A Babe In The Woods
Cara Colter
Vulnerable at first glance, a second look assured secret agent Ben McKinnon that Shauna Taylor could take care of herself.At least with anyone else. Because Shauna seemed unprepared for the passion Ben stirred within her. Or the tender emotions the child in his care conjured up. Yet, rather than run, she opened her home to them, knowing Ben needed her–just as she needed him.Still, Ben's assignment would soon end, leaving Shauna alone. Unless the brooding loner realized that with Shauna he'd have more than a job–he'd have a life…and love….
He came out of the woods…with a baby on his back!
Shauna “Storm” Taylor couldn’t believe her eyes. Peeking over the stranger’s broad shoulders was a baby! A baby! With one tuft of shiny black hair sticking straight out of its head, and with black button eyes and fat red cheeks.
“Are you lost?” Her eyes drifted to the baby. It was pounding one chubby fist against the man’s shoulder. She hoped he was lost. That his presence on her land was uncomplicated—that he had become separated from his wife on a Sunday hike.
But he did not seem to be the kind of man who would get lost. Or be on a family hike, either.
“I need a place to stay,” he said, his voice deep and raw as silk.
She stared at him.
A man by himself she could say no to, easily, firmly.
But a man with a baby?
Dear Reader,
The year 2000 marks the twentieth anniversary of Silhouette Books! Ever since May 1980, Silhouette Books—and its flagship line, Silhouette Romance—has published the best in contemporary category romance fiction. And the year’s stellar lineups across all Silhouette series continue that tradition.
This month in Silhouette Romance, Susan Meier unveils her miniseries BREWSTER BABY BOOM, in which three brothers confront instant fatherhood after inheriting six-month-old triplets! First up is The Baby Bequest, in which Evan Brewster does diaper duty…and learns a thing or two about love from his much-younger, mommy-in-the-making assistant. In Teresa Southwick’s charming new Silhouette Romance novel, a tall, dark and handsome man decides to woo a jaded nurse With a Little T.L.C. The Sheik’s Solution is a green-card marriage to his efficient secretary in this lavish fairy tale from Barbara McMahon.
Elizabeth Harbison’s CINDERELLA BRIDES series continues with the magnificent Annie and the Prince. In Cara Colter’s dramatic A Babe in the Woods, a mystery man arrives on a reclusive woman’s doorstep with a babe on his back—and a gun in his backpack! Then we have a man without a memory who returns to his Prim, Proper…Pregnant former fiancée—this unique story by Alice Sharpe is a must-read for those who love twists and turns.
In coming months, look for special titles by longtime favorites Diana Palmer, Joan Hohl, Kasey Michaels, Dixie Browning, Phyllis Halldorson and Tracy Sinclair, as well as many newer but equally loved authors. It’s an exciting year for Silhouette Books, and we invite you to join the celebration!
Happy reading!
Mary-Theresa Hussey
Senior Editor
A Babe in the Woods
Cara Colter
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To my daughter, Cassidy, with love
Books by Cara Colter
Silhouette Romance
Dare To Dream #491
Baby in Blue #1161
Husband in Red #1243
The Cowboy, the Baby and the Bride-to-Be #1319
Truly Daddy #1363
A Bride Worth Waiting For #1388
Weddings Do Come True #1406
A Babe in the Woods #1424
CARA COLTER
shares ten acres in the wild Kootenay region of British Columbia with the man of her dreams, three children, two horses, a cat with no tail and a golden retriever who answers best to “bad dog.” She loves reading, writing and the woods in winter (no bears). She says life’s delights include an automatic garage door opener and the skylight over the bed that allows her to see the stars at night.
She also says, “I have not lived a neat and tidy life, and used to envy those who did. Now I see my struggles as having given me a deep appreciation of life, and of love, that I hope I succeed in passing on through the stories that I tell.”
Contents
Chapter One (#uc10d0fdb-2e6b-5a7c-8373-7530be6a1e8e)
Chapter Two (#ubbefc7cb-3734-5416-98b4-8952eb60aa00)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
She was being watched. She knew it.
She continued to rock the chair, gently, almost lazily, pushing against the weathered grain of the porch floor with one foot. Waiting. She wasn’t really worried. Not yet. The old pump-action shotgun resting outside the cabin door, an arm’s length away, gave her a sense of security.
It was probably an animal.
She was accustomed to this sensation. Of thinking she was alone, in the bush, a million miles from the nearest human being, when suddenly she would feel it. Watched. Sometimes she would catch a glimpse of the woodland spy—the flick of a deer’s tail, the back end of a bear going the other way—but usually she did not.
A horse, probably Sam, neighed noisily from the corral behind the cabin, a comforting sound. Save for the cheerful bickering of the birds in the forest that ringed the small clearing, it was quiet. A little breeze, fresh and cold coming off the mountains, teased the tendrils of dark hair that had fallen out of her braid. Shoots of tender green grass were beginning to poke up and she almost imagined she could smell spring. Everything was normal.
But she did not relax and the sensation of being watched did not go away. When the hackles rose suddenly on the back of her neck, she knew intuitively it was not an animal out there watching. Slowly, she stretched her hands over her head and then flung them wide, straight out from her shoulders. Her fingertips touched the shotgun. Straining slightly, her hand closed around it, drew it close. She pulled it onto her lap and rocked.
“Might as well come out,” she called. “I know you’re there.”
Silence.
Shauna Taylor, nicknamed Storm by her brothers, had arrived at the cabin, accessible only by horseback or by foot, a short while ago. She had not even emptied her pack boxes yet, had opted instead for a quiet moment on the porch as evening fell. She cast her mind back along the trail trying to think if anything had been unusual, out of place. But there had been nothing, save for the number of trees down on the trail after last year’s heavy winter. It had taken her a long time to clear them, and she was small to be handling a chain saw. Jake, her oldest brother, had told her to wait a week, and he would come with her and handle the heavy work.
But she knew ranch work, and he would still be calving in a week. And besides, she was not one to wait. And certainly not one to let a man do anything for her that she could do for herself. Even her brother.
Still, her independence was costing her now.
Her muscles ached with fatigue.
That was probably all that was wrong. She was tired. Exhausted. To the point of imagining things.
