Hugh stared down at the windows of Faith Carson’s house.

He’d almost given himself away when he’d let his reaction to seeing Beth’s child for the first time get the better of him. Caitlin Carson was Beth’s child—he was convinced of it, although he couldn’t say how he knew.

But according to the law, Faith was Caitlin’s mother. He’d seen a copy of the birth certificate. Everything about it seemed to be in order. Still, he knew his hunch was right. Even though the accident that had killed Jamie and taken Beth’s memory had occurred a hundred miles away, he was sure his sister had been in this place. Here she’d given birth and for some reason, left her child behind.

It was the slightest of hunches that had brought him to Painted Lady Farm. A baby born to a woman alone, during a terrible ice storm. A woman who was a nurse and could have delivered a frightened teenager’s baby. A woman who was also a widow and had, perhaps, despaired of ever having a child of her own—and who might have been desperate enough to risk keeping another woman’s baby.

He didn’t know the details, but nothing he’d learned led him to believe that Faith Carson was a baby snatcher. He was determined to find the truth, but he had to proceed carefully. He wasn’t the only one searching for Beth’s baby.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marisa Carroll is the pen name of the writing team of Carol Wagner and Marian Franz of Deshler, Ohio. The sisters have published over thirty romance novels in the past twenty years and have been the recipients of several industry awards, including Romantic Times Career Achievement Award and a B. Dalton Booksellers’ Award. They have also been finalists for the RWA RITA® Awards and have appeared on numerous bestseller lists, including the USA TODAY list.

Carol and Marian were born and raised in northwestern Ohio. They pursued careers in nursing, X-ray technology and the business community before entering the writing field in 1982. Marian is employed at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. Carol is writing full-time.

Little Girl Lost
Marisa Carroll

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

THE CALENDAR SAID it was November, but the scudding gray clouds and lowering sky made it seem as though winter had arrived in southern Ohio. The maples and slippery elms had long ago lost their leaves. The mottled trunks of the sycamores blended into the white and gray of the storm clouds. Only the oaks held stubbornly to their tattered brown leaves, the way she had been holding stubbornly to her grief.

No, not stubbornly, Faith Carson told herself as she trudged along the path that skirted a small lake and ended at a tiny, hidden roadside park bordering her farm. “Surely six months isn’t too long to mourn a dead husband?”

She wasn’t talking to herself, not really. She’d addressed the question to her two-year-old Shetland sheepdog, Addy, trotting at her heels. She’d found Addy at the local animal shelter a few weeks after she’d moved into the echoing old farmhouse that Mark had inherited from his grandparents, and which, until three weeks after his death, Faith had never set foot in. Addy was the only friend Faith had at the moment. The little dog pricked her ears at the question and gave a yip of sympathetic agreement.

Six months. Not nearly long enough when that sorrow was coupled with the aching loss of a child barely conceived. Surely six months was only a beginning. Faith blinked hard to hold back tears as icy raindrops touched her cheeks. She had nothing left in her but a sense of bereavement so deep and unrelenting she sometimes felt as though she had died, too, on that mountain road in Mexico.

They had been vacationing, their first real vacation since their marriage, looking for the remote area where thousands of monarch butterflies came to spend the winter. Mark was a computer programmer whose passion was butterflies. It was a trip he had wanted to take for as long as she had known him. But a washed-out section of road and a blown tire had caused their rented Jeep to roll over.

Somehow, for some reason, her heart had gone on beating when Mark’s had stopped as she held him in her arms and their baby’s life drained away between her legs. A loss like that scarred the heart so much the healing might take six years, or sixty—or never come.

She walked out of the trees just behind the rustic two-sided building that, along with a pair of old-fashioned outhouses and a rusty jungle gym, were the park’s only amenities. An expensive, sporty blue car was parked in the graveled lot at the edge of the small body of water the county had named Sylvan Lake, but that was still known to the locals of Bartonsville, Ohio, as Carson’s Pond. A young couple, the boy’s arms wrapped around the girl, her head resting on his shoulder, sat on one of the picnic tables near the blackened fieldstone fireplace that took up the entire north wall of the building. Faith halted, half-hidden by a huge pine whose low branches brushed the ground, and acted as a windbreak on one side of the small picnic shelter.

