A Stockingful of Joy (30 page)

"You lie! She's
not
dead, she's not!"

The boy turned and ran out the door into the night. For once, Faith didn't go chasing after him; she must have decided the boy needed time to deal with this alone. Instead she stood still, staring at Morgan. Once more her face was unreadable, but he knew what she had to be thinking.

"Go ahead, say it," he told her bitterly. "I'm a cold-hearted bastard who just ripped the heart out of a little boy."

"As someone once ripped it out of the little boy you were?" she asked softly.

She didn't wait for him to answer but simply knelt to pick up the glass chimney of Hope's lamp. It was cracked nearly from bottom to top, and she set it aside carefully. Then she walked to the rocker that had been her sister's and took up the shirt of Zach's she'd been mending, sat down without another word, and began to work.

It was just as well; he had nothing to say. He'd already said far too much; that look of betrayal in Zach's eyes was seared into his soul. He had some ugly memories he carried, never able to rid himself of them, and he knew he'd just added another.

He sank down onto the folded blankets by the fire; the fact that Faith had left them there instead of putting them away told him she expected he would stay the night again. Yet again he thought of leaving right now, but he couldn't seem to find the energy to even move. He stared into the hearth wondering, if hell was truly leaping flames and eternal torment, how it differed much from life.

He listened to Faith's slight movements as she stitched, saw out of the corner of his eyes her sure, easy, efficient movements as she worked at the familiar task. He looked away, unable to reconcile this quiet, comfortable scene with the image burned indelibly in his mind of a jubilant woman riding free under a winter moon. The idea that both natures could be combined in the same woman astonished him, and excited him in a way he didn't understand or know how to deal with.

He didn't know how long he'd been there when he heard Faith move. She put down her sewing and stood. He didn't look at her until she had walked across the room and taken her cloak from beside the door. She would be going to talk to the boy, he thought; a glance at the small shelf clock told him Zach had been gone for nearly two hours.

She said nothing, just went out and closed the door quietly behind her. Faith Brown was not given to slamming doors to vent her feelings, it was clear. Nor did she yell, or pout; instead of giving in to anger, she merely put on that mask of cool politeness that would make a man welcome a fit of temper. Morgan wondered how she did let it out; it had to come out somehow.

And then he realized he knew; she ran wild with her mare under the night sky.

The fire had the room comfortably warm, but he shivered, and knew that it had nothing to do with cold and everything to do with the crazy emotions careening around inside him. He'd worked so hard all his life at never feeling anything soft or gentle, knowing that those things only opened the door for pain, the kind of pain Zach was feeling right now. If you didn't care, you couldn't be hurt when those you cared about left you. It was a simple, logical way to live.

Only now did he realize it was a damn cold way as well.

The flames burned on the hearth; his gut burned inside him. Resin snapped as it heated, and a log broke and fell. He got up and put another one on the fire; they'd be cold when they came back in. Unless, he thought wryly, they both decided to spend Christmas Eve in the barn, to stay away from him, the despoiler of celebrations.

He heard hurried footsteps on the small porch, and a moment later Faith came in. Alone. She pulled off her cloak but did not hang it up; she tossed it on the table as she passed. She hastened past him into the bedroom without a word, but her worried expression spoke for her. He followed her, catching the door she'd pushed before it closed. He shoved it back. And stopped dead when he realized she was tearing off her clothes in a furious hurry.

She already had her shoes off, and for a moment he just stared as she tugged at the buttons of her bodice until enough were undone that she could pull it off over her head. A long strand of hair came loose from the severe coil at the back of her head, and the image of it streaming out behind her came back to him with stunning force.

Clad only in her chemise from the waist up, she bent to slip off her skirt. Morgan's pulse began to hammer in hot, heavy beats, and when he glimpsed the soft, swaying curves of her breasts and the shadowy valley between them as she moved, his body responded with a swiftness that took his breath away.

