Marriage to a Stranger Read online

  Marriage to a Stranger

  By

  Dorothy Phillips

  Contents

  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

  "MOLLY…" HE WHISPERED. "I DON'T KNOW IF I'LL BE ABLE TO KEEP MY BARGAIN NOT TO TOUCH YOU…"

  He raised his head to look at her. He was so close, she could see every little detail of his face, the dark smoldering eyes, the strong nose, the sensual curve of his mouth, the darkened cheekbones, the strong column of his throat.

  She saw his mouth, the firm lips slightly parted, then it was against hers, rough and demanding with an insistence that sent her blood thundering through her ears. His hands were moving everywhere, touching her hungrily, urgently. Naked desire mounted in her head, leaving her trembling in his arms…

  CANDLELIGHT ECSTASY ROMANCES™

  26 Bargain With the Devil, Jayne Castle

  27 Golden Fire, Silver Ice, Marisa de Zavala

  28 Stages of Love, Beverly Sommers

  29 Love Beyond Reason, Rachel Ryan

  30 Promises to Keep, Valerie Ferris

  31 Web of Desire, Jean Hager

  32 Sensuous Burgundy, Bonnie Drake

  33 Deceptive Love, Anne N. Reisser

  34 Stolen Holiday, Marjorie Eatock

  35 That Island, That Summer, Belle Thorne

  36 A Man's Protection, Jayne Castle

  37 After the Fire, Rose Marie Ferris

  38 Summer Storms, Stephanie St. Clair

  39 Winter Winds, Jackie Black

  40 Call It Love, Ginger Chambers

  41 The Tender Mending, Lia Sanders

  42 The Ardent Protector, Bonnie Drake

  43 A Dream Come True, Elaine Raco Chase

  44 Never As Strangers, Suzanne Simmons

  45 Relentless Adversary, Jayne Castle

  46 Restoring Love, Suzanne Sherrill

  47 Dawning of Desire, Susan Chatfield

  48 Masquerade of Love, Alice Morgan

  49 Eloquent Silence, Rachel Ryan

  50 Snowbound Weekend, Amii Lorin

  51 All's Fair, Anne N. Reisser

  52 Remembrance of Love, Cathie Linz

  53 A Question of Trust, Dorothy Ann Bernard

  54 Sands of Malibu, Alice Morgan

  55 Affair of Risk, Jayne Castle

  56 Double Occupancy, Elaine Raco Chase

  57 Bitter Vines, Megan Lane

  58 White Water Love, Alyssa Morgan

  59 A Treasure Worth Seeking, Rachel Ryan

  60 Love, Yesterday and Forever, Elise Randolph

  61 Love's Wine, Frances Flores

  62 To Love a Stranger, Hayton Monteith

  63 The Metal Mistress, Barbara Cameron

  64 Sweet Healing Passion, Samantha Scott

  65 Heritage of the Heart, Nina Pykare

  Published by

  Dell Publishing Co., Inc.

  1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza

  New York, New York 10017

  Copyright © 1982 by Dorothy Garlock

  ISBN: 0-440-15605-X

  Printed in the United States of America

  First printing—July 1982

  Dear Reader:

  In response to your continued enthusiasm for Candlelight Ecstasy Romances™, we are increasing the number of new titles from four to six per month.

  We are delighted to present sensuous novels set in America, depicting modern American men and women as they confront the provocative problems of modern relationships.

  Throughout the history of the Candlelight line, Dell has tried to maintain a high standard of excellence, to give you the finest in reading enjoyment. That is now and will remain our most ardent ambition.

