A reason to celebrate

When Katie “Smith” and her baby boy, Kyle, appear at the Owens family home one night during a snowstorm just weeks before Christmas, it seems a cruel twist of fate. Katie looks exactly like Jacob Owens’s dead wife—and Kyle could be his son!

At first Jacob wants nothing to do with the mysterious woman. But before long, Katie accomplishes what no one had thought possible—she breaks through Jacob’s grief, giving him back his joy for life.

But how long will she stay? Katie is obviously running away from someone, though she won’t say who. Whatever happens, Jacob vows to keep her and Kyle safe with him—at least until Christmas.

“Tell me who you are, Katie.”

The request was compelling. She shook her head, fighting back tears.

“You can trust me,” Jacob said gruffly. “Let me help.”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I’ve put my son in jeopardy by staying as long as I have. I’ve tricked myself into thinking we were safe these past weeks. It was a mistake. I can’t make it worse by telling you everything about us. If I do let you know who I am—let you help—I won’t be able to leave.”

“You don’t have to leave. Not now. Not ever.” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “We’ll fight this thing together.”

“No.” She lifted her fingers to his lips to stop his words. “Kyle and I have to leave. Soon.”

“Then all I can ask is this. Stay with us...until Christmas.”

“I will,” she said against her better judgment, because she wanted so desperately to do as he asked. “If I can.”

Keeping Christmas

Marisa Carroll

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARISA CARROLL

is the pen name of sisters Carol Wagner and Marian Franz. The team has been writing bestselling books for almost twenty-five years. During that time they have published more than forty titles, many for the Harlequin Superromance line. They are the recipients of several industry awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from RT Book Reviews and a RITA® Award nomination from Romance Writers of America, and their books have been featured on the USA TODAY, Waldenbooks and B. Dalton bestseller lists. The sisters live near each other in northwestern Ohio, surrounded by children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and old and dear friends.

For our aunts whose names we borrowed without their permission

Almeda

Hazel

Janet

Faye

Lois

And in memory of Marlene and Darlene

And what the heck, for our uncles, too

John August

Robert

Dale

Earl

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Prologue

“I’m scared,” Katie Moran told her sister-in-law as the older woman cuddled Katie’s fifteen-month-old son, Kyle, in her arms. “I’m scared to death and I’m getting out of here.”

“Here” was her father-in-law, Andrew Moran’s, palatial beachfront home on Key Biscayne, Florida.

“You’re bein’ melodramatic,” Patrice said in her soft Georgia drawl.

“I’m not,” Katie insisted, shaking her expensively highlighted blond head. “I’m scared.” Instinctively she lowered her voice on the words.

Katie folded her slender arms across her breasts and shivered as cold air from cleverly hidden air-conditioning vents swirled around her bare feet. Except for her lack of footwear she was dressed to go out, in cotton slacks and a matching cotton shell. It wasn’t that the room was uncomfortably cold. But the air was dry and filtered, and the windows sealed, so that they could never be opened to the sea breeze. Katie felt for a moment as if she couldn’t breathe.

She’d never liked the enormous art-nouveau-era villa; never felt at home there during six years of marriage to Andrew’s youngest son. But at least having Michael by her side had made it tolerable. Now he was gone and the huge old house seemed like a prison.

Beyond the plate-glass window behind which she stood, the ruffled blue surface of Biscayne Bay was dotted with expensive pleasure boats of all shapes and sizes. Michael had loved to sail. She had learned to love the sport, too. Someday, he’d told her, when their children were grown and he’d retired from the family investment business, they would sail around the world. Just the two of them, alone with the sea. That conversation had taken place just before Kyle’s birth. Four months later, unexpectedly, tragically, Michael was dead of viral pneumonia. He hadn’t been quite thirty years old.

Below her, on the private beach fronting the estate, she could see Andrew Moran sitting bolt upright in a wooden deck chair, as he did every fine afternoon, bald head shining, a glass of whiskey and soda in his hand, basking in the warm, late-November sun. Katie wondered what he’d do if he learned of this conversation. The thought sent another cold shiver down her spine.

“I admit Andrew is a formidable adversary when he’s crossed,” Patrice went on, generations of Southern good breeding evident in her carefully chosen words. Katie could see her plump, plain-featured reflection very faintly in the glass. Patrice bent her neck to kiss the top of Kyle’s silky head, then raised her gaze to stare at Katie across the room. “But in my opinion, you’re blowin’ things all out of proportion.”

Katie spun around ready to do battle. “You think that car jumping the curb Wednesday morning was an accident?” She held her breath. Surely she hadn’t misjudged her sister-in-law’s loyalty? Patrice was the only friend she had in Miami. Almost the only friend she had in the world.

“Yes, I do,” Patrice said firmly. “It’s just terrible an incident like that had to happen so close to the holiday. But—”

“It certainly gave me something to be thankful for when we counted our blessings at the table yesterday,” Katie agreed with a wry twist of her lips. Yesterday, of course, had been Thanksgiving. And today was Friday. The busiest shopping day of the year, a fact Katie hoped to use to her advantage.

“It was an accident,” Patrice repeated, a hint of exasperation seeping into her voice. “You know as well as I do that Dade County has the worst drivers in the world.”

“What about the roof tile last month?” Katie held out her hands for her son, needing the comfort of his warm, sturdy body in her arms. Patrice gave him up reluctantly, with a last little kiss. “The damn thing nearly killed us both.” Her grasp tightened involuntarily around the little boy as her mind skipped back to that terrible moment when the heavy clay tile had come crashing down at her feet. Kyle grunted in protest and squirmed to be free.

“That was an accident, too,” Patrice insisted, although her face had paled at the memory. “Andrew would never harm Kyle. Even if—” She stopped speaking abruptly. Her soft mouth hardened and she folded her plump beringed hands across her stomach. She was wearing one of those shapeless one-size-fits-all sweaters and a long white skirt. She began plucking at the material with nervous fingers.

“Even if Andrew would be more than happy to have something happen to me,” Katie finished for her.

“Oh, Katie, can’t we change the subject?” Patrice asked helplessly. “I’m tellin’ you, you’re blowin’ the whole thing out of proportion.”

Her sister-in-law hated confrontations of any kind. Katie felt a momentary pang of guilt for forcing the issue. “Maybe I am,” Katie said, “but I can’t take any chances. Don’t you see? I’m all Kyle has in the world.”

“He has me. And Gregory,” Patrice said, hurt evident in her eyes and in the downturned corners of her mouth.

“I know you’d protect Kyle with your life if necessary.”

Katie forced herself to harden her heart against the glitter of tears in Patrice’s soft green eyes. Her sister-in-law had never felt the constrictions of living under Andrew Moran’s thumb, not the way Katie felt them. Perhaps it was the difference in their backgrounds? Patrice had been the middle child of a well-to-do, loving family. Her father was a strong man, who ruled his wife and children with a firm but benevolent hand. She had gone to an all-girl, Southern school and had married Gregory Moran right after graduating from college. She was content to be a stay-at-home, country-club sort of wife. Katie was not. She had never had anyone but herself to rely on. It made her look at people, at life, differently than Patrice.

“The truth is, Gregory is as much his father’s pawn as Michael was. And whether you want to admit it or not, you’re as much a prisoner in this gilded cage as I am.”

“That’s not so.” But Patrice looked disturbed, as though she, too, was realizing the shakiness of her argument. After all, she and Gregory had lived under Andrew’s roof for twelve years, their entire married life. “If you just didn’t always argue with him so much, tried to be a little more accommodating....”

Katie sighed. She was letting her fears get the best of her. And she was alienating Patrice, her only ally. “Maybe you’re right,” she admitted grudgingly.

“I know I’m right.” Patrice hurried on before Katie could qualify her statement. “Andrew isn’t a bad man. You can’t take Kyle away from him. He’s his only grand…son....” She looked down at her hands, folded protectively across her stomach, and deliberately unclasped her fingers.

Katie felt a quick stab of sympathy for her sister-in-law. Patrice was thirty-three, seven years Katie’s senior. She and Gregory had no children of their own. She never complained about her barrenness, but Katie knew how desperately Patrice wanted a baby.

“I won’t have him grow up under that old tyrant’s thumb,” Katie declared.

Patrice sighed. It was a familiar argument between them. One they’d never settle.

“I know you’ve been unhappy here since Mike died....”

“I’ve never lied to you about that.” Katie was determined to say what was on her mind, despite Patrice’s obvious reluctance to hear it. “I won’t have Kyle brought up to be a criminal.”

“Andrew’s not a criminal.” Patrice’s denial lacked conviction.

“He worked for organized crime for years. Michael told me so, just before he died. He wasn’t lying. He was too sick. He’s the one who told me to get Kyle away from here.”

“Why did he say such a thing?” Patrice looked genuinely confused.

Katie shrugged. She’d asked herself the same question over and over. “I think he was afraid of Andrew. He didn’t want Kyle to grow up in fear of Andrew, the way he did. I don’t want Kyle to grow up living on the fringes of organized crime.”

“Andrew’s connections with…those people…were severed years ago,” Patrice insisted. “Gregory told me.”

“Gregory manages Andrew’s business interests. What did you expect him to tell you?”

“Gregory wouldn’t lie to me.”

“I’m not so sure.” Katie narrowed her eyes. “You see the men who come here to talk to Andrew, the same as I do. They’re not your average run-of-the-mill businessmen.”

“Katie, please. Don’t make me choose sides like this.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She didn’t want to argue anymore. Patrice couldn’t understand her fear because she didn’t have a child of her own. And she had never been to jail, like Katie had. Andrew Moran wants Kyle to grow up to be just like him. Cold, ruthless, determined to have his own way at any cost. The thought made Katie’s blood run cold.

“If you would only talk to Andrew. Or Greg,” Patrice tried again.

“You don’t need to cheerlead for Andrew. It won’t make any difference. I’m leaving,” she said abruptly, sitting beside Patrice. “I’m going. Today. Now.”

“Now!” Patrice’s mouth dropped open for a second, then shut with a snap. “Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Katie agreed with a sharp nod that sent short, silky tendrils of hair bouncing against her cheek. “I’ve got it all planned. But I need your help.”

“Katie…”

“I’m not going to ask you to tell Greg or Andrew any lies. I won’t even tell you where I’m going except that it’s somewhere there is winter and snow.”

Years ago she couldn’t wait to get away from the cold northern winters. Now she couldn’t wait to go back.

“How will you support yourself and Kyle?”

“Waiting tables, probably,” Katie said. “I’ve done it before. I was on my own from the day I turned sixteen. I can do it again.”

She’d been raised—if that’s what you could call her grandmother’s haphazard attempts to keep her in line after her parents split up—in Pittsburgh. She’d run away as soon as she could, quitting school, drifting south, ending up in Key West where she’d met Michael, a college senior who was there on spring break. He’d married her and brought her back to Miami. That had been the only time, she suspected, he’d ever gone against his father’s wishes. But Michael, weak, fun-loving Michael, had died and left her alone.

Her grandmother was dead, too. She had no idea where her parents were. There was nothing for her in Pennsylvania anymore. But she was going north. She was going to spend Christmas where it snowed.

