just don’t want to?” he asked.
The little girl’s eyes lifted to his and he saw a misery there that he totally understood. She didn’t like what was back there.
“Tough one,” he muttered.
“Josie!” The cry split through the quiet forest. “Josie! Where are you?” It was a woman’s voice and she was panicked. Scared.
“You Josie?” he asked the little girl, and her guilty expression was enough.
“She’s here!” he yelled. “Stay on the trail and—”
A woman, petite and fair, erupted from the trees and nearly tripped into the clearing. Her wild eyes searched the area until they landed on Josie, small and pink and looking like she wished she could vanish.
“Oh my God!” the woman cried, hurtling herself through snow to practically slide on her knees in front of Josie. “Oh, Josie. I was so worried.” She checked the little girl, cupped her cheeks in her own bare hands. The woman didn’t even have a coat on.
“What did I say about wandering off?” the woman asked, snow gathering in her red hair. “What did I say? You can’t do that, Josie. You can’t scare me that way.” Finally the woman hauled Josie into her arms but stayed on her knees, her blue jeans no doubt getting soaked through.
No coat. No gloves and now she was going to be wet.
He cleared his throat. “She’s been with—”
Before he could even finish, the woman was on her feet, Josie sequestered behind her. The woman was braced for battle, a bear protecting her cub and Max had serious respect for that particular facet of motherhood and had no desire to screw with it.
He took a careful step away from the two females and lifted his eyes to look into the woman’s in an effort to calm her down. He opened his mouth to tell her that he meant no harm, but the words died a quiet death in his throat.
There was a buzz in the air and under his jacket all the hair on his arms stood up.
I know you, he thought, looking into her radiant blue eyes. I know all about you. Her stiff shoulders and trembling lips told the tale more vividly than anything she might say. This woman was terrified of more than just losing her daughter momentarily. This was a woman—a beautiful woman—grappling with big fears.
And the big fears seemed to be winning.
Her eyes narrowed and he looked away, suddenly worried that she might see him as clearly as he saw her. Though he didn’t know what she would detect in him—cobwebs and dark corners, probably.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Max Mitchell,” he answered calmly, despite the fact that his heart was pumping a mile a minute.
He needed this woman to get out of here. Take her silent daughter and leave.
“Your brother is Gabe? The owner?” He nodded and she relaxed, barely. “He said you were in charge of operations.”
“I mow the lawn.” He shrugged. “Shovel snow.” Not quite the truth, but the fact that just about everything would grind to a halt these days if he wasn’t here didn’t seem like the kind of thing to discuss at this moment.
“You better head back. You—” He pointed at the wet patches on her jeans and the snow scattered across her bright blue sweater. Her tight, bright blue sweater. A mama bear in provocative clothes, Lord save him. “You are gonna get cold.”
And my clearing is getting crowded.
The woman and girl were a pretty picture, surrounded by white snow and green trees. They were bright spots, almost electric seeming. He found it difficult to look away.
“I’m Delia,” she said, her accent flavored by the south. Texas, maybe.
A redhead from Texas. Trouble if ever there was. And a woman from Texas without a winter coat or gloves, in a Catskill winter, had to be a guest.
The girl tugged on her mother’s hand and Delia wrapped an arm around her.
“And this is my daughter, Josie.”
Josie waved a finger at Max and he smiled.
“We’re acquainted.”
Delia didn’t like that. Not one bit. Her lips went tight, and her pale skin, no doubt cold, went red. “We’ll head on back. Don’t bother yourself showing us the way.”
He nodded, knowing when he’d been told to stay put.
They turned toward the trail and Max forced himself not to stare at the woman’s extraordinary behind as she walked away.
“What did I say about talking to strangers?” Delia asked.
“I didn’t say a word, Mama,” Josie said, her voice a quiet peep with enough sass to indicate she knew what she was doing.
Max couldn’t help it, laughter gushed out of his throat, unstoppable.
Trouble, the two of them.
DELIA DUPUIS’S mother was French, her father an oil rigger from the dry flatlands of West Texas. Depending on the situation, Delia could channel either of them. And right now, her daughter, her eight-year-old girl who was way too big for her britches, needed a little sample of Daddy’s School of Tough Love.
“This isn’t funny, Josie,” she said. “I don’t know that man and he could have been dangerous.”
“He was nice,” Josie protested.
He was. He was more than nice, and her instincts echoed Josie’s statement. But Delia was not on speaking terms with her instincts these days. She had to shake off the strange sensation that she knew Max. Really knew him. For a moment there she’d felt a spark of something, like being brushed by electricity, and when she looked into his eyes all she’d thought was, I can trust this man.
She’d seen such sadness in his eyes, manageable but there, like a wound that wasn’t healing. That sadness and the way he held his head and how he talked to Josie, the way he didn’t crowd Delia, the way he had shown her more respect in those five seconds than she’d received in the last year of her marriage, had her whole body screaming that he was one of the good guys.
Which, of course, was ridiculous. She couldn’t tell that from a five-second conversation, from a quick glance into a pair of black eyes. And the fact that her instincts told her the compelling, handsome and mysterious man was a good guy was a pretty good indication that he wasn’t.
Her instincts were like that.
Delia turned and despite the cold and her aching hands and misleading gut reactions she crouched in front of her daughter. “Listen to me,” she said, hard as nails. The smile and spark of defiance fled from Josie’s brown eyes. The response killed Delia, ripped her apart, but she didn’t know what else to do. “When I say you stick close, it means you stick close. It means I can see you at all times. I’m not telling you again, Jos. You know how important this
