to open the package without tearing the red and green paper.
“Elizabeth ripped open her presents like a four-year-old,” Jack said, smiling at the memory.
“I want to save the paper,” Mia said. “For later.”
When she left. He gritted his teeth against that reality, focusing on Mia as she opened her present.
She lifted the hand-loomed cashmere scarf from the box, the firelight enriching the deep emerald-and-royal-blue weave. “It’s beautiful.”
“I bought it for my sister a few years ago. I’d forgotten she’s allergic to wool.” He’d wanted to give Mia something that hadn’t belonged to Elizabeth. The moment he saw the scarf again, he could picture it nestled around Mia’s neck, the rich colors warm against her pale skin.
As if she’d read his mind, she wrapped the soft length of cashmere around her, draping it across her shoulders like a shawl. A vivid image intruded—Mia in the scarf and nothing else, the fringed ends concealing, then revealing her breasts.
“Open yours,” she said.
He shook off his erotic fantasy. Taking his time, he undid the bow, then unrolled the paper. Mia watched him, her expression intent.
Jack couldn’t hold back his smile when he revealed William’s grinning face. “I’m surprised you could get him to sit still long enough to draw him.”
“He e-mailed a school photo.”
She’d found the one bright spot in his life, had managed to capture it with her skilled hand. He’d have this, at least, to remember her by.
“Thank you,” he said, pulling her into his arms.
Her slender body felt so slight against his. She was as evanescent as the snow outside melting in the sun. His for the moment, then quickly gone.
He couldn’t keep letting her in like this. If he didn’t start shutting her out, the agony when she left would only be that much worse.
Yet even as he told himself that, he still held her, inhaling her scent, listening to her breathe.
Chapter Fourteen
After her latest meltdown and their exchange of gifts, Mia felt even more unsettled. Something frightening loomed in the mists of her mind, momentarily held at bay by the simple joy of Christmas, but waiting for its chance to strike. She knew she had no choice but to face it down, yet she feared the eventual confrontation.
She wanted to talk to Jack about it, feel the comfort of his arms around her. After he’d shared with her what had happened the night his wife died, it seemed the burden that always weighted him down had eased. She’d thought she could even have told him what she’d buried deep inside her—that she loved him. But when he’d come out to the great room with his gift for her, she could see something still lay heavily on his shoulders. It didn’t feel right to weigh him down even more with her own problems.
Then the house phone had rung and he took the call in his office. After he’d left, Mia carefully folded the striped wrapping paper. The act seemed so familiar, she assumed it was a habit of hers. Yet another bit of useless information about her past life that her mind had stingily doled out.
The dribs and drabs of personality popping up in her consciousness were too disparate for her to reassemble into her life. Without a picture of herself, there was no way of knowing where the pieces fit or what the puzzle looked like. There had to be a way to reach deeper, to pull out her true self.
Even as the idea popped into her mind, she shrank from it. The scent of cinnamon had a connection to her former life. She didn’t understand the link, but it seemed powerful. It had brought out the ugliest of experiences, the most frightening. But maybe if she forced the issue, she might see behind the dark and faceless window into the world in which she belonged.
Unless she took a different path, one more terrifying than rediscovering her past, yet more glorious. If she only had enough courage.
Her hands buried in the ends of the cashmere scarf, she watched Jack’s office door as it swung open.
“How’s Mrs. Franklin?” Mia asked as Jack walked through the great room.
“She’s home, feeling fine.” At the stove, he held his hands out to the fire’s warmth. “They’re heading out to her sister’s place for the rest of the day.”
“That’s good.” She stretched out her legs and rose from the sofa. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
He looked back at her over his shoulder, and for a moment, the lightness she’d seen earlier was there in his face again. Tell him now, an inner voice whispered. The words clung to her lips, ready to spill out.
But then, like a shutter closing, the lightness was gone. The weight returned. “What about?” he asked, his tone unwelcoming.
Suddenly the house seemed to close in on her. “Could we go out? Walk for a little while?”
He didn’t seem happy about that, but he pulled out his parka and boots and the ski overall for her. After directing her to pull on two pairs of socks and the overlarge shoes, he cut up a plastic garbage bag and sealed pieces over Mia’s feet with duct tape. The socks would keep her feet warm and the plastic would keep most of the wet out for the short time they’d be in the snow. The scarf around her neck would add another layer of warmth.
After so many days sequestered inside, Mia’s spirits rose as they stepped from the house. The brilliant white of the pristine snow took her breath away. It sparkled in the sun’s light as if diamonds had been sprinkled on it’s surface. The sky was an impossible shade of blue, its cornflower hue contrasting vividly with the dense green of the trees.
They walked out between the cedars and redwoods, following the path Jack had stamped out. Blue jays screamed as they skimmed from tree to tree, like a fragment of sky let loose.
