Silhouette Christmas Stories

A recipe from Ann Major:

CHRISTMAS DATE-NUT FRUIT CAKE

4 whole eggs

2 lbs (8 cups) pecans (whole halves)

1 lb (1/2 cups) whole Brazil nuts

2 cups flour

2 cups candied pineapple

2 cups candied cherries, halved

2 cups dates

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup rum or 1/2 cup bourbon (I use bourbon)

2 tbsp vanilla

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

In a large bowl, beat eggs. Gradually add sugar and vanilla. Cream together. Add flour, baking powder, salt, nuts and fruit, mixing well with large spoon after each addition.

Line 2 bread loaf pans with wax paper, glossy side inward. Divide mixture between pans. Firmly mash into pans, making sure all air pockets are removed and mixture is compact.

Place in cold oven. Set oven at 325° F. Bake for 1 hour or until knife inserted in center of cake comes out dry.

Remove pans from oven and pour rum or bourbon over cakes while hot.

Serve cake sliced into thin pieces as a snack or dessert, adding ice cream or whipped cream as desired. The nuts and fruit may make the cake appear like stained glass. Any way you serve it, this cake is beautiful in appearance and delicious in taste.

Chapter One

Oh, why had she let Sara and Jim and their children talk her into driving with them into San Antonio to shop?

Lights and red and gold velvet streamers sparkled from the ceiling of San Antonio's River Center Mall. A festive, last-minute mania infected the shoppers and salespeople who hustled and bustled everywhere.

But Noreen Black couldn't get into the Christmas spirit. Instead she felt a quiet desperation, an aching loneliness. Oh, sure, she'd bought half a dozen gifts. Sure, she was being jostled along in the crowd like everybody else during the holiday season. And right now she was struggling to keep a tight grip on Darius's little hand as well as manage her huge shopping sacks. But unlike everyone else who seemed in a joyful mood, Noreen felt only despair.

Suddenly through the crowd Noreen saw a tall man with broad shoulders and darkly handsome good looks threading his way toward her.

It couldn't be! No! Not Grant! Not after all these years. Not when she had Darius clinging tightly to her fingers.

She wanted to run, to cry out. Instead her panic overwhelmed her, and she did the most foolish thing of all. She simply froze.

Then, right before he headed into a luxurious lingerie shop, the man turned and saw her. She felt an instant sensation of doom. For a fleeting second he studied her with one of those quick, assessing, male glances. He saw a beautiful woman in her early thirties who was tall and delicate of feature. A woman who had enormous, dark, frightened eyes. A woman with a shocking mass of jet-black hair bound untidily in a lopsided knot. A woman who wore a bright animal-print scarf and baggy sweater and had a Bohemian air about her. But she was not someone he knew. He smiled briefly and vanished inside the shop.

He was just a stranger. A stranger with gray eyes instead of Grant's vivid, beautiful blue ones. A stranger who probably thought her too dull in her unfashionable clothes, or too skinny. He wasn't Grant. Wasn't even remotely like Grant. Still, it took a second for Noreen's shock to subside.

Just being in San Antonio was enough to make Noreen as nervous as a cat, and today, despite her cheery pretenses, had been no different. San Antonio was part of her past, part of that other life that she had deliberately walked away from five years ago, part of Grant. Even the briefest visit to the city could fill her with an intense sensation of loss and loneliness and leave her depressed for days. A part of her had died here, and she had never recovered.

Of course, living as she did only fifty miles away in a Texas town so small and so poor that it had no doctor or shopping facilities, she had to come into the city from time to time. Never once had she run into Grant or his mother, but the threat of that happening had always been in her mind. She found herself look-ing around with a strange mixture of excitement and dread in the pit of her stomach, as if she were unconsciously searching the crowd for Grant's black head, for his tall, wide-shouldered form.

Darius suddenly yanked free of his mother's grip, and Noreen felt close to panic again. Then she saw that he was racing for the line of children waiting to talk to Santa. Darius loped ahead of her as eagerly and trustingly as a puppy, his short quick legs spraddling everywhere, shoestrings snapping in all directions, sure his mother would follow at her proper adult pace.

Watching him, she smiled fondly. Instead of Velcro fasteners, he insisted on shoelaces because his best friend's teenage brother, Raymond Liska, had laces. It did no good to tell Darius that big brothers could have laces because they were able to tie them.

There was an empty bench right in front of Santa's Workshop, and Noreen sank down on it, piling her bundles beside her. Her feet ached all the way up her calves to her knees. She loosened her scarf. It wasn't even noon yet, and she was exhausted from shopping and from chasing Darius-two jobs she vowed long ago never to take on simultaneously.

But Christmas was coming soon, and all four-year-old boys had to talk to Santa at least once. Darius had talked to five Santas since Thanksgiving. Every time he had done so, his big blue eyes had grown huge as he'd leaned into Santa's ear and whispered. When she'd asked him what he wanted he'd refused to tell her.

"Santa knows," he would say wisely.

Today Noreen had dragged him to every toy store in the mall. With huge shining eyes, Darius had handled the toys, at first with exuberant enthusiasm, until she'd asked him, "What do you want?" Then he had reluctantly set the toys back at cockeyed angles on the shelf. His darling baby-plump face had become still, and his answer had been reverent and enigmatic.

"Santa knows."

"You must tell Mommy."

"Why?"

Little did he know that she had almost nothing for him under the tree. That was the main reason she had let the Liskas persuade her to come into San Antonio.

As Noreen watched Darius jump joyfully into Santa's plump red velvet lap she thought, At least he'll sit still for a second and I can catch my breath.

"Silent Night," her favorite Christmas carol, was being piped over the sound system. For the first time since seven that morning when she'd climbed into the Liskas' Suburban, she relaxed. She glanced down at her wristwatch. She and Darius still had an hour to shop before they were to rendezvous with the Liskas and their four children for lunch on the river at Casa Rio.

Noreen groaned inwardly as she watched Darius unwrap the peppermint candy cane that Santa had given him and whisper into Santa's ear at the same time. Santa was going to have sticky ears. Sugar made Darius absolutely hyper. He wouldn't eat lunch, and he probably wouldn't nap on the way home.

"So what special present do you want Santa to bring you this year, young man?" Santa asked.

"Special?" The word was new. Darius licked his candy cane thoughtfully.

"The best present you've ever gotten?" Santa prompted.

Darius whispered again, but Santa couldn't make out the whisper and told him so.

Darius's eager, piping voice rang through the store. "The best present ever? A daddy that's even better than Leo's, that's what!"

Noreen looked up sharply at her son, all the old sorrow upon her. Her brown eyes grew bleak. She had tried to explain so many times to Darius that his father was in Heaven. She'd framed her favorite picture of Larry and kept it in Darius's room.

Noreen scarcely heard Santa's low rumble. But she heard her son's matter-of-fact reply. "Nope. Just a daddy."

"What about a toy truck or a car?"

Darius shook his black head as stubbornly as his father would have. As stubbornly as any Hale.

Santa was setting the child down, helping him get his balance as Noreen came over and gently took Darius's hand.

"You could have told me what you wanted," she said softly to her son, her voice immeasurably sad.

"Do you think Santa can really bring me a daddy?"

"Honey, I told you how your father died. You have his picture on that little table by your bed."

Darius's big blue eyes, so like his father's and his Uncle Grant's, grew solemn at that memory. "But I need a real live daddy, too."

She rumpled Darius's black hair. "A daddy is… well… er… That's a very complicated present."

"That's why I asked Santa, Mom. 'Cause he's magic."

Noreen remained silent. She turned helplessly back to Santa, who had been eavesdropping. But Santa was no help. With a merry jingling of tiny bells, he just tipped his hat and gave her an audacious wink.

For a moment she remembered her marriage, Larry's death, Grant, the bitter loss of it all. And suddenly she was so cold inside that she could feel nothing else.

Noreen was in a hurry now, a hurry to leave the mall and make it to the Casa Rio by one-thirty to meet Sara and Jim and their brood. She had shopped in a frenzy ever since she'd found out what Darius really wanted for Christmas. She couldn't provide the father he wanted, but she could get him other things. Now she was so loaded down with bags that she could no longer hold them all, and Darius was even carrying the two he'd bought for Leo and another friend.

They were on the escalator when the nightmare she had dreaded for five long years became a reality.

There was no time to prepare. No time to run. She and Darius were trapped on that gliding silver stairway.

They were going down.

Her ex brother-in-law was going up.

Fortunately, Grant wasn't looking in her direction when she saw him. She went rigid with shock, turned her head away, and lifted her shaking hand to cover her features. But not before his harsh, set face had etched itself into her brain, and into her heart and soul, as well.

He looked tired. Tired and haggard in a way that wrenched her heart.

But he was as handsome as ever. He was taller than other men, and broader through the shoulders. So tall he dwarfed her in comparison. His face was lean and dark, his hair as thick and black and unruly as her own, his eyes the same dazzling blue she remembered, his mouth still as beautifully shaped.

As if she could have forgotten him.

As if any woman could.

Her heart was beating like a mad thing gone wild. She was almost safe. They were gliding past each other. She would probably never see him again. Why would she? He was a Hale and, no doubt, by now one of the most powerful lawyers in San Antonio. She was a nobody, a small-town librarian.

How many nights had she dreamed of him? He had probably never given her another thought.

A fatal impulse possessed her. Forgetting her fears for Darius, forgetting she was risking her new life in doing so, she couldn't resist glancing over her shoulder for one last glimpse of him.

She did so just when Grant was looking back.

Their eyes met.

And so did their souls. One fleeting instant of mutual longing bound them before other, darker emotions stormed to the surface.

Slowly his black brows drew together-in a smoldering rage or in hate, she did not know which. Terror welled up in her.

Fortunately, the moving escalators were crowded. Fortunately, the railing was high, and Grant couldn't see that she was with a child.

"Norie!"

The husky sound of his voice crying her name cut her like a knife.

Grant shouted a second time as she scrambled to get off the escalator, pulling Darius, juggling packages.

One of her packages fell. She looked back. Her new pair of sparkly red high heels had tumbled out of their box. But she raced on, into the nearest store where she grabbed a wild assortment of jeans and tops and took Darius with her into a tiny dressing room.

There she stayed for an hour, reading to Darius in a whispery voice from one of the storybooks she.had bought for the school library.

A long time later, a saleslady called to them. "Does anything fit?"

She heard male voices in the next fitting room, saw a pair of male legs on the other side of the divider of her stall. It was only then that Noreen noticed she'd grabbed men's jeans, and she and Darius were hiding in the men's fitting room.

She began to laugh silently, a little hysterically, and Darius watched her with huge worried eyes.

When Noreen and Darius were a breathless thirty minutes late to the Casa Rio, the Liskas were too dear to criticize.

They were a handsome couple. Jim was tall and dark, gentle and strong. His wife had soft brown hair, brown eyes, and a sweet face. They'd been high school sweethearts and had one of the happiest marriages Noreen had ever seen.

Noreen sank down beside them, offering neither excuses nor explanations, and let Jim order her lunch.

Sara, who'd grown up in a small town and simply adored gossip, studied Noreen's white face with avid curiosity.

Fortunately, before Sara could start quizzing her, the children took over. First Leo knocked over his soda. Then Darius tried to feed a chip dipped in hot sauce to a pigeon, leaned back too far in his chair, and nearly fell into the river.