She scanned the clearing in front of her. She had given the cabin a name in a moment’s whimsy. Heart’s Rest. Last year she had burned the name onto a wooden sign that was nailed to a towering lodgepole pine just beyond the stone fire pit and the scraggly, rock-lined bed where she had planted wildflowers. Purple mountain saxifrage. Fairy slipper. Fireweed. Indian paintbrush.
Contentment crept up on her, and her fingers relaxed slightly on the shotgun. She was probably imagining things.
She hoped she was.
Still, her other brother, Evan, was fond of telling her she had the most highly developed sense of intuition of anyone he had ever met.
It came, she supposed, from spending so much time alone, loving the solitude of these high and lonesome places. It came from spending more time with horses than people, and the language of her equine friends was the one of intuition, not words.
It came, she supposed, from growing up in the care of her two brothers, far older than she, on a remote ranch in the Coast Mountains west of Williams Lake, British Columbia. Hopelessly unqualified to raise a small girl after their parents had died in a cabin fire, Jake and Evan had unintentionally let her run wild. She knew the forests and mountains around their ranch as well as she knew her own face in the mirror.
She felt safe in these wild places, connected in some way to the immense creative forces of the universe; looked after. Even now, with something out there, she felt confident. This was her turf, and she could handle whatever came her way.
The only time in her life she hadn’t felt safe was when she had gone to the University of Alberta in Edmonton for two years. Her brothers, surprisingly resolute, had told her it was okay with them if she became a rancher someday, but first they wanted her to know a bigger world. And, truth be told, Storm had felt a strange and tingling eagerness to know a larger world, too.
But the city had been a shock—dodging cars, having to worry about walking alone at night, locking doors.
It was no way to live.
A twig snapped.
She pumped a shell into the shotgun chamber. There were really no places left where a person could be absolutely alone. Hunters and hikers found their way to these isolated spaces. And it didn’t bother her.
Unless they tried to be sneaky about it.
Sneakiness bothered her. A lot. Her intuition had failed her once, back there in Edmonton. When she’d been fooled by a too-handsome face and a smooth way.
She wondered if her brothers would have laughed, seeing their tomboy sister experimenting with makeup. She’d even bought a skirt, ridiculously short, now that she thought about it. Dorian’s eyes widening with appreciation had made that little scrap of material worth its enormous price.
Storm curtly turned the memory off and listened. She told herself to smarten up. It wouldn’t really be fair if she took a shot at some unsuspecting hiker because she detested sneakiness.
The truth was she would have dearly liked to pump a few rounds into the air around Dorian, just to scare the living daylights out of him. Once she’d found out the truth.
Married.
The snake had been married.
If she was alone up here at her mountain retreat, it didn’t matter. And if she wasn’t, it wouldn’t hurt to show she knew how to handle the gun and was not afraid to use it.
Boom! Take that, Dorian.
She shot high, into the air. The sound of the shotgun blast echoed over the quiet clearing. Casually, she pumped another shell into the chamber. At first she thought she had failed to flush out whatever kind of varmint hid in the trees.
And then a thin and reedy wail flowed into the silence left by the blast of the shotgun. Storm’s mouth fell open and she leaped to her feet. She set the shotgun down and raced down the cabin’s crumbling stone steps and across the clearing toward the sound.
Because there was really no mistaking that sound.
Even for a woman like her who refused to even hold one.
There was a baby in those woods.
A man slipped out of the trees before she was halfway across the clearing.
Storm skidded to a halt.
He was an imposing man, maybe two inches over six feet. He was incredibly broad across his shoulders and through his chest, and that broadness narrowed dramatically at his flat belly. His legs were long and lean, the clean line of hard muscle evident through the fabric of heavy denim. His khaki-colored shirt-sleeves were rolled up, revealing a naked length of very powerful forearm. The first few buttons of his shirt were open, showing a tangle of dark, curling chest hair.
He carried himself with confidence, loose-limbed and yet ready. Ready for anything. A man who could deal with the elements, and not just survive but be made stronger by them, even more able to face the challenges of a world as wild and rugged as he was.
Her gaze went to his face. It was a face of raw, rugged and uncompromising strength. His cheekbones were high, his nose straight, his jaw square. He had the faintest hint of a cleft in his chin. He could have been utterly gorgeous if not for a hardness that lingered in the turn of his mouth. His hair was neat and short, but sweat-darkened, and she suspected it was a shade lighter than the dark chocolate it looked to be. His skin had the weathered look of a man who spent a great deal of time outdoors, and the coppery tones of it made the gray of his eyes seem deep and cool, like the gray of icy mountain creeks.
His eyes were watchful, wary and weary.
Beyond weary. The man was exhausted.
Then a movement over his left shoulder drew her gaze from his. She could feel her eyes widen and her mouth drop open.
Peeking over his shoulder was a baby. A baby! With one tuft of shiny black hair sticking straight out from its head, and with black button eyes and fat red cheeks with grimy tear stains running down them.
“Are you alone?” the man asked.
The exhaustion she saw in his eyes was echoed in that voice—a deep voice, raw as silk.
Still, it was not a good question to be asked by a complete stranger. A man who had watched for a long time before he had made his presence known. Who might never have made his presence known if she had not flushed him out with a shotgun blast. The question was not asked out of any kind of friendliness.
“No,” she lied, instinctively, “I’m not alone.”
Some tension leaped in him, coiled along his muscles. A man ready for anything, including a fight. With a baby on his back.
“Who’s with you?” he asked, his eyes scanning the cabin behind her.
“None of your business.”
“Who’s with you?” he asked again, quietly, but with some unmistakable iron in his voice.
“My friend Sam,” she said defiantly. A nice name. Sturdy sounding. Strong. Loyal. Which is why she had given it to the big bay gelding she used for her saddle horse.
“Why didn’t Sam come out when you fired off that shotgun?” he asked. Something in him relaxed. The faintest hint of amusement lit those eyes before the weariness and caution drowned it.
“Why didn’t you?” she snapped back.
“I thought you might shoot me.”
“I still might.”
“You’re not a very neighborly kind of person,” he pointed out, mildly.
“Me and Sam aren’t much used to neighbors.”
“But you’re used to shotguns.” Something, not quite a smile, lifted a corner of that firm mouth. “You and Sam.”