“You’ll have to leave Kyle with strangers most of the time—or at day care. That’s no life for Michael’s child.” They both watched the little boy as he wiggled from his mother’s lap and toddled off toward the window.

“Neither is this.”

“Please, Katie. Don’t be rash.”

“I’ve given this a lot of thought. I’m not going to change my mind.” There was no use arguing with Patrice. Despite the advantages of education and family background she possessed, Patrice was as trapped in Andrew Moran’s web as Katie was. Patrice was trapped because she loved her husband. Only her husband was blind to the depths of that love because he was preoccupied with his business interests and winning his father’s approval. Michael had been the same way: in many respects a lonely little boy, still striving to win his autocratic father’s love. In Katie’s opinion, Andrew Moran had a lot to answer for.

“Katie…” Patrice persisted.

“I need money,” Katie said, taking her sister-in-law’s cold hands between her own warm, strong ones. Neither of them had jobs. The Moran men wouldn’t hear of it, but Patrice had access to more cash than Katie because of a trust fund left to her when her grandmother died.

Andrew had set up charge accounts for Katie at all the best stores. She’d never lacked for anything for Kyle or herself. And someday Kyle would be wealthy in his own right. But Michael had died in debt. Debts that Andrew had paid. And Katie herself had few assets. She didn’t even own a car or jewelry she could sell for cash.

“How much?” Patrice asked, still frowning, and Katie knew she’d won her over to her side.

“As much as you can give me.” She gave Patrice’s hands a squeeze. “We’ll need coats and heavier clothes and diapers for Kyle. I won’t be taking anything with me when I leave.”

“What the hell do you mean, she’s gone?” Andrew Moran threw his starched linen napkin down on the table as he stood to confront his chauffeur. Theo, a tall, grim-faced Haitian, also served as Andrew’s personal bodyguard. He’d been with Andrew for as long as Patrice could remember but he never stood in awe of his employer.

“Just what I said,” he replied in the melodious tenor voice so at odds with his broad-shouldered physique and scarred blue-black face. “She’s gone. Give me the slip, she did. Took off. Her and the man child.”

“Where the hell could she go? Did you drive her to the airport? What? Speak up, man.”

“I took her shoppin’. She wanted the little tyke to see Santa Claus,” the chauffeur replied, his composure unruffled. “The place was crawlin’ with kids and people. They just disappeared.”

Andrew snapped his fingers. “Just like that?”

“Jus’ like that.”

“Dad, don’t get yourself all worked up.”

Patrice shifted her gaze from her father-in-law’s angry face to her husband’s. Father and son resembled each other a great deal physically. Neither man was above average height. Gregory’s brown hair was receding from his forehead. Andrew was nearly bald, with only a monk’s fringe of white hair circling his head from ear to ear. Andrew’s eyes were faded gray, sunk in wrinkles. Gregory’s eyes were blue-green, changeable, steady and clear. She loved his eyes, and his smile, the one feature he’d inherited from his long-dead mother.

“I’m not worked up.” Andrew leaned both clenched fists on the table. “I want to know what the bloody hell’s going on here.” When her father-in-law was very angry the faint echoes of his Liverpool, England, upbringing could be heard in his speech.

“She’s gone,” Theo repeated stubbornly. “I drove ’round and ’round the mall lookin’ for her. There ain’t no sign. They be gone. Both of them.”

“Damn it! I knew the crazy bitch would do something like this. She’s stolen my grandson.”

Andrew pinned Patrice with a hard stare. She jumped. Not because she was afraid of her father-in-law but because she knew he was going to start asking questions, and she was a terrible liar.

“What do you know about this?” he demanded.

“I do wish you’d watch your language at the table, Andrew,” she said, calling on memories of her unflappable Southern belle grandmamma to keep her voice level and clear.

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said ominously, but he did sit again in his heavy teak high-backed chair.

“What precisely do you want to know?” she asked in her turn, wishing that Gregory would come to her rescue, knowing that he would not. She was seeing Andrew through new eyes, Katie’s eyes, and she didn’t like what she saw—a bullying old man riding roughshod over everyone around him.

“You two are thick as thieves,” Andrew said. “How long’s she been planning this stunt? Where did she go?”

“To answer both your questions: I have no idea.” Patrice folded her napkin neatly beside her plate, her roast beef left untouched. No leftover turkey the day after Thanksgiving at Andrew Moran’s table. No leftovers, ever.

“You’re lying.”

“Dad,” Gregory protested, but he in turn immediately began questioning her himself. “Why would she run away, Pat?”

“Because she’s unhappy.” Patrice felt a sharp, cutting stab of pain at Greg’s accusatory tone. She wondered if he really understood what she was saying. “She felt trapped. And she…she was afraid.”

“Afraid?” Gregory wrinkled his high forehead. “Afraid of what?” He looked genuinely perplexed, and then angry in his turn. “What has she got to be afraid of?”

“Nothing,” Andrew broke in before Patrice could reply. “Where’d she go?”

“I don’t know,” Patrice answered. She gave her father-in-law back stare for stare. She still wasn’t afraid of Andrew. She didn’t believe he was evil. But she knew he was ruthless and cunning and determined to get what he wanted.

“Her family’s from Pittsburgh,” Gregory said thoughtfully. “Maybe she went back there.” He frowned, looking more than ever like his father, hard faced, intent, a hunter closing in on his prey. Patrice’s heart gave another painful little jump.

“There’s nobody left for her there. Maybe she went back to Key West,” Patrice said hurriedly. Katie had been brave enough to run away, to make a new life for herself and Kyle. She looked from her husband to his father once again. Katie was right. It was time Andrew’s dictatorship came to an end. Patrice had done a lot of thinking during the long sunny afternoon. She’d asked herself some hard questions. One of them, particularly, demanded total honesty: Was this the way she wanted her child to grow up? The baby she’d finally conceived after so many barren years. The baby Greg didn’t know about yet.

“Too close,” Greg mumbled. “But we’ll check it out. I’ll get some detectives on it first thing in the morning.”

“Why don’t you just let her go?” Patrice stood so quickly her chair went skidding backward across the parquet floor.

“Because she’s stolen my grandson, you fool woman,” Andrew growled. “She can stay gone till hell freezes over for all I care but I want my grandson back.”

Patrice felt cold fear curl around her heart. “What do you mean by that?”

“Dad’s right, Pat,” Greg said, standing also. “I’m not sure Katie’s the best person to have custody of Kyle. She’s so young. No education to speak of and now pulling a harebrained stunt like this.”

“You’d take Kyle away from her if you found her?” Surely this wasn’t happening. Greg, the man she loved, couldn’t be so callous, so cruel.

“Katie’s not being rational. It might be the best thing to do,” he said, watching her closely. “Pat, don’t look at me like that.” He sounded amazed and hurt. “I’m only thinking of my nephew’s interests. We have a responsibility to see that Michael’s son receives the best life he can have.”

“The best life he can have is being with his mother.” It was funny how quickly your heart could break. She’d felt it snap, just like that. There wasn’t any pain yet. That would come later.

“Are you sure? We’d love him and take care of him just as if he were ours. And we can bring him up to be comfortable with his inheritance. Can Katie do that?”

“Kyle isn’t ours.” She wanted to give Greg one last chance. “He’s Katie’s. How could you even consider something like that?”

“It’s not such a bad idea,” Andrew interjected. He rubbed his hand over his chin. “The girl’s wild. Always was, always will be. She’s got a criminal record, too. Not a fit mother. We could use that if we have to.”

“She was caught shoplifting food from a grocery store when she was still a teenager. Barely eighteen. She was starving. Surely you wouldn’t use that against her.” Patrice couldn’t believe her ears. Things like this didn’t happen in this day and age.

“Pat’s right. I don’t think it’s necessary to bring that up.” Greg was still watching her but she could no longer meet his eyes. What he said was too little, too late.

“All right, we’ll forget that scenario for now,” Andrew said placatingly, but his eyes were fierce. “I’ll use it later if I have to. I’ll do whatever’s necessary to get my grandson back.” He turned to Greg. “You’re dead right about one thing, though. You and Patrice would be better off caring for the boy. A judge might balk about turning the little fellow over to an old man like me—” he chuckled “—an old man with a reputation like mine. But you two are the perfect parents—”

“No,” Patrice said, the word exploding from her lips. “I won’t be a party to taking Katie’s baby away from her. I refuse.” She turned and hurried down the length of the long, polished table. Theo stepped aside with a nod.

“Patrice, wait.” Gregory sounded miserable, torn, but Patrice never slowed down.

“Let her go,” she heard Andrew command as she left the room. “She’ll come to her senses soon enough.”

Patrice put her hand over her mouth to keep from sobbing out loud. She’d come to her senses, all right. She was leaving this house, too. Tonight. Just as Katie had.

Chapter 1

“Jacob, you haven’t touched your dessert. What’s wrong? Aren’t you feeling well?” Hazel Owens Gentry addressed her nephew in the same sweet-as-dandelion-wine tone of voice she’d used to reprimand him since he was a little boy. “It’s the last piece of mincemeat pie. I saved it just for you.”

“I’m feeling great, Aunt H, really,” he hastened to assure her. Faded blue eyes regarded him from a face as brown and wrinkled as a berry. His aunt Hazel was an earth mother. She wasn’t completely happy unless she had someone to care for. “But I’m stuffed.” He smiled for her benefit. “I can’t eat another bite.”

“It’s the soup,” Hazel fretted. “Too much pepper? Too much celery?”

“The soup’s great, Aunt Hazel. You make the best leftover turkey soup in Tennessee.” He stretched the smile into a grin. “It’s great.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the meal, sister.” Almeda, the eldest of his five Owens aunts, interrupted her sibling’s lament. “A fitting end for a noble bird.” She picked up her spoon. “Now stop fishing for compliments and sit down and eat yours before it gets cold. If the boy doesn’t want his pie he doesn’t have to eat it.”

Jacob was thirty-four years old but Almeda had called him “the boy” when he was twenty-two and when he was twelve—the year he and his father had come to Holly Ridge, the family home near tiny Owenburg, Tennessee, at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, to live. He suspected she had called his late father, the only Owens brother, the same thing when he was young, as well.

“I’ll eat the pie.” His middle aunt, Janet, added her two cents’ worth. “Mincemeat’s my favorite. And I’d hate to see it go to waste.”

“It won’t go to waste.” Faye giggled and nudged her twin, Lois.

“It’ll just go to your waist,” his youngest—by six minutes—aunt responded with a giggle of her own.

“Girls.” Almeda waved her gnarled, beringed hand in their general direction. “Enough. Eat. The food’s getting cold.”

Faye and Lois were sixty-nine years old and Almeda still referred to them as girls. That’s why Jacob knew he’d always be “the boy.” He handed the pie to his aunt Janet and bent his head to finish his soup, hiding his amusement at the good-natured bickering going on around him.

He owed his sanity, if not his life, to this marvelous eccentric quintet of old ladies. Returning to Owenburg, to his aunts and to his roots three years before, after his wife and baby son were killed, had pulled him through the worst period of his life. For months after the freak accident that had destroyed his family and his happiness, he’d wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and die. But the aunts wouldn’t allow that. They’d descended on his little house in Knoxville near the University of Tennessee campus where he was an associate professor of microbiology and refused to leave without him. He’d given in finally, planning to stay in Owenburg a few days only, just to get them off his back, then return to Knoxville—and he didn’t know what.

