The Baby Quilt
The Baby Quilt
Christine Flynn
He could see her sitting on her bed with little Anna in her arms.
She was looking down at the child, her finger slowly stroking a rounded little cheek, the alabaster slope of her breast visible between the sides of her pink shirt. One tiny fist rested against that fullness and the baby’s eyes were closed.
Emily’s expression looked utterly peaceful.
Justin wasn’t sure what caused the odd tug in his chest just then. He wasn’t a man easily impressed, much less easily moved. Yet, he couldn’t seem to look away. Had he been standing before a painting, he supposed the eroticism was what would have caught his attention, the pure sensuality of soft light on skin, the gentle part of Emily’s mouth, the suckling of the baby’s. But there was an element far beyond that, a Madonna-like quality that made him feel as if he were witnessing something infinitely…precious.
The thought had his conscience kicking hard as it told him to look away. He was intruding here. But it was already too late.
Dear Reader,
Welcome to a spectacular month of great romances as we continue to celebrate Silhouette’s 20th Anniversary all year long!
Beloved bestselling author Nora Roberts returns with Irish Rebel, a passionate sequel to her very first book, Irish Thoroughbred. Revisit the spirited Grant family as tempers flare, sparks fly and love ignites between the newest generation of Irish rebels!
Also featured this month is Christine Flynn’s poignant THAT’S MY BABY! story, The Baby Quilt, in which a disillusioned, high-powered attorney finds love and meaning in the arms of an innocent young mother.
Silhouette reader favorite Joan Elliott Pickart delights us with her secret baby story, To a MacAllister Born, adding to her heartwarming cross-line miniseries, THE BABY BET. And acclaimed author Ginna Gray delivers the first compelling story in her series, A FAMILY BOND, with A Man Apart, in which a wounded loner lawman is healed heart, body and soul by the nurturing touch of a beautiful, compassionate woman.
Rounding off the month are two more exciting ongoing miniseries. From longtime author Susan Mallery, we have a sizzling marriage-of-convenience story, The Sheik’s Secret Bride, the third book in her DESERT ROGUES series. And Janis Reams Hudson once again shows her flair for Western themes and Native American heroes with The Price of Honor, a part of her miniseries, WILDERS OF WYATT COUNTY.
It’s a terrific month of page-turning reading from Special Edition. Enjoy!
All the best,
Karen Taylor Richman
Senior Editor
The Baby Quilt
Christine Flynn
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Karen Euritt,
with thanks for your help.
We really miss you guys!
Books by Christine Flynn
Silhouette Desire
Remember the Dreams #254
Silence the Shadows #465
Renegade #566
Walk upon the Wind #612
Out of the Mist #657
The Healing Touch #693
Beyond the Night #747
Luke’s Child #788
Lonely Knight #826
Daughter of the Bride #889
When Morning Comes #922
Jake’s Mountain #945
A Father’s Wish #962
* (#litres_trial_promo)Logan’s Bride #995 * (#litres_trial_promo)The Rebel’s Bride #1034 * (#litres_trial_promo)The Black Sheep’s Bride #1053 Her Child’s Father #1151 Hannah and the Hellion #1184 From House Calls to Husband #1203 * (#litres_trial_promo)Finally His Bride #1240 The Home Love Built #1275 Dr. Mom and the Millionaire #1304 The Baby Quilt #1327
Silhouette Desire
When Snow Meets Fire #254
The Myth and the Magic #296
A Place To Belong #352
Meet Me at Midnight #377
Silhouette Romance
Stolen Promise #435
Courtney’s Conspiracy #623
Silhouette Intimate Moments
Daughter of the Dawn #537
Silhouette Books
36 Hours
Father and Child Reunion
CHRISTINE FLYNN
admits to being interested in just about everything, which is why she considers herself fortunate to have turned her interest in writing into a career. She feels that a writer gets to explore it all and, to her, exploring relationships—especially the intense, bittersweet or even lighthearted relationships between men and women—is fascinating.
Dear Reader,
One of my sisters called while I was cleaning a closet the other night. While we were talking, and I kept sorting, I came across the worn-out old quilts I keep there, all neatly tucked in tissue and plastic cases. One had been made by an aunt, the other had been the patient work of my husband’s grandmother. My sister mentioned the old quilts she, too, treasures, and remarked that their only value was the time and love that had gone into creating them for their families.
That would be how Emily, the heroine in my story, feels about her baby’s quilt. Knowing how much love her mom put into each stitch would make her cherish it. It’s nothing fancy. And it’s not the sort of thing the worldly, sophisticated Justin Sloan would value. At least not until she shows him how. After all, as we know from every THAT’S MY BABY! title, it’s the little things that count.
Best wishes,
Contents
Chapter One (#ub216d7d5-e6fe-508e-a19b-9f3a317b0ec4)
Chapter Two (#uf41085b5-a346-538e-aff9-a65cd0ad82a5)
Chapter Three (#u19052913-86f3-5156-93e5-71a3e9b7ff7e)
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 Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
Justin Sloan’s mood was as black as the storm clouds churning in the Western Illinois sky. His car had a dead battery. In a fit of rebellion, which he was rapidly coming to regret, he’d left his cell phone recharging in his fifty-second-floor condo in Chicago. And since he hadn’t had the foresight to throw rain gear into his trunk along with his fishing pole and a spare T-shirt, he was about to get soaked to the skin. Those clouds were too leaden to hold back their moisture for long.
The wind shifted and danced, fanning the tall grasses and wildflowers as he continued his trek along the narrow country road. According to his map, the town of Hancock was ten miles from the little bridge he’d just crossed, a good thirty miles closer than the freeway exit he’d taken to reach the fishing spot a client had told him about. Spending a Saturday making long looping casts into a secluded stream had sounded like a fine idea when he’d been staring at the ceiling above his bed at 6:00 a.m. Five hours later, he almost wished he’d fought his insomnia with a run along the shore of Lake Michigan instead.
Almost.
The same edginess that had prompted his escape from the city still stirred in his gut. He’d had to get out. Get away. The need had felt too urgent to question. He wasn’t even questioning it now. It had been there ever since he’d left last night’s celebration dinner—a dinner given in his honor—and still hadn’t quite eased.
The road ahead took a gradual rise over the gently rolling land and made a dogleg turn to the right. His glance narrowed on a house to the left.
The modest old farmhouse sat back from the road, a relic from the turn of last century and painfully austere. It stood ghostly white against the charcoal-gray sky, its stark appearance unrelieved by any hint of decoration except a single window box overflowing with blooms of bright-red. The porch was a utilitarian square, the railings utterly plain. But the land surrounding it burst with every imaginable shade of green. Nearest the road, row upon row of brilliant emerald plants glowed jewellike against dark, loamy earth. Farther back, miles of corn merged on a large square of land planted with what looked to be a vegetable garden. A windmill, its blades spinning madly, guarded a tidy utility shed and a chicken coop.
Relieved to know he wouldn’t have to walk ten miles in the rain to get to a phone, he set his sights on a woman disappearing into a greenhouse and jogged across the road and up the property’s long graveled driveway. Thirty feet from the building, he slowed his pace. The young woman had appeared again. With her calf-length blue dress tangling around her legs, she headed for a long rack of plants.
Slender as a willow branch and just as supple, she bent to hurriedly tuck a flat of plants under each arm and headed for the greenhouse once more. Wisps of flaxen hair had escaped the braid that dangled nearly to her waist. The wind whipped those gleaming strands into a halo around her head, but it was the way the gusts of air plastered the shapeless garment to her body that had most of his attention as he moved toward her.
The thought that she was probably half his age immediately jerked his attention from her intriguing curves. Mentally disrobing the farmer’s seventeen-year-old daughter wasn’t likely to make the farmer eager to lend him a hand. Considering the bolt of lightning streaking against the wall of black in the distance, he wasn’t interested in jeopardizing his welcome.
“Is your dad around anywhere?” he called, an instant before a crack of thunder shook the windows in the house behind him.
It was hard to tell which caused her footsteps to falter when her head jerked up—finding a large, male stranger in her yard, or the jarring boom that sent a covey of wrens screaming from the sweeping arms of the walnut tree shading the house. She’d been so focused on her task that she hadn’t even noticed his approach.
That task obviously took precedence. Ignoring him, she dropped her hand from where it had flattened at her throat and, with her hair streaming across her face, disappeared into the greenhouse.
“Great,” he muttered, looking around for signs of someone who might be a little more cooperative.
There wasn’t anyone outside that he could see. There weren’t any lights on in the house to indicate anyone was inside, either. Wondering if someone might be in the greenhouse, he looked through the plastic-covered windows that had already fluttered loose in places. The milky material rustled in the wind, echoing the snap of the blinding white sheets billowing on the clothesline. There were no shadows to indicate a human inside. The only other form of life seemed to be the chickens who were abandoning their wire enclosure for the white clapboard coop.
A flash of pale blue streaked from the greenhouse.
In no mood to wait until she decided to acknowledge him, he moved with her.
“Look, I’m sorry to bother you, but my car won’t start. It’s not far from here,” he explained when she’d kept going without giving him so much as a glance. “Is your dad around?” he called. “All I need is a jump.”
She hurriedly lifted two more flats of tiny green plants from the rack near the vegetable garden. “My father doesn’t live here.”
She finally looked up. Justin didn’t know which caught him more off guard, the velvet soft quality of her voice, her faint accent, or the angelic quality of her delicate features. Her eyes were the clear blue of a summer sky and her skin looked so soft it fairly begged to be touched.
His glance dropped to the lush fullness of her mouth. Soft and ripe, that sensuality was as unexpected as the innocence.
So was the jolt of heat low in his gut.
Her lips had parted with an indrawn breath when their eyes met the first time. When they met again, her glance faltered and she grabbed another flat.
“What about your husband?” he asked, forcing his focus to her hands. She appeared older than he’d first thought. Her left hand was hidden, but she could easily be married. “Can he help me?”
She was trying to balance a third tray between the two she held when he saw her hesitate. Harried, distracted, she darted a furtive glance from his dark hair to the logo on his polo shirt and murmured, “No. He can’t.”
An instant later, seeing she couldn’t carry more than two trays without smashing what she was trying to save, she hoisted a flat to each hip and took off again.
“Then, how about a telephone?”
Grabbing the plants she hadn’t been able to carry and another flat for good measure, he hurried to catch up with her.
“There is no telephone here,” she said, still moving. “The nearest one is at the Clancy farm. It’s up the road by the bend. I’d imagine Mr. Clancy is bringing in his cows. For a telephone, you’ll have to go to Hancock.”
“Isn’t there any place closer? A gas station?”
“Only in Hancock.”
“How about another neighbor?” He could jog to the little town if he had to. He ran four times a week as it was. But a ten-mile run in the rain wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind when he’d decided to play hooky. “I’d really like to avoid getting drenched,” he admitted, tossing her a rueful smile. “That sky looks like it could open up any minute.
“I drove out from Chicago to do a little fishing,” he explained, wanting her to know he wasn’t some lunatic out stalking farmers’ wives. “I’m taking the day off, you know?” he asked, wondering what the rush was with getting the plants inside. He’d have thought rain would be good for them. “I noticed the weather changing and decided to head back, but my car battery’s dead.”
She didn’t reply. Nor did she slow by so much as a step as they reached the plant-filled building. Not sure if he should follow her in—or if she was even listening—he stopped by the doorway while she shoved her load onto the nearest table and spun back toward the door.
Spotting the flats he’d carried, she pulled them from his hands, slid them next to the others and hurried back out.
He arrowed a frown at her back, practically biting his tongue to keep that scowl from his voice when he fell into step beside her. “Look, I can seen you’re busy here, but all I need is a jump. If there’s a vehicle—”
“What is this ‘jump?”’
“Jump-start,” he explained, never guessing that a farm girl would be as mechanically challenged as most of the women he knew. “You know. Hook up a car with a good battery to a car with a dead one to get the dead one going again?”
Puzzlement merged with the lines of concern deepening in her brow. But all she said was, “There is no car here.”
“Then how about a tractor?” he called to the back of her retreating head.
There was no tractor, either. She told him that as the first fat drops of rain soaked into his shirt and ticked against the tin roof of the utility shed. Another bolt of lightning ripped across the black horizon. In the three seconds before the thunder rolled in to crack overhead, the rain turned to pea-size hail and the woman had tucked herself over the plants she picked up to keep them from being shredded by the little pellets of ice.
“This Clancy place,” he said, hauling another load himself. “How far is it?”
“A mile by the road.” Looking torn between encouraging and declining his unexpected help, she headed into a gust of wind. “It’s shorter if you cut through the soy field.”
“Which one’s that?
“Hey,” he muttered when she shot him a puzzled glance. “I recognize the corn over there, but I’m from the city. Is soy tall or short?”
“Everything is short at one time,” she replied ever so reasonably. “I’ll show you the route, but you’ll want to stay until this passes. You’ll need shelter.”
She was right. The sky grew darker by the minute and the air had taken on a faint glow of pink. The clouds overhead looked as if they’d been flipped upside down, their boiling bellies suddenly a little too close, a little too ominous. Between the shades of slate, misty tails of pearl gray undulated and teased, dangling downward, pulling up.
They were nearly to the greenhouse when everything went dead still. The hail stopped. Not a single leaf on the trees moved. The air itself turned too heavy to breathe, the pressure of it feeling as if it were crushing him in an invisible vise. The woman felt it, too. He could tell by the fear that washed her expression an instant before the wind hit like backwash from a jet and the trays they carried were ripped from their hands.
Everything was leaning. Trees. Cornstalks. Them. A sheet from the clothesline sailed past. The blades of the windmill clattered wildly, fighting for a direction to go. Another sound rumbled beneath the tinny cacophony. Not thunder. The deep-throated hum sounded more like a million swarming bees.
The house sat a hundred yards behind them. It looked more like a mile as he grabbed for the woman’s wrist to stop her from running for the greenhouse.
“It’s not safe there! Get in your house!”
The wind snatched his words, muffling them in the growing roar. He could barely hear the “No!” she screamed back at him. But he saw the word form, and the sheer terror in her eyes as she tried to struggle free of his grip.
Panic had robbed her of reason. He was sure of it. She had to know there was no way the unfinished building would offer any protection. It was nothing but two-by-fours and tearing plastic that, in another minute, could well be nothing but matchsticks.
He swore. In the distance, a funnel of ghostly gray twisted against the black wall. At its base, a swirling cloud of dust began to form. “That thing could be on us any minute,” he growled, finally comprehending why she’d been in such a rush. “I don’t know what your problem is, lady, but I have no intention of playing Dorothy and Toto. Come on!”
He couldn’t hear what she said. He was more concerned with the way she gripped his wrist to pull his hand from hers while he practically dragged her toward the house. Thinking he’d do better carrying her, he swung around to get a better grip when his shift in momentum allowed her the leverage she needed.
She broke free with a sharp twist of her hand. An instant later, a Volkswagen-size chunk of tree ripped past, the tips of its branches barely missing his face as it flew through the space she’d occupied seconds ago. He thought for sure that the heavy branches had grazed her, but frantic as she was, nothing slowed her down. Through the cloud of straw and dust now billowing around them, he saw her bolt through the greenhouse door.
Swearing violently, he raced after her.
The plastic covering the window holes rippled and snapped as wind shredded the flimsy covering. Through the doorway, he saw her duck beneath the long, plant-filled table just inside. He was thinking she had to be crazy not to see that the place was disintegrating around her when she jerked upright and ran back toward him with a hooded white carrier.
He’d barely noted the thick mauve liner and a pair of tiny legs when he realized there was actually an infant inside it.
Dear God, he thought, realization slamming into him. She had a baby out here.
“The cellar!” she hollered, fear stark in her eyes. “By the back door!”
He didn’t ask if she minded him carrying the kid. He just grabbed the carrier from her and pushed her out ahead of him, bent on getting them moving as fast as he could. The wind tore at them like the claws of an invisible dragon, grabbing her hair, her dress, stinging his eyes with the dust that turned day into night. A wheelbarrow blew across the yard ahead of them, flipping end over end. Eyes shielded by their forearms, they raced across the grass while behind them the funnel bore down on the land with the speed and sound of a freight train.
She reached the angled, in-ground door to the cellar two steps before he did. Using both hands, she pulled back hard on the handle. The thing wouldn’t budge.
Without a word, he shoved the carrier into her arms and jerked on the door himself. The pressure of the wind crushed down on it, making the long panel feel as if it were weighted with bricks. He could feel the muscles in his arms and back bunch as he battled, but he edged the solid wood up enough to wedge his foot between it and the frame before giving a powerful pull.
The wind shifted, catching the door, ripping it from its hinges, spinning it upward, slamming it into his shoulder.
Pain, barbed and jarring, shot down his arm. Gritting his teeth, he snatched the carrier again and practically shoved the woman down the steep and narrow stairs. He was halfway down himself when she reached up and pulled the baby from the hard plastic shell. The moment he saw that she had the tiny blond bundle of pink in her arms, he dropped the carrier and pushed her to the corner of the deep, shelf-lined space. With his back to the suction created by the raging vortex, he watched her clutch the baby to her chest and wrapped his arms around them both.
Thunder boomed. The wind shrieked. He had no idea how safe they were, but he figured that even with the door gone, they were better off tucked back in the confined space beneath the house than they would be anywhere else. At least, they were as long as the wind didn’t make missiles of the hundred or so jars of fruits and vegetables gleaming on the shelves surrounding them.
“We need to get away from this glass.”
“By the potato crates. On the other side of the stairs. There’s none over there.”
He glanced behind him. Wooden boxes were stacked a dozen feet away. Neatly folded burlap bags filled a galvanized tub, apparently waiting to be filled with onions like the lone bag leaning next to it. Even with the boxes of empty canning jars lining the shelves next to where they huddled, it seemed better to stay where they were. If the shelves fell, they’d land right on those boxes and bags.
“Do you think we should move?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“I don’t see any place safer. We’ll have to ride it out here.”
He didn’t have to see her to know she was terrified. She had the baby’s tiny head tucked beneath her chin, her hand covering its downy blond hair. With his arms curved around her shoulders, her slender body angled against his left side, he could feel her trembling from neck to thigh.
A blinding flash of lightning turned the space pure white. Thunder cracked. He felt her whole body go taut as a spring an instant before she buried her head against his chest.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, hoping to heaven it would be. He cupped the back of her head the way she did her child’s, protecting it, tightening his hold. “Just hang on. These things don’t last that long, do they?”
“I don’t know, Mr.…I don’t know, “ she repeated, apparently realizing she didn’t know his name. “One’s never come this close before.”
She shifted a little, her thigh slipping along his. Given the intimacy of their positions, he found her formality a tad incongruous. “It’s Sloan. Justin,” he added, thinking she might appreciate a first name, too.
“Justin Sloan. Thank you.”
He wasn’t sure what she was thanking him for. It didn’t seem important anyway. The breath he drew brought her scent with it, something clean and fresh and far too innocent to seem so erotic.
He cleared his throat, training his focus on the wide planks above them while dust swirled and the apocalypse raged overhead. Wondering if those boards would stay put seemed wiser than wondering if that scent was in the silken hair braided and draped over his arm or if it was clinging to her skin.
He glanced back down. “And you’re…?”
“Emily Miller. My daughter is Anna,” she added, then jumped again at the crash of ripping timber.
A huge tree limb arrowed through the open doorway above them. The projectile crashed into the crates of potatoes and onions, splintering itself and the shelves and sending vegetables rolling over the packed dirt floor. Another crash reverberated above them, this one echoing with the sound of shattering glass.
With his back to the melee, his head ducked and his neck exposed, Justin held his breath. He was pretty sure the woman in his arms held hers, too. Only the baby moved. He could feel it wriggling in protest to her mother’s tight hold, but he doubted there was any power on earth, including the fury being unleashed overhead, that could make the woman ease her grasp.
“Justin Sloan?” The sound of his name was faint, muffled by their positions and the cacophony overhead. “May I ask you something?”
He thought for sure she wanted reassurance. It sounded like the end of the world up there. At the very least, it was the end of her house. But if she wanted to know if he thought they’d be all right, her guess would be as good as his.
“Sure,” he said, thinking he’d do the decent thing and lie if it would make her feel better.
“Who are Dorothy and Toto?”
“What?”
“Who are Dorothy and Toto?” she repeated. “And what did you mean when you said you had no intention of playing them?”