He had obviously figured out Sam was fiction, but she tried again, anyway. “That’s why he didn’t come out. He’s used to me blasting off that old shotgun at varmints.”
The stranger’s smile, thankfully, died before it was ever completely born, and cool eyes scanned her face, then the clearing and then the cabin, before returning to her. “You’re alone,” he decided.
She wanted to insist she wasn’t, but knew it was pointless. She suspected this man’s intuition was as fine-honed as her own was. Maybe more so. Despite the weariness, there was an alertness about him that reminded her of wild animals poised on the edge of danger, getting ready to flee. Or fight.
He’s in trouble, Storm thought, bad trouble.
She wondered why she did not sense imminent danger, then realized that her intuition had been known to let her down in this one critical area. Men.
“Are you lost?” Her eyes drifted to the baby. It was pounding one chubby fist against the man’s shoulder and had another tangled in the dark silk of his hair. A lesser man might have winced or tried to unlock the baby’s determined grip, but his attention remained totally focused on her. As if she might make a dash for that shotgun. People who were lost were usually not quite so on guard.
Still, she wished he was lost. That his presence here was uncomplicated—that he had become separated from his wife on a Sunday hike.
But he did not seem to be the kind of man who would get lost. Or be on a family hike, either. Her eyes went to that telltale finger. No gold band. And no little white line where one might have been a short while ago. She considered herself a quick learner.
“I need a place to stay.”
She stared at him.
“I was up here years ago. I remembered the cabin.”
He could be anybody. He’d probably kidnapped that baby. He didn’t look like the kind of man who would find taking a baby on a hiking trip a whole lot of fun.
“A place to stay? Here?”
“Only for a couple of days.”
Oh, great. Now he was appealing to her softer side. A man by himself, she could say no to easily, firmly. But a man with a baby?
He pitched forward a step, and she saw with sudden horror that there was a small pool of blood where he had stood before.
“You’re hurt!”
“It’s just a scratch.”
She could see a red stain now spreading around the side of his shirt, just above the waistline of his jeans, from his back.
She went forward. Suddenly she didn’t have to think at all. She went behind him. She could tell he didn’t like that one little bit. Like an old-time gunslinger, he didn’t like having his back exposed.
The baby was in the top part of a backpack not designed for babies. Bungee straps secured the unusual cargo. She stretched up, unstrapped the cords deftly and took the wriggling little bundle down. If she was taller, she might have been able to see what else was in the pack, and it might have answered some questions for her. But she was not taller, and the next five seconds did not hold much promise of her growing.
The man smelled faintly of soap, overlaid with woodsy aromas of sunshine and sweat. And blood. She glanced down and saw the dark-red stain just above his right hip.
She hoped to hell he wasn’t gun shot. They were a hard ride from the trailhead and a half hour to the tiny hamlet of Thunder Lake after that, if she could get her cranky truck to start right away.
Why did she think he had been shot?
He could have caught himself on a branch. Or fallen on a rock.
The baby gurgled at her and tried to insert pudgy fingers in her nose. It diverted her attention from the man’s presence, though even not looking at him, she could feel him. It was as if electricity hummed and hissed in the air around him, and made her quiet clearing vibrate with tension.
The baby’s weight was solid in her arms. She didn’t think she’d held a baby before. A baby was a rare commodity in a town like Thunder Lake. When there was one around, a baby, Storm avoided the ruckus. And now she knew why. It made a person kind of go all soft and mushy inside, even when a man was dripping blood all over her yard.
“Come on,” she said, lugging the baby up the stairs. Her mind raced. An injured man and a baby had just showed up at her cabin. He was relieved that no one was here but her, a woman on her own. Maybe she was the one with trouble. Bad trouble. She ducked a little pink finger aimed at her eye. The baby clouded things. It was hard to consider the possibility of menace in the merry presence of the child.
The man paused behind her on the porch. She glanced over her shoulder to see him unloading the shotgun. He slipped the shell into his pocket.
There’s plenty more where that one came from, buster.
The cabin was small and cozy inside. A primitive wooden table stood at its center, and a potbellied wood burner was in the corner. Two sets of rough open cupboards were on either side of a sink with a hand pump for a faucet. There was one tiny window, and in a rare fit of domesticity Storm had nailed up two squares of checkered red fabric that passed for curtains if they weren’t inspected too closely.
Her visitor went and pulled back the matching curtains that separated the bunk beds from the main cabin area. When his inspection proved they were alone, the last of the tension relaxed out of those hard muscles. He turned to face her.
“This has changed. You can sleep a crowd in here now,” he commented of the six bunks. “How come?”
“It’s an army training center. I’m expecting the troops at any moment.”
“Led by Sam?” he asked dryly, slipping his arms from the backpack straps and letting it slide to the floor, taking in the rest of the cabin in a glance.
His gaze rested for a moment on the early-blooming wildflowers she had stuck in a tin at the center of the table when she’d first arrived. Now she was sorry she had done that. She thought it made her look somewhat vulnerable, which was not the appearance she wanted to give right at the moment.
“I better have a look at that wound,” she said.
“It doesn’t qualify as a wound.”
“Well, whatever it qualifies as, you’re dripping blood on my floor, so sit down.” She shoved a chair back for him with her foot.
He looked narrowly at her, unaccustomed to taking orders, though she suspected he may have given a few in his day. His compliance was reluctant. He winced when he sat down.
He picked up a brochure on her table, and she resisted an urge to snatch it from his hand, to keep her secrets, while she probed his.
“Storm Mountain Trail Rides,” he read out loud. “Come and see the beauty and panorama of Canada’s great north by horseback. Day, overnight or weekly excursions. Limited to five riders. Mid-June to mid-September.” His eyes flicked to the bunks, counting, and then went back to the brochure. “Led by fully qualified guide Storm Taylor. What the hell kind of name is that?” he muttered. “Storm?”
“I’ll have a look at that wound now.”
But he wasn’t done with the brochure. He flipped it over, and there was her picture with her name under it.
“So,” he said, “Storm of Storm Mountain, you’re getting ready for your trail-riding season to open. No guests booked, for what, three weeks?”
“You’re getting blood on my chair,” she pointed out. “I think we’d better take care of that.”
