shower.
With a mumbled “Pardon me,” he swiftly reached for the jeans and pulled them on under the covers before swinging out of the bed, back to her, to zip them up, barely preserving his modesty in the process, and only a fraction of his composure.
For when he turned around, it was to those singularly captivating eyes staring at him as if he were the answer to a wish.
But hadn’t he been the one doing the wishing?
Without a doubt, the cold had done a number on his reason, Cade decided. He noticed the letter on the coverlet, where it must have slipped out of his hand. It had gotten crumpled, probably during his exertions getting his jeans on. He snatched it up and tossed it back onto the night table, making a mental note to be sure and read it as soon as he had a private moment. Best to get back to reality with no more delay.
“If you don’t mind my bein’ nosy, just what’re you doin’ in my bed?” Cade asked, embarrassment making him short.
She pushed herself halfway up on the headboard, the thick comforter mounding around her. “There wasn’t another one made up in the house,” she said, as if that explained everything.
Once more, sarcasm got the better of him. “Not much reason for a man livin’ out in the middle of the Texas Panhandle to keep a guest room ready on the off chance some strange woman’ll want to make herself at home.”
He immediately regretted his abruptness. Even with her face half in shadow, he marked the shock in her expression, as well as another emotion he couldn’t make out.
“You are Cade McGivern, aren’t you?” she asked.
“I am,” he said, wondering how she knew his name. Of course, one had only to look on the mailbox at the end of the lane, or on any number of papers and such lying around the house.
Yet she murmured on a breath of relief, “At least I’m in the right place.”
Her words sent up a flag of warning. Who was this woman? How did she get here? More important, why was she here?
Well, he was more than ready to end the mystery.
“You mind tellin’ me what’s going on here?” he asked, gesturing toward her and the bed.
She pushed herself the rest of the way upright with some difficulty, swinging her legs over the far side of the bed and rising. “Actually, I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
He took a hit of confusion when she turned and he saw what her position in the bed and the comforter had hidden from him: She was pregnant. Heavily so.
He must have stared, for her arms went protectively around the burden under her navy corduroy jumper.
“T-tell me how you know me,” she said, that unnamed emotion coloring her words and sending up another flag of warning.
“Ma’am, I’ve never seen you before in my life,” Cade said in dead earnestness.
“I…see.” She closed her eyes briefly, as if absorbing another shock. Her mouth trembled in fear.
That was the other emotion he’d spied a minute ago: fear. Again, the warning went off in his head, like an alarm, but at least now he understood what it was about.
For in the next moment an unmistakable shiver of pain crossed her delicate features.
“Oh no,” she moaned. Her hand shot out to grab the bedpost as she bent forward, clutching her belly.
Cade didn’t need a medical degree to know what was happening. In an instant he was around the foot of the bed to take her elbow. “It’s the baby, isn’t it?” he said. “That’s why you stopped here.”
“No!” She shook him off. “It’s not time yet! It’s too early!” She gasped for breath, then seemed to ask of someone besides him, “Why? I did everything I could! Everything I could think of—”
She doubled over. In one motion, he lifted her and laid her back on the bed.
To his dismay, she locked her arms around his neck to keep him from rising.
“P-please,” she panted, obviously still in pain. “Please…tell me the truth. Are you sure you don’t know me?”
Bending over her, Cade could only shake his head. “Why do you think I should?”
“Because,” she answered, her gaze searching his face desperately, “I’ve been sent to you, Cade McGivern.”
“Sent to me? But…why?”
She shifted slightly, and her belly brushed against his naked stomach. The scent of sandalwood rose up to meet his nose.
“It must be…for you to deliver my baby…and not why I’d thought.”
The warning in his ears suddenly sounded louder than ever, like the bong-bong-bonging of a thousand clocks striking midnight.
Because she was looking up at him, hitting him again with that blue gaze as deep as the ocean. And what he now saw in her eyes was aloneness—crushing and soul deep.
It reached out to him, grabbed hold of him and drew him in as nothing else on earth could.
“What did you think you’d been sent to me for?” Cade asked through a throat gone sandpaper-dry.
“To tell me who I am,” she whispered. “Because I don’t know.”
Cade climbed the stairs with a heavy tread, dreading what he had to tell the woman in his bedroom. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like for her, finding out she’d only a ham-fisted cowboy—and perfect stranger to her, to boot—to depend on as doctor, midwife and partner in the delivery of her baby.
But then, she was pretty much a perfect stranger to herself, apparently.
He sure as hell wished Virgil would get home. The old ranch hand would be useless so far as helping him with the actual delivery, but it’d be handy to have someone to sterilize whatever needed sterilizing and to keep the fresh linen coming.
But Virgil must have stopped for the night at the Old-field Ranch next over, rather than trying to ride the six miles back on horseback in a blinding blizzard. No one in the county knew West Texas terrain and weather better than Virg, but not even the most experienced cowboy looked to have any truck with Mother Nature when she got her back up.
Hopefully the hand was safe and warm at the Oldfields’, but Cade had learned that, more often than not, hope bought you more trouble than it was worth.
The proof of that was upstairs in his bedroom.
Mentally bracing himself, he entered the room to find the woman walking its length, back and forth, chin against her chest and one hand on her back, the other flattened on her belly.
She glanced up when he came in the room, relief chasing the fear out of her eyes. But not the desolate aloneness that had a way of pulling him in, despite himself.
That