He had to sound as puzzled as she did. “You know. From The Wizard of Oz. The movie?” he prompted, thinking she must be trying to distract herself. “The tornado hits Kansas and the girl and her dog get sucked up?”
“Did they survive?”
He would have thought she was joking, except her concern when she looked up at him was too real, the fear in her eyes too tangible.
“Yeah. They did.”
“That’s good. I don’t know of this Oz,” she admitted, the fullness of her bottom lip drawing his glance as she spoke. Her mouth looked soft, inviting. Provocative. With her clear blue eyes locked on his, it also looked enormously tempting. “I’ve heard of Kansas, though. I’ve read that it’s very flat.”
The woman wasn’t making a lick of sense to him, but she was definitely taunting his nervous system. The fact that she was reminding him of just how long he’d gone without the comfort of a woman’s body wasn’t something he cared to consider at the moment. Given their proximity, it seemed best to concentrate on something—anything—else.
Ruthlessly reining in his libido, he focused on the sound of her voice, her accent. She didn’t have much of one, just enough to broaden the sound of her vowels. It was more the pattern of her speech that told him she wasn’t a native—which could easily explain why she hadn’t heard of the movie nearly every kid in America had seen by the time he was six years old.
“I take it you’re not from here.”
“No,” she admitted, putting his very logical mind at ease. “I’m from Ohio.”
Emily had no idea why her response made the big stranger frown. With the swiftness of the lightning arcing above them, the dark slashes of his eyebrows bolted over his pewter-gray eyes. His lean, chiseled features sharpened. The dark expression intensified the sense of command surrounding him, an aura she imagined to be possessed by men like kings and warriors in the library books she devoured. Or like the powerful men who stole women’s hearts on Mrs. Clancy’s soap operas. But she really didn’t care that she confused him. All she cared about was that Anna was safe—and that his deep voice held the power to distract her from thoughts of what would have happened had he not come along.
Shaking deep inside, she glanced from the little red polo player embroidered above the pocket of his navy-blue shirt to her baby, soothing Anna’s fussing by rubbing her back. If not for this Justin Sloan, she never would have been able to get inside the cellar with the wind blowing so hard. While she’d struggled with the door, the wind would surely have blown her little girl away, sucked Anna up as he said the wind had done with Dorothy and her dog. It might have blown her away, too, or caused her to be injured so she couldn’t help her child.
The thoughts drew a shudder to the surface. They were too close to the nightmares she battled every day. Only this time her fears had nearly become reality.
But nothing had happened, she reminded herself. They were safe. For now. Safe and protected by this man who had come out of nowhere and was using his own, very solid body to shield them both.
He must have felt her trembling. His big broad hand slipped along her shoulder, drawing her closer. She sought that contact willingly, too overwhelmed by what she felt at that moment to do anything else. She knew there would be damage to face. She knew that very soon she would have to start rebuilding with whatever nature had left her. But for now, for these precious seconds, she wasn’t having to cope all alone.
The need to absorb that feeling was so acute that it bordered on physical pain. She didn’t know if it was right or wrong to want something so badly. She just knew that she was desperate for what she felt just then. He made her feel secure—and security was something she hadn’t felt in a very long time. The desire to stay in the safe haven of his arms was the strongest yearning she’d experienced since long before her husband had died.
The thought of leaving that shelter was unbearable. But she wasn’t given a choice. She was keenly aware of how solid his body felt, how strong. She was also aware of the tension tightening his muscles and a tingling warmth where her breast and hip crushed his side.
In the pale light, she looked up to find his glance fixed on her mouth.
Her heart gave an odd little lurch an instant before he jerked his attention to the baby nuzzling the fabric covering her breast. The tension she’d felt in his body seemed to settle in hers when he looked up and met her eyes.
Suddenly looking as if he could use more space, he eased back far enough to break contact without leaving her vulnerable and nodded toward Anna.
“Is she okay?”
The question had Emily easing her hold as she tucked her head to see her daughter’s sweet little face. In the pale-gray light, she saw Anna give a great, toothless yawn and scrunch her nose to show her displeasure with the position. She much preferred her head on her mom’s shoulder to having it tucked under her chin.
“She’s fine,” Emily assured him, compromising by shifting her little girl up a bit.
“You’re lucky she is.”
“I know,” she whispered. “If it hadn’t been for you—”
“I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about what you were doing.”
At a loss, she blinked at the hard line of his jaw. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you obviously knew this was coming, but you were out there trying to save plants instead of getting her inside where it was safe.” His intent gray eyes glittered like quicksilver as they swept her face, reproach melding with disbelief. “Why’d you have her out there, anyway? What would you have done if you’d been hurt yourself?”
His low voice rumbled through her, stiffening her shoulders at his demands, pulling up her chin at the accusation behind them. Not a single day went by that she wasn’t conscious of the fact that she alone was responsible for the welfare of her precious daughter. Everything she did, the backbreaking hours of digging in the fields while Anna slept protected in the shade or cuddled against her in a tummy sling, the planting, the weeding, the canning, the housecleaning for the Clancys—all of it was done with her child in mind.
Moments ago, he’d made her feel protected. Now, he’d jerked away the shield of numbness that had kept her from looking too closely at the enormity of her situation—and left her feeling even more exposed.
“I had her out there because I always keep her with me. She’s safer than she would be alone in the house. And those plants are my livelihood,” she informed him, totally unfamiliar with the sense of challenge he evoked. “I already lost one planting this year to frost. I was trying to save this one because I can’t afford to lose another.”
She swallowed hard. She’d probably lost the planting, anyway. Profoundly aware of the sudden quiet, torn between gratitude for what he’d done and resentment at his implications, she figured she’d best get started saving what she could.
She glanced up, avoiding Justin’s suddenly guarded expression. “The wind has died.”
He didn’t acknowledge her deliberately diverting observation. He didn’t push to know what she’d have done had she been hurt, either. He simply watched the resignation wash through her pale features as she shifted the infant to her shoulder and smoothed the little white T-shirt over her back.
Turning to the foliage and smashed boxes, he jammed his hands on his hips and heaved a sigh. He was out of his element here. He knew nothing of relying on the land for a living. He knew even less about kids—except it seemed to him that something so tiny should be inside in a crib-thing in a nursery or something. What he had known, though, was that he’d been far too conscious of the surprising fullness of her breast, the gentle curve of her hip. Since he’d already been wondering what she’d been using for brains, he’d figured it wiser to focus on that.
He just hadn’t intended to sound so abrupt about it.
Feeling his conscience kicked hard, he frowned at the large limb blocking the steeply pitched stairs.
She slipped from behind him. “At least the steps aren’t broken.”
“Spoken like a true optimist.”
“I’m trying to be,” she murmured, glancing uneasily toward the light filtering through the leaves.
She had no idea what she’d find out there. Seeing her uncertainty, not caring for the twinge of empathy he felt, he shoved aside the limb blocking the first few stairs and held it aside with his back. Pushing through the splintered limbs and leaves wouldn’t be a problem at all. They’d just have to edge up the side. “I’ll go up first and help you out.”
“It might be easier if I go first. You can reach farther than I can. Here,” she said, stepping close to hold out her baby. “When I get to the top, you can hand her up to me.”
Justin froze. Despite the twinge of pain in his shoulder, his hands shot out in pure reflex. He would have done the same thing if someone had thrown him a ball. Only he would have known what to do with a ball. He hadn’t a clue what to do with the little bundle of big blue eyes blinking up at him.
The impossibly light little body was barely longer than his forearm. The tiny fist waving around before finding its way to that wet little rosebud mouth was smaller than the top half of his thumb. He’d never seen fingers so small.
With her hands tucked beneath his, her mom suddenly looked as if she weren’t sure she should let go. “Do you have her?”
His nod was more tentative than he’d have liked. With one palm cupping the back of the baby’s head, he gripped what little there was of a backside with the other. “Yeah. Go on.”
Just don’t fall, he thought as Emily slowly withdrew her support and retrieved the carrier that had rolled under the stairs. The last thing he wanted was to have to figure out what to do with her child if the woman should need help. He’d gone toe-to-toe with three-hundred-pound linebackers playing college football. He’d bested the toughest negotiators in world-class business deals, but he freely admitted that this infant had him feeling completely helpless. Accustomed to being capable, he didn’t like the sensation at all.
“Okay,” he heard Emily call when the rustle of leaves quieted. “I’ll take her now.”
He hadn’t moved. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the perfect little face, either. Glancing up, he saw Emily framed against the lightening sky. She’d set the carrier on the ground above her and crouched two steps from the top, her arms stretched toward him.
Watching the baby as if he were afraid it might do something to upset his balance, he edged up the bottom steps and carefully lifted the blissfully oblivious bundle past the leaves quivering along the wind-splintered barrier. The sharp scent of fresh pitch swirled in the slight breeze, reminding him to watch for the jagged spikes of wood where the branch had snapped in the middle so they wouldn’t catch the tail of the blanket.
He actually felt sweat bead near his temples when the baby jerked her arm and popped herself in the eye. Her face screwed up at the self-inflicted assault, but she didn’t make a sound. He did, though. When Emily’s fingers slipped beneath his and he felt the baby’s weight shift to her hands, his sigh of relief was definitely audible.
Chapter Two
Justin’s first thought when he stepped onto the wet lawn was that the rain had apparently stopped as abruptly as it started.
His second thought was of his car.
With a sinking sensation, he moved beyond where Emily stood clutching her baby and glanced toward the road. Beneath the heavy clouds, he could barely see the tops of the trees near the little bridge and the curve of the road leading down to it. But the trees were still there, as thick and tall as when he’d parked his car beneath them. Closer in, under a sky that was opening with streaks of brilliant blue, the verdant land remained untouched.
The frustration he’d prepared himself to feel over hassles with transportation and insurance adjusters never materialized. His biggest problem—at the moment, anyway—was still his dead battery. Emily Miller, he was sure, hadn’t fared as well.
When he looked from the coop where the chickens were pecking the ground, he found her staring at the walnut tree. What was left of it, anyway. All that remained was a short, jagged spike that had been blasted clean of its bark. The bulk of the sizable trunk was nowhere to be seen—though Justin figured it a safe bet that the branch poking out of the cellar had once been attached to it. So had the even larger branch that had been stuffed through the back porch. That massive limb had taken out the porch’s center support, but the house itself was still standing. By some miracle, so was the greenhouse. Even the windmill, its blades now turning with laconic ease, appeared unscathed.
He’d expected to see nothing but rubble.
“Are you all right?” he asked, since she’d yet to move. He pulled a white sheet from where it had tangled around an upright water pipe. Tossing it over the T of the clothesline pole, he cautiously scanned her profile. “It’s too bad about your tree. And your porch,” he added, since that was actually the bigger problem. “But it doesn’t look like you lost anything else.”
“No. No,” Emily repeated, responding to the encouraging note in his deep voice. “I don’t think I did.” Her own voice lost the strength she’d just forced into it. “It could have been much worse.”
Brushing her lips over the top of Anna’s soft, sweet-smelling head, she stared at the mass of leaves and branches obliterating her back door. She’d immediately noticed that the greenhouse and chickens and the fields had survived, but she hadn’t let herself breathe until she’d turned to her house.
It really could have been worse. And losing a tree and a cellar door and having to patch her porch was nothing compared to what could have been. There was always some good and some bad. The sweet balanced the sour, her mother and her aunts had always said. That was life. It didn’t matter that her own life had swung wildly out of balance. She was to take with relief and thanks all that had been spared. And take in stride and with grace that which hadn’t.
That was how she’d been raised. It was all she knew to do, though she was the first to admit that she’d never mastered the easy acceptance part. As she stood hugging her child, the thought of the extra work it would take to cut up the tree was enough to bring her to tears. There weren’t enough hours in the day as it was. But she didn’t dare let herself cry. She was afraid that if she did, she’d never stop. And she had to be strong for Anna.
At the moment, she also needed to check on her neighbors.
The rows of corn nearest her little plot of land swayed in the diminishing breeze. Where the land gently rose a couple of acres away, she saw nothing but churned-up earth and a chunk of red-and-white siding that looked suspiciously like part of a barn.
“I need to see if the Clancys are all right,” she said, uncomfortably aware of her rescuer’s eyes on her. “Mrs. Clancy just had a hip replaced and their son and his family are away for a few days. There’s no one there to know if they need help.”
Justin stood with his hands on his lean hips, his broad shoulders looking as wide as the horizon. He stared right at her, his wide brow furrowed. He was very direct with his stares, she’d noticed. Not at all subtle the way the few men she knew were when they looked at her. But then, he seemed very direct about his needs and opinions, too. “You wanted to use their phone. Come with me and I’ll show you the way.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll head on in to town. From the looks of things over there,” he said, nodding toward the cornfields, “the lines are probably down.”
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug, the motion not nearly as casual as she wanted it to be. “I understand tornados are strange. The way they pick and choose what they destroy, I mean. I’ve heard of walls being ripped off, but nothing in the room being disturbed. I think that’s part of Mr. Clancy’s barn,” she said, pointing ahead of her, “but their phone could still be working.”
She was telling him he might be able to save himself some time by coming with her. Whether she knew it or not, she was also making it as clear as the raindrops clinging to the grass that he disturbed her. Her wary glance would barely meet his before shying away, as if she were embarrassed at having been up close and personal with a perfect stranger. He was pretty certain, too, from the strain that had settled into her delicate features that she was more upset than she was letting on about the damage. Yet, even as unsettled as she had to be, she sounded unbelievably calm.
As he watched her kneel to tug a piece of denim from beneath the baby carrier’s thickly padded mauve liner, he couldn’t believe her attitude, either.
He didn’t know a single soul who would walk away from their own crisis to help out someone else with theirs. The fact that she remembered he still had a problem caught him a little off guard, too. After the way he’d jumped on her about leaving her kid outside, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d left him to fend for himself.
She carefully tucked the baby’s little legs through two holes in what looked like a denim tube and slipped her own arms through its two long straps. As she did, his glance strayed down the thick braid lying against her back to the fabric covering the sweet curve of her slender hips.
“Even if the phone’s out,” he said, wondering how all that hair would look unbound and spilling over her body, “maybe he can give me a jump.”
Annoyed with the direction of his thoughts, he pointedly pulled his attention from her. “It looks like you’ve been through this before. The greenhouse,” he said, eyeing the skeletal structure to keep his glance from wandering over her again. “You only have a few windows back there. Did another storm take out the others?”
A long strand of loosened hair swayed over her shoulder. Snagging it back, she rose and tucked a soft-looking square of white fabric under the chin of the sleepy-eyed child in her tummy-carrier. “Those are the only windows that were put in. My husband built the greenhouse for me last year, but winter came before he could finish.
“I hired a man,” she continued, absently rubbing the baby’s back through the denim as she motioned for him to accompany her across the lawn. “He put in the windows Daniel framed and I gave him money to buy the rest, but he hasn’t come back yet. I’m sure I don’t have enough plastic to replace what was torn,” she added, more to herself than to him. “I hope he returns soon.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“Two weeks and two days. He wanted to find the best price, so he said it might take him a while.”
They angled toward a dirt road lined with rows of corn. The wind had calmed to a warm breeze that rattled the leaves on the stalks and fanned the ankle-high grass growing on either side of the ruts. “Is this someone you know?” he asked, leaving her to walk on the near side of the road while he headed for the grass on the other side to avoid the mud in the middle.
“I didn’t before he came looking for work. He said he’d worked for a lot of people in the county, though.” A pensive frown touched her brow. “I wonder if he would repair my porch when he returns.”
He should let it go, he told himself. He should concentrate on how quiet it was compared to the cacophony of only minutes ago. It was so peaceful here. Almost…serene. There was no traffic. No horns, sirens, squealing brakes. He should just think about the stillness. He should not question her about something that undoubtedly had as reasonable an explanation as she’d provided for why she’d had her kid out in a tornado.
“He’d said he’d worked for people around here?” he asked, too curious to know what that explanation was to let the matter drop. “You didn’t check out his references yourself?”
“Even if I’d heard of the names he mentioned, I had no way to speak with them. Besides, there was no need. If he couldn’t do the work, it would be obvious, wouldn’t it?”
There was a certain literal quality to her logic, a simplicity Justin would have found quite eloquent had she not entirely missed his point. He’d bet his corner office that the guy was an itinerant.
“I don’t suppose this man is from around here, is he?”
“He didn’t say.”
Fighting incredulity, he cast her a sideways glance.
“Do you know his name?” he asked, all but biting his tongue to keep his tone even.
The look she gave him was amazingly patient. “Of course I do. It’s Johnny Smith.”
John Smith. How original.
“So you gave this man you really don’t know money to buy something for you and you haven’t seen or heard from him in two weeks.”
“He said he wanted to shop for the best price for me,” she reminded him, looking at him a little uncertainly. “And he did put the other windows in. He did a good job, too.”
“Do you mind if I ask how much you paid him?”
“Twenty dollars.”
“What did you give him for the windows?”
“I only had a hundred.”
There was such innocence in her lovely eyes. And caution. And concern. The myriad impressions registered with Justin moments before she glanced away to watch where she was stepping.
Johnny Smith had done a good job, all right, he thought. A snow job. “You might want to report Johnny to the authorities, Mrs. Miller. He stole your money.”
“I don’t believe that,” Emily said, incredulous. “Not for a moment.” She blinked hard at the distance, her hand still protectively on the little bump resting against her stomach. “He was far too nice to want to do any harm.”
The air of innocence he’d noticed about her before now struck him simply as naiveté. She obviously wanted to believe the best about the man. About people in general, he suspected, though he found the aspiration more dangerous than admirable.
“There are a lot of ‘nice’ crooks out there,” he countered, wondering if the woman had ever set foot off the farm. “I take it you’ve never been conned before?”
“Conned?”
“Swindled, cheated, deceived? No one’s ever taken advantage of you or your husband?”
Her glance darted from his, something like guilt shadowing the delicate lines of her face. “He took nothing that I didn’t give him from my own hand.”
The flatness of her quiet voice could have been recrimination for her own actions. It could just as easily have been defense for those of the man who’d quite probably absconded with her funds. Justin was far more interested in the part of his question she’d chosen to ignore. The part about her husband.
She tended to speak in the singular. And she’d made no reference at all to her husband having anything to do with the handyman. But what struck him as truly odd, now that he thought about it, was that she’d exhibited no concern at all for a husband during or after the storm. The only person she’d expressed concern about needing shelter was him.
All things considered, he strongly suspected that Mr. Miller wasn’t even around anymore.
That she felt it necessary to keep up the pretense tugged hard at his conscience.
“Look,” he murmured, disturbed to know he made her that uncomfortable. He was accustomed to people with better defenses. Harder edges. Even when she was trying to protect herself, she was totally without artifice. “We all make bad judgments sometimes. Don’t let that stop you from turning the guy in. He’s just going to rip off someone else.”
“Even if what you say were true…which I don’t believe it is,” she hurriedly clarified, “I wouldn’t know what to do. I know nothing about your…about the law.”
“I do. I’m a lawyer. This isn’t my area of expertise,” he admitted, more concerned with her tolerance than her correction. “Criminal law, I mean. I handle corporate matters. But I’d be glad to tell the local sheriff what you’ve told me and ask him to come talk to you.”
She gave him a smile as soft as the sunshine breaking through the clouds. “I thank you for your offer. It’s very kind. But it’s possible that he could come back. If he does—when he does,” she corrected, turning her glance back to the horizon, “then I would have unjustly accused him. He will come back.” Her quiet voice grew quieter still. “I need to believe that.”
For a moment Justin said nothing. There was an odd anxiety in the way she spoke, a quiet sort of desperation. It was almost as if she didn’t want him to challenge her nebulous hope because hope was about all she had.
He had no idea why the thought struck him as it did. But he rarely questioned his instincts, and now those instincts were telling him he was right on the mark about this woman’s circumstances. He couldn’t fault her argument, though. He didn’t even want to. He could explain how brilliantly her handyman had duped her. He could point out how the guy had set her up to believe that if he was gone awhile it was because he was trying to help her save money—which would give him plenty of time to disappear. But the chances of recovering her cash at this point were somewhere between zip and nil—and there wasn’t any point in badgering her about something it was too late to do anything about.
“How long has your husband been gone?” he finally asked, gingerly rotating his aching arm.
Emily glanced at the man openly watching her, then promptly looked at the ground. “I didn’t say that he was.”
