Baby In His Cradle

by Diana Whitney

  “I, ah, must have missed that chapter.” After a cursory examination revealed that no portion of her skin had been frozen, and that she wasn’t in pain or in danger, Samuel covered his mouth and pinched his lips together to keep from laughing out loud. What a sight she was, stuck like a human icicle with her clothing and even part of her hair encased in solid ice.

  “I don’t suppose you happen to have an ice pick in your pocket,” she asked hopefully.

  “Nope.” Grateful that she couldn’t turn her head far enough to see his amused grin, Samuel latched gloved fingers around Baloo’s collar to drag him off the grunting woman. “But I could probably hunt one up somewhere, if the price was right.”

  She wriggled, heaved a sigh. “That’s not fair. I’m hardly in the position to bargain.”

  “Which makes for pretty good timing, don’t you think?” Enjoying himself immensely, Samuel patted her head as if she was a recalcitrant puppy, and was rewarded by her indignant huff. “Let’s make a deal here. You tell me how you got yourself into this ridiculous situation, and I’ll figure a way to get you out of it.”

  “You’ll laugh.”

  “I’m laughing now.”

  “You’ll laugh harder, and then you’ll tell me I should have known better.”

  “That’s probably true.”

  “You don’t have to sound so darned cheerful about it.”

  “Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me to cheer up?”

  “Not anymore,” she muttered.

  Chuckling, Samuel spotted a bucket lying a few feet up the pathway, then swung around to scrutinize the frozen washtub drain. The image that popped into his mind doubled him over, much to Ellie’s chagrin.

  She struggled to peer over her shoulder with adorably narrowed eyes. “It’s not that funny, mountain man.”

  “Oh, yes, it is.” Gasping, Samuel stood, staggered back a step, and laughed so hard his side ached. Clearly Ellie had slipped and fallen while trying to bucket water out of the washtub. “Keep an eye on her, ’Loo,” Samuel said when he’d caught his breath. “Don’t let her wander off.”

  As the big hound accepted his mission with a happy yelp, Samuel went to retrieve an ice pick. Ellie was muttering to herself when he left and still muttering when he returned.

  “Hold still,” he warned. “Unless you consider body piercing to be an acceptable fashion statement.”

  She twisted her head as far as her frozen hair would allow, her eyes huge and worried. “Watch what you’re doing with that thing.”

  “Quit staring. It makes me nervous.”

  “You’re nervous?” She flinched at flying ice chips. “How do you think I feel?”

  “Silly, I would imagine. My only regret is that I don’t own a camera.”

  “There is a god,” Ellie mumbled as Samuel hacked away the ice encasing her hair. When it was free, she raised her head with a moan of relief. “Oh, much better. My neck is so stiff—Ack! What’s that?”

  Samuel followed her horrified gaze to a few hairy brown tufts still stuck in the frozen path. “The good news is that layered haircuts are all the rage these days.”

  “I’m bald,” she wailed, twisting her free arm to feel the back of her head.

  “You’ve got plenty of hair,” Samuel assured her as he chiseled at the frozen sleeve of her jacket. “A few strands are just a little shorter now. Roll forward so I can get underneath your elbow...that’s better.”

  “Be careful. I’m partial to that elbow.”

  “I am being careful—Oops.”

  Her head swiveled around. “Oops?”

  “Not to worry.” His grin was deliberately sheepish. “There’s a sewing kit in the cabin.”

  Ignoring her squinty-eyed glare, Samuel whistled a peppy jingle and hacked at the hem of her flimsy rayon jacket. When the garment was freed from its icy tomb, he sat back with a pleased grin.

  Ellie levered up on one elbow, twisting her torso to examine the torn sleeve. “It could have been worse,” she announced, then blew into her cupped palms to warm them. “Maybe I won’t have to murder you in your sleep after all.”

  “Thanks.” Smiling, Samuel removed his wool muffler, wrapped it around her face and ears so that only her eyes were showing. Her huge brown eyes, with amber lights sparkling like a sunset on a mountain stream, the kind of eyes that pierce a man’s soul and haunt a man’s dreams.