She hadn’t expected anyone to be in the park on a day like this, certainly not a pair of amorous teenagers. She took a quick step back, deeper into the shadow of the pine. They hadn’t seen her. She could melt back into the woods, retrace her steps through the frosty grass and be home before the raindrops that were now falling steadily changed to sleet. Addy growled low in her throat.

“Shh.” Faith knelt down to fasten the leash she carried in her pocket to the dog’s collar before Addy could begin barking in earnest. She scooped the small dog into her arms and prepared to depart. The teenagers were absorbed in each other and didn’t look in her direction, but some trick of sound brought their words to her ears.

“Beth, we can’t stay here. There must be a town close by. Maybe it’s big enough for a hospital.”

“If we go to a hospital they’ll call your parents.” The girl cried out, a moan of pain and fear. These weren’t just two moonstruck teenagers making out. Something far more serious than that was going on. Addy whined nervously and squirmed in Faith’s arms. The boy turned his head and stared directly into her eyes.

“Help us,” he said, his face as gray-white as the clouds and the sycamore trees. He was blond, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, seventeen or eighteen at most. A good-looking kid, or would be if he weren’t half-scared to death. “My girlfriend’s having a baby. And I don’t know what to do.”

Faith couldn’t believe her ears, didn’t want to. He couldn’t have said what she thought she had heard.

“Please,” he said, raising his voice so there could be no doubt as he repeated the words. “She’s having a baby. I don’t know what to do.”

Instinctively Faith shook her head. “I don’t, either,” she murmured, but he couldn’t hear her above the moaning of the wind in the trees. And she did know what to do. That was one of the things that made her own loss so hard to bear. She was a nurse. She had the skill and knowledge to help save lives. Once, she had even delivered a baby herself. But that had been five years ago in the hospital emergency room where she’d worked while Mark finished up his graduate studies. She had been young and fearless, then. Now she was not. She hadn’t even set foot in a hospital since three days after her miscarriage.

The girl shifted her position, and Faith took a better look at her, her heart sinking. Her arms were wrapped around her swollen middle, which strained against the fabric of her pale-green sweater. She wasn’t wearing a coat and shivered in the cold air. She was very, very pregnant. Her face was white, her eyes dark with fear. “I—I hurt so badly. I can’t walk.”

Feminine instinct and medical training took over, marching Faith forward on stiff legs. She tied Addy to a sapling at the corner of the shelter and hushed her with a stern warning. The little dog dropped to her belly on the cold ground whimpering with anxiety, sensing the tension in the humans around her, but obedient to Faith’s command.

Faith looked from one terrified young face to the other. “She needs to be taken to the hospital.” She took off her all-weather coat and draped it around the shivering girl’s shoulders. She was wearing the sweatshirt Mark had given her for Christmas the year before, a heavy black one covered front and back with butterflies so she would be warm enough without her coat.

“No!” The girl panted, then bit her lip and groaned, a low, guttural sound. The sound of a woman who was almost ready to give birth. Faith’s heart hammered. This couldn’t be happening. Not today of all days. The day her own child should have been born.

“Your baby is coming, and it shouldn’t be born out here in the cold. I’ll give you directions to the hospital in Bartonsville. When you get there the nurses can notify your families—”

Silvery strands of gossamer-fine hair danced in the cold air as the girl shook her head. “I don’t have a family,” she said defiantly. “Only my brother in Texas.”

“What about you?”

“I—I don’t have any family, either,” he said miserably.

He was lying, but before Faith could call him on it another contraction rippled across the girl’s belly. Less than two minutes had passed since the last one. She had to move quickly or the situation would get out of hand. “I’m Faith Carson. I live just down the road at the bottom of the next hill. What’s your name, honey?”

“Beth.”

“And you are?”

“Jamie.” No surnames. Faith let the omission pass. For the moment there were more pressing matters.

“You’re the baby’s father?”

