Книга - All That Remains

All That Remains
Janice Kay Johnson


Wren Fraser can think of better times to go into labor. Say, when she's not on the run, or when there's a hospital nearby. Better yet, when there's not a major flood trapping her in an abandoned house. She needs a rescue…now!It arrives in one Alec Harper. Strong, competent and good-looking, the detective keeps her safe and doesn't leave her side. He even takes in Wren and the baby when they have no place to go.For a woman wanting her independence, it's shocking how quickly she settles in with Alec. The situation seems a bit too domestic. And the sizzling attraction between them is making things worse. She keeps telling herself to walk away, yet she can't. Or should that be, she doesn't want to?









Suddenly his arms closed around her


Alec groaned, or maybe Wren did. She splayed her hands on his chest. His head bent and he was kissing her. Not sweetly and gently, but so desperately she could probably tell he’d bottled up all his hunger.

He was kissing Wren.

What in hell was he thinking?

He wasn’t thinking. Couldn’t. This felt too good. Too right.

He cradled the back of her head so that he could angle it to please him. The other hand gripped her hips and pulled her tight against him.

He wanted her. That was all his mind could wrap itself around. Wanting.

But he couldn’t have her. He knew that, too. He pulled away before he got so deep he wouldn’t be able to.

She blinked several times in succession and took a step back. His hands dropped to his sides. He saw her swallow.

“You kissed me.”




Dear Reader,

There’s something irresistible about stories where nature traps the hero and heroine together to work out a relationship, survive and battle emotions they never expected to feel. In All That Remains, the intimacy is even greater, given that poor Wren is in labor and Alec must deliver her baby in the most primitive of circumstances. Makes you cringe, doesn’t it? Is there ever a moment in our lives when we feel more vulnerable than when we’re giving birth? Bad enough to have a doctor and nurses seeing all, but how about having to depend on a man who is a complete stranger? And, maybe worse yet, a really attractive one? Yep, irresistible.

I like it even better when those two people stuck with each other and no one else are both emotionally damaged. My daughters always wince when I enthusiastically tell them about any new plot. I’m told I really love to torture people. And I do! But my goal, always, is to write about the resilience I believe we all have, the ability to rise to challenges, to heal, to put someone else first. We never see so much heroism as during wide-spread devastation, like the flood in this book. People surprise each other…and themselves. What better time for love to complicate lives?

Happy reading!

Janice Kay Johnson

P.S.—I enjoy hearing from readers. Please contact me c/o Harlequin Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Toronto, ON M3B 3K9, Canada.




All That Remains

Janice Kay Johnson





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




ABOUT THE AUTHOR


The author of more than sixty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson writes Harlequin Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN




CHAPTER ONE


GRIPPING THE STEERING WHEEL with white-knuckled hands, Wren Fraser struggled to see the narrow country road ahead through sheets of rain. She’d lived in Seattle, for goodness’ sake, and had never seen rain come down like this. The road was winding, the yellow line down the middle her only salvation. There seemed to be no shoulders wide enough for her to pull over safely, and she didn’t dare stop where she was; if another car came along, it would slam right into her. She couldn’t see ten feet ahead, which meant an oncoming driver wouldn’t be able to, either.

Shifting in her seat, Wren tried to ease the pain gripping her lower back. She’d been in the car too long, that was all, and her tension wasn’t helping. She needed desperately to get out and stretch, but even if she spotted a driveway she could pull into, stepping out to get drenched in cold rain wasn’t very appealing. She didn’t have rain gear. In fact, she had only one small suitcase. Given her state of pregnancy, she’d been afraid she wouldn’t be able to handle more getting on and off the light rail train back in Seattle as well as through airports in Seattle and St. Louis.

Her baby was moving restlessly, kicking, stirred no doubt by her anxiety. The seat belt felt uncomfortably tight over her pregnant belly, but releasing and refastening it wasn’t an option with her hands locked onto the steering wheel.

“We’ll be okay,” she murmured. “I promise, Cupcake. It’s just rain. Before we know it, we’ll be snug in a wonderful farmhouse, with a fire burning. And even if I’ve missed dinner, I’ll bet Molly will warm a bowl of soup for me. And then we’ll both be warm.”

The pain in her back had temporarily eased, but baby wasn’t reassured. Wren’s entire distended belly gave a disconcerting lurch and the pressure on her bladder increased. Oh, great, now she had to pee.

Wren had no idea whether she was lost or still following the route MapQuest had laid out for her. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to see a crossroad if one appeared, or street signs; the numbers on the few mailboxes she’d spotted were unreadable through the rain. However desperate she was, she’d probably been foolish not to find somewhere to hole up until she could talk to Molly. Unfortunately, turning back to the last motel she’d seen, an hour ago, was no longer an option. When she fled Seattle yesterday morning, she’d had only one focus: getting to Molly’s.

The Ozark country was supposed to be beautiful. In November it was too late for fall colors, of course—what trees she’d seen through the rain had been skeletal—but Molly had rhapsodized about the quiet rivers and stark gray bluffs, the rounded mountains covered with gum trees and oaks and hickories, the winding green valleys and occasional farmhouses.

Wren had crossed a river a while back, but it didn’t look that quiet to her. The water had been running high and turgid. No wonder, with this downpour. She’d been glad that the road climbed to meander along the rim of the valley. Now it was dropping again, perhaps to meet the same river.

Please, please, let me be close.

She didn’t have a cell phone, not since James had convinced her that she didn’t need one. Even if she’d had one—who would she call?

Oh, Molly, please be home. Please be glad to see me.

Wren wished she’d met the man her best friend from college had married. Molly had wanted her to be the maid of honor, but James couldn’t get away that weekend and he’d hated the idea of her going without him….

Wren shuddered at the memory of how stupid she’d been.

She made herself think again about Molly’s husband. Samuel. If Molly loved him, he must be okay. He wouldn’t turn Wren away. She didn’t need that much from them. The house had extra bedrooms, Molly had said it did. If they could give her even a few weeks of respite, she’d figure something out.

She just didn’t know what that something would be.

A split-rail fence appeared to the right of the road then disappeared behind a burst of wind-driven rain that pummeled the car with new ferocity, making it sway.

Would she need gills to breathe outside? she wondered with momentary whimsy. The car had become her womb. She hoped the waters her baby swam in were warmer and more hospitable than the deluge out there.

The defroster struggled to keep the windshield clear. Suddenly she couldn’t quite make out the yellow line ahead. A flare of alarm triggered a stab of pain in her lower back, and Wren lifted her foot from the gas. While her brain grappled with the realization that she could see nothing but gray ahead—driving, swirling, misting—momentum carried the car forward.

The next second, it plowed into something. Wren was flung forward against the seat belt, then back. Even as she cried out, water rushed over the hood and windshield and she realized she hadn’t come to a complete stop. Oh, God. She must have plunged off the road into the river or a lake or pond. Absurdly, she slammed her foot down on the brake.

The car came to a stop. The wipers tried valiantly to clear the windshield. The engine was still running. Hand shaking, Wren tried to push open her door and couldn’t do more than open the smallest of cracks, through which water rushed. She wrenched the door shut again. Through her panic, she made herself think. Keep driving forward? Try to back up? Molly’s house was ahead, but…she knew there was bare road behind. Whimpering, more scared than she could ever remember being, she put the gear in Reverse.

The engine choked and died.

Frantically she shifted the car into Park and turned the key in the ignition, over and over, and began sobbing. The windows were electronic. How would she get out if she couldn’t roll them down?

The next second, the engine caught and, gasping with relief and fear, Wren hit the two buttons to roll down the front windows. They were almost all the way down when the engine died again.

This time, nothing she could do brought it to life again. Finally she gave up and sat gulping in air, trying to think. Cold rain was slanting in the open window and she was already soaked. If she could wade to the road, maybe somebody else would come along. Maybe even somebody who knew where Molly Hayes lived.

No, not Hayes. For a moment Wren couldn’t think. Roth something. Rothberg. No, that wasn’t right, the name was longer than that. Rothenberg. Or even… Rothenberger? She couldn’t remember.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said aloud. “It doesn’t matter. If I can find the nearest house, we’ll be all right. Anybody would take us in.”

She tried the door again, but she was pushing against water that wasn’t far below the window. Could it be shallower on the other side? Wren unfastened her seat belt, let the seat slide back and laboriously clambered over the console to the passenger seat. But when she tried to open that door, she had no more success.

Shaking from cold and fear, she realized that the interior would soon be underwater if she did manage to get either door ajar more than a crack. In fact, it was trickling in anyway. She looked down to see that her feet stood in several inches of water.

She had to get out the window. Surely—please, God—she could squeeze her pregnant belly through. Wren twisted first and pulled her small suitcase over the seat. She would take it and her purse, that only made sense.

Getting out a car window wasn’t as easy as it ought to be. She poked her upper body out, and saw that she’d be plunging into waist-deep water, at least. It was moving, swirling and parting around the car. The river, then, not a placid pond. She didn’t dare go headfirst.

Feetfirst. Pain squeezed her lower back and, gasping, she waited it out. She’d made it worse, climbing so awkwardly to this side of the car. But the spasm passed, and she maneuvered so she was very nearly on her hands and knees on the car seat, her cheek pressed to the steering wheel. She lifted one leg and stuck it out, twisting so that her hip and not her belly would take her weight on the frame once she got the other leg out, too.

She squirmed and pushed herself, grabbing at the emergency brake, the dashboard, the back of the seat. Anything she could use for leverage. She didn’t think she would have fit had she been facedown or faceup, but sideways her belly just barely cleared the window frame.

For an instant she hung partway, and then her lower body dropped and she gasped from the cold as she plunged into the water.

No, definitely not a pond—current pressed her against the door. Walking in this wouldn’t be easy, and she momentarily hesitated. Maybe she’d be safer if she stayed in the car. The rain would let up eventually, wouldn’t it? And the rental car was bright red. Someone would spot it.

But she was chilled to see that the water level was still rising, lapping now into the car. She heard herself breathing, huge gasps, and grabbed her suitcase and purse.

She started back the way she’d come, but immediately realized the water was becoming deeper. Had her car nearly made it through a flooded dip in the road? Struggling against the current, she turned. She was bumped hard against the fender, then the door, but as she forged ahead the water seemed to be not quite as deep.

She moved, crablike, to protect her belly in case the current carried a branch or something even more dangerous to batter her. Once she was nearly knocked off her feet. Somehow she saved herself. She heard a keening sound that she knew, in a distant part of her mind, was coming from her. She pushed on, trying to hold the suitcase above the water.