She didn’t like the suspicions Justin raised, even though she, too, had been wondering what was taking the handyman so long. She didn’t like the feeling either, that he sensed how ignorant she was of the ways she was trying to assimilate. There was so much she didn’t know. So much she didn’t understand. And she had no idea at all how he’d known Daniel was no longer there.
“No, you didn’t,” he agreed, his tone surprisingly mild. “And I can understand why you wouldn’t want a stranger to know you’re out here alone. But with this storm, if you had a husband around, you’d be wondering if he was all right. The only people you’ve mentioned are your neighbors.”
He’d moved closer when the road had become cluttered with the torn vegetation. She just hadn’t realized how close until she caught his clean, faintly spicy scent. The instant she breathed it in, she was hit with the memory of standing in his arms with her head buried against his rock-hard chest.
He wasn’t anything like the handyman who’d shown up looking for work a couple of weeks ago. The man who’d called himself Johnny Smith had seemed too shy to even make eye contact, much less make personal observations. And there was no way on God’s green earth he would have caused the odd heat that had just pooled in her stomach.
She ducked her head, disconcerted by that heat, determined to ignore it. “Are you always so good at drawing conclusions?”
“My record’s pretty decent.”
His lack of modesty came as no surprise.
“I suppose all lawyers must be good at such things. I’ve never met one before, but I’ve seen one. On Mrs. Clancy’s soap opera,” she explained, thinking of the commanding, demanding and powerful man who, according to Mrs. Clancy, had stolen the heart of every female character in the cast. “You have much of the same manner about you.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“It’s neither. It just is. But you’re right about Daniel,” she continued, assuming he was frowning because she’d yet to answer his question. “He is no longer here.”
His expression relaxed as it shifted from her to her child. “Has he been gone long?”
“Since last spring. He worked for Mr. Clancy,” she told him, her voice growing hushed. “Daniel was raised on a farm, but he didn’t know anything about the big machinery they use here. He was killed trying to repair a piece of equipment while Mr. Clancy wasn’t around.”
The movement of her hand over Anna’s little back was automatic, a soothing motion that gave her as much comfort as it did the baby snuggled against her. “I didn’t understand the talk of gears and tilling blades. But he had forgotten to set some sort of brake.”
There were times when it felt as if it had been only yesterday that she’d received that awful, numbing news. There were other times when she could hardly picture her husband’s boyish face. When she thought of Daniel, she tried to recall how happy they’d once been. But that had been almost too long ago to remember.
“I’m sorry,” she heard Justin say, his voice subdued.
“Me, too. Daniel was a good man.”
“How old is your baby?”
A small smile relieved the strain around her mouth. “Eight weeks yesterday.”
It was now mid-July, Justin thought. That meant she’d been alone when the baby had been born.
He didn’t like the way that bothered him. He didn’t much care for the way she confused him, either. He’d still been trying to figure out the soap-opera reference when she’d hit him with the reason her husband wasn’t around.
He’d figured the guy had simply taken a hike. He hadn’t expected her to be widowed. But that little jolt had just been replaced with a decidedly skeptical curiosity over how someone who’d farmed all of his life would know so little about farm equipment.
It wasn’t like him not to seek an answer when one was readily available. But he had no desire to chip any deeper at the brave front she wore. With her slender frame, her translucent skin, and that pale-as-cornsilk hair, she looked as delicate as spun glass. When he thought about how desperately she’d been trying to save her plants, and the work she had waiting for her when she returned to her house, he was quietly amazed that the front hadn’t already shattered.
Ignoring his curiosity had another advantage. He hated tears. Granted, the only women he’d ever seen cry had used them either to get something from him, or out of fury when they didn’t. And he suspected Emily to be far stronger than she looked. But he didn’t want to push any buttons that would crack her composure. He’d never been around a woman who honestly needed comfort before. He wasn’t sure he’d even know what to do.
“You can see the Clancy place up there,” she said, relieving him enormously when she shielded her eyes against the sun and looked up the road. “Oh, good.” She sighed, smiling at him. “It didn’t hit their house.”
It had hit something, though. Just ahead of them, an untouched section of cornfield opened up to a wide stretch of gravel and an overgrown sweep of lawn. From that same general direction came the deep-throated and distant bawl of something that sounded large and undoubtedly four-legged.
What the Clancy place lacked in architectural interest, it made up for in simple appeal. Approaching from the side, Justin scanned the boxy gray house with its lacy curtains and window planters overflowing with pink petunias. The deep green grass was dappled with the first rays of sunlight filtering through the cottonwoods. Standing sentinel over the home’s steeply pitched roof, a huge aluminum grain silo gleamed like a giant silver torpedo against the clearing sky.
The bawling grew louder as they headed toward the brick red barn. Damage was more evident here. So was the path of the storm. From atop the gentle rise, it looked as if a giant scythe had taken a swipe across the earth.
The tornado had sliced across a pasture, leaving a path of debris and flattening most of the windbreak on its way. It had wiped out a section of the big barn, uprooted a few more trees, taken out a huge section of fence, then veered right toward the bottom land, missing Emily’s place by little more than a couple of city blocks.
“There he is.” Emily headed for a gnomelike little man pulling at a pile of boards and scattered straw by the barn. “And there’s his wife,” she muttered, spotting a flash of movement by the hay bales to her left. “What is she doing out here?
“Mrs. Clancy?” she called, disapproval etched firmly in her brow. “You shouldn’t be outside. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling her,” the barrel-chested farmer shouted across the distance, tossing aside a board with a muffled clatter. “Get her back to the house for me, will you, Emily? I got me some animals trapped back here.”
The woman with a head full of pink-foam curlers in her salt-and-pepper hair balanced herself on a chrome cane and lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. Her rose-print house dress flapped around the knees of her white pressure stockings, her expression bouncing between Emily and Justin in open curiosity.
“Are you all right, child?”
“We’re fine. I only lost a tree and door. And a porch post. No one got hurt.”
“Then let me sit down and take that baby so you can help Sam.” Her sharp hazel eyes cut to the man who slowed his stride, letting Emily hurry ahead of him. When Emily stopped beside her, the older woman’s voice dropped like a rock. “Who’s he?”
“A lawyer. He was fishing and needed a…jump. His car isn’t working. I said maybe he could use your telephone.”
The late-fifty-something Connie Clancy ran a considered glance from Justin’s meticulously cut dark hair to the tips of his expensive hiking boots. “You’d be welcome to use the phone,” she called out over the frantic bawling coming from the damaged building, “but the storm took it out.”
“I figured as much,” Justin replied, dubiously eyeing the pink things protruding from the woman’s head. He’d already noticed the phone and power lines dangling from the utility pole near the downed fence. Considering the damage, he wasn’t about to ask for help with his car.
He glanced toward the barn. At the near end, the siding had been peeled off as neatly as the skin from an apple. The far end looked rather like a bomb had gone off in it. Wires and roofing dangled over a gaping hole. Beams and posts slanted every which way. The man in coveralls wrestled one of those beams, his bulky body straining as he tugged and jerked on the unyielding timber. All the while a chorus of low-pitched and pitiful bawling pierced the air.
The cacophony was joined by a piercing squeal.
Even from forty feet away, the farmer’s sense of urgency was obvious. On either side of his back coverall straps, sweat stains darkened the man’s worn white T-shirt from the strain of lifting the heavy boards. His face was the color of the barn. With the extra thirty pounds the farmer was packing around the middle of his banty-legged frame, he looked like a heart attack waiting to happen.
Justin swore, softly and to himself, but the terse word pretty much summed up how he felt about the course the day had taken. He’d gone looking for escape and landed smack in the middle of Oz. If he’d wanted to deal with dilemmas, he could have stayed in Chicago and gone to the office.
“You stay here and take care of the lady,” he said to Emily. One crisis a day was enough. There was nothing to do but step in and make sure he wasn’t faced with another. “I’ll go help him.”
“There’s a cow and calf trapped inside,” Mrs. Clancy explained as Emily’s baby began to make little squeaking sounds. “The weaner’s in there, too.”
“The dog?” he asked, thinking ‘dachshund.’
Mrs. Clancy hesitated. “The pig,” she replied, looking as if she were speaking to the daft. “Dogs don’t sound like that.”
“I know what a dog sounds like. You call a pig a weaner?”
“You do one that’s recently been weaned from its sow.”
The baby squeaked again. Because she’d started getting fretful, her mom held her closer, moving with a gentle rocking motion. The movement wasn’t what she seemed to want. With her little head turning from side to side against her mother’s swollen breast, her face screwed up, transforming her features from cherubic to prunelike and her fussing into an impatient, hiccuping squall.
The older woman leaned more heavily on her cane. “I’d say she wants to nurse.”
“She does.”
“Well, I can’t help you there, dear.”
Emily’s voice was soft, her soothing tone lacking any trace of exasperation as she ducked her head toward her child’s. “She just wants her mom. But this isn’t the best time, you know, Anna? I need to help Mr. Clancy.”
“I said I’ll help your neighbor.” Justin took a step back, not entirely comfortable with the course of the conversation, trying not to look it. “You can take care of her now.”
“It sounds like the animals might be injured. You might need—”
“I’ll deal with it,” he insisted. “Stay here.”
Puzzlement entered Emily’s eyes with his terse order, but he turned before she could say another word and headed for the barn. Even if her baby hadn’t needed her just then, he didn’t like the idea of Emily climbing around the broken planks and timbers that blocked the end of the towering building. He was even less enthralled with the idea of her dealing with the animals he could hear battering the boards and bawling over the racket Mr. Clancy made when he pulled out a plank and the piece of wall it supported collapsed. He wasn’t crazy about the idea of dealing with them himself. What he knew about farm animals was pretty much limited to the meat counter at his local supermarket. But he was pretty sure a terrified animal was as unpredictable as it was dangerous. It was hard to tell how much damage one could do. Rather like a rejected woman.
The comparison balled a leaden knot in his gut. The last thing he needed to be thinking about right now was how to deal with his senior partner’s daughter. He hadn’t rejected Cameron Beck, anyway. Not yet. He was too busy avoiding the involvement her father was pushing on him to let her know he wasn’t in the market for marriage. Never had been. Never would be.
Given a choice, he’d rather take on the cow.
“That looks pretty heavy there. Let me help you with it.”
The old farmer glanced over his shoulder, his ham-hock fists grasping the end of a beam. Beneath the shadowing brim of a green cap embroidered with the word Pioneer, his spiky gray eyebrows knitted in a worried slash.
“Thanks. Need to get a path cleared,” the man said, his need for haste battling curiosity over who was offering the unexpected assistance. “Brought my animals in to get ’em out of the storm. Now they’re trapped in their pens. They’re going to collapse that wall the way they keep knocking into it.”
He hauled on the beam, dust billowing.
Judiciously avoiding a protruding nail, Justin reached for a door on top of the pile. The tines of a pitchfork were imbedded in its frame. Incredibly, so were stick-straight pieces of straw.
Not Oz, he thought. It was more like a rabbit hole.
Vaguely aware of two pairs of female eyes on his back, not pleased at all to find himself comparing his life to children’s stories, he pulled the door upright. Wincing at the pain in his shoulder, he tossed the door aside and added to the cloud of dust himself.
“You say he was fishing?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Bet he’s staying at that fancy bed-and-breakfast in Hancock that young couple from Des Moines opened last year. He looks like one of those yuppie-types, or whatever it is they call themselves nowadays. Can’t imagine who else would wear one of those designer shirts to go fishing. I’ll bet you can get three shirts from the JCPenney catalogue for what he paid for the one he’s wearing.”
“I suppose.”
“Did he say where he was from?”
As frantic as she’d been at the time, Emily was surprised she even remembered. “Chicago.”
Mrs. Clancy gave a nod. “Thought he looked like big city.”
Speculation brightened Mrs. Clancy’s pleasantly rounded features as she sat on the hay bale she’d selected for a chair. Emily sat on a bale beside her while Anna nursed, the cotton diaper she used for a burp cloth modestly shielding her from the men working beyond them.
“I’d say he’s used to getting his way, too,” the older woman observed, watching the man under discussion shoulder a heavy beam. “I wonder if he’s a firstborn? I can’t remember if I saw it on Sally or Oprah. Or maybe it was Extra,” she considered, pondering, “but someone had a birth-order expert on a while back. A psychologist, I think. She said firstborns are the responsible ones. Used to being in charge and all.
“Junior is like that,” she confided, lowering her voice as if someone might overhear her disparaging her own oldest, and only, child. “Stubborn as the day is long. Just like his father.” Settling back, Mrs. Clancy gave a sharp nod. “As insistent as that lawyer was about you staying put, I’d say that he’s just as set in his ways.”
“I don’t know about birth order,” Emily admitted. She’d never heard of such a thing before, but Mrs. Clancy watched all the talk shows and she was very informed. “But he does seem quite sure of himself. Except with Anna,” she mused, contemplating his broad back. “When he held her, he acted like she was going to slip right out of his hands.”
“Now, why would you be letting a strange man hold your baby?”
“So I could get out of the cellar after the storm passed.” Her voice gentled, her expression turning pensive as she stroked her baby’s downy little arm. The thought that she could have lost Anna tightened her chest, hinted at pain that went far deeper than any she’d felt before—and simply couldn’t bear to consider. “He helped us, Mrs. Clancy. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t come along.”
For a moment, the older woman said nothing. She just pinched her lips and patted Emily on the arm.
“Well, he did come along,” Mrs. Clancy allowed, looking as if she were thinking of the day help had come too late for Emily’s husband. “And you and the baby are fine, so just push those thoughts right out of your head.
“I’ll admit he did seem a little anxious when Anna started fussing,” she observed, deftly changing the subject back to the man Emily was openly watching. “It could be that he’s just never been around young ones before.” She cocked her head full of pink curlers, her interest taking another turn. “I didn’t notice a ring on him.”
“A ring? Oh, you mean a wedding ring.” Emily’s glance automatically cut to the pretty little diamonds glittering on the woman’s left hand. The custom of exchanging rings hadn’t existed in her old community. In it, when a man married, he grew a beard which he never shaved. No one had worn any jewelry at all. “I didn’t notice, either.”
She hadn’t looked at his hands. She’d only felt them. Watching him heft another board, studying the strong lines of his back and long legs, she realized she’d actually felt a considerable amount of his beautifully muscled body. He’d felt very warm, very…hard.
At the thought, her glance faltered, warmth touching her cheeks.
“I’d say you noticed something,” her too observant neighbor murmured. “Of course, a woman would have to be drawing her last breath not to notice a man like that. But you can never be too careful around that sort, you know.
“You remember me telling you about that lawyer on The Tame and The Wild?” she continued, carrying the conversation the way she always did. “Handsome devil, that one. Charmed the sweet young niece of a client right into his bed. Seduced her in five episodes, then dumped her for his secretary’s mother. I’m not saying this fella’s like that and I’m not one to judge,” she claimed, doing just that. “I mean he did offer you and my Sam a hand and I have to say that speaks well of him. But he is a lawyer. And he is from the city,” she stressed, sounding as if the combination somehow diluted his more redeeming behavior.
“Sheltered as you’ve been, I know you haven’t come up against his type. Smooth and sophisticated, I mean. And arrogant,” she muttered, her expression turning to a glower as her thoughts shifted course. “Like those no-conscience weasels from SoyCo who spout statutes and clauses and time allowances instead of fixing the drainage problem by our land. We have crops being flooded because of their negligence and they keep telling us how much time they have to look into the problem. I can tell ’em what the problem is. That new drain tile they put in when they bought the Eiger farm is draining straight onto our land. All they’ve got to do is dig—”
“Mrs. Clancy,” Emily murmured. A vein bulged by the pink tape holding a curl in place at the woman’s temple. “Remember your blood pressure.”
Connie Clancy glared at Justin’s back for another moment then huffed a breath. “Well, I am of a mind to think they haven’t a feeling bone in their bodies,” she muttered, nowhere near ready to give up the subject now that she’d started on it. “They live their highfalutin lives and don’t give a whit about common folk’s livelihoods. Did this Sloan fella say what kind of lawyer he was?”
Actually, Emily thought, he had. He’d said he was ‘corporate’ which didn’t bode at all well for ending the present course of conversation.
“A good one,” she replied, because he’d certainly implied it.
“Sounds just like ’em.”
The terse statement drew Emily’s brow in a faint frown. The thought that Justin could be as coldhearted and presumptuous as the men Mrs. Clancy was so upset about disturbed her. For a twenty-four-year-old woman, she knew she was woefully unsophisticated, but that hadn’t been her impression of him at all.
Dismissing the thought, and knowing the woman would go on forever if she didn’t change the subject herself, Emily edged back the diaper to see how her little girl was doing. The nagging thought that maybe she was just being naive gave way to a more profound concern.
“Do you think Anna’s grown any since you saw her last week?”
Bated exasperation softened the disgruntled woman’s expression. It softened a bit more when she looked over to where the pink-cheeked infant had fallen asleep at her mother’s breast. “Emily Miller, I know new mothers worry, but I’ve never heard of one worrying the way you do.”
“But she doesn’t seem to be getting any bigger.”
“That’s because you’re with her every minute of the day. She’s only a couple of months old. How big do you think she’s supposed to be?” She shook her head, looking vaguely amused. “She’s not some strapping boy like Paula Ferguson’s grandson, you know. Why, that child must have put on a pound a week to be as big as he is now. Of course his mother isn’t exactly dainty herself,” she confided.
She pulled a deep breath, preparing to head off on yet another tangent, but the commotion from the barn had her clamping her mouth shut before she could even get started. A calf shot out of the rubble, its rust-colored rump bouncing as it headed for the flattened cornfield. Over the clatter of boards inside the barn, the bovine bellowing grew more insistent.
The men were nowhere to be seen.
Mrs. Clancy’s hand flattened over her heart. “What in the world…?”
Pulling the diaper from Emily’s shoulder, she tossed it over her own and reached her weathered hands toward Anna. Even as she did, Emily was buttoning herself up and trying not to panic at the thought of what might have happened to Mr. Clancy—or to the man who knew far less than her husband had about the hazards on a farm.
Chapter Three
Emily’s panic was blessedly short-lived. Justin was fine. He assured her of that himself when she found him and Mr. Clancy glaring at the section of wall that had collapsed when the two of them had moved the beam trapping the calf. The old farmer grunted his assurances, too, then added his bulk to Justin’s muscle when Justin started clearing away the new pile of boards.
The men did, indeed, appear completely unscathed, and for that Emily was most grateful, but it was clear enough that they needed help. Neither of them wanted her wading around in the rubble, though, so she left them to their task and did what she could by chasing down the animal that had bolted from the barn as if its backside were on fire. After staking the calf on a long rope near the hay bales, she headed up to the house with Mrs. Clancy and Anna to make sandwiches and a salad for the Clancys’ dinner in exchange for the use of Mr. Clancy’s little red chain saw and a can of gasoline.
She had a tree to cut up. She also had a bushel of beans waiting to be canned. With the sun slanting low on the horizon, she didn’t have much of the day left to waste.
“I’ll take those.”
Justin’s long shadow overtook hers on the rutted road a moment before she felt his hand close over the handle of the chain saw.
“Clancy will pick me up in an hour or so and jump my car for me,” he said, leaving her to carry the can with the baby snuggled against her chest like a little papoose. “He said he needs to check his irrigation before he does anything else.”
He’d wiped off a streak of dirt he’d had on his cheek earlier. But when he fell into step beside her, the saw between them, she noticed an angry red scratch on his arm. “I was going to watch for you. So I could thank you,” she said, not wanting him to think she would let him leave without telling him how she appreciated what he’d done. “You don’t need to carry that for me,” she added. “I can manage.”
“No thanks necessary. And it’s either carry this back for you or sit here doing nothing until he gets finished. He didn’t seem to need any more help.
“Actually,” he muttered, as they moved between the rows of corn, “I think it was my help he didn’t want. We were doing fine until he asked what I did for a living. When I told him I was an attorney, he turned as suspicious as the warden of a pen. He thought for sure that I worked for some corporation who bought a farm east of here and that I’d come to check the condition of his crops or something. I had to swear I’d only come here to fish before he’d let me past that cow.” He shook his head, looking as if he weren’t sure if he should be confused or insulted. “I’ve never even heard of the company he was talking about.”
The furrows in his brow eased only slightly when he hoisted the saw. “You know how to use this thing?”