The few days had stretched into weeks, then months. He’d resigned from the university and taken a job teaching science at Owenburg High School. Three years later he was still here. He no longer thought about dying, but he didn’t think much about living, either. It was a trade-off, he supposed, if you wanted to analyze it, a defense mechanism. If you didn’t want to remember the past, you didn’t dare consider the future.

If you didn’t allow yourself to feel, to care, you could get through the days. And more importantly, you could get through the nights. That was his immediate goal in life. To sleep through the night. He hadn’t quite made it yet, but he was working on it, and maybe in another ten or fifteen years he’d figure out how to do it.

“The television weatherman said it’s going to get down to fifteen degrees tonight,” Faye commented, breaking into his thoughts.

“It’s too damn early in the winter for it to be so cold.” Janet looked up from her pie with a scowl in the direction of the television.

“Janet, that language isn’t appropriate at the dinner table,” Almeda said.

“Oh, hell,” Janet muttered. “It’s nearly the twenty-first century. I’ll say damn if I want to.” Janet had taught physical education and American history at Owenburg High for forty-five years, retiring five years earlier. At seventy-two she still coached the Owenburg girls’ and women’s softball teams. She swam three times a week at the health club in Knoxville, making the forty-mile drive alone, in her 1972 Chevy Impala.

“Be that as it may,” Almeda began, but Lois cut her short.

“It’s sleeting outside,” she informed her sisters. “It’s so slippery I almost fell on my fanny taking Weezer’s food out to the barn.” Weezer was a huge, bad-tempered goose, the family “watchdog,” thirty-five years old and still going strong. Jacob had read somewhere that geese could live to be a hundred years old. In his opinion Weezer was certainly ornery enough to last that long.

“If it gets as cold as they say,” Faye chimed in, “the ice on the ground will last all night.”

“Oh, dear,” Hazel said, with a worried frown. “Think of all those pour souls traveling home from Thanksgiving with their families.”

“And all the snowbirds heading down the interstate to Florida,” Janet added with a touch of acid.

“Oh, yes,” Hazel said, ignoring the sarcasm. “I’ll remember to say a prayer for all of them. Maybe they’ll cancel school tomorrow, Jacob, and you can sleep in.” She reached across the table and patted her nephew’s hand.

“I could use the extra day off,” he agreed. “But not for sleeping in. The woodpile’s getting low. I wouldn’t want to head over here for breakfast one morning and find the fire in the stove’s gone out.” He had his own cabin a hundred yards up the hill but he took a lot of meals, and spent a lot of time, at his aunts’ home.

“No, indeed,” Almeda said, folding her napkin carefully before laying it beside her plate. “There’s been fire in that cookstove every day since I was a girl.”

“The world wouldn’t end if there wasn’t,” Janet said under her breath.

“I like cooking on the old stove,” Hazel, always the peacemaker, broke in quickly. “But I don’t have anything against electricity. And to tell you the truth, I’d just love to have a microwave.” She shot a defiant glance at her older sister out of the corner of her eye.

“Microwaves. Ridiculous appliances.”

“They really are very convenient,” Hazel began. Almeda snorted. For seventy-five years she’d ruled her sisters’ lives. She didn’t intend to stop now.

“Get one if you want it,” Janet told Hazel. “Quit being such a baby.”

“We’ll look at them for you the next time we go to the travel agent,” Faye offered.

“Yes. The office is only a couple of miles from the mall in Knoxville. I think Wainwright’s department store would be the best place to check, don’t you?” Lois decided with a pixiewise nod of her gray-streaked red head. Both the twins were small, barely five feet tall and slender as children.

“Yes, Wainwright’s. We’ll look into it when we go pick up the brochures for our trip to Argentina.”

“Argentina?”

Jacob hid another smile. His twin aunts had been planning the trip of a lifetime ever since his grandparents had passed away fifteen years ago. As far as he knew they’d still never ventured farther away from home than Memphis, but they kept planning, and someday he hoped they made it to all the faraway, exotic places they dreamed about.

Dreams were another thing he’d learned to do without.

“Yes, Argentina,” Faye insisted when Janet had stopped laughing. “It’s a great travel bargain this winter.”

“I’ll bet it is. If you get there before the next coup attempt.”

“It’s time for Sixty Minutes,” Almeda announced imperiously. “I don’t want to miss is. Mike Wallace is doing an exposé on the savings and loan scandal.”

“Another one?” Hazel sighed. “Isn’t that ever going to be settled? You go ahead. I’ll tidy up in the kitchen.”

“I’ll help you, Aunt H,” Jacob offered. “Then I have to get back to the cabin. I can’t count on the weather being bad enough for them to cancel school tomorrow. I still have half a dozen midterm exams to mark.”

“I’ll give you a hand,” Janet said, pushing her chair back from the table as she turned to help Almeda, crippled by arthritis, to rise from her chair. “Sixty Minutes bores me to death.”

“Thanks, Aunt J,” Jacob said as he prepared to carry a stack of plates and bowls into the kitchen. “But they’re essay questions. Still want to volunteer?”

“I withdraw my offer,” Janet said with a cackle. “I’ll find something else to occupy me until bedtime.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to improve your mind a little with a good book,” Almeda said, reaching for her walker, her only concession to the infirmities of age.

“I already have one. It’s Stephen King’s newest thriller. I love the way that man can scare your socks off without half trying.”

Almeda sniffed. “Rubbish. Good night, Jacob boy,” she said, lifting her cheek for his kiss. “Sleep well.”

“Good night, Aunt,” he said, touching his lips to her cheek. His aunts were all the family he had left; all the family he would ever have, now.

“I wonder,” Faye said, lifting the lace curtain over the bowed dining-room window, “if we should move Weezer onto the back porch. It really is miserable out there.”

“I’ll bring her inside,” Jacob offered, wondering what flaw in his character caused him to volunteer for such hazardous duty.

“Would you, Jacob? Thanks. Lois and I have to finish the designs for the Christmas decorations we’re planning this year.”

“I’m not putting up any outside lights as long as the weather keeps up like this,” Janet warned as she headed for the back parlor a few steps in front of Almeda so that she could turn on the TV for her sister.

“I’ll do the lights, Aunt J,” Jacob interjected. “But I agree, not until the weather improves.”

“That’s okay,” Faye and Lois chorused, almost in unison. “We have to buy a couple of new strings of lights first, anyway.”

“How many is a couple?” Almeda asked suspiciously, half turning in the doorway, her hands planted firmly on the handles of her walker.

“Well, five or six, maybe,” Faye admitted with a quick glance at her sister.

“We thought it would be great to outline the whole house with lights this year.”

Jacob groaned. The roof peak of the big old Victorian house was at least forty feet off the ground. “Let’s discuss this tomorrow, okay?” he said, pushing his hip against the swinging door that separated the dining room from the kitchen. “I’m not sure I’m interested in climbing around on the roof at this time of year.”

“But you do such a marvelous job with the lights,” Faye said cajolingly.

“It wouldn’t be Christmas in Owenburg if we didn’t put up the lights. You know how the children look forward to it. And we’ve designed a new display for the side yard,” Lois added, her voice rising with excitement. “Christmas geese. Just like Weezer. With wreaths around their necks, and four little goslings exploring a Santa’s bag of presents that have spilled out on the lawn. We’ve already hired Wiley Harrison to make the geese.”

“Okay,” Jacob said, giving in without a fight, just as he always did when his aunts had their heart set on something. “I’ll do it. But not till the ice melts. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” The twins went off beaming.

“You’re too good to us, Jacob,” Hazel said. “Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Aunt H.” He kept his voice gruff, devoid of emotion. “That’s what family’s for.”

“You need a family of your own,” Hazel replied without missing a beat. None of his aunts was hesitant about voicing an opinion on the matter of his seclusion. But Hazel, a widow herself, was the most vocal of all. “You need to get out, meet someone. Find someone to love again.”

“No.” He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t change expression but his aunt looked as if he had.

“All right, I won’t mention it again.” She turned away from the big double sink where she’d deposited her armload of dirty dishes and opened the back door. A blast of cold, wet air and stinging crystals of sleet blew halfway across the room. “Oh, dear, Lois wasn’t exaggerating. It is sleeting very hard. And it’s miserably cold. Would you mind very much bringing Weezer up onto the porch?”

“I’ll do it right now,” Jacob offered, deciding he might as well get it over with. He grabbed his coat off the rack by the walnut pie safe his great-grandfather had built and pulled it on.

“Look, Jacob,” Hazel said, holding the door half-open as she pointed toward the small strip of the interstate that could be seen across the valley. “Goodness, see all the flashing lights. There’s been an accident. A bad one, by the looks of it. Oh, dear, I wonder if there’s anything we can do to help?”

“I doubt it.” Jacob, too, watched the array of red and blue flashing lights, but he didn’t feel any of his aunt’s quick compassion. He didn’t let himself feel anything at all but a mild curiosity as to what might have occurred. “With the roads as bad as they are, Aunt H, it’d take forty minutes to get over there. There’s nothing we can do.”

“We can pray,” Hazel said with the assurance of a deep and abiding faith.

“Do that,” Jacob said, turning away from the lights, setting off into the storm with his head tucked low on his chest. “It does about as much good as anything else.”

“I’m sorry, missus. Any other time I’d take you all the way to the Fuller place, but this here weather caught me off my guard. I ain’t got no chains on the tires. There’s no way I can get up the hill tonight. You and the little boy, though. You’re sure welcome to come on home with me. My wife’ll have my hide when she hears tell I dropped you off here, alone with it snowin’ to beat the band.”

“No, really. I couldn’t impose on you that way. The motel you mentioned will be just fine.” Just fine, Katie repeated to herself, because it was so far off the beaten track that no one would find her there. “Thanks so much for giving us a ride.” She covered her mouth with her hand as a fit of coughing threatened to take her voice away.

“That’s a bad cold, missus,” the old man said, not for the first time. “Better see about takin’ somethin’ for it.” He nodded his head, barely covered with wispy white hair, sagely. “My wife. She’s got the perfect cure for what ails you. Tea with lemon and—”

Katie broke in on his good-natured rambling. “I’m sure she does, but I’ll be all right as soon as I get a good night’s sleep.”

“Sure you will,” the old man agreed, but he didn’t sound as if he meant it. He peered at her sharply over the top of dark-rimmed, half glasses. “Sure you will.”

Katie felt another painful cough working its way up from deep in her chest. She struggled to hold it back. Kyle squirmed restlessly in the canvas carrier that held him strapped against her chest. His weight, comforting as it was, made it harder than ever to breathe.

“We really appreciate you giving us a lift,” she said again as the old man’s equally venerable pickup eased to a halt at the edge of a tiny hamlet he named as Owenburg.

“No problem. I still think you should have waited for an ambulance to check you and the little one out, though.”