Miraculously, the surface was only hip-high now, then thigh-high. As relief began to trickle through her, she was slammed from behind hard enough to pitch her forward. The suitcase was snatched from her hands and gone, her lunge for it too late. Her purse…no, it was gone, too. She pushed herself up and kept going, so cold her teeth were chattering, and she was convulsively trembling. But the water came only to her knees, and then her ankles, and finally she was shocked to see a yellow stripe ahead. She was still on the road. She’d never left it.

She plodded ahead, following the yellow line. Nothing she did was conscious, not now. She was hiding deep inside, knowing only the cold and the intermittent pain in her back. She walked on and on, with no sense of time or distance.

The road curved, and there was a mailbox straight ahead. It was rusting, the post it sat atop beginning to rot at its base so that the whole thing tilted slightly. Still, it was a mailbox. And where mail was delivered, there must be a house.

The driveway could hardly be dignified by calling it that. It was a muddy track, streams running in the ruts. She slipped once, wrenching her ankle, but she was so cold the pain hardly registered. All she knew was that she had to keep moving. She didn’t dare stop.

No warm golden light appeared ahead. There was no welcome smell of wood smoke. But the shape of buildings appeared through the rain. One was a decrepit barn, the doors sagging half-open. The other was a house with a broad front porch. No lights, even though dusk had deepened the wet sky to charcoal.

She dragged herself up the steps. Windows were blank, dark. Wren knocked. Her hand was so numb she couldn’t feel the impact. She hammered harder, and harder, until she fell against the door and beat on it with both hands.

If she didn’t get inside, she’d freeze to death.

She tried the knob, which turned, but the door didn’t budge. A dead bolt above it was shiny, newer than the original hardware. Break a window, then. She looked around for something to use. An old Adirondack chair sat at one end of the porch. Its paint was peeling. She dragged it, bumpety bump, to the nearest window. Wren didn’t know how she’d find the strength, but she did. She picked it up and slammed it against the small-paned window. Glass shattered, and she lost her grip. The chair tumbled through the window. She paused for a second, waiting for lights to come on, a voice to call out in alarm, a home owner to appear wielding a shotgun. Nothing. At last, painfully, she climbed over the sill, stumbled over the chair, and fell to her hands and knees on the floor of some stranger’s house.



ALEC HARPER KNEW even as he tied the rope around his waist, climbed over the bridge railing and dove into the torrential Spesock River that rescue was coming too late for the driver and any passengers in the car that had plunged into the water. But he had to try.

Crap, the water was cold. He let the current carry him to the small white car, curling his body when he slammed against it. He grabbed for the door handle and held on. Passenger side. He fought his desperate need for air and strained to look inside. Oh, shit, shit. He could see a man, hair floating around his face. A deployed air bag hid the driver from Alec’s sight. The backseat, thank God, was empty.

Alec maneuvered his body over the hood of the car. His achingly cold fingers found purchase on the rim beneath the wiper blades. He was screaming inside for air, but he was almost there. The rope was pulled taut now, and, trusting the men who held the other end, he let go as he washed over the hood. There, in the driver’s-side window… A second man, his face blanched as well, stared with sightless eyes.

Alec yanked on the rope then kicked and fought for the surface. His fellow rescuers dragged him in. At the shouted questions, he shook his head even before hands pulled him onto the bridge, where he lay shaking.

Somebody wrapped him in a blanket. They were a disparate group—two men he didn’t know who he thought were National Guard and himself, a police homicide detective. They held some discussion and decided they had to bring the bodies up.

It turned out to be grueling. They took turns going down and hammering on the window with a tire wrench until they succeeded in shattering it and could unbuckle the bodies, one at a time, and drag them out.

In the complete exhaustion afterward, Alec wondered how long the two had been dead. He and the others could have been rescuing someone still living. He thought of the stranded motorists he’d earlier plucked from the roofs of their cars, each and every one of them sure they could drive through the river their street had become. Stupid, yes, but who had anticipated the speed with which the floodwaters had risen?

These two, he thought, as he helped heave the two drowning victims into the back of an army vehicle, wouldn’t be the last he’d see.

The Spesock River flooded regularly, but not like this. There had been talk about the hundred-year flood levels, although no one really took it seriously. It was hard to in this era of weather as entertainment and forecasts that seemed more hyperbole than fact. But these past weeks of endless, drenching rains had saturated the ground. Flash floods came along every few years in Arkansas, but this time the water kept rising. There was nowhere for it to go. It swallowed houses and roads and farms. When Alec had last stopped briefly at the emergency operations center—set up at the redbrick Mountfort City Hall—he’d heard that nearly one quarter of the county was submerged. He could believe it. He’d spent almost thirty-six hours in a borrowed aluminum fishing boat, and it was hard not to pause and stare in disbelief at the dark, swirling waters turning a once familiar landscape into something his eyes didn’t want to believe.

He waved goodbye to his helpers and returned to his boat. The aging Mercury outboard motor started with a cough and burst of oily smoke, but it obliged when he swung it in an arc that would lead him to Saddler’s Mill. He was so damn cold he had to return to one of the emergency shelters and find dry clothes before he could do any more.

This one had been set up in a high-school gymnasium. Donated cots and bedrolls were packed closely together. After changing clothes, Alec stopped to talk to several people he knew.

Jim Hunt and his wife had celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary last year. Alec knew, because his mother had written him about it. Now they were in the shelter, and the couple of suitcases tucked beneath the pair of cots were all they’d been able to salvage. Not much from a lifetime.

“I suppose the whole sheriff’s department is out there,” Mr. Hunt commented.

A nod was enough answer. Alec doubted a single sheriff’s deputy or detective had stayed home, not when the people they were hired to protect were in danger. Earlier, he’d seen a lieutenant, red-eyed with fatigue, delivering a woman and child to a shelter.

“Have you seen my sister and her family?” Alec asked, as he had every time he saw anyone he knew today.

Mr. Hunt shook his head. “They’re probably at one of the other schools.” His expression was kind. “Don’t worry. Randy’s a good man. He’ll take care of his own.”

Alec nodded his thanks, although he wasn’t so sure. Randy liked his booze. What if he’d been at the tavern when the flash flood rushed down the river?

On the way out of the gym, Alec stopped to gulp a cup of coffee and eat a sandwich. It was the first food he’d had since…hell, he couldn’t remember. Last night? He remembered a bowl of chili over at the Hagertown Grange Hall. He hadn’t wanted to stop even that long; there were folks all over town waiting to be rescued from upstairs windows or roofs, some in even more desperate circumstances. But he had the sense to know he had to fuel his body if he was to keep on without sleep.

During the never-ending day, Alec brought a dozen more people in from outlying homes before he conceded defeat and slept for several hours at a fire station that was high and dry. Cots had been set up here, too, for rescue workers like him. Cops from a dozen jurisdictions came and went, as well as firefighters, paramedics, National Guard. He recognized some people, but most were strangers. Faces were furrowed and gray with exhaustion, as his undoubtedly was. He ran a hand over his chin and found two days’ worth of stubble. He must look like hell. His last thought as he dropped into heavy sleep was of his sister.

The sound of voices woke him. He blinked gritty eyes, waited for full consciousness then dragged himself up. He pulled on his boots, then, carrying the bright yellow rain slicker and pants, followed the smell of coffee to a small kitchen. In the odd white light from a lantern, four people leaned against the wall and wolfed down food. Bacon and eggs, he discovered, when a woman thrust a plate into his hands.

“Thank you.” No electricity here, he realized, looking around. She was cooking on a two-burner camp stove. The coffee was instant, but, under the circumstances, tasted better than the last latte he remembered buying at a Starbucks in St. Louis. Hot, strong and invigorating.

He exchanged a few words with other workers, then donned rain gear and the annoyingly bulky PFD—the life vest, or personal flotation device—and went out into the cold and wet. Dawn was lighting the dark sky with a first hint of gray. The rain hadn’t relented at all.

He refilled the gas tank and felt a kick of relief when, once again, the motor came to life. There were too few boats, too many miles of countryside to be checked, for the aging Mercury to decide to be stubborn, something he’d already discovered it was prone to do.

He hadn’t been out half an hour when he found a whole family roosted atop the peak of a farmhouse. The two kids were tied to the chimney to keep them from falling, the parents huddled around them. God Almighty.

Getting them down was a trial with the boat bobbing a good twelve feet below their perch. The father eventually used the rope to lower first the kids, then his wife, and Alec managed to fight the current and keep the boat in place while catching the two small bodies and the woman in turn and lowering them onto seats. The children were sobbing with fear and scrabbled to throw themselves into their mother’s arms when she arrived, which nearly tipped the boat.

“Sit down!” Alec snapped then realized he’d sounded harsh. Damn, he was tired. He pulled several PFDs, including child-size ones, from a rubber tub and showed the mother how to put them on. As she strapped everyone into the vests, he maneuvered the boat into place.

The man gingerly backed down the steep roof like a mountain climber rappelling, the rope tied to the chimney above. But either he lost his grip or his feet skidded on wet shingles, because he started to slide. If he came down hard enough, he’d sink them. Alec shoved the boat away from the house and rode the wave when the man hit. He pushed the woman toward the tiller and yelled, “Hold it straight!” then leaned over the gunwale, waiting for the head to pop up. Where the hell was he?

She screamed and Alec swung around to see that her husband must have gone underneath the hull and was being swept away. He gunned the motor and steered in a semicircle, timed so he could lean over and grab the arms that were all he could see. The aluminum boat, too lightweight, swayed wildly; the kids cried and the woman sobbed and in the moments of intense struggle Alec was convinced they were going over. Somehow he managed to pull hard enough to drape the man over the edge while keeping his own weight as a counterbalance, and finally to roll the guy in. He felt as though he’d been in a war, and the family was in worse shape.

He took them to a designated landing, where volunteers waited to lead them to a shelter. He waited while they took off the life vests and offered incoherent thanks that he knew would mean something to him later, but not now.



WREN WOKE WITH A START and lay still for a long moment, trying to figure out what had penetrated the stupor of exhaustion. A sound? Yes, there it was again, an odd sizzle from the potbellied woodstove here in the parlor. As if water was dripping onto the fire she’d thankfully built. Rain coming down the chimney?

Drawing the comforter with her, she sat up on the old, dusty sofa to look. But when she put her feet on the floor, they plunged into water. Wren cried out. It was night now, and she couldn’t see, but… She tentatively reached her hand down. Oh, God, oh, God. Water was a foot deep or more. In horror, she grappled with the concept. How could it have reached the house? She’d climbed several steps to the porch. It had to have risen four or five feet to have reached this high. It was lapping into the stove, putting out her fire.