At last the chaos of lunch was over and the Liskas had bribed Raymond to take his younger siblings and Darius off to ride the paddleboats.

The table was set in a cool and shady spot. Mariachi music was being played softly in the background. Sunlight sparkled on the river and shimmered in the golden leaves overhead. Jim, who worked as a science teacher at the same school Noreen did, was finishing the last of his beer. Sara was holding his hand. Noreen sipped her cup of tea.

"We'd better enjoy this before the kids come back," Sara said. "Noreen, the kids were terrible in the mall. I guess it's just that they're all so excited. Leo wanted everything in sight. Raymond kept teasing him, telling him he'd been so bad Santa was bringing switches this year. How was Darius?"

"He told Santa that he wants a daddy."

Jim put down his beer bottle. His dark eyes lit with humor. "That's certainly going to set the town on its edge. I can just see the headline now: Town's Mystery Librarian Gets Son A Daddy!"

Noreen didn't smile. "Darius is getting older. He wants things that I can't always give him. I'm not quite sure what to do about him anymore."

"No parent ever is," Sara said.

A devilish half smile curved Jim's mouth as he pulled his hand free of Sara's and leaned toward Noreen. "I think Darius has a good point. He does need a daddy. But no more than you need a husband."

"What? If ever I heard a chauvinistic remark-"

"Jim's full of them," Sara said placidly.

"You've practically buried yourself alive these past five years," Jim continued.

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

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

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

"I was a widow," Noreen replied tautly.

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

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

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

"Thanks." Noreen still wasn't smiling.

"I meant it as a compliment."

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

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

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

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

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

"Because… "

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But he obeyed.

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

"I-I think so."

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

"Sorry," she murmured in breathless apology.

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

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

"Damn."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The conventional Hales had thought her too uninhibited.

"More than a little."

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

"You should have stayed away."

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

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

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

"Whose fault is that? You ran away."

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

"Because I had to," she said desperately.

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

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

A long tremulous silence hung between them.

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

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

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

"Yeah, I probably should be."

He let go of her, and she jumped free.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She'd thrown that up at him once.

You only want me because I belong to your brother.

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

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

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

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

"Maybe she's okay."

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

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

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

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

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

"That depends on you," he replied grimly.

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

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

"Cold?" she whispered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The silence in the cab was breathlessly still.

"Oh, I have a spare bedroom."

"Then you live alone?"

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

"Y-yes."

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

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

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

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

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

"What?"

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

"As often as I have to."

"You need a man."

"So I've been told."

That rankled.

"But I don't want a man."

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

And that made her good and mad.

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

"Ouch!"

"Sorry," she said.

But he knew she wasn't.

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

Chapter Three

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I never belonged."

"You could have."

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

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

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

"You okay?" she whispered.

"Great."

She was fumbling with the key when he caught up to her.

"The lock keeps sticking."

"That's because your hands are shaking. Let me help you, Norie."

She handed him the key, dropping it into his open palm, careful not to touch him. "A lot of things are broken around here."

His knee throbbed. "I noticed."

He opened the door, and she led him inside, into an icy living room with high ceilings and tall windows. She pulled the chain of an ancient Tiffany lamp. There were wooden rocking chairs and a battered upright piano. The atmosphere was homey, but everything- the furniture, the paint, the curtains-had a faded, much-scrubbed look. There was no central heat. He saw a single gas space heater at one end of the room. It was an old-fashioned house, the type kindly grandmothers were supposed to live in.

"Like I said, it's not the Hale mansion," Norie apologized again. "But would you mind taking off your shoes?"

She was about to lean down and remove her own muddy boots, but he grabbed her arm. At his touch a sudden tremor shook her. He felt a strange pull from her, and he couldn't let her go.

"Do you really think I give a damn about your house?" His voice was rasping, unsteady. "I came to see you."

For a moment longer he held her. She didn't struggle. He almost wished she had, because he probably would have pulled her into his arms. Her expression was blank; her dark glittering eyes were enormous. He could think of nothing except how beautiful she was. Unconsciously she caught her lower lip with her teeth, and that slight nervous movement drew his gaze to her mouth.

They were alone, in the middle of nowhere. It had been five years. Five long years. He wanted to kiss her, to taste her. But he had made that mistake before- twice-the first night he'd met her, and on her wedding day.

He swallowed hard. "Thank you… for letting me stay."

He saw intense emotion in her eyes.

Although it was the most difficult thing he'd ever done, instead of drawing her closer, he released her. She leaned down and pulled her boots off. As he bent over to do the same, the shock of pain that raced from his knee up his thigh made him gasp.

"You're hurt," she said, kneeling before him. "I'll do it."

Standing, he could see nothing but the gypsy-thick waves of her dark hair glistening in the honey-gold glow of the lamp as they spilled over her delicate shoulders. Her loop earrings glittered brightly. He felt her quick, sure hands on his ankles. He caught the dizzying scent of her sensuous perfume. No other woman had such drowsy dark eyes; no other woman possessed this air of purity and enduring innocence that mingled with something so free, so giving.

He had always wanted her. From the first moment he'd seen her angel-sweet face and known the beauty of her smile.

He'd only meant to stop by and see her on his way from San Antonio to Houston, to inform her that Larry had not left her penniless. Grant had intended to take no more than an hour from his busy life. He had a big case to prepare for next week and his Houston project was a mess.

He hadn't expected all his old feelings for her to be stronger than before. It was only one night, he'd told her. One night alone together. Nothing to get flustered over. But his hands were shaking.

Right, he thought grimly. One night. Alone. Together.

The time stretched before him like an eternity. Every slowly kindling nerve in his body burned for her. He clenched his hands into fists.

"There." She was done.

Smiling up at him, she placed his shoes neatly beside her boots and led him through a series of icy rooms. Since the house had no halls on the lower floor, each room opened into the next. To get to the kitchen and the stairs that led to the upper story, they had to walk through her bedroom. It was large and airy-too airy on a night as cold as this one. As they passed through it, he saw a large four-poster bed, a library table full of books and magazines, and a television set. A large Christmas tree decorated with handmade red and gold ornaments stood in the corner. He caught the crisp aromatic odor of fresh spruce. There was a nativity scene sandwiched in between the books on her table.

"Why is the Christmas tree in your bedroom?" he asked.

"Because we-"

"We?" he demanded. Grant gazed at her for a long moment. "I thought you lived alone."

Norie's breath caught in her throat. "I-I do. What I meant to say is that I spend most of my time there." She flushed under his hard scrutiny. "I don't like to heat up the whole house." She lowered her gaze to avoid his unfaltering one.

He hadn't practiced law for fifteen years without developing an almost uncanny sense about people. She was lying-covering something up. But what? Scanning the room again, he found no trace that a man might share it with her.

He shrugged. The best way to find out was to leave it alone-for now.

The stairs were difficult. His knee hurt so badly he could barely climb the steps, and he felt weak again when he had struggled to the top. He followed her from the dark hallway into a charming bedroom with frilly curtains and yellow flowered paper. The room was as icy as the rest of the house.

She knelt on the faded carpet and lit a fire in the space heater, then rose and went to the bed to find the cord and controls to the electric blanket. He crossed the room to help her.

Together they located the switch, pulled the covers back, and plumped the pillows. It seemed an intimate activity suddenly, unmaking the bed, and he stopped before she was through. For a moment he stood without moving, watching her, enjoying the simple beauty of her doing this simple thing for him.

"There," she said softly, smoothing the blanket. "The bathroom is right next door. I'll put out fresh towels. If you're still the same size you were, there are some boxes of Larry's clothes under the bed." Her eyes darkened. "I-I never got rid of them."

"I haven't put on an ounce."

He felt the heat of her eyes move swiftly over his body, mutely confirming his statement. And then she smiled in her unutterably charming way and blushed rosy pink before she glanced down at the carpet in front of his toes.

"I'll leave you to settle in, but I'll be back… with something hot to eat." Her tone was light and a little breathless. "You're probably starving."

"Oh, I am." His own voice when he answered was oddly hoarse. He gave her a look that told her it wasn't only food he was hungry for.

She backed away, stumbled against the doorjamb, blushed again, and was gone.

Damn. She was afraid of him.

The jeans Grant found in the box under the bed fit his muscled body like a snug second skin. The black turtleneck sweater molded every hard muscle in his torso, shoulders, and biceps. Well, maybe he'd put on an ounce. Or maybe as he'd gotten older he'd gotten into the habit of wearing looser-fitting clothes. Comforting thought.

As soon as he finished dressing he climbed into the bed to get warm. He lay beneath the toasty electric blanket, listening to the sounds of Norie bustling about in the kitchen beneath him. Outside, the wind was swishing around the corners of the house and whistling under the eaves. But his pillow was soft, the electric blanket warm. The room was beginning to seem almost cozy. He felt a baffling contentment, to be here, alone with Norie, so far from his own exciting but hectic life.

It was odd, Norie choosing this ice-cold house on a remote farm outside of a dying town, as opposed to the life she could have had.

Why?

He had never understood her.

Not from the first.

Maybe that was why he'd made so many mistakes.

His thoughts drifted back in time. Back to the first night when his mother had sent him to Austin to save his little brother from a scheming older woman.

"Noreen Black is a penniless little nobody. Some sort of Bohemian-an intellectual! An orphan who was raised in north Texas on a dirt farm. She's twenty-seven to Larry's twenty-three. I'm sure she's out to catch him," Georgia Hale had shrieked before Grant left for Austin. "Do you want the same thing to happen to your little brother that happened to you?"

Grant had been making vast monthly payments on a settlement to the beautiful young woman who'd deliberately married him so she could take him to the cleaners. Remembering the bitter consequences of his own mistake, he'd driven off to Austin determined to pay off Noreen Black before she had Larry completely in her clutches.

When Grant had knocked on the door of Miss Black's little apartment a couple of blocks west of the UT campus, a soft welcoming voice had answered. "Larry?"

"Larry's brother."

She'd thrown open the door. "Grant! Larry's told me all about you."

The "scheming older woman" was a slim girl with enormous dark eyes. Her cloud of dark hair was tied back with a green scarf, and huge silver loops danced at her ears. She didn't look twenty, much less twenty-seven. There were books scattered untidily on the dilapidated couch, red plastic dinette chairs and table. She had a pencil tucked behind one ear and had padded barefoot to the door in a pink and black leotard and tights. Tendrils of damp curls clung to her forehead. Her smile was the sweetest he'd ever seen.

His gaze roved the length of her body, passing downward over a flawless neck and shoulders, gently rounded breasts, a narrow waist, and long, shapely legs.

"Lovely," he said in a low voice.

Unconsciously Norie drew back, crossing her hands over her breasts.

"I-I was studying, but I stopped to exercise. To get the oxygen flowing again. I-I wasn't expecting company… " She trailed off uncertainly.

He couldn't tear his gaze away from the curve of her thighs, and Norie's color deepened.

"Are you looking for Larry?"

"No, I came to see you."

"I don't want to be rude, but I do have a big test tomorrow."

She was giving him, Grant Hale, the brush-off. Anger coiled in him as tight as a spring. Of course she was. She was after Larry. Somehow Grant managed to keep his voice calm. "Surely you have time for a quick dinner. I drove all this way just to meet you."

"I-I'm on a very limited budget."

"I'm buying."

That seemed to settle it.

"Well… since you drove all this way… "

She smiled so disarmingly that a shiver of unwanted male excitement darted through him. She was good, really good, at working a man with her charm, he thought cynically. He could see why Larry had fallen for her.

