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  “This is where we made love the last time.”

  Feeling her body heat rise, she looked at the bed again. It was a king-size, big enough to get lost in, but for one brief time they had found each other instead.

  “When …?” she whispered.

  “When we closed on the house. You were ecstatic. I didn’t see you that way very often, and I wanted to share it. I wanted to feel …”

  “Feel what?”

  He gave a shake of his head. “Just feel.”

  She wanted to know so much more. Was it day or night? Did he turn to her in bed, slide in behind her, awaken her with gentle caresses and erotic kisses? Did he catch her in the middle of something else, distract her with one steamy look and boldly seduce her? Or was he blunt, the way he sometimes preferred, the way she had sometimes preferred?

  Had their lovemaking been tender or greedy? Hard, demanding, raw? Had they made love, as he’d called it, or engaged in slick, hot, potent sex for its own sake?

  Deliberately tormenting herself, she asked in a throaty voice, “Were we good?”

  “We were always good, Maggie. You can’t have forgotten that.”

  Always. Yes. From their very first time together.

  What if she locked the door, closed the drapes, stripped off her clothing and his, and demanded the use of his body … She knew how to cut through his resistance, how to heat his blood and fog his mind, how to arouse him beyond bearing and satisfy him beyond belief.

  “Maggie?”

  He touched her hand, and she swore she heard a soft sizzle.

  SOME ENCHANTED SEASON

  A Bantam Book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  A Bantam Book / December 1998

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1998 by Marilyn Pappano.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or

  by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

  recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without

  permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-81725-9

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Te tears were overwhelming.

  Maggie McKinney had thought she could escape without them. They hadn’t threatened when she’d told Ross she was leaving him. She’d been calm and cool when she’d said she would be seeing a lawyer about a divorce first thing Monday morning. She’d been dry-eyed and composed when she’d packed a few items and carried them down the stairs while he watched from the living room, and she had remained that way as she’d walked out the door, even though part of her had been sobbing in silent entreaty.

  Please don’t let me go.

  Please say you don’t want this.

  Please tell me you’re sorry.

  Please don’t let it end this way.

  But he hadn’t stopped her, hadn’t asked her to stay, hadn’t said a damn word to her, and so she’d had no choice but to keep walking out of the house. Out of his life. Out of their marriage.

  Before she’d driven ten feet down the snowy street, the tears had burst free, hot and bitter. Like a dam suffering from years of neglect and damage, her marriage had crumbled, and now her spirit was crumbling too. There’d been too many arguments, too many different dreams, too much disappointment and disillusionment.

  Tonight was the final, killing betrayal. Tonight she knew beyond a doubt that there was nothing left of their marriage to save. Affection had turned to hate, respect to derision, love to ashes. They were finished, and her heart ached with it.

  It was a Christmas Eve to remember.

  Gripping the steering wheel with one hand, she groped in the passenger seat for her purse and the tissues inside. She dried her eyes, blew her nose, then tried to concentrate on the road. It was a sorry night for traveling. Thick, fat snowflakes fell in a flurry of white, covering the highway and reducing visibility to practically nothing. A smart person would be at home, celebrating the holiday with her family, warm and snug and contemplating the big day tomorrow.

  But she didn’t have a family. Ross had seen to that.

  And she didn’t have a home. He’d seen to that too.

  Fresh tears spilled over. She wiped them away as the windshield wipers cleared the glass of snow. Ice was gathering on the road that climbed out of the valley into the surrounding mountains, causing the tires to slip, then grab.

  As the truck fishtailed over a slick patch, she tightened her grip and considered for an instant returning to the house and waiting out the snow. But how could she go back? How could she give him another chance to hurt her? How could she stay in the same house with him, knowing how he felt? Heavens, he’d stood there, utterly disinterested, and watched her go, knowing what the weather was like, what the roads were like, and he hadn’t said a word. How like him to provide further proof of how little he cared.

  Why she cared was a mystery. She should be angry. Anger was strength. Angry was the best way to be when dealing with Ross. Angry was how she would survive this.

  But first she had to go through the pain. Things between them had gotten so miserable that she’d thought the end, when it came, would bring relief. She hadn’t known it would feel as if her whole world had shattered. She hadn’t known she would feel so betrayed. Disappointed. Lost.

  She hadn’t known it would hurt.

  Praying for the ache to ease, she didn’t feel the gentle slide of the car right away. When she became aware of it, she jerked the steering wheel, worsening the skid. In a panic, she tapped the brakes, but the truck continued to slide, picking up speed.

  It reached the edge of the road, bumping across the narrow shoulder, then falling, rolling bottom over top, breaking trees, crashing over rocks. The air bag deployed with startling force, pushing her back, but it couldn’t stop her head from slamming sideways against the door frame, couldn’t protect her, as it deflated, from the truck as it crumpled around her.

