Loe raamatut: «Christmas With A Stranger»

CHAPTER ONE

THE snow began in earnest just as darkness fell. Dense, feathery flakes whirling across the beam of her headlights to imprison her in a closed and isolated world.

Jessica hadn’t been comfortable with the driving conditions from the start. She was used to a milder sort of winter on the island, one of west coast sea mist and wind-driven rain, not the breath-freezing cold of the high Canadian interior.

She’d spent last night in a small town tucked between a lake and the highway, in a country inn built to resemble a Swiss chalet. There’d been logs blazing in the fireplace in the lobby and a twelve-foot Christmas tree that filled the air with the scent of pine, and French onion soup smothered in melted cheese for dinner. It had been a warm, safe place now some three hundred miles behind—much too far to merit her turning back.

If she wanted shelter from the weather again tonight, her only option was to tackle the eighty miles of switchback mountain road that lay between her and her next stop on the way to Whistling Ridge.

Smearing a gloved hand across the windshield, she squinted through the swirling snow, her heart lurching as the wheels of the car skidded suddenly to the right. Upright poles planted at intervals to measure the depth of the winter snowfall were all that stood between her and the swift, steep drop to the valley below.

This was insanity and only the fact that Selena had been injured in a ski-lift accident could have induced her to abandon her original holiday plans and embark on such a journey. But then, wasn’t that how it had always been, ever since they were children? With Selena getting into trouble of one kind or another, and Jessica dropping everything to come to the rescue?

Another forty-five-degree bend loomed up ahead. Cautiously, she steered into the turn. Halfway around, she saw the flicker of headlights below her as another driver navigated the road, but more quickly, with an assurance she sorely lacked.

Once on the straight again, she increased her speed. She had little choice. The car behind was gaining rapidly, there was no room to pass and the snow was, if anything, falling more thickly. In great fat clumps the size of footballs, in fact, that rolled down the mountainside and bounced across the road.

Headlights dazzled in her rear-view mirror. A horn blared, repeatedly, furiously. Panic choked her throat. Was the other driver mad? Trying to run her off the road?

All at once, the open mouth of an avalanche shed yawned blackly a few yards in front, offering a brief haven of safety where she could let whoever was in such a hurry behind get past her.

Clutching the steering wheel in a death grip, Jessica pressed down on the accelerator and shot into the shelter with the other vehicle practically nosing her bumper from behind.

And then the air was filled with thunder and the earth seemed to rock beneath her. And the road, which was supposed to run all the way to Whistling Valley ski resort where Selena lay in a hospital bed, came to a sudden end at the far end of the avalanche shed.

At first Jessica didn’t believe it and, pulling as far over to one side as possible to allow the other driver to get by, kept her car idling forward. Until she saw that there was no way out of the shed, that its exit truly was blocked by a wall of snow, and that, far from trying to pass her, her pursuer had drawn to a stop also, and was climbing out of his vehicle and coming toward her.

Incongruously large and implicitly threatening in the light cast by his car’s headlamps, his shadow leaped ahead of him on the concrete wall of the shed. Reaching for the control panel on the console, Jessica snapped the doors locked and wished she could as easily subdue the tremor of apprehension racing through her.

Approaching her window, he stooped and stared in at her. She had the impression of a man perhaps in his early forties; of dark displeasure, well-defined brows drawn together in a scowl, and a mouth paralleling the same vexation. Of wide shoulders made all the more imposing by the bulky jacket he wore, and of masculine power composed not just of sinew but of command, as though he was not inclined to tolerate having his authority thwarted by anyone.

The way he rapped on her window and ordered, “Open it,” bore out the idea, especially when she found herself automatically obeying the directive and lowering the glass an inch.

“Do you have a death wish?” The question blasted toward her on a cloud of frosty air.

Unvarnished disapproval laced the husky baritone of his voice, leaving her in no doubt that she was alone with a stranger who looked and sounded very much as if he’d like to take her neck between his powerful hands and wring it.

But she wasn’t earning accolades as the youngest headmistress ever appointed to Springhill Island’s Private School for Girls by cowering in the face of incipient trouble. “Certainly not,” she said, as calmly as her thudding heart would allow. “But I imagine you must, if the way you were driving is any indication. You practically ran me off the road.”

