Catherine Spencer - Christmas With A Stranger

She might not look better, but she looked familiar. And that left her feeling secure enough to brave an evening with Morgan Kincaid.

She walked with the upright, flowing grace of a nun, Morgan decided, his gaze remaining fixed on the doorway leading to the front hall long after she’d disappeared through it. Dressed like one, too, in sober, neutral colors designed along straight, concealing lines. The only piece missing from the picture was the sweet charity of soul one might reasonably expect in a woman of the cloth, but Jessica Simms was a vinegary bit of a thing whose habit of giving a nostril-pinching little sniff of suspicious disapproval around men spoke volumes.

Not that he necessarily held that against her. On the contrary, he applauded her for it. He’d seen enough tragedy resulting from people, particularly women and children, choosing to ignore their self-protective instincts where men were concerned.

Abruptly, he grabbed the empty wood basket and, with Shadow at his heels, strode through the mud room and out into the night, welcoming the sting of the still falling snow against his face, the bite of the wind funneling up from the valley. Anything to distract him from the memories too ready to leap out of his professional past—some of which would, he suspected, haunt him till the day he died.

It was Christmas, for Pete’s sake—a time for families to come together in celebration. The trouble was, he’d seen too many ripped apart by violent crime and nothing he’d been able to do in the way of exacting justice had managed to heal them. Not chestnuts roasting, not plum puddings ablaze with rum, not children hanging stockings. Especially not children hanging stockings.

For a while, during the married years with Daphne, he’d hoped she’d become pregnant. He’d needed to know he could look after his own family, even if he couldn’t always protect others’. He’d wanted his parents to know the joy of grandchildren. But the children hadn’t come, Daphne hadn’t stayed, and his parents had died within six months of each other.

So here he was, thirty-seven, with more money than he knew what to do with, a career that promised to elevate him to the Bench before he turned fifty, and spending another Christmas alone, except for Clancy and a woman he felt he should address as Sister!

Flinging enough wood into the basket to keep the stove well stoked until morning, he retraced his steps from the shed to the house. Already, the prints he’d made when he’d come out were powdered with a fresh layer of snow. It was going to be a classic white Christmas, the kind shown on nostalgic cards where women in fur muffs shepherded families to church and children gazed, wide-eyed, through square-paned windows draped in icicles.

Families, children.... Despite his best attempts to shut it out, the whole memory thing came full circle again, threatening to blanket him more thoroughly than the snow.

He shook his head impatiently. He should have stayed in Vancouver where it was probably raining, and those dim-witted ornamental cherry trees along the boulevards and seafronts were bursting with pale pink blossom in anticipation of a spring still three months away. Where he had friends who gathered in exclusive private clubs to nibble on Russian caviar and sip champagne. Where the women adjusted their sleek designer gowns and watched him with a certain hunger that, for a little while, he could return.

Instead, he was snowbound with the very proper Miss Simms who probably wouldn’t know sexual appetite if it jumped up and bit her on the nose. Damn!

He kicked open the outside door and dumped the wood basket on the floor next to the tree Clancy had brought in at noon. On the other side of the wall, he could hear her puttering around the stove, opening the oven door, rattling cutlery.

She froze when he came into the kitchen, as if she’d suddenly come face to face with an intruder bent on unspeakable mischief. She stood on the far side of the table, knives and forks cradled in her graceful nun’s hands, her big gray eyes all wide and startled, and it irritated the hell out of him.

“What’s with the nervous tic?” he inquired.

She stared at him, the way a cornered kitten might. “Is it all right to do this?”

He frowned. “Do what?”

“Prepare the table for dinner.”

“Of course it’s all right,” he snapped, his irritation boiling over. “Why on earth wouldn’t it be?”

“It upset your hired hand, when he came in for lunch. He seemed to think I was interfering.”

“Oh, that.” Morgan selected a bottle of wine from the rack built next to the Welsh dresser and found a corkscrew. “It wasn’t you so much as the memories you stirred up. Beyond making sure the plumbing doesn’t freeze when I’m not here, he doesn’t spend much time in the main house since his wife died. I guess coming in and seeing the place looking the way it did when she was alive took him aback, especially with it being so close to Christmas.”

“I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“No reason you should.” He took down two wine glasses. “Will you join me, or don’t you drink?”

“A little red wine with dinner would be nice.”

A little red wine with dinner would be nice, she said, mouth all ready to pucker with disapproval. Oh, brother, it was going to be a long evening!

While she served the food, he filled the glasses and wondered unchivalrously if his getting roaring drunk might pass the time more pleasantly. She sat across from him and shook out her serviette, her movements refined, her manners impeccable, as if she’d been born with a silver spoon in her mouth and a flock of servants on hand to do her slightest bidding. And yet the meal she’d turned out suggested a more than passing familiarity with the working end of a kitchen.

They had cream soup made from carrots and flavoured with ginger, followed by stew with dumplings and rich brown gravy, and he had to admit the food went a good way toward improving his mood.

“These dumplings,” he said, spearing one with his fork, “remind me of when Agnes, Clancy’s wife, used to do the cooking. She always served them with venison, too.”

“Venison?” Jessica Simms echoed, managing to turn rather pale even as she choked on her wine.

“Deer,” he explained, thinking she hadn’t understood.

She pressed her serviette hurriedly to her mouth and mumbled, “I was afraid that was what you meant.”

“Why, what did you think you were eating?”

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