Heart of Winter (18 page)

B
ack at work, Nicky found herself haunted by a particularly vivid ghost. Winthrop drifted around in her thoughts constantly so that she couldn't eat or sleep or rest. She didn't understand why he couldn't have managed the time to say goodbye to her. Of course, there was always the possibility that he was simply indifferent.

She was a nervous wreck by the time Thursday rolled around. Gerald was equally anxious, all thumbs as he waited for the driver to take him to the airport. And tomorrow was the wedding at the ranch.

“Why aren't you packed and ready?” Gerald asked suddenly, as if it had only occurred to him that Nicky wasn't coming.

“I'm not going,” she said quietly.

“But why not?” he asked, and smiled. “Winthrop invited you, didn't he?”

“I suppose he felt obliged to,” Nicky confessed. She sighed heavily. “You see, I…well, I kind of…I told him I loved him,” she concluded, and went scarlet. She buried her face in her hands while Gerald gaped at her. “Of all the stupid things I ever did, that was by far the stupidest. He told me right up front that he didn't want commitment. I should have listened.”

“Oh, Nicky,” he murmured. He patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Nicky, I'm so sorry. With all due respect, you could have found a more approachable man. Winthrop has too many scars and he's lived completely alone for so long…. I'm just really sorry. If I'd thought anything like this would happen, I'd never have forced you into going to Montana with me.”

“It's not your fault,” she reminded him. “I didn't have to go.” She forced a smile. “But I can't quite manage the wedding. I hope you understand. Having to be around him, and having him know how I feel…I just couldn't bear the embarrassment.”

“I'll make some kind of excuse for you. Don't worry.” He studied her worriedly. “You'll be all right?”

“Sure I will. I thought I might go and spend the weekend with my father. Christmas is coming up in three weeks.”

“So it is.” He patted her shoulder again. “Can you cope while I'm on honeymoon?”

“You bet, boss,” she said brightly.

“Okay. Well…” The driver appeared in the door and announced that he was ready when Gerald was.

“Kiss Sadie for me,” Nicky said.

“I'll do that with pleasure. You'll have to come over for supper one night when we get back in town.”

“That would be nice.”

“I'll see you soon, Nicky.”

“Yes, sir.” She smiled, and waved goodbye to him.

She wanted to go to the wedding. It would have been heaven to stand and look at Winthrop just once more. But she'd do better to get him out of her mind, and going back to the ranch would only open old wounds. She'd had enough torment. And he'd never led her on. He'd told her exactly how he felt, so if her heart was broken she could only blame herself.

She settled back into the office routine the next day, fielding questions and phone calls and correspondence with a flair that would have pleased her absent boss.

She wasn't prepared for the phone to ring and an angry, irritated Winthrop to be on the other end of the line.

“Where in hell are you?” he demanded coldly.

She stared at the phone as if it had grown teeth. “I'm…here. Working,” she faltered.

“You were invited to the wedding,” he reminded her.

“Yes, I know.”

“Then why aren't you here?”

She stared at her feet. “I didn't want to come,” she said in a ghostly tone.

“I don't bite,” he grumbled. “And I hadn't intended to drag you off into the underbrush.”

“I know that,” she moaned. She bit her lower lip. “I made a fool of myself,” she said after a minute, almost choking on the words. “I…couldn't face you.”

There was a pregnant pause. “Made a fool of yourself? How?”

She twisted the cord around her fingers. “I threw myself at you like a lovesick teenager.”

“Was I complaining?” he asked unexpectedly.

“I know how you feel about women.”

“Do you?” he asked in bemusement. “I'd planned to take you hunting with me.”

Her heart leaped. “Had you?”

“Your father tells me you can handle a .30-.30 with the best of them,” he added. “I thought we'd hunt deer.”

“I would have liked that.”

“It's not too late,” he reminded her. “Gerald could send the plane for you.”

She closed her eyes and prayed for strength. “I don't think it's a good idea, Winthrop.”

“Why not, for God's sake?”

“Because I can't live on dreams,” she burst out. “And the sooner I face it, the better off I'll be. I know you mean well, but it…it tears the heart out of me, that's all. I won't come.”

She hung up quickly, before he could talk her into going to Montana. He was offering her comfort, but he didn't realize the torment it would cause her. Loving him, being near him, and knowing he didn't care for her would have been the last straw.

All the rest of the day she expected him to call back. But he didn't. And she went to Kentucky and spent the weekend with a surprised and very different father. They talked, she and Carol went shopping, and when the time came to go back to Chicago, she was frankly reluctant to go.

“This has been fun,” her father remarked, grinning. “We'll have to have a big Christmas this year. I'll get a tree and everything.”

“And we'll have a party,” Carol added, clinging to his arm with real affection. “Nicky needs to meet some men her own age. I know at least one with a good character I could invite.” She glanced at Nicky ruefully. “Notice I didn't say with money—just with character.

“Yes, and I appreciate that,” Nicky grinned back. She liked Carol. The more she saw of the redhead, the more depth she found in the other woman.

“Come home for Christmas,” her father coaxed. “We'll have a big time.”

It would at least keep her mind off Winthrop. “All right,” she agreed, smiling. “I'll plan on it. See you in a couple of weeks, then.”

“I'll send a plane up to get you,” he grinned.

She went back to her apartment feeling vaguely happy. But the bubble burst at work the next morning. Becky was waiting in her office with a cold message from Winthrop.

