Ellie gave a limp shrug. “He couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
Tears spurted again, infuriating her. She angrily wiped them away. “He couldn’t marry me because he was already married.” Ellie heaved a sigh, took a gulp of cooled coffee and ignored the hard stare Samuel was giving her. “Please, don’t look at me like that. I didn’t know.” She set the cup down, avoided his gaze. “I found out when my boss invited me for lunch at a fancy restaurant. Stanton was there with a beautiful blonde. My boss was delighted. Seems he knew both Stanton and his wife from their chamber of commerce activities, and he couldn’t wait to hustle me over for an introduction. Stanton was not pleased to see me, of course, and since up until then I hadn’t a clue he was married, I wasn’t particularly pleased myself.”
Samuel shrugged his lips, widened his eyes. “No, I don’t suppose you were.”
Ellie set the mug down with enough force to slosh its contents, dismissed the pity in Samuel’s eyes with a flick of her wrist. “Stanton called later that afternoon. I told him I wanted nothing to do with him, and he laughed at me. Laughed. He said I was carrying his child, and there was nothing on earth that could keep him out of my life. I thought he was crazy.” Her lips quivered helplessly. “But he wasn’t crazy. He meant every word. I knew I was in trouble when I received the papers.”
That got Samuel’s attention. “Papers?”
Trembling uncontrollably, Ellie fisted her hands in her lap. “A bunch of legal mumbo jumbo, the crux of which was that I would get a whole bunch of money if I gave up all rights to our child. I refused, of course, so Stanton came to see me. He admitted that because his wife was barren, he’d deliberately enticed me into an affair, then somehow managed to sabotage my birth control. He kept saying that I was young, that I could have more children, but this was his only chance. He cried. He begged. He pleaded. I kept refusing. Finally, he stood up, gave me a smile that turned my blood to ice, and said that he’d see me in court. The next day I got a summons. Stanton was suing me for sole custody of our child.”
Samuel’s eyes glinted, his clamped lips were white with fury. He unballed a fist, regarded his flexing fingers as if seeing them for the first time.
“I was beside myself,” Ellie said simply. “I went to a lawyer, who simply shrugged and said that the Mackenzies were rich enough and powerful enough to win. I didn’t have the money to fight them.”
Samuel took a steadying breath, stared her straight in the eye. “What did you do then?”
She returned his stare without flinching. “I did what I always do when things go wrong. I ran away.”
“But he found you, didn’t he?” Samuel leaned forward, touched her chin when she tried to turn away. “And after he found you, you ran away again, into the woods. That’s how you ended up here.”
A tear ran down her cheek, shifting course with her mute nod.
Samuel stood so quickly his chair fell over. He paced the kitchen, rubbing his temples, his face grim. Stopping, he looked over his shoulder. “Do you think Mackenzie is still looking for you?”
“I know he is,” Ellie whispered, then pushed away from the table and burst into tears. “He’ll never give up, never. Oh, God, Samuel, he’s going to take my son away.”
“No, he’s not.” Samuel lifted Ellie to her feet, hugged her fiercely. “I won’t let him.”
For a brief, sweet moment, Ellie almost believed him.
Chapter Six
Samuel cradled Ellie in his arms, stroking her hair, murmuring softly until her tears dried into his sweater. A ball of pure fury wedged into his gut. Ellie had been betrayed in the cruelest possible way by a man she’d loved, a man she’d believed had loved her. It had all been a lie, a deliberate deception so vile that even Samuel, who had spent years viewing the tattered remnants of violence people inflicted upon each other, was shocked.
Deep down he didn’t want to believe Ellie’s story, didn’t want to believe that anyone could be capable of the sick abuse she’d described. But he’d seen genuine terror in her eyes, and a depth of sorrow that had shaken him to the core. He couldn’t not believe her.
Tucked inside his protective embrace, she melted against him, all warm and quivery and soft. Then she shifted slightly, as if preparing to step away. Samuel tensed, held her tighter, reluctant to relinquish the fragile bond of trust between them. It was more than trust. It was an emotional joining, a dependence. A need.
Need. The word circled in his mind, spurted adrenaline straight to a jittering heart. Samuel feared being needed. More precisely, he feared his own inability to meet that need. He feared failure.