  All at once Samuel’s breath backed up in his chest. Blood roared past his ears, drowning the jackhammer thud of a heart suddenly gone mad. She was beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful woman on earth, but more than that, she was the most enchanting, most deliciously desirable woman Samuel had ever known.

  He wanted her.

  In that split second all the lies he’d told himself, all the excuses he’d made for longings he’d refused to recognize as real dissipated into a cloud of frozen steam.

  He wanted her, wanted this woman more desperately than he wanted his next breath.

  The realization scared him to death.

  “Samuel?” The red wool flexed as she spoke, puffing softly, then pulling back to sculpt the outline of lips so lush, so familiar that he saw them in his sleep.

  “You look pale. Are you all right?”

  He blinked, forced his gaze from those intoxicating eyes. “Sure. I’m fine.” Without looking up, he tugged off his gloves, held them out to her. “Put these on.” The words broke harshly, an angry command. He didn’t have to look up to know she was startled, but she accepted the gloves without comment.

  From the corner of his eye he saw her slender hands disappear into tanned leather. “We’re almost done, right?”

  “Not quite.” Exhaling slowly, he fastened his gaze on the portion of her left hip that was still firmly frozen to the path in such a manner that he’d have to practically press his face against her full, rounded bottom in order to chop her free. A dull throb in his groin elicited a groan that instantly caught Ellie’s attention.

  She stiffened, propped up on her elbow and struggled to peer down at the ice locked around her hip. “What is it, what’s wrong?”

  Samuel dared not look up, fearing he’d be forced to explain the bead of sweat oozing from his brow in freezing weather. “Nothing. It’s just that we still have a lot of, er, territory to cover.”

  She followed his gaze and to his surprise, hooted with laughter. “That’s one way to put it. Not very flattering, but probably more accurate than I’d like to admit.” Settling back into a reclining position on her side, Ellie heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Do what you must before we both freeze to death.”

  Samuel swallowed hard, crouched forward and delicately jabbed the ice pick around the luscious curve of her hip. He worked carefully, methodically, forcing himself to focus on the chore rather than the fact that his forehead was pressed against her denim-clad bottom. She wiggled. His hands started to shake. Her hips flexed. Every drop of moisture evaporated from his mouth.

  Each time he freed a few more inches of fabric, she wiggled, flexed and issued a soft, sensual sigh that damned near drove him wild with sexual hunger. By the time he chipped away the final shards of incarcerating ice, Samuel was in serious distress.

  Ellie, however, was elated. With a gleeful whoop, she sat upright as Samuel parked the pick in the icy bank. Her happy arms encircled his neck as he helped her to her feet. “Free at last, free at last.” Beaming, she reached down to pat the prancing hound’s head with a floppy gloved hand. “I was beginning to feel like a fly in an ice cube.” She turned to Samuel, rosy-faced and glowing. “My hero...again.” Hoisting up on tiptoes, she pulled off the woolen muffler to brush her lips across his mouth.

  The kiss was impulsive, a chaste expression of gratitude that exploded with nuclear heat. Light blasted his brain, a detonation of blinding brilliance that left him reeling, hungry for more.

  He took more, urging her lips apart with a desperation that shook him to the marrow. Her response turned his knees to water, boiled the blood in his ve
ins. A hot, sweet fire burned the pit of his soul. He tasted her deeply, drank her aching sweetness. It wasn’t enough. He wanted to taste all of her. All.

  It was Ellie who broke away, gasping, trembling, her eyes wide with shock, black with desire. She pressed her palms against his shoulders in an age-old signal of feminine retreat.

  Samuel recognized the silent request; he simply didn’t want to honor it, didn’t want to feel her sweet warmth slip slowly out of his grasp.

  But he did honor the request. Gritting his teeth, he sucked a breath of frigid air, and forced himself to release her.

  Ellie stumbled backward until her calves bumped the shrinking snow embankment flanking the shoveled shed path. Her swollen lips moved without sound, then her tongue darted out to moisten them. Her gaze darted, her fingers slipped from his shoulders, tangled into a worrisome leather knot beneath her chin. “I, ah, don’t know what to say.”