They continued past the last of Jack’s footprints, Jack moving slowly as he forged a trail. If she lagged behind, he’d stop and turn back, waiting for her while she caught up, putting out a hand to help her keep her balance. It reminded her of that first walk they’d taken shortly after she’d arrived, and she reflected on how much had happened since then.
They couldn’t go as far as they had that day, not with knee-deep snow impeding their progress. With Mia gasping for breath from the exertion, she let Jack pull her up on a stout fallen tree. They sat on the log, shoulders brushing, his gloved hand beside hers on the damp bark.
“Tell me,” he said softly.
Forward or back? Which direction should she go? Her mind told her she shouldn’t desert the woman she’d once been, but her heart sang a different story.
“What if I don’t go back?”
His tension was immediate, his jaw flexing with it and his shoulders taut. “What do you mean?”
He knew what she meant, she could see it in his eyes. But he wasn’t giving an inch. She would have to spell it out.
Her throat went dry. “What if I stay here with you?”
She saw it just for an instant—hope flared in his face, as dazzling as the sun-kissed snow. Then he turned away, staring off into the trees. “No.”
Her fingers in the thick gloves dug into the tree trunk. “Why no
t?”
“You have a life out there, Mia. You damn well can’t pretend it didn’t happen. That it isn’t waiting for you.”
“Maybe I don’t want that life back.” Because I love you! Except she still couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud.
“Whatever you think you want from me, it’s not in me to give. Not anymore.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She reached for his hand, forced the words from her throat. “We don’t have to love each other.”
His gaze locked on to her face, fierce and angry. “Is that what you want? To use each other that way? When I feel that knife in my heart remembering Elizabeth, I should just lose myself in you until I don’t feel it anymore?”
He curved his fingers around the back of her neck, sliding beneath the whorls of the scarf. “And I’ll be your secret little escape from nightmares. Because you’d rather sleep with a stranger, a man you don’t love, than face whatever has you so scared.”
He pressed his mouth to hers, all his anger burning through the contact. She pushed against him, and his chest seemed hard and immovable. Fear spurted up inside her, blacking out her vision, speeding her heart to a pounding roar. A scream welled up, pushed at her throat, but it never had a chance to emerge because he’d already let her go, a look of horror on his face.
“Dammit, dammit, dammit!” He pushed off the log, kicking at the snow, slamming a fist into the trunk of a nearby ponderosa. Mia covered her face with her hands, shaking all over.
“Mia.” Contrition in his face, he reached a hand out toward her.
She didn’t take it. Not because she was afraid of him; her fear had had nothing to do with Jack. But she couldn’t ignore her reaction to his brief flare of anger. She realized she wouldn’t be able to go forward without first going back. Even if she could convince Jack to accept her into his life, she would have to deal with her fears first.
“There’s something I have to do,” she told him.
She slid from the log, accepting his hand to steady her as she dropped to the snow. This time she walked ahead of him. When she stumbled once or twice, his hand went to her elbow to right her before she fell.
Back inside the house, she stripped off the ski overall and gloves. She had to push herself to walk into the kitchen, to drag out the step stool. She found the tin of cinnamon sticks, made sure the lid was shut tightly. Then she brought her sketch pad out to the great room.
Jack had spread their outerwear by the fire to dry, and now he stood watching her as she sat cross-legged on the sofa. She looked up at him. “Stay with me. Please.”
He moved to the other end of the sofa as she opened the pad to a fresh sheet. With trembling hands she opened the lid of the tin and pulled out a cinnamon stick. She tried to snap it in two, but her hands shook so badly, she couldn’t manage it.
“I’ll do it,” Jack said, reaching across for the slender brown stick.
She jolted at the crack of the cinnamon bark breaking. Then he handed her the pieces and the fragrance filled her nostrils. Her heart hammered in her chest as she shut her eyes.
At first she could only hear the unsteady rasp of her breathing, could see nothing but the orange flicker of firelight through her eyelids. She inhaled deeply, letting the spiciness curl on her tongue, move into her lungs.
The scent grew stronger, sharper. It seemed to blow into her face in irregular puffs. The faint orange of firelight disappeared, replaced by a face looming large and angry over her.
He was shouting at her, the words angry and ugly. His lips and tongue were red, colored by the disk of cinnamon candy on his tongue. Each time he struck her, he said terrible things about her, and she tried to shrink smaller and smaller with each blow.
She knew the monster’s face as her father’s and the girl he struck was herself, a tiny little thing cowering in the kitchen. But even as he shouted at her, the scene shifted to a different place—a hotel room?—and she transformed from that helpless girl to a grown woman. Now she wore the red Christmas sweater and the jeans she’d worn when she’d arrived here, running shoes on her feet.
But the same man beat her, his eyes filled with rage, the odor of cinnamon clinging to him like a dank smog. Even as his fists rained down on her, his mouth spewing obscenities, his face melted and changed, now her father’s, now the monster’s. The scene would hitch and restart, again and again, the same blows inflicted in an endless loop.