The baby made a sound somewhere between a mew and a squeak.
“I think he’s hungry,” he said.
His concern for the baby’s well-being was somewhat reassuring. Storm held the baby at arms’ length. He. His lashes were thick and sooty as a chimney brush. He waved his chubby arms and legs at her and gurgled. He was wearing plain blue terry-cloth pajamas with feet in them. He seemed content, like a baby who could wait while she saw to a man bleeding all over her furnishings, humble as they might be. She considered where to set him. The counter or tabletop seemed like a good idea, but given his roly-poly build he might roll off like a live beach ball. Instead she plopped him down on his padded fanny on the floor.
He flopped forward at the waist and grabbed at a dust mote.
“Does he crawl?” she asked dubiously.
The man gave the baby a measuring look. “No.”
But Storm felt he was guessing. He didn’t know if the baby crawled. She had the awful feeling he didn’t know much more about that baby than she did.
Well, maybe a little more. He knew the baby was male.
The baby captured the dust mote and after trying to put it in his ear and his eye, he finally managed to cram his prize into his mouth.
Storm leaped forward and dug it out. The baby chomped happily on her fingers with his toothless gums. It should have been utterly disgusting, but for some reason it wasn’t so bad. Casting one more look at the man at the table, she went and scooped her bedroll off one of the bunks, unrolled it and put the baby on it. She hoped his diaper wouldn’t spring a leak on her only bedding.
The baby flopped over even further, until his nose was practically touching the sleeping bag, and then with a mighty grunt, pushed his legs out behind him, so now he was lying on his stomach. He flailed away, grunting with exertion.
Storm watched for a moment, fascinated, then turned to the man at her kitchen table.
“Take off your shirt.”
“I hardly know you.” That hint of a smile again.
She wondered if he used that smile to disarm people, because there was no answering warmth in his gray eyes, only watchfulness, appraisal. He was measuring her every move.
I’m in trouble, she thought, but kept her voice steady. “And that’s how it’s going to stay,” she said firmly. “Take off your shirt.”
He pulled his shirt tails out of the waistband of his pants, flinching when the fabric pulled at the clotted blood at his side. He unbuttoned, revealing to her slowly the broad swell of his chest, the rock-hard cut of pectoral muscles. He slid the shirt off, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from gasping at the absolute male perfection of him. His skin was bronze and silky over sinewy muscles. Hair curled, thick and springy, over the broad, hard plain of his chest. The hair narrowed down to a taut stomach, then disappeared inside the waistband of his jeans.
She turned abruptly. What was wrong with her? This man had arrived on her mountain and at her cabin with an attitude that aroused all her suspicions. She needed to keep her mind crystal clear so that she knew how to deal with this troubling situation. Patch him up and send him on his way, or patch him up and be on her way? What was not going to happen, what was not even a possibility, was sharing her cabin with him for a few days.
Not that he had to know that just yet.
On the top shelf of one of her open cupboards was a first-aid kit, and she took it down and sorted carefully through the bandages, painkillers and swabs.
When she turned back to him, she saw that he had straddled the chair so she could get a better look at his wound. His broad and naked back was enough to cloud anyone’s thinking! Again, she was taken by the color of his skin. Bronze. It made it look warm and silky, skin that invited touching.
She bent quickly and looked at where the blood blossomed like an obscene crimson flower slightly above and to the side of his hip. When she cleaned away the blood, it really did look like a scratch, a mean scratch though, deep, wide and ragged.
“How did you do this?”
“I was trying to chop my way through a mess of brush. The ax swung back and clipped me.”
She studied the wound, thinking it was at least possible, though the wound seemed to be in an odd place and the edges of it not clean enough to have been caused by an ax. She continued to suspect the wound was the result of a gunshot, though if it was a gunshot it was superficial, a graze. Her brothers would say she read too many suspense novels.
“Which way did you come in from?” she asked, striving to sound casual.
He hesitated. “From the east.”
“That’s a tough way to come in.” She didn’t say a weird way. He had come cross-country, from a little-known logging road. It explained why she had seen no sign of him on her trail.
Doing her best not to hurt him more, she finished cleaning around the wound. His skin felt exactly the way she had known it would feel—like warm silk wrapped over steel.
She continued to probe, trying to keep her questions conversational and casual. “What would make you come here? With a baby?”
“We’re on vacation.”
“A vacation?” Too late, she tried to snatch back the skepticism out of her tone.
He shrugged, and she glanced up from her swabbing of that cut, to see his eyes on her, hooded, measuring.
She turned hastily from him to her humble kitchen counter and mixed up Jake’s favorite old family formula to put on the injury.
“This place doesn’t seem like it would be first choice for someone with a baby to take a holiday,” she ventured, glancing back at him.
“Really?” he said evenly. “Fresh air. Great fishing. What is that?”
“Turpentine and brown sugar. It kills infection.”
“No kidding?” he growled.
“Kerosene oil works, too, but you have to be careful with it. It’ll blister the skin.”
“Really?”
“And a bit of chimney soot and lard will work, but it’s messy.” She offered these folksy little gems to him partly to take his mind off the pain, partly to make him think she was just a naive mountain girl, not sophisticated enough to be even contemplating the possibility he might have kidnapped that baby.
“My brother Jake would have put a spiderweb on to stop the bleeding, but I’ll just use one of these regular bandages.”
“Shortage of spiderwebs?”
“I think the baby is eating them.”
He chuckled at that, a reluctant and dry sound deep in his throat.
She unrolled medical gauze around his entire lower body, back to belly, to hold the bandage in place and keep pressure on it. It was amazingly hard not to touch a man while doing that, so she simply surrendered to the circumstances.
A mistake. Every time her hands grazed his skin, his muscles, physical sensation rocked through her. She had never been struck by lightning, thank God, but she was pretty sure it would feel just about like this. She felt a need so naked and demanding it set her teeth on edge. Where had it come from? This sudden need that felt greater than a need for food or water. To be kissed hard and held soft.
Not by this man!
A stranger, with a suspicious wound, and a baby she did not think was his.
The air around him practically tingled with danger, mystery and an aura of exotic worlds she knew nothing about.