"It'll only take me a minute to dress. Make yourself at home. There's soda in the refrigerator."

While he waited for her, he rummaged about in the kitchen. There was, as she'd said, one soda in her tiny refrigerator. He saw milk, eggs, hamburger meat, canned goods, a few plastic dishes. A tight budget, she'd said.

Not for long, not after she caught Larry.

She returned wearing a red embroidered Mexican smock, red painted earrings, and silver jewelry. Grant complimented her on the outfit and drove her to an elegant restaurant on Town Lake.

She ordered the least expensive thing on the menu.

A trick, Grant thought.

To his amazement, he began to enjoy himself. In the candlelight, with her shining eyes and her pretty, sweet smile that seemed to be for him alone, she was beautiful. Larry was forgotten.

Grant began to drink, rather too much. He never got around to offering her money to leave Larry alone. Instead he talked about himself, about his secret dreams. He told her about Susan, their divorce, the hurt of it all. He told her things he'd never told anyone else. How as a child he'd secretly wished to know his own father. How he'd wanted love, how he'd grown up without it, how it was something he no longer believed in.

Then she'd told him about herself, about her loving parents, about their wonderful life together on their small farm until her parents had died in a car accident.

"I want all that again," she whispered. "You see, I do believe in love. More than anything, I want a home, children. I even know what I'll name them."

"What?"

"The boys will be Darius and Homer. The girls Galatea and Electra."

Grant laughed. Her fingers were toying with the tips of her silverware, and his hand brushed against them accidentally. He felt a warm tingle at the touch of her flesh. She drew her hand away and looked at him, her beautiful face still and silent and tender.

"I-I got those names out of books," she said in a rush. "I always loved to read, even as a child. Especially after Mother and Daddy died. I have a master's in English, and I've taught for three years. I'm studying to be a librarian. And now… I really do need to get home. That test… "

She was lovely, lovelier than any woman he had ever known.

She drove. Because she knew Austin better, and because she hadn't drunk any alcohol. On the way back into town, he was grimly silent.

She parked in the dark in front of her apartment building.

"I had a wonderful time," she whispered. Her face lit with a guileless, naive happiness. Her eyes were sparkling in the darkness.

"So did I." Grant ran his hand up the pale smoothness of her bare arm.

"You're not like Larry."

At her mention of his brother, Grant's mood turned grim. "No?"

"Not at all."

"I came because Larry wrote that he was serious about you."

"What?"

"Don't pretend you don't know," Grant murmured in a coaxing, cynical rasp.

"I'm not pretending. He's just a good friend."

The wine and the hard liquor Grant had consumed made his thoughts swim. She was so soft and lovely, this gypsy girl, so totally different, she mesmerized him. His emotions were in turmoil. "You're poor. He's rich."

"I had no idea." Her voice was a tender whisper. "He seemed so young and so mixed-up. I felt sorry for him."

"I told you not to pretend with me."

"Grant… " She looked lost.

He swore under his breath. "You're good, girl. Very good. Maybe you can fool Larry with your angel face and your innocent, sweet Bohemian act, but you can't fool me. All night you've tantalized me, smiled at me, beckoned me with your beauty. You don't love my brother."

"No, I don't."

Silver bracelets jingled. She reached for the door handle, but his larger hand closed over hers. The minute he touched her, he was lost.

She was warm satin flesh. Her pulse raced beneath his fingertips. He was on fire. His gaze rested on her soft lush red mouth for one second only. Then his lips covered hers. He circled her with his arms. She tried to cry out, but his hot, ravaging mouth stifled all utterance. She was trembling with fear, and with some other emotion that more than matched the power of his own blind passion.

She was warm and sweet like heated honey. An angel who was erotic as no wanton could ever be. Shock waves of desire surged through every aching nerve in his body. He wanted her, as he had never wanted another. This funny, seemingly innocent woman-child who was poor, who was a gypsy girl.

Her slim body was crushed beneath the power of his weight, and the hands that had been pushing against his chest stopped pushing. He felt them curl weakly around his neck, and she pulled him closer, returning his kisses with guiltless wonder, sighing softly in rapture. So there was fire in her, too. Fire for him as well as for his brother.

At last Grant let her go.

"I want you," he said. "I'll give you everything Larry would have given you and more. Except a wedding ring. Like I told you, I made that mistake once before."

Her lovely face changed subtly, quickly, from the soft glowing expression of a woman newly in love to that of a woman who'd lost everything.

"You really think that I… " A sob caught in her throat.

His expression was harsh.

Her luscious, passionate mouth, swollen from his kisses, quivered. Her face was very pale. He saw the sparkle of new tears spill over her long lashes. Her beautiful neck was taut, her head proudly poised and erect.

"I've made mistakes, too," she said softly in a small, brave voice that didn't quite mask her utter de-spair. "And tonight… you, Grant Hale, were one of them."

He tried to stop her when she tried to go.

"I'm not what you think," she whispered. "And you're not what I thought."

He was forcibly struck by the sorrow in her pain-glazed eyes. She got out of the car and ran all the way to her door where she dropped her keys and struggled with the lock for a long time. He knew she was weeping so hard she couldn't see.

Flushed with anger and frustrated desire, he watched her fumble about, thinking he should help her, thinking he should go, thinking he would forget her, and knowing deep down he never could. When she vanished into the gloom of her apartment building, he started the car and burned rubber in his wildness to get away.

But he'd never forgotten her stricken, tear-streaked face. Not even after she'd married his brother on the rebound. Not in the five years since Larry's death.

Chapter Four

There was a whisper from the doorway that had nothing to do with the wind.

Grant opened his eyes and saw Norie standing there, holding a plastic tray with two cups of steaming hot tea, milk, and Christmas cookies. She'd removed her poncho and was wearing a white sweater that clung to her slender body, and a soft woolen skirt. She seemed to hesitate on the threshold, as if she had doubts about the wisdom of joining him in his bedroom.

Her hair fell in dark spirals, framing her lovely face and neck. Her dark eyes were immense and luminous. Just the sight of her looking so gently innocent and vulnerable made his own body feel hard and hot with wild ravening need.

The wind whistled, and the house shuddered from a particularly strong blast.

"Come in," he murmured.

"I was afraid I'd wake you," she replied breathlessly.

He watched her set the tray down on the table by the bed. She handed him a cup of tea and a plate of homemade cookies. Neither spoke for a while, and the silence seemed awkward and heavy to both of them.

"It seems funny… you being here… in this house," she said at last.

"What do you mean?"

"You're used to more glamorous settings-New York, Europe. You've been all over the world."

"I feel at home here… with you."

She stared into her teacup. "We're nothing alike."

"In a way that's true. But there's an old cliche. Opposites attract."

"You never liked me." Her voice was low, whispery.

The knowledge that she had run away and hidden from him for five years weighed heavily on his heart. "I liked you too much," he said through gritted teeth.

Her teacup rattled precariously in its saucer, and she looked up. "Can we talk about something else?"

"Fine. What?"

"I-I don't know. What can two people as different as we are find to talk about?"

Hard pellets of ice pinged on a piece of tin nailed to the roof.

"Maybe the weather." His tone was derisive. "Bad night."

"Yes, it is."

That was all either of them could think of for a very long time. He was too aware of her beauty, too conscious of his need to run his hands through her black hair, to kiss her lush red lips. He felt white-hot with need. There was an awful, passionate, unbreakable tension in that silent room that was tearing them both to pieces. What was going on here? Suave, sophisticated Grant Hale never had trouble talking to a woman.

Desperate for distraction, he forced himself to remember the past. Norie had always been different, unconventional. She'd been an enormous amount of trouble to him. First he'd tried to stop her from marrying his brother. The problem was, she hadn't even known Larry was that interested in her until Grant had told her. Larry had written that letter to his mother when he'd been drunk, in the hopes of stirring her up. Hales were like that. Stirring was in their blood. Larry liked to be the center of a family drama.

Norie had been so upset about what happened between herself and Grant that night in Austin that she'd begun to see Larry in a more favorable light. She'd felt sorry for him for having such a materialistic mother and brother; she'd believed that was why he was so wild and unhappy. In the end she'd acted on impulse for the first time in her life and married Larry. But the marriage had never been a happy one. Not with Georgia's continual interference. Not with her threats to disinherit Larry because he'd chosen such an unsuitable bride. Not with Larry's weak, wavering nature.

They were married for two years. A month before he died, Larry had left Norie to please his mother.

It was the most horrible irony to Grant that he'd driven the only woman he'd ever loved straight into the arms of his brother who had never really cared for her.

Then, right after Larry had killed himself on his motorcycle, Norie had run off for no reason at all.

Norie didn't care about success or money. In fact, Grant wouldn't blame her if she was terrified of money and how it could twist people. She didn't care about knowing the right people, or traveling to the right places. She didn't have a single status-seeking cell in her body. She didn't know anything about fashion or fads. There was no way she could ever fit into his life. Their values were nothing alike. He needed a woman who could shine at cocktail parties, a woman who knew how to be an elegant hostess. A woman his mother could brag about to her friends.

He had had all that.

And it was empty as hell.

He wanted this woman. And he didn't care if it cost him everything he had, everything he was.

Maybe they could talk about the cookies.

The Christmas cookies really were quite interesting. Some of them were expertly painted. There were green Christmas trees with silver balls and red-and-white Santa Clauses. But some of the cookies were painted with a violent, primitive awkwardness. Grant picked up a particularly brilliant, clumsily painted cookie.

"Who painted this?"

She shut her eyes. Her voice was trembly. "A-a little friend."

He remembered Larry telling him about all the neighborhood children that flocked to their house whenever Norie was home. She'd baked for them. Larry had been bored by children.

Norie's teacup rattled again in its saucer, and she quickly changed the subject. "How did you find me?"

"Yesterday morning, I was reading the paper. There was a mention of a UIL meet in Karnes City. I read through the students' names and the names of the teachers and school personnel accompanying them. I saw Noreen Black. I'd been looking for Noreen Hale. After that all it took was a few phone calls. Imagine my amazement when I found out that you were living only fifty miles away. If you hadn't run from me yesterday, we could have settled everything then."

"Settled what?"

"Larry left you an estate, of course. Did you imagine you were penniless?"

"I don't want Larry's money." Her dark eyes flashed. "I never cared… about his money. Anyway, we were separated when he died."

"It's yours, nevertheless. I've been managing it for you ever since."

"I'm sorry to have put you to so much trouble."

His voice was velvet soft. "I didn't mind. I liked knowing I was helping you, Norie."

"I don't want your help."

His gaze roamed her shapely length as heatedly as if he touched her. She began to tremble. Then she stiffened.

"You're afraid of me," he said gently. "Why?"

"I'm not afraid." But her voice was a slender thread of sound.

"Then why did you run from me in San Antonio?"

"Grant, I… " Her throat constricted.

"I came here to help you, Norie."

"I'm perfectly fine. I-I don't need your help."

"I know that I wasn't always your friend. In the beginning Mother and I-"

"I don't need either of you," Norie pleaded desperately.

He felt just as desperate. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe we, that maybe I, need you."

"No. No… " She set the teacup down, her hands fluttering in protest. She got up and was slowly backing away from him.

"None… "

"You need to go to sleep now. I'll be back to turn off the heater later."

"Norie!"

But she was gone.

