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.
