by Janet Dailey
"Yes…well," she ran a shaking hand over her forehead, "I'm ready." She glanced hesitantly toward the connecting door to Kerry's room.
"I'll explain to Kerry if you'd like to leave now," Todd offered.
She darted him a grateful look. "Thank you, Todd. And you, too, Mary." She gave the housekeeper a quick hug before picking up one of the smaller cases and hurrying toward the door.
With the rest of her luggage under his arm, Todd started to follow, then glanced back at Mary. "When Kerry wakes up…"
The housekeeper smiled gently. "I'll tell her you'll explain everything when you get back."
BUTTERFLIES COULD FLY AWAY and never look back. Jill didn't feel very much like a butterfly. She doubted if she ever would again.
Taking her foot off the accelerator, she gently applied the brakes to ease the car around the curve in the snow-packed road. The Christmas-wrapped packages on the seat started to slip and she put out a hand to stop them. She didn't feel in the holiday spirit either. She just hoped that once she was home with her parents and brothers and sisters, she would catch the festive mood.
After the way she had moped around the house this past summer when she had left the ranch, her parents were entitled to expect some improvement in her disposition. They had been wonderfully understanding, although they couldn't really believe there was a man who wouldn't love their daughter. Of course, Jill hadn't told them the whole story. Kerry was the only one who came close to knowing all of it.
The car she was driving had been a consoling gesture from her parents. They had shrugged it off by saying that they were tired of making double trips back and forth to Helena to pick her up on the holiday vacations. They would not be too pleased, though, when they discovered she had made this trip without Kerry's company.
Her engagement to Todd was still on, even though Todd had transferred to Harvard and Kerry had remained in Helena. They had made the decision not to marry until Kerry had finished college, even though it meant a separation. Jill had never had the courage to inquire whether the waiting period had been Riordan's idea, although she had guessed that it was. His name was never mentioned unless by Jill.
Todd had flown back from Harvard to spend Christmas with Kerry. Jill had invited both of them to come home with her, but Todd had declined. He wanted to be certain to catch his flight back. With the unpredictability of winter storms, he didn't object to being snowbound at the airport as long as he wasn't stranded two hundred miles away from it. Naturally Kerry preferred to stay in Helena with him, especially after he had given her his mother's engagement ring.
Jill touched the beige tan cameo suspended by a delicate gold chain around her neck, Todd's Christmas present to her. It, too, had belonged to his mother—she remembered how startled she had been when he told her that. She had held it for long minutes, unwilling to put it around her neck.
"Does Riordan know you gave me this?" she had asked finally. A cold hand had closed over her heart to keep it from beating.
Shortly after Todd had arrived in Helena, he had driven to the ranch to see his brother and to select Kerry's engagement ring from his mother's jewelry.
"Yes, he knows," Todd had answered quietly. His eyes had examined Jill's frozen expression. "After I'd taken Kerry's ring from the box, I mentioned that I wanted to buy a gift, so Riordan told me to pick out something I thought you might like from Mother's jewelry."
Jill had forced a bright smile onto her taut lips. "It's very lovely, and I do like it," she said, fastening the cameo necklace around her neck. "Are you and Kerry driving out to the ranch for Christmas day?"
"No, Jill, Kerry and I want a peaceful Christmas," he had said with decided emphasis.
"I'm sure Sheena will keep him company," Jill had shrugged, but a shaft of jealousy had drilled deep.
"She's gone to Palm Springs for the holidays. She came to see Riordan while I was there," Todd bad explained.
Later Jill had summoned the courage to ask if Riordan had given his approval of their engagement. It had seemed likely since Riordan had evidently permitted Todd to give Kerry their mother's ring.
Todd had breathed in deeply, a slightly closed look stealing into his expression. "Let's just say that he's reconciled to the fact that be can't change my mind."
Sighing heavily, Jill couldn't help wondering if Riordan hadn't relaxed his opposition to their engagement just a little bit. He might not have given his wholehearted approval, but at least he was not taking such a hard line against it.
