liked spending Christmas on the ranch. Will wasn’t able to add much about his mysterious guest, but everyone at the ranch assumed that Will had finally found a woman. A special woman. He’d said so himself, hadn’t he?
The 318 on Monday. As Jared looked around the lobby he wished his younger brother had provided a better description of his guest. There had been something about a red jacket, but then Mom had taken the receiver from Bitty and asked Will if he preferred sage green or sea foam on the guest-room walls. Then Uncle Joe got on the kitchen extension and asked if the future houseguest played bridge.
I’ll fill you in when I see you. Then Will’s cell phone broke up and the connection was lost seconds later. Jared would have asked why the woman was making a three-day train trip instead of flying to Great Falls, which was what Will would do tomorrow to get home for Christmas.
He also would have asked how Will met her. And why he’d invited her to spend Christmas at the ranch, but Will was famous for inviting people to visit Graystone. His brother, always the adventurer, collected friends wherever he traveled. But he’d never invited one lone woman—one designated for special treatment—home until now.
So the next afternoon, after trying three times to call his brother and getting only Will’s voice mail, Jared drove the hundred and sixty miles north to Havre, a good-size town just south of the Canadian border, to meet a stranger. A stranger his younger brother called “special.” He’d practically had to hogtie his mother to the kitchen table to keep her from making the trip, but he’d needed to take the truck and he didn’t think either woman would be comfortable riding for three hours in the back section of the king cab.
“I’ll have dinner ready then,” Jenna Stone declared, with a sideways glance at Aunt Bitty, who was busy plugging her radio into a receptacle above the counter. “I wouldn’t have minded getting out of the house for a while, though.”
“No,” he’d said, figuring the next suggestion would be for Jenn to meet the train by herself, and with the way the sky looked, they were in for snow. And a lot of it. They might need the four-wheel-drive truck, and his mother’s Explorer was in the shop getting new brakes and wouldn’t be ready until tomorrow.
Jared continued searching through the crowds and looking for a special-looking woman who might or might not be wearing a red coat. He should have brought one of those signs chauffeurs hold, and the thought made him smile.
He skirted the edge of the crowd and looked for someone who appeared to be waiting for a ride. A middle-aged woman with two small children sat on a bench, her suitcases piled around her. And a couple of college-age girls, expectant expressions on their pretty faces, stood on tiptoe and peered over the crowd. He caught a glimpse of a cherry-red coat and dark hair curling to a woman’s shoulders and hurried toward her. If she would only turn around, he thought, he could say something like, “Are you waiting for Jared Stone?”
She turned toward him, almost as if hearing his unspoken plea, and revealed pale skin, large eyes and a heart-shaped face that was nothing short of perfect. Her red coat, age and the expression on her face, as if she was waiting for help, made Jared feel as if he’d hit pay dirt.
She was lovely, a fragile-looking young woman who obviously needed rescuing. Her eyes widened when she spotted him a few feet away from her. Jared knew no one could deny the Stone family resemblance. He and Will both looked like their father, though Will was leaner. Jared smiled, but was stalled on his way to greet her as two elderly women shoved suitcases in his path and waved gloved hands toward the exit. Jared reached down to help them, earning the fluttering thanks of the Bailey sisters, old friends of his grandparents who had moved to Havre a few years back.
“You look just like your grandfather,” one of them announced. “I’d know that Stone chin anywhere.”
“Are you looking for someone?” Jared asked. In other words, was there someone who could assist the Baileys so he’d be free to collect his guest and begin the drive home?
“Mr. Perkins is over there,” the other sister, the shorter one, said. “He’s come to collect us, but I don’t think he’s seen us yet. My, what a crowd this afternoon. It certainly is festive.”
Jared didn’t know who Mr. Perkins was, but he obligingly turned to look where the elder Miss Bailey pointed. He caught the eye of the station’s porter and waved him over to help.
“The porter’s coming to carry these suitcases for you,” Jared reassured the women. “Just stay where you are.”
“Thank you, dear,” the taller Miss Bailey beamed. “Please wish your dear mother a merry Christmas for us.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, tipping the brim of his Stetson before turning back to the dark-haired beauty in the red coat. She was no longer there, which gave him a jolt of unfamiliar panic. Jared Stone wasn’t a man to panic easily, if ever, but he sure as hell didn’t want to lose his brother’s special guest.
Jared pushed through the thinning crowd and saw the red-coated young woman seated, bundles of blankets on her lap, on a bench along the wall between the rest rooms. Her head was tilted back against the wall, almost as if she’d resigned herself to resting there for a long, long time. She clutched the bundle in her arms as if it was her only and most sacred possession.
This time he made sure he said her name. “Melanie?” She didn’t move, so this time he said it much louder.
“Melanie,” he called, surprising himself with how loud he’d said the word, but satisfied when her head lifted and she met his gaze. He willed himself to smile, though he felt as if a bolt of summer lightning had hit him right in the middle of the train station.
She was beautiful, he realized again, when her lips lifted into a smile of greeting. He moved around a chubby grandfather, who bent over a little boy to make sure his jacket was zipped shut, to approach her. Finally.
“You are Melanie Briggs, I hope,” he said, stepping close enough to see that her eyes were lined in dark shadows and she looked like she could use some rest. Two and a half days on a train couldn’t be much fun.
“Yes. Jared Stone?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m so glad to see you.”
“Same here.” He wished he’d thought to bring pillows; the woman looked tired enough to sleep all the way back to the ranch.
“I saw you a moment ago,” she said, her voice low and soft. “And then you stopped to greet the older ladies and I thought I had been mistaken after all.”
“I look too much like my brother to fool anyone,” Jared said, wondering why he wanted to scoop her into his arms and carry her out the door. Only because she looked as if she’d fall over if she stood, he assured himself. Not for any other reason than that.
“Will told me I would know you when I saw you, but I didn’t really believe him.”
“Come on.” He reached for the large suitcase at her feet. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I’d like that,” she said, adjusting the bundle in her arms. That’s when he looked down and saw the pink face of a sleeping baby. That’s when his heart stopped beating for a second or two, long enough to scare him, as he stared down at the baby in his houseguest’s arms.
“Will didn’t tell you I had a daughter?”
“No.”