  Samuel’s chest constricted. He felt ill. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  She angled a sideways glance, quickly refocused it on the screen porch door. “I think it would be more appropriate to say we shouldn’t have done that.” Her smile was forced, nervous. “I wasn’t exactly kicking and screaming.”

  The memory of her heated response reignited the flame in his gut. He shifted, flinched at the painful pressure of jeans that were suddenly a size too small. “The responsibility is mine.”

  A light frown touched her brow, then was gone. She unlocked her gloved fingers, stuffed them into her pockets. “You’re not responsible for everything in this world, Samuel. What happened, happened, but it wouldn’t have if I hadn’t wanted it to.”

  Their eyes met, sending and retrieving silent messages that both understood, yet neither was willing to acknowledge aloud. When she blinked and looked away, Samuel understood. They’d been alone together for weeks, isolated from the world by the intimacy of their cramped surroundings. They cared for each other. They nurtured each other. In a very real sense, it was natural for them to think about taking the next step, to consummate their emotional bonding with a physical bonding.

  It was natural but it was wrong. Samuel’s feelings were too deep, too jumbled. He had nothing to offer Ellie and Daniel because he had nothing to offer himself.

  His shoulders stiffened reflexively. “It won’t happen again.”

  Ellie regarded him for a moment before her eyes lightened, and a half smile lifted the corner of her mouth.

  It would definitely happen again. They both knew it.

  “Here you go, Snowdrift, your last home-cooked meal.” Ellie slid a plate of carrot chunks and buck brush leaves into the bunny cage, lowered the spring door and sat back on her heels. She glanced over at the sofa, caught Samuel staring at her before he jerked his gaze back to the open book in his hands.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him watching her when he thought she wasn’t looking. Ellie certainly hoped it wouldn’t be the last, but as always, she pretended not to notice. “Are you sure Snowdrift is ready to leave, Samuel? Three weeks doesn’t seem like enough time for his leg to have healed completely.”

  He blinked up as if seeing her for the first time, lowered the book to his lap. “The rabbit is fine, Ellie. The splint has been off for a week, and there’s no trace of a limp. I’m sure that if you asked, our hairy houseguest would agree that he’s more than ready to go home.”

  “But it’s so cold out there. Shouldn’t we at least wait until the weather warms up?”

  “It was cold when we found him. That’s why nature supplied him with a warm fur coat.”

  She huffed to her feet, scowling. “You needn’t speak to me as if I were a child.”

  “That wasn’t my intent.” Clearly it was, or at least so said the amused twitch at the corner of his mouth. “I’m well aware that only mature adults use terms like ‘nooky-wooky, bunny-wunnums’ in conversation with a flop-eared mute.”

  Ellie lifted her chin, issued a haughty sniff. “I’ll have you know that Snowdrift understands every word I say.”

  “Ah, well, that makes one of us.”

  Chuckling, Ellie went to retrieve her fussy son from the cradle. “Women are supposed to be mysterious. That’s part of the allure.”

  “In that case, may I say that you are one of the most alluring women I’ve ever met.”

  Even though she knew he was joking, her heart thumped a little harder. She pressed Daniel to her shoulder, rubbed his tiny shoulders as she gazed across the room. “Am I?” she asked softly.

  Samuel’s smile faded as a slow heat darkened his gaze. He didn’t reply; he didn’t have to. The longing in his eyes was all the answer she needed. Gooseflesh prickled her arms, tangible evidence of excitement she dared not reveal.

  The kiss they’d shared earlier that day still weighed heavily on her lips, and in her heart. Ellie had been kissed before, but nothing had ever come close to the thrill of feeling Samuel’s hungry mouth on hers.

  Samuel wanted her. He just didn’t want to want her.

  The realization sent her heart into wild palpitations even as her rational mind signaled a frantic cease and desist order. Samuel was fighting his yearnings for the same reason that Ellie was fighting hers. They were both living a lie, a pretense of idyllic bliss that was destined to end, and end sooner than either of them cared to admit.

  Despite her deep attraction to Samuel, Ellie knew all too well that the heart can be deceived. Love blinds, betrays. Having already learned that the hard way, the last thing on earth Ellie needed was another such lesson.

