.

minutes, Ty felt himself stumble backward in shock. His sense of being in an exhausted state of distorted reality increased. He made himself stand very still, squint through the sleet and snow, demanding it go away.

      It was a Christmas tree. And it was real, because when he blinked hard and looked again, it was still there. Behind plate glass, bright lights winked against dark boughs, sent little splashes of color onto the gathering snow in his front yard.

      He checked his driveway again, seeking familiar landmarks. Turned and studied his house, reassured himself that had been his pasture the cows had been shepherded into, his barn where he had put up his horse.

      His eyes went back to the tree.

      As far as Ty knew, there had never been one set up in the new Halliday house.

      Or at least not in the twenty-six years he had lived here.

      And in Ty’s exhausted mind, a single, vulnerable hope crept in, a wish that he had made as a small boy.

      Maybe his mother had come home.

      He shook off the thought, irritated that it had somehow breached the wall of his adult world. Wishes were for children, and there had been no chance of his ever coming true, thanks to his father.

      In his tired mind it did not bode well that the car in the yard, and the baby in his house, and the tree in his window had stirred something up that was better left alone, that he had not given any power to for years.

      He went around to the back door again, habit more than anything else. In these parts the front door was rarely used, even by company. The back entrance was built to accommodate dirty boots and jackets, hats, gloves, bridles hung indoors in cold weather to keep the bits warm.

      Ty Halliday took a deep breath, aware that the pit of his stomach felt exactly as it had in his days on the rodeo circuit when you gave that quick nod, the chute door opened, and suddenly you were riding a whirling explosion of bovine motion and malice.

      He put his hand on the doorknob and felt it resist his flick of the wrist. At first he thought it was stuck, but then in an evening where he could have done without one more shock, he was shocked again. His door was locked.

      Okay. Maybe one of his neighbors was playing a practical joke on him. Unlocked doors invited pranks. It was a tightly knit community and they all loved to have a laugh. Melvin Harris had once come home to find a burro in his living room. When Cathy Lambert had married Paul Cranston some of the neighbors had snuck into their house and filled every single drawer with confetti. They’d been married six years, and sometimes you still saw a piece of it sticking to one of Cathy’s sweaters.

      Ty lifted a worn welcome mat and found a rusty key. Sometimes he locked up if he was going to be away for a few days.

      He slid the key in the door and let himself in, braced for some kind of battle, but what greeted him was enough to make him want to lay down his weapons.

      His house, which he had always seen primarily as providing shelter, felt like home.

      First, it smelled good. There was a light perfume in the air, woman, baby, underlying the smell of something wonderful cooking.

      Second, the sound was enough to break every barrier a man had placed around his heart—and Ty would be the first to admit in his case, that was many. The baby was now chortling with glee.

      Ty took the bridle he had slung over his shoulder and hung it on an empty peg. Then he took off his wet gloves and tossed them on the floor. He slid his sodden feet from muddy boots, and then took a deep breath—gladiator entering the ring to face unexpected horrors—and went up the stairs off the landing and surveyed his kitchen.

      A fat baby with a shock of impossibly curly red hair sat dead center of Ty’s kitchen on a blanket surrounded by toys. The baby, a boy, if the dump trucks and fire engines that surrounded him were any indication, was gurgling joyously.

      The baby turned at his entrance, regarded him solemnly with gigantic soft brown eyes.

      Instead of looking alarmed by the arrival of a big, irritated stranger, whose long Aussie-style riding coat was dripping water on the floor, the baby’s eyes crinkled happily, and the joyous gurgling increased.

      “Papa,” he shouted.

      Ty said a word he was pretty sure it was against the law to use in the presence of babies.

      Or ladies.

      Not that she looked like a lady, exactly. Through a wide archway, the kitchen opened onto the living room, and first a crop of hair as curly as the baby’s appeared from behind the boughs of the tree. And then eyes, like the baby’s, too, large and soft and brown, startled now.

      Startled?

      It was his house.

      Cute. Just like the car. She had a light dusting of freckles across a delicate nose, curly hair the color of liquid honey in a jar. At first, he thought she had a boyish build, but Ty quickly saw her curves were just disguised in a masculine plaid shirt.

      She didn’t have on a speck of makeup and was one of those rare women who didn’t need it, either.

      “Who are you?” she demanded, a tiny tremor in her voice.

      What kind of question was that to be asked in his own house? He could tell, from the way her eyes skittered around—looking for something to hit him with if he moved on the baby or her—that she was not just startled, she was scared. Any remaining thought that this might be a prank disappeared.

      Her pulse beat frantically in the hollow of her slender neck.

      Ty had to fight, again, the notion that he was somehow dreaming, and that he was going to wake up very soon. He didn’t like it one little bit that exhaustion would make it way too easy to appreciate this scene.

      That exhaustion was making some childhood wish try to push out of a dark corner of his mind.

      Annoyed with himself—a man who believed in his strength and his determination, a man who put no faith at all in wishes—Ty planted his legs firmly apart, folded his arms over his chest.

      She darted out from behind the tree, dropped the tangle of Christmas tree lights that were in her hand and grabbed a lamp. She yanked it off the side table and stood there holding it like a baseball bat.

      Ty squinted at her. “Now, what are you going to do with that?” he asked mildly.

      “If you touch my baby or me, you’ll find out!”

      The lamp was constructed out of an elk antler. It was big and heavy and it was already costing her to hold it up. It made him very aware of how small she was.

      He had to fight to get beyond the exhaustion and the irritation that came with the weariness, to the same calm energy he tapped into to tame a nervous colt. He thought of the locked car and the locked back door.

      He said, “I’m way more scared of a baby than that lamp. Especially one who calls me Papa.”

      He thought maybe her hold on the lamp relaxed marginally.

      “How did you get into my house?” she demanded. “I locked the door.”

      “I used a key,” he said, his voice deliberately quiet, firm, calm. “I happen to have one. I’m Ty Halliday. And last time I looked, this was my place.”

      The lamp wavered. Doubt played across her features for a second. Then she brought her weapon back up to batting position, glaring at him.

      “Why don’t you put that down?” he suggested. “Your arms are starting to shake. We both know I could take it from you if I had a mind to.”

      “Just try it,” she warned him.

      It was a little bit like an ant challenging an aardvark, but somehow he didn’t think pointing that out to her was going to help the situation, and he reluctantly admired her spunk.

      Something