If the skeptical way he looked at the useful little device was any indication, he didn’t appear overly familiar with it himself. What struck Emily more was his easy dismissal of her neighbor’s suspecting attitude. He was either terribly forgiving or his hide was as thick as a buffalo’s.
“I’ve borrowed it before. To cut firewood,” she explained, searching for traces of the arrogance Mrs. Clancy claimed men like him possessed. “It’s much simpler to use than an ax.”
His glance swept over her face, past the tiny head resting between her breasts and down to her sneakers. “I have a little trouble picturing you swinging an ax.”
“I had trouble doing it.” Not arrogant, she thought. But definitely bold. “That’s why I borrowed the saw. I’ve added one to my wish list.”
“Of course you have.” Wincing, he cautiously rotated his left shoulder. “It’s what every woman wants. Flowers. Diamonds. A chain saw. I’ll make a note of that,” he muttered, a cornstalk snapping beneath his weight. “I’ll have women falling at my feet.”
The hint of sarcasm in his tone automatically stiffened her back. Yet, when she saw the faint smile tug at the corner of his mouth, she realized he wasn’t mocking her as some people had been known to do when she expressed her admittedly simple desires. He was teasing her. From the way he flinched when he edged his left arm back, he also seemed to be rather uncomfortable.
“You speak as if you don’t have a wife,” she observed, wondering what he’d done to himself.
“I don’t. I don’t plan to ever have one, either.”
“Never?”
Her luminous blue eyes went wide, her expression caught somewhere between amazement and incredulity. Justin wasn’t sure when he’d ever seen anyone look so openly astonished. He wasn’t sure, either, why he’d finally put voice to a conviction that had only solidified in the past year.
“I can’t see any advantage to it,” he admitted, figuring the bartender syndrome must be at work. He had never confided in one himself. He rarely confided in anyone for that matter. But he could see where it would be easier for a person to admit certain truths to a stranger than to someone he knew. Friends and family had their own expectations, their own agendas.
“Life is easier with a partner,” she said simply. She gave a shrug, the gesture seeming to say her conclusion was nothing more than a plain fact. Snow was white. Birds had wings. Life was easier with a partner. “I read in Newsweek that studies show men even live longer when they’re married.”
He met her easy certainty with equal conviction. He’d heard about those studies, too. But he didn’t get a chance to tell her that he’d prefer quality over quantity. He’d pulled his left arm in a little to move his sleeve from his stinging skin. As he did, her hand ceased its soothing motions on the back of the denim carrier and she reached for his arm.
Curling her fingers a few inches above where he held the saw, she peeked toward his opposite shoulder. “What is it that’s bothering you? Did you hurt yourself back there?”
Justin’s first reaction was to brush off her question. His second was simply to breathe.
She’d moved in front of him, setting the can of gas on the drying ground, and lifted the edge of his sleeve. Gingerly, she touched the skin below the abrasion on his biceps. Unguarded interest shadowed her exquisite face. But it was the troubled look in her eyes that hit him like a physical blow. No woman had ever looked at him with such open and honest concern.
“You are hurt,” she accused softly. “What happened?”
There were flecks of pale silver in his pewter-gray eyes. Emily noticed them as his glance quietly searched her face. Feeling her heart catch at his scrutiny, she dropped her hand as she swung her glance back to the angry red abrasion emerging below the short sleeve of his shirt. What skin was visible looked raw and sore. The shirt itself was snagged, as if something rough had dragged across it, tearing and pulling its threads.
“The door hit it.”
“What door?”
“The one to your cellar. Come on,” he murmured, reaching for the gas can himself, “I could use something cold to drink.”
She snagged the can before he could, her sense of indebtedness growing stronger as they cut toward the little house her husband had repaired. Logic told her Justin couldn’t be hurt too badly. After all, he’d worked all afternoon hauling boards without a hint of hesitation or complaint. That she’d been aware of, anyway. But whether or not he’d been in pain before, he was now. And he’d hurt himself protecting her and her child.
“We’ll have to go in the front,” she said as they approached her house a few minutes later. “I have iced tea or lemonade. Which would you prefer?”
Leaving the chain saw by the can of gas near the back porch, Justin told her he didn’t care as long as it was cold and wet, and followed her past a propane tank at the side of the house. He was pretty sure from her preoccupation that she was thinking about the tree she needed to clear from her back door. He didn’t doubt that she wanted to get started on it.
All he wanted was to get his car running and get home.
That was what he’d been telling himself, anyway.
He pushed his fingers through his hair as he took the steps up her front porch, the motion more habit than exasperation. He wasn’t anywhere near as frustrated by the delays as he should have been. But then, he hadn’t intended to accomplish anything today anyway, he reminded himself, pulling open the screen door Emily had already disappeared through. That was the only possible explanation for why he didn’t feel like pacing out of his skin. Delays of any kind usually made him crazy.
The interior of the little house was dim. It was also cooler than it was outside. Drawn as much by curiosity as that coolness, he stepped over the threshold and let the screen door bump closed behind him.
Emily was nowhere to be seen. He could hear her, though. Her gentle voice filtered through a doorway to his right as she spoke to her baby. It sounded very much as if she were commiserating over how awful it must feel to be wet, and making assurances that she would remedy that situation in no time at all.
Figuring she must be changing her baby’s diaper, he pushed his hands into his pockets and took another step into a room that smelled faintly of cinnamon and lemon oil.
The starched white curtains had been drawn to keep out the heat of the sun, but as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he could easily see around the neat and sparsely furnished space.
To his left, a stone fireplace took up most of the wall. Across from it, a simple wooden bench was filled with embroidered pillows. Beside him, a rocking chair had a small quilt draped over its back.
The reds and blues in the quilt were muted in the pale light, but the exquisite workmanship in the beautifully crafted piece was evident. Resisting the urge to touch it, he glanced toward the old treadle sewing machine beneath the narrow front window. Judging from it and the oil lamps atop a crowded book case, it appeared that Emily was into antiques.
She also seemed to have an eclectic sense of philosophy. Two small posters lay on the braided rag rug that covered most of the wood floor, presumably waiting to be put into the inexpensive frames propped against the wall. The smaller one was of a secluded mountain stream cascading into an enormous waterfall. The flowing script across the bottom read Go with the Flow. The poster next to it, larger and presumably for her daughter’s room, was of a teddy bear in a pink tutu looking out a window. It simply said Dream.
“She’s happier now,” he heard Emily say as she emerged from the bedroom and headed for the doorway across from him. “She wanted her bassinet. Please. Come in,” she invited, only to come to a halt when she reached the doorway herself.
Over her shoulder he could see a large wood table graced with a bouquet of flowers. Other than that, he could see nothing in the roomy, Spartan space but the basics. An old stove, an older refrigerator and white painted cabinets. He couldn’t even see a sink, but that was because the limb occupying her back porch blocked the early evening light—along with the sink itself. Part of that limb had punched through the window and was hanging like a bushy verdant waterfall nearly to the floor.
He heard her pull a deep breath, saw her slender shoulders rise. It didn’t take a Rhodes scholar to figure out that the Fates were having a field day with this woman. In the past few months, she’d lost her husband, had a child and been shafted—whether or not she wanted to admit it—by an itinerant who’d split with a chunk of her hard-earned cash. Considering the way the Fates had jerked her around today, he wouldn’t have been at all surprised if the broken window over the sink hadn’t just supplied the proverbial last straw.
The thought had him reaching for her shoulder. Before he could touch her, she let out a sigh and stepped away.
Frowning at himself, wondering what he’d thought he was going to do, he shoved his hands into his pockets and watched her head for the window by the refrigerator. She pushed open the unruffled white curtains to let in what light there was, then took an oil lamp from the top of the refrigerator and set in on the table.
He was thinking that the electricity must be out here, too, when she stooped to pick up the bar of soap that been knocked to the floor and headed for the sink, picking her way through the glass on the floor as she went. As if she tackled a jungle of foliage in her kitchen every day, she rustled her way through the leaves until she found what she was looking for.
Metal squeaked over the rush of water as his glance slipped down her long, windblown braid. Life here was as foreign to him as life on Mars. But nothing he’d encountered so far puzzled him more than this woman’s almost philosophical acceptance of what would have had anyone else he knew reaching for antacids, at the very least.
It was almost as if it hadn’t occurred to her to be upset just now. Luisa, his long-suffering cleaning lady, would have thrown her hands into the air and railed at the litany of saints she evoked for everything from world peace to a lost sock had she been faced with this mess. His mother—along with nearly every other woman he knew—would have stared blindly at the disorder, expecting someone, anyone, to materialize from somewhere and tend to it, lest she wreck her manicure.
Emily simply worked around it.
“You might want to wash,” she said, drying her hands with a towel she pulled from the refrigerator handle. The towel went over her shoulder as she reached into a cabinet. “The bathroom’s through there,” she said, nodding to a doorway on the other side of the refrigerator. “That would be easier than trying to get to the pump in here.”
He’d barely glanced past her when his brow furrowed. “The pump?”
“The water pump. I don’t have faucets.”
Curious, he pushed aside the bough hiding the gunmetal gray sink and stared at the tall, upright and decidedly old-fashioned metal spout with its long wooden handle. “This place must have been here since the turn of the century.”
“It has,” she replied over the clink of ice in a glass. “Mr. Clancy said the building was here when his father bought the place years ago. They sold it to us along with these two acres of land in exchange for a year’s work from Daniel. He worked for him for a wage after the land became ours.”
“You didn’t want to modernize?”
She’d wanted to. She’d wanted to keep the rose print wallpaper, too, tattered as it had been. She’d never had anything pretty on her walls before. But Daniel had stripped it and painted everything white.
“We were used to a simple house,” she said, reminding herself that this winter, she would repaint every room. If she got up her nerve, she might even pick colors that were outrageously bold. The only room she had painted so far was Anna’s and that was soft, shell pink. “The walls and the foundation were good, so Daniel only had to repair the roof and replace the windows.”
Daniel had been a good carpenter. He’d learned from his father and his father had raised more houses and barns than anyone in Haven County. There had even been a man in Hancock who would have hired Daniel to work in his cabinet shop, but Daniel had wanted to tend the land.
It had kept him closer to the old ways, made it easier for him to keep himself separate from their neighbors.
“I’m sure you must be hungry,” she said, refusing to let her thoughts carry her back when she was trying so hard to move forward. Ice cracked as she poured liquid over it. “I’ll put some antiseptic on those scrapes, then fix you something to eat.”
Soaping up after he’d given the handle a pump, Justin eyed the golden pie sitting on the stove. His breakfast of a large black coffee-to-go and two granola bars had worn off hours ago. “You don’t have to feed me,” he said, marveling at the way she minimized her lack. She couldn’t afford regular plumbing. He wasn’t about to take her food. “And my arm’s fine. It’s just bruised.”
“Your arm is not fine. You were out in that barn with the sore open and unprotected. It needs to be cleaned.
“And you didn’t have to help me, either,” she continued, her voice suddenly quiet. “But you did.” Gratitude shifted in her eyes as she held out a towel. “I know you said no thanks were necessary, but I’ll never be able to thank you enough for what you did for me and Anna today. So let me do what I can.” She lifted the towel a little higher. “Please?”
The thought of the barn and what had been in it already had him hesitating. Her unexpected plea had him hesitating even more.
“You don’t owe me anything.” Whatever he’d done, he’d done on instinct. When he’d dived for that cellar, he’d been protecting himself as much as he had her and her kid. “You gave me shelter. I’d say that makes us even.
“But I’ll take you up on the antiseptic,” he told her, ignoring the disagreement in her eyes as he took the towel she offered. She truly didn’t owe him anything. But he knew what it was like to feel obligated. If she hated the feeling as much as he did, he wouldn’t deny her the satisfaction of evening the score. “Where do you want me?”
Emily looked up at the mountain of male muscle towering over her. She didn’t know why he seemed so much bigger to her now than he had outside. But she didn’t think it wise to stand there watching his glance move over her face while she tried to figure it out. “It would help if you’d sit down,” she murmured and turned to gather supplies from the bathroom.
He’d drained the glass of lemonade she’d left for him on her well-scrubbed pine table and was leaning back in one of its straight-backed chairs when she returned and set everything on the table beside him. He was following her every move. She could feel it. But she didn’t let herself meet his eyes. She focused only on the fabric covering his biceps. She’d noticed the snags before. What she hadn’t noticed was the tear in the seam.
“I’ll fix your shirt for you,” she said, leaning over so she could lift his sleeve and see how far up the scrape went.
“Don’t bother. I have another one in the car. Wait a minute,” he muttered when he felt the sleeve scrape his sore skin. “I’ll just take it off.”
Before she could say a word, he’d bent his dark head and grabbed a handful of fabric between his shoulder blades. Seconds later, he dragged the garment over his head.
Emily swallowed hard as he dropped it to his knee. Until two years ago, Daniel had been the only man she’d seen in any state of undress. He’d worked hard and ate well, but his thin build had not been what one would call impressive. Justin’s…was. His shoulders were broad, every corded muscle in his tapering back and carved arms beautifully defined.
She’d seen pictures of statues depicting such beautifully proportioned men. She’d even seen pictures of men themselves in ads for skimpy underwear, though the first few times she’d encountered them while flipping through magazines at Mrs. Clancy’s and at the grocery store, she’d nearly turned pink with embarrassment.
The image of a half-naked man no longer startled her as it once had. Mary Woldridge, a checker at the market who’d become her friend, even said she was no fun to watch at the magazine rack anymore. The real thing, however, was rather disturbing. So was the four-inch-wide swath of bruised, raw and abraded skin that ran from Justin’s biceps to the top of his shoulder. Little splinters were visible between the streaks of blood that had dried and crusted in places, any one of which could have caught on his sleeve with his movements and caused a fresh jolt of discomfort.
He would have been terribly uncomfortable working with Mr. Clancy. But it was the thought of how he’d been hurting while he’d shielded her and her child that had her reaching to touch the skin below his reddened flesh.
“You’re already bruising,” she murmured. “Does it feel like you chipped bone?”
“I don’t think I did anything like that. It just feels a little sore.”
She met his eyes, sympathy in her own as she straightened. She needed more light.
Justin watched her turn away, the soft fabric of her dress shifting against her slender body as she moved across the room. The dress itself was modest to a fault. Demure, he supposed, though it wasn’t a word he recalled ever having reason to use before. The sleeves nearly reached her elbows and her delicate collarbone was barely exposed. But the memory of how she’d looked with the wind molding that fabric to her body had been burned into his brain. All too easily, he could picture the fullness of her high breasts, the curve of her hips, her long, shapely legs.
Thinking of how exquisitely she was shaped beneath that formless garment had his body responding in ways that were not wise to consider in such an intimate space. So he forced his attention to what she was doing as she turned back to the table and touched the match she struck to the wick of the oil lamp she’d set there. Moments later, a bright glow illuminated her lovely face. That light gleamed in her hair, adding shimmers of platinum to shades of silver and gold as she replaced the glass chimney and positioned the lamp near the jar of vividly colored flowers.
With the scrape of wood over scarred pine flooring, Emily tugged a chair next to his and sat down beside him.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?”
He held up the thumb of his left hand. “Just a couple of slivers. I can get them if you have any tweezers.”
She reached toward a gauze pad. “I have a needle,” she told him, pulling out the one she’d brought and sterilizing it in the wick’s flame. “You have them in your arm, too. Here,” she murmured, replacing the chimney once more. “Let me see.”
His bare chest was terribly distracting. Trying not to think of how incredibly solid it had felt, she took his thick wrist and moved his hand closer to the light. With his hand resting palm-up on her table, she could easily see two fine slivers of wood in the pad of his thumb.
His hands distracted her, too.
They were strong, broad and long-fingered. Good hands. Capable hands. Yet, they were nearly unblemished. There were no calluses, no scars, no healing scratches. Only the fresh-looking scrapes and nicks he’d earned that afternoon.
Fascinated, she started to touch the smooth pad at the base of his fingers, only to pull back as if she’d touched fire the instant she realized what she was doing.
“What’s the matter?”
With a sheepish smile, she ducked her head and went to work on his thumb, deftly slipping out a sliver with the needle and wiping it onto a gauze pad. “Your hands are very smooth. I’ve never seen a man’s hands that weren’t scarred and callused from years of work. Except maybe Dr. Fisher,” she amended, thinking of the kindly old physician in Hancock who’d delivered Anna. The other sliver joined the first. “But I can’t honestly say I paid any attention to them. Yours are the only ones I’ve noticed.”
“Is that good or bad?” He posed the question mildly, absorbed as much by her lack of guile as her brisk efficiency when she dabbed on peroxide with a cotton ball, then blotted at the bubbles. “No calluses, I mean?”
“There are some who would say that soft hands mean a person is idle. But Dr. Fisher is a very busy man. And you work with your mind.” She tipped her head, still looking intrigued as she finished with dabs of antibiotic cream. “Your hands don’t look soft, though. And they didn’t feel that way at all.”
“They didn’t?”
Emily kept her head down as she slowly wiped a bit of cream from her own fingers. “No,” she murmured, but she would give him no more than that. Her last observation had slipped out before she considered what she was saying. He didn’t need to know she could still imagine how comforting their solid, masculine weight had felt against her back when he’d wrapped her in his arms. He didn’t need to know how drawn she was by their strength. How drawn she was by him.
“I’m relieved to hear that.”
She thought he might be smiling—the way he had when he’d teased her about her chain saw. But he wasn’t smiling at all. He was watching her as if he knew very well she was thinking of his hands on her body. And she was. Though until his glance slowly wandered to her mouth, she hadn’t considered that he might have been thinking of that, too.
She wasn’t comfortable with the awareness shimmering between them. That was as obvious to Justin as the faint tremor in the breath she drew and the chips of sapphire darkening in her eyes. He wasn’t all that comfortable with it himself. But it was there, thickening the air, snaking through his body and washing wariness over Emily’s fragile features.
Pressing her hand to her stomach, she blinked twice and reached for the peroxide to continue with her task.
Clearly flustered, trying not to look it, she promptly knocked it over.
“Oh, mein!” She gasped, bumping the bottle again as she snatched for it. Solution spilled over the edge of the table. It pooled on the wood, splashed on his pants.
“I’ve got it.” Catching the bottle before it went over the edge itself, he turned it upright and saw her grab a towel.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, mopping at the wet spot on his thigh. “I wasn’t paying—”
“It’s okay. Really.” Catching her wrist, he stilled her frantic motions. “It’s okay,” he repeated, ducking his head so he could see her eyes. “Honest. No harm’s done.”
“I’m not usually so—”
“Emily.” Beneath his fingers, he could feel her pulse, its beat as frantic as a trapped bird’s. Incredibly with her mouth inches from his, his own didn’t feel much calmer. “You don’t need to be nervous with me.”
“I can’t seem to help it.”
His glance swept her guileless face. There wasn’t an ounce of cunning in this woman. Nothing false or deceptive about her. She didn’t seem to have any natural defenses at all.
Deliberately ignoring the urge to tug her closer, he slipped his hand from hers. “What was that you said?” he asked, thinking she needed to protect herself better if she was ever going to make it on her own. “What language?”
All she’d said was “Oh, my.” Emily told him that as she pulled back, handing him a towel for his pants, and made herself focus on wiping up the table. “It’s Pennsylvania Dutch.”
She must have been even more rattled than she’d thought to have reverted to the only language she’d heard spoken until she was six years old. She rarely spoke the old German dialect at all anymore. Except to Anna once in a while, so she’d know something of her heritage. She’d learned English in school and had spoken it most of her life, but she’d worked hard over the past two years to pronounce her words the same as her neighbors. She didn’t want to be different. She wanted to belong.
Desperately.
Something like caution entered Justin’s deep voice. “Isn’t that what the Amish speak?”
“In their homes and to each other. In the Old Order communities, anyway,” she said, returning her attention to his abraded arm. “But they speak English, too.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I was Amish,” she said, gently wiping antiseptic over his scraped skin. “And we were Old Order.”
She turned away, picking up her needle again. When she turned back, she frowned at his biceps. “You have one here that looks awfully deep.” Apology touched her eyes even as she began picking at the stubborn splinter. “I’m sorry if it hurts.”
He didn’t get the feeling that she was avoiding the subject. She was simply concentrating on what she felt was more important—something he found oddly touching since what she was concentrating on was taking care of him. With her wielding that needle, he didn’t want to distract her, either.
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Christine Flynn
He could see her sitting on her bed with little Anna in her arms.