For a moment she thought she’d managed to silence him. His jaw almost dropped and he appeared to be at a loss for words. He shook his head, as though unsure that he’d heard her correctly, then recovered enough to say, “Lady, do you have the foggiest idea what’s just happened?”

“Of course.” She gripped the steering wheel more firmly. It was easier to keep her hands from shaking that way. “There has been a bit of a snow slide.”

“There has been a bloody avalanche,” he informed her with a rudeness she would not for a moment have tolerated in her students. “And if you’d had your way we’d both be buried under a load of snow—always assuming, of course, that we hadn’t been swept clear down the mountain.”

Embarrassingly, her teeth started to chatter with shock then, and short of stuffing both gloved hands in her mouth, there was little she could do to disguise the fact except blurt out, “That must be why it’s so cold in here.”

At that, he straightened up and thumped a fist on the roof of her car, sending a clump of snow slithering down her windshield. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing,” he informed the shed at large, his words echoing eerily. “Is this her way of trying to be funny?”

“Hardly,” she retorted, addressing the zippered front of his down jacket, which was all she could see of him. “I plan to spend tonight in Wintercreek and have quite a few miles still to cover before I get there. I’d just as soon not waste time keeping you entertained with witticisms.”

He bent down to confront her again, squatting so that his face was on a level with hers. “Let me get this straight. You expect to reach Wintercreek tonight?”

“Didn’t I just say as much?” She wished she could see his face more clearly. But everything about him was a little bit distorted in the flare of his car’s headlamps, with one side of his features thrown into dark relief and the other silhouetted in light. Like opposite sides of a coin—or good and evil all wrapped up in one package.

She suppressed a shudder. This was not the time for such fanciful notions. It was a time for positive thought and action. “I have a hotel reservation—”

“I heard you the first time and I hope your deposit’s refundable,” he interrupted curtly. “Because, as they say in the vernacular of these parts, ‘honey, you ain’t goin’ nowhere any time soon’.”

“Are you telling me I’m stuck in here until someone comes to rescue me?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.”

Her confidence nosedived a little further. “And...um...how long do you think that will take?”

He shrugged. “Hard to say. First light tomorrow, if we’re lucky.”

“But that’s almost twelve hours away!”

“I know.” He braced his hands against his knees and shoved himself upright again. “Better turn off the engine before you asphyxiate us, and resign yourself to sleeping in your back seat. Open the trunk and I’ll hand in your emergency supplies.”

She hadn’t thought it possible for anything to make her heart sink any lower but, to her dismay, he managed it with his last remark. “Emergency supplies?”

“Sleeping bag, candle, GORP.”

“GORP?” she echoed faintly.

“Good old raisins and peanuts. Trail mix, cereal bars, stuff to keep your stomach from folding in on itself—call it what you like; I don’t care. Let’s just get you settled before we both die of exposure.”

“I don’t... I have only a suitcase. With clothes in it,” she added, as if that might mitigate things a little.

It didn’t. Thumping a fist on the roof of her car yet again, he let out a long, irritable exhalation. “I might have known!”

“Well, I didn’t,” Jessica said tartly. “They never mentioned an avalanche on the weather report. If they had, I’d have stayed off the road. And please stop bludgeoning my car like that. Things are quite bad enough without your making them any worse.”

She thought he swore then. Certainly he muttered something unfit to be repeated in mixed company. Eventually, he composed himself enough to order, “Get out of the car.”

“And go where? You already said no one’s likely to rescue us tonight.”

“Get out of the car. Unless you were lying a moment ago and you really do harbor a death wish.”

“I’d just as soon—”

“Get out of the goddamned car!”

It was Jessica’s strongly held belief that a teacher who wished to retain control of her classes should make clear her expectations at the outset. Insubordination ranked high on her list of priorities. Unless it was stamped out at the start, it flourished quickly and completely undermined a teacher’s authority. Related to that were the social graces which, in her opinion, were as important a part of the curriculum as any other subject. She felt it was incumbent on her and her staff to teach by example wherever possible.

Which was why, when she replied to her companion’s incivility, she resisted the temptation to tell him to take a flying leap into the nearest snow bank and, instead, said firmly but politely, “I’ll do no such thing. Furthermore, I don’t like your tone.”

“I don’t like anything about this situation,” he shot back, singularly uncowed. “Believe me, if finding myself stranded overnight was in the cards when I got out of bed this morning, I can think of a dozen people I’d rather keep company with than some ditsy woman who doesn’t have the brains to travel equipped for winter driving conditions.”

