by Jane Toombs
Fay put down her fork. “I’m not sure. It seemed to take forever to see a light. To get here.” Chilled by the realization neither she nor the baby would be alive if she hadn’t, she hugged herself.
He reached down and touched her shoulder. “Hey, you made it. Eat up, you need to.”
She nodded and picked up the fork, aware he was right. She did need food. Without her breast milk, Marie would have no nourishment. “Thanks. I could use a change of clothes. And I did pack a box of disposable diapers and some baby clothes in the car, too.”
She swallowed a forkful of scrambled eggs, then paused. “It just occurred to me to wonder why you left that outside light on in the midst of a storm. Were you expecting someone?”
He shook his head, looking uncomfortable. “A habit left over from childhood, I guess.”
“You mean from when your mother left a light on for you?”
“You might say that.”
Puzzled, but also curious about his obvious uneasiness, she asked, “Have I said something wrong?”
He released his breath in a sigh before muttering, “At least I had the sense to leave the damn light on.”
She’d hit a nerve, though she hadn’t a clue why. Somehow she knew, though, it had nothing to do with her.
“Your eggs are getting cold,” he told her.
So they were. She picked up her fork again.
Between naps and nursing the baby, the time passed so quickly Fay was surprised to note darkness when she looked at the windows. Dan had run the washer and dryer, so temporarily, at least, Marie had clean diapers and blankets. That evening, after he’d prepared dinner and cleaned the dishes, he pulled a chair up beside the couch where Fay had propped herself up on pillows.
“I’m still curious about how you got here,” he said. “Want to talk about it?”
“Just the facts ma’am?” she asked, smiling at him.
“My dad used to watch Dragnet,” he said. “Police work in those days seemed pretty cut-and-dried.”
“My dad watched it, too.”
“Was he a cop?”
She shook her head. “He worked as a foreman in an automobile foundry until he retired.” When he could have been so much more, she couldn’t help thinking. At least she hadn’t inherited her dad’s lack of ambition. Fay sighed. “I guess you could say my dad is part of the reason I’m here in this cabin. He didn’t want me to have the baby.”
Dan frowned. “Because your—the baby’s father was dead?”
How careful he was not to say husband, Fay told herself, wondering if all cops were so tactful. “You’re right in thinking I wasn’t married to Marie’s father,” she said. And that was all she intended to tell him about what had happened there.
“Anyway,” she continued, “my mother died five years ago. Since my father and I were at odds, I decided I’d rather have my baby in a more nurturing atmosphere. I still had a couple more weeks to go before my due date, and I made up my mind to drive to Duluth to see my mother’s sister and have the baby there. Aunt Marie and I have always been close.”
“So she’ll be worrying about why you haven’t shown up.”
Fay shook her head. “Aunt Marie invited me to come stay with her any time I wanted to. She said she wasn’t planning on making any trips for a few months and she’d love to have me there. I knew she meant it, which was why I decided to go. I called her to let her know, but when the answering machine started to kick in, I hung up.”
“You didn’t leave a message?”
“No, I thought I’d call her on the way. You probably think that sounds so impulsive, but that’s the way I am.”
“You’ll get no polite denial from me.”
She tamped down her spurt of annoyance. Okay, she had been a tad impulsive. But she’d badly needed someone who cared about her, someone who would welcome the baby. “I did try to call, but my cell phone battery went dead.
“I planned to use a pay phone and I tried that, too, from a gas station near the Straits. But there was only one phone at the place and the guy using it apparently intended to talk forever. The next place I stopped, just before I crossed the Straits, had an out-of-order phone.”
“What you’re telling me is your aunt didn’t know you were on your way to Duluth.”
She sighed. “That’s one of those Sergeant Friday facts. So Aunt Marie won’t be worrying about me.” Fay eyed him. “I did plan to call once I crossed the Mighty Mac, but by then it had started to rain and I figured I’d just drive straight through. No need to tell me, I realize it was a bad choice.”
When he raised one eyebrow slightly and seemed about to speak, she tried to change the subject. “You must have some kind of police rank.”
“Sergeant, just like Friday.”
Though no expert about the police force, she knew sergeants didn’t walk beats. “That makes you a detective?”
He nodded. “Once over the bridge, the rain got progressively worse, I gather.”
“Yes, but I had no idea it was going to get so bad I got lost.” She glanced toward the makeshift crib. “And I certainly had no warning I was going to start labor.”
“The cabin phone’s still out,” he said. “Can’t expect any repairs ’til the storm blows out. And a cell phone won’t work in this remote area, so it’s just as well your aunt didn’t know you were on your way to her. How about your father?”
“I did leave a message on his answering machine saying I was leaving town and didn’t know when I’d be back. Not that he cares.”
She fielded Dan’s skeptical look and gazed calmly back at him. He had no idea what her father was like. Time to try to turn the tables again. It didn’t seem likely he had a wife if he was out here all alone in the wilderness, but he must have relatives. “Isn’t there anyone who might be worrying about you?”
“Bruce, Will and Megan, my brothers and my sister, know I can take care of myself. They live in Evergreen Bluff, the closest town to this cabin. We’ll be going there as soon as we can get out to the main road. Bruce is a doctor and I’m taking you and Marie to him to be checked out.”