  Anne Gisonny

  Editor

  Candlelight Romances

  CHAPTER ONE

  The silence in the cabin was deep indeed, deeper than the vast wilderness in which the cabin stood. The man's voice was quiet for a few minutes and the silence pounded against her eardrums. Molly stared at him and vaguely knew he was trying to make it easy for her, but there is no easy way to tell a girl her father is dead. Jim Robinson, bush pilot, and his wife, friends to both Molly and her father, had come to tell her the news before she heard it on the wireless radio. Fortunately the news hadn't reached the remote cabin thirty miles south of Fairbanks. Jim was thankful for that, but the girl was taking the news so calmly, he feared she was in shock. "Molly?" he said anxiously. Then again, "Molly?" She looked dully from Jim to his wife, her face blank, uncomprehending. She shifted her gaze, with anguished eyes, to the open doorway and to the lake beyond. Fragments of sunlight leaped and danced gracefully on the blue water and it seemed to Molly that she was suspended in time and space and if she closed her eyes, she could remain there, safe and secure in the life she and her father had made together. She hung in a nondescript void. The silence was as deep and as high as the blue of the sky and the depth of the lake. A memory floated through her mind. Suddenly she recalled her father telling her to be still and listen to the silence. She had not known what he was talking about. Now she knew.

  Jim took her arms and tugged her toward him, forcing her head down onto his shoulder.

  "We never know why these things happen, honey. Why it was Charlie and not one of the other members of the expedition." He realized suddenly that her unnatural calm hid acute bewilderment as well as grief.

  The girl's stillness frightened him and he grasped her upper arms and forced her away from him so he could see her face.

  "Let it go, Molly!" he said urgently. "Don't hold it inside. It has happened and we can't change it."

  "I know. I want to cry, Jim, but it won't… come. I loved him so much. I… don't know what I'll do without him! No one knew that range like Da—d—Dad. I just can't believe he could fall in a crevice!" The tears came. Big racking sobs shook the small body that Jim held against him. She cried tears of despair. Her voice, sobbing and tremulous in anguish, called to her father over and over again. The big man could do nothing but hold her while his wife stood by helplessly, her own eyes swimming in tears.

  After awhile the sobbing ceased and Molly raised her wet, swollen eyes to Jim.

  "Evelyn will stay with you," he said gently. "Her mother will take care of our boys."

  "Thank you." Her voice held a queerly resigned note which Jim found far more pathetic than her tears. "I'll be all right now, but if you will excuse me, I'd like to be alone for a while." Her unwavering glance held his. "I'm sorry, Jim, for making it so hard for you to tell me." He touched her head with clumsy tenderness.

  They watched her leave the room; head bowed, shoulders slumped as though the weight of the world rested upon them. She had retreated once again into the deep recesses of her own reserve and Jim shook his head as he heard the door of her bedroom close softly.

  Evelyn looked anxiously at her husband.

  "What will she do, Jim?"

  "I don't know, but as much as Charlie loved that girl, I'm sure he must have considered the possibility that she could be left alone. He knew these expeditions were dangerous, although he never let Molly know. He cautioned me more than once not to mention it to her."

  He sighed and pulled his wife down beside him on the couch. They sat for a few minutes without speaking. Both turned their heads toward the bedroom door, but no sound came from beyond. If Molly insisted on wrapping herself away in that impenetrable reserve of he
rs, there was little they could do for her; they could only wait and hope that by staying near she was comforted.

  Jim looked down at his wife and saw that although she had leaned her head back against the couch and closed her eyes, big tears were creeping down under her lashes and trickling unheeded down her cheeks.

  "Evelyn!"

  She opened her eyes and he saw mirrored there all the sorrow and compassion her generous heart felt for her friend. With an exclamation he leaned forward and gathered her up in his arms. They sat quietly together for a long while before Evelyn broke the silence.

  "Do you think she'll go to Anchorage, Jim? She has never talked much about the time she spent with Charlie's sister, but I got the impression she wasn't happy there."

  "I don't know if she will go to Anchorage or not. I do know she can't stay here alone. Good Lord! It's ten miles to the nearest neighbor. She may be twenty-five years old, but she's as innocent as a babe. Every single man within a hundred miles will be finding an excuse to come by here."

