The Last Noel. Heather Graham
he managed to sit up so he could get a look at where they were, and his heart sank.
Oh God. He’d hoped it was just the blizzard and the pain confusing him, making him see the familiar where it didn’t exist, but he hadn’t been confused. What he’d seen was all too real.
This was Kat’s family’s country home, the one she always joked was out in the boondocks, where people still knew one another and where they cared.
Kat.
With her music and her laughter. He could remember far too vividly the times they had come up here for weekends when her family was away, the nights they had spent cuddling on the couch, watching old movies, unable to keep their hands off each other.
Casablanca rolled across his mind. He could hear Humphrey Bogart saying, “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she had to walk into mine.”
Except that Kat O’Boyle hadn’t just walked into his life.
He had plowed into hers.
Maybe it wasn’t the house, he thought, and looked again.
Nope, it was. Painted white and black with detailed Victorian gingerbreading. The porch, the sloping yard…This was the house, all right.
Maybe they weren’t here. But he knew they were. He could see lights in the windows, and in the living room, a Christmas tree strung with colorful lights.
What the hell was the matter with these people? They lived in Boston. Why hadn’t they bought a vacation home somewhere warm? Anywhere but here.
Maybe, he hoped against hope, Kat wasn’t there.
No, Kat never missed Christmas with her family.
He closed his eyes, wishing he couldn’t see the house. When he opened them, he thought about getting out of the car, then decided to give it another second, even though the backseat now seemed as cold as the middle of an iceberg.
Even if something had happened and Kat wasn’t here, her family was inside. He’d never met them, but he felt as if he knew them. Her father, set in his ways. Her twin brother, Frazier, whom he’d at least seen when Kat pointed him out once across campus. Her little brother, Jamie. He’d wanted to meet her family. Even when she had complained about them, it had been with love.
Her parents were just so old-school, she had told him once. They had both been born in the States, but their parents had come over from Ireland, and sometimes it felt as if they had only recently come over themselves. Her father thought Mexican food was weird and sushi would kill her one day. She’d once suggested they hire a country singer at the pub, and her mother had looked at her as if she’d betrayed the nation.
They fought too much, Kat had said, even admitted that they probably should have gotten a divorce.
No, he’d told her. It was great when people believed so strongly in marriage that they made it work no matter what. He’d never told her about the way his parents had gotten divorced. They hadn’t meant to hurt him, of course. They were decent people who’d gotten so caught up in their own pain that he had gotten lost in the shuffle. And then, when time had passed and some of the wounds had healed…
Then everything had really gone to hell.
He closed his eyes again, and when he opened them…
There was a face looking in the window at him.
Kat’s face.
He blinked to banish the hallucination. Then he heard the door open and realized she was real.
“Craig?” she murmured incredulously. “Craig Devon?”
“Kat?” He couldn’t see clearly, couldn’t think clearly, but he knew he had to shake it off.
“Oh my God! What are you doing here? Did they kidnap you or—”
She broke off, staring at him. He steeled himself, feeling his heart freeze and then shatter into little pieces.
“I heard you were in jail,” she said. Her voice had gone as cold as the snow around them.
Jail? He felt like laughing. She didn’t know the half of what had happened.
His choice, of course. The turns his life had taken weren’t the kind a man longed to share with the woman he loved. The woman he longed to have love him in return.
Kat.
So impossible.
Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world…
Damn, his head hurt and his tongue was thick, but he needed to speak and speak fast. “What are you doing out here?” he asked her. “Those bastards in your house—”
“I know,” she said coldly.
“So how did you get out—”
“They don’t know about me,” she said.
The world seemed to steady around him. He could see her in the moonlight that glowed softly through the snow. The red fire of her hair was like a silk frame around her face, and though there wasn’t enough illumination for him to really see her eyes, he knew them well. Technically speaking, they were hazel, but the word wasn’t enough to describe the reality. They were green, and they were gold. Sometimes they were the sun, sometimes like emeralds. But tonight they were filled with disappointment, even revulsion.
“They didn’t kidnap you, did they?” she asked.
He struggled to sit. “No. But, Kat—”
He broke off when he heard a sound, and turned to look as the door to the house opened. Scooter was there with two men. Craig squinted. Kat’s older brother and her father, he had to assume. “Kat.” He found the strength to grip her shoulders. “Someone’s coming—one of them. So if they really don’t know about you, you need to get the hell out of here. Do you understand me? Disappear.”
“You’re one of them.”
“No…not exactly. One of them hit me and—”
“One of them hit you?” she interrupted skeptically.
“Yes, and left me out here. Now get the hell out of here!”
The men were coming down the walk. She could see them now, Scooter, her father and Frazier.
“Craig, if you’re with them…”
“Please, Kat, I don’t know what they’ll do. Go for help.”
“Go for help?” she inquired. “I barely made it to the car in this wind. See the way they’re all hunched over against it? Where am I going to go, Craig? How the hell am I going to get help?”
Snowdrifts were everywhere. They were going to see her footprints, he thought, as the wind picked up, howling. Maybe the snow was blowing around enough to hide her footprints.
He roused and took hold of her shoulders again. He could see her eyes. Gold and emerald. His stomach lurched. She’d been the first really good thing in his life, and he had screwed it up. “I’m begging you to get out of here and find help before Scooter sees you.”
“There is no help, Craig.”
“Then hide somewhere.”
“Hide?” she asked indignantly. “They have my family. I can’t just run away and hide. Do you have a gun? If you have one, give it to me, damn it.”
“Kat, I don’t have a gun.”
“But you were with them.”
“Kat, I’m begging you, go!”
“Are you with them or not?”
“Kat, I…”
His head throbbed with pain and humiliation at the look in her eyes. If they caught her…Lord, if they caught