She was looking down at the child, her finger slowly stroking a rounded little cheek, the alabaster slope of her breast visible between the sides of her pink shirt. One tiny fist rested against that fullness and the baby’s eyes were closed.
Emily’s expression looked utterly peaceful.
Justin wasn’t sure what caused the odd tug in his chest just then. He wasn’t a man easily impressed, much less easily moved. Yet, he couldn’t seem to look away. Had he been standing before a painting, he supposed the eroticism was what would have caught his attention, the pure sensuality of soft light on skin, the gentle part of Emily’s mouth, the suckling of the baby’s. But there was an element far beyond that, a Madonna-like quality that made him feel as if he were witnessing something infinitely…precious.
The thought had his conscience kicking hard as it told him to look away. He was intruding here. But it was already too late.
Dear Reader,
Welcome to a spectacular month of great romances as we continue to celebrate Silhouette’s 20th Anniversary all year long!
Beloved bestselling author Nora Roberts returns with Irish Rebel, a passionate sequel to her very first book, Irish Thoroughbred. Revisit the spirited Grant family as tempers flare, sparks fly and love ignites between the newest generation of Irish rebels!
Also featured this month is Christine Flynn’s poignant THAT’S MY BABY! story, The Baby Quilt, in which a disillusioned, high-powered attorney finds love and meaning in the arms of an innocent young mother.
Silhouette reader favorite Joan Elliott Pickart delights us with her secret baby story, To a MacAllister Born, adding to her heartwarming cross-line miniseries, THE BABY BET. And acclaimed author Ginna Gray delivers the first compelling story in her series, A FAMILY BOND, with A Man Apart, in which a wounded loner lawman is healed heart, body and soul by the nurturing touch of a beautiful, compassionate woman.
Rounding off the month are two more exciting ongoing miniseries. From longtime author Susan Mallery, we have a sizzling marriage-of-convenience story, The Sheik’s Secret Bride, the third book in her DESERT ROGUES series. And Janis Reams Hudson once again shows her flair for Western themes and Native American heroes with The Price of Honor, a part of her miniseries, WILDERS OF WYATT COUNTY.
It’s a terrific month of page-turning reading from Special Edition. Enjoy!
All the best,
Karen Taylor Richman
Senior Editor
The Baby Quilt
Christine Flynn
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Karen Euritt,
with thanks for your help.
We really miss you guys!
Books by Christine Flynn
Silhouette Desire
Remember the Dreams #254
Silence the Shadows #465
Renegade #566
Walk upon the Wind #612
Out of the Mist #657
The Healing Touch #693
Beyond the Night #747
Luke’s Child #788
Lonely Knight #826
Daughter of the Bride #889
When Morning Comes #922
Jake’s Mountain #945
A Father’s Wish #962
* (#litres_trial_promo)Logan’s Bride #995 * (#litres_trial_promo)The Rebel’s Bride #1034 * (#litres_trial_promo)The Black Sheep’s Bride #1053 Her Child’s Father #1151 Hannah and the Hellion #1184 From House Calls to Husband #1203 * (#litres_trial_promo)Finally His Bride #1240 The Home Love Built #1275 Dr. Mom and the Millionaire #1304 The Baby Quilt #1327
Silhouette Desire
When Snow Meets Fire #254
The Myth and the Magic #296
A Place To Belong #352
Meet Me at Midnight #377
Silhouette Romance
Stolen Promise #435
Courtney’s Conspiracy #623
Silhouette Intimate Moments
Daughter of the Dawn #537
Silhouette Books
36 Hours
Father and Child Reunion
CHRISTINE FLYNN
admits to being interested in just about everything, which is why she considers herself fortunate to have turned her interest in writing into a career. She feels that a writer gets to explore it all and, to her, exploring relationships—especially the intense, bittersweet or even lighthearted relationships between men and women—is fascinating.
Dear Reader,
One of my sisters called while I was cleaning a closet the other night. While we were talking, and I kept sorting, I came across the worn-out old quilts I keep there, all neatly tucked in tissue and plastic cases. One had been made by an aunt, the other had been the patient work of my husband’s grandmother. My sister mentioned the old quilts she, too, treasures, and remarked that their only value was the time and love that had gone into creating them for their families.
That would be how Emily, the heroine in my story, feels about her baby’s quilt. Knowing how much love her mom put into each stitch would make her cherish it. It’s nothing fancy. And it’s not the sort of thing the worldly, sophisticated Justin Sloan would value. At least not until she shows him how. After all, as we know from every THAT’S MY BABY! title, it’s the little things that count.
Best wishes,
Contents
Chapter One (#ub216d7d5-e6fe-508e-a19b-9f3a317b0ec4)
Chapter Two (#uf41085b5-a346-538e-aff9-a65cd0ad82a5)
Chapter Three (#u19052913-86f3-5156-93e5-71a3e9b7ff7e)
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 Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
Justin Sloan’s mood was as black as the storm clouds churning in the Western Illinois sky. His car had a dead battery. In a fit of rebellion, which he was rapidly coming to regret, he’d left his cell phone recharging in his fifty-second-floor condo in Chicago. And since he hadn’t had the foresight to throw rain gear into his trunk along with his fishing pole and a spare T-shirt, he was about to get soaked to the skin. Those clouds were too leaden to hold back their moisture for long.
The wind shifted and danced, fanning the tall grasses and wildflowers as he continued his trek along the narrow country road. According to his map, the town of Hancock was ten miles from the little bridge he’d just crossed, a good thirty miles closer than the freeway exit he’d taken to reach the fishing spot a client had told him about. Spending a Saturday making long looping casts into a secluded stream had sounded like a fine idea when he’d been staring at the ceiling above his bed at 6:00 a.m. Five hours later, he almost wished he’d fought his insomnia with a run along the shore of Lake Michigan instead.
Almost.
The same edginess that had prompted his escape from the city still stirred in his gut. He’d had to get out. Get away. The need had felt too urgent to question. He wasn’t even questioning it now. It had been there ever since he’d left last night’s celebration dinner—a dinner given in his honor—and still hadn’t quite eased.
The road ahead took a gradual rise over the gently rolling land and made a dogleg turn to the right. His glance narrowed on a house to the left.
The modest old farmhouse sat back from the road, a relic from the turn of last century and painfully austere. It stood ghostly white against the charcoal-gray sky, its stark appearance unrelieved by any hint of decoration except a single window box overflowing with blooms of bright-red. The porch was a utilitarian square, the railings utterly plain. But the land surrounding it burst with every imaginable shade of green. Nearest the road, row upon row of brilliant emerald plants glowed jewellike against dark, loamy earth. Farther back, miles of corn merged on a large square of land planted with what looked to be a vegetable garden. A windmill, its blades spinning madly, guarded a tidy utility shed and a chicken coop.
Relieved to know he wouldn’t have to walk ten miles in the rain to get to a phone, he set his sights on a woman disappearing into a greenhouse and jogged across the road and up the property’s long graveled driveway. Thirty feet from the building, he slowed his pace. The young woman had appeared again. With her calf-length blue dress tangling around her legs, she headed for a long rack of plants.
Slender as a willow branch and just as supple, she bent to hurriedly tuck a flat of plants under each arm and headed for the greenhouse once more. Wisps of flaxen hair had escaped the braid that dangled nearly to her waist. The wind whipped those gleaming strands into a halo around her head, but it was the way the gusts of air plastered the shapeless garment to her body that had most of his attention as he moved toward her.
The thought that she was probably half his age immediately jerked his attention from her intriguing curves. Mentally disrobing the farmer’s seventeen-year-old daughter wasn’t likely to make the farmer eager to lend him a hand. Considering the bolt of lightning streaking against the wall of black in the distance, he wasn’t interested in jeopardizing his welcome.
“Is your dad around anywhere?” he called, an instant before a crack of thunder shook the windows in the house behind him.
It was hard to tell which caused her footsteps to falter when her head jerked up—finding a large, male stranger in her yard, or the jarring boom that sent a covey of wrens screaming from the sweeping arms of the walnut tree shading the house. She’d been so focused on her task that she hadn’t even noticed his approach.
That task obviously took precedence. Ignoring him, she dropped her hand from where it had flattened at her throat and, with her hair streaming across her face, disappeared into the greenhouse.
“Great,” he muttered, looking around for signs of someone who might be a little more cooperative.
There wasn’t anyone outside that he could see. There weren’t any lights on in the house to indicate anyone was inside, either. Wondering if someone might be in the greenhouse, he looked through the plastic-covered windows that had already fluttered loose in places. The milky material rustled in the wind, echoing the snap of the blinding white sheets billowing on the clothesline. There were no shadows to indicate a human inside. The only other form of life seemed to be the chickens who were abandoning their wire enclosure for the white clapboard coop.
A flash of pale blue streaked from the greenhouse.
In no mood to wait until she decided to acknowledge him, he moved with her.
“Look, I’m sorry to bother you, but my car won’t start. It’s not far from here,” he explained when she’d kept going without giving him so much as a glance. “Is your dad around?” he called. “All I need is a jump.”
She hurriedly lifted two more flats of tiny green plants from the rack near the vegetable garden. “My father doesn’t live here.”
She finally looked up. Justin didn’t know which caught him more off guard, the velvet soft quality of her voice, her faint accent, or the angelic quality of her delicate features. Her eyes were the clear blue of a summer sky and her skin looked so soft it fairly begged to be touched.
His glance dropped to the lush fullness of her mouth. Soft and ripe, that sensuality was as unexpected as the innocence.
So was the jolt of heat low in his gut.
Her lips had parted with an indrawn breath when their eyes met the first time. When they met again, her glance faltered and she grabbed another flat.
“What about your husband?” he asked, forcing his focus to her hands. She appeared older than he’d first thought. Her left hand was hidden, but she could easily be married. “Can he help me?”
She was trying to balance a third tray between the two she held when he saw her hesitate. Harried, distracted, she darted a furtive glance from his dark hair to the logo on his polo shirt and murmured, “No. He can’t.”
An instant later, seeing she couldn’t carry more than two trays without smashing what she was trying to save, she hoisted a flat to each hip and took off again.
“Then, how about a telephone?”
Grabbing the plants she hadn’t been able to carry and another flat for good measure, he hurried to catch up with her.
“There is no telephone here,” she said, still moving. “The nearest one is at the Clancy farm. It’s up the road by the bend. I’d imagine Mr. Clancy is bringing in his cows. For a telephone, you’ll have to go to Hancock.”
“Isn’t there any place closer? A gas station?”
“Only in Hancock.”
“How about another neighbor?” He could jog to the little town if he had to. He ran four times a week as it was. But a ten-mile run in the rain wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind when he’d decided to play hooky. “I’d really like to avoid getting drenched,” he admitted, tossing her a rueful smile. “That sky looks like it could open up any minute.
“I drove out from Chicago to do a little fishing,” he explained, wanting her to know he wasn’t some lunatic out stalking farmers’ wives. “I’m taking the day off, you know?” he asked, wondering what the rush was with getting the plants inside. He’d have thought rain would be good for them. “I noticed the weather changing and decided to head back, but my car battery’s dead.”
She didn’t reply. Nor did she slow by so much as a step as they reached the plant-filled building. Not sure if he should follow her in—or if she was even listening—he stopped by the doorway while she shoved her load onto the nearest table and spun back toward the door.
Spotting the flats he’d carried, she pulled them from his hands, slid them next to the others and hurried back out.
He arrowed a frown at her back, practically biting his tongue to keep that scowl from his voice when he fell into step beside her. “Look, I can seen you’re busy here, but all I need is a jump. If there’s a vehicle—”
“What is this ‘jump?”’
“Jump-start,” he explained, never guessing that a farm girl would be as mechanically challenged as most of the women he knew. “You know. Hook up a car with a good battery to a car with a dead one to get the dead one going again?”
Puzzlement merged with the lines of concern deepening in her brow. But all she said was, “There is no car here.”
“Then how about a tractor?” he called to the back of her retreating head.
There was no tractor, either. She told him that as the first fat drops of rain soaked into his shirt and ticked against the tin roof of the utility shed. Another bolt of lightning ripped across the black horizon. In the three seconds before the thunder rolled in to crack overhead, the rain turned to pea-size hail and the woman had tucked herself over the plants she picked up to keep them from being shredded by the little pellets of ice.
“This Clancy place,” he said, hauling another load himself. “How far is it?”
“A mile by the road.” Looking torn between encouraging and declining his unexpected help, she headed into a gust of wind. “It’s shorter if you cut through the soy field.”
“Which one’s that?
“Hey,” he muttered when she shot him a puzzled glance. “I recognize the corn over there, but I’m from the city. Is soy tall or short?”
“Everything is short at one time,” she replied ever so reasonably. “I’ll show you the route, but you’ll want to stay until this passes. You’ll need shelter.”
She was right. The sky grew darker by the minute and the air had taken on a faint glow of pink. The clouds overhead looked as if they’d been flipped upside down, their boiling bellies suddenly a little too close, a little too ominous. Between the shades of slate, misty tails of pearl gray undulated and teased, dangling downward, pulling up.
They were nearly to the greenhouse when everything went dead still. The hail stopped. Not a single leaf on the trees moved. The air itself turned too heavy to breathe, the pressure of it feeling as if it were crushing him in an invisible vise. The woman felt it, too. He could tell by the fear that washed her expression an instant before the wind hit like backwash from a jet and the trays they carried were ripped from their hands.
Everything was leaning. Trees. Cornstalks. Them. A sheet from the clothesline sailed past. The blades of the windmill clattered wildly, fighting for a direction to go. Another sound rumbled beneath the tinny cacophony. Not thunder. The deep-throated hum sounded more like a million swarming bees.
The house sat a hundred yards behind them. It looked more like a mile as he grabbed for the woman’s wrist to stop her from running for the greenhouse.
“It’s not safe there! Get in your house!”
The wind snatched his words, muffling them in the growing roar. He could barely hear the “No!” she screamed back at him. But he saw the word form, and the sheer terror in her eyes as she tried to struggle free of his grip.
Panic had robbed her of reason. He was sure of it. She had to know there was no way the unfinished building would offer any protection. It was nothing but two-by-fours and tearing plastic that, in another minute, could well be nothing but matchsticks.
He swore. In the distance, a funnel of ghostly gray twisted against the black wall. At its base, a swirling cloud of dust began to form. “That thing could be on us any minute,” he growled, finally comprehending why she’d been in such a rush. “I don’t know what your problem is, lady, but I have no intention of playing Dorothy and Toto. Come on!”
He couldn’t hear what she said. He was more concerned with the way she gripped his wrist to pull his hand from hers while he practically dragged her toward the house. Thinking he’d do better carrying her, he swung around to get a better grip when his shift in momentum allowed her the leverage she needed.
She broke free with a sharp twist of her hand. An instant later, a Volkswagen-size chunk of tree ripped past, the tips of its branches barely missing his face as it flew through the space she’d occupied seconds ago. He thought for sure that the heavy branches had grazed her, but frantic as she was, nothing slowed her down. Through the cloud of straw and dust now billowing around them, he saw her bolt through the greenhouse door.
Swearing violently, he raced after her.
The plastic covering the window holes rippled and snapped as wind shredded the flimsy covering. Through the doorway, he saw her duck beneath the long, plant-filled table just inside. He was thinking she had to be crazy not to see that the place was disintegrating around her when she jerked upright and ran back toward him with a hooded white carrier.
He’d barely noted the thick mauve liner and a pair of tiny legs when he realized there was actually an infant inside it.
Dear God, he thought, realization slamming into him. She had a baby out here.
“The cellar!” she hollered, fear stark in her eyes. “By the back door!”
He didn’t ask if she minded him carrying the kid. He just grabbed the carrier from her and pushed her out ahead of him, bent on getting them moving as fast as he could. The wind tore at them like the claws of an invisible dragon, grabbing her hair, her dress, stinging his eyes with the dust that turned day into night. A wheelbarrow blew across the yard ahead of them, flipping end over end. Eyes shielded by their forearms, they raced across the grass while behind them the funnel bore down on the land with the speed and sound of a freight train.
She reached the angled, in-ground door to the cellar two steps before he did. Using both hands, she pulled back hard on the handle. The thing wouldn’t budge.
Without a word, he shoved the carrier into her arms and jerked on the door himself. The pressure of the wind crushed down on it, making the long panel feel as if it were weighted with bricks. He could feel the muscles in his arms and back bunch as he battled, but he edged the solid wood up enough to wedge his foot between it and the frame before giving a powerful pull.
The wind shifted, catching the door, ripping it from its hinges, spinning it upward, slamming it into his shoulder.
Pain, barbed and jarring, shot down his arm. Gritting his teeth, he snatched the carrier again and practically shoved the woman down the steep and narrow stairs. He was halfway down himself when she reached up and pulled the baby from the hard plastic shell. The moment he saw that she had the tiny blond bundle of pink in her arms, he dropped the carrier and pushed her to the corner of the deep, shelf-lined space. With his back to the suction created by the raging vortex, he watched her clutch the baby to her chest and wrapped his arms around them both.
Thunder boomed. The wind shrieked. He had no idea how safe they were, but he figured that even with the door gone, they were better off tucked back in the confined space beneath the house than they would be anywhere else. At least, they were as long as the wind didn’t make missiles of the hundred or so jars of fruits and vegetables gleaming on the shelves surrounding them.
“We need to get away from this glass.”
“By the potato crates. On the other side of the stairs. There’s none over there.”
He glanced behind him. Wooden boxes were stacked a dozen feet away. Neatly folded burlap bags filled a galvanized tub, apparently waiting to be filled with onions like the lone bag leaning next to it. Even with the boxes of empty canning jars lining the shelves next to where they huddled, it seemed better to stay where they were. If the shelves fell, they’d land right on those boxes and bags.
“Do you think we should move?” she asked, her voice trembling.
“I don’t see any place safer. We’ll have to ride it out here.”
He didn’t have to see her to know she was terrified. She had the baby’s tiny head tucked beneath her chin, her hand covering its downy blond hair. With his arms curved around her shoulders, her slender body angled against his left side, he could feel her trembling from neck to thigh.
A blinding flash of lightning turned the space pure white. Thunder cracked. He felt her whole body go taut as a spring an instant before she buried her head against his chest.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, hoping to heaven it would be. He cupped the back of her head the way she did her child’s, protecting it, tightening his hold. “Just hang on. These things don’t last that long, do they?”
“I don’t know, Mr.…I don’t know, “ she repeated, apparently realizing she didn’t know his name. “One’s never come this close before.”
She shifted a little, her thigh slipping along his. Given the intimacy of their positions, he found her formality a tad incongruous. “It’s Sloan. Justin,” he added, thinking she might appreciate a first name, too.
“Justin Sloan. Thank you.”
He wasn’t sure what she was thanking him for. It didn’t seem important anyway. The breath he drew brought her scent with it, something clean and fresh and far too innocent to seem so erotic.
He cleared his throat, training his focus on the wide planks above them while dust swirled and the apocalypse raged overhead. Wondering if those boards would stay put seemed wiser than wondering if that scent was in the silken hair braided and draped over his arm or if it was clinging to her skin.
He glanced back down. “And you’re…?”
“Emily Miller. My daughter is Anna,” she added, then jumped again at the crash of ripping timber.
A huge tree limb arrowed through the open doorway above them. The projectile crashed into the crates of potatoes and onions, splintering itself and the shelves and sending vegetables rolling over the packed dirt floor. Another crash reverberated above them, this one echoing with the sound of shattering glass.
With his back to the melee, his head ducked and his neck exposed, Justin held his breath. He was pretty sure the woman in his arms held hers, too. Only the baby moved. He could feel it wriggling in protest to her mother’s tight hold, but he doubted there was any power on earth, including the fury being unleashed overhead, that could make the woman ease her grasp.
“Justin Sloan?” The sound of his name was faint, muffled by their positions and the cacophony overhead. “May I ask you something?”
He thought for sure she wanted reassurance. It sounded like the end of the world up there. At the very least, it was the end of her house. But if she wanted to know if he thought they’d be all right, her guess would be as good as his.
“Sure,” he said, thinking he’d do the decent thing and lie if it would make her feel better.
“Who are Dorothy and Toto?”
“What?”
“Who are Dorothy and Toto?” she repeated. “And what did you mean when you said you had no intention of playing them?”
He had to sound as puzzled as she did. “You know. From The Wizard of Oz. The movie?” he prompted, thinking she must be trying to distract herself. “The tornado hits Kansas and the girl and her dog get sucked up?”