“I’m not seeking your company,” Jessica snapped.

“But you’re stuck with it,” he said, chafing his bare hands together to keep the circulation going and turning toward his own vehicle again. “So hop out of the car now, because it’s not big enough for two to stretch out in and I’d like to get some sleep.”

Horrified, Jessica stared at him as the import of his words struck home. “You expect me to spend the night in your car...with you?”

“It beats the alternative,” he said bluntly. “Life’s tough enough without my waking up tomorrow to find a frozen corpse on my hands”

“But—!”

He blew into his cupped palms and, with the first hint of humor he’d shown so far, slewed an alarming leer her way. “Listen, we can debate the propriety of the arrangement once we’re under the covers.”

He was rude and he was outrageous—but, she was beginning to realize, he was right on one score at least. The cold was seeping through the open window to infiltrate her clothing most unpleasantly.

Still, she wasn’t about to cave in to his suggestions without a murmur. “I think I should warn you that I have taken several courses in self-defense.”

“Pity you didn’t start worrying about your safety before now,” he said, his expression at once resuming its former forbidding aspect. “As it happens, I’m harmless, but it would well serve you right if—Oh, what the hell!”

He pushed himself away from her car and seemed to make a concerted effort to rein in the anger suddenly vibrating around him. “You’ve got five minutes to make up your mind. If you’re not out of this car and into mine by the time I’ve got my sleeping bag unfolded, better say your prayers and write out your last will and testament, because, lady...” he blew into his hands again to emphasize his point “...it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”

And with that he marched back to his car and doused the headlamps, leaving only hers to bathe the shelter in their glow. She heard a door slam, another open. Saw an interior light go on as he rummaged around at the back of what appeared to be a large utility vehicle. And knew, as the chill already invading the inside of her car crept deeper into her limbs, that she had little choice about what to do next.

He could be a serial killer, a deranged psychopath, a man intent on choking the living breath out of her, but, if she chose to ignore his less than gracious invitation, she’d wind up dead by the morning anyway.

Swallowing doubts and reservations along with what was left of her pride, she rolled up the window and stepped out of the car. As though crouching in wait for just such an ill-prepared victim, the cold took serious hold, knifing through her mohair winter coat as if it were made of nothing more substantial than silk.

Just as she approached, her reluctant knight jumped down from the tailgate of his vehicle, which turned out to be a Jeep whose heavy winter tires were looped with snow chains. “Smart decision,” he said, shrugging free of his jacket. “Take off your boots and coat, then hop in.”

She liked to think she’d outgrown any tendency toward foolish impulse and indeed spent a good portion of her tenure as headmistress counseling her students to think before they spoke, to temper spontaneity with deliberation. Yet the question was out of her mouth before she could prevent it, gauche and horribly suggestive. “Why do we have to take off our clothes if all we’re going to do is sleep?”

He stood before her, the interior light of the Jeep enhanced by the glow of a candle set in a tin can on the floor under the dashboard. Quite enough illumination for her to take in the powerful breadth of shoulder beneath the heavy jacket and lean, athletic hips snugly clad in blue jeans. Was it also enough for him to detect the sweep of color that flooded her face?

If it was, he chose to ignore the fact, instead pointing out what would have been painfully obvious to anyone of sound mind. “I stand six three in my bare feet. Last time I checked, I weighed in at a hundred and ninety-four pounds. For that reason I bought an extra-large sleeping bag but it’s still going to be a snug fit for two. I no more want your snowy boots in the small of my back than you want mine in yours. As for the coat, you might want to roll it up and use it as a pillow.”

“Of course,” she muttered, chagrined. “How stupid of me.”

“Indeed!” He rolled his eyes and gestured her toward the Jeep with a flourish. “Climb aboard, stash your boots in the corner, and make yourself comfortable.”

Comfortable? Not in a million years, Jessica thought, trying to keep her sweater in place as she slithered into the sleeping bag.

No sooner was she settled than he slammed closed the tailgate and raised the rear window, rather like a jailer securing a prison cell. He then went around to the driver’s door, pulled it closed behind him, shucked off his boots and, tossing his jacket ahead of him, proceeded to crawl over the seat and join her in the back of the Jeep.