“No.” Katie bit her lip and tried to smile. “I mean, we weren’t hurt at all. The bus just slid off the road. It happened so quickly I didn’t even have time to be afraid. It was all the police cars and flashing lights that upset Kyle. That’s why I wanted to move on.” She stopped talking before she got herself into more trouble. She was certain her explanation of why she was in such a hurry to leave the scene of the accident did not sound very convincing.

“Sure, sure.” The old farmer had been one of the first to stop and assist the dazed and disgruntled passengers of the cross-country coach. He’d helped Katie and Kyle off the bus and he’d helped find her purse, which had slid down the aisle when the bus tilted over in a small depression. Every cent she had in the world was in that purse. She’d be forever grateful to him for finding it, even if he hadn’t also agreed to give her a ride away from the wreck. “Now, if you want, I can help you carry your stuff up the hill to the motel.”

“No, thanks,” Katie said, remembering the old man’s painful limping gait. “I appreciate the offer but we can get there on our own.”

“You’re still welcome to come to my place.”

“You’re very kind but no, thanks,” Katie said again, opening the truck door before she could weaken and change her mind, take the kind old man up on his generous offer, be warm and well fed and taken care of, instead of setting off into the night with her child in the middle of a winter storm. Despair welled up inside her and threatened to choke off even more of her breath. She pushed it away, pulled Kyle’s blanket over his head and prepared to step down out of the truck. “Good night,” she said, smiling at the old farmer. She’d forgotten to ask his name but it was too late now. Besides, if she asked his name she would be obliged to give hers in return. She couldn’t risk that.

“God bless,” he replied, sliding the big cloth tote that held everything they owned, including her purse, across the seat. “The Fuller’s Motel is halfway up the hill, to the left. You can’t miss it. The only other house up there is Holly Ridge. That’s the Owens sisters’ place. If you end up there, you went too far.”

“I think I can manage that,” Katie said, ignoring the pounding pain in her head that began again the moment she stepped out into the swirling snow.

“Like I said, you can’t miss it.”

Katie waved and closed the truck door. She turned her back on the helpful old man and surveyed the narrow road winding up the hill. Behind her the lights of the little sleeping town glowed faintly through the storm.

She started off through the snow with the wind blowing her hair in her eyes. The tote pulled heavily on her shoulder, while Kyle squirmed beneath his blanket. His diaper needed changing and he was hungry. It was madness heading off into the storm like this but the memory of all those highway patrol cruisers, six of them at least, back where the bus had slid off the interstate, kept her moving forward. It seemed as if the sharp-eyed patrolmen had all been watching her and Kyle.

Katie had begged a ride from the old farmer when he’d decided there was no further need for his help and had prepared to resume his journey. He’d agreed without even asking why she wanted to go. She didn’t think that would ever happen in the city. But here in the hill country of Tennessee, people not only helped their fellow man; they respected their privacy while they were about it.

Katie trudged on uphill, through a thin layer of snow that hid the treacherous patches of ice beneath it. She kept walking, head down, crooning to Kyle, who was crying now from discomfort and fatigue. How much farther could it be? she wondered, keeping an eye on the side of the road, looking for the turnoff to Fuller’s Motel. She’d given up looking for a sign. If there was one, it was hidden in the feathery pines along the side of the road. She shifted the tote to her left shoulder, folded back the blanket a little from Kyle’s face and kissed the tip of his nose, slipped and nearly fell in an icy puddle of half-frozen water. When she regained her balance she realized she’d walked all the way to the top of the hill.

In front of her there was an iron gate, lacy with grillwork. On either side a white picket fence stretched away into the snowy darkness. Ahead was the dark bulk of a big old Victorian house, two stories high, with dormered attic windows and a cupola tower from which warm yellow light shone through lacy curtains.

There was also a light in the foyer behind a door with a center oval of leaded glass. “I don’t think this is Fuller’s Motel,” Katie said, spots of bright light dancing in front of her eyes. She blinked hard, trying to dispel the dizzying sensation. She shifted Kyle to her shoulder, having taken him out of his carrier after nearly falling in the icy puddle. It had frightened her to think she might slip again and fall hard, landing on top of him. His little head kept bobbing up and down. He wanted out from under the sheltering blanket. Now. Katie tried to hush him and decide what to do. If only her head didn’t hurt so badly, and she could take a long steadying breath, it might be easier to think.

Her first thought was to turn around and head back down the hill, but she’d already missed the turnoff to Fuller’s Motel once. She’d probably do so again. The smart thing to do was ask more specific directions from the women in the house, because this had to be the house—the Owens sisters’ place—that the old farmer had spoken of. After all, she thought wryly, you couldn’t miss it.

Making up her mind, Katie fumbled for the latch to open the gate. The iron was icy slick and fiery cold beneath her fingers. She’d bought heavy jackets and hats for both of them before leaving Florida, but not gloves for herself or mittens for Kyle. When she’d asked about them, the saleswoman had looked at her as if she were crazy. Maybe she was, a little bit, for running away like this. Then she thought of Andrew Moran, his cold eyes, hard mouth and ruthless character and knew she’d done the right thing.

The gate opened with a screech of icy hinges. Katie started up the laid-brick walkway, shushing Kyle, trying to balance the slipping tote and not fall flat on her face on the icy path. She was halfway to the house before the commotion going on out of sight along the side of the building registered in her tired brain. She could hear curses, a man’s low gravelly voice and what sounded like squawks and honks from an angry goose. Or at least what she imagined an angry goose might sound like. She’d never seen one close up before. But that was about to change.

Around the corner of the house, wings outspread, neck thrust belligerently forward, came a huge white goose, heading straight for them, standing thigh-high and looking as if she meant business. Katie thrust Kyle higher onto her shoulder and turned sideways to put the big cloth tote between herself and the hissing bird.

“Shoo,” she said, backing away as quickly as possible. “Shoo, go away. Scram.” She couldn’t free her hands to swing the tote or lift her foot to kick out at the goose for fear of losing her balance. “Nice goose, go away,” she said in a hiss that was a fair imitation of the irate fowl’s.

The goose stopped about ten feet away and flapped her wings, honking loud enough to wake the dead. Katie edged her way toward the steps leading onto the porch as an overhead light came on and a round-faced, white-haired woman stuck her head out the door.

“Weezer, hush,” she said but the goose paid no more attention to her than she had to Katie. “Oh, my, we have a visitor. Don’t worry, she won’t hurt you,” the woman added, raising her voice to carry over the din.

“Damn you, Weezer, get back here or you can freeze your goose fanny out here in the cold all night.” A tall black shadow detached itself from the bulk of the house and stepped into the light.

The man coming toward her was tall and dark, broad shouldered and slim hipped and far more intimidating than the goose. He moved with an easy silky grace across the snowy yard. His black hair was covered with a dark knit cap. He was wearing a navy blue pea coat and jeans. His hands were shoved deep in the pockets of his coat but Katie knew they would be big and strong like the rest of him. His face was crisscrossed by shadows from the porch but she could see his jaw was firm and square, his nose big enough to be called Roman and that his eyes were as dark as a moonless midnight sky. When he looked at her she took an involuntary step backward. His gaze was as cold and emotionless as the frigid wind blowing down off the Smoky Mountains.

“Who the hell are you?” he asked, his voice a low rumbling growl.

“I’m Kate,” she responded, stumbling a little over the shortening of her name. Her name was Katie, not Kate or Katherine or anything else, just Katie. “Kate Smith,” she finished, having at least enough sense left not to use her true name.

He snorted, somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “Give me a break. Kate Smith. Where’d you come up with that one?” His eyes left her momentarily and she took a quick, shaky breath. “Weezer, down girl,” he ordered. “Stop that infernal racket.” He poked the toe of his shoe in the general direction of the goose.

Kate Smith. Katie blushed and hoped he couldn’t see. It was the name she’d given the police for the accident report. She should have thought of a different one. Even though the singer called Kate Smith had been dead for years, most people still remembered her name.

“That’s my name,” she insisted before the man could pin her once more with that dark, unnerving gaze. She held Kyle tighter against her as he squirmed to be free. She wished her head wasn’t hurting so, and that the maddening multicolored specks would stop dancing before her eyes. She couldn’t think straight, feeling so bad, and she desperately needed her wits about her. She shifted to her left, retreating a little farther into the darkness outside the circle of yellow light from the porch. “I’m lost,” she said, turning instinctively toward the plump, white-haired woman. “I’m looking for Fuller’s Motel.”

“This isn’t it,” the man said.

“Jacob. Mind your manners,” the old lady said admonishingly.

No, it wasn’t the same old lady. The voice was different. Katie closed her eyes a moment then looked again. The woman on the porch had been joined by another, tall and stooped, standing with the aid of a metal walker. She was even older than the first. And other, curious female faces were staring out from behind the lace curtains at the big bow window that faced onto the porch. They had to be the Owens sisters.

But who is the dark man?

“Fuller’s is a quarter mile down the hill and turn right,” he said as though giving a command. “You can’t miss it.”

“So I’ve been told.” Katie laughed, but it came out more of a croak. At least the damn goose was quiet. Having placed herself between Katie and the porch, she seemed content to wait for Katie to make a threatening move before she attacked. Katie eyed the bird as warily as she did the man.

“Where did you come from, child?” the first old lady asked.

“My car…broke down on the highway.” It had seemed like a very long drive across the valley. These people would know she couldn’t have made the journey on foot. Best stick to the truth as much as possible. “Someone gave me a lift this far. He told me about the motel,” she finished in a strangled whisper, trying desperately not to start coughing again.

“Oh.” The old lady glanced at the man, still standing as though rooted to the ground, his long legs spread to balance him against the icy wind. “I thought perhaps you’d been involved in the accident on the interstate.”

“Accident?” Katie couldn’t keep the fear and dismay out of her voice. These people already knew about the accident? She faced the women on the porch but still watched the dark man from the corner of her eye. Is he the hired help? Or a relative? “How did you know about the bus going off the highway?”

The old lady folded her hands across her middle, looking pleased. “We didn’t know there was a bus involved but my nephew and I saw the flashing emergency lights across the valley from the back of the house.”

“Oh.” Katie knew she’d given herself away but she was too sick and miserable to care. “Please, if you’ll just give me a few more detailed directions to the motel I won’t bother you anymore.” She was so dizzy she didn’t know if she could make it back down the hill but for Kyle’s sake she’d have to keep going somehow.

Sensing his mother’s distress, the little boy began to howl, kicking out, swatting at the blanket that covered him with both small, determined hands.

“Goodness,” the first old lady gasped, coming down the steps. “Do you have a baby under that blanket? I thought so but I’m not wearing my glasses and I wasn’t sure.” She fluttered along the walk, shooing the indignant goose aside, holding out her hands as though to take Kyle from Katie’s aching arms. “How wicked of us to keep you standing here in this awful storm with a baby in your arms.” She took one long, myopic look at Katie. Her jaw dropped. “My God, Katherine,” she said very softly and then shut her mouth with a snap.

Instinctively Katie tightened her grip on her son. “Not Katherine. My name is Katie. Kate, I mean.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” she agreed. She looked quickly over her shoulder at the dark man. “Kate, not Katherine.”

“Aunt H, let her go. It’s only a five-minute walk back down the hill to Fuller’s.” He hadn’t moved an inch. It was as if he didn’t want to get any closer to her. That was fine with Katie. She didn’t want to be any closer to him, either.