She had a lot of questions to ask and she ordered them in her mind as she bent to the task at hand, knowing, even before she asked, that his answers would not satisfy her curiosity, nor lessen the sense of danger vibrating off him in waves that were unmistakably sensuous.
“You’re trussing me up like a mummy,” he complained.
“Since you mention it, where is junior’s mommy?”
“She died. She died when he was born.”
“And you’re his daddy, right?”
A flick of emotion in those complicated eyes. “Right.”
She felt a shiver go up and down her spine as she registered the lie, but she said with absolute calm, “Well, you’re welcome to the cabin. It’s primitive but if it’s fresh air and fishing you’re looking for, you’ll find plenty of both here. I have to move on, but if you need me to leave you anything—”
“You can’t go anywhere tonight. It’s nearly dark.”
It was said pleasantly enough, but she had the uneasy feeling she had just become a prisoner. Still, she had her shotgun outside the door, and her wits.
“That’s probably a good idea,” she said pleasantly. “It wouldn’t be smart to go thrashing around the mountains in the dark. We’ll muddle through tonight, and I’ll go in the morning.”
She cast him a look from under her lashes. She knew these mountain trails, night or day. And besides, there would be a moon.
Ben McKinnon watched his prisoner carefully. Because that was what she was now. He could not risk letting her go and telling anyone she had seen him with the baby. He wondered if she knew it, and suspected she did. Her eyes, gorgeous blue, almost turquoise, sparkled with spirit and intelligence, despite the folksy cobwebs and chimney soot routine.
She was a complication he didn’t need. One he resented. He had not planned on anyone being at the cabin. He needed five days, maybe six, in a place where he could not be found and would not be looked for. Meanwhile, Jack Day, a friend from the Federal Intelligence Agency, would find out who had betrayed him and if the vengeance of Noel East’s political enemies extended to the baby. Back there in the woods, Ben had ditched a high-tech two-way radio that he could check in on later.
Noel East. A humble and courageous man, a single father, who had put his name forward as a candidate in the tiny country of Crescada’s first free elections.
Ben had been assigned to protect him. The immensity of his failure would haunt him into old age.
The baby began to howl, thankfully, bringing him back to the here and now before he saw again in his mind’s eye that strangely peaceful look on Noel’s face, heard again his dying words.
“How can something so small make so much noise?” the woman asked, astounded.
“I’ve been asking myself the same thing for three days,” he said, and saw his mistake register in her face. He’d just said he was the kid’s father, one of those lies he had become adept at telling in the course of his work. Necessary lies. “He’s hungry,” he said, hoping that interpreting the caterwauling would win him back some lost ground.
“Have you got food for him?”
“In the pack.” He sprang up when she moved toward it, intercepting her smoothly. “I’ll get it.”
He seemed to be doing very poorly here. He had failed to allay her suspicions, failed to convince her he was the baby’s father, now she knew there was something in that pack he didn’t want her to see.
“We need to heat this stuff up,” he said, again hoping to impress her with what an expert he was on formula preparation.
“I’ll get some wood and we’ll light the stove.”
As soon as she was out the door, Ben set down the formula. He shut his eyes and pressed a hand against his wound. Hell, he hadn’t hurt like this for a long time. But turpentine and brown sugar?
He limped over to the small window and looked out into the gathering darkness. She was splitting kindling, not heading for the horses. He could hear her whistling, which he thought was probably a ploy to make him think she was more accepting of this situation than she was.
“Would you give it a rest?” he asked the baby.
The baby ignored him.
He was not a man used to being ignored. Or used to babies. And certainly not used to a woman like that. When he’d first seen her on the porch, he’d thought she was a boy. Then she had stretched, and not only shown him some very unboyish curves but her face had come out from under the shadow of the brim of her hat, and her thick dark braid had flopped over her slender shoulder. She was more than lovely. Striking. Stunning.
What was a woman like that doing running a rugged business like this by herself? Hiding, he figured, probably every bit as much as he was. Just from something different.
He was willing to bet, from the suspicion in her eyes, it had been a man.
He resented that unknown man, too. Destroying her trust when he needed a trusting woman most.
Giving her one more glance, he went back to his pack and found a little plastic container of green powder that claimed it became peas when water was added. He dumped some into a dish and added water. Instant pond scum.
The baby stopped crying as soon as he picked him up, a reaction that pleased and horrified him at the same time.
“Open up,” he muttered.
The baby opened his mouth, then closed it firmly just before the spoon made it in. Green stuff dribbled down his little blue outfit.
Ben scowled. The baby pouted. Ben glanced around. He listened. He could still hear the ax biting into wood.
“Okay, okay. Chugga-chugga choo-choo. Here comes the train. Open the tunnel. Open the tunnel!”
The baby laughed, the tunnel opened, the green slime went in, was chewed thoughtfully and swallowed. He held out the spoon again. The baby pouted. The kid wouldn’t eat now without the train routine.
Ben felt he had been through just about the toughest week in his career, first losing Noel East, who had become his friend, and then smuggling this baby, Noel’s child, out of Crescada. And now he had to play choo-choo to get the damn kid to eat? It didn’t seem that life could get much more unfair.
The baby got a look of intense concentration on his face. He turned a most unbecoming shade of purple. A horrible aroma drifted up to Ben’s nostrils.
He conceded his fate; it could get more unfair after all.
Chapter Two
Storm felt perspiration popping out on her forehead.
“Give,” her unexpected guest told her quietly. “You can’t win. You’re going to break your arm trying.”
Storm braced her elbow, closed her eyes, tightened her grip on his hand and pushed with everything she had.
Damn. He was holding her. Toying with her. She suspected he could put her down in a second if he chose.
They were arm wrestling over who was going to look after that diaper. Jake and Evan had been arm wrestling with her since she was a tot. They’d shown her a trick, a way to snap her wrist quickly at the very onset of the match, which gave her pretty even odds against superior strength.
And it often told her a great deal about a man, the way he accepted his defeat or his victory. And she needed to know something about this man.
She had never arm wrestled Dorian. A mistake. She probably could have saved herself a great deal of heartache if she’d used her regular measuring stick of character, instead of pretending to be something she was not. She nearly shuddered at the thought of that bright-red lipstick and thick black mascara that she’d hidden behind.
Still, it seemed to have been a terrible mistake to suggest an arm wrestle to this man, too.