Inching into the sleeping bag, he turned on his side so that his back was toward her. Why couldn’t she have left it at that? What demon of idiocy compelled her to try to make pillow talk?

Yet, “This is really quite absurd,” she heard herself remark, in a voice so phonily arch that she cringed.

He sort of shifted his shoulders around and tugged his folded jacket into a more comfortable position beneath his head. “How so?”

“Well, here we are in bed together, and we don’t even know each other’s names.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m Jessica Simms.”

“Are you?” he said indifferently. “Well, goodnight, Jessica Simms.”

As snubs went, that rated a ten. “Goodnight,” she replied huffily, and went to turn her back on him. Except that, now that he was hogging most of the sleeping bag, there really wasn’t room for such maneuvering, a fact he was quick to point out.

“Quit fidgeting and nest up against me,” he said impatiently. “Every time you shuffle around like that, you let in cold air.”

“Nest?” she quavered, refusing to allow the import of “up against me” to take visual hold in her mind.

“Like two spoons, one around the other.”

And just in case she hadn’t understood he reached back one arm and yanked her close so that her breasts were flattened next to his spine and her pelvis cradled his buttocks. Truly a most compromising situation and one she could only be thankful none of her colleagues or students was likely to hear about.

“Thank you,” she said politely. “You’re very kind”

She felt his sigh, rife with exasperation and heartfelt enough that it lifted the sleeping bag and let out a little gust of warm air. “For crying out loud, go to sleep,” he said.

Of course, it was an order impossible to obey—for him as well as for her, at least to begin with. For the longest time, he lay next to her, long, strong and tense as steel. But gradually, as the night progressed, his muscles relaxed, and she must have dozed off herself because the next time she became aware of her surroundings he was sleeping on his stomach with his face turned toward her.

In the steady light of the candle, she saw that he was not as old as she’d first supposed and looked to be only in his late thirties. It was fatigue that etched his face, carving deep lines beside his mouth and between his eyes, and making him appear older.

Even as she watched, he seemed to sink further into sleep, so that the grooves relaxed, then faded away until she had nothing left to look at but his long, silky lashes touching softly against the lean austerity of his cheekbones.

How handsome he was, she thought.

What colour were his eyes?

Dreamy brown? No, he was not the dreamy type.

Icy green? Possibly. Despite the warmth generated by his body, she sensed that he was a cool, reserved man. Cold, even.

Her arm had grown numb from being cramped beneath her. She flexed her fingers and, with excruciating care, slid her wrist out and across her waist. But cautiously, without creating the least little draft, so that not even the candle flame wavered.

His eyes flew open anyway, alert and noticeably blue, and caught her staring.

Was the spark of sexual awareness that blazed briefly between him and her a figment of her imagination?

“What?” he muttered, the word laced with suspicion, and she decided that, yes, it must have been her imagination.

“Nothing. My arm—” She levered the rest of it free and waggled her fingers, wincing at the pins and needles trying to paralyze them. “It went to sleep.”

“Pity you didn’t.” he said, his head with its thick, dark hair lowering again to the makeshift pillow.

As suddenly as he’d woken, he fell asleep again. She shivered, less from the cold air lurking around them than from the stark lack of sympathy she sensed in him. She was inconveniencing him terribly, no doubt about it, and even less welcome in his sleeping bag than a bed bug.

Selena’s latest crisis couldn’t have come at a more inappropriate time, Jessica thought uncharitably. By now she should be lounging beneath a sun umbrella in balmy Cancun and trying to pretend she was more than a lonely, thirty-year-old woman most of whose dreams seemed unlikely to come true, not risking life and limb to be with a sister who had little use for her except when disaster arose.

But the avalanche wasn’t Selena’s fault; nor was it hers. And if her sleeping partner thought their present arrangement was inconvenient, how much worse would he have found it if she’d sped through the shed fast enough to wind up trapped under the snow at the other end? Or would he have left her to her fate and gone calmly about the business of making himself comfortable for the night without sparing her a thought?

Remembering how irritably he’d reacted to her lack of preparedness, she suspected he’d have left her to suffocate. It irked her enough to want to punish him, enough for her to make no attempt at stealth or silence when she struggled to her other side so that she was facing the deep perpendicular embrasures of the snow shed and no longer tempted to look at him.

He reacted with the same ill temper he’d displayed before. “For Pete’s sake settle down,” he grumbled. “You’re worse than a pair of puppies wrestling in a gunny sack.”