Norie was in her bed in a warm flannel nightgown, removing her heavy earrings. She picked up a book review of a children's story. But the black print blurred when she tried to read. She kept thinking of Grant. She felt a throbbing weakness in the center of her being. He seemed so hard and tough, so masculine. So sexy with every muscle rippling against the soft black cloth of that sweater. She'd always been both fascinated and disturbed by him. She still was-and he knew it.

But he was a Hale, and even if he wasn't the weakling Larry had been, he was still Georgia Hale's son.

Grant was so smooth with women, so experienced. And Norie knew next to nothing about men, especially men like him.

What did he really want with her?

One thing she knew. She had to get him out of her life before Darius returned on Sunday.

Darius! A shiver of apprehension raced coldly over her flesh.

Why hadn't she thought? She remembered the way Georgia had used her money to turn Larry against her. Georgia could be subtle; she could be ingratiating. But she liked to control everything and everybody. Especially Larry, her favorite son. If she found out that Larry had had a child, what might she do to get control of Darius? Would she use her money to destroy Norie's relationship with her own son as she had used it to destroy her marriage to Larry? What if Georgia found some way to take Darius away?

In a flash Norie threw back her covers and got up. In her bare feet she scampered across the cold floors, removing every trace of Darius-his Christmas stocking laid out in front of the tree, his gifts, his tennis shoes and socks that he'd taken off by her bed. She dashed upstairs, hid these things in his room under his bed, and pulled the door tightly shut.

And to think that after Larry's death Grant had been so grief-stricken she'd almost told him that she was pregnant.

On her way downstairs she saw the pale thread of golden light under Grant's door. The door creaked when she opened it, but Grant didn't stir. For a second longer she studied him. He was beautiful with his long inky lashes, his tanned skin, his dark unruly hair, his powerful body. He had thrown off some of his covers. She watched the steady rise and fall of his powerful shoulders. Hesitantly she tiptoed to the heater and turned the knob at the wall.

The room melted into darkness.

The room would cool down quickly, so she went to Grant's bed to arrange his covers.

She was about to go when suddenly his warm hand closed tightly over hers.

She was caught in a viselike grip.

"I-I thought you were asleep," she murmured breathlessly. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"I'm glad you did." His voice was like a hot caress. "What have you been doing? Your hand is as cold as ice."

His concern made her pulse leap. "A few household chores downstairs."

"It's a shame for a woman as lovely as you to live out here all by yourself. To have to do everything by yourself."

She couldn't answer. She felt all choked-up inside, and she was too aware of his nearness, of his warm call used hand imprisoning hers.

There was a long moment of charged silence. She caught the musky scent of him, felt the warmth of his body heat.

"Why did you run away?" he murmured. She felt his fingertips stirring her hair. "Was it because of the way I felt about you?"

"What are you saying, Grant?"

His fingers were smoothing her hair down around her neck, and she wanted nothing more than to be pulled into his arms.

"I wanted you from the first minute I saw you," he murmured huskily. "I thought you belonged to my brother. Not even that mattered."

"I was a challenge."

"Once I might have agreed with you. Mother sent me to end your relationship with Larry, but the minute I saw you, I had my own reasons for wanting to end it. I wanted you even when you belonged to my brother. That's why I was always so nasty the few times I saw you after your marriage. I couldn't deal with those feelings." Grant's hand kept moving against her scalp in a slow circular motion that was mesmerizingly sensuous. "I've persecuted myself with guilt because I drove you away. I haven't always been the kind of man a woman like you could admire."

No__She remembered the holidays they'd been forced to share when she'd been Larry's wife. Georgia had been coldly polite, but Grant had been unforgiveably rude.

If only he hadn't been touching her and holding her, Norie might have fought him. But she felt his pain and she had to relieve it. "Georgia wanted me out of Larry's life. When he left me, I felt completely rejected by all the Hales. After he died, I thought you wanted me gone, Grant. That's why I left," she admitted softly.

"What?" His hand had stilled in the tangled silk of her hair.

"I overheard your family talking after the funeral. Your mother had worked so hard to break up my marriage. She said Larry never would have died if he hadn't married me, that I'd made him unhappy. You can't imagine how terrible that made me feel. It was clear everyone wanted me gone. Everyone. I thought I heard your voice."

"The Hales can be a crazy bunch. Maybe they did say those things, but I didn't. After the funeral I had to get off by myself. I felt so bad about Larry. He was so spoiled, so young. He died before he ever knew who he was or what he wanted. He couldn't stand up to Mother. I left the house for the rest of the day. When I came back, you were gone."

"It doesn't matter now."

"It does to me." Grant's voice was hard and grim, determined. "I should never have left you alone with them."

He pulled her closer, so close she was quivering from his heated nearness. So close her pulse throbbed unevenly.

"What are you doing?"

His lips touched hers, gently at first. A gasp of heady pleasure caught in her throat.

"Honey, I think it's obvious. For seven years I've wanted you more than I've ever wanted anything. Or any woman. You thought I didn't. I should have done everything in my power to stop you from marrying Larry. After the wedding I couldn't admit to those feelings, not even to myself. We've always been at cross purposes. For five years I've searched for you. Now there is nothing to keep me from claiming you."

Nothing but her own common sense and her will to preserve the placid life she'd made here for herself and Darius. Her heart raced in panic.

"Grant, no-" Norie twisted to evade the plundering fire of his mouth.

He covered her parted lips with his, and with heated kisses teased them to open wider. His hands ran over her body and lifted her gown. She felt dizzy. Uncertain.

"Please, don't do this," she murmured helplessly. "We're all wrong for each other."

"I know." There was the hint of cynicism in his tone of voice, but his eyes were dark with passion.

"But-"

"I don't care. Not anymore. I just want you, Norie. And if I can have you-even if it's only for one night-I will."

"Your family- "

"To hell with my family. If I can have you, I don't want anything else."

"You're a Hale."

His breath drew in sharply. "Not really, gypsy girl. I told you that my real father deserted Mother shortly after I was born. When Mother married Edward Hale, she forced him to adopt me. She wanted both her sons to share the same name so people would think of us as real brothers instead of half brothers."

Norie had heard all that before. To her he was a Hale, and that was that. She tried to pull away, but Grant held her fast, with hard, powerful arms. And he kissed her.

She tasted him. Her tongue quivered wetly against his. A thousand diamonds burst behind her closed eyelids. She drew a breath. It was more like a tiny gasp. Suddenly she was clinging to him with quaking rapture. His male attraction was something she could no longer fight. He ripped back the covers and pulled her down against the solid wall of his chest.

"Norie. Norie… "

Her name was sweet as honey from his lips.

Inexpertly, she caressed his rough, hard jawline with trembling fingertips. Her dark eyes met the smoldering blue fire of his gaze.

"You're mine," he said inexorably. "Mine."

Then he began to kiss her, his mouth following every curve, dipping into every secret female place, lubricating her with the silky wet warmth of his rasping tongue until she was whimpering from his burning hot kisses.

Her dark eyes flamed voluptuously, and she was as breathless as he in a mad swirling world of darkness and passion and wildness that was theirs alone.

She wanted him more than anything in the world.

And yet…

"I-I can't," she pleaded desperately, placing her fingertips between her lips and his. "I want to, but I just can't."

His grip tightened around her.

A sob came from her throat.

On a shudder that was half anger, half desperation, he let her go.

For a long moment she hesitated.

"Go," he commanded, a faintly ragged edge to his breathing. "Go, before I change my mind."

Then she fled, away from Grant's warmth, out into the cold, empty darkness of the house.

Chapter Five

Norie lay in her icy room, in her bed, her nerves and muscles wound so tightly she jumped with every blast of the norther outside. At last she drifted into fitful sleep, only to be plagued by dreams of Grant. She would then awaken with her pulse throbbing unevenly and lie listening to the wind. Yet it wasn't the storm outside that was battering her heart and soul, but the one within her.

Her slim fingers curled and uncurled like nervous talons, twisting and untwisting the sheets. She wanted Grant. More than she ever had.

His presence made her aware of the emptiness of the past five years. She had accomplished nothing by running away. If she didn't send him packing soon, she knew she would be lost. There was only one thing to do-call the wrecker first thing in the morning. The sooner Grant left, the sooner she could start all over again to try to forget him.

But the next morning when she picked up the phone, it was dead.

No sound came from upstairs, so she assumed Grant was still asleep. She dressed quickly in the dark, cold house, ate a bowl of bran with a banana, and went out to her truck.

The road into town was glazed over with ice, and she went only a quarter of a mile before deciding to turn back. Better to spend the day with Grant, than to kill herself trying to get rid of him.

Only when she got back to the house and found him in her kitchen scrambling eggs, she wasn't so sure. There he was, large and male, making himself at home, dominating the room with his virile presence. He was watching her. His blue eyes flamed in a way that told her he was remembering last night. Treacherous, delicious shivers danced over her skin, and she blushed uneasily. That made him smile.

"The phone's dead," he murmured without the faintest note of regret in his voice.

She was toying with her woolen scarf nervously. "That's why I thought I'd try to make it into town to try and get a wrecker, but the road's too icy."

"I'm glad you had the sense to come back." There was a quiet, intimate note in his low-toned remark.

She was pulling off her coat and scarf, and he was watching her again. His intent, hot gaze savored the beauty of her flushed face and the soft curve of her breasts.

"You'd better keep an eye on those eggs." She pivoted sharply and hung her things on a peg by the door.

"Looks like you're stuck with me for another night," he said mockingly. "I've got one more day… and one more night to change your mind." His voice was a honeyed caress.

She gasped uneasily. "That's not going to happen."

His eyes darkened to midnight blue as he stared at her thoughtfully. "Something tells me you're not so sure."

She felt another treacherous blush creep up her neck and saw his quick smirk of male triumph. What was he, a mind reader? "You think you know so much!" she snapped, exasperated. "Those eggs are going to be dry as dust."

He turned off the stove. "I never was much good at talking and cooking at the same time. I get distracted easily." His voice grew huskier. "The eggs didn't have a chance against a distraction as lovely as you." He grinned in an impish, teasing way that made him even more incredibly handsome.

She was horrified by the pleasure she felt at his compliment, horrified at the warm, wonderful confusion that was totally enveloping her, leaving her defenseless.

She stared at him, speechless for at least a minute. She wanted to think of something to say that would be so spiteful he would leave her alone, but words failed her. All she could do was sweep haughtily out of the kitchen into her bedroom. She slammed the door on the low rumble of his male chuckle.

He was seducing her, teasing her, laughing at her for her weakness where he was concerned. As experienced with women as he was, he probably considered her an easy conquest. Somehow she had to summon the strength to fight him. But as she made her bed and picked up her things, she was aware of every sound that came from the kitchen. He sang and he clattered plates. Pots banged on the stove.

She decided her only option was to ignore him, to try to stay as far away from him as she could possibly get. So she went into the living room to dust. But wherever she went, he allowed her no peace. He called her into the kitchen saying he didn't know what plate to use or where the salt and pepper shakers were. And when she was reaching up to get the objects he wanted, he was right behind her, his body so close, so warm, that it was all she could do to resist the fatal impulse to step back into his arms. The rest of the morning and the afternoon he pestered her in the same way.

Later that night, after dinner and the dishes, he went up to bathe, and she thought she was safe. But while she was cleaning the pantry, he called down to her from his bedroom.

At first she ignored him, but he wouldn't stop calling to her. Surely he was the most stubborn man on earth.