“Hazel,” the imperious old lady standing in the doorway ordered, “get back in here. You don’t even have a sweater on and it’s freezing.”

“Of course it’s freezing. So is this poor sweet baby.” Hazel reached out to pull the corner of Kyle’s blanket up over his head. Her hands were shaking; her head and shoulders were white with snow. Katie felt guilty for keeping her out in the cold. Kyle looked at the old lady’s plump, wrinkled face for a long moment, smiled and laid his head on Katie’s shoulder. “What a beautiful child.”

“Yes, he is.” Katie managed a smile of her own. “I’m sorry to have caused you so much trouble.”

“Think nothing of it, my dear.” Hazel smiled up at her. At five foot seven Katie was several inches taller than her champion. Hazel reached out to pat Katie’s cheek. “Goodness.” She placed her hand more firmly against Katie’s skin. “You’re burning up. Are you ill?”

“I…don’t know,” Katie said in confusion. She was freezing and too warm all at once. It was a very disorienting and uncomfortable feeling. She wished she could lie down somewhere out of the storm and go to sleep. “I…I’m tired,” she admitted, unable to summon the energy for any more elaborate falsehoods. “I don’t dare be sick.”

“Almeda, this child is ill. We can’t send her back out into the storm.”

“Sick or not, she can’t stay here, Aunt H,” the man said, moving at last, closing the distance between them, looming over Katie like an angry cloud. “I’ll get the Jeep and drive her down the hill to Fuller’s. If she’s sick they can call the emergency squad from there.”

“Jacob!” The old lady sounded shocked. “How can you even suggest such a thing? No Owens has ever turned away a soul in need from this house. We’re not about to start tonight.”

Katie was having trouble focusing her eyes. The sounds of their voices amplified, then receded with nauseating regularity. She swayed on her feet. She had to sit down, and soon, or she was going to collapse.

The dark man took another step closer, as if to press his argument with his aunt. Katie wheeled to avoid him. The sudden movement threw her completely off balance.

“Here, take him,” she whispered, thrusting Kyle into the old lady’s arms. “Please, I…I think I’m going to faint.”

“Jacob,” Hazel said, scooping Kyle and his blanket against her ample chest. “Catch her, she’s going to fall.”

Katie felt the tote slip from her shoulder and land in the snow with a dull thud but she didn’t care. She tried to focus on Kyle, safe in Hazel’s arms, but his face swam sickeningly before her eyes. “No, don’t,” she said, or tried to, as the dark man loomed closer. “I’ll be fine, just let me find a place to sit.”

“Aunt H is right,” he said, sounding every bit as reluctant as she was. “You’re going to fall flat on your face. Here.” He pulled her against him and slid his arms beneath her knees. “Hold still till I get you inside.” Katie stopped struggling and laid her head against his shoulder just to keep the world from spinning completely out of control. “I’m sorry to be so much bother.”

He carried her across the porch and into the foyer. “I’m sorry, too.” He sounded a little breathless from the extra weight, but not much. She could feel his muscles work, even beneath the heavy wool coat, and smell the faint spicy tang of his after-shave.

“Jacob, where’s your Christian charity?” the tall, stooped old lady scolded as he prepared to deposit Katie on some kind of hard, uncomfortable-looking sofa in the foyer.

“I don’t have much to spare, Aunt,” he said, then bit off the word with a curse. “My God,” he said quietly, but there was no reverence in his tone. “Who the hell are you?”

Katie risked looking at his face as she laid her head against the tall curved back of the settee.

“I told you,” she said, fighting nausea as she stared up into his handsome, stone-hard features. “I’m Kate. Kate Smith. But you can call me Katie.”

“No,” he said, standing so suddenly Katie had to shut her eyes against the blur of movement. “You’re not Katherine, but you look enough like her to be…her twin.”

He laughed, a sound that held no mirth at all. “But since she’s dead and buried these three years, maybe I should say instead that you look enough like her to be her ghost.”

Chapter 2

Katherine’s ghost. Who was Katherine? And what did she mean to this dark, unfriendly stranger?

“I’ve been accused of being a lot of things in my life, but a ghost has never been one of them.” No one said anything.

Katie wished she didn’t feel so disoriented and confused. The lights in the foyer were bright and hurt her eyes. She closed them, hoping to alleviate the pain in her head. It didn’t work. She opened them again and found the man still standing by the settee, watching her.

“Please,” she said, unable to look away from his compelling yet shuttered gaze. “May I have a glass of water?”

“Will tea do?” a gentle childlike voice asked at her shoulder. She turned her head to find herself confronted by two smiling, identical faces. Brown eyes stared at her from beneath curly mops of gray-streaked red hair. “We thought you might want something warming. But Faye can march straight back into the kitchen and fetch you a glass of water.” The heads turned, nodded. One disappeared, presumably in the direction of the kitchen. The woman who remained offered her the cup of herb tea. “It’s our great-grandmother’s recipe,” she said, still smiling. “It’s good for whatever ails you.” Katie took the cup. She was suddenly very cold, and the warmth of the thick china mug was welcome. The tea smelled strange, but not unpleasant. It was flavored with lemon and honey and other things she couldn’t identify. She let the liquid run down her throat, soothing and warming, while the aroma drifted up into her nostrils, making it just a little easier to breathe, a little easier to think.

“Thank you,” she said, meaning it, as she handed the empty mug back to the red-haired woman. “I think you saved my life.” She wondered if she was delirious and had only imagined the woman’s double standing at her side moments before.

“Did my sister tell you it’s an old family remedy?” Once more there were two. “Here, I brought you a glass of spring water, as well.”

“Thank you,” Katie said again, holding the glass with both hands because she was trembling so hard. She took a sip and handed it back, looking from one pleasant, girlish face to the other.

“We’re twins,” the woman on her left said. “I’m Lois Owens and this is my sister, Faye.”

“You might as well introduce everyone,” Faye said with a grin that was filled with mischief. “I’m afraid there’s enough of us to confuse someone who’s purely well.”

“Faye, you speak as if you’ve just come down out of the hills,” the tall, bent woman broke in. “I’m Almeda Owens. My sister, Hazel Owens Gentry, you’ve already met,” she said with a sweeping gesture of her gnarled hand. “This, also, is my sister, Janet.”

Janet, plump, gray and inquisitive looking, gave Katie a brief nod and a long, assessing look. “The baby needs changing,” she said.

“Yes, I know.”

“And this,” Almeda went on, ignoring her sister’s comment about Kyle, “is our nephew, Dr. Jacob Owens.”

Katie said, “Oh,” because she couldn’t think of anything else. If he was a doctor, his bedside manner left a great deal to be desired. Jacob said nothing at all.

“Janet’s right about the baby needing to be changed,” Hazel said in the awkward silence. “And I believe he’s hungry, as well.” She still cuddled Kyle to her chest, but he was squirming and fussing.

“Yes,” Katie said wearily. “I was just getting ready to give him his bottle when…when the bus went off the road.” She gave Jacob a defiant look. He made no mention of her change of stories.

“Where are his diapers?” Janet asked. “I’ll get them.”

“In my tote.” Katie sat up, ignoring the pain in her neck and shoulders. She looked around. “Where is it? I…I remember it falling from my shoulder.” Suddenly she felt like crying. Everything she owned was in that bag, even her purse. And she’d lost that twice in the same evening.

“I’ll get it,” Jacob offered roughly. “Don’t start crying about it. No one steals anything from this yard with Weezer around.”

“Oh, dear, Weezer. She’s still out in the storm.”

“I’ll pen her up, Aunt H, don’t worry.”

“I’ll go with you and bring in the bag,” Janet offered.

“Come straight back, Jacob, and help us get Katie to bed. She doesn’t look stout enough to negotiate the stairs,” Hazel ordered, bouncing Kyle up and down, shushing his increasingly loud and angry squawks as she did so.

“You’re not planning to keep her overnight?” Jacob turned on his heel, his hand already on the doorknob.

“Oh, no,” Katie said at the same time. “I couldn’t impose.”

“You’re not imposing.”

“We’d love to have you,” the twins said, speaking as one.

“Too cold to be taking a baby out on a night like this.”

“An Owens has never turned away a soul in need,” Almeda said, ending the argument.

Katie saw Jacob’s jaw tighten and his expression grow even bleaker than before. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. I can have the Jeep warmed up and drive her and the baby down to Fuller’s in less time than it will take to make up a bed.”

“Yes,” said Katie. “We’ll go to Fuller’s.”

“No, my dear. The matter is settled.” Almeda gestured toward her nephew. “Janet can get Kate’s bag from the yard. Carry the child upstairs. No,” she said, fixing Katie with a dark-eyed stare that was every bit as formidable as her nephew’s. “I won’t hear any more arguments. You’re not well, and not thinking clearly.”

“Stay here tonight for the baby’s sake, if not your own,” Hazel added more gently. “Fuller’s aren’t used to many visitors at this time of year. The rooms will be cold. And you need your rest.”

“What’s the baby’s name?” Faye—or was it Lois?—asked, running her fingers over Kyle’s silky hair.

“Kyle Michael.”

“Kyle. I like that name. Let me hold him, Hazel. You can’t have him all the time.” Kyle, diverted by the soft lilt of her voice, stopped squirming and allowed himself to be taken into Faye’s arms.

“I want to hold him, Faye.”

“You can change him,” her sister said with a grin.

“Okay, but I get to feed him, too.”

“His food is in the bag. I hope it hasn’t frozen out there in the snow.” Katie stood and immediately wished she hadn’t. She grabbed the arm of the settee and tried to sit back down before she fell. Jacob was at her side before her hand closed over the carved wood. His disapproval was so strong Katie could feel it like a wall between them. But with one swift movement he scooped her up in his arms, holding her high against his chest.

“Please, put me down.” She had never felt so helpless in her life. She didn’t like it, not one bit.

“If my aunt Almeda says you’re spending the night, you’re spending the night,” Jacob replied in the same cold, gruff voice he’d used before. Again, Katie felt the fine tremors in his muscles and realized this time the tension in him was not from the exertion of carrying her in his arms, but having her near at all.

Who was Katherine? she wondered again.

Katie lifted her aching head, determined to ask him, but one look at Jacob’s hard jaw and set, uncompromising features drove the question from her mind.

He carried her up the curving staircase, pausing for a moment at the half-landing to allow his aunt Hazel to precede them the rest of the way. He stopped in front of a door some distance down the long, well-lighted upper hallway and waited as Hazel switched on the overhead light and turned down the quilt-covered spindle bed in the middle of the room.

“I’ll fetch a heating pad for your feet, my dear. And what about your night things?” she asked, turning away from the humpbacked cedar chest at the foot of the bed, her arms full of blankets.

“In my bag,” Katie mumbled as Jacob let her legs slide free of his grip. He kept his arms around her as her feet found the floor, but his touch was impersonal. Katie shivered again but not entirely from her fever. His hands were warm and strong, his touch sure and confident. He would be a skilled and demanding lover, or a formidable foe.

She sat on the firm, comfortable mattress as quickly as her aching muscles and spinning head would allow. She couldn’t imagine where such wayward thoughts were coming from.

