Some Enchanted Season

Prologue
 

T
e 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 think of a better gift.

Chapter One
 

R
oss 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.”