Read Online A Holiday to Remember by Lynnette Kent - Free Book Online Page B

looked around the kitchen, as if he were hiding somewhere, waiting to be discovered. “Doesn’t he want lunch?”
    “I don’t know,” Jayne was forced to reply. “He came inside with us.”
    “I saw him through the window a few minutes ago,” Selena volunteered. “He was walking down the driveway.”
    Jayne fought to keep her face blank. Without comment, she returned to her sandwich.
    Had he decided to leave? Without telling her or…or anyone? No one with intelligence would try to walk all the way to Ridgeville in three feet of snow. And expecting to find a ride on the road was a ridiculous idea. The plows wouldn’t reach this area for several days.
    Of course, she didn’t really know him, so she couldn’tdecide what he might choose to do. Maybe he wasn’t as smart as she’d thought.
    As the girls cleaned up the kitchen, Jayne finished her coffee and tried to talk herself out of the unreasonable dismay she felt at Chris Hammond’s departure. He complicated her life, distracting her from the students for whom she was responsible. His absurd obsession with her “false” identity made him unpredictable and unreliable. She should be glad he’d left—that meant he’d decided to believe the truth and stop pestering her.
    She was glad he’d left. Her single-handed custody of these seven girls could now proceed without interference.
    With their chores done, they had gathered around her in an attitude of expectation. “Can we go to the snow bowl now, Ms. Thomas? Can we?”
    “Yes. Get dressed and we’ll hike up there.”
    With the situation restored to normal, all of them prepared to go back outside. Bundled up once more, they headed down the hallway toward the side exit as a group, the students chattering and giggling, Jayne pulling on her gloves and tugging her hat down over her ears.
    Just as Yolanda reached for the door handle, the panel swung away from her, pulled outward by an unseen hand. Several of the girls squealed in shock or fright. Jayne jumped, and her heart started racing.
    Chris Hammond stood just outside the door, holding his hat in one hand. Powdered with snow from shoulders to toes, his hair wet and tousled, he looked as if he’d fought through an avalanche to reach them. Excitement snapped and crackled in his blue eyes.
    He winked at Yolanda, now staring at him with her mouth open, nodded at Jayne, and then grinned at the entire group.
    “Who’s up for an afternoon snowball fight?”

Chapter Five

    “I hate snow.” Jayne muttered the words to herself over and over that afternoon as she watched from the lip of the round, shallow valley, which the blizzard had coated with white icing. On one slope, four or five girls whirled down the walls of the bowl on blue disks. Snow people in various stages of construction stood sentry along the edges.
    And at the center stood Chris Hammond, defending himself against snowballs thrown from all directions. He had hiked across campus, he’d explained, as far as the school gymnasium, where he’d pulled out the sleds and snowshoes stored in the equipment room.
    The building was locked, he’d said in answer to Jayne’s query, but he’d had the foresight to take with him the ring of keys hanging in the maintenance office in the manor. As she stared at him, appalled, he’d reassured her that he’d left the building as secure as he found it. Then he gave her that heart-stopping grin.
    Now he constituted the center of battle. Girls joined the fight at different times, stayed for a while and then drifted off to some other game, only to return later and renew their attack. His dramatic reactions to hits, misses and his own missiles—lobbed rather than thrown, Jayne was certain—kept everyone laughing. He had made their afternoon at The Nest a special event.
    She wanted to laugh, to be entertained. But her feet were cold inside her fleece-lined boots, and she was sure her nose was red. Her hands were warm enough, thanks to thick sheepskin gloves and the