When she trudged up the stairs at last, she found him standing in the middle of his bedroom trying to look hurt and helpless. He said his shoulders were so sore from the wreck that it hurt him to lift his arms and button his shirt. It took only a second for her senses to register his physically disturbing state. His unbuttoned blue shirt contrasted with the dark bronze of his damp skin. He smelled clean and male. She caught the sensual scent of his aftershave. His black hair was jet dark, wet and curly.

They were alone. This was their last night together. Her last chance. She should run back downstairs at once.

But she could only stare at him, thinking he was as darkly beautiful as a muscled pagan god. She could only feel dizzy and weak with a sickening longing to touch him and caress him.

His blue gaze was electric. "Come here, Norie," he commanded gently.

She began to tremble, but she lacked the strength to move either toward him or away from him. It was he who closed the gap between them with two swift silent strides.

His shirt swung open further. He stood so close she could feel the heat from his body, see the wetness that glistened on his bare chest.

He had asked her to button his shirt. In that moment it was as if she had no mind of her own. Very slowly she reached toward him, intending to bring the edges of his shirt together. Instead her fingertips slid beneath the soft blue fabric to touch the hard curves of his muscular chest and torso. She felt bone and muscle. His skin was like warm, polished bronze. Her slim fingers tangled in the hair on his chest and then splayed in wonder over the place where his heart pounded with excitement.

He sucked his breath in sharply as her soft hands moved on, wandering in sensuous exploration, lovingly pushing his shirt aside, over his shoulders, then more urgently wrenching it off, and tossing it to the floor. Gently, her lips followed the path of her hands, kissing him first in the spot that concealed his violently thudding heart, then following every curve of his hard muscles.

She would have stopped touching him and kissing him, if only she could. But she was hot, as hot as he was. At last she lifted her head helplessly, and found that his blazing eyes were upon her radiant face. His gaze studied every inch of her face with such tenderness that she almost stopped breathing. Very slowly he leaned down and kissed the black shining curls at her temples. Then her cheek. Then her throat. She felt his breath falling warmly against her skin like heated velvet whispers. Only the tumultuous drumming of his heartbeat betrayed his restraint.

"Don't fight it," he whispered. "You can't." He balled his hands into fists. "I know, because I can't, either." His voice was a ragged, hoarse sound.

Very gently he drew her into his arms and toward the bed. And she let him.

He was right. She couldn't fight him. She was weak. She wanted him too much.

His hand curved along her slender throat. His finger wound a strand of silken black hair into a sausage curl and released it, letting it bounce against her satin throat.

"Open your lips," he instructed huskily.

He brushed a soft, sweet kiss across her mouth, and then he, too, was lost. All of his careful control was disintegrating. He was shaking against her. His breath drew in sharply, loudly, fiercely. He kissed her again, harder and hotter than before. He held her so tightly she felt that her own body was fused into his. His mouth moved against hers, his tongue moist and urgent as it slid between her parted lips to taste the warm, sweet wetness within. She let her tongue touch his.

Node's knees became weak, but it didn't matter because he was lifting her into his arms and carrying her to the bed.

Her lashes fluttered lazily, hopelessly shut as he stirred her with his lips and hands to erotic, feverish, passionate ecstasy.

Outside, the flat Texas landscape was bleak and barren and frozen. The wind was howling wildly. It was going to be another stormy night.

Inside, the two lovers were lost to the world and conscious only of each other. For them, there was only the wonder of their passionate extravagant present. For Noreen, only the wonder of having Grant at last.

He was still forbidden.

He was still a Hale, no matter how he denied it.

Tomorrow she would probably be sorry.

But tonight, as she lay enfolded in his crushing embrace beneath crisp cotton sheets, he was hers. Recklessly, gloriously, completely hers.

She abandoned herself heedlessly to the night, to the mounting passion of her lover, to her own wildness that had lain dormant until now. At last, she discovered the ecstasy that she had read about in books and always wanted but never known, not even during the brief unhappy years of her marriage.

After it was over-their fierce, molten mating-he buried his lips in her silken hair and breathed in the sweet, clean smell. She ran her hands over his magnificent body that glistened with sweat, and she reveled in the beautiful strength of his hard, muscular physique.

Tears of joy flooded her eyes.

She felt vulnerable, soft.

Gently he brushed her wet cheek. "Forgive me," he murmured quietly.

"For what?"

"For all the wasted years." He clasped her tightly. "For that first night in Austin, all those years ago. For your wedding day when I insulted you with the kind of kiss no brother-in-law should ever give a bride."

"Don't," she whispered shudderingly. She put a fingertip to his lips.

"I was wrong, Norie. So wrong. I thought… I thought I was protecting Larry."

"I know."

"I always loved you, but I couldn't admit I was wild with jealousy when you married Larry. I couldn't admit that you might love him. I treated you badly. I stood by and watched Larry pit you against Mother. He always loved to be fought over." Grant ran a light finger down her belly. "No more. At last you are mine."

Noreen let him stroke her hair, let him kiss her again. She even let him remove the wedding ring she'd continued to wear for Darius's sake. Yes, tonight she belonged to Grant. Tonight was their dream. Tomorrow would be soon enough to awaken to reality.

His black head lowered and his parted lips moved over hers tenderly, nibbling for a time, forcing her mouth open again, slowly, teasingly, while his hands traced over her body and then pulled her closer. She could feel his heat beginning to flame all over again.

"I thought you were hurt."

He laughed softly. "I have miraculous recuperative powers."

Noreen's hand slid down his hair-roughened chest, stroking his flat muscled stomach, hesitating, then moving lower. She touched that hot, warm part of him that told her just how fully aroused he was.

"Indeed you do," she whispered on a wanton giggle.

"And you're one sexy… librarian."

"Oh, Grant," she breathed against his lips and threw her arms about him. "I thought things like this only happened in books."

"So you like this better than reading?"

"Much… much better."

He chuckled huskily.

And that was the last thing either of them said for a very long time.

When Grant awoke the next morning, he was alone. Outside, everything was covered with a layer of frost and the sky was white and wintry. Inside, the room was cozily warm. Norie must have turned on the heater before she'd left him and gone downstairs.

If only she'd stayed in bed, it would have been so much easier to face her. He got up quickly and began to dress. The hall outside was icy as was every other room in the house except his and the kitchen.

Norie was in the kitchen bending over the stove. She looked pretty in her looped earrings and a pale yellow dress that emphasized her slim waist and the curve of her breasts. The sight of her made him remember last night. His heart gave a leap of pure happiness.

He smelled bacon and eggs, freshly brewed coffee and baking biscuits. The wooden table in the middle of the room was set with handmade red place mats and blue china. Everything was so charming, so perfect, and the most perfect thing of all was Norie.

He shut the door, and she turned, and he watched the flush on her cheeks rise in a warm blush of color. Their glances met. He smiled, and she set the spatula down, hesitating, but only briefly, before she stepped joyfully into his open arms.

He kissed her gently, on the brow first, and then her mouth, and she surrendered heedlessly to his lips. He thought, this is how marriage would feel. He would wake up, and she would be there-every day.

"I feel very lazy, very spoiled," he said. "Can I do anything?"

"I wanted to spoil you. Did you sleep all right?"

"Perfectly."

"And your knee?"

"Much better."

"Everything's almost ready. Nothing fancy."

"I don't want fancy." He reached out to touch her cheek.

"The phone's back on," she said quietly.

Her eyes, meeting his, were intense and thoughtful. She turned back to the eggs, and Grant opened the refrigerator out of old habit just to inspect its contents. Inside, he saw a turkey.

"So you're going to cook a turkey for yourself out here, all alone?"

Her face changed. "I-I cook Christmas dinner every year."

"For anybody special?" he demanded, sounding both stiff and disconcerted.

The room grew hushed.

She wouldn't look at him, but he saw the color rise and ebb in her cheeks. She seemed to hesitate. "If you're asking about another man, there isn't one."

His stomach tightened. What was she hiding? In some indefinable way, she had erected a barrier. He felt shut out of her life again and angry about it. But what right did he have to say anything?

"How long till breakfast?" His voice came out harsh and loud from the strain of controlling both his curiosity and his temper.

She had turned away and was stirring something on the stove. The spatula was clanging rather too loudly. "Six or seven minutes."

"I think I'll walk down to my car." His words, his manner, were a careful insult.

"Fine."

At the door he turned. "Norie… "

She drew a sharp breath. "Just go."

He jerked open the screen door and stomped out, his footsteps crunching into ice and shattering the frozen stillness of the morning.

A wan sun shone through the thin white clouds and made the layer of frost on his black Cadillac sparkle. It was going to take a wrecker, all right, to get it out of the ditch. Grant wouldn't know till then if he would be able to drive it or if it would have to be towed. But his mind wasn't really on the car. It was on Norie.

Last night, she'd been sweet and warm and loving. This morning she couldn't wait until he drove himself and his car out of her life.

Why?

Impatiently, he grabbed Norie's rolled-up newspaper and pulled it from her mailbox. Then he headed briskly back to the house.

Six minutes, she had said. He stopped in the middle of the road to think. Okay, so she had managed without him for five years. She was independent and proud. It was stupid to think he could storm into her life and take over in the first forty-eight hours. His gaze wandered over the farm. Not bad. For a woman alone, she had a lot to be proud of.

Sure, the house could stand some paint, but in the sunlight with every window pane glimmering, it wasn't nearly as bad as he'd thought in the darkness the other night. A magnificent spiderweb hung on a low branch. In the frozen sunlight, it seemed to be spun out of crystal gossamer lace. Along a fence a line of bare trees stood out sheer and black. The farm and its isolation appeared peaceful, almost beautiful this morning. He remembered how she liked to grow things. Maybe she was afraid he would want to take her away from all this. Maybe there were people here, friends who mattered as much to her, or more, than he ever could.

Grant felt on edge. He'd never liked going slow, waiting. Hell, they'd already lost seven years.

He started back to the house. He was barging around the back of it when his ankle caught on a handlebar, and he fell against a low shrub. He barely managed to catch himself.

"What the… "

At his feet he saw a tangle of shiny red metal and wire wheels. A tricycle. He pulled the thing out of the hedge and set it upright on all three wheels. For some reason he remembered the clumsily hand-painted cookies. Her little friend must have left it.

He remembered how she'd always loved children, and it seemed a shame that she had to content herself with little friends she had over to paint cookies, a shame that she didn't have any of her own. She would make a wonderful mother; she would be nothing like his own unmaternal, socialite mother. He could give Norie marriage, children.

"Grant!"

He looked up.

She was in the doorway looking soft and lovely and calling him to breakfast.

Over breakfast the barrier between them was still there. But he tried to enjoy himself, anyway. The food was perfect, but he hardly tasted the biscuits and the bacon and the coffee. All that mattered was Norie. He tried to concentrate on her. She was telling him as she had on that first night about her childhood in north Texas, about her parents. Soon she had him talking about himself, telling her how he'd always wanted to know his real father but his mother was ashamed of that early marriage and would never allow it. But all the time Grant was talking, he kept wondering what was wrong.

"So how did you end up here?" he asked at last, switching the conversation back to her.

"The very same day Larry was buried, after I got home to Austin, Mike Yanta, the school superintendent here, called me and offered me a job. It seemed like the perfect solution."

"And was it?"

"In a way. I love the school, the children, the story hours. I know everybody in town, and everybody knows me."

