she knew ranch work, and he would still be calving in a week. And besides, she was not one to wait. And certainly not one to let a man do anything for her that she could do for herself. Even her brother.
Still, her independence was costing her now.
Her muscles ached with fatigue.
That was probably all that was wrong. She was tired. Exhausted. To the point of imagining things.
She scanned the clearing in front of her. She had given the cabin a name in a moment’s whimsy. Heart’s Rest. Last year she had burned the name onto a wooden sign that was nailed to a towering lodgepole pine just beyond the stone fire pit and the scraggly, rock-lined bed where she had planted wildflowers. Purple mountain saxifrage. Fairy slipper. Fireweed. Indian paintbrush.
Contentment crept up on her, and her fingers relaxed slightly on the shotgun. She was probably imagining things.
She hoped she was.
Still, her other brother, Evan, was fond of telling her she had the most highly developed sense of intuition of anyone he had ever met.
It came, she supposed, from spending so much time alone, loving the solitude of these high and lonesome places. It came from spending more time with horses than people, and the language of her equine friends was the one of intuition, not words.
It came, she supposed, from growing up in the care of her two brothers, far older than she, on a remote ranch in the Coast Mountains west of Williams Lake, British Columbia. Hopelessly unqualified to raise a small girl after their parents had died in a cabin fire, Jake and Evan had unintentionally let her run wild. She knew the forests and mountains around their ranch as well as she knew her own face in the mirror.
She felt safe in these wild places, connected in some way to the immense creative forces of the universe; looked after. Even now, with something out there, she felt confident. This was her turf, and she could handle whatever came her way.
The only time in her life she hadn’t felt safe was when she had gone to the University of Alberta in Edmonton for two years. Her brothers, surprisingly resolute, had told her it was okay with them if she became a rancher someday, but first they wanted her to know a bigger world. And, truth be told, Storm had felt a strange and tingling eagerness to know a larger world, too.
But the city had been a shock—dodging cars, having to worry about walking alone at night, locking doors.
It was no way to live.
A twig snapped.
She pumped a shell into the shotgun chamber. There were really no places left where a person could be absolutely alone. Hunters and hikers found their way to these isolated spaces. And it didn’t bother her.
Unless they tried to be sneaky about it.
Sneakiness bothered her. A lot. Her intuition had failed her once, back there in Edmonton. When she’d been fooled by a too-handsome face and a smooth way.
She wondered if her brothers would have laughed, seeing their tomboy sister experimenting with makeup. She’d even bought a skirt, ridiculously short, now that she thought about it. Dorian’s eyes widening with appreciation had made that little scrap of material worth its enormous price.
Storm curtly turned the memory off and listened. She told herself to smarten up. It wouldn’t really be fair if she took a shot at some unsuspecting hiker because she detested sneakiness.
The truth was she would have dearly liked to pump a few rounds into the air around Dorian, just to scare the living daylights out of him. Once she’d found out the truth.
Married.
The snake had been married.
If she was alone up here at her mountain retreat, it didn’t matter. And if she wasn’t, it wouldn’t hurt to show she knew how to handle the gun and was not afraid to use it.
Boom! Take that, Dorian.
She shot high, into the air. The sound of the shotgun blast echoed over the quiet clearing. Casually, she pumped another shell into the chamber. At first she thought she had failed to flush out whatever kind of varmint hid in the trees.
And then a thin and reedy wail flowed into the silence left by the blast of the shotgun. Storm’s mouth fell open and she leaped to her feet. She set the shotgun down and raced down the cabin’s crumbling stone steps and across the clearing toward the sound.
Because there was really no mistaking that sound.
Even for a woman like her who refused to even hold one.
There was a baby in those woods.
A man slipped out of the trees before she was halfway across the clearing.
Storm skidded to a halt.
He was an imposing man, maybe two inches over six feet. He was incredibly broad across his shoulders and through his chest, and that broadness narrowed dramatically at his flat belly. His legs were long and lean, the clean line of hard muscle evident through the fabric of heavy denim. His khaki-colored shirt-sleeves were rolled up, revealing a naked length of very powerful forearm. The first few buttons of his shirt were open, showing a tangle of dark, curling chest hair.
He carried himself with confidence, loose-limbed and yet ready. Ready for anything. A man who could deal with the elements, and not just survive but be made stronger by them, even more able to face the challenges of a world as wild and rugged as he was.
Her gaze went to his face. It was a face of raw, rugged and uncompromising strength. His cheekbones were high, his nose straight, his jaw square. He had the faintest hint of a cleft in his chin. He could have been utterly gorgeous if not for a hardness that lingered in the turn of his mouth. His hair was neat and short, but sweat-darkened, and she suspected it was a shade lighter than the dark chocolate it looked to be. His skin had the weathered look of a man who spent a great deal of time outdoors, and the coppery tones of it made the gray of his eyes seem deep and cool, like the gray of icy mountain creeks.
His eyes were watchful, wary and weary.
Beyond weary. The man was exhausted.
Then a movement over his left shoulder drew her gaze from his. She could feel her eyes widen and her mouth drop open.
Peeking over his shoulder was a baby. A baby! With one tuft of shiny black hair sticking straight out from its head, and with black button eyes and fat red cheeks with grimy tear stains running down them.
“Are you alone?” the man asked.
The exhaustion she saw in his eyes was echoed in that voice—a deep voice, raw as silk.
Still, it was not a good question to be asked by a complete stranger. A man who had watched for a long time before he had made his presence known. Who might never have made his presence known if she had not flushed him out with a shotgun blast. The question was not asked out of any kind of friendliness.
“No,” she lied, instinctively, “I’m not alone.”
Some tension leaped in him, coiled along his muscles. A man ready for anything, including a fight. With a baby on his back.
“Who’s with you?” he asked, his eyes scanning the cabin behind her.
“None of your business.”
“Who’s with you?” he asked again, quietly, but with some unmistakable iron in his voice.
“My friend Sam,” she said defiantly. A nice name. Sturdy sounding. Strong. Loyal. Which is why she had given it to the big bay gelding she used for her saddle horse.
“Why didn’t Sam come out when you fired off that shotgun?” he asked. Something in him relaxed. The faintest hint of amusement lit those eyes before the weariness and caution drowned it.
“Why didn’t you?” she snapped back.
“I thought you might shoot me.”
“I still