Because when his hand had locked around hers, she had felt the strength in it. A pure strength. And she had felt something else.
Pure sizzle.
Right down to the bottom of her belly.
She’d arm wrestled just about every man in Thunder Lake and never, ever felt that sudden “woomph” deep in her stomach.
She glanced into the clear gray of his eyes and felt it again. A pull to him that was unfathomable given their circumstances, given the fact he thought he could make her stay here, and she planned to prove him wrong.
She told herself, sternly, she only needed to know something of him so she knew what to do once she had left here. Give him a few days with the baby to have his vacation? Or go down that mountain as fast as she could and come back with the law?
The very fact that she did not feel free to leave when she wanted should be telling her exactly what she needed to know.
But her intuition was placing her in a position of inner turmoil. Her intuition looked into the clearness of his eyes and saw, lurking just beneath the cool, still surface, strength of spirit.
The facts spoke of something else. The wound, his presence at her cabin not really explained, the baby most likely not his. He wasn’t even comfortable changing a diaper!
Childishly, she decided how the arm-wrestling match finished would make her decision for her. If he won, she would go down the mountain and forget she had ever seen him or that baby. If she won, she was coming back with Constable Jennings from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
She closed her eyes again, focused all her strength, felt her arm begin to tremble with effort and exertion. And nearly fell off her chair when he suddenly released her hand.
“Hey!” she said, miffed.
His eyes weren’t clear now, but deliberately hooded. “A draw,” he said blandly.
“It was not. I was about to take you.” She knew darn well the exact opposite was true.
“You were about to break your arm.”
“Oh, right.”
“I could see the white line of your bone right through your skin. Trust me. It was a draw.”
He had called the match because he thought he was going to harm her. That told her a reassuring little fact she needed to know. It would seem he wasn’t planning to hurt her. It would seem he was—the word noble flitted through her mind. She gave herself a shake.
She got to her feet abruptly, wiping her hand on her jeans as if she could wipe away the sudden feeling that had engulfed her when she had looked into his eyes.
They were the eyes of a dangerous man. Mysterious. Cool. Calm. And yet she could not help but feel the strength in them was linked to her own future.
He nodded at her. “You’re very strong.”
On the outside. Still, it was a good response. He had won the match, even if he was noble enough not to say so. He was sure of himself. He didn’t need to overpower her to nurture his own self-esteem. And he didn’t rub her face in his superior strength, either.
No surprises there. He oozed that standoffish kind of confidence of a man who walked tall and walked alone.
She spun away from that steady searching look in his eyes and looked at the baby. The aroma wafting off that wee individual was every bit as astonishing as the amount of noise he could make.
Gingerly, she picked up a clean diaper and studied it. “What’s his name?” she asked the man behind her.
And then realized she didn’t know his name either.
“You can call him Rocky. You don’t have to change him. I’ve managed before.”
“A deal’s a deal. And what can I call you?”
Hesitation. “Ben.”
She unfolded the diaper and flipped it trying to figure out which way it went on. What kind of man didn’t even want to tell you his name? Perhaps the arm-wrestle test had failed to reveal his character to her after all.
Really, all she had to remember was one thing.
She was a terrible judge of character when it came to men. Arm wrestling or no.
Suddenly, he was right behind her. He had come on leopard-quiet feet, and so she gasped with soft surprise when he reached around her and took the diaper, laid it out flat on the counter and contemplated it for a moment.
His arm was brushing her shoulder.
She could feel the corded muscles in it, the heat coming off it. He smelled of the forest and of man, and compared to the other smell in the cabin it was pretty heady stuff.
She gritted her teeth.
And reminded herself. His wound was suspicious. She was a terrible judge of men. Whose baby was this, anyway? She moved slightly so that she was out of range of that muscular arm and his masculine potency.
“Like that,” he decided, placing the diaper, and then casually, “And what should I call you?”
“Storm, just like it says on the brochure.”
“Storm.” He repeated it, looking at her as if he was looking deeper, trying to see beyond what his eyes told him. “A nickname?”
“My brothers always called me that.” Her brothers had always said the name accurately reflected her temperament, though she didn’t share that with Ben.
He nodded at that, satisfied she suspected that his own assessment of her character, arrived at in less than fifteen minutes, had just been confirmed.
“Well, Storm, I think the moment of truth has arrived.”
Great. Just spill the beans.
But that wasn’t the truth he was talking about. He scooped the baby off the floor, held him at arm’s length for a moment and then laid him on the counter. “Somehow we’ll figure this out together. Any suggestions for step one?”
Rocky gurgled and smiled, somehow not in the least intimidated by this intimidating man.
“Very helpful,” Ben told the baby, and she detected there might be a sense of humor behind all that steel.
“How about the snaps on the sleeper?” she suggested, trying not to smile, trying to remember her most important step was to get out of here. She could contemplate what step two would be after she had accomplished step one.
“Even better.”
She watched his hands, strong and brown, make short work of the snaps. They were not, she decided, hands accustomed to this kind of work, and yet he was not a man who would do anything hesitantly.
Her own shirt, western-style, had snaps on it.
She ordered her mind not to go there.
Ben stripped off the sleeper with the same let’s-get-the-job-done efficiency. The baby was pink and dimpled all over. He waved his arms and legs, apparently delighting in the little explosions of odor his every vigorous movement caused.
“Have you got any clothes-pegs?” Ben asked.
Her lifestyle often required drying things on an inside line. She found the tin with the clothespins in it and brought it to him.
She had thought he intended to use them as diaper fasteners, and despite her desire not to let him win her over in any way, she burst out laughing when he carefully put one on the end of his nose.
“Want one?” he asked, his voice only marginally less sexy for the nasal twang in it.
“Does it help?”
“Yeah.”
So she nodded and found a clothespin clipped on the end of her nose. She was willing to bet she looked a lot less sexy—not, she realized, that she had looked that sexy to begin with. Not that she even wanted to think about why she might care if she looked sexy or not.
The clothespin helped. It hurt, but it was worth it.
“All right. Flap one, down.” He pulled the plastic tab, and the baby’s right leg sprang free of the diaper. She listened to his voice and heard a clue there. She would take money that there was something military in his background.