He nodded, his Adam’s apple working up and down in his throat. “Is Beth going to be okay?”

“She needs expert care. You know that, don’t you?”

“We were looking for a hospital. We got lost. I’m—I’m not used to driving in the country. The road’s go every which way.”

“It’s okay. You’re only a few miles from a good hospital. I’ll give you directions, but you must leave now. Your baby’s going to be born very soon if I don’t miss my guess.”

“How do you know it’s going to be soon?” Beth was gasping for breath, clutching at Jamie’s arm with both hands. He stood beside the table, ramrod straight, breathing almost as hard and fast as the mother-to-be.

Faith sighed. “I’m a nurse,” she said. “I know.”

“First babies take a long time, I’ve heard. This—this only started about an hour ago.”

“Has your water broken?”

For a moment Beth looked puzzled, then nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I didn’t know what it was at first, then I remembered from health class. It was this morning. Then the cramps started.” She began to sob. “I hurt so bad. I just want to get this thing out of me.” The sobs turned to a groan, and she dropped her hands to the tabletop, lifting herself into a crouch, straining against the contraction.

“Don’t push,” Faith ordered automatically. “Try to breathe through the contraction. Like this.” She made an O with her mouth and panted.

Beth tried, but she was too upset and in too much pain for the exercise to do any good. She cried out and her knees buckled.

Jamie had gone from looking scared to terrified. “Help us. I don’t know what to do. The doctor at the clinic in…back home…told us the baby probably wasn’t due for another three weeks.”

“Have you had regular prenatal care?” Faith asked.

“I—I just went twice. I had a test where they rub a wand over your stomach—”

“A sonogram,” Faith supplied.

“Yes. My baby’s a girl. But they wanted—” Beth broke off what she was about to say. Faith guessed it was that the clinic doctor wanted to notify her family. She was a little thing, and if she wore baggy clothes, like the sweater she had on now, she probably had been able to hide her pregnancy. “If we go to the hospital they’ll take my baby away.” Beth’s eyes sought Faith’s. They were blue Faith noted, as blue as a country sky on a cloudless June day.

“No they won’t. Not unless you want to give the baby up.”

“I want my baby.” Beth bit down hard on her lower lip as another contraction began.

“Beth,” Jamie said, his tone edged with desperation. “We’ve gone over this and over this. We don’t have any money or jobs or a place to live. How can we take care of a baby?”

“Other girls have. I can, too. You don’t have to marry me. You know that, Jamie. Your parents don’t want you to, anyway.”

“I—I just don’t know how we’ll manage—” He broke off as she cried out again. “Do something,” he pleaded to Faith.

“Do you have a cell phone?” she asked.

Jamie wouldn’t quite meet her eyes. “We lost it.”

So much for the easy way out.

Faith took one more look at the car. It was a two-seater. Warmer than the open shelter, certainly, and out of the wind, but with little room to maneuver. If there was a problem with the birth she would be at an even greater disadvantage shoehorned inside it than she was now. Beth moaned again, leaning against her young lover, straining.

“Don’t push,” Faith said sharply. Beth’s labor was progressing rapidly. Even if she left Addy behind and they all squeezed into the car, the baby’s arrival would probably occur before they reached the hospital. “We’re going to have to deliver the baby here,” she said with false calm.

Beth started to cry harder. “I think so, too.”

Faith reached out and touched her fingertips to Beth’s cold cheek. She couldn’t think about her own grief, couldn’t remember that she should be laboring in the same way as this girl, bringing the baby she had longed for so desperately into the world.

“It’s going to be okay.” She swallowed against the familiar lump of sorrow in her throat, made her voice as soothing as she could manage. “I’m going to deliver your baby and Jamie’s going to help.”

“Me?” He swallowed audibly. “I… What can I do?”

“Do you have any blankets in the car? Towels?”

“We have sleeping bags. And I have a couple of clean sweatshirts. Will they do?”

“Yes. We can wrap the baby in them. How about a pair of scissors?”

The last of the color drained out of Jamie’s face as he made the connection. He shook his head. “No scissors.”