And again, just as before, he ensured her compliance by anchoring her in place, but this time so that he was snugly cushioned against her behind, and one of his long, strong legs pinned down hers, and she could feel his breath on the back of her neck.

It was an exceedingly...intimate situation.

Exceedingly!

Her watch showed ten minutes past eight when she awoke to find herself alone in the back of the Jeep. A fresh candle burned in the tin can under the dashboard and the start of another day seeped through the upper sections of the narrow vents on the downhill side of the shed to cast a pale, chill light along its length. Pushing herself into a sitting position and finger-combing loose strands of hair back from her face, Jessica saw him coming toward her from the far end of the tunnel.

Quickly, she shuffled free of the sleeping bag and pulled her clothing into place. By the time he hauled open the tailgate, she had her boots on and looked as respectable as could be expected, given the circumstances.

“Have they come to rescue us?” she asked, putting on her coat.

“No.” He reached under the dashboard on the passenger side of the Jeep and pulled out a small knapsack.

“Then what were you doing at the end of the shed?”

He handed her a foil-wrapped cereal bar and raised his dark, level brows wryly. “Same thing you’ll probably want to do before much longer,” he remarked pointedly.

To say that she blushed at that would have been the understatement of the century. She felt herself awash in a tide of pure scarlet. “Oh...yes—I...um...I...see what you mean.”

“Don’t let modesty get the better of you. The sun’s barely up and I don’t hold out much hope of us being dug out for at least another half hour. Too risky for the highway crew, when they can’t see what the conditions are like up the mountain. And that’s always assuming that there isn’t three feet of snow blocking the road between them and us.”

Jessica’s gaze swung to the nearest embrasure beyond which the narrow strip of sky now showed the palest tint of pink. “And if there is?” She could barely bring herself to voice the question. The thought of being imprisoned another day with him and with such a total lack of privacy didn’t bear contemplating.

“We might be here until mid-morning. Possibly even longer. It’d take a bulldozer to cut a path through anything that deep.” He hitched one hip on the tailgate and swung one long, blue-jeaned leg nonchalantly, as if picnic breakfasts in avalanche sheds were an entirely usual part of his weekly routine. “So, Jessica Simms, want to tell me what persuaded you to drive up here with nothing more reliable than a set of all-weather radials and a road map to get you where you’re going?”

“I’m on my way to visit my sister in Whistling Valley.”

“That’s another seven hours’ drive away. You’d better stop in Sentinel Pass and get yourself outfitted with a set of decent tire chains if you seriously want to get there in one piece.”

“Yes.” She squirmed under his scrutiny, aware that while he seemed to be learning quite a bit about her she knew next to nothing about him. “You haven’t told me your name yet.”

“Morgan. If you knew you were coming up here for Christmas, why the hell didn’t you plan ahead? BCAA or any travel agency could have warned you what sort of conditions to expect.” He took another bite of his breakfast bar, then added scathingly, “Maybe then you’d have chosen clothing more appropriate than that flimsy bit of a coat and those pitiful excuses for winter boots you’re currently wearing.”

He was worse than a pit bull, once he got his teeth into something. Clearly, he found her apparent incompetence morbidly fascinating. “I didn’t have time to plan ahead, Mr. Morgan. This trip came about very suddenly.”

“I see.” He crushed the wrapping from his breakfast into a ball, tossed it, backhanded, into the open knapsack and unearthed a bottle of mineral water.

She shook her head as he unscrewed the cap and offered her a drink. She wasn’t about to let a drop of liquid past her lips until she was assured of more civilized washroom facilities. It was all very well for a man to make do but for a woman....

“Some sort of family emergency?”

“What?”

“This sudden decision to visit your sister, was it—?”

“Oh!” She tucked her hands into the pockets of her coat and hunched her shoulders against the cold, which seemed even more pervasive than it had been the night before. “Yes. She hurt her back in a ski-lift accident and at first it seemed that her injuries were serious.”

“But now that you’re up to your own neck in trouble they don’t seem so bad?”

“No,” Jessica retorted, bristling at the implied criticism. “I phoned the hospital again before I left the hotel yesterday and learned her condition’s been upgraded to satisfactory.” She sighed, exasperation adding to the tension already gripping her. “It’s just that Selena’s always been prone to getting herself into difficulties of one kind or another.”