“Flap two, down,” he said in that same pilot-preparing-for-takeoff tone. He pulled number two. With lightning speed he had the diaper down and off and had handed her the damp cloth. He was running for the door.
She thought she might embarrass herself by puking, but oddly enough the chore didn’t bother her.
In seconds the baby was clean. She looked at the little jar of petroleum jelly, dabbed her fingers in and swabbed a generous amount on the baby’s little pink bottom. Ben was back.
“What did you do with that thing?” she asked.
“I put it in your fire pit. It puffed up like a big marshmallow and disappeared.”
“Great, do the same with this.” She handed him the washcloth.
“Isn’t it brand new?”
“I don’t care.”
He gave her an approving look and went back out. She plopped the baby on the fresh diaper.
“Don’t try and do up those tabs with petroleum jelly on your hands,” he called over his shoulder.
Too late. “Why not?”
“They won’t—”
The grease-slicked tab refused to cling to the diaper. She tried to wipe it off. No dice.
“—stick.” He came back in and looked over her shoulder. “Beginner’s mistake. But I have a short supply of diapers. I can’t throw any of them out.”
“You can always use moss,” she said.
“Really? And if there’s no moss, maybe a spider’s web or two?”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No, ma’am.” But he turned quickly from her and began rummaging in the first-aid kit. When he turned back to her, roll of gauze in hand, the glint of amusement that had leaped in his eyes was gone. It was just as well. When these small traces of personality pushed through his surface remoteness, she saw a man who could be altogether too charming.
“I think it’s wonderful that the native people knew how to use what was around them—weren’t dependent on stores and factories to provide them with something so simple as a diaper,” she informed him.
“You won’t get any argument from me.”
“Good,” she said with great dignity.
“Just as long as you don’t start mixing up the turpentine and brown sugar as a substitute for baby powder.”
She glared at him, reminding herself it was a good thing if he thought she was some kind of backwoods bumpkin. The last thing he would be expecting would be a daring, midnight escape. The last laugh would be hers.
The only part that was too bad was that she wouldn’t have the enjoyment of seeing his face when he woke up in the morning to an empty cabin.
He flashed her a grin that nearly stole the breath out of her lungs and then ignored her as he wrapped the gauze around the waistband of the baby’s diaper, finally tying it in a neat bow in the front. “How’s that for using the resources at hand?”
She tried not to smile, but that ridiculous bow got her. She smiled. And then she laughed.
And so did he.
And she knew three things about him. One, he did not laugh often.
Two. He had removed the clothespin from his nose and she had not. She snatched off the clothespin.
Three. He was a complete novice at changing diapers.
The laughter died in her, and it did in him, too. They regarded each other warily.
“This isn’t your baby, is it?” Stupid to ask. She wanted to lull him into a false sense of security, and yet she needed to know. At least that.
He hesitated, shot her a look out of the corner of his eye. His features were suddenly closed. He carefully folded the baby’s arms back into the sleeves of his sleeper and tucked his legs back inside the fabric.
“No,” he finally said. “He’s not my baby.”
“Then why do you have him?”
“It’s a long story, Storm.” His voice was laced with weariness and remoteness.
She ignored the way she felt when he said her name, his voice deep-timbered, as sexy as the touch of hot hands across the back of her neck.
“I seem to have some time on my hands.” She folded her arms stubbornly over her chest.
“The less you know the better.”
She took in her breath sharply at that, and he watched her narrowly, then looked away, ran a hand through the rich darkness of his hair, sighed and looked back.
“I can tell you this: I’ve been entrusted with his care. I’m not one of those dads you read about in the paper. Or a kidnapper.”
“How long have you had him?”
“A few days.”
“Is his name really Rocky?”
Hesitation. “No.”
She studied him long and hard. He did not flinch under her scrutiny but met her gaze evenly. Still, there was something hooded in his eyes. A place that was hard and cold, that had seen too much.
Sometimes intuition was a curse.
Because beyond all that she thought she saw a man dying of loneliness.
She reminded herself that a woman could die of perpetual stupidity, too.
“What’s his real name?” she asked.
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Won’t.”
“All right. Won’t.”
“And for how long have you been entrusted with his care?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She realized she had better not press him anymore. She did not want to alert him to the fact she could not stay under these circumstances.
Ben discovered he liked looking at her.
Those wide eyes were incredible. He was not sure he had ever seen human eyes so close to turquoise in shade. They tilted up at the corners. She had taken off the hat, and her hair was dark and shiny like a river of braided black silk. Her features were even and pleasing, a faint scattering of freckles over a pert little nose. Her lips were full and sensuous, and he wondered what it would be like to taste them.
And chastised himself for wondering. He had a job to do: to keep that baby safe until some semblance of sanity returned to Crescada, until whoever had murdered the baby’s father, Noel East, was safely in custody, where he could not harm the baby, Rockford. Ben knew his focus had to stay crystal clear, and contemplating the taste of lips would not keep his focus crystal clear.
He forced himself to study her analytically, to figure out if she was going to be an asset or a liability if things went sour.
An asset.
There was strength in her face. Independence. Intelligence.
And she was strong physically, as well.
He had been totally taken by surprise by the power in her arms when she had innocently suggested an arm wrestle. He’d been so taken off guard by the quick and powerful flick of her wrist that had she pressed her advantage she might have taken him before he knew what hit him.
He had better keep that in mind. He needed his guard up or she could take him before he knew what hit him.
The question was, take him where?
A question he really did not want an answer for. At all.
A mystery. She was a mystery. Even her name held some of her mystery, something brewing within her that was elemental and fierce, a force of nature that a man would be foolish to underestimate.
In his experience women who looked like her walked the runways of the world. What was she doing running a string of horses, alone, in this remote and beautiful north country?
Why had she challenged him to an arm wrestle, when she could have gotten him to do anything she wanted, up to and including handling that disgusting diaper all by himself, with a bat of her gorgeous tangled lashes?
One thing his life did not need was any more intrigue.
His whole life had been intrigue. Dark secrets. Danger. He’d been recruited to do federal intelligence work at age twenty-one. He had thought he was embarking on a career of high romance and adventure.
Instead the road had been a lonely one that had turned him hard and cold. Much too hard and cold to be entrusted with something so fragile as a baby.
Or this woman.
