gaze rising to Luke’s face. Loose waves of dark-brown hair just brushed the neck of his T-shirt. The fabric expanded to cover broad shoulders. He was a giant of a man, yet there was a gentleness about his face, more specifically his eyes. Set above high cheekbones, his eyes were startlingly blue against his dark complexion. Eyes that watched her intently, missing nothing.
Dana was surprised to find that a surreal warmth had filled her, calmed her when she wasn’t even aware of it. But to her amazement, that wasn’t all. She’d hardly been aware of herself as a woman during the past year and a half. But emotions she’d thought long dead now warmed her body in places she’d learned to ignore. Luke’s gaze flickered to her mouth, and Dana jerked her hand away as though she’d been burned.
“Is anyone expecting you?” Luke’s deep voice cut through the silence that followed.
Was anyone expecting her? She desperately wanted to say yes, but couldn’t think of a soul who’d look for her. Her aunt and uncle had raised her since the age of five, after her parents died in an auto accident. Dana checked in with them once a week. But if she didn’t, would they call her? An old pain threatened to resurface, and she suddenly knew why she phoned them so regularly. The answer was no.
Her chest constricted again, but this time Dana reached for Luke, her hand seeking his chest like a lifeline. He placed his hand over hers, warm and reassuring.
“No, Dana,” he crooned, his deep voice hypnotic. “Don’t let it happen again. Breathe.”
Her eyes were glued to his chest, but her thoughts were frantically searching for a positive answer to his question. The list of people close to her was short and getting shorter. Her ex-husband? She shook her head, forcing down a hysterical sob. No, Robert was busy tending to his new wife and newborn son. His biological son, she mentally added. A child that even the most advanced fertility treatments hadn’t allowed her to bear.
Perhaps that was the reason she was so out of control, she reasoned. She’d continued to try to become pregnant, even after the divorce, for the last year and a half. Her doctor had pumped enough hormones into her system to give her normally laid-back personality a jolt of hysteria. Not that the effort had done any good.
And now that door had permanently closed.
I’m afraid we’ve reached an impasse, Dana. Her doctor had delivered the news as gently as possible. There’s nothing more we can do.
She’d received the call from her doctor just moments before she was to go on-air today. The proverbial straw that had broken the camel’s back.
There hadn’t been time to confide the news to anyone, but she could predict the reaction of friends and family. It’s for the best, they’d say. After all, she was a single woman in the public eye. If viewers reacted negatively to a pregnancy, it could mean the end of her career.
But what did she care?
People looked at her carefully arranged appearance, her high-profile career, and thought she’d achieved her dream. It made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. What she wanted was to spend sleepless nights holding an infant against her breast, make mud pies with a toddler, and teach a first-grader how to turn a wad of gum into a shiny pink bubble.
At one time the dream had included a loving husband, but not anymore.
“Dana?”
Dana looked up, knowing his watchful eyes had seen the play of emotion on her face. She dropped her hand, forcing her breathing to steady on its on. This was her life, the hand she’d been dealt. She called on the stubborn pride that had seen her through more than one lonely crisis, including her childhood.
Dana lifted her chin slightly. “No. No one is expecting me.”
Chapter 3
Luke nodded, trying not to be distracted by the sudden moisture in her eyes. In his experience in law enforcement, emotion that intense could be traced to one of two things. Either the suspect had just bared their soul or they were desperately lying. The thought struck him as odd. He had no logical reason to think Dana Langston would lie.
He flexed his free hand, wishing for the familiar feel of the radio, for the chance to call for backup. And to check her story, he admitted. He lifted the cell phone from the floor where it lay among the spilled contents of the diaper bag and optimistically pressed the power button. The phone came to life, its face illuminating in the dim lighting of the storage room. Luke cast a questioning glance at Dana.
“I couldn’t get through earlier when I tried. Maybe the mountains, maybe the storm…”
Luke punched in the number for the police station and hit the send button. Nothing happened for a few seconds and then the familiar no-connection tone sounded. “Still nothing,” he announced.
His shoulder muscles tensed beneath the thin fabric of his shirt, reacting to the cold in a painful spasm. There was nothing more bone-chilling than an empty house, no matter what shelter it offered. Luke looked at Dana and the baby. Dana’s jeans were encrusted in mud and melting snow, as his were. And the baby just looked vulnerable as hell. Without a means to call for help, they were stuck for the night. He had no intention of spending it shivering in a supply closet.
“Do you know how to use a gun?”
Dana’s eyes widened in response to his question. “I—I did a segment once on personal protection. The instructor at the range showed me how to shoot the targets.” She shook her head and Luke noticed she was making an effort to breathe slowly. “It was just for the camera.”
Luke grinned. “How’d you do?”
The corners of her mouth twitched slightly. “Pretty good for a city girl.”
My God, she almost smiled. Luke had a feeling that didn’t happen often, even under better circumstances. “Good.” Luke noticed that Dana held the baby in the crook of her left arm, propping the bottle with the same hand, which left her right hand free. He laid the gun on the floor and gently slid it toward her. “I’m going to leave this with you while I—”
“No.” She shook her head. “Please don’t. Don’t leave me.”
“Shh…” Luke placed his hand on her knee, absently caressing her leg beneath his discarded jacket while he spoke. “The temperature is dropping, and we’re stuck here for the night. We’re going to need a way to stay warm. The good news is, the porch light was on, so I know there’s an electrical feed.” He gestured behind her at a dusty space heater. “I just need to find the fuse box and switch the circuit breaker. If that doesn’t work, I’ve got to see if there’s any firewood.”
“No—you can’t build a fire. He’ll see the smoke. He’ll know where we are.”
“He already knows where we are, Dana.”
She went perfectly still, but her eyes registered fear so deep that Luke regretted the words. “Look, whoever is out there can’t stay out there in this storm for long. He’ll freeze to death before he gets another chance at us. We’re safe here.”
Dana looked around her, as if considering where she was for the first time. “What is this place?”
“An old forest ranger’s station. They gave me a key a couple of years back when they built a new observation