She straightened with the skirt in her hands. He had a moment to see womanly curves and long legs beneath white cloth that seemed both modest and incredibly suggestive, before she realized he was there and gasped, holding the skirt up in front of her. She stared at him, eyes huge in her suddenly pale face.

With an effort that told him just how close to the edge he was, he made himself look only at her face.

"What's wrong?" he asked, unable to control the urgent note of need in his voice, but hoping that in her innocence, she wouldn't understand it for what it was.

"I… Zach is gone. I have to go find him." She raised the skirt slightly. It covered her breasts, but left him with a view of her bare feet and delicately slender ankles. "Will you let me dress, please?"

He didn't move. It took a moment for him to beat down the rising heat and concentrate on what she'd said. "Gone?" Of course he was gone, they'd both seen him run out of the house.

"Yes. Will you go, please?" He still didn't move. "Fine, then," she said, her voice tight, her cheeks flaming. And dropped the skirt to the floor.

Morgan had a momentary view of what he'd imagined to be beneath that dress, now hidden only by the thin linen of her shift and drawers. And then she was pulling on the trousers he'd seen her wearing on that night ride he couldn't put out of his mind. As she reached for a heavy shirt of some homespun-looking material and began to wrestle it on, things finally began to register. Unlike her tidy self, she had tossed her dress on the floor. She was redressing in front of him. She was putting on her riding clothes. And the urgency of her movements finally snapped him out of his haze.

"What do you mean, Zach's gone?"

She glared at him, her embarrassment vanished now. "What I said. He's gone. He took his pony. I found the tracks heading into the trees up the hill."

He frowned. "Up? Toward the mountains?"

She nodded. "And snow's coming. Fast."

He shook his head, able to see through the tiny window behind her what she had not yet noticed. "It's already here."

She whirled to look, a small sound of distress escaped her, and she raced to the small cupboard and took out a pair of high, lace-up boots. She sat down on the edge of the bed and began to pull them on.

"Stay here," he said. "I'll go find him."

Her head came up sharply. "No."

"Faith—"

"I'm going." She turned back to fastening the boots.

"There's no need. That's a big storm coming in. I'll go."

"Zachary is my responsibility."

He winced, although he knew she hadn't meant anything other than the literal meaning of her words. But he couldn't deny the sense of guilt that was prodding him. "And him taking off like that is mine," he said grimly.

She looked at him for a moment, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that she was seeing much more than this moment. Her next words proved him right.

"You're absolved," she said. "You can stay safely… alone."

"I'll go," he repeated, reduced to repetition in the face of a perceptiveness he found hard to face.

"You do as you wish." She stood up. "As I suspicion you always do."

His mouth twisted; she sounded exactly like he did, when he was making sure it seemed as if something meant less than nothing to him. He'd never thought about how it really sounded. Or he'd never cared.

"But you're going anyway."

She didn't even look at him. "I am."

He'd always known that he generally got done what he wanted to do. When others gave up, he kept on. Aunt Abigail had called it stubbornness; he'd thought of it as determination. Whatever it was, for the first time in his life he knew he'd met its match in the woman before him. She would be going with him.

She'd never been so cold. Nor had she ever seen snow like this, a wall of white coming down so thick it seemed solid rather than flakes. But she couldn't stop, not when Zach was out here somewhere, as cold as she was, and scared. The trail the boy and his pony had left had been buried under fresh snow an hour ago, but she refused to quit.

The big black beside her slowed, then halted, and she reined in Espe to look back at Morgan.

"We've got to stop," he said.

"No."

"Faith, you can't see a foot in front of you. Neither can the horses. We've probably been riding in circles. There's a bit of shelter on the lee side of those rocks over there—"

"I'm going on." It was hard to say, her lips were so cold.

"Damn it, it won't do Zach any good if you freeze to death out here."

Freeze to death
. The words rang in her ears, and the ugly vision she'd been fighting for the last hour came viciously back to life, a vision of a small boy, frozen and lifeless in this swirling white world.