Still, here he was, and if there was one thing he had learned—and learned swiftly—it was that it was very rare for a man in his line of work to ever be handed circumstances that were to his liking. He learned to make do with what he was dealt.
This time the cards had turned up a baby whose family was dead and who needed his protection. And a woman with far too many questions making her eyes burn brilliant.
He spent ten years living by the military adage, “Need to know.” What you didn’t need to know, you weren’t told. And what others didn’t need to know, you didn’t tell them.
And this woman in front of him wanted to know everything. For her own safety, and that of the baby, he would tell her nothing for as long as he could.
Oddly, the way her eyes were resting on him, he suspected she already knew things about him that he did not know about himself.
And it scared the living daylights out of him.
He thrust the baby at her. “Maybe you could try and shovel some of that green stuff into him.”
She looked awkward with the baby, and yet her face softened with tenderness when she looked at him.
And for a blinding moment a renegade yearning shot out from under the steel trap of Ben’s hard-earned control—a yearning to walk away from this life of loneliness and be a part of a circle of love.
It occurred to him he’d given Storm his real name, evidence that his thinking was already being clouded by her presence, by that restlessness within himself that had made him take the job with Rocky’s father on pure whimsy, instead of reason. He’d liked the man. And look where that had gotten him. He should know by now that forming attachments was something he should guard against.
Cursing inwardly, he turned away from her and the baby and went outside.
He listened. The forest was dark and silent. He listened inside himself. His heart told him he had not been followed. And that he was in danger of a different kind.
A kind he had never faced before, and was not trained to defend against.
Storm spooned the green stuff into Rocky, who slurped it back with relish. He waved his hands wildly in the air in between bites.
Ben had gone outside. She was glad. His presence did things to her. Made her aware of something deep, dark and dangerous inside herself.
Something that had never been tapped or touched.
Not even by her infatuation with Dorian.
The baby finished eating, and she dampened a cloth and wiped his face. She took him and rested his head against her shoulder and rocked him, and he went to sleep almost instantly. She liked the puddled warmth of him in her arms. Only after he had started to feel heavy did she lay him carefully back on the sleeping bag on the floor.
The night was turning chilly as it would do in the mountains in the spring, and even in the summer.
Ben came back in, the load of firewood he carried effortlessly showing the corded muscles of his arms to distinct advantage. “It’s cold out,” he said briefly.
He put down the wood carefully, so as not to wake the baby, then went and gazed down at him for a moment, unaware of how his hard features softened with momentary tenderness.
And certainly unaware of what that softening of those features did to her.
Filled her with something.
Yearning.
“I guess we should eat,” she said abruptly. “I’ve got plenty of grub in my pack boxes. I’ll go get them.”
She didn’t know if he accompanied her out of a sense of chivalry or because he was guarding her, but they went together to where she had left the pack boxes by the corral. He went unhesitatingly and held out his hand to her old horse.
“That’s Sam,” she said, disarmed by the look on his face. What was it? Wistfulness?
He turned and gave her a look, the wistfulness replaced by a look of dry amusement. “So this is Sam.”
She shrugged, watching how he stroked the horse’s forehead, scratched along his mane. “You like horses,” she said. “You’ve been around them a bit, too.”
“We used to raise quarter horses when I was a kid. I grew up on a ranch in Wyoming.”
“I should have known.”
“What?”
“Cowboy. You can take off the boots and the hats, and you can put years between you and the range, but it’s still there.”
“What’s still there?”
She was sorry she had blurted out the thought, sorrier still he was pursuing it into her private thoughts about him. “Arrogance,” she said. But she thought mystique, strength, self-reliance. The way they held themselves. The pride in their eyes.
A slight frown creased his forehead. “You’re an expert on cowboys?”
“I was raised by two of them.”
“I should have known.”
“What?”
“Cowgirl.”
“And you’re an expert on cowgirls?”
“No. We were pretty isolated where we were. I don’t know the first thing about cowgirls. But if I had to pick one to put on a poster, I’d pick you.”
“I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not.”
“I think it is.”
“Why would you pick me?” She knew she was treading a fine line here between getting his guard down and letting hers down.
“Because you look like you could rope and ride as easily and effortlessly as most women could sew a button on a shirt.”
“Sew a button on a shirt? Are your views of women that archaic?”
“Beautiful but slightly prickly,” he went on, as if she hadn’t interrupted.
“I am not.” She meant beautiful.
“Believe me prickly is not nearly as deep a character flaw as arrogance.”
“That’s true.”
“You look like you could shoot a bear without blinking—”
“I did so blink. My eyes were shut tight when I pulled the trigger.”
He laughed, a good sound, rich and deep, a sound that could chase away a good cowgirl’s suspicions. And make her trust someone who had not proven he could be trusted.
“How old were you when you left the ranch?” she asked him.
“Sixteen.” The remoteness snapped back into place, but not before she caught a glimpse of regret.
“You miss it.” She thought of her time in Edmonton, where not a day had gone by when she didn’t miss her brothers’ laughter, the warm breath of her horse and being able to walk outside to a space so big you could never fill it, and air so clean and crisp it was like inhaling champagne.
He shrugged, invulnerable. “I suppose. Parts of it.”
A note in his voice told her things of him. That he was a long way from the boy who had grown up on a ranch in Wyoming and that he would do anything to find his way back to that kind of simplicity.
Was that how he had found his way here?
No. There was nothing simple about him being here. With a baby who was not his.
“So,” she said casually, “what did you do after you left the ranch?”
He came out of the corral, his face completely closed now, hefted the pack boxes, one in each hand, and went back toward the cabin. “This and that,” he said. “Saw the world. You know.”
But she didn’t. And she knew he would not tell her anything further. In this little two-step they were doing to see who could get whose guard down further, she suspected she had just lost round one. She was determined to keep her mouth shut and her eyes open.
Supper was ready in short order. He took over completely, managing the cranky stove like an old hand. Canned stew and biscuits, coffee, strong and hot, and tinned peaches afterward.
“You’re used to doing this,” she commented.
“Cooking?” he asked.
“Making do. Roughing it.”
“This isn’t what I would call roughing it,” he said, and then looked like he regretted saying it, as if it was a crime to reveal even the tiniest little things about himself to her.
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