And the necklace she wore, did it have any special significance? Was it an indirect and private way of apologizing? Whoever said that hope sprang eternal certainly was right, Jill thought wryly. Here she was hoping for a miracle. Of course, Christmas is a miracle time, she reminded herself, so maybe it was only natural.
Christmas. It was a time for family gatherings and enormous dinners. Jill could visualize her own home with holly strung on evergreen branches all through the living room, dining room and hall. Her father would have mistletoe hung in every archway and from every light fixture. And her mother would have the stockings they had used as children hung over the fireplace, waiting for Santa.
The tree would be gigantic, covered with tinsel, angel hair, and the ornaments that had become old friends over the years. Plates of Christmas candy and bowls of colored popcorn balls would be all over the house, promising an extra five pounds of weight to anyone who dared to touch them. Logs would be in readiness in the fireplace, but a fire wouldn't be started until Christmas morning, after Santa Claus had safely made his visit.
That was Christmas to Jill.
Unbidden the question came—what was Christmas to Riordan? Todd had told her Riordan was in his teens when he had stopped accompanying his father to Helena to spend Christmas with his mother. How many lonely Christmases had he spent in that big house without family and with only Mary Rivers as company? No family and probably no decorations. Men didn't take the time to do such things on their own, and what would there have been to celebrate?
And what about that little twelve-year-old boy who had been forced to shoot his horse when it had broken its legs? That little boy who had grown into a man, a man who wouldn't give horses names in case he had to destroy one again. That same man was spending Christmas alone again this year. His own brother had chosen the company of the woman he loved over Riordan, just as their father had done.
Suddenly it didn't matter whether Todd's "decision" was warranted or not. It just seemed so totally unfair that Riordan was going to be alone again.
Jill turned into the first plowed side road she found and reversed her direction back the way she had come. A couple of miles back she had passed the crossroads intersection and the highway that would take her to the Riordan ranch. One of the packages on the seat contained a sweater for her father. With luck, it would fit Riordan. Another contained a handcrafted shawl she could give Mary.
His present would be a conciliatory gesture on her part. He might just meet her halfway. There was that eternal hope again! She smiled sadly. More than likely, Riordan would think it was another trick she was playing, a maneuver of some sort. But she didn't care. She simply had to see him.
The lane leading from the cleared county road to the ranch house had not been plowed. Several sets of tracks ran over each other in the general direction of the buildings located on the other side of the meadow, presently out of sight behind the rise. Jill offered a silent prayer that she wouldn't get stuck as the car crunched over the tire-packed snow.
The winter sun set early in the north country. It was barely past mid-afternoon and already there was a purpling pink cast to the snow-covered mountains. Jill refused to think about the rest of her drive home in the dark.
The house, nestled in the protective stand of snow-draped evergreens, looked somehow bigger and emptier than she remembered. A tense excitement gripped her as she selected the packages from the rest and stepped out of the car.
At the front door, she hesitated, gathering
her courage before she opened the door. Maybe it was a subconscious wish to catch Riordan unawares that had prompted her to enter without knocking, or maybe she had become accustomed to simply walking in after spending those fateful weeks in the house that summer.
The house wits silently empty. A fire crackling in the entryway hearth would have made the house seem warm, but there was none. Slipping off her snowboots, Jill listened attentively for some sound of human occupation.
It suddenly occurred to her that Riordan might not even be here. He could be at one of the barns or at another section of the ranch altogether. That would only leave Mary Rivers. She would undoubtedly be in the kitchen. Jill slowly exhaled the breath she had been unconsciously holding. It was probably just as well that she hadn't seen Riordan, she decided, but she would speak to Mary.
The awesome silence of the house had her tiptoeing on the hardwood floor of the hall leading to the kitchen in the rear. As she drew closer, she caught the aroma of cooking and smiled. Mary was there.