“Did they survive?”
He would have thought she was joking, except her concern when she looked up at him was too real, the fear in her eyes too tangible.
“Yeah. They did.”
“That’s good. I don’t know of this Oz,” she admitted, the fullness of her bottom lip drawing his glance as she spoke. Her mouth looked soft, inviting. Provocative. With her clear blue eyes locked on his, it also looked enormously tempting. “I’ve heard of Kansas, though. I’ve read that it’s very flat.”
The woman wasn’t making a lick of sense to him, but she was definitely taunting his nervous system. The fact that she was reminding him of just how long he’d gone without the comfort of a woman’s body wasn’t something he cared to consider at the moment. Given their proximity, it seemed best to concentrate on something—anything—else.
Ruthlessly reining in his libido, he focused on the sound of her voice, her accent. She didn’t have much of one, just enough to broaden the sound of her vowels. It was more the pattern of her speech that told him she wasn’t a native—which could easily explain why she hadn’t heard of the movie nearly every kid in America had seen by the time he was six years old.
“I take it you’re not from here.”
“No,” she admitted, putting his very logical mind at ease. “I’m from Ohio.”
Emily had no idea why her response made the big stranger frown. With the swiftness of the lightning arcing above them, the dark slashes of his eyebrows bolted over his pewter-gray eyes. His lean, chiseled features sharpened. The dark expression intensified the sense of command surrounding him, an aura she imagined to be possessed by men like kings and warriors in the library books she devoured. Or like the powerful men who stole women’s hearts on Mrs. Clancy’s soap operas. But she really didn’t care that she confused him. All she cared about was that Anna was safe—and that his deep voice held the power to distract her from thoughts of what would have happened had he not come along.
Shaking deep inside, she glanced from the little red polo player embroidered above the pocket of his navy-blue shirt to her baby, soothing Anna’s fussing by rubbing her back. If not for this Justin Sloan, she never would have been able to get inside the cellar with the wind blowing so hard. While she’d struggled with the door, the wind would surely have blown her little girl away, sucked Anna up as he said the wind had done with Dorothy and her dog. It might have blown her away, too, or caused her to be injured so she couldn’t help her child.
The thoughts drew a shudder to the surface. They were too close to the nightmares she battled every day. Only this time her fears had nearly become reality.
But nothing had happened, she reminded herself. They were safe. For now. Safe and protected by this man who had come out of nowhere and was using his own, very solid body to shield them both.
He must have felt her trembling. His big broad hand slipped along her shoulder, drawing her closer. She sought that contact willingly, too overwhelmed by what she felt at that moment to do anything else. She knew there would be damage to face. She knew that very soon she would have to start rebuilding with whatever nature had left her. But for now, for these precious seconds, she wasn’t having to cope all alone.
The need to absorb that feeling was so acute that it bordered on physical pain. She didn’t know if it was right or wrong to want something so badly. She just knew that she was desperate for what she felt just then. He made her feel secure—and security was something she hadn’t felt in a very long time. The desire to stay in the safe haven of his arms was the strongest yearning she’d experienced since long before her husband had died.
The thought of leaving that shelter was unbearable. But she wasn’t given a choice. She was keenly aware of how solid his body felt, how strong. She was also aware of the tension tightening his muscles and a tingling warmth where her breast and hip crushed his side.
In the pale light, she looked up to find his glance fixed on her mouth.
Her heart gave an odd little lurch an instant before he jerked his attention to the baby nuzzling the fabric covering her breast. The tension she’d felt in his body seemed to settle in hers when he looked up and met her eyes.
Suddenly looking as if he could use more space, he eased back far enough to break contact without leaving her vulnerable and nodded toward Anna.
“Is she okay?”
The question had Emily easing her hold as she tucked her head to see her daughter’s sweet little face. In the pale-gray light, she saw Anna give a great, toothless yawn and scrunch her nose to show her displeasure with the position. She much preferred her head on her mom’s shoulder to having it tucked under her chin.
“She’s fine,” Emily assured him, compromising by shifting her little girl up a bit.
“You’re lucky she is.”
“I know,” she whispered. “If it hadn’t been for you—”
“I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about what you were doing.”
At a loss, she blinked at the hard line of his jaw. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you obviously knew this was coming, but you were out there trying to save plants instead of getting her inside where it was safe.” His intent gray eyes glittered like quicksilver as they swept her face, reproach melding with disbelief. “Why’d you have her out there, anyway? What would you have done if you’d been hurt yourself?”
His low voice rumbled through her, stiffening her shoulders at his demands, pulling up her chin at the accusation behind them. Not a single day went by that she wasn’t conscious of the fact that she alone was responsible for the welfare of her precious daughter. Everything she did, the backbreaking hours of digging in the fields while Anna slept protected in the shade or cuddled against her in a tummy sling, the planting, the weeding, the canning, the housecleaning for the Clancys—all of it was done with her child in mind.
Moments ago, he’d made her feel protected. Now, he’d jerked away the shield of numbness that had kept her from looking too closely at the enormity of her situation—and left her feeling even more exposed.
“I had her out there because I always keep her with me. She’s safer than she would be alone in the house. And those plants are my livelihood,” she informed him, totally unfamiliar with the sense of challenge he evoked. “I already lost one planting this year to frost. I was trying to save this one because I can’t afford to lose another.”
She swallowed hard. She’d probably lost the planting, anyway. Profoundly aware of the sudden quiet, torn between gratitude for what he’d done and resentment at his implications, she figured she’d best get started saving what she could.
She glanced up, avoiding Justin’s suddenly guarded expression. “The wind has died.”
He didn’t acknowledge her deliberately diverting observation. He didn’t push to know what she’d have done had she been hurt, either. He simply watched the resignation wash through her pale features as she shifted the infant to her shoulder and smoothed the little white T-shirt over her back.
Turning to the foliage and smashed boxes, he jammed his hands on his hips and heaved a sigh. He was out of his element here. He knew nothing of relying on the land for a living. He knew even less about kids—except it seemed to him that something so tiny should be inside in a crib-thing in a nursery or something. What he had known, though, was that he’d been far too conscious of the surprising fullness of her breast, the gentle curve of her hip. Since he’d already been wondering what she’d been using for brains, he’d figured it wiser to focus on that.
He just hadn’t intended to sound so abrupt about it.
Feeling his conscience kicked hard, he frowned at the large limb blocking the steeply pitched stairs.
She slipped from behind him. “At least the steps aren’t broken.”
“Spoken like a true optimist.”
“I’m trying to be,” she murmured, glancing uneasily toward the light filtering through the leaves.
She had no idea what she’d find out there. Seeing her uncertainty, not caring for the twinge of empathy he felt, he shoved aside the limb blocking the first few stairs and held it aside with his back. Pushing through the splintered limbs and leaves wouldn’t be a problem at all. They’d just have to edge up the side. “I’ll go up first and help you out.”
“It might be easier if I go first. You can reach farther than I can. Here,” she said, stepping close to hold out her baby. “When I get to the top, you can hand her up to me.”
Justin froze. Despite the twinge of pain in his shoulder, his hands shot out in pure reflex. He would have done the same thing if someone had thrown him a ball. Only he would have known what to do with a ball. He hadn’t a clue what to do with the little bundle of big blue eyes blinking up at him.
The impossibly light little body was barely longer than his forearm. The tiny fist waving around before finding its way to that wet little rosebud mouth was smaller than the top half of his thumb. He’d never seen fingers so small.
With her hands tucked beneath his, her mom suddenly looked as if she weren’t sure she should let go. “Do you have her?”
His nod was more tentative than he’d have liked. With one palm cupping the back of the baby’s head, he gripped what little there was of a backside with the other. “Yeah. Go on.”
Just don’t fall, he thought as Emily slowly withdrew her support and retrieved the carrier that had rolled under the stairs. The last thing he wanted was to have to figure out what to do with her child if the woman should need help. He’d gone toe-to-toe with three-hundred-pound linebackers playing college football. He’d bested the toughest negotiators in world-class business deals, but he freely admitted that this infant had him feeling completely helpless. Accustomed to being capable, he didn’t like the sensation at all.
“Okay,” he heard Emily call when the rustle of leaves quieted. “I’ll take her now.”
He hadn’t moved. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the perfect little face, either. Glancing up, he saw Emily framed against the lightening sky. She’d set the carrier on the ground above her and crouched two steps from the top, her arms stretched toward him.
Watching the baby as if he were afraid it might do something to upset his balance, he edged up the bottom steps and carefully lifted the blissfully oblivious bundle past the leaves quivering along the wind-splintered barrier. The sharp scent of fresh pitch swirled in the slight breeze, reminding him to watch for the jagged spikes of wood where the branch had snapped in the middle so they wouldn’t catch the tail of the blanket.
He actually felt sweat bead near his temples when the baby jerked her arm and popped herself in the eye. Her face screwed up at the self-inflicted assault, but she didn’t make a sound. He did, though. When Emily’s fingers slipped beneath his and he felt the baby’s weight shift to her hands, his sigh of relief was definitely audible.
Chapter Two
Justin’s first thought when he stepped onto the wet lawn was that the rain had apparently stopped as abruptly as it started.
His second thought was of his car.
With a sinking sensation, he moved beyond where Emily stood clutching her baby and glanced toward the road. Beneath the heavy clouds, he could barely see the tops of the trees near the little bridge and the curve of the road leading down to it. But the trees were still there, as thick and tall as when he’d parked his car beneath them. Closer in, under a sky that was opening with streaks of brilliant blue, the verdant land remained untouched.
The frustration he’d prepared himself to feel over hassles with transportation and insurance adjusters never materialized. His biggest problem—at the moment, anyway—was still his dead battery. Emily Miller, he was sure, hadn’t fared as well.
When he looked from the coop where the chickens were pecking the ground, he found her staring at the walnut tree. What was left of it, anyway. All that remained was a short, jagged spike that had been blasted clean of its bark. The bulk of the sizable trunk was nowhere to be seen—though Justin figured it a safe bet that the branch poking out of the cellar had once been attached to it. So had the even larger branch that had been stuffed through the back porch. That massive limb had taken out the porch’s center support, but the house itself was still standing. By some miracle, so was the greenhouse. Even the windmill, its blades now turning with laconic ease, appeared unscathed.
He’d expected to see nothing but rubble.
“Are you all right?” he asked, since she’d yet to move. He pulled a white sheet from where it had tangled around an upright water pipe. Tossing it over the T of the clothesline pole, he cautiously scanned her profile. “It’s too bad about your tree. And your porch,” he added, since that was actually the bigger problem. “But it doesn’t look like you lost anything else.”
“No. No,” Emily repeated, responding to the encouraging note in his deep voice. “I don’t think I did.” Her own voice lost the strength she’d just forced into it. “It could have been much worse.”
Brushing her lips over the top of Anna’s soft, sweet-smelling head, she stared at the mass of leaves and branches obliterating her back door. She’d immediately noticed that the greenhouse and chickens and the fields had survived, but she hadn’t let herself breathe until she’d turned to her house.
It really could have been worse. And losing a tree and a cellar door and having to patch her porch was nothing compared to what could have been. There was always some good and some bad. The sweet balanced the sour, her mother and her aunts had always said. That was life. It didn’t matter that her own life had swung wildly out of balance. She was to take with relief and thanks all that had been spared. And take in stride and with grace that which hadn’t.
That was how she’d been raised. It was all she knew to do, though she was the first to admit that she’d never mastered the easy acceptance part. As she stood hugging her child, the thought of the extra work it would take to cut up the tree was enough to bring her to tears. There weren’t enough hours in the day as it was. But she didn’t dare let herself cry. She was afraid that if she did, she’d never stop. And she had to be strong for Anna.
At the moment, she also needed to check on her neighbors.
The rows of corn nearest her little plot of land swayed in the diminishing breeze. Where the land gently rose a couple of acres away, she saw nothing but churned-up earth and a chunk of red-and-white siding that looked suspiciously like part of a barn.
“I need to see if the Clancys are all right,” she said, uncomfortably aware of her rescuer’s eyes on her. “Mrs. Clancy just had a hip replaced and their son and his family are away for a few days. There’s no one there to know if they need help.”
Justin stood with his hands on his lean hips, his broad shoulders looking as wide as the horizon. He stared right at her, his wide brow furrowed. He was very direct with his stares, she’d noticed. Not at all subtle the way the few men she knew were when they looked at her. But then, he seemed very direct about his needs and opinions, too. “You wanted to use their phone. Come with me and I’ll show you the way.”
“Thanks, but I think I’ll head on in to town. From the looks of things over there,” he said, nodding toward the cornfields, “the lines are probably down.”
She lifted one shoulder in a shrug, the motion not nearly as casual as she wanted it to be. “I understand tornados are strange. The way they pick and choose what they destroy, I mean. I’ve heard of walls being ripped off, but nothing in the room being disturbed. I think that’s part of Mr. Clancy’s barn,” she said, pointing ahead of her, “but their phone could still be working.”
She was telling him he might be able to save himself some time by coming with her. Whether she knew it or not, she was also making it as clear as the raindrops clinging to the grass that he disturbed her. Her wary glance would barely meet his before shying away, as if she were embarrassed at having been up close and personal with a perfect stranger. He was pretty certain, too, from the strain that had settled into her delicate features that she was more upset than she was letting on about the damage. Yet, even as unsettled as she had to be, she sounded unbelievably calm.
As he watched her kneel to tug a piece of denim from beneath the baby carrier’s thickly padded mauve liner, he couldn’t believe her attitude, either.
He didn’t know a single soul who would walk away from their own crisis to help out someone else with theirs. The fact that she remembered he still had a problem caught him a little off guard, too. After the way he’d jumped on her about leaving her kid outside, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d left him to fend for himself.
She carefully tucked the baby’s little legs through two holes in what looked like a denim tube and slipped her own arms through its two long straps. As she did, his glance strayed down the thick braid lying against her back to the fabric covering the sweet curve of her slender hips.
“Even if the phone’s out,” he said, wondering how all that hair would look unbound and spilling over her body, “maybe he can give me a jump.”
Annoyed with the direction of his thoughts, he pointedly pulled his attention from her. “It looks like you’ve been through this before. The greenhouse,” he said, eyeing the skeletal structure to keep his glance from wandering over her again. “You only have a few windows back there. Did another storm take out the others?”
A long strand of loosened hair swayed over her shoulder. Snagging it back, she rose and tucked a soft-looking square of white fabric under the chin of the sleepy-eyed child in her tummy-carrier. “Those are the only windows that were put in. My husband built the greenhouse for me last year, but winter came before he could finish.
“I hired a man,” she continued, absently rubbing the baby’s back through the denim as she motioned for him to accompany her across the lawn. “He put in the windows Daniel framed and I gave him money to buy the rest, but he hasn’t come back yet. I’m sure I don’t have enough plastic to replace what was torn,” she added, more to herself than to him. “I hope he returns soon.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“Two weeks and two days. He wanted to find the best price, so he said it might take him a while.”
They angled toward a dirt road lined with rows of corn. The wind had calmed to a warm breeze that rattled the leaves on the stalks and fanned the ankle-high grass growing on either side of the ruts. “Is this someone you know?” he asked, leaving her to walk on the near side of the road while he headed for the grass on the other side to avoid the mud in the middle.
“I didn’t before he came looking for work. He said he’d worked for a lot of people in the county, though.” A pensive frown touched her brow. “I wonder if he would repair my porch when he returns.”
He should let it go, he told himself. He should concentrate on how quiet it was compared to the cacophony of only minutes ago. It was so peaceful here. Almost…serene. There was no traffic. No horns, sirens, squealing brakes. He should just think about the stillness. He should not question her about something that undoubtedly had as reasonable an explanation as she’d provided for why she’d had her kid out in a tornado.
“He’d said he’d worked for people around here?” he asked, too curious to know what that explanation was to let the matter drop. “You didn’t check out his references yourself?”
“Even if I’d heard of the names he mentioned, I had no way to speak with them. Besides, there was no need. If he couldn’t do the work, it would be obvious, wouldn’t it?”
There was a certain literal quality to her logic, a simplicity Justin would have found quite eloquent had she not entirely missed his point. He’d bet his corner office that the guy was an itinerant.
“I don’t suppose this man is from around here, is he?”
“He didn’t say.”
Fighting incredulity, he cast her a sideways glance.
“Do you know his name?” he asked, all but biting his tongue to keep his tone even.
The look she gave him was amazingly patient. “Of course I do. It’s Johnny Smith.”
John Smith. How original.
“So you gave this man you really don’t know money to buy something for you and you haven’t seen or heard from him in two weeks.”
“He said he wanted to shop for the best price for me,” she reminded him, looking at him a little uncertainly. “And he did put the other windows in. He did a good job, too.”
“Do you mind if I ask how much you paid him?”
“Twenty dollars.”
“What did you give him for the windows?”
“I only had a hundred.”
There was such innocence in her lovely eyes. And caution. And concern. The myriad impressions registered with Justin moments before she glanced away to watch where she was stepping.
Johnny Smith had done a good job, all right, he thought. A snow job. “You might want to report Johnny to the authorities, Mrs. Miller. He stole your money.”
“I don’t believe that,” Emily said, incredulous. “Not for a moment.” She blinked hard at the distance, her hand still protectively on the little bump resting against her stomach. “He was far too nice to want to do any harm.”
The air of innocence he’d noticed about her before now struck him simply as naiveté. She obviously wanted to believe the best about the man. About people in general, he suspected, though he found the aspiration more dangerous than admirable.
“There are a lot of ‘nice’ crooks out there,” he countered, wondering if the woman had ever set foot off the farm. “I take it you’ve never been conned before?”
“Conned?”
“Swindled, cheated, deceived? No one’s ever taken advantage of you or your husband?”
Her glance darted from his, something like guilt shadowing the delicate lines of her face. “He took nothing that I didn’t give him from my own hand.”
The flatness of her quiet voice could have been recrimination for her own actions. It could just as easily have been defense for those of the man who’d quite probably absconded with her funds. Justin was far more interested in the part of his question she’d chosen to ignore. The part about her husband.
She tended to speak in the singular. And she’d made no reference at all to her husband having anything to do with the handyman. But what struck him as truly odd, now that he thought about it, was that she’d exhibited no concern at all for a husband during or after the storm. The only person she’d expressed concern about needing shelter was him.
All things considered, he strongly suspected that Mr. Miller wasn’t even around anymore.
That she felt it necessary to keep up the pretense tugged hard at his conscience.
“Look,” he murmured, disturbed to know he made her that uncomfortable. He was accustomed to people with better defenses. Harder edges. Even when she was trying to protect herself, she was totally without artifice. “We all make bad judgments sometimes. Don’t let that stop you from turning the guy in. He’s just going to rip off someone else.”
“Even if what you say were true…which I don’t believe it is,” she hurriedly clarified, “I wouldn’t know what to do. I know nothing about your…about the law.”
“I do. I’m a lawyer. This isn’t my area of expertise,” he admitted, more concerned with her tolerance than her correction. “Criminal law, I mean. I handle corporate matters. But I’d be glad to tell the local sheriff what you’ve told me and ask him to come talk to you.”
She gave him a smile as soft as the sunshine breaking through the clouds. “I thank you for your offer. It’s very kind. But it’s possible that he could come back. If he does—when he does,” she corrected, turning her glance back to the horizon, “then I would have unjustly accused him. He will come back.” Her quiet voice grew quieter still. “I need to believe that.”
For a moment Justin said nothing. There was an odd anxiety in the way she spoke, a quiet sort of desperation. It was almost as if she didn’t want him to challenge her nebulous hope because hope was about all she had.
He had no idea why the thought struck him as it did. But he rarely questioned his instincts, and now those instincts were telling him he was right on the mark about this woman’s circumstances. He couldn’t fault her argument, though. He didn’t even want to. He could explain how brilliantly her handyman had duped her. He could point out how the guy had set her up to believe that if he was gone awhile it was because he was trying to help her save money—which would give him plenty of time to disappear. But the chances of recovering her cash at this point were somewhere between zip and nil—and there wasn’t any point in badgering her about something it was too late to do anything about.
“How long has your husband been gone?” he finally asked, gingerly rotating his aching arm.
Emily glanced at the man openly watching her, then promptly looked at the ground. “I didn’t say that he was.”