“Your nightclothes?” Hazel was asking her again.

Katie wasn’t certain how to tell her hostess she’d be sleeping in an oversize T-shirt she’d bought in Gainesville their first night out but had never worn. She’d been afraid to stop for the night anywhere along the way. She’d slept—if that’s what you could call her restless catnaps with Kyle in her arms—on the bus.

“Here’s your tote,” Janet announced, appearing in the doorway. The room was large and high ceilinged but it now seemed filled to overflowing with people.

“Thank you,” Katie said. “If you’ll show me where the bathroom is, I’ll…change.” She couldn’t help but be aware of Jacob’s presence in the room. She was suddenly very reluctant to talk about nightclothes and bedtime rituals in front of him.

“It’s right next door, my dear. That’s why I had Jacob put you in this room.”

“There are only two bathrooms in this old pile,” Janet complained. “The other one’s downstairs, where Almeda sleeps. She can’t climb the stairs anymore.”

“This house is over a century old,” Hazel explained. “Bathrooms were a luxury when it was built, not a necessity.”

“I hate hiking down that damn freezing hallway in my bare feet in the middle of the night,” Janet went right on complaining.

“Wear your slippers,” Hazel threw over her shoulder. She frowned down at the sleep shirt Katie had fished out of the tote from beneath a stack of disposable diapers. “That doesn’t look very warm, my dear.”

“I’ll be fine,” Katie insisted. She was starting to shiver again.

“Perhaps I should get you one of my nightgowns. Or Almeda’s?”

“No, really.” Their kindness was limitless, and for that reason overwhelming. “All I need are a couple of aspirins and some sleep.” She glared at Dr. Jacob Owens briefly. Why hadn’t he suggested something to make her feel better?

“Here’s the little one,” Faye or Lois announced, sliding past Janet, still firmly anchored in the doorway. She was carrying a dry and sated but still-sniffling Kyle in her arms. “He’s all ready for bed,” she said, indicating the one-piece terry sleeper she’d obviously found in the tote, “but he still wants his mamma.”

Katie let the sleep shirt fall into her lap and held out her arms. “Come here, sweetheart.” She cuddled her son in her arms. He gave her the quick hard hug he’d just learned how to give and smiled brightly.

“Hi,” he said, hiccuping on a sob. “Hi,” he repeated, loudly and plainly. It was one of his favorite words.

“How old is he?” Hazel asked, closing the chest. It seemed she had decided not to press the matter of the nightgown.

“Fifteen months,” Katie said, holding her son close to her heart, absorbing his warmth and his unconditional baby love.

“What about his father?” Jacob asked.

This time Katie had no trouble meeting his hard, assessing gaze.

“He’s dead,” she said bluntly. “Kyle’s all I have left in the world.” She held the little boy out to him. “Please take a look at him. He seems fine, but considering we were involved in an accident, I think a doctor should examine him.”

Jacob’s arms remained stiffly at his sides. He made no attempt to take the baby from her. Katie’s arms began to tremble from a combination of fatigue and Kyle’s weight dragging on her shoulders. Her son was a strong, sturdy little boy. She sat him on her lap.

“What kind of a doctor are you, anyway? You won’t give me so much as an aspirin. And you won’t even touch my son?” Her indignation got the better of her tongue. “What are you, some kind of mad scientist or something?”

Jacob laughed, but the harsh grating sound only sent more shivers racing down Katie’s spine. “Closer than you think. My aunts are very fond of introducing me by my title. The ‘Doctor’ is academic, not medical. I have a Ph.D. in microbiology.”

“Jacob was an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee.”

“Now I’m the science teacher at Owenburg High. But I’m not so far beyond redemption that I’d begrudge you two aspirins. And if I was,” he said with what might have been the beginning of a very reluctant smile, “my aunts would have my hide.”

Maybe it was her fever? Maybe it was that phantom smile? Katie wasn’t sure afterward what made her say it, but she had to know. “And who was Katherine?”

The curl of a smile turned into a sneer, then disappeared completely. “She was my wife.” He turned on his heel and left the room.

“Oh, dear.” Hazel watched him go.

“I thought he was getting better,” Faye—or Lois?—said with a sigh. “It’s a good thing school’s back in session tomorrow or he’d be shut up in his cabin for days.”

“Grief is a dreadful thing when it turns inward,” Hazel said very softly. “I’ll get you aspirin and a glass of water.”

“How long has Katherine been dead?”

“Three and a half years.” Janet took three steps into the room. “We don’t talk about it.”

“I see. I’ll apologize before I leave.”

“Best not mention it again,” Janet said flatly. “We have a baby bed.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the doorway. “But it’s in the attic. The twins and I will bring it down tomorrow.”

“Please, don’t bother. We won’t be imposing on you any longer than necessary. If we push a chair or something against the edge of the bed so he doesn’t roll off, he can sleep with me,” Katie said hurriedly. She didn’t want to think about Jacob Owens or his dead wife any more that night. It would be hard enough finding the courage to face him in the morning before she left this place.

If she ever saw him again. The prospect of never laying eyes on Jacob Owens again in her life was not quite as appealing as it should have been but she felt too miserable to analyze her feelings.

“We can arrange that.” Janet went off in search of furniture to act as a guardrail for Kyle. Hazel went to get the aspirin and a glass of water. Faye—or was it Lois?—smiled a good-night and left the room, as well. Katie and Kyle were alone.

“I feel a little like Alice down the rabbit hole,” Katie confessed to her son as she nuzzled the soft, warm skin at the nape of his neck. “Except I don’t think there’s a tall, dark, very handsome ogre in Alice in Wonderland.”

She considered what she’d just said. “Handsome?” The word came out more of a snort than a question. “The man is not handsome. He’s a monster. A son of a…gun,” she finished hastily, remembering how quickly Kyle picked up new words these days. “But,” she said thoughtfully, sitting her son in the middle of the bed as she started to undress. “I think he’s an ogre with a broken heart.”

“Is she asleep?” Jacob asked his aunt Hazel as she came through the swinging door that separated the dining room from the kitchen.

“Yes. She’s exhausted, poor thing, but I don’t think she’s seriously ill.”

“Great-grandmother’s cherry bark tea will fix her right up,” Almeda said from her customary place at the head of the oblong hickory table that had stood in the window alcove since his father’s father was a boy.

Janet followed her sister into the kitchen. She was trailed closely by the twins. “Jacob. We thought you’d gone back to your cabin.” The younger Owens sisters exchanged speaking looks.

“I wanted to check on the furnace before I turn in for the night,” he said, not quite truthfully. He didn’t want his aunts alone in the house with that woman, although he didn’t want to say so and bring their combined wrath down on his head. He didn’t trust Kate Smith’s story, or her intentions, even though she did look sick and tired and terrified beneath her know-it-all facade. He wondered, briefly, what she was really running away from.

Kyle’s father? He wasn’t altogether certain he believed her statement that he was dead. The information had come too easily to her lips. After three and a half years he could barely speak the words aloud.

Was she fleeing a lover? That was more likely.

Or the law? Possible, but for some reason he didn’t think so.

“Jacob, I’m speaking to you.” Almeda’s voice cut into his thoughts. “Seeing you’re so worried about us having a stranger under our roof, do you wish to spend the night in the house?”

“Maybe I will,” he said too quickly.

Almeda narrowed shrewd dark eyes beneath white eyebrows. “The invitation is withdrawn if you plan to haunt the upper hall and spy on our guest all night long.”

“The thought never crossed my mind,” he lied.

“Yes, it did.” Almeda wrapped her gnarled hands around her mug of tea. “You think she’s going to murder us in our beds.”

Jacob laughed; it was rusty and almost devoid of humor, but it was a laugh, nevertheless.

Faye kicked Lois under the table but Jacob didn’t notice.

“No, but she might run off with all the money and silver in the house.”

“In her condition?”

“She’d never get out of the yard with Weezer on the porch,” Janet pointed out.

“Good point,” Jacob conceded.

“She’s nothing but a poor, frightened young woman who’s running away from someone or something that has her scared half to death,” Hazel said, echoing his own reluctant conclusions. “I’m certain of it.”

“Well, I’m not.” Jacob leaned his hips against the tiled countertop. He folded his arms across his chest. “But I promise not to harm a hair on her head.”

Almeda refused to be drawn into an argument. “Good. That’s settled. Remember, she’s our guest and she stays as long as she needs our hospitality.”

“It’s the Christian thing to do.”

“It is the season, after all,” Lois said quietly.

“It’s still November.”

“Close enough,” said Faye. “Christmas is my favorite time of year.”

Jacob set his coffee mug on the counter. “I give up. She stays as long as she wants. I’m going back up to my place to put some more wood in the stove. I’ll check on Weezer once more, then I’ll come back here and spend the night in my old room.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea.” Almeda seconded the suggestion. “We should all be in our beds.”

“Not me,” Janet said. “I’m going to watch Tales from the Crypt. Anyone care to join me?”

“No.” Hazel shuddered. “I hate that show. It gives me nightmares.”

“We’re going to bed,” the twins said, taking turns. “We’ve got a million things to do tomorrow.”

“I meant what I said about the lights on the roof,” Jacob reminded them. “Not till it thaws.”

“Of course.” They grinned. “If the sun comes out you can do it as soon as you get home from school.”

Jacob shook his head. He was defeated, and he knew it. “Good night.” He shrugged into his coat and headed out into the snow.

“He smiled,” Faye said in a stage whisper after he’d gone.

“And he laughed. Almost,” her twin sister added. “I can’t remember the last time I saw him laugh.”

It was many hours later when Jacob returned to the house. He’d forgotten the term papers that needed to be graded. But the back door was unlocked for him, as he knew it would be. His aunts were the most trusting souls on earth. And thank God, beyond ordinary common sense precautions, in Owenburg they still could be. He shook the snow off his coat and hung it on a hook by the door. He did the same with his hat, then took off his shoes. He walked through the house in his stocking feet, climbed the stairs and stopped before his father’s and his grandfather’s room.

He hadn’t slept here in months—he usually stayed only if the weather was very bad or his aunts were having problems with their temperamental old furnace—but he knew it would be ready for him. Probably with the bed already turned down and the radiator steaming.

He hesitated for a long minute, then walked silently down the hall to the room where Kate Smith and her son slept. He watched her from the open doorway. The soft glow of the wall lamps in the hall cast dim fingers of light all the way to the bed.

Kate Smith. He caught himself smiling again. If he had to pick a moment when he’d truly decided she wasn’t dangerous, it was then. She wasn’t much of a criminal if she couldn’t even pick an alias that didn’t make people think twice. But she’d told him to call her Katie. Katie. The name suited her much better than Kate.

She lay on her back, one arm outstretched toward her child, one lying across her chest, just beneath the gentle swell of her breasts. She had very nice breasts. He remembered the feel of them beneath her sweater as he’d carried her upstairs. Jacob looked quickly away. The baby slept beside her, on his stomach, his bottom high in the air.

Just the way his son used to sleep. His heart ached as he stood there staring at them.