“The iceman calleth,” Becky said, whistling through her teeth. “And was he in a snit! He said to tell you that you can—” She cleared her throat. “Well, that you can sit up here in the city and freeze for all he cares, and that if he never sees you again, it will be too soon.” She cocked her head at Nicky. “Does he drink? Because he sounded as if he had a
snootful!
”

That didn't sound like Winthrop. “Are you sure it was Winthrop?” she asked.

“Boy, am I sure.” Becky shook her head. “He even spelled it for me.” She smiled with mischief in her eyes. “He got it right on the third try, anyway.”

“Oh, my.”

“Oh, my, isn't what the switchboard operator had to say. She's thinking of filing charges against him for his use of language.” She turned to go back to her own office, still shaking her head. “Poor old guy. What did you do to him, Nicky?”

Nicky wasn't sure. But if he was that angry, she must have gotten under his skin a little. She sat back and waited for new developments.

But when a week went by with no more word from him, she fell into a black depression. Gerald came back to work a new man. The honeymoon in the Bahamas had been ecstatic, and he could hardly keep his feet on the floor while Nicky brought him up to date on what was happening in the office.

“Yes, I can handle all that,” he sighed. He watched her closely. “I hear Winthrop called you.”

She flushed. “Sort of.”

“I hear he was drunk at the time,” he added.

“How did you hear that?”

“Mary,” he said. “She was snickering so hard that I could barely understand her. She said he went off into the mountains and dared anybody to bother him.”

“Will he be all right?” she asked with concern she couldn't help.

“Winthrop?” he asked as if she'd taken leave of her senses.

“Well, he isn't Superman.”

“Don't tell him that. He's just taken out another lease on the cape,” he murmured.

“If he wants to go off in the mountains in a snit just because I wouldn't come to the wedding, that's his problem,” she said shortly. “Anyway, he didn't really want me there.”

“That isn't what Mary said.”

“What do you want to do about this letter?” she asked, attempting to change the subject.

He started to speak, then changed his mind and settled for work. They fell back into a pleasant routine, and Winthrop wasn't mentioned again. Nicky was sure that he was only angry because she hadn't fallen all over herself getting back to Montana. She didn't dare hope it was because he'd started to care for her.

He didn't call. He didn't write. Christmas Eve came and Nicky gave up hoping that she'd hear from him. She wished her boss a merry Christmas, sent her love to Sadie and went to Lexington for the holidays.

Her father met her at the airport in his Lincoln, with Carol beside him, and took time to have the driver run them through town so that she could see the beautiful Christmas decorations.

“It's just like old times,” Nicky sighed. “I always did love the way they decorate the city.”

“Me, too. You ought to see the decorations we have at the house,” her father said with a twinkle in his eyes.

“And your present,” Carol added, also twinkling. “It was really hard to wrap, so I gave up trying and just stuck a bow on it.”

Nicole had presents for both of them in her luggage: a pipe for her father and for Carol a bottle of her favorite perfume. But she frowned, wondering what they could have gotten her that made them both look so smug.

She didn't have long to wait. They piled out at the steps and she walked toward the enormous brick house with feverish curiosity. It was decorated with boughs of holly and red velvet ribbon, and she took a minute to tell Carol how pretty it looked.

“Thanks,” Carol laughed. “I did it all myself. With a little help from your dad,” she acknowledged with a wink in his direction.

“Your present's in the living room,” her father added as he helped Carol out of her mink coat. “We'll go see about some hot cider while you open it.”

“Aren't you coming?” she asked.

Her father helped her out of her tweed coat, nodding at the pretty green silk dress that matched her eyes. “You look very nice. No, we're not coming. Not just yet. Go on, now. And Merry Christmas, sweetheart.”

He kissed her cheek and then went away, whispering to Carol, who glanced over her shoulder at Nicky and giggled.

Boy, it sure was some strange Christmas, she told herself as she opened the living room door. And then she stopped dead. Because her present wasn't under the huge lighted Christmas tree. It was sitting on the sofa, looking toward her furiously, with a glass of whiskey in one lean hand.

“Merry Christmas,” Winthrop said curtly.

Her mouth flew open. He had a bow stuck on the pocket of his gray vested suit, and he looked hung over and pale and a little disheveled. But he was so handsome that her heart skipped wildly, and she looked into his dark eyes with soft dreams in her own.

“You've got a bow on your pocket,” she said in a voice that sounded too high-pitched to be her own.

“Of course I've got a bow on my pocket. I'm your damned Christmas present. Didn't you listen to your father?” He got up, setting the glass down with enough force to shake the table, and started toward her, limping just a little. He didn't look like a present, he looked murderous. “I can't eat,” he said accusingly. “I can't sleep, I can't work. I spent a week up in the mountains trying to get you out of my head, and all I got was drunk. I'm hung over, bleary-eyed and half mad with wanting you.”

“Oh, I'm so glad, Winthrop,” she whispered. Her heart went wild. “Because I'm half mad with wanting you, too…Oh!”

The tiny cry was lost under his devouring mouth. He had her up in his arms, barely pausing to kick the door shut before he carried her back to the sofa and stretched her out on its velvety length under the formidable weight of his body.

She protested the intimacy of his hold, but he shook his head and took her mouth under his again, glorying in its breathless response.

“No more fighting,” he breathed into her parting lips. “There's no need. You're mine, now. That gives me the right to take any liberties I please with you, and this is only the beginning. You're going to marry me, lady. I've got all the necessary papers. All we need is a blood test, and that's scheduled an hour from now. We're going to have a Christmas wedding.”