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
