Silhouette Christmas Stories Page 2

  "Why, that's not true. I stay very busy with my job and with Darius. You know I'm as involved as anybody in civic projects."

  "You're still the town mystery," Jim persisted. "You came to town five years ago-pregnant and single."

  "That sounds so deliciously sinful," Sara said, "like a soap opera or something. You know it wasn't like that."

  "I was a widow," Noreen replied tautly.

  "Who still wears her wedding band, but goes by her maiden name. People know just what you want them to know. They know you're the school librarian."

  "And a good one," Sara said, still trying to make peace.

  "They know you moved in with Miss Maddie, that you inherited her farmhouse last year after she died. Not that anyone thinks you shouldn't have. Not after the way you took care of her after she went blind. They know that in the summers you hold the best story hour in the county every Wednesday morning at 10:00 sharp. They know you're a woman without pretensions. You're as plain as earth. As simple as water."

  "Thanks." Noreen still wasn't smiling.

  "I meant it as a compliment."

  "Don't be mad, Norie," Sara said, folding her hand over Jim's again. "That's the way he compliments me, too."

  "If I'm so ordinary, then why can't people be satisfied that there's nothing to know?"

  "Because you don't talk about your past. You're running away from something or someone. And everyone wants to know who or what."

  "Why-why, that's nonsense." But Noreen's slim fingers were so tensely clenched around her teacup that every vein stood out.

  Jim leaned over and gently unclenched her hand. "Is it? Then why don't you accept a date with Mike Yanta the next time he asks you out?"

  "Because… "

  She looked at Jim and then looked away. Her dark eyes grew luminous with a pain she could neither share nor explain.

  Her two dear friends would never understand. They didn't know she was a Hale by marriage. They knew nothing of her wealthy background. They wouldn't understand if she tried to explain.

  People like them would have considered the Hale wealth and power a blessing. They wouldn't know that money could be the crudest of weapons. It could be used to destroy love, to wield power, to sever the closest bonds that could exist between a man and a woman.

  Noreen had learned all about money and its misuse by bitter experience. First she had lost the man she loved. Then she had lost her husband. She was determined not to lose her son.

  Unbidden came the memory of Grant Hale on the escalator… Of his arrogant tanned face… Of his husky voice calling her name…

  Chapter Two

  Noreen was shivering as she gripped the steering wheel of her truck and strained forward to see through her fogging windshield. The last lights of the town were growing dimmer in her rearview mirror. The sky ahead was black; the narrow, curving road that led to her farmhouse treacherously slick with ice. And it was still sleeting.

  Texas weather. Yesterday San Antonio had been sunny and warm, so warm it had been impossible to believe that today could be this dark and wintry with cold.

  Because she didn't like driving the lonely road by herself, Mike Yanta had offered to follow her home. But she had known he would have expected an invitation to come in, so she had refused.

  It was nearly midnight, and Noreen was tired. She hadn't slept much the night before. Instead she'd lain awake in her icy bedroom, listening to all the eerie creaks her farmhouse made as the norther howled. And she'd been thinking of Grant. Thinking of how his face had seemed leaner and harsher. Remembering how his eyes had pierced through her. Today had been no better. The past had seemed very near, all the old conflicts as deeply troubling as before.

  Although she was off for the school holidays, she'd spent the day sewing Darius's cow costume for the school's annual Christmas pageant. Darius had stood by the sewing machine "to help." He had helped by losing pattern pieces and stabbing a stray pin into his bare toe.

  She was on her way home from the Liskas where she'd left Darius to spend the weekend with Leo. Sara and Jim had invited her to dinner, and they'd had Mike Yanta over, too.

  Darius's cow costume was neatly folded in the passenger side of the cab. Tonight's pageant had been a success, with Leo and Darius both starring as cows in Jesus's manger.

  She was nearly to the bridge and the gate that led to the road to her house. Suddenly a blur of red and white lights up ahead and off to the right dazzled her. With a mitten, she wiped at the cloudy windshield.

