been so quiet for so long that Marcy put her cheek against the child’s forehead, hoping to find that nothing was seriously wrong with her. Thankfully, Angie’s temperature seemed fine.
There was no third seat in the SUV and it didn’t take the cowboy long to fill up the cargo space with their things. Once they were all buckled in and cautiously on their way, Marcy closed her eyes and gave a silent prayer of thanks for their rescue.
Peeking out through half-closed lids to check on the stranger who’d picked them up, she decided to thank him for being their hero only when they were safe and sound and she was sure he wasn’t really a serial killer. Marcy studied his profile while he concentrated on the slick road.
What kind of man was this?
He’d pushed the hat back on his forehead so he could get a better view out the windshield. She remembered thinking how tall and broad-shouldered he was as they’d been standing out on the side of the road.
Now she could see that he was also powerfully built. He had what could only be described as a commanding presence. Just by breathing, he seemed to suck up all the oxygen and space surrounding his body, and Marcy could imagine him as a leader of troops. A man others would respect.
Thank heaven. Perhaps they would all get out of this storm safely.
Looking closer, she noted the jet-black, slightly too long hair under his gray cowboy hat…and quickly scanned the rugged angles and jutting jawline of his face. The lighting wasn’t very good, but his bronzed skin, high cheekbones and Roman nose all looked Native American.
Which was why the first thing out of his mouth surprised her so much.
“The name’s Lance Steele,” he said without looking directly at her. “What’ll I call you?”
“Oh, please excuse me. Things have been so…” She caught herself and began again. “My name’s Marcy Griffin. And my baby is Angelina…. ‘Angie’ most of the time unless I’m frustrated and trying to get her attention.” In her daughter’s entire nine months of life, Marcy hadn’t come that close to apologizing for simply being alive—the way she would’ve done in her best-forgotten past.
She had no intention of ever allowing herself to become such a wimp again.
The corner of his mouth cracked slightly but not enough to actually call it a smile. “Is the kid…Angie…okay? She’s not sick, is she?”
“She’s fine. It’s just been a long, hard day for her.”
“Where are you two headed? And what the devil were you thinking to bring a child out in a—” He screwed up his mouth and looked as if he was about to spew a raft of curse words at her.
After he breathed deeply and rolled his shoulders for a second or two, he seemed a little more in control. “Sorry. But you two should be someplace dry and warm right now. Not out becoming stranded in one of the worst blizzards in history. Where’s your husband? What will he have to say when he finds out how much danger you two were in?”
The flash of a reminder about Mike made her forget to be careful and thoughtful before she answered the questions of a cowboy who had yet to completely prove he wasn’t a maniac. “If my ex-husband cared one way or the other about being a father in the first place…or if he’d ever bothered to meet the baby he helped to create…I’m sure he would have nothing good to say about anything I did.”
She folded her arms across her chest and stared out at the inhospitable landscape. Well, that little speech was more than she’d said to anyone in months. And it had been much more venomous than was strictly necessary. She had better find a less combative way to get to know their rescuer.
“I’m sorry,” she said with a sigh. “I realize you don’t know anything about my divorce. Angie and I are on our own. I’m trying to get to a new job. It’s really a great opportunity. But we have to be there by the first of January. I thought we had lots of time, but…”
“How far away is this new job?” he interrupted.
“Not that far, under normal circumstances. Cheyenne…in Wyoming.”
“Yeah, I know where it is. I’ve spent a lot of time in Cheyenne.”
“Is that your home? You aren’t headed there now, are you?”
The slight shake of his head was almost imperceptible. “Nope. I’m headed for a ranch outside Great Falls. That’s my home.”
He’d said the word home with such obvious reverence, she just knew some lucky woman must be waiting there for his return. Marcy didn’t think she’d better question him any further right now, however, especially on the subject of who he was fighting his way home to see.
Out of nowhere, a loud cracking sound split through the piercing noise of the howling winds. Lance slowly put his foot on the brake and the SUV came to a sliding stop…within a foot of a huge pine tree that had landed across the road directly in their path.
Both of them sat in stunned silence, looking out the windshield at nothing but pine needles and bark in every direction. There was total quiet for what seemed like a half hour, but it was probably only a few seconds.
“Stay put. I’ll go move it out of the way,” Lance growled.
“Is it the whole tree?”
He shook his head in frustration. “It’s just a damned big branch. I’ll handle it.” He got out and slammed the door behind him.
He knew he shouldn’t take his frustrations out on a perfect stranger. None of this was her fault. Whether she was in the SUV or not hadn’t caused the wind to take off the biggest branch he’d ever seen and lay it end to end blocking the road.
Okay, so there was nothing he’d like better than to never have seen her and her baby standing by the roadside in the first place. He had a timetable of his own and no time to deal with someone else’s problems.
But that little outburst of hers about the no-good scum of a husband abandoning them both before the baby was even born had made him furious. He’d known plenty of bums like that from his rodeo days. Men who would play around with women and then disappear when things got serious.
But knowing about it didn’t make hearing the truth from the woman’s side any easier. It was despicable. The thought of having a family right in the palm of your hand and casually tossing it aside rather than cherishing every minute made him angry and itching to hit something.
Nothing on earth would make him abandon these two to the storm. He didn’t know why he’d been hapless enough to be saddled with them, but it looked as if fate had stepped in yet again and changed his plans. At the very least, he would take them to a truck stop and make sure they were safe.
Pulling his hat lower and hunching down inside his jacket, Lance stepped out of the warmth of the running car and into a polar blast of Arctic air. The temperature must’ve dropped twenty degrees in the past hour.
He tried not to breathe too deeply in the sharp raw cold, knowing all too well how his lungs would burn if he did. A man couldn’t be a wrangler on a ranch in northern Montana without being fully aware of all the dangers lurking in the long, hard winters there.
By the time he made it
