Christmas With A Stranger

“Your sister’s going to have to get along without you a while longer,” he declared, rolling the chair away from the desk and pacing moodily to the window. “And I don’t have a wife.”

“But you said....”

“I said I didn’t live alone.” He spun around to face her, his face a study in disgruntlement. “I did not say I was married.”

“All the more reason for me to find some other place to stay, then,” she blurted out, horrified to find her thoughts straying from the very pertinent facts of her dilemma with the car to the vague realization that she was afraid to be alone with this man.

He spelled danger, though why that particular word came to mind she couldn’t precisely say. It had something to do with his sense of presence that went beyond mere good looks. Whatever it was, it had expressed itself in the middle of the night before and she knew it was only a matter of time before it would do so again. He exuded a complex and undeniable masculinity that she found... sexy.

An uncomfortable heat spread within her at the audacity of the admission. She did not deal with sexy; it had no relevance in her life. “I’m afraid,” she said, “that you’ll just have to drive me to Wintercreek yourself.”

“Forget it,” he said flatly. “Even if it didn’t involve a three- or four-hour round trip for me, what good will it do you to be in one place when your car’s in another, eighty miles away?”

Once again, he was so irrefutably right that, illogically, Jessica wanted to kick him. Curbing any such urge, she said, “In that case, I’ll endeavor not to cause you any more trouble than I already have.”

“You can do better than that,” he said, and jerked his head toward a door at the far end of the main hall. “You can make yourself useful in the kitchen back there and set the table. There’s a pot of chili heating on the woodstove which should be ready to serve by the time I get cleaned up. Maybe a hot meal will leave us both more charitably inclined toward the other.”

Confident that she’d obey without a qualm, he loped off, long legs moving with effortless rhythm up the stairs. Refusing to gaze after him like some star-struck ninth-grade student, Jessica made her way to the kitchen, which would have been hard to miss in a house twice as large.

Big and square, with copper pots hanging from the beamed ceiling and the woodstove he’d mentioned sending out blasts of heat, it could easily have accommodated a family of ten around the rectangular table in the middle of the floor, yet Morgan Kincaid clearly had the house pretty much to himself.

There’d been only one toothbrush in the bathroom, only one set of towels hanging on the rail, and an unmistakable air of emptiness in the row of closed doors lining the upper hall. Did he perhaps have a housekeeper who occupied the rooms above the stables? Was that what he’d meant when he’d said he didn’t live alone?

If so, Jessica decided, taking down blue willow bowls and plates from a glass-fronted cabinet, she’d prefer spending the night with her, even if it meant sleeping on the floor. The favor of Morgan Kincaid’s reluctant hospitality was no favor at all.

She was stirring the pot of chili set on a hot plate hinged to the top of the woodstove when a man of about seventy, accompanied by a pair of golden retrievers, came into the kitchen from a mud room off the enclosed porch at the back of the house.

Short, stocky and unshaven, his appearance was what one could most kindly call weathered. “You must be the woman,” he observed from the doorway, unwinding a long, knitted scarf from around his neck and opening the buttons on a sheepskin-lined jacket.

Not quite sure how to respond to that, Jessica murmured noncommittally, replaced the lid on the chili pot, and bent to stroke the head of the smaller dog, who came to greet her before curling up in one of the two cushioned rocking chairs near the woodstove. The other animal remained beside his master and it was hard to tell which of the two looked more suspicious.

“You made any coffee?” the man inquired, in the same semi-hostile tone.

“Yes. May I pour you a cup?”

“Cup?” His gaze raked from her to the table and came to rest in outrage on the hand-sewn linen place mats and napkins she’d found in a drawer. “What the hell—? Who gave you the right to help yourself to Agnes’s Sunday-best dishes and stuff?”

Compared to the acerbic dwarf confronting her now, Morgan Kincaid’s personality suddenly struck Jessica as amazingly agreeable. She made no attempt to hide her relief when he, too, appeared and stood surveying the scene taking place, although she could have done without his smirk of amusement.

“Lookee, Morgan,” the old buzzard with the dog spluttered furiously, “we got ourselves a woman with a nestin’ instinct taking charge. Makin’ herself right at home and pawin’ through our private possessions as if she owns the place. Better watch yourself, or she’ll be warmin’ your bed again come nightfall.”

“Put a lid on it,” Morgan ordered him affectionately. “Jessica Simms, meet Clancy Roper, my hired hand. He looks after the horses when I’m not here, and keeps a general eye on the place. The dog in the chair is Shadow, the other’s Ben. Clancy, this is the person I told you about whose car is being repaired.”

“I didn’t figure on her bein’ the tooth fairy,” Clancy returned. “How long you plannin’ to keep her around, nosin’ through the house and ferretin’ out things that ain’t any o’ her concern?”