Loosening his grasp, he moved his hands to her shoulders, widened his stance as cool air rushed to fill the widening gap between them. Ellie shivered, sniffed, wiped her wet face with the back of her hand. “I’m okay,” she murmured, although she clearly wasn’t. He pulled out a chair, waited until she’d seated herself before bringing her a glass of water. She drank greedily, licked her lips, tried to smile. “You’re so good to me.”
“It’s about time someone was.” Regretting his sharpness when her expression crumpled, he exhaled slowly, recalled the photo he’d seen in her wallet and forced a gentle tone. “You have no family at all?”
Ellie’s gaze skittered with guilt. “My parents live back East,” she murmured. “But that’s the first place Stanton would look for me. Besides, I don’t want my son learning to greet every problem by tossing a melodramatic hand over his forehead and wailing, ‘Aye, so much pain!’”
A simultaneous demonstration was theatrical enough to have been amusing under different circumstances, but neither Ellie nor Samuel were in a joking mood. Dropping her hand back to her lap, Ellie chewed her lip, gazed toward the cradle. “Don’t get me wrong. I love my parents, and I know they love me, but they come with built-in guilt tentacles that snare a person’s spirit and suck out the joy.”
“So you don’t get along with your folks?” The thought saddened Samuel, who cherished his own parents with godlike reverence.
“We get along well enough. We just don’t see things the same way.” She sighed, rubbed the back of her neck. “I enjoy life.”
“I’ve noticed.” A grinning snowman outside the kitchen window bore mute testimony to that philosophy. “I presume your parents don’t share your fun-loving nature.”
She shrugged. “They have no sense of humor. Everything is a crisis to them.”
“Some things really are a crisis, Ellie.”
“I know that.”
“You can’t always run away from your problems.” He squatted by her chair, sandwiched her fragile hands between his large palms. “Sometimes you have to face them head on.”
“I’m not afraid of a fight.” The statement was shaky, unconvincing. “At least, not a fair fight, but I can’t win this, Samuel, and I’m not going to lose my son.”
“No, you’re not.” It was an irresponsible assurance, he supposed, although he meant it from the bottom of his heart. Having saved both Ellie and her precious child from the icy jaws of death, Samuel had no intention of allowing them to be separated by the coldhearted cad whose cruelty had nearly destroyed them both. “You can’t hide here forever, Ellie.”
She glanced away, her lips clamped and colorless. “Just a few more weeks, until the roads are passable. Then maybe you could drive us somewhere, anywhere.... I’d pay you. I have money in the bank.”
“It’s not a question of money.” Releasing Ellie’s hands, Samuel stood, squeezed his nape and paced the small kitchen until Baloo wandered in to investigate the creaking floorboards. The dog eyed his somber master, then wisely returned to the comfort of his bed.
Samuel continued to mull possibilities in his mind. Running wasn’t the answer. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name, yet he couldn’t dismiss Ellie’s fear of losing Daniel. This Mackenzie character was the child’s biological father. If he was as wealthy and powerful as Ellie described, the courts would be impressed. Add to that the
stability of a long-term marriage, and the ability to provide a two-parent home compared with . a single mother barely able to make ends meet and the Mackenzies had a definite advantage.
“Samuel...” Standing now, Ellie braced herself against the table as if fearing her knees would buckle. “All I need is some time, just a little time. Please, can you give me that?”
The plea in her eyes broke his heart. He reached out, stroked her hair with his knuckle. “Yes, I can give you that,” he whispered, and was surprised by a flood by relief. Deep down, he realized that he’d never wanted her to leave, not really. Ellie and Daniel had complicated his life, but they’d also brought him immeasurable joy.
They needed him. Need. He repeated the word in his mind; for once, it didn’t frighten him.
That evening Ellie cooked venison meat loaf in a round cake pan, adding embellishment from a tube of squeeze cheese discovered behind a half-empty cracker box in the crowded pantry.
Samuel sat down to his meal, and found himself faceto-cheesy-face with a grinning meat loaf that bore suspicious resemblance to mysterious, smiling apparitions that appeared on the bathroom mirror after a steamy shower. Apparently Ellie had stumbled across the bottle of liquid defroster he used on his truck windows. The cartoonish creatures were harmless enough, and oddly amusing, although he’d certainly never admit that out loud. He did, however, look forward to his showers for no other reason than to view her newest creations. Ellie was nothing if not imaginative.