  "And a few that are not single," Evelyn asserted dryly. "She's been here with Charlie for about six years, hasn't she?"

  "Ever since she left the convent school, except for the few months she spent in the city with Charlie's sister. Charlie taught her a lot about how to take care of herself, or he wouldn't have left her here alone for a week or two at a time. Of course Tim-Two was here to look out for her while he was away."

  "I forgot all about the Indian. You'll have to tell him."

  "Yes, I know. He's been with Charlie for a long time. He came here one winter about half starved to death. Charlie took him in, and he's been here ever since. I haven't any idea how old he is, but I imagine he would be a pretty wicked enemy."

  Evelyn laughed softly. "Just to look at him scares me. That one eye of his that goes off in the other direction gives me the willies!"

  Jim stood up. "I'll go talk to him. Make some coffee, will you, honey? I think we should leave Molly alone for a while. She'll come out and talk when she's ready."

  He went through the kitchen and out the back door toward a cabin that was set about a hundred feet behind the house. Tim-Two had built the cabin himself. It was small, tight, and really quite ugly, like the man himself.

  Evelyn busied herself about the kitchen. She stoked up the big wood range and set the granite coffeepot on to perk. She looked around the neat room. Nicely built cabinets lined one wall, with a stainless steel sink set into the middle of the counter top. A hand water pump was perched on one end of the sink. The big cooking range dominated the opposite wall; shiny black, with touches of blue on the big oven door at the bottom and on the doors of the two warming ovens at the top. The hot water reservoir was on one side of the range and the woodbox on the other.

  She sat down at the trestle table that divided the kitchen from the living room, and let her gaze wander over the cozily furnished room. A stone fireplace, big enough to accommodate a six-foot-long log, took up the entire end of the room. In this cold country heating was a main concern, and heat from the fireplace and the cooking range in the kitchen kept the rooms comfortably warm. Evelyn knew too, about the potbellied stoves in each of the two bedrooms. There was a rocking chair on one side of the fireplace and a comfortable pillow-lined couch on the other side. In between the two was a bright braided rug. The pillows, curtains, Charlie's pipe on the table, all caught Evelyn's eye as she looked about the room. Molly had done a good job turning this old barn of a cabin into a home; not fancy by city standards, but very comfortable. The girl was a natural homemaker, no doubt about that. It was unfair that she would have to leave it all.

  Molly lay on the bed in her room, arms under her head, dazed eyes focused on the ceiling. Dry eyed, now, thinking about the big, burly dark-haired man that was her father. When her mother died, the nature of her father's work had forced him to make arrangements for her to be cared for in a convent school. From the age of six her life had been regulated by the strict nuns. When she reached the age of eighteen, she had about decided to enter the cloister because she knew of no other kind of life. Disturbed about the step she was considering, Charlie took her out of the convent and brought her to Anchorage to live with his sister. He wanted her to have a taste of living in the outside world before she turned her back on it forever.

  Molly endured the time she spent with Aunt Dora and her cousins like a prison sentence. Fashion and the social life of Anchorage was their life and from the beginning she had felt oddly out of place in their home. After two months she longed for the quiet of the convent and begged Charlie to let her go back there if he didn't want her to share his home in the bush. The happiest day of her life was when she packed her things and Charlie loaded them in his old pickup truck and headed north. That was almost six years ago and Molly could count on one hand the times she had been to the city since then.

  Charlie had been afraid that the wild north country would be lonely for his only child, but she took to the life like a duck to water. Her natural instinct for making a home exerted itself and she plunged into the work with vigor. The first few months she scrubbed, cleaned, painted, and hung pictures. She made curtains and slipcovers for the couch and chairs. The delighted Charlie let her have full reign of the house and was constantly amazed at all she could do. The sisters at the school had trained her well in the art of cooking, as Charlie discovered to his pleasure, and he wondered how he had ever gotten along without her.