She didn’t like the suspicions Justin raised, even though she, too, had been wondering what was taking the handyman so long. She didn’t like the feeling either, that he sensed how ignorant she was of the ways she was trying to assimilate. There was so much she didn’t know. So much she didn’t understand. And she had no idea at all how he’d known Daniel was no longer there.
“No, you didn’t,” he agreed, his tone surprisingly mild. “And I can understand why you wouldn’t want a stranger to know you’re out here alone. But with this storm, if you had a husband around, you’d be wondering if he was all right. The only people you’ve mentioned are your neighbors.”
He’d moved closer when the road had become cluttered with the torn vegetation. She just hadn’t realized how close until she caught his clean, faintly spicy scent. The instant she breathed it in, she was hit with the memory of standing in his arms with her head buried against his rock-hard chest.
He wasn’t anything like the handyman who’d shown up looking for work a couple of weeks ago. The man who’d called himself Johnny Smith had seemed too shy to even make eye contact, much less make personal observations. And there was no way on God’s green earth he would have caused the odd heat that had just pooled in her stomach.
She ducked her head, disconcerted by that heat, determined to ignore it. “Are you always so good at drawing conclusions?”
“My record’s pretty decent.”
His lack of modesty came as no surprise.
“I suppose all lawyers must be good at such things. I’ve never met one before, but I’ve seen one. On Mrs. Clancy’s soap opera,” she explained, thinking of the commanding, demanding and powerful man who, according to Mrs. Clancy, had stolen the heart of every female character in the cast. “You have much of the same manner about you.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“It’s neither. It just is. But you’re right about Daniel,” she continued, assuming he was frowning because she’d yet to answer his question. “He is no longer here.”
His expression relaxed as it shifted from her to her child. “Has he been gone long?”
“Since last spring. He worked for Mr. Clancy,” she told him, her voice growing hushed. “Daniel was raised on a farm, but he didn’t know anything about the big machinery they use here. He was killed trying to repair a piece of equipment while Mr. Clancy wasn’t around.”
The movement of her hand over Anna’s little back was automatic, a soothing motion that gave her as much comfort as it did the baby snuggled against her. “I didn’t understand the talk of gears and tilling blades. But he had forgotten to set some sort of brake.”
There were times when it felt as if it had been only yesterday that she’d received that awful, numbing news. There were other times when she could hardly picture her husband’s boyish face. When she thought of Daniel, she tried to recall how happy they’d once been. But that had been almost too long ago to remember.
“I’m sorry,” she heard Justin say, his voice subdued.
“Me, too. Daniel was a good man.”
“How old is your baby?”
A small smile relieved the strain around her mouth. “Eight weeks yesterday.”
It was now mid-July, Justin thought. That meant she’d been alone when the baby had been born.
He didn’t like the way that bothered him. He didn’t much care for the way she confused him, either. He’d still been trying to figure out the soap-opera reference when she’d hit him with the reason her husband wasn’t around.
He’d figured the guy had simply taken a hike. He hadn’t expected her to be widowed. But that little jolt had just been replaced with a decidedly skeptical curiosity over how someone who’d farmed all of his life would know so little about farm equipment.
It wasn’t like him not to seek an answer when one was readily available. But he had no desire to chip any deeper at the brave front she wore. With her slender frame, her translucent skin, and that pale-as-cornsilk hair, she looked as delicate as spun glass. When he thought about how desperately she’d been trying to save her plants, and the work she had waiting for her when she returned to her house, he was quietly amazed that the front hadn’t already shattered.
Ignoring his curiosity had another advantage. He hated tears. Granted, the only women he’d ever seen cry had used them either to get something from him, or out of fury when they didn’t. And he suspected Emily to be far stronger than she looked. But he didn’t want to push any buttons that would crack her composure. He’d never been around a woman who honestly needed comfort before. He wasn’t sure he’d even know what to do.
“You can see the Clancy place up there,” she said, relieving him enormously when she shielded her eyes against the sun and looked up the road. “Oh, good.” She sighed, smiling at him. “It didn’t hit their house.”
It had hit something, though. Just ahead of them, an untouched section of cornfield opened up to a wide stretch of gravel and an overgrown sweep of lawn. From that same general direction came the deep-throated and distant bawl of something that sounded large and undoubtedly four-legged.
What the Clancy place lacked in architectural interest, it made up for in simple appeal. Approaching from the side, Justin scanned the boxy gray house with its lacy curtains and window planters overflowing with pink petunias. The deep green grass was dappled with the first rays of sunlight filtering through the cottonwoods. Standing sentinel over the home’s steeply pitched roof, a huge aluminum grain silo gleamed like a giant silver torpedo against the clearing sky.
The bawling grew louder as they headed toward the brick red barn. Damage was more evident here. So was the path of the storm. From atop the gentle rise, it looked as if a giant scythe had taken a swipe across the earth.
The tornado had sliced across a pasture, leaving a path of debris and flattening most of the windbreak on its way. It had wiped out a section of the big barn, uprooted a few more trees, taken out a huge section of fence, then veered right toward the bottom land, missing Emily’s place by little more than a couple of city blocks.
“There he is.” Emily headed for a gnomelike little man pulling at a pile of boards and scattered straw by the barn. “And there’s his wife,” she muttered, spotting a flash of movement by the hay bales to her left. “What is she doing out here?
“Mrs. Clancy?” she called, disapproval etched firmly in her brow. “You shouldn’t be outside. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling her,” the barrel-chested farmer shouted across the distance, tossing aside a board with a muffled clatter. “Get her back to the house for me, will you, Emily? I got me some animals trapped back here.”
The woman with a head full of pink-foam curlers in her salt-and-pepper hair balanced herself on a chrome cane and lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the sun. Her rose-print house dress flapped around the knees of her white pressure stockings, her expression bouncing between Emily and Justin in open curiosity.
“Are you all right, child?”
“We’re fine. I only lost a tree and door. And a porch post. No one got hurt.”
“Then let me sit down and take that baby so you can help Sam.” Her sharp hazel eyes cut to the man who slowed his stride, letting Emily hurry ahead of him. When Emily stopped beside her, the older woman’s voice dropped like a rock. “Who’s he?”
“A lawyer. He was fishing and needed a…jump. His car isn’t working. I said maybe he could use your telephone.”
The late-fifty-something Connie Clancy ran a considered glance from Justin’s meticulously cut dark hair to the tips of his expensive hiking boots. “You’d be welcome to use the phone,” she called out over the frantic bawling coming from the damaged building, “but the storm took it out.”
“I figured as much,” Justin replied, dubiously eyeing the pink things protruding from the woman’s head. He’d already noticed the phone and power lines dangling from the utility pole near the downed fence. Considering the damage, he wasn’t about to ask for help with his car.
He glanced toward the barn. At the near end, the siding had been peeled off as neatly as the skin from an apple. The far end looked rather like a bomb had gone off in it. Wires and roofing dangled over a gaping hole. Beams and posts slanted every which way. The man in coveralls wrestled one of those beams, his bulky body straining as he tugged and jerked on the unyielding timber. All the while a chorus of low-pitched and pitiful bawling pierced the air.
The cacophony was joined by a piercing squeal.
Even from forty feet away, the farmer’s sense of urgency was obvious. On either side of his back coverall straps, sweat stains darkened the man’s worn white T-shirt from the strain of lifting the heavy boards. His face was the color of the barn. With the extra thirty pounds the farmer was packing around the middle of his banty-legged frame, he looked like a heart attack waiting to happen.
Justin swore, softly and to himself, but the terse word pretty much summed up how he felt about the course the day had taken. He’d gone looking for escape and landed smack in the middle of Oz. If he’d wanted to deal with dilemmas, he could have stayed in Chicago and gone to the office.
“You stay here and take care of the lady,” he said to Emily. One crisis a day was enough. There was nothing to do but step in and make sure he wasn’t faced with another. “I’ll go help him.”
“There’s a cow and calf trapped inside,” Mrs. Clancy explained as Emily’s baby began to make little squeaking sounds. “The weaner’s in there, too.”
“The dog?” he asked, thinking ‘dachshund.’
Mrs. Clancy hesitated. “The pig,” she replied, looking as if she were speaking to the daft. “Dogs don’t sound like that.”
“I know what a dog sounds like. You call a pig a weaner?”
“You do one that’s recently been weaned from its sow.”
The baby squeaked again. Because she’d started getting fretful, her mom held her closer, moving with a gentle rocking motion. The movement wasn’t what she seemed to want. With her little head turning from side to side against her mother’s swollen breast, her face screwed up, transforming her features from cherubic to prunelike and her fussing into an impatient, hiccuping squall.
The older woman leaned more heavily on her cane. “I’d say she wants to nurse.”
“She does.”
“Well, I can’t help you there, dear.”
Emily’s voice was soft, her soothing tone lacking any trace of exasperation as she ducked her head toward her child’s. “She just wants her mom. But this isn’t the best time, you know, Anna? I need to help Mr. Clancy.”
“I said I’ll help your neighbor.” Justin took a step back, not entirely comfortable with the course of the conversation, trying not to look it. “You can take care of her now.”
“It sounds like the animals might be injured. You might need—”
“I’ll deal with it,” he insisted. “Stay here.”
Puzzlement entered Emily’s eyes with his terse order, but he turned before she could say another word and headed for the barn. Even if her baby hadn’t needed her just then, he didn’t like the idea of Emily climbing around the broken planks and timbers that blocked the end of the towering building. He was even less enthralled with the idea of her dealing with the animals he could hear battering the boards and bawling over the racket Mr. Clancy made when he pulled out a plank and the piece of wall it supported collapsed. He wasn’t crazy about the idea of dealing with them himself. What he knew about farm animals was pretty much limited to the meat counter at his local supermarket. But he was pretty sure a terrified animal was as unpredictable as it was dangerous. It was hard to tell how much damage one could do. Rather like a rejected woman.
The comparison balled a leaden knot in his gut. The last thing he needed to be thinking about right now was how to deal with his senior partner’s daughter. He hadn’t rejected Cameron Beck, anyway. Not yet. He was too busy avoiding the involvement her father was pushing on him to let her know he wasn’t in the market for marriage. Never had been. Never would be.
Given a choice, he’d rather take on the cow.
“That looks pretty heavy there. Let me help you with it.”
The old farmer glanced over his shoulder, his ham-hock fists grasping the end of a beam. Beneath the shadowing brim of a green cap embroidered with the word Pioneer, his spiky gray eyebrows knitted in a worried slash.
“Thanks. Need to get a path cleared,” the man said, his need for haste battling curiosity over who was offering the unexpected assistance. “Brought my animals in to get ’em out of the storm. Now they’re trapped in their pens. They’re going to collapse that wall the way they keep knocking into it.”
He hauled on the beam, dust billowing.
Judiciously avoiding a protruding nail, Justin reached for a door on top of the pile. The tines of a pitchfork were imbedded in its frame. Incredibly, so were stick-straight pieces of straw.
Not Oz, he thought. It was more like a rabbit hole.
Vaguely aware of two pairs of female eyes on his back, not pleased at all to find himself comparing his life to children’s stories, he pulled the door upright. Wincing at the pain in his shoulder, he tossed the door aside and added to the cloud of dust himself.
“You say he was fishing?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Bet he’s staying at that fancy bed-and-breakfast in Hancock that young couple from Des Moines opened last year. He looks like one of those yuppie-types, or whatever it is they call themselves nowadays. Can’t imagine who else would wear one of those designer shirts to go fishing. I’ll bet you can get three shirts from the JCPenney catalogue for what he paid for the one he’s wearing.”
“I suppose.”
“Did he say where he was from?”
As frantic as she’d been at the time, Emily was surprised she even remembered. “Chicago.”
Mrs. Clancy gave a nod. “Thought he looked like big city.”
Speculation brightened Mrs. Clancy’s pleasantly rounded features as she sat on the hay bale she’d selected for a chair. Emily sat on a bale beside her while Anna nursed, the cotton diaper she used for a burp cloth modestly shielding her from the men working beyond them.
“I’d say he’s used to getting his way, too,” the older woman observed, watching the man under discussion shoulder a heavy beam. “I wonder if he’s a firstborn? I can’t remember if I saw it on Sally or Oprah. Or maybe it was Extra,” she considered, pondering, “but someone had a birth-order expert on a while back. A psychologist, I think. She said firstborns are the responsible ones. Used to being in charge and all.
“Junior is like that,” she confided, lowering her voice as if someone might overhear her disparaging her own oldest, and only, child. “Stubborn as the day is long. Just like his father.” Settling back, Mrs. Clancy gave a sharp nod. “As insistent as that lawyer was about you staying put, I’d say that he’s just as set in his ways.”
“I don’t know about birth order,” Emily admitted. She’d never heard of such a thing before, but Mrs. Clancy watched all the talk shows and she was very informed. “But he does seem quite sure of himself. Except with Anna,” she mused, contemplating his broad back. “When he held her, he acted like she was going to slip right out of his hands.”
“Now, why would you be letting a strange man hold your baby?”
“So I could get out of the cellar after the storm passed.” Her voice gentled, her expression turning pensive as she stroked her baby’s downy little arm. The thought that she could have lost Anna tightened her chest, hinted at pain that went far deeper than any she’d felt before—and simply couldn’t bear to consider. “He helped us, Mrs. Clancy. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t come along.”
For a moment, the older woman said nothing. She just pinched her lips and patted Emily on the arm.
“Well, he did come along,” Mrs. Clancy allowed, looking as if she were thinking of the day help had come too late for Emily’s husband. “And you and the baby are fine, so just push those thoughts right out of your head.
“I’ll admit he did seem a little anxious when Anna started fussing,” she observed, deftly changing the subject back to the man Emily was openly watching. “It could be that he’s just never been around young ones before.” She cocked her head full of pink curlers, her interest taking another turn. “I didn’t notice a ring on him.”
“A ring? Oh, you mean a wedding ring.” Emily’s glance automatically cut to the pretty little diamonds glittering on the woman’s left hand. The custom of exchanging rings hadn’t existed in her old community. In it, when a man married, he grew a beard which he never shaved. No one had worn any jewelry at all. “I didn’t notice, either.”
She hadn’t looked at his hands. She’d only felt them. Watching him heft another board, studying the strong lines of his back and long legs, she realized she’d actually felt a considerable amount of his beautifully muscled body. He’d felt very warm, very…hard.
At the thought, her glance faltered, warmth touching her cheeks.
“I’d say you noticed something,” her too observant neighbor murmured. “Of course, a woman would have to be drawing her last breath not to notice a man like that. But you can never be too careful around that sort, you know.
“You remember me telling you about that lawyer on The Tame and The Wild?” she continued, carrying the conversation the way she always did. “Handsome devil, that one. Charmed the sweet young niece of a client right into his bed. Seduced her in five episodes, then dumped her for his secretary’s mother. I’m not saying this fella’s like that and I’m not one to judge,” she claimed, doing just that. “I mean he did offer you and my Sam a hand and I have to say that speaks well of him. But he is a lawyer. And he is from the city,” she stressed, sounding as if the combination somehow diluted his more redeeming behavior.
“Sheltered as you’ve been, I know you haven’t come up against his type. Smooth and sophisticated, I mean. And arrogant,” she muttered, her expression turning to a glower as her thoughts shifted course. “Like those no-conscience weasels from SoyCo who spout statutes and clauses and time allowances instead of fixing the drainage problem by our land. We have crops being flooded because of their negligence and they keep telling us how much time they have to look into the problem. I can tell ’em what the problem is. That new drain tile they put in when they bought the Eiger farm is draining straight onto our land. All they’ve got to do is dig—”
“Mrs. Clancy,” Emily murmured. A vein bulged by the pink tape holding a curl in place at the woman’s temple. “Remember your blood pressure.”
Connie Clancy glared at Justin’s back for another moment then huffed a breath. “Well, I am of a mind to think they haven’t a feeling bone in their bodies,” she muttered, nowhere near ready to give up the subject now that she’d started on it. “They live their highfalutin lives and don’t give a whit about common folk’s livelihoods. Did this Sloan fella say what kind of lawyer he was?”
Actually, Emily thought, he had. He’d said he was ‘corporate’ which didn’t bode at all well for ending the present course of conversation.
“A good one,” she replied, because he’d certainly implied it.
“Sounds just like ’em.”
The terse statement drew Emily’s brow in a faint frown. The thought that Justin could be as coldhearted and presumptuous as the men Mrs. Clancy was so upset about disturbed her. For a twenty-four-year-old woman, she knew she was woefully unsophisticated, but that hadn’t been her impression of him at all.
Dismissing the thought, and knowing the woman would go on forever if she didn’t change the subject herself, Emily edged back the diaper to see how her little girl was doing. The nagging thought that maybe she was just being naive gave way to a more profound concern.
“Do you think Anna’s grown any since you saw her last week?”
Bated exasperation softened the disgruntled woman’s expression. It softened a bit more when she looked over to where the pink-cheeked infant had fallen asleep at her mother’s breast. “Emily Miller, I know new mothers worry, but I’ve never heard of one worrying the way you do.”
“But she doesn’t seem to be getting any bigger.”
“That’s because you’re with her every minute of the day. She’s only a couple of months old. How big do you think she’s supposed to be?” She shook her head, looking vaguely amused. “She’s not some strapping boy like Paula Ferguson’s grandson, you know. Why, that child must have put on a pound a week to be as big as he is now. Of course his mother isn’t exactly dainty herself,” she confided.
She pulled a deep breath, preparing to head off on yet another tangent, but the commotion from the barn had her clamping her mouth shut before she could even get started. A calf shot out of the rubble, its rust-colored rump bouncing as it headed for the flattened cornfield. Over the clatter of boards inside the barn, the bovine bellowing grew more insistent.
The men were nowhere to be seen.
Mrs. Clancy’s hand flattened over her heart. “What in the world…?”
Pulling the diaper from Emily’s shoulder, she tossed it over her own and reached her weathered hands toward Anna. Even as she did, Emily was buttoning herself up and trying not to panic at the thought of what might have happened to Mr. Clancy—or to the man who knew far less than her husband had about the hazards on a farm.
Chapter Three
Emily’s panic was blessedly short-lived. Justin was fine. He assured her of that himself when she found him and Mr. Clancy glaring at the section of wall that had collapsed when the two of them had moved the beam trapping the calf. The old farmer grunted his assurances, too, then added his bulk to Justin’s muscle when Justin started clearing away the new pile of boards.
The men did, indeed, appear completely unscathed, and for that Emily was most grateful, but it was clear enough that they needed help. Neither of them wanted her wading around in the rubble, though, so she left them to their task and did what she could by chasing down the animal that had bolted from the barn as if its backside were on fire. After staking the calf on a long rope near the hay bales, she headed up to the house with Mrs. Clancy and Anna to make sandwiches and a salad for the Clancys’ dinner in exchange for the use of Mr. Clancy’s little red chain saw and a can of gasoline.
She had a tree to cut up. She also had a bushel of beans waiting to be canned. With the sun slanting low on the horizon, she didn’t have much of the day left to waste.
“I’ll take those.”
Justin’s long shadow overtook hers on the rutted road a moment before she felt his hand close over the handle of the chain saw.
“Clancy will pick me up in an hour or so and jump my car for me,” he said, leaving her to carry the can with the baby snuggled against her chest like a little papoose. “He said he needs to check his irrigation before he does anything else.”
He’d wiped off a streak of dirt he’d had on his cheek earlier. But when he fell into step beside her, the saw between them, she noticed an angry red scratch on his arm. “I was going to watch for you. So I could thank you,” she said, not wanting him to think she would let him leave without telling him how she appreciated what he’d done. “You don’t need to carry that for me,” she added. “I can manage.”
“No thanks necessary. And it’s either carry this back for you or sit here doing nothing until he gets finished. He didn’t seem to need any more help.
“Actually,” he muttered, as they moved between the rows of corn, “I think it was my help he didn’t want. We were doing fine until he asked what I did for a living. When I told him I was an attorney, he turned as suspicious as the warden of a pen. He thought for sure that I worked for some corporation who bought a farm east of here and that I’d come to check the condition of his crops or something. I had to swear I’d only come here to fish before he’d let me past that cow.” He shook his head, looking as if he weren’t sure if he should be confused or insulted. “I’ve never even heard of the company he was talking about.”
The furrows in his brow eased only slightly when he hoisted the saw. “You know how to use this thing?”