Now Samuel sliced the happy meat loaf without comment, served it with the protective dispassion of a man for whom emotion had become synonymous with pain. But deep inside, tucked away in a secret corner of his heart, a silent smile spread with healing warmth.
Initially Samuel had considered Ellie’s constant cheerfulness to be the gift of a life untouched by sadness. How wrong that presumption had been. She’d suffered unspeakable sadness, endured the depth of deceit and betrayal heinous enough to destroy most people. But Ellie Malone wasn’t most people. She hadn’t been destroyed. Certainly she was frightened, terrified, even devastated, yet her inner joy had somehow survived.
Samuel didn’t understand that, although he admired it, admired her. He was, in fact, intensely drawn to Ellie, to her vibrancy and enthusiasm, to her gleeful embrace of life, and the way she savored each delicious moment as if it were a gift of chocolate.
Beyond that, Samuel also felt a visceral connection to little Daniel with whom he had emotionally bonded from the moment of birth. Daniel was the child of his heart; Samuel loved him with frightening ferocity.
All of which was perfectly natural, he supposed, given the circumstance of proximity and interdependence. At least, that’s what his rational mind insisted. His heart had other ideas.
Ellie’s infectious humor had nourished Samuel’s soul, enriched his life beyond measure. Every time he gazed into those dark, laughing eyes, every time the cabin vibrated with impulsive song, every time a cartoon appeared on a frosty windowpane or a happy-faced grin livened a meal, Samuel could almost forget past failure, and the trauma that had driven him to this isolated wilderness.
For those brief and shining moments, Samuel Evans was a happy man.
An icy sweep of February air rushed through as he ducked into the cabin, hunched forward with one arm cradling his midriff beneath the unlined leather. Baloo shot inside to prance worried circles around his master’s legs, wailing mournfully and pawing the leather hem of Samuel’s bulging jacket.
Ellie dropped the broom, hurried over as Samuel kicked the door shut with a grunt. “My God, what’s wrong, are you hurt?” The frantic questions died on her lips as Samuel twisted awkwardly, withdrew his hidden hand to reveal a melon-size ball of fur sporting spiky, tufted ears. “Ooh, it’s a bunny rabbit.”
Baloo swung his head around, splashed a wet, lolling grin and gave an agreeable bark.
“’Loo found him.” Samuel shrugged one arm out of the jacket, allowed Ellie to tug off the second sleeve after he’d gently transferred the terrified rabbit to his other hand. “It was trapped under a fallen branch.”
After hanging the jacket on a peg, Ellie took a closer look at the tiny grayish white creature huddled in Samuel’s gentle hands. A crimson smear stained its hindquarters. “Oh, the poor little thing is hurt.”
“I figure he must have been grazing buck brush when the branch snapped in the wind, pinned his rear leg against a rock.”
“Will he be all right?”
“I don’t know.” Samuel shrugged, headed to the kitchen table. “Do we have something to lay him on?”
Ellie ducked into the bathroom, returned with a fluffy blue bath towel that she folded into a soft pad in the middle of the table.
“There you go, little guy,” Samuel murmured, nesting the trembling creature on the makeshift bunny bed. “Now, let’s take a look at you.” He frowned, continued to murmur softly as he examined the rabbit’s hindquarters. “Bruising, swelling, some skin abrasion—” he probed with gentle fingers “—obvious soft tissue damage. No overt evidence of fracture, but he made no attempt to hop away when I moved the branch off him, so I’ve got to assume that his ability to use the leg has been severely compromised.”
Ellie’s gaze was riveted not on the bunny, but on the tender touch of the man who was tending it. Long, slender fingers, incredibly sensual, glided across the fragile furred creature with breathtaking ease, competent, knowledgeable, yet so achingly kind a lump raised in her throat. She remembered what it felt like, those knowing hands sliding across her own quivering skin, gentling her fear, soothing her pain, evoking the same trust she now saw in the frightened creature’s eyes.
She remembered, and her heart quickened in response.
“Get down,” Samuel muttered, popping the sensual image from Ellie’s mind. Baloo dutifully hopped off a chair to sit dejectedly at his master’s feet.