  Taillights jutted out of the ditch beyond the bridge. A pair of headlights shone like twin cones cocked at a crazy angle. A black Cadillac had skidded off the bridge and was stuck in the ditch.

  Carefully, she drove across the bridge. When she came alongside the car, her truck slid to a halt with a hush of wet tires. She leaned across her passenger side and rolled down the window. Icy air blasted inside the truck. Dear God. She couldn't see any sign of life. Suddenly she was afraid of the dark and the unknown. Never had the road seemed more abandoned or forlorn. Just for a second, she toyed with the idea of driving on to her house where she could call for help. But the thought of leaving someone seriously injured in this cold stopped her.

  The road had no shoulder, but she pulled off anyway, turned on her hazard lights, and set the emer-gency brake. She fumbled blindly under the seat for her flashlight and a crowbar, found them and jumped out.

  Frigid gusts tore at her white woolen poncho and whipped her flimsy skirt. Her white boots sank into mud as she stepped off the road. When she reached the Cadillac, the mud was oozing over her ankles.

  Frantically, she banged on the tinted window on the driver's side with her crowbar and shouted. Precious seconds were ticking past.

  Then there was a feeble sound from inside. She caught her breath.

  She made out a man's voice. "Help me open the door."

  She struggled with the handle, tugging upward against the heavy door with every ounce of her strength until it gradually yielded. A man's strong hands were pushing at it from the inside.

  "Get your keys and turn off your lights," she yelled.

  The man could be dying and she was worrying about his battery.

  But he obeyed.

  "Can you hold the door by yourself, so I can get out?" a huskily pitched male voice asked from the depths of the Cadillac.

  "I-I think so."

  It took all her strength, but she managed the door just long enough for him to climb outside. The night was so dark she could only make out the shape of him. Once he was free, the door slipped out of her grasp and slammed with a thud.

  "Sorry," she murmured in breathless apology.

  "Hey, listen, honey, there's nothing to be sorry about. I was trapped till you came along."

  His deep voice was muted and weak, but it was achingly familiar. "Grant?" Just for a second she flashed her light on his face.

  "Damn."

  He closed his eyes and ducked his head, but not before she recognized the high chest, the carved jaw and strong cheekbones, the jutting chin and the aquiline nose. Dear God. There was blood on his dark brow, in his hair.

  "Merry Christmas, Norie," he muttered. '"I didn't mean to land my Cadillac in your ditch."

  "You're hurt," she whispered, tearing off her mitten, touching his face gently, even the sticky bloody place, smoothing his inky hair before she remembered he was the last man she should ever touch in such a familiar way.

  She jerked her hand away. "What are you doing here?"

  "I knew the welcome wouldn't last long." His voice was filled with the same bitter, insolent arrogance she remembered. "I was coming to see you. It's colder than hell. Can we get in your truck?"

  Noreen stumbled backward, away from him, her white poncho billowing in the crisp, cold air, and when he tried to follow her, he staggered.

  She moved toward him, not wanting to touch him, knowing she had to. Wordlessly she gave him her hand and he clasped it tightly. Although his fingers were icy, her fle
sh burned from his touch. She began to tremble. He put his arm around her and leaned on her heavily as she helped him pull himself out of the ditch.

  He was so weak she had to open the truck door for him. Her groping hand found Darius's cow costume and tossed it behind the seat. Grant heaved himself inside and collapsed.

  When Noreen climbed behind the wheel, she was instantly aware of how big and male and virile Grant was beside her. As always he was wearing a flawlessly cut three-piece suit. His lawyer uniform, he'd once jokingly told her. The cuffs of the pants were as muddy as the hem of her white skirt.

  "Why did you want to see me?" she whispered, her breathing as rapid and uneven as his.

  His mouth curled contemptuously. "It was crazy, I know. But then, our relationship always was a little crazy."

  The conventional Hales had thought her too uninhibited.

  "More than a little."