And Katherine. How often had he teased her about putting the baby in bed with them. “We can’t make love,” he’d complain, “with a baby between us. It cramps my style and it will warp the boy for life.” Katherine would laugh. He would lean over, kiss the baby and she would put him in his own bed so that they could make love; long, slow, sweet love.

Jacob clenched his fists at his sides. He wouldn’t remember the soft, powdery baby smells, the giggles, the kisses exchanged with the woman he loved as she nursed his son, played pat-a-cake with him. The pain as they lowered them into the cold hard ground together. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. He would not give in to the pain.

Kate Smith bore a physical resemblance to Katherine, that was all. He could handle that. He didn’t have to exchange another half-dozen words with her. Tomorrow, or the day after that, she would be gone. Out of his life forever and he could go on, getting from one day to the next, making it through one more night, one more week, one more Christmas.

He gave the sleeping woman and her child a last look. Her short, dull gold hair gleamed faintly in the diffuse light. The little boy slept soundly, his thumb in his mouth. He looked like his mother, but his build was square and sturdy. Like his father? Kate, although tall, was slender as a child, skinny, really. Too skinny. Jacob liked his women with a little more meat on their bones.

The errant thought and his physical response to it surprised him, amazed him and scared him to death. Thinking about what Kate Smith would look like with an additional ten or twelve well-distributed pounds on her frame was too close to thinking about what it might be like to hold her, or kiss her, or make love to her. Doing that meant he would have to start feeling things again, letting his emotions stir to life, including the agony of remembering what he had lost. He wasn’t about to do that again for anyone. Not now. Not ever.

“Damn,” Greg Moran growled as he slammed down the receiver. “She won’t answer the phone.”

“Give her time to cool down,” his father counseled from his chair by the fire. He didn’t turn around. Neither did Greg. He remained by the inlaid wood desk that sat squarely in the middle of Andrew’s mahogany-paneled study. His hands balled into fists as he rested his elbows on either side of the phone. “She’ll come around. Patrice is a smart girl.”

“Maybe she’s already left town. Checked out of the hotel and went home to her family,” Greg said, following his own train of thought. He loved his wife. He hadn’t thought it was possible to miss her this much. He wanted her back, no matter what it took.

“We’d know. Someone follows her whenever she leaves the hotel,” his father reminded him.

“That’s another thing. I don’t want her finding out she’s being followed. I don’t want her hounded out of town.”

“Don’t worry,” Andrew said. “I’ve got my best guys on it. She’ll get tired of this game in a few days.”

“Sure, Dad.” But in his heart Greg wasn’t so certain. Maybe Patrice was right. Maybe they should let Katie go her own way.

“Patrice will come around,” Andrew repeated smugly. “In a few days you’ll have found my grandson and brought him home. Patrice won’t be able to stay away when she knows Kyle needs a woman to take care of him. She loves that boy like he was her own.”

“What if Katie won’t let us bring Kyle back here?” Greg asked.

“She won’t have any choice. Leave that all up to me. You just find her.” Andrew’s tone was hard as steel.

“She won’t give him up without a fight.” Greg hid a smile. Katie was a scrapper; even his father had to admit that.

“Remember. She’s got nothing to give the boy. We have everything, including the law, on our side.” Andrew chuckled. “Why do you think I make all those… campaign contributions…every election year?”

“Moran Enterprises makes campaign contributions for the same reasons every other company in this state does. To help elect the best man or woman for the job. Right, Dad,” Greg said, warningly.

“Sure, sure.” Andrew chuckled once more, then his voice hardened again. “Don’t try to con me. Are you trying to tell me you can’t find her?” He turned in his chair, his bald head shining softly in the mellow, recessed lighting. His stare was anything but mellow.

“I have a couple of leads,” Greg answered noncommittally. “It takes time to check them out. She’s only been gone three days. Right now I’m more interested in getting my wife to come home.”

“Three days is three damn days too long. You get the boy back here and your wife will come racing back so fast it’ll make your head spin.” Andrew brought his fist down on the arm of the chair. “The boy should be here with us. He’s our blood.”

For his father that was enough. For years it had been enough for Greg, too. Since the day he’d graduated from college he’d concentrated on turning Andrew’s ill-gotten gains into a legitimate business empire. For the most part he’d succeeded, although he wondered, sometimes, if his father didn’t stay in too close touch with his old pals from the syndicate. Were Katie’s glimpses of Andrew’s shady past one of the reasons she’d run away? He didn’t know. He couldn’t be sure.

But one thing he could be sure about. He’d spent all his life, forty-two years, trying his damnedest to please his old man, to make a success of Moran Enterprises and to rehabilitate the old sinner’s name. But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough again. Not since Patrice had walked out on him and left an aching, empty chasm in the middle of his soul.

Outside the rain poured down from a leaden sky onto the lavishly landscaped grounds of the Key Biscayne hotel. Patrice smiled ruefully. If it wasn’t raining so hard, she could probably see Andrew’s mansion from here. She hadn’t run very far, but at least she had gone from her father-in-law’s house. The house she’d lived in with Gregory for twelve years, yet never thought of as her own, as theirs. Leaving Greg, taking a stand, that was the gesture she had to make. For Katie’s sake, and for her own.

She didn’t have her sister-in-law’s strength of purpose. Or her imagination. She’d never considered Andrew an evil person until the night Katie disappeared. Then she’d seen him for what he was: a ruthless, domineering man, skating the thin line between respectability and lawlessness. She didn’t care what Andrew had done in the past; that was all long ago and far away. Gregory said his father’s business dealings—his own business dealings—were legitimate now, and that’s all that mattered to her.

She missed Gregory. She wanted to be with her husband, to tell him about their child—the baby they’d wanted so desperately for so long. She was over four months pregnant. Her monthly cycles were so irregular she hadn’t realized, herself, she was pregnant until a few weeks ago. Now she was unable to share her joy with her husband until the situation between Katie and Andrew was resolved. That’s why she’d ignored the phone ringing behind her, was still ignoring its insistent summons. Because it was Gregory on the other end of the line, she knew in her heart, and because if he asked her, she would tell him what little she knew about where Katie had gone.

She couldn’t lie to Greg, even for Katie’s sake, but she couldn’t be a party to the scheme to take Kyle from his mother. That’s why she was here, in a hotel room, not two miles from her home, torn in mind and spirit, crying herself to sleep each night, instead of starting to plan for Christmas, her favorite time of the year. And this Christmas was to have been the most special of all, because her gift to Greg was their child.

Chapter 3

“The receipt for this fruitcake has been handed down in our family for six generations,” Hazel said, brandishing a sharp knife as she cut candied pineapple into tiny bits and added it to the bowl of batter, already stiff with crystallized fruits, on the table before her. She used the word receipt instead of recipe, just as Katie’s grandmother had done.

“I’ve never been fond of fruitcake,” Katie admitted as she broke off a small piece of sugar cookie for Kyle, who was sitting on her lap. “Every one I’ve ever had has been dry and tasteless as chalk.” Kyle opened his mouth wide for the bite of cookie, then made a grab for the rest of it. Katie laughed and so did Hazel.

“It’s good to hear you laugh. I know you must be feeling better.”

“Much better,” Katie agreed. “I don’t know how I can thank you for letting us stay here these past three days.”

“By praising my fruitcake to the sky, of course,” she said with another merry grin.

“That won’t be difficult, I’m sure.”

“If you’re not still with us when these are done—they have to ripen, you know—you must give me your address and I’ll send you one.”

“Yes,” Katie said, lying. “I’ll do that.”

She and Kyle were sitting in an antique rocking chair in the sun, in the window alcove of the Owens’ kitchen. The wide windowsills were crowded with blooming geraniums and potted ferns, the winter daylight filtered through lace curtains, but suddenly it seemed to Katie as if the sun had gone behind a dark cloud. It was Wednesday afternoon. She’d been here three days and soon she would have to be moving on.

The back door opened and the twins came into the kitchen from outside. Cold air streamed in with them, stirring currents of warmer air, heavy with the scent of growing plants, spices and wood smoke. Katie took a deep breath and held it, savoring the good smells and the good feelings in the room.

“The reason Hazel’s fruitcakes are in such demand,” Faye said, picking up the thread of the conversation as if she’d been in the room all along, “is because she soaks the things in rum before she stores them away.”

“That’s right,” Lois said, nodding in agreement. Now that she felt better, Katie had almost no trouble telling them apart. “Even the Methodist preacher thinks they’re great.”

“And he’s a teetotaler.”

Everyone laughed. Kyle loudest of all.

“Come on, fella,” Faye said, offering the baby another bite of cookie. “Want to come play with me so your mommy can rest for an hour?”

“You can take him to play if you like,” Katie said, lifting Kyle into Faye’s outstretched arms. “But I’m not a bit tired. I’ve spent the last three days resting. Are you sure there isn’t something helpful I can do?” She’d asked the question a dozen times already that day, and each time she’d been politely rebuffed.

“Thanks, but no,” Lois said. “I’ve already spent the afternoon straightening out the Christmas lights. It seems no matter how carefully I pack them away each year, whenever it comes time to put them up again they’re always a mess.”

“Gremlins,” Hazel said, shaking her head.

“Impatience.” Faye sniffed, cooing nonsense words at Kyle while tickling his belly with the tip of her finger. “You’re always in too big of a hurry.”

“I just don’t like Christmas to be over. And anyway, last year it was freezing cold when we took the lights down. Remember? I thought I’d freeze my…fingers…off before we were done.”

“Well, anyway, I’ve got about half of them ready to go for when Jacob gets home from school—he always stops in on his way up the hill. I got all the kinks out of the wires, and I replaced all the burned-out bulbs.”

“You’ll need someone to hold the ladder so Jacob doesn’t fall off the roof and break his neck,” Janet added, coming into the kitchen through the swinging door just in time to hear the last few remarks.

“Katie can do that,” Faye said without looking up from Kyle’s sugary, beaming face. “She’s dying to get outside, aren’t you, Katie?”

“Well, yes,” Katie said. “I would like some fresh air.” But she didn’t want another confrontation with Jacob Owens. She’d spent the better part of the past day and a half, since she had come downstairs, avoiding him. He didn’t want her in his aunts’ house. He didn’t want her near him. She wanted the same thing. Didn’t she?

“Good, that’s settled. If we aren’t the first house in town to start putting up Christmas decorations the twins pout for a week.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Lois sniffed.

“Never mind Janet,” Faye said, ignoring her elder sister while concentrating on making Kyle laugh even harder. “She’s an old Scrooge.”

“I am not. I’m just practical. A virtue sadly lacking in several members of this family.”

“You’re a Scrooge,” Lois said firmly. “Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. I want to make it last.”

“Christmas should be in your heart, not on the front lawn,” Almeda said, coming into the kitchen from the short hallway that connected the big room with the bathroom and her bedroom.

“Christmas is in my heart,” Lois insisted. “That’s why I want everyone to enjoy the season as much as I do.”

“In the spirit of the season,” Katie heard herself say. Christmas had never been her favorite holiday. She knew enough about herself to know why. If you didn’t have a family, Christmas could be a very lonely time of the year. Michael and Kyle had helped keep away the loneliness she always felt at Christmastime. But now Michael was gone and she and Kyle were truly alone. “I’ll hold the ladder for Jacob while he puts up the lights.”

