Chapter 1

A wintry mix of freezing rain, sleet, and snow peppered the roof and rattled the windows of the old farm house. Icy tentacles of cold snaked beneath the door to rush across the hardwood floors and over the gray cat sleeping on the colorful oval rug. Molly McCreight shivered, laid aside her book, and rose from her cozy spot in front of the blazing fireplace. The cat stirred, too, gazing up with curious green eyes.

"Ah, be still, Samson. I'm just going to poke something against that door. If Bart Crimshaw had fixed it last summer like he was supposed to. . . " She let the words and thoughts drift away. Bart, the beast, hadn't ever done anything he was supposed to do. He'd disappeared like all the others as soon as he realized she wasn't kidding when she said she would never be interested in having children.



"But we don't care, do we, Samson? We're doing fine, just fine, without any of them."

The cat's ears flicked, though he stayed beside the glowing fire. She wasn't doing just fine and even Samson knew it. She mourned for the loss of her once close relationships with her mother and her sister, Chloe, and most of all, she mourned for baby Zack.

Since taking the job at the Winding Stair Senior Citizen Center things had been a little better, but the estrangement from her family still lay like a rock in the pit of her stomach.

As she mumbled to the bored-looking cat, Molly took a towel from the bathroom, rolled the thick terry cloth like a jelly roll and stuffed it under the front door.

"Listen to that wind." Hunching her shoulders, she rubbed her upper arms as if to ward off the outside chill. "It's a miracle we still have electricity."

Above the incessant howl of winter came a low hum.

"What in the world?" Molly pulled the heavy antique rose drape away from the window and peered out. Though the time was not yet six o'clock, outside was as dark as sin. "Surely, that's not a vehicle way out here in this storm?"

Thick layers of ice already coated the windows, the porch and the front of the house. More of the icy pellets and rain fell in such abundance she was hard-pressed to make out the faint glow of lights in the distance. The hum of a motor increased, coming closer. Since her farmhouse set a ways off the main gravel road, Molly knew the visitor was headed her direction.

When the freezing rain had begun early that morning, she had done the sensible thing and prepared for the certain storm ahead. She'd filled the wood box and piled enough extra wood on the porch to keep her going for days even though the propane tank was full. She'd run water into buckets though the water had never frozen in the two years she'd lived on the remote farm in Oklahoma's Kiamichi Mountains. And she'd made a pot of vegetable beef stew to die for just because the rich aroma of stewed tomatoes and beef filtering through the house made her feel warmer.

"Looks like a truck of some sort," she muttered, frowning through the narrow window in the front door. She flipped on the porch light and strained her eyes against the darkness camped beyond the yard.

"It is a truck, Samson. A delivery truck." Her frown deepened. "Now, what kind of idiot...?"

The headlights disappeared as if they'd been sucked inside the dying motor. A smaller light signaled the opening van door. With a muffled thud, that light was extinguished also.

Molly made out the hurrying form of a man, not overly tall, but not short either, picking his way over the crusty ice toward her front porch. Bundled against the frigid weather he looked thick and heavy but moved with speed and agility, his arms crossed in front of him in a posture Molly found odd for running.

He was carrying something. At times, she ordered a lot of things, but come on.

"No package could be that important."

When the man's feet thudded against the wooden porch, Molly yanked the door open, gasping at the sudden blast of frigid air. Shadowed beneath the glowing yellow light with sleet and bits of snow swirling around him, the man peered down at her from under a brown bill cap. He was a uniformed delivery man, all right. She recognized the familiar dark brown truck that sailed up and down the country roads delivering packages. The man himself looked vaguely familiar, but he wasn't her usual delivery man.

"Ma'am, I was wondering if you could--"

She didn't give him a chance to finish. The cold air was filling up her cozy little house, and she wasn't about to stand on ceremony in this kind of weather. He couldn't be a criminal. Even an ax murderer had better sense than to be out in this weather. Only a working stiff would be so dedicated.

"Get in here before you freeze." With one hand she shoved the storm door wide and with the other she grasped his thick, quilted sleeve and pulled. That's when she realized what he was carrying against his chest. Not a package. A bundle. A soft, quilted bundle decorated with yellow ducks and pink rabbits. She yanked her hand away and stared long and hard as the delivery man stomped into the house, sprinkling ice pellets all over the floor. He ushered in the unmistakable scent of cold air on a warm body.

Molly shut the door and kicked the towel against it, all the while staring in disbelief at the bundle in the delivery man's arms.

The man went straight for the fireplace and stood close, his back to her. Molly followed him, keeping her eyes on the bundle. Maybe it wasn't what she thought it was.

"The roads are so bad, I was afraid I wouldn't make it back to town. Don't need to tell you what would happen if I got stranded and ran out of gas in this weather."

"No."

There would be enough horror stories in the days to come of motorists or other hapless folks who'd gotten caught out in this. The occasional Oklahoma ice storms were notorious for paralyzing entire sections of the state. Sometimes weeks would pass before the roads were cleared, power back on, and life returned to normal. Aunt Patsy, the farm's true owner, had spent her share of days stranded up here while waiting for the ice to melt or the road grader to arrive in this remote portion of the county.

"I'm sorry to intrude on you this way." A pair of sincere blue eyes--worried eyes--peered at her. Normally she would have considered such eyes, rimmed as they were in black spiky lashes, especially attractive. And the rest of his face, clean-shaven, lean and honest was only made more ruggedly attractive by a narrow scar that sliced one eyebrow and disappeared upward into a neat crew cut. She found the scar intriguing-and appealing.

The bundle in his arms was an entirely different matter.

"You're the closest house for miles," he said, as though that gave him the right to remind her of what she could never forget.

Most times she loved the solitude of living miles from nowhere, driving in to her job and then hurrying home to her little farm. In town she could always feel the stares, the eyes of suspicion, and hear the not-so-subtle whispers. No matter that the tragedy happened two years ago, a small town never forgot--or forgave--such a terrible transgression. How could they when she couldn't even forgive herself?

"You got a telephone?"

Her gaze flickered up to his and quickly back to the bundle. Yellow ducks and pink rabbits. Foreboding crept up her spine, colder than the outside temperatures. "Phone's been out since noon."

"Figures. My communication system is down, too, and cell phones are impossible up here in the hills."

Molly knew that. No one in these mountains even considered buying a cell phone.

Tormented by thoughts of the bundle, she turned her back to the fire and tried not to think too much. Please Lord, please. Let that be a doll. Or a puppy.

The bundle stirred; a soft cooing issued from the quilt. Molly's pulse rate jumped a notch. That was no puppy.

"Ma'am ...," the delivery man began.

"Molly," Stepping back, she interrupted, terrified of what he was about to say. "I'm Molly McCreight."

"Pleased to meet you, ma'am and I'm Ethan Hunter." He thrust the bundle toward her. "Do you know anything about babies?"

Her heart stopped beating for a full three seconds. She couldn't breath. There really was a baby inside that mass of quilts and blankets.