  His fathomless eyes were boring holes into her. "Yeah. More than a little."

  "You should have stayed away."

  "Maybe you're right," he muttered thickly. "I tried to talk myself out of coming a dozen times." But he reached for her hand, and with the last reserves of his strength, he pulled her hard against him. As his muscular body pressed into hers, she began to tremble all over again.

  Anger flared in his eyes. "But then maybe you're wrong."

  "Grant, please, let me go," she begged in a small voice. "It's been five years. We're strangers now."

  "Whose fault is that? You ran away."

  That old familiar undercurrent of electricity was flowing between them, even more strongly than ever before.

  "Because I had to," she said desperately.

  She felt the heat of his gaze on her mouth, and the emotion in his eyes was as hot as the night was cold. With a light finger he gently touched her red lips, traced the lush, full curve of them.

  Her own eyes traveled languorously to his hard handsome face, and she felt the old forbidden hunger for his strength, for his wildness, for the feel of his powerful body on hers.

  A long tremulous silence hung between them.

  "It's wrong, Grant." She gasped out the first coherent words that came to mind. "So wrong."

  "Maybe so, but whatever it is, it's lasted five hellish years."

  "You should be out with one of your beautiful women."

  "Yeah, I probably should be."

  He let go of her, and she jumped free.

  He fell weakly back against his seat as she started the truck.

  Grant lay woozily with his head against the cold glass. No telling what he'd done to his Cadillac. No telling when he'd get to Houston to check on his apartment projects, but at the moment, he didn't much care. His right knee throbbed, and so did his chest where he'd banged it hard into the steering wheel. Every bump in the road made the pain worse, but he said nothing. He was too aware of this woman, too aware of how she still stirred him.

  Tonight when he'd stepped free of his car, she'd seemed like an angel, a Christmas angel, in her white swirling clothes and gypsylike looped earrings. Funny, because he'd never really cared much for Christmas. As a child he'd thought it the loneliest season of the year. His wealthy mother had been too busy socializing to pay much attention to him or Larry, and Grant had never known his real father or even his real father's name.

  The truck skidded, and Grant watched Noreen struggle with the wheel to maintain control. She was such a fragile, delicate thing. She was the kind of woman that made a man feel protective. He didn't like the idea of her driving this lonely road at night.

  The fragile scent of her perfume enveloped him, tantalized him. She was as sweet as roses. And as prickly, too.

  Five years. To remember. To want. To do without. And he wasn't a man used to doing without. At least not where women were concerned.

  She'd thrown that up at him once.

  You only want me because I belong to your brother.

  Well, she'd been wrong. Larry had been dead five years, and here was Grant. He was such a fool for her, he'd come the minute he'd found out where she was.

  Why? None wasn't the traffic-stopping kind of glamorous beauty Grant usually dated. But she was lovely in her own way. It wasn't her black hair, her red lips, her breasts, not her slim body-none of the things he had wanted from other women. It was her, her personality, something inside her that captivated him. Something that was quiet and powerful and completely honest.

  He loved the way she liked to read quietly. The way there was always an aura of contentment around her. The way she was so gentle with children. The way she'd almost tamed Larry. Even the bright, offbeat styles she dressed in appealed to him. None didn't try to pretend to be something she wasn't.

  Grant had gotten off to a bad start with her. He hadn't met her until Larry had written to their mother that he was seriously interested in her. Georgia had become hysterical. "This girl's different, Grant! Smarter! Larry's going to marry her if you don't drive up and stop him!"

  "Maybe she's okay."

  "No, she's a gold digger like all the others who've tried to trap him before."

  It had never occurred to either Grant or his mother that Larry might be trying to stir her up and get some maternal attention.

  Bad start. That was the understatement of the year. That first night in Austin had been a disaster.

  Just like tonight, Grant thought coldly, suddenly furious with himself for coming. Why the hell had he bothered? She was as unfriendly as ever. He'd driven all this way, wrecked his car, and she'd hardly had a single kind thought.

