High-Stakes Homecoming. Suzanne Mcminn

too. Something was wrong. This entire series of events was bizarre.

      The spring wind whipped higher, colder, suddenly, and something hard struck his head, his arms. The hound yelped, hit.

      Hail.

      Huge, golf ball-sized hail. The kind of hail that could kill a person.

      “Run!” he yelled, grabbing Willa’s arm, dragging her in the opposite direction of where he knew she wanted to go.

      Penn gave her no choice, forced her into a dead run toward the house, and Willa was terrified her skull was going to be split in two by the hail at any second. And what good would she do Birdie then?

      They reached the house and he yanked open the door. Willa ran inside, Flash whimpering at her heels, and she pivoted back to see Penn’s dark figure fill the doorway behind her.

      The door shut, blocking the storm and the terrible night, leaving her wet and shaking and scared as he turned around.

      “What about Birdie?” she half sobbed, and caught herself.

      She was looking to him, Penn, to tell her what to do now. She was so far gone, it was ridiculous. How could so many things go wrong at once?

      Penn’s gaze riveted beyond her.

      “Willa—” he started.

      She felt a prickle at the nape of her neck.

      “Mommy.”

      The scream that had been clawing its way up Willa’s throat came all the way out.

      She dropped her flashlight and swung wildly. There Birdie stood, in her favorite Pooh Bear jammies. Her big hazel eyes gazed up at Willa, so big, so bright, without her glasses. Emotion smashed into Willa. She didn’t remember moving her feet across the short distance that separated them. She was just there, reaching for her daughter.

      “Birdie, Birdie, Birdie.” She sobbed her daughter’s name over and over as she clutched her against her chest, dropping down, nearly falling crazily backward as she held her.

      Birdie lifted her small face to her, her eyes wide and scared. Willa was scaring Birdie. She had to pull herself together.

      “I was worried about you, sweetie. I couldn’t find you.”

      “I was sleeping.”

      “You weren’t in your bed!”

      “I was in your bed, Mama. I was scared of the storm.”

      Birdie hadn’t been in her bed! She’d checked! But right now she didn’t care, it was a senseless point. She couldn’t resist tugging Birdie tightly against her one more time. Wherever she had been, she was here now. In her arms.

      “You’re wet, Mama,” she mumbled into Willa’s chest, wriggling in her mother’s arms.

      “I know. I’m sorry.” She was soaked and she didn’t care. But she didn’t need to soak Birdie, too. She forced herself to let Birdie draw back.

      Emotion still shot her pulse off the scale. Birdie was alive, in her arms. She wanted to just sit down and cry and hold her precious daughter.

      “Who’s that man, Mama?”

      Willa scrambled to her feet, controlling the sudden, silly—she knew it was silly—this urge to push Birdie behind her to keep her safe. As if she needed to protect her from Penn. Penn had been helping her to search for Birdie.

      But he was also the one who was here to threaten the very foundation of her and Birdie’s lives, take this farm away from them.

      Penn’s gaze, stark in the shadows cast by the flashlight he held directed low, struck her tightly, intensely. Even from several feet away, she felt as if he loomed over her, making her feel short despite her five feet, seven inches. He was…Big was the only word that came to mind.

      Yeah. Big and bad. Good-looking and arrogant. A city slicker here to smash her like a bug beneath his steely boot.

      That was difficult to remember when she was also grateful to him. And way too emotional.