Keeping Christmas. Marisa Carroll
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Fuller’s. If she’s sick they can call the emergency squad from there.”
“Jacob!” The old lady sounded shocked. “How can you even suggest such a thing? No Owens has ever turned away a soul in need from this house. We’re not about to start tonight.”
Katie was having trouble focusing her eyes. The sounds of their voices amplified, then receded with nauseating regularity. She swayed on her feet. She had to sit down, and soon, or she was going to collapse.
The dark man took another step closer, as if to press his argument with his aunt. Katie wheeled to avoid him. The sudden movement threw her completely off balance.
“Here, take him,” she whispered, thrusting Kyle into the old lady’s arms. “Please, I…I think I’m going to faint.”
“Jacob,” Hazel said, scooping Kyle and his blanket against her ample chest. “Catch her, she’s going to fall.”
Katie felt the tote slip from her shoulder and land in the snow with a dull thud but she didn’t care. She tried to focus on Kyle, safe in Hazel’s arms, but his face swam sickeningly before her eyes. “No, don’t,” she said, or tried to, as the dark man loomed closer. “I’ll be fine, just let me find a place to sit.”
“Aunt H is right,” he said, sounding every bit as reluctant as she was. “You’re going to fall flat on your face. Here.” He pulled her against him and slid his arms beneath her knees. “Hold still till I get you inside.” Katie stopped struggling and laid her head against his shoulder just to keep the world from spinning completely out of control. “I’m sorry to be so much bother.”
He carried her across the porch and into the foyer. “I’m sorry, too.” He sounded a little breathless from the extra weight, but not much. She could feel his muscles work, even beneath the heavy wool coat, and smell the faint spicy tang of his after-shave.
“Jacob, where’s your Christian charity?” the tall, stooped old lady scolded as he prepared to deposit Katie on some kind of hard, uncomfortable-looking sofa in the foyer.
“I don’t have much to spare, Aunt,” he said, then bit off the word with a curse. “My God,” he said quietly, but there was no reverence in his tone. “Who the hell are you?”
Katie risked looking at his face as she laid her head against the tall curved back of the settee.
“I told you,” she said, fighting nausea as she stared up into his handsome, stone-hard features. “I’m Kate. Kate Smith. But you can call me Katie.”
“No,” he said, standing so suddenly Katie had to shut her eyes against the blur of movement. “You’re not Katherine, but you look enough like her to be…her twin.”
He laughed, a sound that held no mirth at all. “But since she’s dead and buried these three years, maybe I should say instead that you look enough like her to be her ghost.”
Chapter 2
Katherine’s ghost. Who was Katherine? And what did she mean to this dark, unfriendly stranger?
“I’ve been accused of being a lot of things in my life, but a ghost has never been one of them.” No one said anything.
Katie wished she didn’t feel so disoriented and confused. The lights in the foyer were bright and hurt her eyes. She closed them, hoping to alleviate the pain in her head. It didn’t work. She opened them again and found the man still standing by the settee, watching her.
“Please,” she said, unable to look away from his compelling yet shuttered gaze. “May I have a glass of water?”
“Will tea do?” a gentle childlike voice asked at her shoulder. She turned her head to find herself confronted by two smiling, identical faces. Brown eyes stared at her from beneath curly mops of gray-streaked red hair. “We thought you might want something warming. But Faye can march straight back into the kitchen and fetch you a glass of water.” The heads turned, nodded. One disappeared, presumably in the direction of the kitchen. The woman who remained offered her the cup of herb tea. “It’s our great-grandmother’s recipe,” she said, still smiling. “It’s good for whatever ails you.” Katie took the cup. She was suddenly very cold, and the warmth of the thick china mug was welcome. The tea smelled strange, but not unpleasant. It was flavored with lemon and honey and other things she couldn’t identify. She let the liquid run down her throat, soothing and warming, while the aroma drifted up into her nostrils, making it just a little easier to breathe, a little easier to think.
“Thank you,” she said, meaning it, as she handed the empty mug back to the red-haired woman. “I think you saved my life.” She wondered if she was delirious and had only imagined the woman’s double standing at her side moments before.
“Did my sister tell you it’s an old family remedy?” Once more there were two. “Here, I brought you a glass of spring water, as well.”
“Thank you,” Katie said again, holding the glass with both hands because she was trembling so hard. She took a sip and handed it back, looking from one pleasant, girlish face to the other.
“We’re twins,” the woman on her left said. “I’m Lois Owens and this is my sister, Faye.”
“You might as well introduce everyone,” Faye said with a grin that was filled with mischief. “I’m afraid there’s enough of us to confuse someone who’s purely well.”
“Faye, you speak as if you’ve just come down out of the hills,” the tall, bent woman broke in. “I’m Almeda Owens. My sister, Hazel Owens Gentry, you’ve already met,” she said with a sweeping gesture of her gnarled hand. “This, also, is my sister, Janet.”
Janet, plump, gray and inquisitive looking, gave Katie a brief nod and a long, assessing look. “The baby needs changing,” she said.
“Yes, I know.”
“And this,” Almeda went on, ignoring her sister’s comment about Kyle, “is our nephew, Dr. Jacob Owens.”
Katie said, “Oh,” because she couldn’t think of anything else. If he was a doctor, his bedside manner left a great deal to be desired. Jacob said nothing at all.
“Janet’s right about the baby needing to be changed,” Hazel said in the awkward silence. “And I believe he’s hungry, as well.” She still cuddled Kyle to her chest, but he was squirming and fussing.
“Yes,” Katie said wearily. “I was just getting ready to give him his bottle when…when the bus went off the road.” She gave Jacob a defiant look. He made no mention of her change of stories.
“Where are his diapers?” Janet asked. “I’ll get them.”
“In my tote.” Katie sat up, ignoring the pain in her neck and shoulders. She looked around. “Where is it? I…I remember it falling from my shoulder.” Suddenly she felt like crying. Everything she owned was in that bag, even her purse. And she’d lost that twice in the same evening.
“I’ll get it,” Jacob offered roughly. “Don’t start crying about it. No one steals anything from this yard with Weezer around.”
“Oh, dear, Weezer. She’s still out in the storm.”
“I’ll pen her up, Aunt H, don’t worry.”
“I’ll go with you and bring in the bag,” Janet offered.
“Come straight back, Jacob, and help us get Katie to bed. She doesn’t look stout enough to negotiate the stairs,” Hazel ordered, bouncing Kyle up and down, shushing his increasingly loud and angry squawks as she did so.
“You’re not planning to keep her overnight?” Jacob turned on his heel, his hand already on the doorknob.
“Oh, no,” Katie said at the same time. “I couldn’t impose.”
“You’re