Her hand was on the kitchen doorknob ready to turn it to open the door when she heard Riordan's voice come from inside the kitchen.
"I don't care what you're fixing. I told you I'm not hungry," he snapped.
"Then have some coffee and stop grouching about like a grizzly," Mary replied evenly
"I am not grouching," Riordan answered tightly.
"Snapping my head off every five minutes is not grouching?" the housekeeper inquired dryly. "You either have a severe case of cabin fever or you're thinking about that girl. Which is it?"
Jill held her breath, unable to move until Riordan had answered. There was a heavy silence before he spoke in a cuttingly indifferent voice.
"What girl?"
"Jill, of course, as if you didn't know."
"I wasn't thinking of her," Riordan replied.
"Weren't you?" Mary countered. "When are you going to give up and ask the girl to marry you?"
Jill's heart exploded against her rib cage, pounding so fiercely it seemed impossible they couldn't hear it.
There was a sudden scrape of a chair leg. "That would be the height of absurdity!" he jeered. The pounding of her heart stopped almost abruptly.
"Why?"
"You know why, Mary," Riordan sighed angrily. His cryptic statement was followed by a long pause as though he was waiting for the housekeeper to comment. Bitterness and contempt coated his next words. "I remember one August when mother made one of her unexpected departures. I was thirteen or fourteen at the time. Dad came in the house after saying goodbye to her, looking all hollow and beaten. I demanded that he go and get her and make her stay with us, but he said he couldn't use force to keep her or beg or bribe her to stay. The only thing he could do, he said, was to simply love her."
"He was right, Riordan," Mary agreed quietly.
"Right!" he returned with a scoffing laugh. "In all the times she left him, I never saw dad cry once—only when she died. Then he became half a man. When she was alive, you know how many winter evenings he sat in front of her portrait and how impossible it was to get him to leave that room when she died. No woman has a right to bring a man down like that. He was strong and intelligent, a giant, and she had no right to make a fool of him."
"She loved him," Mary said.
"She used him," Riordan corrected grimly. "If she'd loved him, she would have stayed here where she belonged."
"But she never belonged here…I think that's something you were never able to understand. No matter how much she loved your father, your mother would never have been happy on this ranch. It wasn't her environment. As much as your father loved her, didn't you ever wonder why he didn't move to the city to be with her?" Mary answered her own question. "He would have been miserable because he didn't belong there. Their love for each other was the bridge between the two worlds, and it was a very strong one."
"Like a migrating butterfly, mother flew over that bridge every spring and left every fall." His voice was savagely harsh. "I will not be plunged into darkness for nine months of the year the way dad was. I may have inherited his curse for falling in love with butterflies, but I will never marry one!"
The fragile hope that had been building inside Jill began to crumble. It was just as she had told herself last summer. Although Riordan was attracted to her, he also despised her violently.
"Butterflies," Mary murmured with amused disbelief. "You believe Jill is a butterfly?"
"Picture her in your mind, Mary," he sighed bitterly. "Her hair is as golden as the sun and her eyes are as big and as blue as the sky. She's so fragile, I could snap her in two with one hand. Men are drawn to her just like they were drawn to my mother."
"Riordan, you're blind!"
"Oh, no," he declared. "I kept my eyes open all the time so I could see all the traps she laid for me."
"Since when do butterflies have to lay traps?" Jill had to strain to hear the housekeeper's soft voice. "Jill is very beautiful, but she isn't a butterfly. Look at the way she fought for her friend and stood up to you. She's slender and supple like a willow, but not fragile."
In the silence that followed, Jill's mind raced to assimilate Mary's words. Finally she came up with the same verdict. She was not a butterfly. She not only loved Riordan but she loved his home and life as well. She had never needed to feed on the admiration of others to survive as his mother had. Wild elation swept over her.
The silence was shattered by Riordan's snarl. "You don't know what you're talking about!"