“Not a moment longer than necessary,” Jessica informed him shortly, then pointedly addressed her next remark to Morgan. “In addition to taking the unpardonable liberty of laying the table, I found a loaf of bread and put it to warm in the oven. I hope that doesn’t also violate some unwritten rule of the house?”

“No,” he said, a hint of apology merging with the amusement dancing in his eyes. “And the table looks very nice.”

“In that case, if you’re ready to eat I’ll be happy to dish up the food.”

“I’m starving, and so must you be.” He held out a chair for her with a flourish that drew forth another irate snort from the hired hand. “Have a seat and I’ll take over. We’re used to doing for ourselves here, though not quite as elegantly as this any more. Clancy, quit sulking and sit down.”

“The dogs needs feedin’, or don’t that matter now that you got a woman trippin’ you up every time you turn round?”

“The dogs won’t mind waiting.” Unperturbed by the irascible old man, Morgan set about serving the chili and slicing the loaf of bread. “You want coffee with your meal, Jessica, or would you prefer to have it afterward?”

“Whatever you’re used to is fine with me.”

“We usually have it with, especially during the winter when the days are so short. We start bringing in the horses around four in the afternoon, which doesn’t allow much time for a leisurely lunch.”

“Ain’t waitin’ that long today,” Clancy muttered, practically swiping his flannel-shirted arm across the end of Jessica’s nose as he reached over to help himself to bread. “Not only ain’t the company the sort that makes a man want to hang around, the sky’s cloudin’ up from the north-east pretty damn fast. Reckon we’ll be seein’ snow again before the day’s out.”

Morgan aimed a glance Jessica’s way. “Just as well you’re not planning to drive all the way to Whistling Valley today, after all, or you might be spending another night on the road and leaving yourself at the mercy of the next person who happens to come along.”

“I’m really rather tired of your harping on about last night,” she said, the note of reprimand in his remark really grating on her nerves. “I’ve already told you why I wasn’t as well prepared for the weather as I would have been had circumstances been different, and I don’t feel I owe you any further explanation or apology.”

“Right grateful little vixen, ain’t she, Morgan?” Clancy Roper said gleefully. “Reckon that’ll teach you not to go pickin’ up strange women off the side of the highway.”

“Doesn’t it occur to you that you were lucky I was the one you found yourself trapped with?” Morgan lectured her, ignoring Clancy. “Or that you have a responsibility to yourself and society at large not to take that sort of risk with your safety?”

“I don’t make a habit of expecting the worst,” Jessica retorted. “Most people behave decently, I find, given the chance.”

He spread long, lean fingers over the table top and shook his head. “Then you’re kidding yourself. Good Samaritans are pretty thin on the ground these days, and just because it’s Christmas doesn’t mean you can afford to indulge in the wholesale belief that all men are full of goodwill.”

“Reckon we just might find that out the hard way,” Clancy put in with a scowl, “if Gabriel—”

But before he could elaborate further Morgan cut him off with a meaningful glare and a brusque, “Shut up, Clancy. Let’s not get into that again.”

They ate the rest of the meal in strained silence. Once they were done, Morgan nodded to Clancy. “Feed the dogs while I bring in another load of wood,” he said, heading for the back porch, “then we’ll get back to the stables.”

Feeling thoroughly superfluous, Jessica said, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Not unless you’re used to working horses.”

“Just got to look at her to see she wouldn’t know the hind end of one if it was starin’ her in the face,” Clancy said, shoveling dog food into two bowls.

“You’re right,” Jessica informed him. “But I’m perfectly able to wash dishes and from the way you’ve managed to splatter chili all over yours it’s just as well. I’m also capable of producing an acceptable evening meal.”

“Lordy, Lordy,” the old curmudgeon sneered back. “Ain’t never before heard a woman spit out such a mouthful of hoity-toity words in one breath.”

“Considering we’re both lousy cooks,” Morgan told him, “I think you’d be smart to button your lip. Jessica, feel free to take over the kitchen. There’s a freezer full of stuff in the mud room, and sacks of potatoes and other vegetables. Oh, and help yourself to the phone in the office if you want to call the hospital again.”

She did, and afterward almost wished she hadn’t bothered. Selena, it turned out, had received a relatively minor injury to her spine-mostly bruising which, though painful, was not expected to create any lasting complications.

Jessica would have thought that was cause enough for any reasonable person to celebrate, but Selena was not famous for being reasonable. Thoroughly put out by the number of Christmas parties she was missing and the fact that the hospital restricted the number of visitors she was allowed, she devoted most of the conversation to a litany of complaint.

Patience stretched to the limit, Jessica finally cut short the call with the suggestion that since there was little Selena could do to change things she might as well make the most of them.