wife if he was out here all alone in the wilderness, but he must have relatives. “Isn’t there anyone who might be worrying about you?”
“Bruce, Will and Megan, my brothers and my sister, know I can take care of myself. They live in Evergreen Bluff, the closest town to this cabin. We’ll be going there as soon as we can get out to the main road. Bruce is a doctor and I’m taking you and Marie to him to be checked out.”
“Oh. Well, thanks.” She waited a minute, then said, “Do you actually live in this cabin year round?”
“I live downstate, in Archer.”
“Archer!” she cried. “So do I. What a coincidence.”
As they stared at each other in mutual surprise, she noticed again how bright a blue his eyes were, really an unusual and attractive color. She also saw, for the first time, a thin scar running from his hairline across his left temple. When she realized she was raising her hand as though to touch the scar, she hastily clasped her hands together. What was the matter with her? Had the baby’s birth addled her wits?
Marie cried, as if on cue, and Dan hurried to change her and bring her to Fay to nurse.
The next morning, though intermittent snow mixed with rain still sputtered from the clouds, the wind no longer howled around the cabin. After making sure Fay and Marie were all right, Dan set out to try to find the wrecked car. He wished Fay would get some color back in her face. The slow and careful way she walked around the cabin and her frequent naps told him she still wasn’t up to par.
He was almost to the creek before he saw the snow-mounded car up against a good-sized pine. He was about to trudge through the snow to it when he noticed the bridge over the creek looked wrong. Wading closer, he let loose with a few choice expletives when he realized what had happened. The no-longer-frozen creek, roiling over its banks with snow melt, had washed out the footings on the far end of the bridge, closest to the main road. Great. Just great. No way to cross the damn thing until it got fixed.
As he slogged his way back to the wreck, he tried to console himself with the fact that at least her car was on this side of the bridge so he had access to supplies for the baby and for Fay. After brushing away some of the snow, it was obvious to him the car would have to be towed when that was possible. It seemed a miracle Fay hadn’t been seriously injured.
He wound up making two trips to transport everything he found inside the car to the cabin. On the second trip he thought about Fay wandering lost and half-frozen through the storm. He gritted his teeth, knowing she and the baby might well have died out here, if he hadn’t thought of his mother’s strange belief about storms and left the porch light on. Though he tried not to think about his mother much, the memory he’d dredged up about the light had saved lives.
But his mother was someone he never talked about, even to his siblings.
“Good thing you brought so much for the baby,” he told Fay, once he was inside again. “Looks like we may be stuck here longer than I figured.” Then he gave her the bad news about the bridge.
“If it can’t be helped, there’s nothing we can do,” she said, much less upset than he’d thought she would be. “You said there was enough food for us, I have breast milk for Marie, and now we have the stuff from the car. We’ll make it all right, the three of us.”
We. The three of us. Her words warmed him even as he tried to push them from his mind. Fay and her baby were his responsibility until he could get the two of them to safety. Still, he was Dan Sorenson, a man who wanted no ties to anyone.
Since Fay was still too weak to trust herself carrying the baby back and forth from the wood-box, Dan continued to fetch Marie for Fay to nurse and, much of the time, to change her diaper as well. He was getting more adept at the latter, especially with the disposable ones. Fay had also included a dozen cloth diapers, which some book she’d read had told her would be welcome in case of an emergency. Dan was sure the author had never figured on this kind of emergency.
He’d thought about and discarded the idea of giving her the only bedroom, in the loft, because he doubted her ability to climb up and down the steep stairs in her condition. Besides, where she was on the couch, near the fireplace, was the warmest spot in the house. Dan had been sleeping in the Morris chair since her arrival since he couldn’t take the chance she or the baby would need him in the night and he might not hear from the loft. He’d never felt such a tremendous urge to protect anyone as he did Fay and her baby.
Watching her sleep, he noticed how attractive she looked with her brown hair now softly curling around her face, in the topaz robe that changed her eyes to the same warm shade. He wondered about the baby’s father, who’d died, and about Fay’s father, who didn’t want his own grandchild. He glanced over at the wood-box, where Marie was sleeping. Though he’d recovered the baby bed from the car and set it up, they’d decided together the baby was better off where she was.
“You’re frowning.” Fay’s voice told him she was awake. “Having bad thoughts?”
“Not as bad as some,” he told her.
“Yeah, I get those in-between ones. I found the best thing to rid myself of them is to work.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
She hitched herself up higher on the couch. “I’m a consultant.”
“That covers a lot of ground.”
“So do I. After I got my MBA, I worked for a high-powered management company that sent me all over the place doing this and that for different firms. Once I had enough experience, I decided I could do better on my own, so I took the leap and it’s worked out great.”
“A high-powered consultant.”
She smiled and said, “Good description.”
“What did Marie’s father do?”
“Something similar, only for a firm, not for himself.”
“Now you’re frowning,” he told her.
“I like a man to be ambitious. Ken…” Her words trailed off.
“Sorry to pry. A cop gets used to asking questions.”
“I don’t mind your questions. After what we’ve been through together we’re hardly strangers. It’s just that I discovered somewhat late that Ken and I didn’t mesh too well. There was no way I could marry him and I told him so.”
Dan hid his surprise. “Then he died?”
Fay bit her lip. “I’d already broken off with him by that time. I had no idea then I might be pregnant, but that wouldn’t have changed my mind. It was all so sudden, the leukemia he never knew he had and killed him almost overnight.” She took a deep breath. “Logically, his death wasn’t my fault, but sometimes I feel so guilty.” Tears glimmered in her eyes. “Why is it logic has no effect on emotion?”
Dan moved from the chair to sit beside her on the couch and took her hand between both of his. “You can’t blame yourself for his disease.”
She sighed. “I know. But then, even though I’ve always used protection, I discovered I was carrying Ken’s child and told my father. He insisted I not have this baby. He hated Ken. Dad never reconciled himself to the fact I meant