She needed the fire. It had been her salvation, finding brittle old wood heaped in a copper bin beside the stove, a bundle of yellowed newspapers with a date two years past and a box of matches abandoned atop the newspapers. The only food in the cupboards had been in cans and she hadn’t been able to find an opener. It was lucky she wasn’t hungry. The refrigerator was unplugged, which told her no one planned to be back in the near future. In fact, either the storm had taken out a power line somewhere or the electricity to the house had been cut off. But she’d been able to build a fire, and she’d dragged the comforter from an old bedstead in one of the two bedrooms.

Her back hurt again. The pain had been coming and going unpredictably, waking her periodically. Each time, she’d added wood to the stove. Kneeling on the sofa, she waited this spasm out. It had occurred to her sometime in the past few hours that she might be going into labor, but the thought had been so terrifying she didn’t let herself take it seriously. Early twinges were common, she knew that. Braxton-Hicks contractions. Except…were they felt in the back? She didn’t know. Wren didn’t think this pain was any more severe than what she’d had earlier—yesterday?—when she was still behind the wheel of the car. So she wouldn’t worry about that problem—not yet.

She laughed, and heard her own hysteria. Oh, yes. She had bigger problems.

She hadn’t seen a staircase, which meant there was no second story. But, frowning, she seemed to remember the house rearing higher above her than the single-story ranch houses she’d lived in. Old houses like this often had attics, didn’t they?

By the time she put her feet back on the floor, the water level had risen to her knees. Wren left the comforter on the back of the sofa and fumbled in the woodpile for a piece of kindling. When her fingers found one, still dry near the top of the heap, she opened the door of the stove and poked the kindling in to the coals, which sizzled as water inched in but remained alive. When the wood was alight, she went exploring, holding her torch high.

In a bedroom, she found the square in the ceiling she’d been looking for. A rope hung down, and when she pulled on it, she was rewarded with a creak and some movement. Not for the first time, she cursed her petite size, but being pregnant helped. She hung from the rope, and with a groan a folding staircase dropped.

She climbed the narrow, steep stairs and poked her head up. She was relieved to see a floor rather than open joists. Dusty bits of unwanted furniture and heaps of boxes. The glint of a reflection from a window. At least she’d have daylight when the sun rose. She’d be able to signal for rescue, if anyone came.

She eased down the steps, holding tight as she went, then waded through the house looking for anything she could salvage from the rising waters. More bedding. The matches, and some dry firewood, although she’d only be able to start a fire upstairs if she could find a flame-proof container like a metal washtub. Clothes—nothing that exactly fit, but the voluminous flannel nightgown she’d found in her earlier exploration was wet now, and she was beginning to shiver again. She grabbed armfuls and thrust them upstairs.

The piece of kindling burned down quickly and she replaced it. She grabbed a knife from the kitchen—just in case, although she didn’t know in case of what—and found her way to the staircase right before the flames reached her hand a second time. She cried out and had to drop the burning wood into the water, which quickly drowned it.

Climbing in the complete darkness was scary. She felt her way once she reached the attic. Her hands encountered cloth. Flannel, maybe a shirt, she decided, as she lifted. Denim beneath. Groping, she located the blankets and her comforter and an old quilt she’d found. She crawled toward the window, dragging the bedding with her, then went for the clothes and the knife.

She shook out the comforter and spread it, then folded it twice to make a pad. Sitting on it, she scrabbled among the garments for something, anything, that might fit her, settling finally on a flannel shirt. She tugged the nightgown over her head and discarded it, then hurriedly pulled on the shirt, rolled the sleeves half a dozen times to free her hands, then buttoned it. If she stood, she thought the shirt would reach near to her knees. Right now, she wouldn’t worry about putting anything else on. All she did was pull blankets and the quilt over her, and lie down facing the window. Praying for a pale tint of dawn that might allow her to see out.



ALEC HAD GOTTEN STARTED at first light and had rescued a dozen people by the time the sun was seriously up in the sky. He guessed it was about ten o’clock, and he was reaching his limit. He almost skipped the old Maynard house; he knew Josiah had gone to a nursing home in Blytheville a couple of years ago, and the house had been empty ever since. But Alec’s conscience wouldn’t let him. It was possible travelers had taken refuge there. There weren’t many options on that stretch of the Spesock.

All he could see was the roof of the barn and the upper portion of the house. The water was nine feet deep or more. He swung the tiller to circle the house. That was when he spotted a white sheet hanging, sodden, from the attic window.

Even as he steered closer, he saw a figure behind the glass, struggling to push the casement up. He was bumping the side of the house before he got a good look.

Oh, hell. Oh, damnation. That woman was pregnant. Her belly huge. As he tried to edge to position the boat beneath the window, her mouth opened in a cry of distress and she dropped from sight.

Alec swore then yelled, “Ma’am! Ma’am? Are you all right?”

She didn’t reappear. A gust drove rain between them and in the window. Swearing some more, he swiped his arm across his face, trying to clear his vision.

Finally she returned to the open window. She said something. He shook his head and gestured at his ear.

“I’m in labor!” she screamed.

“Are you alone?” he called, and she nodded.

His silent profanities intensified. There was no way a hugely pregnant woman in labor was clambering out of that window and lowering herself to the boat, then hunching beside him in the bitter cold and rain for a forty-five-minute trip to the nearest shelter.

Could a helicopter reach her? He knew how few were available. If eastern Arkansas had been alone in flooding, rescue workers would have had more resources to draw on. But the Mississippi and all its tributaries had gone over the banks, and the National Guard and army were spread over Ohio and Tennessee and down into Mississippi, too. Alec had had the impression rural Arkansas was low on the list of priorities.

Not seeing any other choice, he lifted a grappling hook on the end of a rope that was tied to the seat of his boat. He waved her back and she seemed to understand, disappearing again. Alec gave the hook a toss and watched it catch over the windowsill. He tugged on the rope until the boat was snug against the house and below the window. He thought he could reach his fingertips over that sill.

All right. What would he need? First-aid kit…although he couldn’t imagine what in it would be of any use for a woman in childbirth. Nonetheless, he slung it in the window. Big rubber flashlight in case this went on into night. He had a cache that held some clean drinking water and energy snacks; he slung that in, too, hoping she’d had the sense to get out of the way and he hadn’t knocked her out. Finally he killed the motor, reached high and just got his hands over the soaking wet sill.

He was hanging there when something big hit the boat. The whole seat that anchored the rope ripped free with a groan, and the boat swung away. His fingers began to slip. He had a cold, clear moment of knowing he was going to fall. Vest or not, he wouldn’t have a chance in the bitter floodwaters.

Small strong hands grabbed his wrists and held on tight.




CHAPTER TWO


ALEC KNEW SHE WOULDN’T be able to hold on to him for long. He was a big man, his considerable weight hanging by his fingertips and her grip. But she’d arrested his slide toward the floodwaters, and he inched his right hand toward the rope and grappling iron. A second later, he’d managed to grab the iron above the knot.

His shoulders were screaming. As he tried to pull himself upward, he cursed the bulky flotation vest that caught on the clapboards. With his toes he scrambled for purchase. Any tiny toehold. His booted feet kept slipping. But the woman was exerting steady upward pressure, too, and he got a better hold on the windowsill with his left hand. He closed his eyes, summoned the memory of doing that last pull-up in P.E. so long ago, and with a guttural sound put everything he had into one try.

He was almost shocked to find his shoulders over the edge. She wrapped her arms around him and held tightly as he tried to clear the window.

The damn vest snagged. He had to maneuver a half roll, which meant he tumbled into the attic and fell hard onto one shoulder.

As he lay there, winded, muscles shaking from the exertion, the woman uttered little cries interspersed with “Are you all right? Oh, God. I didn’t think you’d make it. Please. Are you all right?”

A grunt was the best he could do. She turned abruptly and shoved the window down as far as it would go with the iron grappling hook biting into the wood.

Alec flopped to his back and stared up at thick cobwebs festooning open beams. He’d left the goddamn radio, he thought, stunned at his stupidity. It was gone with the boat.

“Shit,” he said aloud.

“You’re all right.”

He rolled his head to look at the woman. The extremely pregnant woman. It was hard to see anything but that gigantic belly.

“I’m alive,” he conceded. “Thank you.”

“For getting myself stuck here? You should be cursing me.”

Alec gave a grunt of laughter. “Thousands of people have gotten themselves stuck somewhere or other. Nobody expected a flood of this magnitude, or the waters to rise so damn fast. Trust me, you’re not alone.”

“I didn’t know there was going to be a flood at all,” she admitted. “I’m not from around here. I stopped for the night before I headed into Arkansas, but I didn’t even turn on the TV or see any newspaper headlines. The rain was scary, but I didn’t have a clue until I drove into the water.”

“Car still there?”

She nodded.

He shoved himself to a sitting position, his back to the wall beside the window. With clumsy, cold hands, he unbuckled the PFD and yanked it over his head. It landed with a splat on the attic floor. It was bloody cold in here, but he unsnapped his raincoat, too, and finally stood to strip off the coat and yellow rain pants. Beneath, he wore jeans and a thick chamois shirt under a down vest. Wool socks and boots.

His cell phone was in the pocket of his vest, which would have made him feel optimistic if didn’t know damn well there would be no coverage here in the valley. Cell phones were notoriously unreliable throughout the Ozarks. He turned it on, in case.

No bars.

“Doesn’t it work?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

Alec shook his head. “Doesn’t matter anyway. It would take a helicopter to get us out of here, and there aren’t enough of those to go around.”

She went very still for a long moment, as if absorbing the undoubtedly terrifying knowledge that he was as good as it was going to get. At last she said, in a briskly practical voice, “Your hair’s wet. Here.” She offered a piece of clothing—a pajama top, maybe Josiah’s?—and he used it to scrub his head.

Then, finally, he sat and really looked at her.

She was a small woman. Hard to judge height, given her girth and with her kneeling, but he’d be willing to bet she didn’t top five foot three or four. Small bones. Tiny wrists. Feet encased in enormous wool socks. Her legs were bare beneath what he guessed was a man’s flannel shirt. Probably Josiah’s, as well.

His assessment moved upward. She had a small, upturned nose, nice lips that were neither thin nor pouty and brown eyes that dominated an elfin face so thin it looked gaunt. Medium brown hair that had gotten wet and dried without seeing a hairbrush. Stick-straight, it was shoved behind ears that poked out a bit, adding to that fey affect. Not a pretty woman, for sure, but…something.

“Are you here alone?”