  Yet Samuel Evans was as different from Stanton Mackenzie as day is from night. A man of profound strength and exquisite sensitivity, Samuel exuded an aura of sadness that touched Ellie’s soul. There was something powerful about his gentleness, something that affected her in a unique and most disturbing way.

  But Ellie Malone was not ready to put her heart on the line again. Not now. Perhaps not ever.

  Dawn broke clear and cold, a day so crisply blue that Ellie could have wept at its beauty. She bundled in layers of clothing, topped by the colorful rayon jacket with an ice pick tear in the sleeve, and went stoically to the front porch to bid a final goodbye.

  From the steps she watched man and dog tramp the icy snowpack toward the forest beyond. Just before they stepped into the concealing woods, Samuel paused, turned to reveal the furry creature nested in his arms. He appeared to whisper something to the rabbit, hoisted it up for a moment in what appeared to be a final goodbye, then turned and carried the little animal into the forest.

  Ellie watched until the final blur of movement disappeared behind the obscuring trees. A tear seeped out to freeze against her lashes. “Goodbye, Snowdrift,” she whispered. “Have a happy life.”

  You’re going to be bawling on the front porch, and you’ll wish you hadn’t let yourself love him.

  Too bad her heart hadn’t listened. Again.

  Chapter Eight

  Ellie descended the loft ladder clutching framed photographs found in a storage container beneath the unused cot. She took them to the kitchen where Samuel was hunched over the table scrawling study notes in a spiral notebook.

  At the sound of her footsteps, he spoke without looking up. “Did you find anything you could use in that box of old clothes?”

  “There were a few T-shirts, some flannels I can cut down to make nightshirts for Daniel and a couple pair of jeans that might fit me.”

  Her tummy, swollen and saggy for the first few weeks after Daniel’s birth, had finally firmed back to relative normalcy, but there was no way her ample feminine fanny would fit into Samuel’s slim-hipped jeans. She was sick to death of alternating between sweat pants and the maternity denims she’d been wearing when she arrived. When Samuel finally recalled that some of his brother’s old clothes might be stored in the loft, she’d been as excited as a school girl on her first mall excursion.

  Setting the framed photos on the counter, Ellie shrugged the draped garments off her shoulder, h
eld up a faded pair of frayed Wranglers. “Wow, that’s what I call roomy.” Nonetheless thrilled by her find, Ellie laid the jeans aside to admire a pair of corduroys that was less worn, but just as large. “I may have to take them in a bit.”

  “Rory likes his beer,” Samuel murmured, flipping a page. “Last time I saw him, he had the belly to prove it.”

  “Amazing, considering what a skinny kid he was.”

  After issuing a grunt of agreement, Samuel laid down his pencil. “How did you know that?”

  Ellie glanced up from the extralarge flannel shirt she’d spread out to gage pattern dimensions. “Know what?”

  “That my brother was a skinny kid.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot.” Pushing the plaid fabric aside, she uncovered the framed photographs and brought them to the table. “I found these in with the clothes. That’s you, isn’t it?” Excited, she pointed to the smaller of two boys posing beside a rushing creek holding a fishing pole in one hand and a string of fat trout in the other. “Those serious eyes of yours are a dead giveaway.”

  Samuel lifted the photograph, studied it with a smile. “You’d be serious, too, if you’d just lost a month’s allowance. Rory and I had bet on that day’s catch.”

  Standing behind his chair, Ellie leaned forward until her breast inadvertently brushed his shoulder. She shifted quickly but not before she felt his reflexive quiver, heard his quiet intake of breath. The soapy scent of his freshly washed hair wafted up, delightfully dizzying, oddly erotic.

  Ellie moistened her lips, exhaled slowly, waited for her pulse to slow before carefully reaching over his shoulder to touch the image of each fish on young Rory’s string. “So he outfished you, hmm? Let’s see, one, two, three—”

  “Six,” Samuel interrupted grumpily. “My brother caught six. I only caught four.”

  Amused that Samuel’s irked expression was so similar to the one in the photograph, Ellie chuckled happily, gazed down at the somber young face that inexplicably tugged at her heart. “How old were you then?”