If the skeptical way he looked at the useful little device was any indication, he didn’t appear overly familiar with it himself. What struck Emily more was his easy dismissal of her neighbor’s suspecting attitude. He was either terribly forgiving or his hide was as thick as a buffalo’s.
“I’ve borrowed it before. To cut firewood,” she explained, searching for traces of the arrogance Mrs. Clancy claimed men like him possessed. “It’s much simpler to use than an ax.”
His glance swept over her face, past the tiny head resting between her breasts and down to her sneakers. “I have a little trouble picturing you swinging an ax.”
“I had trouble doing it.” Not arrogant, she thought. But definitely bold. “That’s why I borrowed the saw. I’ve added one to my wish list.”
“Of course you have.” Wincing, he cautiously rotated his left shoulder. “It’s what every woman wants. Flowers. Diamonds. A chain saw. I’ll make a note of that,” he muttered, a cornstalk snapping beneath his weight. “I’ll have women falling at my feet.”
The hint of sarcasm in his tone automatically stiffened her back. Yet, when she saw the faint smile tug at the corner of his mouth, she realized he wasn’t mocking her as some people had been known to do when she expressed her admittedly simple desires. He was teasing her. From the way he flinched when he edged his left arm back, he also seemed to be rather uncomfortable.
“You speak as if you don’t have a wife,” she observed, wondering what he’d done to himself.
“I don’t. I don’t plan to ever have one, either.”
“Never?”
Her luminous blue eyes went wide, her expression caught somewhere between amazement and incredulity. Justin wasn’t sure when he’d ever seen anyone look so openly astonished. He wasn’t sure, either, why he’d finally put voice to a conviction that had only solidified in the past year.
“I can’t see any advantage to it,” he admitted, figuring the bartender syndrome must be at work. He had never confided in one himself. He rarely confided in anyone for that matter. But he could see where it would be easier for a person to admit certain truths to a stranger than to someone he knew. Friends and family had their own expectations, their own agendas.
“Life is easier with a partner,” she said simply. She gave a shrug, the gesture seeming to say her conclusion was nothing more than a plain fact. Snow was white. Birds had wings. Life was easier with a partner. “I read in Newsweek that studies show men even live longer when they’re married.”
He met her easy certainty with equal conviction. He’d heard about those studies, too. But he didn’t get a chance to tell her that he’d prefer quality over quantity. He’d pulled his left arm in a little to move his sleeve from his stinging skin. As he did, her hand ceased its soothing motions on the back of the denim carrier and she reached for his arm.
Curling her fingers a few inches above where he held the saw, she peeked toward his opposite shoulder. “What is it that’s bothering you? Did you hurt yourself back there?”
Justin’s first reaction was to brush off her question. His second was simply to breathe.
She’d moved in front of him, setting the can of gas on the drying ground, and lifted the edge of his sleeve. Gingerly, she touched the skin below the abrasion on his biceps. Unguarded interest shadowed her exquisite face. But it was the troubled look in her eyes that hit him like a physical blow. No woman had ever looked at him with such open and honest concern.
“You are hurt,” she accused softly. “What happened?”
There were flecks of pale silver in his pewter-gray eyes. Emily noticed them as his glance quietly searched her face. Feeling her heart catch at his scrutiny, she dropped her hand as she swung her glance back to the angry red abrasion emerging below the short sleeve of his shirt. What skin was visible looked raw and sore. The shirt itself was snagged, as if something rough had dragged across it, tearing and pulling its threads.
“The door hit it.”
“What door?”
“The one to your cellar. Come on,” he murmured, reaching for the gas can himself, “I could use something cold to drink.”
She snagged the can before he could, her sense of indebtedness growing stronger as they cut toward the little house her husband had repaired. Logic told her Justin couldn’t be hurt too badly. After all, he’d worked all afternoon hauling boards without a hint of hesitation or complaint. That she’d been aware of, anyway. But whether or not he’d been in pain before, he was now. And he’d hurt himself protecting her and her child.
“We’ll have to go in the front,” she said as they approached her house a few minutes later. “I have iced tea or lemonade. Which would you prefer?”
Leaving the chain saw by the can of gas near the back porch, Justin told her he didn’t care as long as it was cold and wet, and followed her past a propane tank at the side of the house. He was pretty sure from her preoccupation that she was thinking about the tree she needed to clear from her back door. He didn’t doubt that she wanted to get started on it.
All he wanted was to get his car running and get home.
That was what he’d been telling himself, anyway.
He pushed his fingers through his hair as he took the steps up her front porch, the motion more habit than exasperation. He wasn’t anywhere near as frustrated by the delays as he should have been. But then, he hadn’t intended to accomplish anything today anyway, he reminded himself, pulling open the screen door Emily had already disappeared through. That was the only possible explanation for why he didn’t feel like pacing out of his skin. Delays of any kind usually made him crazy.
The interior of the little house was dim. It was also cooler than it was outside. Drawn as much by curiosity as that coolness, he stepped over the threshold and let the screen door bump closed behind him.
Emily was nowhere to be seen. He could hear her, though. Her gentle voice filtered through a doorway to his right as she spoke to her baby. It sounded very much as if she were commiserating over how awful it must feel to be wet, and making assurances that she would remedy that situation in no time at all.
Figuring she must be changing her baby’s diaper, he pushed his hands into his pockets and took another step into a room that smelled faintly of cinnamon and lemon oil.
The starched white curtains had been drawn to keep out the heat of the sun, but as his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he could easily see around the neat and sparsely furnished space.
To his left, a stone fireplace took up most of the wall. Across from it, a simple wooden bench was filled with embroidered pillows. Beside him, a rocking chair had a small quilt draped over its back.
The reds and blues in the quilt were muted in the pale light, but the exquisite workmanship in the beautifully crafted piece was evident. Resisting the urge to touch it, he glanced toward the old treadle sewing machine beneath the narrow front window. Judging from it and the oil lamps atop a crowded book case, it appeared that Emily was into antiques.
She also seemed to have an eclectic sense of philosophy. Two small posters lay on the braided rag rug that covered most of the wood floor, presumably waiting to be put into the inexpensive frames propped against the wall. The smaller one was of a secluded mountain stream cascading into an enormous waterfall. The flowing script across the bottom read Go with the Flow. The poster next to it, larger and presumably for her daughter’s room, was of a teddy bear in a pink tutu looking out a window. It simply said Dream.
“She’s happier now,” he heard Emily say as she emerged from the bedroom and headed for the doorway across from him. “She wanted her bassinet. Please. Come in,” she invited, only to come to a halt when she reached the doorway herself.
Over her shoulder he could see a large wood table graced with a bouquet of flowers. Other than that, he could see nothing in the roomy, Spartan space but the basics. An old stove, an older refrigerator and white painted cabinets. He couldn’t even see a sink, but that was because the limb occupying her back porch blocked the early evening light—along with the sink itself. Part of that limb had punched through the window and was hanging like a bushy verdant waterfall nearly to the floor.
He heard her pull a deep breath, saw her slender shoulders rise. It didn’t take a Rhodes scholar to figure out that the Fates were having a field day with this woman. In the past few months, she’d lost her husband, had a child and been shafted—whether or not she wanted to admit it—by an itinerant who’d split with a chunk of her hard-earned cash. Considering the way the Fates had jerked her around today, he wouldn’t have been at all surprised if the broken window over the sink hadn’t just supplied the proverbial last straw.
The thought had him reaching for her shoulder. Before he could touch her, she let out a sigh and stepped away.
Frowning at himself, wondering what he’d thought he was going to do, he shoved his hands into his pockets and watched her head for the window by the refrigerator. She pushed open the unruffled white curtains to let in what light there was, then took an oil lamp from the top of the refrigerator and set in on the table.
He was thinking that the electricity must be out here, too, when she stooped to pick up the bar of soap that been knocked to the floor and headed for the sink, picking her way through the glass on the floor as she went. As if she tackled a jungle of foliage in her kitchen every day, she rustled her way through the leaves until she found what she was looking for.
Metal squeaked over the rush of water as his glance slipped down her long, windblown braid. Life here was as foreign to him as life on Mars. But nothing he’d encountered so far puzzled him more than this woman’s almost philosophical acceptance of what would have had anyone else he knew reaching for antacids, at the very least.
It was almost as if it hadn’t occurred to her to be upset just now. Luisa, his long-suffering cleaning lady, would have thrown her hands into the air and railed at the litany of saints she evoked for everything from world peace to a lost sock had she been faced with this mess. His mother—along with nearly every other woman he knew—would have stared blindly at the disorder, expecting someone, anyone, to materialize from somewhere and tend to it, lest she wreck her manicure.
Emily simply worked around it.
“You might want to wash,” she said, drying her hands with a towel she pulled from the refrigerator handle. The towel went over her shoulder as she reached into a cabinet. “The bathroom’s through there,” she said, nodding to a doorway on the other side of the refrigerator. “That would be easier than trying to get to the pump in here.”
He’d barely glanced past her when his brow furrowed. “The pump?”
“The water pump. I don’t have faucets.”
Curious, he pushed aside the bough hiding the gunmetal gray sink and stared at the tall, upright and decidedly old-fashioned metal spout with its long wooden handle. “This place must have been here since the turn of the century.”
“It has,” she replied over the clink of ice in a glass. “Mr. Clancy said the building was here when his father bought the place years ago. They sold it to us along with these two acres of land in exchange for a year’s work from Daniel. He worked for him for a wage after the land became ours.”
“You didn’t want to modernize?”
She’d wanted to. She’d wanted to keep the rose print wallpaper, too, tattered as it had been. She’d never had anything pretty on her walls before. But Daniel had stripped it and painted everything white.
“We were used to a simple house,” she said, reminding herself that this winter, she would repaint every room. If she got up her nerve, she might even pick colors that were outrageously bold. The only room she had painted so far was Anna’s and that was soft, shell pink. “The walls and the foundation were good, so Daniel only had to repair the roof and replace the windows.”
Daniel had been a good carpenter. He’d learned from his father and his father had raised more houses and barns than anyone in Haven County. There had even been a man in Hancock who would have hired Daniel to work in his cabinet shop, but Daniel had wanted to tend the land.
It had kept him closer to the old ways, made it easier for him to keep himself separate from their neighbors.
“I’m sure you must be hungry,” she said, refusing to let her thoughts carry her back when she was trying so hard to move forward. Ice cracked as she poured liquid over it. “I’ll put some antiseptic on those scrapes, then fix you something to eat.”
Soaping up after he’d given the handle a pump, Justin eyed the golden pie sitting on the stove. His breakfast of a large black coffee-to-go and two granola bars had worn off hours ago. “You don’t have to feed me,” he said, marveling at the way she minimized her lack. She couldn’t afford regular plumbing. He wasn’t about to take her food. “And my arm’s fine. It’s just bruised.”
“Your arm is not fine. You were out in that barn with the sore open and unprotected. It needs to be cleaned.
“And you didn’t have to help me, either,” she continued, her voice suddenly quiet. “But you did.” Gratitude shifted in her eyes as she held out a towel. “I know you said no thanks were necessary, but I’ll never be able to thank you enough for what you did for me and Anna today. So let me do what I can.” She lifted the towel a little higher. “Please?”
The thought of the barn and what had been in it already had him hesitating. Her unexpected plea had him hesitating even more.
“You don’t owe me anything.” Whatever he’d done, he’d done on instinct. When he’d dived for that cellar, he’d been protecting himself as much as he had her and her kid. “You gave me shelter. I’d say that makes us even.
“But I’ll take you up on the antiseptic,” he told her, ignoring the disagreement in her eyes as he took the towel she offered. She truly didn’t owe him anything. But he knew what it was like to feel obligated. If she hated the feeling as much as he did, he wouldn’t deny her the satisfaction of evening the score. “Where do you want me?”
Emily looked up at the mountain of male muscle towering over her. She didn’t know why he seemed so much bigger to her now than he had outside. But she didn’t think it wise to stand there watching his glance move over her face while she tried to figure it out. “It would help if you’d sit down,” she murmured and turned to gather supplies from the bathroom.
He’d drained the glass of lemonade she’d left for him on her well-scrubbed pine table and was leaning back in one of its straight-backed chairs when she returned and set everything on the table beside him. He was following her every move. She could feel it. But she didn’t let herself meet his eyes. She focused only on the fabric covering his biceps. She’d noticed the snags before. What she hadn’t noticed was the tear in the seam.
“I’ll fix your shirt for you,” she said, leaning over so she could lift his sleeve and see how far up the scrape went.
“Don’t bother. I have another one in the car. Wait a minute,” he muttered when he felt the sleeve scrape his sore skin. “I’ll just take it off.”
Before she could say a word, he’d bent his dark head and grabbed a handful of fabric between his shoulder blades. Seconds later, he dragged the garment over his head.
Emily swallowed hard as he dropped it to his knee. Until two years ago, Daniel had been the only man she’d seen in any state of undress. He’d worked hard and ate well, but his thin build had not been what one would call impressive. Justin’s…was. His shoulders were broad, every corded muscle in his tapering back and carved arms beautifully defined.
She’d seen pictures of statues depicting such beautifully proportioned men. She’d even seen pictures of men themselves in ads for skimpy underwear, though the first few times she’d encountered them while flipping through magazines at Mrs. Clancy’s and at the grocery store, she’d nearly turned pink with embarrassment.
The image of a half-naked man no longer startled her as it once had. Mary Woldridge, a checker at the market who’d become her friend, even said she was no fun to watch at the magazine rack anymore. The real thing, however, was rather disturbing. So was the four-inch-wide swath of bruised, raw and abraded skin that ran from Justin’s biceps to the top of his shoulder. Little splinters were visible between the streaks of blood that had dried and crusted in places, any one of which could have caught on his sleeve with his movements and caused a fresh jolt of discomfort.
He would have been terribly uncomfortable working with Mr. Clancy. But it was the thought of how he’d been hurting while he’d shielded her and her child that had her reaching to touch the skin below his reddened flesh.
“You’re already bruising,” she murmured. “Does it feel like you chipped bone?”
“I don’t think I did anything like that. It just feels a little sore.”
She met his eyes, sympathy in her own as she straightened. She needed more light.
Justin watched her turn away, the soft fabric of her dress shifting against her slender body as she moved across the room. The dress itself was modest to a fault. Demure, he supposed, though it wasn’t a word he recalled ever having reason to use before. The sleeves nearly reached her elbows and her delicate collarbone was barely exposed. But the memory of how she’d looked with the wind molding that fabric to her body had been burned into his brain. All too easily, he could picture the fullness of her high breasts, the curve of her hips, her long, shapely legs.
Thinking of how exquisitely she was shaped beneath that formless garment had his body responding in ways that were not wise to consider in such an intimate space. So he forced his attention to what she was doing as she turned back to the table and touched the match she struck to the wick of the oil lamp she’d set there. Moments later, a bright glow illuminated her lovely face. That light gleamed in her hair, adding shimmers of platinum to shades of silver and gold as she replaced the glass chimney and positioned the lamp near the jar of vividly colored flowers.
With the scrape of wood over scarred pine flooring, Emily tugged a chair next to his and sat down beside him.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?”
He held up the thumb of his left hand. “Just a couple of slivers. I can get them if you have any tweezers.”
She reached toward a gauze pad. “I have a needle,” she told him, pulling out the one she’d brought and sterilizing it in the wick’s flame. “You have them in your arm, too. Here,” she murmured, replacing the chimney once more. “Let me see.”
His bare chest was terribly distracting. Trying not to think of how incredibly solid it had felt, she took his thick wrist and moved his hand closer to the light. With his hand resting palm-up on her table, she could easily see two fine slivers of wood in the pad of his thumb.
His hands distracted her, too.
They were strong, broad and long-fingered. Good hands. Capable hands. Yet, they were nearly unblemished. There were no calluses, no scars, no healing scratches. Only the fresh-looking scrapes and nicks he’d earned that afternoon.
Fascinated, she started to touch the smooth pad at the base of his fingers, only to pull back as if she’d touched fire the instant she realized what she was doing.
“What’s the matter?”
With a sheepish smile, she ducked her head and went to work on his thumb, deftly slipping out a sliver with the needle and wiping it onto a gauze pad. “Your hands are very smooth. I’ve never seen a man’s hands that weren’t scarred and callused from years of work. Except maybe Dr. Fisher,” she amended, thinking of the kindly old physician in Hancock who’d delivered Anna. The other sliver joined the first. “But I can’t honestly say I paid any attention to them. Yours are the only ones I’ve noticed.”
“Is that good or bad?” He posed the question mildly, absorbed as much by her lack of guile as her brisk efficiency when she dabbed on peroxide with a cotton ball, then blotted at the bubbles. “No calluses, I mean?”
“There are some who would say that soft hands mean a person is idle. But Dr. Fisher is a very busy man. And you work with your mind.” She tipped her head, still looking intrigued as she finished with dabs of antibiotic cream. “Your hands don’t look soft, though. And they didn’t feel that way at all.”
“They didn’t?”
Emily kept her head down as she slowly wiped a bit of cream from her own fingers. “No,” she murmured, but she would give him no more than that. Her last observation had slipped out before she considered what she was saying. He didn’t need to know she could still imagine how comforting their solid, masculine weight had felt against her back when he’d wrapped her in his arms. He didn’t need to know how drawn she was by their strength. How drawn she was by him.
“I’m relieved to hear that.”
She thought he might be smiling—the way he had when he’d teased her about her chain saw. But he wasn’t smiling at all. He was watching her as if he knew very well she was thinking of his hands on her body. And she was. Though until his glance slowly wandered to her mouth, she hadn’t considered that he might have been thinking of that, too.
She wasn’t comfortable with the awareness shimmering between them. That was as obvious to Justin as the faint tremor in the breath she drew and the chips of sapphire darkening in her eyes. He wasn’t all that comfortable with it himself. But it was there, thickening the air, snaking through his body and washing wariness over Emily’s fragile features.
Pressing her hand to her stomach, she blinked twice and reached for the peroxide to continue with her task.
Clearly flustered, trying not to look it, she promptly knocked it over.
“Oh, mein!” She gasped, bumping the bottle again as she snatched for it. Solution spilled over the edge of the table. It pooled on the wood, splashed on his pants.
“I’ve got it.” Catching the bottle before it went over the edge itself, he turned it upright and saw her grab a towel.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, mopping at the wet spot on his thigh. “I wasn’t paying—”
“It’s okay. Really.” Catching her wrist, he stilled her frantic motions. “It’s okay,” he repeated, ducking his head so he could see her eyes. “Honest. No harm’s done.”
“I’m not usually so—”
“Emily.” Beneath his fingers, he could feel her pulse, its beat as frantic as a trapped bird’s. Incredibly with her mouth inches from his, his own didn’t feel much calmer. “You don’t need to be nervous with me.”
“I can’t seem to help it.”
His glance swept her guileless face. There wasn’t an ounce of cunning in this woman. Nothing false or deceptive about her. She didn’t seem to have any natural defenses at all.
Deliberately ignoring the urge to tug her closer, he slipped his hand from hers. “What was that you said?” he asked, thinking she needed to protect herself better if she was ever going to make it on her own. “What language?”
All she’d said was “Oh, my.” Emily told him that as she pulled back, handing him a towel for his pants, and made herself focus on wiping up the table. “It’s Pennsylvania Dutch.”
She must have been even more rattled than she’d thought to have reverted to the only language she’d heard spoken until she was six years old. She rarely spoke the old German dialect at all anymore. Except to Anna once in a while, so she’d know something of her heritage. She’d learned English in school and had spoken it most of her life, but she’d worked hard over the past two years to pronounce her words the same as her neighbors. She didn’t want to be different. She wanted to belong.
Desperately.
Something like caution entered Justin’s deep voice. “Isn’t that what the Amish speak?”
“In their homes and to each other. In the Old Order communities, anyway,” she said, returning her attention to his abraded arm. “But they speak English, too.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I was Amish,” she said, gently wiping antiseptic over his scraped skin. “And we were Old Order.”
She turned away, picking up her needle again. When she turned back, she frowned at his biceps. “You have one here that looks awfully deep.” Apology touched her eyes even as she began picking at the stubborn splinter. “I’m sorry if it hurts.”
He didn’t get the feeling that she was avoiding the subject. She was simply concentrating on what she felt was more important—something he found oddly touching since what she was concentrating on was taking care of him. With her wielding that needle, he didn’t want to distract her, either.
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Christine Flynn
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The Baby Quilt, электронная книга автора Christine Flynn на английском языке, в жанре современные любовные романы