She nodded. “Except for…” She gestured at her belly.

“You’re having contractions.”

“Yes.”

“When did they start?” As if that would tell him anything. He sure as hell was no expert on childbirth. His wife’s first labor had been dizzyingly fast, and Alec had missed the birth of his younger daughter entirely.

“I don’t know,” this woman said softly. “I think now…almost two days ago. When I was driving, my back kept hurting. It would come and go. I thought it was because I was so tense. You know, with the rain coming down so hard, and hardly any visibility, and not really knowing where I was going.”

“Where were you going?”

Those big brown eyes sought his. “Um…to visit a friend. Molly Hayes. No, Rothenberg. She got married. Do you know her?”

Alec shook his head. “I haven’t lived in these parts that long. I’m sorry. If I haven’t encountered them on the job, I probably don’t know them.”

“Oh.” Then, in an entirely different voice, she groaned, “Ohhhh.”

Galvanized, Alec shifted to his knees, gripped her shoulder—so fragile his hand felt huge—and guided her as gently as he could to her makeshift pallet. “Lie down. That’s it.” She clenched her teeth, her body bowed so that he doubted anything but her shoulders and heels touched the pallet. Alec unpried the fisted fingers of one hand and took it in his. She grabbed on so hard it hurt. Hell, maybe she could have pulled him in the window on her own, especially in the grip of a contraction.

“You’re doing great,” he murmured. “That’s it, honey. Ride it out. It’ll pass. That’s it. You’re doing great.”

He listened with incredulity to his own drivel. For God’s sake, how was that supposed to help her? As if she didn’t know the contraction would pass.

When it did, she collapsed like a rubber raft with the air valve opened.

“Do you have a watch? How often are they coming?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “No watch.”

“I have one.” The glass was slightly fogged, but the second hand still swept around. “We’ll time you.” Her lips were chapped, and he saw a streak of blood. She’d bitten down too hard, he guessed. “Did you take a childbirth class?”

“I got books.”

Alec didn’t waste time discussing what she’d read. “Here’s what you’re going to do.” He demonstrated the breathing technique he’d been taught in the medical part of the police academy. He remembered that much, thank God. “Breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth. Four pants, then blow. Got that?”

She nodded, those brown eyes fastened on his face as if nothing and nobody else in the world existed to her right now. “Yes. Thank you.” She hesitated. “Have you… Are you a paramedic?”

“Cop. But we have some training, too. I’ve delivered a baby.”

Hope lit her face. “You have?”

He hated to dampen that hope, but admitted, “A long time ago. I was a patrol officer. Woman was trying to drive herself to the hospital. She didn’t make it.” His mouth tilted into a rueful grin. “Scared me, but we managed.”

“Do you think…” She bit her lip, then winced. “I mean, that we’ll manage now?”

“Of course we will.” He found himself smiling and meaning it, although something complicated was happening inside him that he suspected was partly fear. Yeah, they’d manage—if nothing went wrong. If the baby wasn’t breech, or her placenta didn’t separate. If she dilated fully without drug intervention. If the baby didn’t suffer distress, or get the cord wrapped around its neck, or… Alec didn’t even want to think about the myriad nightmarish possibilities.

Most childbirth was uneventful. Cling to that.

Okay.

“You’re cold,” he said gruffly. “Let’s tuck you in.”

He wrapped a hand around one of her feet and found it icy. Swearing, he gathered blankets and bundled her in them.

There was a chimney at one end of the space, he saw, but no opening for a fireplace. At some point, a floor had been laid up here, but rooms were never framed in. Alec didn’t think the Maynards had children, which meant they’d never needed to add upstairs bedrooms.

“I had a fire downstairs,” the woman said. “It felt so good. But then water started coming in. I brought the matches up and even a little bit of wood, but…”

“The bedding was smart. We can keep you cozy. The baby, too, when it comes.” He paused. “Do you know whether it’s a boy or girl?” Or, from the size of that belly, both.

She tried to smile, but it trembled on her lips. “A girl. I haven’t named her yet. I guess I’m superstitious.”

“You call her it?”

Now a tiny laugh escaped her. “Cupcake. She’s Cupcake.”

“Ah, that’s more like it.” He laid a hand on her belly. “Hi, Cupcake.”

Beneath his hand, muscles seized and her belly became rock-hard. Cupcake’s mother groaned. Alec glanced at his watch. Five minutes, give or take a few seconds. Too bad he didn’t know how long it took to get from contractions five minutes apart to the actual birth. Assuming there was any norm.

He turned her face so she had to look into his eyes. “Breathe,” he reminded her. “One, two, three, four, blow. One, two, three, four… That’s it.” He counted and praised until the tension left her body once again.

“Better?” he asked.

She closed her eyes, but whispered, “Yes. Better.”

“Now I’ve met Cupcake—” he touched her belly again “—you and I might introduce ourselves. I’m Detective Alec Harper, Rush County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Oh.” Her eyes opened. “My name is Wren.” She studied him warily. “Um…will you need to put my name in a report or anything like that?”

He went on alert. “Is someone looking for you?”

After a moment she gave a small nod. “Cupcake’s father. He’s…” She swallowed. “I’m running away,” she finished, with an air of finality. “For Cupcake’s sake. And mine.”

“There’s not a warrant out for your arrest?”

She stared at him. “For my arrest?”

“You’re not in trouble with the law?”

“For heaven’s sake, of course not!”

“Then I promise Cupcake’s father won’t find you by any doing of mine.”

Those eyes, as soft as a Hershey’s bar melted for a s’more, kept searching his face. “Okay,” she said. “Fraser. My last name’s Fraser.”

“Ren? How do you spell it?”

“Like the bird. W-R-E-N.” She sighed. “I suppose that’s how I looked to my mother. Small and brown-feathered and sort of plain.”

He’d swear he heard a lifetime of sadness in words she said lightly.

“It’s a pretty name,” Alec said. Somehow, he hadn’t let go of her hand, which lay trustingly in his rather like the small bird they were talking about. “Wrens may not be colorful, but they’re quick and cheerful and full of life.”

“Still, it would be rather nice to be a blue jay. Or a cardinal.”

He grinned at her. “Blue jays are thieves, you know. Lousy characters all around. Cardinals are in bad taste. Too flashy.”

Wren gave another tiny giggle that warmed his heart ridiculously. His hand tightened on hers, and she looked down as if bemused to see where it lay. But she made no move to remove it from his.

Another contraction came. Gaze fastened desperately on his, she breathed her way through it. When it passed, she said, “Do you mind talking to me? You said you’re a detective?”

“Major crimes,” he said. “Homicide, rape, assault.”

“Do you like what you do?”

He felt his mouth twist. Funny she should ask him that. He might still be married if he’d been willing to give up what he did. He wouldn’t have lost India and Autumn, the two people he loved most in the world.

“Yeah.” His voice came out hoarse. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, I like my work. I never wanted to be anything but a cop.”

“Then that’s what you ought to do,” Wren said firmly. “You’re lucky.”

Lucky. That was one way of putting it.

“You?” he asked.

“Nothing special.” Her voice brightened. “I did graduate from college.” The brightness left her. “But I majored in history, which is pretty much useless. I wanted to do grad school to become a librarian, but—” She grimaced. “I told myself I’d still do it, but…later.”

Cupcake’s father had come along, Alec guessed. He was developing quite a dislike for Cupcake’s father.

“You got married?”

She looked at him in surprise. “No. Oh, no. I was stupid, but not quite that stupid. We’re not married, thank goodness. Just…” She indicated her belly.

“Do you know for sure that he’s after you?”

“No-o.” Memories pinched her face. “But he said I couldn’t leave him. That he’d find me, and I’d be sorry if I ever tried.”

“Bullies like that don’t always follow through.”

“No.” Again she sounded doubtful. “But I’d rather make it impossible for him to find me.”

Alec didn’t like seeing that expression on her face. He smiled at her. “Well, there’s the silver lining to your current predicament. I can guarantee you that Cupcake’s father can’t get to you right now.”

Some of the tension left her. “That’s true, isn’t it? And I was so lucky that you came along. I told myself I could do this alone, but…I was scared.”

“You weren’t just lucky,” he told her firmly. “You were smart, too. You got yourself from your car to a house, then into the attic. If you hadn’t hung that white sheet out the window, I might not have come close. I knew this house was abandoned.”

“Why was it?”

“Old guy lived here. Josiah Maynard. His wife died quite a while ago. He let the place go after that, from what I heard. Almost two years ago he had to move to a nursing home.”

“He’s still alive, then?”

“Far as I know.”

She gave a little nod. “Then I’ll go visit him once I can. I should thank him for…for leaving some clothes behind, and wood and even matches. And tell him I’m sorry I had to break a window to get in.”

Alec laughed. “With water halfway to the ceiling downstairs, I think the house is history. One broken window doesn’t make any difference.”

“You mean, it won’t be rebuilt—” She groaned, her grip on his hand tightened, and they were off again.

After a quick glance at his watch, he counted with her. He hadn’t checked the time with the last one, but he thought contractions were still spaced about five minutes apart. Probably no surprise, not if it had taken her nearly two days to get to this point. Still, he’d feel better if they were getting closer together, even though he wasn’t looking forward to the denouement.

“Are you hungry? Or thirsty?” he asked, when she was resting again.

Wren shook her head. “No. I’m okay.”

“Warm enough?”

She seemed to do an internal check, then answered with faint surprise, “Yes.”

“Let me get the window completely closed.” He left her to pry the grappling iron out of the wood. The sodden white sheet dropped into the water below and was whipped away. He stood looking out for a minute, having one of those moments of disbelief, then shook his head and shoved the swollen casement window down.

The attic was not noticeably warmer.

“I really am sorry. I mean, that you got stuck here with me.”

He turned to face her. “I didn’t get stuck. I made a decision. You couldn’t climb out the window and get down to the boat while you were in labor. If the outboard motor had failed on the way back, we’d have been up a creek, if you’ll pardon the pun. It’s better to hunker down here with you. It would be nice if we had a working woodstove, maybe a kettle and some cocoa—”

“Marshmallows.”

He laughed. “Yeah, why not? But this isn’t so bad, is it? You gathered enough bedding and clothes to keep us from freezing. The water has risen as high as it’s going to get. We’re safe. You’ve got me to help Cupcake be born. Somebody will come looking for me eventually, or we’ll wait until the water goes down.” He shrugged. “We’re fine, Wren. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

She thought that over, then said, “But now you can’t rescue anyone else.”

He shook his head. “We were winding down. This was one of the last places I was going to check.”