"The perfect life." His voice was unduly grim.

"More or less. For me anyway."

"But are you fulfilled?"

He wanted just one word from her, one word to show that she cared. But even before she answered, he knew she wouldn't give it.

"Are you?" she whispered.

"I used to think so. I was a success. That's all I considered. Until I met you."

"I probably make a tenth of your income, but it's all I need." She was twisting her napkin nervously.

Her all I need certainly didn't include him. A little muscle jumped convulsively in his jaw. "I told you part of the reason I came was business. Larry named you as his only beneficiary."

"But I thought… "

"Mother controlled most of the money, and she still does. But Larry had a sizable trust all his own. I've managed that trust for you for the last five years and more than tripled the original amount. You are not a poor woman."

Norie was very pale, and she was shredding the napkin into pieces. "I told you I don't want it."

"But it's yours," he said harshly.

"I-I don't feel that it is. Georgia wouldn't want me to have it."

"Mother changed her mind about you a long time ago."

"I don't believe you!"

"When you ran away, when you never came back to claim your inheritance, Mother came to realize that you hadn't married Larry for his money after all. She wanted me to come here. She even told me to tell you that she's sorry. I was wrong about you, too. In the beginning I thought you were after Larry's money. Hell, you weren't even after Larry."

"Not till you came and your coming made Larry so mad he wanted to show you and Georgia he could live his own life. But he failed. We both failed."

"It took me a while to figure out that's how it happened. I was a fool not to see the truth the minute I met you. You're the most honest woman I've ever known, and the most loving."

Her eyes grew enormous and she gripped the table. "Grant… You're just as wrong about me now as you were then. I'm not the saint you seem to think I am."

"To me you are. You shouldn't be living alone. You should be married."

"I've been married."

"You should have children this time. Do you remember telling me that you wanted a big house with four children? You even knew what their names would be."

She turned white. "Homer, Electra, Galatea, and… Darius," she whispered, rising slowly from the table.

He laughed. "So you still remember?"

She seemed uneasy suddenly. "I used to be such a bookworm. Those names appealed to me when I was a child."

"You planned a big family. Aren't you waiting a little long to get started?"

A burning color washed back into her face, and she said quickly, "Life doesn't always work out the way we plan it."

"It's not too late."

She looked at his face for a long time, and then she looked away. "I-I wish I could believe that, but I can't." Methodically she began to stack the dishes. "This is real life. You and I-we're so different. I'm what I am. I like flowers, kids, friends, wide-open places. You're a Hale."

"I'm a man. You're a woman."

"It's not that simple. We can't just erase what happened. I can remember dozens of beautiful women on your arm. How long could you be happy with me?"

"Forever."

"Do you think Georgia would ever allow that?"

His stomach went tight and hard, as if None had punched him there. "Do you think I'm like Larry? Do you think I would allow anyone, even my mother, to come between me and the woman I love?"

"If not her, then her money." Norie's voice was a bitter, tormented whisper. She walked to the sink with the dishes and shoved the handle of the faucet. Water splashed loudly. "You've accomplished what you came here to accomplish… and more." She flushed. "We've got to get your car pulled out of that ditch. Then you can go."

At the terrible finality in her low voice, Grant felt something inside himself break and die. It was as if his heart was being twisted and wrenched, and the agony was unbearable.

He hardly knew what he was doing as he sprang blindly to his feet. His chair crashed behind him to the floor.

"Grant!"

He moved toward her and jerked her hard against his body. A dish fell and shattered in the sink.

"So you think money, any amount of money, could change what I feel for you?" His hard gaze flicked over her pale face. She seemed small and defenseless against his enormous body. "What did last night mean to you anyway?" he demanded roughly.

"I-I don't know. I don't know. I just know I've got my life and you've got yours."

"Is that really all we've got?" Grant studied her, straining to read her expression. But she seemed a very long way away. "Damn it. I can't let you go."

"You don't have a choice."

"There's always a choice, Norie. Always. That's all life is."

She began to struggle, fighting him silently to escape, but she was like a child in his grasp.

His mouth took hers. He held her against him until she stilled, crushed until she did nothing more to stop his hands as they molded her curves to fit the tough contours of his body.

When she fought him no more, when she became smooth and warm, when he could feel her quickening response, only then did the stubborn will to conquer her with the force of his own passion subside.

Tenderly, he kissed away the salty tears that had spilled down her cheeks. At last he withdrew his mouth, his hands. Norie drew a long breath and opened her eyes. Then she pulled herself free of him and stumbled shakily backward toward the kitchen door, one of her hands clutching her throat. For a numb moment she could only stare at him.

"Norie, please… "

For a second longer those big, scared eyes were upon him.

Then she broke and ran.

Chapter Six

The icy morning air was biting cold as it seeped through her jean jacket and her thin yellow dress. Noreen was pale and shivering, and her unhappy dark gaze was fixed on Jimmy Pargman and his wrecker and the muddy black Cadillac he had just pulled out of the ditch. In his car, Grant was coolly ignoring Norie as he tried to start the engine. His lean face was set and hard. He had not spoken to her once since he'd kissed her and she'd run out of the kitchen. He was now just as anxious to be gone as she was to be rid of him.

Her heart beat jerkily. In another minute Grant would drive away, this time forever, unless she did something to stop him-and that was something she would never do. Because of Darius. Because she was too afraid of the Hale money and of what Georgia might try to do if she found out about Darius.

But as Norie looked at Grant, she felt a terrible stab of longing. More than anything she wanted to cross the road, to fling herself into his arms. To forget how different they were. To hold him, to touch him, to smooth that black tumbling lock out of his face… just one last time. Her eyes swam with unshed tears. And this weakness made her despise herself.

Fragments from last night kept replaying in her mind like newly edited film clippings. She remem-bered the way his fingers had unbuttoned her gown, the way his hands and mouth had roamed everywhere until she was as thoroughly and wantonly aroused as he.

How could she have let him? How could she have been so totally unlike herself, so shamelessly forward? She was the one who had gone to him when he'd called, to his room, to his bed, knowing what might happen.

She had forgotten Darius, forgotten everything that really mattered to her. Nights like that were probably commonplace to a man like Grant, to a man who could have any beautiful woman he desired.

The Cadillac's engine purred, and Norie felt a hopeless, sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. She closed her eyes. She had to forget him! To go on as if last night had never happened. To go on as if her feelings for him didn't exist.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw the Liskas' familiar blue Suburban coming toward her.

Sara was bringing Darius home! Dear God!

Grant opened the door of the Cadillac just as Sara braked alongside Norie and rolled down the windows on her side.

"Hey, Mom!" Darius's blue eyes were wide with curiosity as he looked first at her, and then at the Cadillac across the road. "Guess what? Raymond let Leo and me play his Nintendo, and we didn't even break it."

For a paralyzed, horrified moment Noreen couldn't speak. Then she managed a weak, "That's great, hon."

Grant was paying Jimmy, so he didn't notice Darius.

Noreen touched Sara's arm. "Why don't you drive on to the house? I'm almost through here. We'll have tea while the kids play."

"Who's he?" Suddenly Sara saw the tears in her friend's eyes. "Hey… "

"Later, Sara," she whispered chokily. "I'll tell you everything."

"Why do I know you really won't?"

"Please… " The sudden huge knot in Norie's throat made it impossible for her to explain.

Sara's brown eyes softened with compassion. She stepped on the gas just as Jimmy did the same. The Suburban turned off to head toward Norie's house. The wrecker headed back into town.

Noreen and Grant were left alone, standing on opposite sides of that desolate bit of asphalt in that wide-open landscape that seemed to stretch away forever. Noreen stole a glance at him. He was looking at her, too. And they were as mute and awkward with one another as if they were strangers.

Grant opened his trunk and pulled a shoebox and briefcase from it. He opened the shoebox and dangled a pair of sparkly red shoes from the tips of two lean fingers.

Her heart was pounding with fright. She had no choice but to cross the road and retrieve them.

She came so close to him, their steamy breaths mingled. Her hands touched his briefly. Warm skin against warm skin. They both tensed in acute awareness of one another. Then she was snatching her shoes from him and replacing them noisily into their tissue paper and box. He was briskly unsnapping his briefcase and pulling out a thick sheaf of legal documents.

She raised her eyebrows.

"These papers deal with your inheritance." His voice was harsh and loud.

"I told you I don't want money, Grant."

"That may be, but getting rid of it is going to be a little bit more complicated than that." His dark face was as stern as death, his blue eyes unreadable.

He handed her his card. It was so crisp and sharp it cut her fingers.

"Call my secretary and make an appointment. I'll have her help you do whatever you decide to do about it."

He was so coldly formal Norie's blood seemed to freeze in her veins. He was killing her. She almost broke down. Instead she met his chilling blue gaze.

Not a muscle moved in her beautiful face. Nor did she allow even the glimmer of a tear. She held herself as rigidly as he.

"All right," she managed, forcing herself to speak, surprising herself by sounding calmly unconcerned.

For a moment longer he stared at her. His mouth hardened. "So, it's goodbye? This time for good?"

When she said nothing to break the frozen silence, he opened the door of his car and hurled his great body angrily inside. "Have it your way. It's not even goodbye." He twisted the keys viciously in the ignition. "Merry Christmas, Norie."

As his big car zoomed away from her, the tears she had held back slipped down her cheeks in a scalding flow.

She watched his car until it vanished into the big empty landscape, and the knowledge that she was doing the right thing didn't help her at all.

"I'm sorry, Grant." Her voice was low and muffled by her sobs. "So sorry."

But he was too far away to hear her. Too far away to know of the desperate pain in her heart that his leaving caused her.

Norie sat at the same table where she'd shared breakfast with Grant only an hour earlier. On the surface, everything was just as before. Except for the fact that it was Sara who was seated at the table with her.

There was no visible trace of Grant in the kitchen. No visible trace of him anywhere except in her heart.

The farmhouse was cozily warm. Sara had lit several of the space heaters, both upstairs and downstairs. The two women were in the kitchen dipping their tea bags into their cups. Leo and Darius were in Node's bedroom looking at the ornaments and presents.

"So who was he, Norie?" Sara demanded quietly. Her soft brown eyes were aglow with curiosity and concern.

Norie sipped her tea, too upset to reply. She wondered if her life would ever be the same without him. Instead of answering her friend, she listened to their sons in the next room.

"Yeah, Leo, I made this one."

"I could tell 'cause you forgot to paint the reindeer's hoof."

"And I popped the popcorn and stringed it. Mom made most of the good things though."

"You don't have as many presents as me under your tree."

"That's 'cause I want something special. See, Santa's gotta bring it all the way from the North Pole. And it could smother in his bag."

"What do you want?"

"Santa knows."

"I bet it's a dog."

"It's sorta like a dog. Only better."

The boys began to whisper conspiratorially.

But Norie couldn't hear them. Her own heart was pounding too hard.

"Mom!" Darius yelled from the doorway.

"Darius, that's your outside voice," she murmured softly, correcting him out of maternal habit.

His impatient tone was only a fraction softer. "Where's all my stuff?"

"In your room."

"Everything?" He cocked his four-year-old brows as arrogantly as any Hale.

She nodded.

"Mom, I had things out where I wanted them."

She smiled. "Out is where you want everything." But she was talking to an empty doorway. The boys were racing each other up the stairs like a pair of rough-and-tumble puppies.

"Boys! Leo! No running!" Sara called.