“Oh. Well, thanks.” She waited a minute, then said, “Do you actually live in this cabin year round?”
“I live downstate, in Archer.”
“Archer!” she cried. “So do I. What a coincidence.”
As they stared at each other in mutual surprise, she noticed again how bright a blue his eyes were, really an unusual and attractive color. She also saw, for the first time, a thin scar running from his hairline across his left temple. When she realized she was raising her hand as though to touch the scar, she hastily clasped her hands together. What was the matter with her? Had the baby’s birth addled her wits?
Marie cried, as if on cue, and Dan hurried to change her and bring her to Fay to nurse.
The next morning, though intermittent snow mixed with rain still sputtered from the clouds, the wind no longer howled around the cabin. After making sure Fay and Marie were all right, Dan set out to try to find the wrecked car. He wished Fay would get some color back in her face. The slow and careful way she walked around the cabin and her frequent naps told him she still wasn’t up to par.
He was almost to the creek before he saw the snow-mounded car up against a good-sized pine. He was about to trudge through the snow to it when he noticed the bridge over the creek looked wrong. Wading closer, he let loose with a few choice expletives when he realized what had happened. The no-longer-frozen creek, roiling over its banks with snow melt, had washed out the footings on the far end of the bridge, closest to the main road. Great. Just great. No way to cross the damn thing until it got fixed.
As he slogged his way back to the wreck, he tried to console himself with the fact that at least her car was on this side of the bridge so he had access to supplies for the baby and for Fay. After brushing away some of the snow, it was obvious to him the car would have to be towed when that was possible. It seemed a miracle Fay hadn’t been seriously injured.
> He wound up making two trips to transport everything he found inside the car to the cabin. On the second trip he thought about Fay wandering lost and half-frozen through the storm. He gritted his teeth, knowing she and the baby might well have died out here, if he hadn’t thought of his mother’s strange belief about storms and left the porch light on. Though he tried not to think about his mother much, the memory he’d dredged up about the light had saved lives.
But his mother was someone he never talked about, even to his siblings.
“Good thing you brought so much for the baby,” he told Fay, once he was inside again. “Looks like we may be stuck here longer than I figured.” Then he gave her the bad news about the bridge.
“If it can’t be helped, there’s nothing we can do,” she said, much less upset than he’d thought she would be. “You said there was enough food for us, I have breast milk for Marie, and now we have the stuff from the car. We’ll make it all right, the three of us.”
We. The three of us. Her words warmed him even as he tried to push them from his mind. Fay and her baby were his responsibility until he could get the two of them to safety. Still, he was Dan Sorenson, a man who wanted no ties to anyone.
Since Fay was still too weak to trust herself carrying the baby back and forth from the wood-box, Dan continued to fetch Marie for Fay to nurse and, much of the time, to change her diaper as well. He was getting more adept at the latter, especially with the disposable ones. Fay had also included a dozen cloth diapers, which some book she’d read had told her would be welcome in case of an emergency. Dan was sure the author had never figured on this kind of emergency.
He’d thought about and discarded the idea of giving her the only bedroom, in the loft, because he doubted her ability to climb up and down the steep stairs in her condition. Besides, where she was on the couch, near the fireplace, was the warmest spot in the house. Dan had been sleeping in the Morris chair since her arrival since he couldn’t take the chance she or the baby would need him in the night and he might not hear from the loft. He’d never felt such a tremendous urge to protect anyone as he did Fay and her baby.
Watching her sleep, he noticed how attractive she looked with her brown hair now softly curling around her face, in the topaz robe that changed her eyes to the same warm shade. He wondered about the baby’s father, who’d died, and about Fay’s father, who didn’t want his own grandchild. He glanced over at the wood-box, where Marie was sleeping. Though he’d recovered the baby bed from the car and set it up, they’d decided together the baby was better off where she was.
“You’re frowning.” Fay’s voice told him she was awake. “Having bad thoughts?”
“Not as bad as some,” he told her.
“Yeah, I get those in-between ones. I found the best thing to rid myself of them is to work.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
She hitched herself up higher on the couch. “I’m a consultant.”
“That covers a lot of ground.”
“So do I. After I got my MBA, I worked for a high-powered management company that sent me all over the place doing this and that for different firms. Once I had enough experience, I decided I could do better on my own, so I took the leap and it’s worked out great.”
“A high-powered consultant.”
She smiled and said, “Good description.”
“What did Marie’s father do?”
“Something similar, only for a firm, not for himself.”
“Now you’re frowning,” he told her.
“I like a man to be ambitious. Ken…” Her words trailed off.
“Sorry to pry. A cop gets used to asking questions.”
“I don’t mind your questions. After what we’ve been through together we’re hardly strangers. It’s just that I discovered somewhat late that Ken and I didn’t mesh too well. There was no way I could marry him and I told him so.”
Dan hid his surprise. “Then he died?”