Forehead still crinkled, she asked, “But don’t you have family? People you’re worried about?”

“A sister and her kids, but she has a husband.” Useless, in Alec’s opinion, but his sister hadn’t asked for it. “I’m hoping their house is high enough to be dry, but they may have gone to a shelter. I wasn’t working that part of the county.”

“And you couldn’t call them.”

“I tried my sister’s cell, but it was off. She tends to let the battery die down.”

“Are you worried?” She scrutinized him carefully.

With a stir of amusement, he thought, She’s persistent. A bird after a worm.

“If I’d been really worried, I would have taken a break to go look for them. I wasn’t.”

After a minute, she said, “Okay.”

“You?” he asked. “Anyone you wish you could call?”

Her eyes widened. “You mean…him?”

“No.” His voice was rough. “I didn’t mean him.”

“Oh. Um…no. Except Molly. I mentioned her, didn’t I? She’s my best friend. We were college roommates.”

“No family?”

“Nobody who’ll worry about me.”

What did that mean? He didn’t ask, because she was having another contraction.

The world outside ceased to exist in any meaningful way. She had contractions. They talked. Alec suggested she walk around a few times. He poked in boxes to see if he could find anything useful to add to their meager stash, but found mostly the kind of useless crap people shoved in their attics: picture frames with the glass long broken, plastic food containers and lids, none of which seemed to fit with each other, Christmas ornaments and carefully folded bits of wrapping paper, saved from long-ago holidays, canning supplies… He paused at that one, and removed a couple of jars. He could piss out the window, but Wren might not feel comfortable doing that.

Mostly they didn’t talk about anything important, but it occurred to him as every hour melted into another hour, then another, that he couldn’t remember ever sharing quite so much with another woman—or anyone at all, come to that—as he was with her. She told him her favorite books, but in sharing that much offered memories, too. He heard a wistful story about her dreams of being a ballerina. Her mother had eventually put her into lessons, but then the shy girl Wren was had learned she would have to perform in front of an audience at the recitals and had refused.

“I kept dancing,” she said, “but only for myself. Dreaming, yet knowing I’d never go anywhere with it.”

Bothered by his impression of a lonely childhood, he talked, too.

He told her about fishing with his dad, of triumphs on the football field, of the first Thanksgiving after his father died, and then of how responsible he’d felt for his younger sister, Sally. Trying to disguise how much he’d admitted to, he ended on a light note. Smiling, he said, “My favorite part was scaring the crap out of any boy who looked at her twice.”

Too bad he hadn’t been around when Sally met Randy. Ancient regrets played on a spool that should have been long since worn-out. What if he’d moved to rural Arkansas from St. Louis ten years ago, when his mother and sister came here to live with Aunt Pearl, instead of waiting until a year and a half ago when Mom was already dying of cancer? If Alec had been around from the beginning, would Sally have made better decisions? Would Mom still be alive?

Great timing to ask himself unanswerable questions.

Unsettled, he realized if Wren was really listening, he’d given away too much. He grunted. If? He knew damn well she’d heard everything he said, and everything he didn’t. Just as he’d heard her.

Contractions were four and a half minutes apart, then four. She walked some more, grumbled, “Cupcake isn’t in any hurry, is she?” and groaned through yet more pain.

“I hope you weren’t looking forward to that epidural too much,” Alec commented.

She rolled her eyes and sang, off-key, from the Rolling Stones’ song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

As expected, he laughed. It occurred to him, as morning became afternoon, that he’d laughed more today than he had in a couple of years.

She did finally confess that she needed the canning jar, and he turned his back when she used it. He pretended he couldn’t hear the tinkling sound that ensued. Finally, a small voice said, “Do I dump it out the window?”

He turned around. “I can do it.”

Expression defiant, she held the jar behind her. “Not a chance.”

Alec grinned. “We’re going to get to know each other even better, you know.”

Wren scrunched up her face. “I don’t want to think about that. And I don’t want you carrying a jar of my pee around, either.”

“All right. I’ll open the window for you.”

He muscled it up, then, smiling, looked away while she did the deed. Only when she gave her permission did he turn back and tug the window down again. Cheeks flushed, she set the wet jar—which he guessed she’d rinsed out with rain—some distance away and then retired to her pallet.

Three and a half minutes.

Three.

The contractions were growing in intensity, seizing her and shaking her in great, vicious jaws. Alec would have given one hell of a lot to be able to do something, anything, besides hold her hand, count for her and smooth hair from her damp forehead.

She kept shifting on the pallet as if she was increasingly uncomfortable.

“Shall I find something to make that softer?”

“I don’t know if it would make much difference. My back hurts.”

“Ah.” She’d said that earlier, hadn’t she? He wished he’d remembered sooner. “Roll over,” he said, disengaging his hand from hers and helping her heave onto her side to face away from him.

Grateful for something useful to do, he gently worked the flannel shirt up, careful to keep the blanket covering her hips—although her body would hold no secrets from him by the time they were done. Then, starting tentatively, he spread his hands over her back and began to knead taut muscles.

Wren moaned, and he stopped. “Did I hurt you?”

“No. Oh, no! It felt so good.”

He relaxed. “Okay.”

It was the first time he’d touched her much, beyond holding her hand. She was a dainty woman, her vertebrae delicate, her shoulder blades sharp-edged, her neck so small his hand would engulf it. In fact, he could splay the fingers of one hand and cover her entire lower back. That’s where the pain seemed to be centered, although she sighed with pleasure no matter where he squeezed. He dug his thumbs in at the small of her back, and she arched as if in ecstasy. When he gentled his touch, she made a funny little noise in her throat that sounded for all the world like a purr.

Alec was dismayed to realize he was getting aroused. Crap. He couldn’t let her roll toward him and notice.

Think about something else, he ordered himself. Anything but fragile bones and taut muscles and throaty sounds of feminine pleasure. Think about… Yes, there it came, another contraction rolling over her body, changing the sounds that emerged from her.

He counted as he smoothed the flannel shirt down, his hands more reluctant than he wanted to admit.

“I’ll give you another massage in a bit,” he said, as he helped her turn over again.

Hair clung in sweaty clumps to her forehead and cheeks. “How far apart are they now?”

“Two and a half minutes.” Without even thinking about it, he stroked the hair from her face, trying not to react to the unconscious way she nuzzled his hand when he was done. Hoarsely, he said, “We’re getting there.”

He’d become—almost—accustomed to the intense way she fastened those big brown eyes on him.

“It doesn’t feel like it,” she whispered. “It’s…surreal. Like it’s been going on forever, and will keep going.”

“I know,” he said. “I know.” The strange part was his contentment. He tended to be restless. He’d always gotten bored easily. Law enforcement, with physical and mental challenges intertwined, had kept him engaged. He’d known he couldn’t bear straight office work. Carlene hadn’t understood that. Or maybe she had, and didn’t care. Marriage to a cop wasn’t easy.

“I didn’t know what I was signing on for,” she’d kept saying.

Alec still didn’t know if he’d let her down, or she’d let him down. In the end, it didn’t much matter.

Except…it did, because she’d taken his two little girls with her when she left. In the end, she’d taken them so far away, he had lost them.

Not a good time to think about his daughters.

He didn’t really even want to think about Cupcake. Wren, yes. He liked thinking about Wren. With her, everything felt good. Better than it should, considering they were strangers.

“Ohhh.” She grabbed for his hand.

“That was quick,” he murmured. “Breathe. That’s it, honey. One, two, three, four…”

Alec had the odd thought that he knew her face better than he’d known Carlene’s. He’d counted the scattering of freckles across Wren’s small nose. Studied the whorls of her ears and the minute flecks of gold and green in her eyes.

The contraction past, he found himself reassuring her with a gentle massage of her shoulders and neck that worked its way up to her sweaty head. He pressed circular patterns into her temples, used his fingertips to smooth her forehead. It was all he could do not to run his thumb over her chapped lips.

Not a stranger. Not anymore.

Jarred, he had the thought that, eventually, she’d get taken to the hospital, and he’d go to work. If they kept her long, he might stop by to visit once.

Her eyes were closed. She was breathing softly, for this moment utterly relaxed. She wouldn’t see the way he was frowning, or the inner quake that probably showed on his face as he imagined a future when he’d never know what had happened to Wren.




CHAPTER THREE


WREN KNEW SHE OUGHT TO BE really, really scared. She had never in a million years imagined having her baby on the floor of an old attic in a house being swallowed by a flood. She hadn’t even wanted to go the at-home-with-a-midwife route. She’d planned on a hospital, a fetal monitor strapped across her belly, a surgical suite down the hall if necessary. She’d had every intention of being surrounded by all the technology possible—not to mention obstetricians and nurses.

Yet here she was, and although fear did tiptoe through her consciousness now and again, mostly she was okay. The surprising sense of security was entirely thanks to Alec, who had, without hesitation and with considerable risk to himself, climbed into the attic and stranded himself along with her. All because she needed him.

She remembered that terrifying moment when his hands had slipped and she’d been sure he was going to fall. All in a flash, she’d seen it in Technicolor—the splash, then the sight of his head bobbing as he was swept away until he disappeared in the eternal rain, leaving her utterly alone again. More alone, because he’d briefly given her hope that she wouldn’t be.

Somehow, with superhuman strength, he’d hauled himself upward and made it through the window. If she could have chosen anyone in the world—well, except for an obstetrician, maybe—it would have been him. He’d had enough training to give her confidence, and he’d actually delivered a baby before. He was calm, and so kind. After hours and hours of either kneeling or sitting on the floor beside her, his back probably ached as much as hers did, and the way she’d been squeezing his hand, it had probably gone numb. She hoped it had gone numb so it didn’t hurt.

He encouraged her to talk, and he listened. Really listened, she could tell, unlike James, who had only pretended. Alec had talked to her, too, as if they were best friends. There were parts of himself he didn’t offer, of course. Flashing yellow caution lights clearly marked those areas, but that was okay. There were things she didn’t talk about, too. People.

She was glad he didn’t ask any more about James. She didn’t want him here even in spirit when her baby was born. He hadn’t wanted Cupcake, and now she was glad. Glad!

Wren couldn’t help having the sneaking wish that Detective Alec Harper was Cupcake’s biological father instead. It was wrong of her to even think that, sort of like having a sudden and inappropriate crush on your obstetrician. Women probably fell for their doctors often; after all, they projected a calm air of confidence and knowledge that no rattled husband could possibly match. But Wren bet Alec would project it, even if it was his baby being born. And he’d never know she was wishing, would he? So what did it hurt to dream a little?

