held a baby before. A baby was a rare commodity in a town like Thunder Lake. When there was one around, a baby, Storm avoided the ruckus. And now she knew why. It made a person kind of go all soft and mushy inside, even when a man was dripping blood all over her yard.
“Come on,” she said, lugging the baby up the stairs. Her mind raced. An injured man and a baby had just showed up at her cabin. He was relieved that no one was here but her, a woman on her own. Maybe she was the one with trouble. Bad trouble. She ducked a little pink finger aimed at her eye. The baby clouded things. It was hard to consider the possibility of menace in the merry presence of the child.
The man paused behind her on the porch. She glanced over her shoulder to see him unloading the shotgun. He slipped the shell into his pocket.
There’s plenty more where that one came from, buster.
The cabin was small and cozy inside. A primitive wooden table stood at its center, and a potbellied wood burner was in the corner. Two sets of rough open cupboards were on either side of a sink with a hand pump for a faucet. There was one tiny window, and in a rare fit of domesticity Storm had nailed up two squares of checkered red fabric that passed for curtains if they weren’t inspected too closely.
Her visitor went and pulled back the matching curtains that separated the bunk beds from the main cabin area. When his inspection proved they were alone, the last of the tension relaxed out of those hard muscles. He turned to face her.
“This has changed. You can sleep a crowd in here now,” he commented of the six bunks. “How come?”
“It’s an army training center. I’m expecting the troops at any moment.”
“Led by Sam?” he asked dryly, slipping his arms from the backpack straps and letting it slide to the floor, taking in the rest of the cabin in a glance.
His gaze rested for a moment on the early-blooming wildflowers she had stuck in a tin at the center of the table when she’d first arrived. Now she was sorry she had done that. She thought it made her look somewhat vulnerable, which was not the appearance she wanted to give right at the moment.
“I better have a look at that wound,” she said.
“It doesn’t qualify as a wound.”
“Well, whatever it qualifies as, you’re dripping blood on my floor, so sit down.” She shoved a chair back for him with her foot.
He looked narrowly at her, unaccustomed to taking orders, though she suspected he may have given a few in his day. His compliance was reluctant. He winced when he sat down.
He picked up a brochure on her table, and she resisted an urge to snatch it from his hand, to keep her secrets, while she probed his.
“Storm Mountain Trail Rides,” he read out loud. “Come and see the beauty and panorama of Canada’s great north by horseback. Day, overnight or weekly excursions. Limited to five riders. Mid-June to mid-September.” His eyes flicked to the bunks, counting, and then went back to the brochure. “Led by fully qualified guide Storm Taylor. What the hell kind of name is that?” he muttered. “Storm?”
“I’ll have a look at that wound now.”
But he wasn’t done with the brochure. He flipped it over, and there was her picture with her name under it.
“So,” he said, “Storm of Storm Mountain, you’re getting ready for your trail-riding season to open. No guests booked, for what, three weeks?”
“You’re getting blood on my chair,” she pointed out. “I think we’d better take care of that.”
The baby made a sound somewhere between a mew and a squeak.
“I think he’s hungry,” he said.
His concern for the baby’s well-being was somewhat reassuring. Storm held the baby at arms’ length. He. His lashes were thick and sooty as a chimney brush. He waved his chubby arms and legs at her and gurgled. He was wearing plain blue terry-cloth pajamas with feet in them. He seemed content, like a baby who could wait while she saw to a man bleeding all over her furnishings, humble as they might be. She considered where to set him. The counter or tabletop seemed like a good idea, but given his roly-poly build he might roll off like a live beach ball. Instead she plopped him down on his padded fanny on the floor.
He flopped forward at the waist and grabbed at a dust mote.
“Does he crawl?” she asked dubiously.
The man gave the baby a measuring look. “No.”
But Storm felt he was guessing. He didn’t know if the baby crawled. She had the awful feeling he didn’t know much more about that baby than she did.
Well, maybe a little more. He knew the baby was male.
The baby captured the dust mote and after trying to put it in his ear and his eye, he finally managed to cram his prize into his mouth.
Storm leaped forward and dug it out. The baby chomped happily on her fingers with his toothless gums. It should have been utterly disgusting, but for some reason it wasn’t so bad. Casting one more look at the man at the table, she went and scooped her bedroll off one of the bunks, unrolled it and put the baby on it. She hoped his diaper wouldn’t spring a leak on her only bedding.
The baby flopped over even further, until his nose was practically touching the sleeping bag, and then with a mighty grunt, pushed his legs out behind him, so now he was lying on his stomach. He flailed away, grunting with exertion.
Storm watched for a moment, fascinated, then turned to the man at her kitchen table.
“Take off your shirt.”
“I hardly know you.” That hint of a smile again.
She wondered if he used that smile to disarm people, because there was no answering warmth in his gray eyes, only watchfulness, appraisal. He was measuring her every move.
I’m in trouble, she thought, but kept her voice steady. “And that’s how it’s going to stay,” she said firmly. “Take off your shirt.”
He pulled his shirt tails out of the waistband of his pants, flinching when the fabric pulled at the clotted blood at his side. He unbuttoned, revealing to her slowly the broad swell of his chest, the rock-hard cut of pectoral muscles. He slid the shirt off, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from gasping at the absolute male perfection of him. His skin was bronze and silky over sinewy muscles. Hair curled, thick and springy, over the broad, hard plain of his chest. The hair narrowed down to a taut stomach, then disappeared inside the waistband of his jeans.
She turned abruptly. What was wrong with her? This man had arrived on her mountain and at her cabin with an attitude that aroused all her suspicions. She needed to keep her mind crystal clear so that she knew how to deal with this troubling situation. Patch him up and send him on his way, or patch him up and be on her way? What was not going to happen, what was not even a possibility, was sharing her cabin with him for a few days.
Not that he had to know that just yet.
On the top shelf of one of her open cupboards was a first-aid kit, and she took it down and sorted carefully through the bandages, painkillers and swabs.
When