They pretended not to hear. The wild footsteps careened up the stairs and down the hall overhead.

"They sound like a herd of stampeding elephants." Sara giggled.

Norie cringed when doors opened and slammed. "So much for minding."

"They're just excited over Christmas," Sara said.

Norie sipped her tea.

"So who was that very attractive man?" Sara repeated her earlier question.

Norie had dreaded this. "My brother-in-law."

"What happened to his car?" Sara eyed the plump stack of legal papers in their blue folders that Norie had placed on the edge of the table. "Why was he here?"

"Sara, it's something I can't talk about, not even to you."

"Jim's right about you being mysterious."

Galloping footsteps crashed down the stairs, and a breathless Darius flung himself into the kitchen. "Hey, Mom, who slept in the guest bed upstairs?"

Sara arched her brows knowingly, and Noreen turned red.

"Can we play in there, Mom? The fire's on, and it's real warm."

"No!" The single word was too sharp, and Darius, who was not used to such sternness from her, looked hurt. More gently she said, "You bring your things down here where we can watch you."

"But we want to play up there by ourselves."

"No."

"You never let us."

"Darius!"

Mother and son stared at one another across the kitchen. Darius's lower lip swelled mutinously.

"Darius, remember about Santa. He rewards good little boys."

Darius gulped in a big breath.

Then Leo said, "Can we build a house by the tree with blankets and cushions?"

"Of course, but try not to make too big a mess."

Sara laughed. "You don't mind asking the impossible."

Leo was running back up the stairs, and Darius was right behind him.

The showdown was over. At least the one between mother and son. Norie knew that Sara was more determined.

"So your brother-in-law spent the weekend here?" Sara asked softly. "With you? Alone?"

Norie got up to pour more water into the kettle. Then she went to the stove. Her back was to Sara. "He skidded into the ditch. I couldn't very well leave him there."

"Something tells me you didn't want to leave him there."

"Much as I love you, Sara, I'm just not ready to talk about Grant."

"Well, I'll be here when you are."

"I know. You have always been my dear, dear friend."

It was a long time before Norie could turn around and pretend to Sara that everything was normal.

The next few days were the bleakest and loneliest Norie had ever known. They were even worse than when she had come to town pregnant and alone to live with Miss Maddie. No matter what she did or where she went, Norie couldn't quit thinking of Grant.

When she was Christmas shopping, she would see things she wanted to buy for him. She'd even bought one gift-a beautiful blue silk dress shirt that would look wonderful on him because of his blue eyes. It had seemed so stupid and silly, buying a present for a man she would never see again.

When she got home, she hid the gift under her bed. But sometimes she took it out to admire it secretly and dream of really being able to give it to him.

At night she lay awake thinking about him, seeing in her mind his every gesture, his every smile, remembering the exact things he'd said to her. Most of all, she remembered the way he'd gently, tenderly, brought her again and again to shuddering heights of ecstasy.

And every time she looked at Darius, she saw Grant. With his black hair and dazzling blue eyes, Darius was almost a miniature replica of his handsome uncle. Darius did not mention the special gift he had asked Santa for again, but every time Norie looked at him she knew that he was silently longing for a father-as once Grant had longed for his father. She felt Darius's special excitement, his expectancy, and these things only made her sadder.

Somehow she got through the days and the nights.

It was Christmas Eve, the night her church held a beautiful candlelight service. Norie was sitting alone on a wooden pew watching Darius, who was in the children's choir. Her black dress was tied at the waist with a handmade lavender sash. As always, large loops dangled from her ears…

Darius and Leo were wearing white choir robes with huge red satin bows tied beneath their scrubbed chins. They looked like angels, and they sounded like them too, as their voices and those of the other children filled the sanctuary with the lovely familiar melodies of sacred Christmas carols.

The service was an hour long, and it was a time of beauty and peace for Norie. All too soon the lights of the sanctuary were put out. For a moment there was darkness except for a single candle. Then the candles of the congregation were lit one by one. A hush filled the church, and Norie whispered a prayer that made her own candle flutter gently. Merry Christmas, Grant. Be happy. Wherever you are.

"Silent Night" was played, and so many candles were lit that the church became more brilliant than she'd ever seen it.

She felt an arm brush her waist possessively, and she turned.

Grant was there beside her.

For a moment he stood without moving, just looking down at her. Then he smiled at her boyishly, charmingly. His eyes were filled with tenderness and warmth, and some powerful emotion she couldn't be sure of.

She could barely see him for the mist of emotion that rushed at her.

"Grant… " A radiant smile broke across her face.

Black hair, blue eyes. He was movie-star handsome in a dark, conventional suit and tie as he towered beside her.

Her pulse stirred with a thrilling joy.

His hand closed over hers, and suddenly she knew how much she loved him. It didn't matter that she could never be as socially correct as his mother or the other women he had dated. Norie was still scared, scared of loving him, but in all her life she had never felt the swell of love that she felt for this man. The past-Larry, the Hales, their money and its misuse, all the grief, the rejection, and the heartbreak-no longer mattered so much.

"Merry Christmas," she whispered, her voice warm and light and happy.

"I had to come, gypsy girl," he said quietly.

His low, raspy voice was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard; more beautiful even than the sound of the angels. Gently he touched one of her gold loop earrings.

Her lashes, strangely heavy, fluttered down, but she felt the warmth of his caring in every cell of her body.

For her the world held promise once again.

Shyly, she squeezed his strong hand.

She was wrapped in happiness as she listened to the haunting loveliness of the last verse of "Silent Night."

For the first time in years Christmas really seemed a time of love and renewal and rebirth. Then she glanced up and beneath the glimmering jewel-bright stained glass windows, she saw two angelic-looking little boys in white robes and red bows. Darius's big blue eyes were wide and curious as he studied Grant. Then he smiled happily, knowingly, and he sang so joyously that Norie imagined she could hear his voice soaring above all the others in the choir and congregation. It was Christmas Eve, and Darius believed very firmly in the magic of Christmas.

Darius!

Grant still didn't know about Darius!

Dear God. She made a quick, silent prayer.

After the hymn was over, and the lights came back on, Norie managed to slip away from Grant and ask Sara to keep Darius for an hour or two, so she could be alone with Grant and explain.

Then she rushed out of the church and found Grant waiting for her by her truck.

Chapter Seven

Norie's eyes kept flicking apprehensively to the bright reflection of Grant's headlights in her rearview mirror. What would he say? What would he do when she told him about Darius? Grant had always believed in her honesty.

Never before had the drive home seemed so long. How in the world would she go about explaining?

There's something I haven't told you…

A little something I have to explain…

I wanted to tell you, Grant, but…

How could she make him understand why she had run away? Why she'd been so afraid of the Hales and what their money might do?

Larry had married her because she was different, and he'd wanted to defy his mother. Norie had been caught in the middle of their troubled relationship. She'd been too naive to pick up on the secret machinations that were weakening her marriage until it was too late. Larry's incessant extravagances had made it all too tempting to him to go to Georgia for the money he needed, and all too easy for Georgia to use this as a weapon to destroy Larry's fragile new loyalty to Norie.

After Larry's death Norie had felt utterly rejected. She'd been afraid that she might still be too naive to prevent Georgia from using her money to divide her from her son. No, Grant would never understand.

The high-ceilinged rooms glowed with rosy, welcoming light and warmth and smelled sweetly of fir and spruce. Norie was in the kitchen nervously making tea. Darius's things were everywhere, but Grant hadn't seemed to notice. He'd been too busy lighting the heaters and laying out his presents for her in front of the Christmas tree.

He had taken off his jacket and was kneeling by the tree. From where she stood, Norie watched him with a longing that was so intense it bordered on pain. She marveled at the play of powerful muscles in his back beneath the fine fabric of his shirt every time he moved, at the way the light shimmered iridescently on his blue-black hair.

Finally he became aware of her and met her gaze with a hungry, flushed look that made her cheeks glow even brighter than his. As she moved toward him, he picked up a small green present wrapped with a golden bow. "I want you to open this one first, gypsy girl," he said in a deep, husky voice.

"Now?"

"Now," he said softly.

She remembered the blue silk shirt hidden beneath her bed. "I bought you something, too."

"Did you?" He grinned at her. "I wasn't sure whether you'd be glad to see me or whether you'd throw me out."

She nuzzled her face against his shoulder. "It's a good thing you didn't call. I would have told you not to come. But now that you're here… " She slid her pale hands upward across the broad expanse of his chest until they found the knot of his tie, but she was so clumsy at loosening it that he had to help her. Unbuttoning the first three buttons, she slid her fingers inside and touched his hot, warm skin. "I'm glad you came," she whispered in a hushed voice. "So very glad." With her lips she began to explore the hollow at the base of his throat.

"I kept thinking about your turkey. It seemed a shame for you to be out here all alone, eating by yourself," he said in a low, hoarse tone, pulling her closer.

"You better not have come back just because of my turkey."

He gave her the small present. "I want you to open this one first. It will explain everything."

Her fingers shook as she tore into the glittering ribbon and then the green paper. Inside was a white cardboard box, and inside it, a smaller black velvet one. She snapped the inner box open instantly.

A solitaire diamond engagement ring winked at her from black velvet.

Her breath caught. She stared at the ring for a long moment, then looked back up at him.

"Well?" he whispered. "Do you like it?"

Gingerly she touched it, tracing the finely cut stone, the gleaming band with her fingertip. Her gaze blurred. "It's beautiful, Grant. The most beautiful ring in all the world."

"For the most beautiful woman."

"But are you sure?"

He smiled down at her. "I love you, Norie. Marry me."

She ought to tell him. About Darius. Now.

But she was too dazzled by Grant's words, by the tenderness shining in his eyes. So she just stood quietly and let him slide the ring onto her finger and twist it so they could both watch it catch the light and shimmer.

"There, it's a perfect fit," he said, pleased.

"Grant, I'm not the right kind of woman… "

"Hush." His hands were in her black silky hair. He pressed her face against his chest and smoothed her hair. Softly he said, "You're so beautiful, Norie. The whole time I was gone, every day, every hour, I was thinking of you."

"So was I."

"I nearly picked up the phone to call you a thousand times. But I knew what you'd say. I needed you so much. I felt so hopeless, so lost."

"So did I."

"No more, gypsy girl."

"What about Georgia?"

"She will accept you. I swear to you she will."

Then he lifted Norie's face toward his, and he bent slightly to cover her lips with his. He kissed her ever so gently. She moaned and raised her arms to encircle his neck. Her heart had begun to thump erratically. Waves of desire pulsed through her, and she knew she had to stop him.

Finally she got the words out. "Grant, there's something terribly important I have to tell you."

"What could be that important?" His hand cupped her chin and he lifted her face again so he could resume kissing her. "More important than this?"

Their lips met. His tongue dipped into her mouth again just as the front door flew open with a bang. Norie scarcely heard the eager footsteps as her child ran inside, the door slamming behind him. She was too aware of Grant tensing in surprise.

"Mom! Hey, Mom, I'm home!"

Suddenly Darius stopped and stared in disbelief at the vision of his mother in a man's arms, the two of them framed in the doorway with the lights of the Christmas tree twinkling behind them.

Norie withdrew slowly. Still holding her hand, Grant stepped back a single step to stare at the diminutive replica of himself.