Deciding she’d squelch all these surprising emotions later, she let herself enjoy his care, and even feel entitled to it. Except when he rolled her over so that he could give her the best back rub she’d ever had, Wren hardly looked away from him. She probably wouldn’t have anyway, because he’d become her lodestar. And the truth was she liked looking at him.

She often felt dwarfed by men, but Alec’s size along with everything else about him made her feel safe instead of small and insignificant. Probably a woman in labor shouldn’t notice things such as the way his jeans pulled taut over the hard muscles in his thighs. Or the thickness of his wrists, and the dusting of hair on powerful forearms, but she did. Usually she didn’t like the unshaved look on men, but dark stubble emphasized the hollows beneath his cheekbones and enhanced the air he had of being pure male.

He had a habit of shoving a hand through dark, unruly hair. And his wonderful mouth seemed to be made for smiling, even though he’d looked surprised the first few times he did smile and laugh. Maybe that was just because of everything he’d seen these past two days. He’d told her about some of it: the dead animals floating past, the scared children, the despairing adults sitting in emergency shelters knowing everything they owned was gone. People had died, too. He was one of the rescue workers who had pulled two people out of a submerged car, and known even as they worked that they were too late. Wren had seen the dark flash of emotion on Alec’s face.

She had a feeling, though, that he didn’t do much smiling these days. At least, not heartfelt smiles or real belly laughs. He was so very guarded, she knew there had to be a reason.

Once she asked if he was married, and his response was a terse, “No. Divorced.” She hadn’t dared ask more.

As appealing and sexy as he was, his eyes were what drew her most. As dark as his hair was, his eyes should have been brown like hers, but they weren’t. They were a pure, rich blue, much deeper than the summer-sky blue that blonds often had. The color alone made his eyes riveting, but beyond that they expressed an intensity that she guessed was just him. And even when his face stayed impassive, his eyes betrayed emotions Wren wished she could better read. His clear irises were often darkened by shadows. But his eyes smiled, too, sometimes even when his mouth didn’t. She loved the glints of humor and, yes, the kindness.

The contractions were closer together now, barely giving her any rest between. They came like ocean waves, rolling over her, ebbing slowly even as the next built. The whole “pant, pant, blow” thing had helped, but it wasn’t so much anymore. She kept losing track, crying out, her entire body arching in agony. She quit noticing how sexy Alec was, and cared only that he was here.

Finally, one of those waves was stronger than the others, and she crushed his big hand. “I need to push.”

“Not yet.” He bent close over her, compelling her by sheer force of personality. “Breathe.”

She groaned as the wave receded. “Why can’t I?”

He pried his hand from hers. “I think it’s time I take a look, Wren. I want to make sure you’re completely dilated.”

She didn’t ask how he’d know, because she preferred to believe completely in his ability to deliver her baby.

An hour ago she would have been self-conscious when he lifted the blankets, pushed up the flannel shirt and gently spread her knees. Now, with another wave lifting her, cresting, she couldn’t afford any emotion so petty.

“Breathe.”

She tried. Oh, God, she tried, but she’d never felt anything like this, a compulsion so powerful it gripped every cell of her body. Strange, guttural sounds came from her and her hips rose.

The contraction eased and she sagged back down, although already she felt the next gathering force. “Please,” she whispered.

Alec’s hands squeezed her thighs and he said, “Okay. I think we’re ready.”

He moved away from her briefly, and she felt him lifting her, putting some of the clothes she’d dragged up under her hips. Because this would be messy, Wren realized, in a corner of her brain not quite overridden by pain.

Then he knelt again between her thighs. “This time push.”

She couldn’t have done anything but. Her mind blanked of everything but this huge, overwhelming need—and the sight of Alec’s face, his rumbles of encouragement.

“I see Cupcake’s head. That’s it. I know you’re tired, but…you’re amazing.” He flashed her a huge grin. “I’ve got her head, honey. A little more.”

There was a brief pause, just enough for Wren to gather strength, and then she heard herself screaming as she pushed with everything she had. She felt her baby slip from her. Satisfaction roared in her ears, but already she was levering herself to her elbows.

“Is she all right? Why isn’t she crying?”

He was utterly preoccupied, there between her knees. “Give her a second. I’m wiping her face.”

Then it came, a thin wail, and he laughed, exultation in those blue, blue eyes as they met hers.

“Let me wrap her up.” And finally he lifted a flannel bundle and laid it on Wren’s stomach. She could see his delight. “Meet Cupcake.”

Wren looked disbelievingly at the small, scrunched face of her daughter. She didn’t look anything like television-commercial babies. She was beet-red, and her eyes were squeezed shut as if she was absolutely refusing to see this cold, scary world. She was smeared with blood and slimy stuff, but all the same Wren had never seen anything so beautiful.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she whispered, and smoothed a hand over a head damply fuzzed with a shade of brown the same as her own hair. And she was filled with joy, because at first glance there was nothing whatsoever of James in her baby.

“I need to cut the cord,” Alec said.

Wren lifted her gaze from Cupcake. “I didn’t even think of that. What can you… Oh! I brought a knife up from the kitchen.”

He laughed. “I have scissors from the first-aid kit, thankfully sterile.” He brandished them as he ripped off the packaging. “And I found some twine I think will work.”

That hadn’t come from the first-aid kit, which made Wren realize it must have been one of the things he’d been looking for earlier, when he’d been opening boxes. She remembered once hearing a grunt of satisfaction.

She watched anxiously as he tied the still pulsing umbilical cord. Then the scissors flashed, and without hesitation he cut the cord.

“She’s her own person now,” he murmured, and Wren realized her face was wet with tears.

She looked and touched and marveled, hardly aware that she had more contractions and that Alec was still occupied. Eventually he said, “I’m going to clean you up as well as I can without water, and then we’d better figure out something for a pad.”

A pad? Oh.

“Um…” She turned her head. “There are some pajama bottoms here somewhere. I couldn’t have gotten them on before, but maybe now…”

“All right. Why don’t you try putting her to your breast? Even if you weren’t planning to breast-feed, you have to for now.”

“I was.” She undid a couple of buttons and lifted Cupcake—who needed a real name now. As she did, her daughter opened her eyes and, in the gray light through the window, Wren saw that they were a murky blue, which likely meant they were going to turn brown like hers. She felt another moment of fierce delight. Her own mother might have been disappointed when she’d first seen Wren, tiny and wizened and not very pretty at all as babies went, but Wren was glad Cupcake had gotten nothing from her father.

It took some doing to figure out what angle worked best, and to coax the baby to begin nuzzling for her breast. But finally she latched on and began to suckle as though she knew exactly what to do.

“Like a pro,” Alec murmured, and their eyes met over Wren’s knees.

“Isn’t she amazing?”

“So are you.” He was stuffing her into those pajamas as he spoke, although he laughed and paused to roll the hems up. And up. Then, sounding awkward for the first time, he said, “I’ve, er, folded a T-shirt in there to be a menstrual pad. It’s not ideal, but as long as you’re not moving around a lot, it ought to do.”

His momentary discomfiture made her feel embarrassed for the first time, too. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t given a second thought to letting a man who was a virtual stranger do such intimate things for her.

“Thank you,” she said stiffly.

He nodded. “Is the baby asleep?”

Filled with tenderness, Wren glanced down to see that Cupcake’s mouth had slipped from her tingling breast. “Yes.”

“You need to have something to eat and drink now.”

She thought about it, and realized she was hungry. And her mouth felt…gritty. “Do we have anything?”

“Bottled water and energy bars. Not very exciting.”

“You’re apologizing?” She stared incredulously at him. “What, because you didn’t bring big juicy hamburgers and fries with you?”

There was that grin she already loved. “No, I’m apologizing because we’re going to have to ration what we do have. We could be stuck here for another day or more, you know.”

That momentarily dimmed her delight. “Is it going to get cold once night falls?”

“Afraid so.” He set a big plastic water bottle beside her, watching as she eased the soundly sleeping baby onto the pallet. Then he slid an arm around behind Wren and helped her to a sitting position.

She winced. Her stomach muscles seemed to be shot, and she was definitely sore. Instead of sitting cross-legged as she would normally have done, she tucked both feet to one side of her and reached for the water.

“Is this all we have?”

“Yes, but we can catch some rainwater. Drink what you need.”

She guzzled enthusiastically. It was probably plain tap water, but it tasted like ambrosia. So did the peanut butter-flavored bar he peeled open for her.

“Want another one?”

“How many do we have?”

He counted. “Ten. You haven’t eaten since…?”

Wren had to think back. “It’s been…two days. And I was feeling unsettled then. My back was starting to hurt, and my stomach felt weird. So I ate only half the BLT I bought at a restaurant.”

“Then you’re definitely having another one.” He pulled an array of them out of the zippered bag he’d thrown through the window. “You have a choice of more peanut butter, apple and cinnamon or…” He squinted at one. “Chocolate.”

She sat up straighter. “Chocolate?”

“We have a winner.” Looking amused, he handed one to her. “Do all women love chocolate?”

Wren gaped at him. “Don’t you?”

“Not particularly. I don’t much care about candy.”

“Chocolate isn’t candy,” she assured him. “It’s a basic food.”

“Dairy, grains, fruits and vegetables, meats…and chocolate.”

She grinned. “Right.”

“I’ll remember that.”

Wren ate this bar more slowly, drawing out the pleasure. A cramping in her stomach made her really, really wish she had something with more substance to eat. Or maybe more comforting. Thick, steaming split-pea soup with bits of salty ham. Or a stew filled with chunks of potato and carrots and tender meat.

Her sigh was unconscious. She only became aware of it when she saw Alec raise his eyebrows.

“Oh…I was planning a menu for after we get out of here.”

“Ah.”

Wren frowned. “You haven’t eaten anything.”

“Unlike you, I’ve been getting regular meals. And I didn’t go through labor. I’ll wait until later.”

That gave her pause. He really was afraid they might be trapped here for days. If she didn’t get enough to eat, would her body fail to produce the milk her baby needed?

Again, he seemed to read her mind. Maybe it was easy, given the scared look she flashed at Cupcake.

“She’s going to be fine.” He gave a rueful grin. “Our biggest challenge may be finding enough cloth to keep her in some sort of diaper. Doing laundry isn’t exactly an option.”

“No. I didn’t think of that.” Wren studied the sleeping baby again. For the first time, she noticed that Alec had bundled her oddly, with a sleeve of the flannel shirt doubled over between her legs, while the other sleeve wrapped around holding the whole arrangement in place. He’d been remarkably clever.