"N-no." she stammered. She bit back a sob.

"For God's sake, don't cry," Morgan said. "Your face will freeze."

"It's already frozen," she snapped.

"Get down," Morgan said fiercely, in a voice that brooked no argument. "We're stopping. At least until this lets up a little."

"No," she repeated doggedly.

In answer he dismounted and pulled her from the little mare's back. She tried to fight him, but instead found herself sagging against him, marveling that he still seemed so strong, when she was about to cave in, body and spirit.

"We're not quitting, Faith. Just resting for a while. We need it. The horses need it."

His voice was soft, gentle, as she'd never heard from him before. And the quiet reassurance was the one thing that could have convinced her; she let him lead her to the rocks.

The biggest boulder was better than horse-high, and provided a windbreak. The lower portion had been hollowed out slightly by wind or water or weather, and gave them a tiny bit of shelter from the snow. He untied his bedroll and put it down for her sit on. As she watched rather numbly, Morgan worked swiftly, using their slickers to give the horses what shelter he could, then managing to start a small fire at the edge of the slight overhang with some mesquite he found that was dry enough to burn. Then he sat down beside her.

When she shivered, he moved closer. He cradled her gently against him, moving only to open up his overcoat and invite her inside. She went, letting him tuck it around her, nearly shuddering at the welcome warmth. Oddly she felt him shudder as well, but supposed it was because she'd brought cold air with her. She could feel the steady thud of his heart beneath her cheek, and snuggled closer. The beat faltered, then raced as if to catch up, and she leaned her head back to look at him curiously. The fire was too small for much light, and he was little more than a shadow in the darkness, but in her mind she saw him as clearly as if the sun were pouring over them instead of this blizzard of snow.

For an instant his arms tightened around her, until it almost hurt. And then, before she realized what was happening, his mouth came down on hers.

She'd been kissed once or twice, by supposed suitors who had changed their minds about her attractions the moment they laid eyes on her sister. Or perhaps that had been the attraction in the first place, she'd finally realized. But nothing had ever prepared her for this. For an instant she wondered how it could happen, how such heat could happen when the world was freezing around them. But then the blaze raced along her every nerve, and she could think of nothing but the feel of his lips and the strength of his arms as he pulled her ever closer.

He brushed his tongue over her lips, creating more, sudden heat, like a shower of sparks. She gasped at the fire that shot through her, and then settled somewhere within her like a hot liquid pool. He took the chance she unwittingly offered him and probed further, and the feel of his tongue gently tasting her turned that hot liquid into a boiling mass of sensations she'd never known.

"Faith."

He whispered it against her mouth, and it made her quiver. His hands moved, slipping down her body to her waist, and pulling her tight to him. She felt him move his hips slightly, felt the digging pressure of something hard against her belly. She gasped when she realized what it must be, but the heat that rippled through her was not from embarrassment, but of some new, strange feeling she'd never experienced.

He moved then, pulling her down on the opened bedroll, coming down over her, his weight oddly pleasant atop her. His hands moved again, to her breasts, cupping, lifting, and before the shock of such an intimate touch could grip her it was shoved aside by the greater shock when his fingers rubbed over the tips. For a split second she realized in wonder that her nipples were hard, almost aching, and then it went through her like a wildfire, hot, pouring sensation that blazed a path from his fingers to some low, deep, hollow place inside her.

He groaned, something that sounded like her name. Then she heard something very odd and realized it was herself, moaning, almost whimpering. It was a begging little sound, and she didn't even know what she was begging for, only that she wanted it more than she wanted anything except to find Zach…

Zach.

She wrenched her mouth away. She stared up at Morgan, who was breathing as quickly as she, as if he'd felt the same sudden shortness of air. He was looking at her, and in that instant she saw all the emotions that he never let show. She saw heat, need, and oddly, a gentleness that was almost tender. And it made her want even more to sink back into his arms, to let this rising heat carry her with it to whatever end was in store.

"Zach," she said, almost desperately.