Christmas With A Stranger. Catherine Spencer

through already. Couldn’t have been much of a slide, after all.”

      They were heaven-sent words.

      “Thank goodness!” She scrambled down after him. “And thank you, Mr. Morgan. You undoubtedly saved my life and I’m very grateful.”

      “I undoubtedly did, Miss Jessica, and you’re welcome.”

      “Have a very merry Christmas.”

      She thought perhaps a shadow crossed his face then, but all he said was, “No need to race back to your car. It’ll take a while before they clear a way out for us.”

      “It’s a miracle to me that they even knew where to come looking.”

      “They have sensors strung all along the vulnerable stretches of highway. The minute one gets wiped out, they know there’s been a slide and they usually don’t waste much time getting to it.”

      “I see.” She pulled the collar of her coat more snugly around her neck. “Well, I think I’ll wait in my car, just the same. The cold’s making its presence felt again.”

      “As you like.” He closed the tailgate and raised the rear window of the Jeep. “Just don’t fire up your engine until we see daylight. Wouldn’t want to die from carbon monoxide poisoning when we’ve made it this far, would we?”

      “I’m well aware of the danger from exhaust fumes, Mr. Morgan,” she said loftily, resenting his confident assumption that, because she’d been ill prepared to cope with an avalanche, she must be some sort of congenital idiot.

      Half an hour later, however, she was half convinced his assessment might not be far wrong. By then enough passage had been cleared for one of the road crew to come into the shed to check on its occupants.

      “Start her up, ma’am,” he said kindly, stopping at her window. “You’ll be on your way in about ten minutes, but you might as well be warm while you wait.”

      After a bit of coaxing, her car sputtered to life and shortly after she heard the roar of the Jeep’s engine. Outside, she could see that although the sun had not yet risen above the surrounding mountains the sky was such an intense blue that its reflection trapped hints of mauve in the snow heaped up along the road.

      Perhaps if she hadn’t been so mesmerized by the sight of freedom she’d have noticed sooner that her troubles were far from at an end. Only when one of the road crew waved her forward did she switch her attention to her car and see the red warning light on her dashboard.

      Instinct led her to do exactly the right thing and switch off the car’s ignition immediately. The damage, however, was already done, as evidenced by the puff of steam escaping from under the hood.

      Behind her the Jeep’s horn blasted impatiently, but even a fool could have seen that her car wasn’t going anywhere.

      With mounting dismay, Jessica watched as her sleeping companion jumped down from the Jeep, exasperation and resignation evident in every line of him, and, in a dismaying rerun of last night’s fiasco, approached her window.

      “Don’t tell me,” he jeered, coming to a halt beside her. “Either you’ve forgotten how to take your foot off the brake or your damned car’s broken down.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      ANY hopes Jessica might have entertained that the extent of the problem was not too serious the almighty Mr. Morgan quickly put to rout.

      He surveyed her engine, which continued to puff out little clouds of steam like a mini-volcano on the verge of erupting. “It figures,” he drawled, rolling his eyes heavenward, and beckoned the road crew to come see for themselves the latest misfortune she’d brought down on her hopelessly inept head.

      “Release the hood,” one of them called out to her, and, after they had it propped open, they clustered around the innards of her car with the rapt attention all men seemed to foster for such things. There followed a muttered discussion to which Jessica, still slumped disconsolately behind the steering wheel, was not privy.

      Eventually, the Morgan man came back and leaned one elbow on the roof. “Might as well face it, Jessica Simms,” he announced conversationally, his voice floating through the window which she’d opened a crack. “The only way this puddle-hopper’s going to move is hitched to the back end of a tow truck.”

      She could have wept, with disappointment, frustration, and rage. “I suppose,” she said, hazarding what seemed like a reasonable guess, “that my radiator’s overheated?”

      “On the contrary, it’s frozen. Better phone your sister and tell her not to expect you at her bedside any time soon. Sentinel Pass is the nearest place you’ll find a service station and they’re working around the clock to keep emergency vehicles on the road. Types like you go to the bottom of their list of priorities.”

      He bent down and pinned her with a disparaging blue stare. “Of course, all this could have been avoided if you’d used the brains God gave you and taken your car in for winter servicing.”

      “I intended to,” she spat, terribly afraid that if she allowed herself a moment’s weakness she’d burst into tears instead. “The moment school was out for the holidays I planned to go over to the mainland and have it attended to. Normally, it’s something I take care of earlier, but we’ve had such a mild winter so far this year—”

      “Ah, well,” he interrupted, with patently insincere sympathy, “they do say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, don’t they?”

      “Oh, put a sock in it!” she retorted, consigning good manners to perdition, along with any remnant of seasonal goodwill toward him that she might have been inclined to nurture.

      If Satan had chosen that moment to take human form and torment a woman past endurance, he would have smiled exactly as Mr. Morgan smiled then. With devastating, dazzling delight.

      A couple of the road crew joined him at the window. “We’re about ready to head back to Sentinel Pass, Mr. Kincaid, so if you want a hand pushing the car over to the side...?”

      “I’d appreciate it,” he said. “Get Stedman’s to phone once they’ve towed it in and had a chance to assess the damage, will you? As for you,” he barked, stabbing an imperious finger in Jessica’s direction, “we’ve frozen our butts off long enough on your account. Into the Jeep, fast, and don’t bother to argue or complain!”

      She had no inclination to do either. Her most pressing need was to find a washroom in the not too distant future, so the sooner they arrived at wherever he was taking her the better. But he offered not a word of explanation of where that might be as he drove out of the snow shed and, some five miles further along the highway, turned north onto a narrow road that twisted snakelike up the side of the mountain.

      As warmth from the heater blasted around her ankles, however, the frozen dismay of Jessica’s situation began to melt enough for her to venture to ask, “Where are we going?”

      “To my lair in the hills where I plan to have my wicked way with you,” he said. “And if you don’t like that scenario I’m willing to settle for driving you to the top of the hill and shoving you over the edge.”

      “Very funny, I’m sure,” she said, refusing to let him rattle her, “but if that’s all you have in mind you could have finished me off last night.”

      “Don’t think the idea didn’t occur to me,” he warned, and swung left up an even narrower road so suddenly that her suitcase, which he’d flung in the back of the Jeep, rolled onto its side and landed with a thud against the wheel well.

      “I think we would both much prefer it if I spent the day at the nearest hotel,” she replied. “Perhaps where my car’s going, and while it’s being fixed I could freshen up and—?”

      “There isn’t any accommodation to be had in Sentinel Pass. It’s a truck stop, not a tourist spot, and they’re busy enough