Cupcake scrunched up her face, made a grunting sound, then gradually relaxed again. She had a surprising amount of hair, which clustered in stiff tufts. Wren wished she had one of those small knitted caps that babies always seemed to wear in hospital nurseries.

“I’m most worried about keeping her warm,” Alec said quietly, as if once again he was reading her mind. “I think that when night falls we’ll need to keep her between us. I don’t want to scare you, but I’m going to lie down next to you.”

Wren shivered, but she wasn’t cold. It was… She didn’t know. She was suffering from nerves, she guessed. And something that felt oddly like excitement. She liked the idea of lying stretched out beside him. Which, she supposed, shouldn’t be such a surprise, given how attracted to him she’d been from the minute he’d shoved back the hood of his rain slicker and looked up at her window, like the prince there to rescue Rapunzel.

The ridiculousness of that would have made her laugh under other circumstances.

Wow. Call me shallow.

Apparently her body was on board with the whole concept of offering herself to any guy who rescued her. She’d escaped from James only four days ago, and here she was eyeing another man.

Yes, but she hadn’t had sex in something like six months. No, more than that. James had been repulsed by her body once Cupcake’s presence showed in a slight thickening around Wren’s waist and then a bump below her belly button.

He had been furious from the moment she told him she was pregnant. In those first weeks, she’d still been delusional enough to imagine that he’d come around. That soon he would rejoice, too, in the life quickening inside her.

Instead, as the depths of his need to have her belong to him and him alone had become apparent, she’d finally seen how dumb she’d been. How blind.

The thought was enough to make her shudder.

Alec’s sharp eyes saw that, too. “You’re getting cold.”

“No, I’m okay. Just…feeling a little scared,” she admitted. “Not of what’s going to happen, but of what could have happened.” She tried to smile, but her lips trembled. “I haven’t said thank you yet, but… Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.”

“You’re very welcome,” he told her, with equal formality. “I should probably thank you. I’ll think of this at Christmas. If only we had a manger for a cradle and a heap of straw to keep Cupcake cozy.”

Blinking, Wren had to admit that their current conditions were every bit as primitive as that long-ago stable. Well, except for the energy bars and the scissors Alec had triumphantly torn from their sterile packaging.

Cupcake would have died if anything had gone wrong. Terror poured through Wren as she gazed at her daughter and let herself acknowledge a truth she’d managed to block out all day. She and Cupcake—mother and child—were incredibly lucky.

Blessed.

She very gently cupped her daughter’s head and waited for the fear to ebb, as the labor pains had. She closed her eyes and thought…thank you. God or whoever was listening, thank you.

A lump of emotion seemed to be caught in her throat. What was it Alec had said to set her off? I’ll think of this at Christmas. Where would he be at Christmas? With his sister and her family?

On another tremor of uncertainty that wasn’t so different from the earlier fear, Wren wondered where she would be at Christmas. Would she have found Molly by then? Or…or perhaps a motel room? Except, she didn’t have a cent. This was one time she would have to ask her mother for help. After that, if Wren couldn’t find Molly, maybe she could rent a room, if there were such things as boarding houses anymore. She would have to look for a job, too, of course. Finding one where she was allowed to bring a baby wasn’t going to be easy. Day care. There must be day-care centers around. Or maybe she could be a night janitor. No one would be around to be bothered when Cupcake got hungry or unhappy because her diaper was wet and cried.

The terror was surging again, building in power, because now she didn’t have to worry only about herself, but about another entire person. And she knew she was woefully unprepared to take care of her daughter. Especially knowing James would try to find them. She wished Alec was right and James wouldn’t bother, but Wren didn’t believe it. He hadn’t let her go the first time she’d tried to leave him, a month ago. If anything, he’d gotten more obsessed since then. She couldn’t imagine that he would be able to shrug and decide to let her go. And…she’d seen his violent side.

Don’t think about it, she decided. Not now. Not yet.

Here and now, she and Cupcake were safe. They might get chilly, and hungry, but they weren’t alone, and they were safe. She’d never in her life trusted anyone completely, but there was always a first, and this was it. Alec wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her or her baby, as long as they were with him.

“I think I need that applesauce jar again.”

With a low, deep chuckle, he rose to his feet and held out his hands to help her up. “Is that what it was for?”

“Well, some kind of preserves. In the old days, they canned green beans and things like that, too. The jar’s too big for jam.”

He hoisted her up, frowning when her face changed. “What is it?”

“I wonder if, um, I need to replace the T-shirt. Or refold it or something.”

“Ah.”

She loved the way he said that. Acknowledgement, understanding, no need to comment. He bent and produced another item of clothing from the shrinking stack. Boxer shorts? Oh, heavens, had she grabbed the former resident’s underwear?

“We might have to do some washing. I mean, between me and Cupcake. Maybe we could rinse things out in the rain….”

Alec shook his dark head. “I don’t think they’d dry.”

Worrying over the problem, she retired to the end of the attic, aware that Alec had politely turned his back again. Flushing with embarrassment, she used the jar, dumped the contents out the window he’d already opened and let the rain rinse it. Then, before she could struggle to close the window, he reached around her and did it. She felt the heat of his body behind her, the strength of the arms that momentarily caged her, and her stomach did a dip and roll.

Stepping back, he said in a curiously gentle voice, “All right?”

She bobbed her head and, without looking at him, retreated to her pallet. Her throat had formed another of those impossible-to-swallow lumps. Cupcake was so tiny, and Wren realized suddenly that she was exhausted. It had to be hormones that were causing her mood swings. Joy to fear to gratitude to lust and back to fear again in mere minutes. Realizing that she wasn’t altogether sure she could lower herself to a sitting position gracefully and without pain was enough to make her eyes burn. Had she torn? Alec hadn’t said, and why would he when he couldn’t do anything about it?

Before she could begin any kind of undignified maneuvering, Alec lifted her up and laid her down. She squeaked, and he smiled.

“You were giving the problem more thought than it deserved.”

“My body is holding a major protest.”

He crouched over the first-aid kit. “It hadn’t occurred to me, but—” He made a pleased sound. “Here we go. Aspirin or ibuprofen?”

“Really?” Wren struggled up to her elbow, careful not to shift Cupcake, who she’d snuggled against her.

“Yeah, I thought about it earlier, when you were in labor, but I wasn’t sure what was safe for you to take.” He grimaced. “Or how much good either would do. Sorry that I’m only now remembering it’s here.”

“I haven’t hurt that bad. But I won’t say no to some ibuprofen.” She took the two capsules, popped them in her mouth, then swallowed them with a sip of water. “Thank you,” she murmured, settling back down.

“Hey, these dressings should work as menstrual pads for at least a few changes.” He sounded pleased. “I should have thought of it.”

Paper rustled as he laid out a small pile of sterile dressings then closed the velcro fasteners on the case, and stood. “I’m sorry, but I need to…” He gestured toward the window.

“Feel free.” Wren curled more comfortably around Cupcake and tugged the blankets higher over them. One of them was particularly scratchy wool, but it was warm. She tried not to listen to the sound of Alec lowering his zipper and then, a moment later, pulling it up again, and was grateful she couldn’t hear what he did in between.

The window grated as he shoved it down, and then his footsteps neared.

“The sun is going down, isn’t it?” Wren whispered.

“Yeah.”

She’d hardly noticed the deepening of the gray light.

“Is it still raining?”

“Yeah,” he said again.

“If we’re going to be biblical, it’s poor Noah we ought to be identifying with. And his wife. Doesn’t it figure that nobody can remember her name? She probably took care of all the animals and still put dinner on the table every night for him, and all anyone remembers is her husband because he built the boat.”

Alec knelt beside her. “I suspect he’s remembered because the vision was his.” Amusement roughened his voice.

“Who says? Maybe it was her idea. Wouldn’t it figure he took the credit?”

He sat and untied his boots. “As it happens, I know her name. Emzara.” He tugged off the first boot and set it aside. “Don’t ask me why that stuck from Sunday school.” In the act of pulling off the second boot, he paused. “Come to think of it, I know why. It was Mom. She said something pretty similar to what you did.”

“Smart woman.” Wren was beginning to feel drowsy, even though she wished there was a whole lot more padding between her and the floor.

Jeez. Talk about ungrateful.

Alec dropped the second boot, then in a quick move lifted the blanket and stretched out beside Wren, sandwiching Cupcake between their chests.

“She won’t smother under there, will she?”

“No. These blankets feel like wool. Wool breathes. And warm air would be better for her.”

“Okay.” She couldn’t help being disconcerted by how close his face was to hers.

“I’m using the first-aid kit for a pillow,” he said unnecessarily. “Why don’t I stretch my arm out, and you can pillow your head on it?”

She noticed the careful way he spoke. Just as politely, she said, “Oh, but it’ll go numb.”

“I’ll retrieve it if it does.” She couldn’t tell if that was amusement again in his voice, or something else.

But she lifted her head as he slid his arm beneath it. After a few wriggles, she settled far more comfortably onto his bicep. As if doing so was entirely natural, he curled his arm around her and she felt his big hand clasp her shoulder.

“Let me know if you get cold,” he said. “I’ve got on a heavier shirt than you do. I can give you the vest. Or we can find some other things for you to wear.”

Although she had no intention of taking his down vest, she said, “Okay.”

He squeezed her shoulder. “Go to sleep, Wren. I’ll watch out for Cupcake.”

She snuggled into him and let her eyes drift closed. She could smell male sweat overlying soap and a hint of forest. She liked how he smelled. “Okay,” she heard herself murmur again, drowsily.

Falling asleep hadn’t been so easy in a long, long time.




CHAPTER FOUR


ALEC SLEPT IN SNATCHES, an hour here and there. He was uncomfortable, but unwilling to disturb Wren or the baby by moving. The floor seemed to get harder as the night wore on, the cushioning beneath him thinner and more inadequate. He felt as if he was pillowing his head on a square rock. Tomorrow night—if they were still here—he’d find something else. His arm did go numb under Wren’s head, and sharp pains stabbed his right shoulder, the one he’d landed on when he fell through the window.

How long had it been since he’d slept cuddling a woman? Two years, maybe? No, longer than that—closer to three. Oh, who was he kidding? He and Carlene hadn’t been that friendly in bed for a while before their divorce. And his few sexual encounters since hadn’t included sleep—or much in the way of cuddling, either.

Early on, Wren had snuggled onto her side and shifted her head to his shoulder. He had a suspicion she would have been nestled against him if not for the small lump that was Cupcake between them. Wren, he thought, was a cuddler.