For some reason she didn’t want to think too closely about, she couldn’t stop herself from offering to do the chore. Besides, it was the least she could do for the quintet of wonderful old ladies who’d given her shelter from the storm. She was almost well; nothing was left of her illness but a lingering cough and runny nose. The Owens sisters had been as kind to her as if she was their own flesh and blood. They adored her son. They treated her like family; more like family than any of her own relatives, including her parents, had ever done. Just because she didn’t like their nephew was no reason not to repay their kindness in such a simple and relatively painless way. In the spirit of the season.

“You’ll need a pair of boots,” Hazel said, pouring the fruitcake batter into buttered pans. “What size shoes do you wear?”

“Eight and a half,” Katie said, trying not to blush. She resisted the urge to shove her feet under the rocker. “I doubt if any of you have feet that large.”

The twins snickered. “Janet does.”

“Wrong,” Janet said, not showing any sign of malice. “I wear an eight. You’re welcome to my boots even if they pinch,” she went on with a nod to Katie. “But I’ll be wearing them myself, since you’ll need my help untangling Lois’s thousand strings of lights if Jacob is going to get down off that ladder before midnight.”

“Quit exaggerating,” Faye scoffed, shaking her head. Kyle did the same. “There’s nowhere near a thousand strings. There’s twenty or twenty-five at the most.”

“I wear an eight and a half. She can borrow my boots,” Almeda decreed as she lowered herself heavily onto a chair at the table. “They’re on the back porch. Just like new, I might add. I don’t go out much anymore in this kind of weather.”

“If we wait until tomorrow the snow will be all gone and it will be forty-eight degrees,” Jacob said, coming through the back door, picking up the thread of the conversation just as quickly as his aunts had done earlier. Katie wondered if it was merely the result of living so closely together for so many years, or something in the Owens’ genes.

“Oh, Jacob, you’re not backing out on us, are you?” Lois asked, looking as disappointed as a child. “I penned Weezer up so she won’t try and eat the bulbs. I have all the boxes down from the attic. I’ve checked all the extension cords, and even un…packed a dozen strings.”

“Untangled, you mean,” Janet said under her breath.

“Unpacked,” Lois insisted. “I saw Mrs. Barnett, down at the crossroads, already has her Santa and reindeer set up out on the lawn. We can’t let her get the jump on us, Jacob. We just can’t.”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” Jacob said, giving his aunt a salute. Katie almost thought she saw the glimmer of a smile cross his lips, but it never reached his eyes. They were blue, she noticed without wanting to—dark, dark blue. Navy blue, like the color of his coat and the knit cap on his dark head. Katie took a closer look at his clothes. It was a navy-issue coat, a pea coat, and a watch cap, both of which had seen better days. So Dr. Jacob Owens had been a sailor. One more tiny nugget of information to add to her private list of the things she knew about him.

“Give me a minute to get this tie off,” he said, suiting action to words as he pulled the knot from a gray knit tie and opened the collar of his long-sleeved gray-and-red-striped shirt. “I’ll call the Calhoun boys to come and give us a hand.”

“We don’t need the Calhoun boys, Jacob,” Lois said, smiling across the room at their reluctant guest. “Katie’s going to help.”

“Katie?” Jacob turned on her, tie still in hand, the indulgent half smile he’d been wearing wiped away in the space of a heartbeat, replaced by a frown.

“I’ll be glad to help,” she said hurriedly. She didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but Jacob made no effort to hide his antagonism for her and she couldn’t help wishing Lois had never asked for her assistance.

“I don’t need your help,” he said bluntly, tossing the discarded tie on the table and reaching for his coat.

“Yes, we do,” Lois piped up. “The Calhoun boys have basketball practice every night after school. They won’t be able to help until the weekend. I don’t want to wait that long to get the lights up. You promised,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest. “You promised.”

“I promised,” he said between clenched teeth as he rebuttoned his coat. “So let’s get going. This family spends entirely too much time and energy worrying about Christmas.” He walked out the door.

“Oh, dear,” Lois said, biting her lip. “Now I’ve made him mad.”

“It’s not you, Lo,” Faye said, offering her Kyle’s plump cheek to kiss. “It’s Christmas. You know how much Katherine loved the holidays. He doesn’t want to remember that she and the baby are gone forever. And Christmas is the hardest time of year for him....”

And the baby. So Jacob had lost a child, as well as his wife. She thought of her own loss. She had loved Michael, and she truly mourned his loss. Sometimes she wondered how she could have gotten through it without Kyle. To have lost the woman you loved and the child she bore you…together… The loss would be incalculable. Perhaps she’d judged Jacob Owens too harshly. Perhaps she should…

An imperious tapping came at the window beside her chair. Katie leaned over and lifted the lace curtain. Jacob’s dark, harsh features stared back at her, below eye level, framed by blooming pink geraniums and green leaves. “Let’s get going,” he called loudly through the old, green-tinged, wavy glass. “It’s colder than a witch’s—”

“Jacob!” Almeda called, holding up an imperious hand. “Watch your language.”

“Yes, Aunt,” he hollered back. The darkness didn’t leave his face, but Katie thought she saw just the slightest hint of softening in his deep blue eyes. He lowered his voice. “I’ll watch my p’s and q’s.”

“See that you do,” Almeda replied. Her hearing was evidently very good for a woman of her years.

“C’mon, Kate Smith,” he said, more softly still. “Get a move on.”

“I will,” Katie said, wondering why she was in such a hurry to do what he told her. He was a thorn in her side. He was moody and distrustful and he made her feel like a criminal for accepting his aunts’ hospitality. Now she was practically falling out of her chair to do his bidding. No, she told herself stubbornly, I’m doing it for his aunts. She squared her shoulders just a little. For his aunts. “I’m coming,” she said, and dropped the curtain.

The last thing in the world he wanted was to be hanging Christmas lights with the alleged Kate Smith as his helper. He hated Christmas because it reminded him more than at any other time of year of what he had lost. But for his aunts’ sakes, especially for Faye and Lois who celebrated the holidays with the intensity of children, he tried to hide his bitterness. He was surprised they hadn’t already come up with a scheme to keep Katie and her little boy with them until after New Year’s. Christmas was for children, after all. And they had no children or grandchildren of their own to spoil, as they would have lovingly and joyfully spoiled his son. Resolutely and quickly, because he’d had so much practice at it, he changed the direction of his thoughts.

“Let’s hurry this up a bit,” he said, tugging on the string of big, old-fashioned, teardrop-shaped outdoor lights that Katie was feeding up to him. “I’d like to be down off this ladder before dark. Did you hear me, Kate Smith?” He twisted his head around and looked down at his assistant, standing half a dozen rungs below him on the heavy wooden ladder. “I’m freezing my can off out here.”

“So am I,” came the spirited reply. “And I don’t like being up on this damned ladder any more than you.”

“No one asked you to come up,” he reminded her, enjoying the play of emotions across her expressive face, despite his reluctance to be in her company.

“It’s a dirty job, but someone had to do it,” she shot back, sniffling into the tissue she had wadded into her glove. “If I didn’t volunteer, you really would be up on this thing all night.” She looped a coil of lights in her hand, grabbed the sides of the ladder and leaned back, the better to glare up at him. “I suppose you expect your seventy-five-year-old aunt to come crawling up here and be your gofer.”

“Hey,” Janet yelped from the ground. “I’m not seventy-five. Hazel is. I’m seventy-two.”

“I was speaking in round figures,” Katie said, swiveling her head to shower one of her glittering, disarming smiles down on his aunt. Jacob felt a small, unwelcome twinge of regret that she wasn’t going to be smiling when she looked up at him again. Her smiles were really marvelous, something to behold.

“Not round enough,” Janet responded and laughed. Katie laughed, too. Her laugh was even more infectious than her smile. When she laughed she reminded him the least of Katherine. His wife had been a passionate and caring woman, but her emotions were always under control. Katie X—he’d taken to calling her that in his thoughts—wore all her emotions on her sleeve.

“I was trying to make a point,” Katie said, hooking her arm around the rung of the ladder in front to feed Jacob another few feet of lights that he looped through hooks set permanently under the eaves of the house.

“You succeeded.” Jacob tugged hard enough to cause the fragile colored-glass bulbs to bang together dangerously.

“You have no sense of humor,” Katie said. Provocatively? He couldn’t be sure. She tilted her head, watching him, challenging him. The lights were tangled just below his reach. Janet had stepped away from the base of the ladder to answer an urgent plea for help from the twins. He was alone, twenty-five feet in the air, with Katie X. He reached down for the string of lights just as she lifted them toward him. Their gloves hands met, but it was as if the barrier of cloth didn’t exist. He felt a jolt of sensation go through him as strong and as real as if the Christmas lights had shorted out in his hands.

“I lost my sense of humor and everything else three and a half years ago,” he said bluntly. He yanked on the lights again. The tangle came loose and he started back up the ladder to the peak of the roof.

“That’s when your wife and child were killed?”

“Yes,” he said. The word was scarcely more than a growl.

“Was your child a boy or a girl?” She wasn’t going to let him alone until she had the information she wanted, it seemed. He remained silent for a long moment, hooking the lights with mechanical efficiency, searching his heart for any weak spots in his defenses before he spoke again.

“A boy.”

“How old?” Her voice was soft, caring, but he refused to hear anything but the prying words.

“Eighteen months.”

“Near Kyle’s age,” she whispered, but he heard her, anyway.

“Yes.”

“His name was Kent Jacob.” It was a combination of Katherine’s father’s name and his own. He was surprised he’d been able to say it out loud.

“How did it happen?” She passed him another loop of lights and he started methodically stringing them down the far side of the roof peak, as far as he could reach.

He considered telling her to mind her own business but somehow he knew it would do no good. Katie X was nothing if not single-minded.

“It was a freak accident,” he mumbled, tightening a green bulb that had come loose in its socket with more force than necessary. “They were sitting in the car, in our driveway, waiting for it to stop raining when lightning struck a tree next door. Half the damn tree came down on top of the car. They were both killed instantly.”

“I’m sorry,” Katie said, so softly he could barely hear her.

“Being sorry doesn’t help.” He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He never wanted to talk about it.

“My husband died very suddenly, too,” she went on, ignoring his bad manners. “A little less than a year ago. On Monday he said he didn’t feel well. On Wednesday he collapsed. On Friday he was dead.” She sounded as unbelieving as he had been when he learned of what had happened to his wife and son. “It was pneumonia. Some kind of virulent strain.”

“No one dies of pneumonia anymore.”

“Michael did. And now Kyle and I are all alone.”

“Except for whoever you’re running away from.” He glared down at her, wanting to make her suffer a little in return for making him answer her questions.

“We’re not running away from anyone,” she said so quickly he knew immediately she was lying. The color drained from her face, leaving two round spots on her cheeks and her nose bright red. She looked as if he’d hit her in the stomach with his fist. He felt just as lousy as if he had.

“We’re not running away,” she repeated, staring up at him with frightened, defiant eyes. Brown eyes, the color of spice or café au lait, rimmed with long, sooty lashes. What was the old cliché about eyes like that? Bedroom eyes. Jacob crushed the thought with a silent curse.

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