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 without having you underfoot all day. The closest town of any size is Wintercreek which you already know lies two hours east of here, so, like it or not, we’re stuck with each other’s company until you’ve got wheels again.” He drew an irate breath. “Which will hopefully be later this afternoon.”
Jessica swallowed a sigh and stared through the windshield. Thick stands of pine hemmed the road; directly ahead a snow-covered peak reared majestically into the clear sky. “Do you really have a home up here?” she asked doubtfully, afraid that, unless they arrived very soon, she was going to have to suffer yet another indignity and request that he pull over so that she could make a trip behind a tree. “It seems a very isolated place.”
“That’s what gives it its charm, Jessica. No nosy neighbors, no TV, just peace and quiet in which to do whatever I please—as a rule, that is.”
“But you do have a phone service. I heard you tell the men who dug us out that whoever repairs my car should phone you when it’s ready.”
“We have the bare necessities,” he allowed.
We? “So you don’t live alone, then?”
“I don’t live alone.”
“I noticed,” she said, when he showed no inclination to offer any further details, “that the road crew called you Mr. Kincaid, but you told me your name was Morgan.”
“It is,” he said. “Morgan Kincaid.”
She swiveled to face him. “Then why did you let me make a fool of myself calling you Mr. Morgan?”
He flung her another satanic grin and she couldn’t help noticing that, loaded with unholy malice though it was, it showcased a set of enviably beautiful teeth. “Because you do it so well, with such strait-laced gullibility.”
He wasn’t the first man in her life to have realized that, she thought grimly. Stuart McKinney had beaten him to it by a good seven years, and made a bigger fool of her than Morgan Kincaid could ever hope to achieve. “Then I’m happy I was able to provide you with a little entertainment,” she replied. “It eases my guilt at having caused you so much inconvenience.”
He swung the Jeep around a final bend and, approaching from the west, drove up a long slope which ended on a plateau sheltered by sheer cliffs at its northern edge. On the other fronts, open land sloped to a narrow valley with a river winding through, but it was not the view which left Jessica breathless so much as the house tucked in the lee of the cliffs.
Built of gray stone, with a steeply pitched slate roof, paned windows, chimney pots and verandas, it sprawled elegantly among the fir and pine trees, a touch of baronial England in a setting so unmistakably North American west that it should have been ludicrous, yet wasn’t. It was, instead, as charming and gracious as it was unexpected.
To the left and a little removed from the main house stood a second building designed along complementary lines; a stable, Jessica guessed, whose upper floor served as another residence if the dark red curtains hanging at the windows were any indication. Smoke curled from the chimneys of both places and hung motionless in the still air, tangible confirmation that Morgan Kincaid hadn’t lied when he’d claimed not to live alone.
“Okay, this is it,” he said, drawing to a halt at the foot of a shallow flight of snow-covered steps in front of the main house.
Grabbing her suitcase, he led the way up to a wide, deep veranda and into a narrow lobby where he stopped and removed his boots. Jessica did likewise, then followed him into the toasty warmth of a vaulted entrance hall. Directly in front of her a staircase rose to a spindled gallery which ran the length of the upper floor.
“Go ahead, Jessica,” Morgan Kincaid invited, his voice full of sly humor as he gestured up the stairs. “The bathroom’s the first door to the right at the top. Take a shower while you’re in there, if you like. You’ll find towels in the corner