She was also a quiet sleeper, or maybe simply exhausted to the point where her body had decided to suspend all but essential operations. Once she settled in, she went boneless. He couldn’t even hear her breathe. Every so often, to reassure himself, he tilted his face so that he could feel a soft stir of warm air on his cheek when she exhaled.

He’d never slept in bed with a baby, although he’d been known to snooze on the sofa with one of his daughters on his chest, their knees tucked up and thumb in mouth. Remembering the sweet weight of a baby gave him a piercing pain beneath the breastbone that was sharper than the one in his shoulder. That memory led to others, even less welcome.

Maybe he hadn’t been the best father in the world, not given his working hours. The last straw for Carlene had been when he’d missed India’s fourth birthday party.

“You’ll be here when I blow out the candles, won’t you, Daddy?” India had begged him, her blue eyes wide. “You will, right?”

“I’ll do my best,” he’d promised, giving her a big hug and kiss on the nose before he went out the door.

But there had been a shooting, not an especially ugly one—he didn’t even remember the specifics, except that Benson was out because his mother was dying and Molina had come down with the flu, so Alec and his partner had gotten the call even though they shouldn’t have been top of the rotation yet. It was his job. Somebody had died. A kid’s birthday party didn’t cut it as an excuse.

India hadn’t been that upset. Her Grandma Olson had been there, and half a dozen friends from preschool with their parents chiming in the birthday song. She’d gotten lots of presents, and when he did finally make it home had taken great pleasure in showing them to him one at a time, putting each carefully away before presenting the next. That was India, congenitally organized.

It was Carlene, predictably, who was furious, certain that Alec was teaching his daughters that they couldn’t depend on him. The words she’d said that night still gnawed at him when he let his guard down. It was only a few weeks later that she’d packed one day while he was at work and announced when he got home that she and the girls were going to her mom’s.

He swore under his breath and tried surreptitiously to flex muscles that ached.

Cupcake was considerably more restless than her mommy. Having her under there was unsettling, like sleeping with a cat that had burrowed beneath the covers. She snuffled and wriggled and periodically woke crying. The first couple of times, Wren barely regained consciousness, and only after Alec shook her awake. He had to unbutton the front of her shirt and help the baby find a nipple. The whole experience was weird and so intimate he tried not to think about the fact that he was groping in the dark for this woman’s breasts and moving her body around so that the strange small creature between them could suckle on her.

He tried to keep the blankets pulled high to maintain the baby’s body temperature. The air outside the coccoon they’d created was winter cold. During one of his periods of wakefulness Alec realized that he couldn’t hear the rain. Incredulous, he lay listening to the silence. Had it finally stopped? Forty days and forty nights. No, it hadn’t actually been that long. He remembered Wren saying that the day felt surreal, as if it had gone on forever and only now mattered. He felt that way about the storm. After the days of gray, slanting rain, bobbing on floodwaters, hauling soaked, scared people until their faces were interchangeable and his tiredness grinding, this attic was an oasis.

He should have slept like a baby, he thought, then smiled as he gently settled Cupcake on her back and pulled blankets higher over her mother, who was already burrowing onto his shoulder. Okay, maybe not. If he had made it home to his own bed, he might have slept like a log. Not a baby.

Probably he should have checked if Cupcake was wet, but he was damned if he was going to bare her butt or try to figure out an alternative he could wrap her in.

With a groan, he did slide his hand under her to make sure she wasn’t soaking the comforter, but so far it was dry, thank God. He seemed to remember that a woman’s breasts didn’t produce much actual milk the first day or so. The trickle of colostrum apparently wasn’t overwhelming Cupcake’s bladder.

The next time he opened his eyes, it was to the gray light of day and to the contented sound of a baby nursing. What the hell…? Alec blinked gritty eyes a couple of times and oriented himself. Attic. Childbirth. Brown-feathered Wren and her wrinkly, red-faced baby.

No weight on his shoulder. He turned his head and saw Wren curled on her side supporting Cupcake’s head. She smiled at him, her face so close he could see the lighter flecks in her brown eyes.

He stretched and discovered that pretty much every muscle in his body ached and he was hungry.

“Damn,” he muttered. “What I’d give for a heaping plate of scrambled eggs, crispy bacon and country-fried potatoes.”

“After a hot shower.” Longing suffused her voice.

“Yeah. Definitely after a shower.”



WHO NEEDED TELEVISION or a morning newspaper when you had a new baby and a gorgeous man around?

Since waking, Wren had spent most of the time—well, half the time—minutely studying her daughter. Less exhausted this morning, she felt wonder bubbling in her like champagne shaken until it threatened to pop the cork. To think that she had created this beautiful, perfect, little person! Wren loved everything, from the tiny, fuzzy eyebrows to the pink lips that pursed and occasionally smacked, to the curve of cheeks and high forehead. When she nursed or bobbed against Wren’s shoulder, Cupcake’s head fit in the cup of her hand as if made for it. She weighed hardly anything, but as Alec had pointed out yesterday, she was doing well, so if she was a week or two early it obviously hadn’t mattered. Wren could tell how relieved he was when he said that. She suspected he, too, had hidden a few shudders at the thought of how many things could have gone wrong.

Astonishingly enough, watching him sleep, and gradually wake, had been almost as engrossing as staring at her beautiful baby. Every so often she looked away from Cupcake to study Alec’s hard face, only slightly relaxed in sleep. No open mouth or drooling; somehow he managed still to seem guarded. And yet there was something about his closed eyelids, the dark lashes fanned on his cheeks, that gave him an air of vulnerability. He was dreaming; his eyelids quivered, and a couple of times his nostrils flared and his mouth tightened. One hand lay on top of the covers, and she saw his fingers twitch, make a fist, then relax again.

At last his lashes fluttered and his eyes opened. For a moment he stared blankly at the empty rafters before his head turned sharply and his deep blue eyes pinned her in place.

She smiled as if it didn’t feel even a tiny bit strange to wake next to him.

His first words told her their minds were in sync. A chocolate energy bar didn’t sound nearly as good this morning as it had yesterday. She could almost smell the bacon.

Wren sighed. Hungry as she was, she’d give up breakfast for a hot shower.

“Oh, well, we don’t even have soap.”

Alec laughed, a low, husky sound. “What would you do with it if you had it? You can’t tell me you want me to dip some floodwater up for you to bathe in.”

Wren scrunched up her nose. “I suppose it’s cold.”

“Safe to say.” The humor left his face. “Not very sanitary, either. The town septic system got overwhelmed, and God knows what’s floating around out there.” He rose to his feet as easily as if he hadn’t spent the night on a hard floor the way she had. “It’s not raining.”

“No. I noticed it quit.”

“Damn,” he said softly. “I should have filled some jars with rainwater yesterday.”

“Will we run out of water?”

He went to the window. “No.” The tension in his voice had dissipated. “No, it’s still drizzling. I’ll start collecting water.”

He figured out how to hang a jar out the window before coming back to discuss breakfast.

“I’ll have apple and cinnamon,” she decided.

“Not chocolate?”

“Who has chocolate for breakfast?”

He chose peanut butter. Suspicious, she asked if he was trying to leave the tastiest ones for her, but he insisted he didn’t care. There were more peanut-butter bars than either of the other flavors, so that’s what he’d eat.

Then, before Cupcake fell asleep, they took advantage of daylight to refold and smooth their bedding, pile the wet or bloody clothes in one place, sort through what was left for suitable diaper or menstrual pad material and continue searching boxes for anything that might be the tiniest bit useful.

“Hah!” Alec exclaimed when he unearthed a trunk of old quilts.

Taking them out, one by one, Wren breathed, “Ooh, look at these. They’re handworked. This one is from the 1920s, I think. Look at these fabrics. And I’ll bet this one’s even older. Alec, the fabric is so fragile. I hate to use them.”

“I don’t.” While she still kneeled in front of the trunk, he lifted out the entire pile and carried it to their pallet. “I don’t know about you, but my whole body hurts. That floor was hard.”

She giggled a little at his indignation. “Didn’t you ever camp?”

“You mean outside? Good God, no. I’m a city boy.”

“You don’t look like a city boy,” she said thoughtfully.

He glanced at himself. His jeans were faded and fit as if molded for him. They were also dirty, the denim stiff from wetting and drying—probably repeatedly. The equally well-worn red chamois shirt stretched across broad shoulders. It had a long tear above one cuff. He was walking around in saggy wool socks. His dark hair stuck out in every direction. The dark stubble on his cheeks was going to be a beard in another day or two.

In fact, he’d confessed as he dug through boxes, that he was wishing for a razor. Even an old-fashioned straight razor.

“Dull would be okay,” he’d muttered.

“Remember? No soap.”

“I just want to scrape it off.” He cast a look of dislike toward the first-aid kit. “If the scissors would just open farther—”

“I have that knife.”

“Did you look at it? It’s worse than dull.”

She shook her head, then smiled. “You look good in a beard.”

He scowled. “I itch.”

He found no razor. She’d noticed him scratching his cheeks and jaw unhappily every now and again.

By the time his watch told them it was midday, he’d filled several jars with rainwater. Finally, he hung a white sheet out the window again as a signal, the way she had…was it only yesterday?

While she nursed Cupcake again, Alec spread two of the three quilts atop their pallet.

“So, I think it’s time I give Cupcake a real name. Before she starts kindergarten and the other kids make fun of her.”

Alec grinned, as she’d expected he would. She loved his smiles, each and every one of them. The corners of those blue eyes crinkled, the creases in his lean cheeks deepened and the sense that smiles came rarely for him warmed something inside her.

“Might be a plan.”

Cupcake’s mouth slipped from her breast and Wren decided she had to change her diaper-slash-outfit. Alec saw what she was doing and picked out a man’s white T-shirt which he deftly ripped so that they could pass one fold between the baby’s legs and then tie it over her tummy. Wren had to laugh when she saw the final result. Cupcake gazed fuzzily at her as if bemused by the sound.

“The latest in baby wear.”

“Yeah. Maybe we should go into business.”

“Well…we could advertise in survivalists’ magazines.”

He gave a hearty laugh. “I could submit one of those housekeeping tips to them, too. Multiple uses for canning jars.”

Wren laughed, too, feeling ridiculously happy. Hungry, yes, but still happy.

“I want to name her after you.” Ignoring his stunned expression, she suggested, “Alexa? Only that’s not quite right. Alisha? Why didn’t you have one of those convenient names that’s easily convertible to a female version? Like Robert to Roberta, or…”

“Edwin to Edwina? What a hideous thought.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Definitely not Edwina. That sounds like my grandmother or something.”

“I had a Great-Aunt Edwina. Also a Great-Aunt Pearl.”





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