  Lying there on the bed Molly thought about the love her father had for his work and that now he would never finish the job he had started. He loved Alaska and spent many evenings discussing with her the potential of the country. He was the country's foremost authority on ice age mammals, and his research had taken him to every part of the great Alaskan tundra. What would happen to his work now that he was gone? He had colleagues, but Molly had met few of them. He mentioned their names from time to time, but she didn't think he worked closely with them because he preferred to work, for the most part, alone. She wondered if she should contact one of them and offer her father's files. Well—she would have to think about that for a while.

  She gave a deep, dejected sigh and slipped off the bed. Many things would have to be decided, but not now. There would not be a funeral service for her father, but a memorial service would be held later on and she supposed she would have Aunt Dora to contend with and she wasn't looking forward to that.

  Glancing about the room Molly caught her reflection in the mirror and was surprised she looked no different than she had yesterday after all that had happened. The outside of her was still the same, but the inside was totally different. She wondered if anyone else in the world felt as empty as she did.

  Having no exalted opinion of herself Molly was completely unaware of her beauty, although she realized she was prettier than some girls. A few of the men that had come to call on her cousins had looked at her in a friendly way, but her shyness had prevented her from making friends with any of them. Her cousins hadn't seemed anxious for her to mix socially with the crowd they ran with. This hadn't bothered her for they all seemed to be quite frivolous.

  Jim and Evelyn were sitting at the trestle table when Molly came out of the bedroom. What a totally feminine girl she is, thought Evelyn. Her small five-foot three-inch body was slim but softly rounded. She was an elfen-type girl who moved lightly on the ground as if her feet were skimming the surface. The honey-colored hair hung almost to her waist and she wore it now in one long, loose braid hanging down her back. Occasionally she wore it in a neat braid on top of her head and it made her look like a small girl playing dress-up. Violet eyes, rimmed with dark lashes, were set into a face that had known very little makeup. Her good health gave her the soft, clear skin and the slight rosiness to her cheeks. She had no vanity about her eyes or the soft mouth that was quick to tilt into a smile. Molly Develon was a very pretty girl; not only pretty on the outside but on the inside, as well. Being shy and sweet-natured, she would never knowingly offend anyone.

>   Evelyn jumped up and went to the range. "Sit down, Molly, I'll get you some coffee. Jim will be leaving in a few minutes."

  She set the coffee cup in front of Molly and went around the table to sit on the long bench beside her husband. He put his arm around her and she snuggled close.

  "Don't think you need to stay with me, Evelyn. I've been here alone many times." Molly's voice was soft but controlled.

  "I'm staying and that's the end of it," Evelyn said firmly.

  "Of course she's staying. I'll get all the more lovin' when she comes back to me." Jim's attempt at light banter brought a smile to his wife's face.

  "Don't let him fool you, Molly. He gets his share of lovin'."

  "Yes, I know, and I do appreciate you doing this for me."

  Jim reached across and took Molly's hand. "Molly, there isn't a person south of Fairbanks who wouldn't have broken their necks to do something for you. You've endeared yourself to all of us. We all want to help, you have only to ask." Tears came to her eyes, she swallowed the lump in her throat, but said nothing. "If you agree," Jim continued, "I'll arrange a memorial service for Charlie day after tomorrow. Herb Belsile, Charlie's attorney, and I will take care of everything."

  "That's kind of you," Molly murmured. "Perhaps you will notify Aunt Dora in Anchorage?"

  "Sure. Now… there are a few things I would like to say before I go," Jim said kindly. "Herb will be out in about a week to see you. He knows Evelyn will be staying here with you and he seems to think he should come out here rather than you going into the city to see him. I don't have any idea what provisions Charlie made for you. Herb will have to tell you that. But Molly, honey, you can't stay out here alone this winter." He paused and Molly's heart gave a queer little jerk. "What I'm trying to say is this. In the next few days try and get yourself in the frame of mind to accept whatever Herb has to tell you. Charlie will have left you financially secure, but he wouldn't have wanted you to stay here alone."