Before Ellie’s pulse had slowed appreciably, Samuel’s warm fingers slipped over hers, causing another spike in her palpitating heart rate. “Just keep him calm,” he said, placing her hand over the rabbit’s shivering body: “I’ll get the med kit.”
As he left the kitchen, Ellie stroked the animal’s silky fur, felt the frenetic stutter of its tiny heart. “It’s all right, Snowdrift.” She felt an empathetic kinship with the wounded animal. “You couldn’t be in better hands.”
“Snowdrift?” Samuel laid the plastic case on the table, muffled the snap with his hand so the sound wouldn’t startle his skittish patient. “My brother and I once found a baby squirrel in the woods. Mom allowed us to take it in and nurse it back to health, but she wouldn’t let us name it. She said it was God’s creature, not ours.” He retrieved a bottle of antiseptic, several tongue depressors and a roll of adhesive tape from the case and laid them beside the blue towel bunny bed. “Well, I was kind of an obstinate kid. I figured what the heck, God was too busy to notice one baby squirrel in a whole world full of critters, so I secretly christened the little fellow.”
Ellie watched, smiling, as Samuel soaked a cotton ball with antiseptic and gently cleaned the animal’s abrasions. “And what did you call your squirrel?”
“Fuzzy.”
A snort of tickled laughter escaped. “Fuzzy? Oh, good grief.”
He looked stung. “What’s wrong with that?”
“It lacks a certain creativity, don’t you think?”
“I was six years old.”
“Well, in that case I’ll cut you some slack.”
“Thanks.” Frowning, Samuel tossed the cotton ball aside, reached for a tube of ointment. “Anyway, the day we turned that squirrel loose was the day I finally understood why my mother hadn’t wanted us to name him. While my big brother waved happily and hollered, ‘Bye, squirrel,’ I was bawling my eyes out screaming, ‘Come back, Fuzzy. Come back.’ It was pitiful, just pitiful.”
“Oh, c’mon.”
“It’s the gospel truth.”
“It’s a pile of badger droppings and you know it.” Suppr
essing a snort of tickled laughter, Ellie clutched her hands as if in prayer and launched into a comical parody. “Come back, Fuzzy, come back. Timmy fell down a well and you have to run get help! You’ll be a hero, Fuzzy. They’ll hang an itsy-bitsy medal around your neck and give you your very own TV show.”
Samuel skewered her with a look. “Have you always been this cynical?”
“No, it’s a relatively recent acquisition.” She chuckled, handed him a gauze pad, noted the faint flush crawling up his earlobes. And quite attractive earlobes they were. “Truth time. There was never any Fuzzy, was there?”
Avoiding her gaze, Samuel completed dressing the rabbit’s abrasions, turned his attention to creating a bunny-size splint out of the tongue depressors. “Would you cut a few adhesive strips for me? Three of them, about four inches long.”
Ellie complied with a smug smile. She recognized an avoidance tactic when she saw one. “Well, Fuzzy or no Fuzzy, I’m naming this little fellow Snowdrift, so what do you say to that?”
“I say—” he paused to secure the tiny splint with one of the adhesive strips “—that when this bunny finally hops back into the woods under his own steam, you’re going to be bawling on the front porch, and you’ll wish you hadn’t let yourself love him.”
Sobered by a wistful catch in his voice, Ellie angled a glance upward and saw reverence in Samuel’s eyes. And she saw pain.
Then he blinked and it was gone, replaced by a satisfied glow. “There you go, bunny. A couple weeks of bed rest and you’ll be good as new.” He stroked the animal’s head with a fingertip, then lifted it gently and laid it in Ellie’s arms.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ll be right back,” he mumbled, then headed out the back door.
An insistent whine caught her attention as Baloo placed his front paws on the table to sniff the interesting creature nested in Ellie’s arms. “First me, now a wounded bunny. You’re quite the rescue hound, aren’t you, boy?” Baloo barked happily, swished his tail so fast his bony butt vibrated. “Maybe you’re the one who deserves his own TV series.” She flinched as a drippy tongue flopped out of the grinning muzzle. “On the other hand, maybe not. Ooh, calm down, Snowdrift. You’re okay,” Ellie whispered to the wriggling rabbit. “Baloo just wants to be friendly, that’s all.”
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