  "So, how long are you here for?" she asked.

  "That depends on you," he replied grimly.

  "There's no motel in town, and I don't feel like driving twenty-five miles to get you a room and then back again. It's nearly Christmas, but I-I can't very well put you in the stable."

  He knew she didn't want him anywhere near her. But the mere thought of sleeping in the same house with her made him shiver with agonizing need.

  "Cold?" she whispered.

  "Thanks for the invitation," he muttered, getting a grip on himself.

  She started nervously twisting knobs on the dashboard, adjusting the heater. "We'll call the wrecker in the morning."

  A gust of hot air rushed across his face. His hand covered hers on the knob, and he felt her pulse quicken. "Hey, there's no reason to be so flustered. Honey, it's just one night."

  She pulled her hand away and let him fix the heater.

  "Right. It's just one night," she murmured, with an air of false bravado.

  "I hope I'm not putting you out," he said softly. Without touching her again, he swept his gaze over her body.

  The silence in the cab was breathlessly still.

  "Oh, I have a spare bedroom."

  "Then you live alone?"

  There was another long moment's silence, and he wondered if there was a new man in her life. He thought she blushed.

  "Y-yes."

  She was lying. He felt it. "What a shame," he murmured, pretending to believe her.

  But she didn't hear him. She was leaning on the steering wheel, turning the truck, braking in front of a locked gate.

  She got out and unlocked it. The least he could do was slide across the seat and drive the truck through.

  So he did. She relocked the gate and climbed back inside.

  "So, do you do this often?" he demanded, the mere thought making him angry all over again.

  "What?"

  "Drive home alone? Get out and struggle with that damned gate in all kinds of weather?"

  "As often as I have to."

  "You need a man."

  "So I've been told."

  That rankled.

  "But I don't want a man."

  His taunt was silky smooth. "Then you've changed."

  And that made her good and mad.

  She stomped a muddy white boot to the accelerator so hard his head snapped back. A sudden blaze of pain exploded somewhere in the middle of his brain. />
  "Ouch!"

  "Sorry," she said.

  But he knew she wasn't.

  He rubbed his head. At least she wasn't indifferent. But then, she never had been. Neither had he. That had been the problem.

  Chapter Three

  So this was where None had been for five damn years. This was what she preferred to the kind of life a Hale could have given her, the kind of life he could have given her.

  As she drove, Grant stared in wonder at the small farm, the falling-down picket fence, the white, two-story, frame house built on a scant rise beneath towering pecan trees. The windmill. Why had she chosen this instead of him? Instead of everything he could give her?

  The house was probably eighty or ninety years old. He'd been in old houses like this one before, houses that were built so they would catch the summer breezes and the windmill would be driven. In the winter such shabby structures were too vulnerable to the cold north winds.

  A screened-in porch was on either side of the building and there was a veranda across the front. A solitary yellow bulb by the front door was the only source of light. He noted the tumbledown cistern in the backyard and the large flowerbeds where she could grow flowers in spring and summer. A clothesline was strung from the corner of the house to the back gatepost. There was a small enclosed yard.

  She parked the truck in front of the house. Everything seemed so bleak and cold to him-so remote. He was used to living in the middle of town, in a beautiful home, surrounded by beautiful things-antiques, carpets, tapestry, crystal.

  "It's not the Hale mansion," she whispered.

  Was he so obvious? "You ran from all that."

  "I never belonged."

  "You could have."

  "No." The tortured word was torn from her throat.

  For a second longer she stayed beside him, so close he could almost feel the heat of her body. Then she threw open her door and ran up to the house. He followed at a much slower pace.

  He felt almost sure there was no man in her life. Even though it was dark, he saw that the grass was too high. There wasn't much firewood left. The gate latch needed fixing. He stumbled and nearly fell when the bottom two steps gave beneath his weight because the wood was rotten. A splintering pain centered in his hurt knee, and he had to stop for a second.