  When finally the truck came to a sudden and violent stop against a tree too strong to plow over, she lay motionless, trapped between the seat and twisted metal. She tried to move but couldn’t, tried to lift her head to check herself for damage, but couldn’t manage that either.

  Blood pooled on the leather seat beneath her cheek. She thought she should be feeling a great deal of pain—sharp, agonizing, life-threatening—but she felt nothing. Her breathing sounded loud and labored, but the air she was taking in was sweet, cold. Snowflakes drifted through the broken window beside her, landed on the seat, and brought with them the cool, clear realization that Ross didn’t have to worry about a nasty divorce.

  She was going to die. Right there. Alone in her truck on a quiet, snowy Christmas Eve.

  He probably couldn’t thin
k of a better gift.

  Chapter One

  Ross McKinney stood at the massive window that made up the outer wall of his office and gazed out across the city. It was a cold, gray morning, not the sort that put Buffalo in its best light. The city looked dreary, unwelcoming. He felt that way.

  In the past eleven months, he’d spent an inordinate amount of time staring out windows. Last Christmas Eve the windows had been in a newly refurbished house in Bethlehem, and he’d watched the snow come down, obscuring all but the nearest houses, and worried about Maggie. For the first two months of the year, the window had been in an intensive care cubicle dominated by a hospital bed and its frail patient. Machines had supported and monitored her, their whooshes and beeps the only signs of life in the small room for nine weeks.

  There had been more windows—in another hospital room, the rehab center, the quiet, still place he called home, this room. Most of his time had been spent here, where, on good days, he could lose himself in the demands of his business, where, when he was lucky, he could put aside his anger, his regret, his guilt, and concentrate for a time on something else. Something productive. Something not Maggie-related.

  In a few hours he would have traveled full circle. He would be back in Bethlehem, back in Maggie’s house, where this most recent tragedy that their marriage had become had gotten its start. Where he had started it. Where together they would end it.

  Ironically, due to the head injuries she’d suffered in the accident, she didn’t remember the town of Bethlehem, or the house, or the events that had set in motion the accident. He was taking her to recuperate in a place she might never remember—a place he would never forget.

  “This isn’t necessary.”

  Ross didn’t look over his shoulder at the lawyer shuffling papers on the other side of the desk. Tom Flynn had made clear his opinion of Ross’s plans. It was what Ross paid him to do, and usually he followed Tom’s advice. But not this time.

  “You have an office at the house in Bethlehem with a computer, a modem, a fax. It would mean some reorganizing, but—”

  “No.” Finally Ross did turn from the window. “If I didn’t know you better, Tom, I’d say you were afraid of the responsibility.”

  As he’d expected, Tom took the words as a challenge. “I can handle it.”

  “I know.” Next to him, Tom was one of the better deal makers—or breakers, as suited his purpose—around. He was smart, tenacious, quick to understand the intricacies of business, and, like Ross, he was driven. He’d created himself out of nothing, had chosen a slot and shaped himself to fit it. There was nothing Tom couldn’t achieve—except, perhaps, a satisfying personal life.

  Again, like Ross.

  “I just don’t see the point in these changes. Do you really think you’re going to spend twenty-four hours a day playing nursemaid to Maggie?”

  “She doesn’t need a nursemaid.”

  “She doesn’t need you. But the company does.”

  Ross opened his briefcase and began removing folders. Tom was right. Maggie didn’t need him. There was a time when she had, when no one or nothing was more important to her than he was, but that time was long past. She’d grown used to being alone, to rarely having his complete attention. She’d learned to entertain herself, to fulfill her emotional needs elsewhere, to live without him, and he’d done the same.

  But she needed someone. After eight months of intensive therapy, Dr. Allen was releasing her from the rehab center today. He’d recommended that she complete her recuperation someplace familiar, someplace where she’d been happy. Ross hadn’t been able to think of one place that met both requirements. His house here in the city was familiar, but she hadn’t been happy there, and so he’d chosen Bethlehem, where she had been.

  Dr. Allen had suggested that she go with someone familiar as well. She’d had her fill of strangers poking, prodding, examining, and treating her. Now she wanted someone she knew with her, and he was the only candidate.

  The doctor had made it clear before asking Ross that they’d explored other options and come up empty-handed. There was Maggie’s mother, who’d disowned her for marrying Ross sixteen years ago. Janet Gilbert had wanted more for her only child than marriage to a poor bastard with big dreams that, she was convinced, would never amount to anything but heartache. He’d proved her wrong a few million times over, but it hadn’t mattered. Janet had never forgiven Maggie.

