At first he’d thought the sounds existed only in his head, another torture inflicted on him by the flu that had grabbed him by the throat the day he left Boston and had brought him to his knees, literally, when he reached his destination and staggered from his car to the front door.
And now that door, he surmised with another, deeper groan, was going to crash in at any moment. Whatever his visitor wanted, it was patently obvious he had no intention of leaving till he got it.
Better get up and get it over with.
It took him a few minutes to crawl out of bed, find a pair of jeans, drag them on, zip them up, with curses erupting all the while. Keeping himself vertical by grabbing one piece of furniture after the next, he stumbled to the bedroom door. Descending the stairs might present more of a challenge, he acknowledged grimly. But he made it, though by the time he got to the last step, he was more than ready to call it a day. Or a night? He’d left all the lights on when he arrived on Tuesday, and now he could see blackness pressing in through the ground-floor windows.
He lurched across the hall and fell against the front door, hitting it with his shoulder. As he dragged back the dead bolt, the bell shrilled again, paining his eardrums.
‘Hang on,’ he croaked. ‘Don’t be so damned impatient.’
He flung open the door.
And two things happened at once.
Firstly, an arctic wind blasted his naked chest with a brutality that sucked the air from his lungs.
And secondly, he saw that his visitor was not a man.
He stared disbelievingly at the woman gazing back at him with eyes that were as wide and startled as his own. Her clothes were partially snow-encrusted, but in the light from the overhead lamp, even with the snowflakes whirling around her, he could see her coat was bright red; her boots were black; her rakishly tilted toque was red with white trim...
And the small sack slung over her shoulder was leather. Creamy white leather. Butter soft. Crammed full. And in it...dear God, over her shoulder, from the top of the sack, peered a...teddy bear?
The stranger said, in a husky voice, breathless and more than a bit shaky, ‘Oh, thank heavens!’ She swung die sack down and rested it on the stoop. ‘I was beginning to think there was no one home!’
Santa Claus...
Female version.
Ho, ho, ho!
But shouldn’t she have come down the chimney?
Damian shuddered. His legs wobbled and he grabbed the edge of the door to keep himself upright. He felt every inch of his bare flesh shrink from the icy air.
‘Go away,’ he croaked. ‘You’ve come to the wrong place. I don’t do Christmas.’
The creature swayed toward him as he started to close the door. Her eyes were pleading. And as she cried ‘Wait!’ he noticed something else. Those eyes—as green as pine and exquisitely fringed with silky brown lashes—were dark with exhaustion...and redrimmed, as if she’d been crying.
He hesitated. A voice of caution whispered in some sane but distant part of his brain—
‘May I please come in and use your phone?’ she begged. ‘You see I’ve had an accident. My van’s stuck in a snowbank at the end of your drive—’
‘Are you hurt?’
‘Bumped. Winded. Shocked. But thankfully not hurt. I just need to call for a tow truck for my van. Then I’ll be out of your way...honestly...as soon as I possibly can.’
Van? Shouldn’t it have been...reindeer? Damian tried to hold onto the voice of caution but in the face of the stranger’s desperate pleading, it faded away.
With a sigh of surrender, he swept a hand sideways.
She kicked the snow off her boots and walked past him, bringing in with her a flurry of snowflakes, and the faint scent of French perfume.
He slammed the door, and with a tilting gait, followed her into the living room.
‘Your phone?’ she asked.
‘Over there.’ He cleared his raspy throat, gestured vaguely toward the massive oak coffee table, shivered and wrapped his muscled arms around his chest. ‘Help yourself.’
She put the sack down; it hovered, and fell over. The bear looked up unblinkingly as the stranger whisked off her toque and shook out a tumbled mass of glorious curls that were the same rich silky brown as Belgian chocolates. Her brow was sweet, her nose pert, her chin dimpled. She unbuttoned the coat and glancing at him, she murmured, ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll take this off otherwise I’ll feel the cold terribly when I go out again.’ She crossed to the fireplace, shook the snow into the empty hearth and draped the garment over a wing chair adjacent to the fire. She was wearing a ribbed red sweater, he noted vaguely, and—tucked into her boots—a pair of neatly fitting cream slacks that revealed a very attractive—
‘Where am I?’ She looked around at him, and he saw that her lips were curved in a wry smile. ‘When I tell the tow truck people to come, I’ll have to tell them where.’
The fever was burning him up. The chills were making him shiver. Her words were echoing in his head in a diminishing spiral. Suddenly all he could think of was getting back to bed, burying himself under the covers.
‘Tell them it’s the McAllister place on the Tarlity side road,’ he growled. ‘Look, I’ve got this damned flu and I’m not in any state to entertain. Make yourself at home till the truck comes—phone book’s under the table. Call Grantham Towing—Bob’s the only game in town, but he’s reliable.’ Groggily he tipped two fingers to his brow in a salute, and wheeling around in a quick move that made his head swim, he made his way unsteadily to the stairs.
When he was halfway up, he heard the riffle of pages and guessed she was hunting the phone book for the number. By the time he reached the landing, she was talking to someone.
He swung the bedroom door shut behind him, and it closed with a loud click. Reeling across the room, he plunged into bed, fumbled for the duvet and pulled it up over his marble-cold shoulders.
But even as he told himself he’d never sleep nor ever in this life get warmed up again, he went out like a light.
‘I’m sorry, miss. We can’t possibly make it tonight.’
‘Are you absolutely sure? Thing is, Mr. Grantham, I’m stranded at the back of beyond with a complete stranger.’ Stephanie lowered her voice and went on, in little more than a whisper, as she glanced furtively at the stairs. ‘For all I know, the man might be a serial killer—’
A hearty laugh came across the line, making her jump. ‘You said you were calling from the McAllister place?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Hell, I’ve known McAllister for years. The man’s a loner but he’s no more a serial killer than I am—’
‘But—’
‘Take my word for it. Gotta go—the switchboard’s lit up like a Christmas tree! I’ll send somebody out tomorrow for sure...depending, of course, on the weather.’
And with that, the owner of Grantham Towing hung up.
At her end, Stephanie dropped the telephone onto the cradle. Well, she challenged herself, what am I to do now!
There was only one answer to that. She would have to ask the growly McAllister man if she could spend the night. No, not ask. She would have to tell him she was going to have to spend the night.
Tugging off her boots, she made for the stairs with reluctant