Darius was still in his "church clothes," but just barely. His shirttails were wrinkled and hung loosely out of his slacks, his tie was crooked, and his shoelaces were dragging. Norie was sure that in all his life, Darius had never stood so absolutely still for so long without being told to. His blue eyes were open wide with wonder.

"Santa is awesome!" Darius shouted in his outdoor voice, using his idol, Ray Liska's, favorite word. Then Darius ran happily toward them, never doubting for a moment that he would be a welcome addition in the big man's arms.

Grant knelt slowly to the child's level.

"Santa really did bring me a daddy." Darius let out a big sigh. Then he touched Grant's sapphire tie tack. "You are real! Boy! You even look a little like me."

"What's your name, son?"

"It's Darius."

"Darius?" Grant looked up at Norie. His face was dark, unreadable.

"Hey, can you play football?"

"I played in high school," Grant told him almost absently.

"Awesome."

Darius didn't usually hug people he'd just met. But he made an exception with Grant and laid his cheek against Grant's trustingly just for a second before pulling himself free and dashing eagerly toward the kitchen.

"Hey, come on. I gotta lot of things upstairs I want to show you."

Grant stood up slowly. As Darius dashed up the stairs, Norie's soulful eyes sought Grant's and silently pleaded with him to understand. But he looked past her, his expression closed and hard. Without a word he left the room and followed Darius.

Norie stayed downstairs, her heart filled with an agony of doubt and regret. She could hear their voices-Grant's deep baritone mingling with Darius's overly excited shouts.

Why was her life always like this? Just when she was sure she loved Grant, she'd ruined everything. She wouldn't blame him if he hated her.

An hour passed before Grant came down again. Norie was in the kitchen, sitting silently at the table. The tea she had made for herself had gone cold while she'd waited nervously, hopelessly.

He sank down heavily across from her, his jaw rigid, his eyes dark. "That kid's got energy. He was so excited, I had to bribe him to get him down for the night."

"We have to talk," Noreen said.

"That's the understatement of the year."

"Grant, I was going to tell you."

"When? Did you ever stop to think what the past five years have been like for me? I cared about you. After Larry died, I wanted to help you. I would have done anything in the world to try to make you happy. But what were your feelings for me? My only brother died. Knowing where you were, knowing about Darius would have meant everything to me. Not only to me. But to Mother. Larry was her favorite child. I was very little comfort to her."

"I want to explain."

"It's too late for that. I'm going."

"Grant, no."

He looked up. "Don't you understand? I believed in you. I believed that deep down you cared something for us, for me. You think the Hales rejected you. Honey, by keeping Darius from us, you rejected us. The one thing I never expected from you was dishonesty of this magnitude."

"I wanted to tell you," she said softly, each word carefully enunciated. "I almost did, the day of Larry's funeral. But then I heard all the Hales talking, and I thought you felt the same way."

"Norie, none of it matters anymore. You're free of me and the Hales. If you're so afraid of us, you don't need to be anymore." Slowly he got up. "I'm going. I won't tell Mother. Be happy. You're finally really, truly free of us all."

Norie went to him and put her arms around him. "But you know that's not what I want anymore." She was speaking rapidly, desperately.

At her touch, everything in him went as still as death. He released her gradually, slowly pushing her away, all the time staring into the shadowy depths of her eyes.

"Grant, please-" Her lips barely moved as she whispered.

But he wouldn't let her finish.

"Tell Darius… Tell him, Merry Christmas from me tomorrow, will you? Tell him… maybe next Christmas Santa will do the job right, and he'll get a daddy who'll teach him how to play football. I'm not the right guy."

Then without speaking to her again, Grant turned and strode out of the house, letting the door close behind him on a whisper of icy air.

Tears pooled in Norie's eyes, but she didn't chase after Grant. He had decided to go, and no matter how much she wanted him to stay, she knew that no amount of pleading could persuade him.

The house seemed frigid and empty, as frigid and empty as her own heart.

She heard a slight sound on the stairs, and knew that Darius had not gone to bed after all. He came into the kitchen, his eyes as big and sad as hers. He was dragging his favorite red teddy bear.

"Where's Grant?"

"I don't know."

"Will he come back?"

"I don't know that, either," she admitted.

"But he's my special present from Santa."

She took him into her arms and ruffled his black hair. "Mine, too, darling," she murmured softly.

"Mine, too. But he's your uncle, and you'll see him from time to time."

Darius sat on her lap and sucked his thumb.

"You're a big boy now, Darius. Big boys don't suck their thumbs."

He pulled his thumb out reluctantly. His face was very serious. "I didn't ask for an uncle. I asked for a daddy."

"Well, it isn't Christmas yet. Maybe, just maybe, Santa realized he'd delivered our special present too early. Go back to bed. Santa doesn't come until little boys are asleep."

"Do you really think he'll send Grant back?"

"Maybe, if we both pray very hard."

"Mom, do you really believe in magic?"

Behind them the Christmas tree lights were softly aglow. Grant's ring was still on her finger. His other gifts were still under the tree. Her gaze stole to the manger scene that she and Darius had built together, to the tiny figure of the baby Jesus.

"Yes, in a way," she replied gently. "You see, when it's Christmas, I believe in miracles."

Chapter Eight

Norie sat up in bed, her heart beating expectantly, not knowing what it was that had awakened her.

And then she knew.

It was Christmas Day.

She fell back against her soft cool pillow in a daze of happiness.

Her bedroom was cozily warm. Someone had come in earlier and lit the space heater. From the kitchen wafted the aroma of coffee and bacon and biscuits. A man's deep husky voice was accompanying a radio that was playing "Joy to the World."

Grant had come back to her as she and Darius had prayed he would.

She listened to Grant sing with her eyes closed, his baritone washing over her, caressing her.

At last she got up, pulled on her robe and stumbled barefoot across the cold floors into the kitchen.

"Grant?" His name was a broken cry across her lips.

His dark gaze smoldered with love for her.

"I thought it was you," she managed to utter dreamily. Then she was flying across the kitchen into his arms. "You did come back."

Tenderly, he enfolded her into his strong arms and lowered his black head to the long pale curve of her beautiful neck. She felt his hands smoothing the snarls from her sleep-tangled, silken curls.

"I had no choice. I know from experience that life without you holds nothing but emptiness. I love you, gypsy girl. I always have and I always will."

"Enough to forgive me?"

His dark eyes moved over her face, and his expression grew momentarily soft. "There's nothing to forgive."

"Last night I was afraid you despised me."

"I was angry. But after I calmed down, I understood why you did what you did."

"I should have told you about Darius years ago. Instead I ran away."

"We drove you away," he said gravely.

"After Larry died and I heard your family saying they didn't want me, I felt completely alone. The only thing I had was my unborn child. When Mike Yanta called and offered me this job, I took it. I came here and made a life for myself, but because I never resolved my conflict with you and your family, there was always something incomplete in my life. You see, I wanted to belong to your family, to be a real Hale, for Darius's sake as well as my own. I knew I was keeping your mother's only grandchild from her. But I was afraid of her, afraid that she might try to dominate my child the way she had dominated Larry. I was afraid she might use her money to alienate Darius from me. But I couldn't forget you, Grant. No matter how hard I tried."

"Mother won't use her money like that again. She knows she made a terrible mistake." Grant's tone grew gentler, lower. "But I was as guilty as she. From the first, I was insensitive to you. To the person you really were. I hurt you. I promise I'll be more careful in the future."

"Oh, Grant… " She could scarcely speak. "My values were so wrong. I was so mixed-up about the power of money that I attached more importance to it than I should have. I should have believed in you, in myself." She winced as she thought of all the hurt she had caused everyone. "I'm always going to wonder what would have happened if I'd been stronger and hadn't run away in the first place."

Grant took her anguished face between his hands and tilted it back. "That's something we'll never know. Maybe we needed these years so we'd know how much we nearly lost."

"And how much we really love each other." She had never dreamed that he loved her so much, that money and its powers no longer could seem frightening.

She pulled away a little from him then, smiling up at him, but he drew her back and kissed her. His hand wrapped around the back of her shoulders. His hard mouth slanted over hers in fierce possession.

A long time later they pulled apart, breathless.

"Darling," he murmured. "How do you think Darius would feel about Santa bringing him a grandmother and a grandfather for Christmas as well as a daddy? You can say no… "

She smiled up at him mistily and placed two fingertips over his mouth. "Hush… I don't want to say no. I want you to call them and invite both of them for Christmas dinner. It's a little late, I know. Georgia usually has so many invitations. They'll have to drive fifty miles."

"They'll come."

Grant sought her lips again. Then he rained hot urgent, kisses over her forehead, her brow, her throat, before stopping to cradle her face in his hands and peer into her eyes.

"It looks like Santa brought all of us a lot more than Darius asked for." Grant kept holding her. "If I didn't know better, I'd say today is the next best thing to a miracle."

"Santa's special miracle," she breathed.

"And mine," Grant said. His dark face grew solemn. "Darling, I-I have a confession to make." For the first time his confidence seemed to desert him.

"If it's about other women… don't… "

"It's even worse than that."

Her black brows arched quizzically.

"It was because of me, that the phone went dead that morning. I tampered with it that night, you see. I had to have you by fair means or foul."

For a long moment, she stared at him in stunned surprise. Then her expression grew radiant. "I guess you were just helping Santa work his miracle."

"I love you," he whispered.

She took his hand and squeezed it. "Let's go upstairs and tell Darius."

The kitchen door by the stairway banged against the wall. "I'm right here, Mom!" Darius shouted exuberantly right before he burst into the room dragging his blanket and his teddy.

Norie put her fingers to her lips.

"I know, Mom. My outdoor voice… " In a softer, more tentative tone, the child whispered, "Right here… Dad."

Grant knelt down and folded the little boy into his arms. "Right here… son." Very gently he lifted him from the ground.

"Are you really going to stay?" Darius demanded eagerly.

"Forever."

Norie drew a deep breath of pure happiness.

"Merry Christmas, Norie," Grant whispered, his blue eyes dazzling bright, as he drew her closer into the warm circle of love.

Holding Darius tightly, Grant bent his head and kissed her.

Author's Note

For me, Christmas is a very special time of family, love and renewal. It is truly a season of miracles.

A beautiful pecan tree hangs over my backyard. I know Christmas is coming when the pecans start falling and the squirrels start racing about collecting them. My mother (who loves fresh pecans nearly as much as the squirrels) uses the nuts to make homemade candy-divinity, pralines, fudge and my Aunt Bill's recipe for carmelized fudge. I use them to make pralines and date-nut fruit cake. I've included the recipe in the front. Now my daughter is old enough to bake cookies for her friends.

With three children in our house, there is always great excitement as Christmas approaches. My two younger children, Kim and Tad, insist on putting up the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. I guess just seeing the tree in the living room is a daily reminder that Christmas is really coming soon. My older son, David, decorates the outside of the house.

Usually, before Christmas, we go to our city's local production of The Nutcracker. My sons used to object, but now they look forward to it as a pleasant ritual. And then on Christmas Eve there is a beautiful candlelight service in our church. After attending the service we go to my parents' for eggnog.

On Christmas Day, I cook a big turkey dinner for my family and all of our relatives who live in town. At some time during the holidays, we drive to the Texas hill country, where my husband's parents and sisters have homes, and we spend several days visiting them. If we make the trip before Christmas, we always go into the woods to help them cut down their Christmas tree.

I always look forward to Christmas, and I hope that this year's Christmas will be special for each and every one of you.