  As parents went, Frank Gilbert was an even bigger disappointment than Janet. He’d run out on his family when Maggie was barely six and, at the urging of his new young wife, broken off all contact with his first family. Maggie hadn’t seen him since she was ten, although a child support check had arrived every month like clockwork until her eighteenth birthday. That month Frank had prorated the check and removed himself completely from her life.

  There had also been the possibility of asking a friend to help out, but it was a hell of a favor to ask. After all, Maggie’s friends had families and responsibilities of their own.

  So that was how Ross had gotten selected to spend the last few months of Maggie’s recuperation in Bethlehem with her.

  He could have refused, could have said he was too busy, too vital to the company to take up residence five hours away, and it would have been mostly true. But was two or three months of his time so much to ask considering their sixteen years together? Considering that the responsibility for the sorry state of their marriage rested on his shoulders?

  Considering that the bulk of the responsibility for her near death also rested on his shoulders?

  “No one would blame you if you refused to go,” Tom said.

  He would blame himself, though, and he carried too much guilt already. “I want to go. I want to do this for Maggie.” It wasn’t much of a good-bye gift, but it was the best he could manage. “The decision to turn the business over to you was mine, not Maggie’s. I know myself, Tom. It’s all or nothing. If I try to work while I’m there, I’ll end up leaving Maggie alone all the time. That’s not what she needs, not what the doctor had in mind.”

  “But you’re going to leave her alone in a few months anyway.”

  The words were quiet, empty of emotion, harmless little sounds that carried no accusation, but he felt the indictment anyway. No condemnation, but he still felt damned.

  After a few moments, he returned to his work. He offered no response, neither confirmed nor denied Tom’s assertion. He hadn’t discussed his plans with anyone, hadn’t even fully thought them out.

  He’d made the decision a year ago. After the holidays, he’d planned to file for a divorce that would have been far more civil than the marriage had become. Years before, he’d given Maggie a fair share of the business, back when the deal hadn’t been worth the paper it was written on, but now it was worth millions. She would have gotten more money on top of that, would have taken with her a fortune in jewels, another in art.

  She would have lived the rest of her life in luxury, and he would have been free to pursue what was important to him—business. A friendship or two. Maybe a relationship with a woman who hadn’t learned to hate him, who didn’t resent the hell out of the attention he gave his work.

  But he’d put the decision out of his mind soon after making it. How could he think about divorce when the doctors hadn’t expected Maggie to live? Make plans to be free when she hovered in a coma between life and death? Be so callous and selfish while she struggled to relearn all the skills robbed of her—little ones like feeding and dressing herself and major ones like walking and talking?

  If only they’d spent last Christmas Eve the way they’d spent most evenings—apart. If only he hadn’t angered her, if only she hadn’t left the house, been on that road …

  Regrets, he’d learned in the last eleven months, were pointless. He couldn’t change the past. Because of him, Maggie had left, she had been on the road, and because of it, she was still his wife. His responsibility.

  And for that reason, he was accompanying her to
Bethlehem.

  Deliberately he changed the subject. “You’ll have to make an effort to get along with Lynda while I’m gone. I would hate to replace her, so don’t harass her into quitting.”

  “I think I could replace her quite easily,” Tom said with a scowl. “Any idiot walking down the street would probably do just fine.”

  If Tom was Ross’s right hand in running the business, Lynda Barone was his left, and if there was one thing she certainly was not, it was an idiot. And one thing she definitely was was a major annoyance in Tom’s life. The two barely managed civility most of the time. Often they regressed into outright hostility. Maggie had once commented that sometimes such hostility between a man and a woman was a screen for something personal, intense, sexual.

  But, as they’d learned in their own relationship, sometimes hostility was simply hostility.

  “Maybe I’ll send Lynda to Japan to work on the deal from their end,” Tom muttered. “That should keep her busy for a few months.”

  “If you did, she’d come back speaking fluent Japanese and have the consortium insisting on doing business solely with her.” Ross glanced at his watch. He had an eleven-thirty appointment with Dr. Allen. It was time. “If you have any problems that truly require my attention, call me. Otherwise … I’ll see you in two to three months.” He closed his nearly empty briefcase, smiled a smile he didn’t feel, and offered a hand to his lawyer.

  Muttering something about damned principles, Tom shook hands, then Ross left the office. He took the elevator from the twenty-first floor to the open top tier of the three-level parking garage. The city was even colder and grayer than it had looked from his office. It had been a mild winter so far, but they would get snow soon. Probably while he was in Bethlehem, where he could get snowed in for days, with nowhere to go and nothing to do.

  With no one for company but Maggie.

  He shook off the apprehension that settled over him, put his briefcase in the trunk with his luggage, and got into the car.