Long striding steps were carrying him to the hallway door where Jill stood. Suddenly she didn't want him to discover she had been there listening. She stepped hurriedly away from the door, intending to retreat to the front of the house, but it was too late. The door was yanked open.
Riordan stopped short.
The harsh lines of anger on his face changed to stunned surprise, but his features were nonetheless forbidding. Jill blinked at him uncertainly. This couldn't be the same man whose voice she had heard state that he loved her. There was not even a flicker of gladness in the wintry silver eyes at the sight of her.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded coldly.
Her fingers tightened convulsively on the packages in her arms. "It's Christmas," she offered in hesitant explanation.
His gaze slid to the gaily wrapped presents. "Get out, Jill," he said with the same freezing calm. "I don't want anything from you."
Chilled by his cold command, Jill swayed to carry out his order. Then a voice warned that this was her last chance. If she left him now, there would never be another.
"Did you…" She halted to chase the quiver from her voice. "Did you mean it when you said you loved me?"
"You were listening?" A dark brow arched, arrogantly aloof. Jill nodded numbly. "Yes, I meant it," Riordan acknowledged, "but it doesn't change anything."
"It must," she breathed fervently, taking a step toward him, then another, all the while anxiously searching his face for some indication of his love. "I did try to trick you and maneuver you and do all those things you accused me of, but I never intended to let my own emotions become involved. Riordan, you must believe me. I mean; whoever heard of a butterfly coming back in the dead of winter?" She made a feeble attempt at a joke, but it failed miserably as he remained withdrawn. "I never meant to fall in love with you. It just happened. I love you."
He reached out and took the packages from her arms, flipped them onto a table in the hall, then gathered her to him, saying not a word and letting the blazing light in his eyes do all the talking. Covering her mouth with a hungry kiss, he lifted her off the floor and carried her into the living room.
It was much later before anything other than incoherent love words could be spoken. Jill was nestled against his shoulder, the long length of him stretched in a half-sitting position on the sofa. The thudding beat of his heart was beneath her head, the most blissful sound she had ever heard.
"Do you think she really loved him?" Riordan murmured.
Peering through the top of her lashes, Jill could see he was gazing at the portrait. "I think she did. She gave him all the love she had."
His arms tightened around her. "And you, darling? Will you promise to give me all the love you have?"
"Yes," she whispered achingly. Her fingers crept to his face, caressing the rugged features she loved so much. "Oh, Riordan, that will be the easiest promise in the world to keep."
"I'll probably be very jealous and possessive and you'll start to hate me," he smiled wryly.
"Not any more than I shall be." She outlined his hard, passionate mouth with her fingertip and sighed. "I wish I didn't have to leave. Darling, please come home with me. We'll drive together and you can meet my family."
He moved her hand away, tucking a hand under her chin and lining her head so he could plant a hard kiss on her lips.
"I don't intend to let you out of my sight." His low voice vibrated with emotion, delicious shivers ran over Jill's skin at its intensity. "We'll get married while we're at your parents' and be husband and wife before the New Year comes."
Jill glowed. "Are you sure you want to marry me?"
"Sure?" His gray eyes, warm and vibrantly alive, caressed her face. "Did you think I intended to make another cheap proposition? I admit it was cheap, darling. But that morning I came to your room I knew I had to have you. What I didn't realize was how completely I wanted you…forever. That was something I learned in the last six months—painfully, I might add. Besides, I have to marry you to exorcise your ghost from this house. You don't know what it's like to have you haunting my bedroom every night."
"I think I might have an idea," she murmured, snuggling deeper in his arms, unbelievably content. "I can hardly wait to tell Kerry that we're getting married."
"I never expected to beat Todd to the altar," Riordan chuckled.
Her eyes had been half-closed, savoring the dreamlike sensation of being in his arms and loved by him. Her lashes sprang open suddenly, tension darkening the blue shade of her eyes.
"Riordan, what about college?" she breathed uncertainly. "I only have a half a year to go to get my diploma."