She lurched out of the flashback with a gasp, hands flailing out to protect herself from the phantoms in her mind. The touch of Jack’s fingers on her arm terrified her until she brought herself back to the present.
Her chest heaved as she sucked in a lungful of air. Covering his hand with her own, she held tight to him, fighting to ground herself. With one last squeeze, she let go and picked up her pencil.
Her fingers moved like lightning across the pad, laying down lines and curves, shading between them. A dark streak here, a pale brush of the pencil edge there. She was scarcely aware of what she was drawing, only faintly aware of Jack in the room, turning up the fire as shadows lengthened, throwing the afghan over her as the room grew chilly.
She leaned over the pad as she drew, unwilling to share the sketch until she finished. Jack seemed to understand; he kept his distance, moving through the room without disturbing her.
By the time she drew the last stroke, her hand had cramped so badly she could barely hold the pencil. She dropped the pad facedown on the sofa beside her and tossed the pencil on the end table. Then she stood as close as she could to the pellet stove, desperate for the heat.
Jack came over and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his warmth. One by one the taut muscles within her body relaxed and she almost felt herself again.
“What did you see?” he asked as he stroked her back.
“The same as before, my father beating me.” She gulped back her fear. “But then it changed.” She told him about the hotel room, how she’d seen her present-day self being beaten.
“Could your father have found you?” Jack asked. “Attacked you?”
“It looks that way. He must have come to my room—maybe in a hotel near here. I let him in…” Tears suddenly clutched at her throat as she realized the magnitude of her mistake. “How could I have let him in? Shouldn’t I have known he would do this to me?”
His hand trailed across her back soothingly. “Maybe he told you he was there to make amends. You might have wanted to give him a second chance.”
“There are still too many unanswered questions.” Frustration filled her. “I don’t know my name, who the rest of my family is. And how did I get here to your property?”
“I think you drove. Once we’re able to get out of here, we’ll find your car down the road.”
The reminder of how soon she’d be leaving him sent an ache of longing through her. She wished another storm would hit, a dozen storms, piling up snow so high she would never be able to get out. Force him to let her stay.
“What did you draw?” His question pulled her from her wishful thinking.
“I’m not even sure.” She pulled away and picked up the pad, bringing it over to the light of the fire.
She was glad for Jack’s nearness, that his arm curved around her shoulder as they stood side by side. She needed his support as she gazed down at the fiend she’d rendered with paper and pencil.
It wasn’t a human face. The creature could have escaped from hell, with its fanged mouth, the deformities sprouting from its cheeks and chin. The hair hung in sparse tangles, the nose was nothing more than holes above the thin lips.
Only the eyes looked human, dark and shockingly kind, a travesty in that hideous face. They were familiar, too, although she couldn’t quite puzzle out where she’d seen them.
When she recognized them, she went rigid, and Jack’s arm dropped from her shoulders. Alarm searing her, she glanced up at him. “They’re your eyes,” she whispered.
He’d hurt her. He’d terrified her, grabbing her so roug
hly out there in the snow, almost punishing her with his kiss. With all Mia had been through, to traumatize her further with his actions was inexcusable.
Why else had she drawn his eyes in that monster’s face? He felt sick at the thought. He would cut his own hands off rather than touch her in anger again.
The business line rang in his office, giving him a reprieve from his guilt. It had to be Dawson. Other than a wrong number, he’d be the only one to call Jack on Christmas.
“Hey,” Dawson said in greeting. “How are you doing?”
“Fine.” To his amazement he meant it. He was usually a wreck on Christmas after a week of emotional turmoil.
“You sound good.” Dawson sounded as surprised as Jack.
“An update on the road-clearing crew. With the weather cooperating, they’ll start first thing in the morning. For every day less than a week, they get a bonus. You might even be able to get out by the end of the weekend.”
A knot formed in Jack’s stomach. “That’s good. Thanks.”
He returned to the great room. “That was Dawson. We’ll be out in three days.”
She nodded, her expression grave. “About the drawings. The monster having your eyes.”
“I shouldn’t have hurt you—”
She put up a hand to stop him. “I drew your eyes in his face because it was the only way I could feel safe. Because I knew you’d keep the monster from hurting me.”
She reached for him and he couldn’t refuse her. He sat beside her, drawing her into his arms, the balm of her forgiveness washing through him.
Chapter Fifteen
They slept together that night in Jack’s bed, making love again, this time in darkness, Jack memorizing every curve and hollow of Mia’s body with his fingertips. Afterward he held her until dawn crept into the window, drifting off to sleep with her soft hair brushing his cheek.
Just after nine the next morning, after toast and scrambled eggs, they went out together down the road. They chose to walk rather than take the Suburban, Mia in her makeshift snowboots following in his tracks. They heard the heavy equipment before they saw it on the far side of the rockslide. Jack’s stomach sank as it hit home how soon Mia would be leaving.
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