Fay bit her lip. “I’d already broken off with him by that time. I had no idea then I might be pregnant, but that wouldn’t have changed my mind. It was all so sudden, the leukemia he never knew he had and killed him almost overnight.” She took a deep breath. “Logically, his death wasn’t my fault, but sometimes I feel so guilty.” Tears glimmered in her eyes. “Why is it logic has no effect on emotion?”
Dan moved from the chair to sit beside her on the couch and took her hand between both of his. “You can’t blame yourself for his disease.”
She sighed. “I know. But then, even though I’ve always used protection, I discovered I was carrying Ken’s child and told my father. He insisted I not have this baby. He hated Ken. Dad never reconciled himself to the fact I meant to have my baby.” The tears ran down her cheeks.
Dan wrapped his arms around her and held her while she wept, patting her soothingly, trying to ignore how good her softness felt against him.
When her tears eased, she drew away, wiping her eyes with a tissue from the pocket of her robe. “Sorry. It should have been Aunt Marie listening to all this, but I didn’t make it that far.”
“I don’t mind being her substitute,” he told Fay. “Not at all.”
Only later did it alarm him how much he’d relished being the one who’d offered her comfort in the circle of his arms. It wouldn’t do. Not at all. The situation was only temporary. Once they could leave the cabin, she’d go her way and he’d go his. Unencumbered, in his case. Alone.
Chapter Three
By the following day, Fay felt strong enough to pick up little Marie, change her diaper and carry her to the couch to nurse. Every so often, though, she had to ask Dan to carry the baby back to the wood-box, making her wonder if it was normal to have such little exercise fatigue her so.
“The plows should be clearing the highway so repair trucks can get through,” he told her in the afternoon. “The problem is I don’t know where the electric and phone lines went down so I can’t tell how long it’ll be before we get them fixed. We’re stuck here ’til I can get a call out about the bridge being impassable.”
“Now that the storm’s over, won’t your siblings worry if they don’t hear from you?” she asked.
“Bruce might not, and Will’s out of town, but Megan’s sure to. We tease her that her mission in life is to mother the world. That’s why I’m out here. She drove me crazy fussing over me at our old home in town. Seemed to think I needed bedside nursing.”
His words reminded her she’d noticed he favored his left leg when he walked. “Were you injured?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Got shot in the leg. Flesh wound. Pretty well healed now.”
“Is that why you’re in the Upper Peninsula instead of on duty in Archer?”
“Some of the reason, anyway.”
Fay was sure the leg wound had been more serious than he let on. She wondered what else was keeping him off duty, but didn’t probe. If he wanted to tell her, he would. But he’d made her curious. “Who shot you?” she asked.
“The perp. Perpetrator. That’s cop talk for the bad guy.”
She opened her mouth to ask what happened to the perp, but decided she was doing exactly what she’d told herself she wouldn’t—probing. “Evidently your job has its exciting moments.”
“Some a lot more exciting than I’d like. Jean—” He broke off abruptly.
“Jean?” she echoed.
“My ex.”
“Oh.” She should have known a guy as attractive as Dan would have been married. At first she hadn’t thought of him as anything other than the man who’d saved her life. Who’d taken care of her and Marie. But there was no denying blond, blue-eyed Daniel Sorenson was a hunk to set women’s hearts—and other parts—throbbing.
Not that hers were. Physically and emotionally she was nowhere near ready for either romance or sex. Still, she did have eyes, after all, and she did like to look at him. She also wanted to know more about why Jean was his ex. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to ask. “So you’re divorce
d,” she said as casually as she could.
His mouth twisted. “Cops’ marriages have a tendency to fail.”
Fay blinked, having never thought about it before. “Why?”
“We sometimes get killed.”
She examined his blunt words. “I admit that’s a real problem, but—”
“Cops also work overtime and often can’t let a wife know they won’t be home on time. The uncertainty of whether their husband might not be coming home because he’s dead or lying in a hospital wounded seems to wear on women.”
“Okay, but that still doesn’t seem to me to—”
“In my case there was also the question of children.”
“Question?”
“I don’t want any. Won’t have any. Not with today’s world like it is. Jean wanted kids.”
Fay thought of his gentleness with little Marie and felt a pang. She could tell he’d already grown fond of her daughter. Dan would make a wonderful father.
“That’s too bad,” she said. “Raising a child has always been a risk, though.”
“Yet you took it.”
She smiled. “I’ve been a risk-taker for most of my life.”
He grinned wryly. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know firsthand.”
“I guess I deserved that. Going back to your divorce. Do you feel it was your fault? Because I don’t. Jean must have known you were a cop when she married you.”
“She thought she could convince me to get into something she considered safer. You may have the same trouble understanding what she never could. I like what I do. Once in a great while, I might even make a difference. I don’t want to find other work, safer or not. No, I don’t blame myself for the divorce, but I do for the marriage. Cops have no business marrying. Especially this cop.”
His tone was so bitter she suspected something else was involved at the root of the problem. Deciding not to touch on that, she said, “I think I can understand why you joined the police.” Though it was true he’d advanced to detective, he seemed to be saying he liked it just where he was. If he had any ambition, he could eventually become a police commissioner somewhere, become a real power. It reminded her of her father staying a foreman all his life when he could have advanced. He’d liked his job, too.