“Not even cuticle scissors? A penknife, then.” Faith held on to her composure with both hands. It wouldn’t do to let these two terrified kids see that she was almost as afraid as they were.

“I have a penknife.” Jamie pulled a small one out of his pocket. “It’s sharp.”

“Good. That will do.”

She’d been burning trash earlier that morning so she had matches in her pocket. She could sterilize the blade to cut the umbilical cord. But she would need something to clear the baby’s nose and mouth, and something to tie off the cord. “Do you have any cotton swabs? Dental floss?”

“In my makeup case,” Beth groaned. “I have floss and Q-Tips. Will the baby be all right being born outside like this? It’s so cold.” She was shivering, but not entirely from the cold. Her legs were shaking hard, another sure sign she was far along in her labor.

“Everything will be fine,” Faith assured her, but she had no such assurance for herself. “Give me the knife.” She held out her hand. “I’ll deal with Beth’s clothes while you get the things we talked about.”

Jamie took off for the car at a run. Faith looked at the shivering girl on the wooden picnic table. It looked hard and uncomfortable but the only alternative was the stone floor. Thankfully Beth was wearing thin leggings and not jeans. If the penknife was sharp enough Faith thought she could split the crotch and panties and at least protect the girl’s legs and feet from more exposure to the cold.

She told Beth her plan and the girl nodded, lifting her hips off the table. Faith said a little prayer of thanks that Jamie’s knife was indeed sharp. The baby had not yet crowned but Faith was certain that one more contraction would bring the top of its head into view. She couldn’t risk examining Beth anymore closely for fear of infection later; she had no way to sterilize her hands. Washing them in the icy water of the old-fashioned pump outside the shelter house would have to do. But she couldn’t leave the laboring girl exposed on the table. She would have to wait on Jamie’s return to do even that much.

“Try to relax,” she said.

“Are you really a nurse?” Beth was half sitting, half reclining against Faith’s arm. But her weight was slight.

“Yes.”

“And you’ve delivered babies before?”

“Yes,” Faith assured her. That it was long ago and far away needn’t be said.

“You’re wearing a wedding ring. Do you have children?”

“No. I’m a widow.” The words came out tight and hard. There was no way she could stop them.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Beth said politely.

“So am I.”

“I have to push again.” The sounds Beth made deep in her throat were no longer quite human.

“Jamie, hurry!” Faith called over the rising wind and the sharp tattoo of sleet on the metal roof. Tiny icicles were already forming along the eaves, and the pine tree’s needles had begun to chime slightly whenever the wind set the branches swaying. Addy turned her back to the wind and dropped her head on her paws.

Jamie started the car and left it idling. He ran up the slope to the shelter, slipping a little on the icy crust forming on the brown grass. His arms were full of two down sleeping bags, a couple of red sweatshirts and a small plastic case, pink and sparkling—the kind of case teenage girls used to keep their treasures safe, emphasizing again how young they both were.

“Good thinking to start the car,” Faith praised him. “We’ll move Beth and the baby inside as soon as we can.” The baby was crowning and there was only time to lift Beth enough to slide one of the sleeping bags beneath her and to wrap the other around her as best they could. Faith murmured encouragement, forcing her breathing into a normal pattern, steeling herself not to show any of her own fear and uncertainty.

Another contraction, another long unearthly moan, and the head emerged. No one saw but Faith. Beth was staring fixedly at the butterflies on Faith’s sweatshirt, and Jamie was watching Faith, too, not wanting to look between his girlfriend’s legs.

Faith’s cracked and bruised heart began bleeding anew as she cradled the baby’s head in her hands. Oh, God, why did you have to ask this of me today of all days?

Aloud she said only, “Okay, honey. You’re doing fine. Just rest now, wait for the next contraction.”

Beth groaned. “When will it be over? It hurts too much. I can’t stand it any longer.”

“Yes, you can,” Faith said soothingly. “This will do it. Her shoulders will come out and the rest of her body will just slide along. I promise. Just push slowly and steadily so you don’t tear. You can do it, come on.”

“Please make it—” The word ended in a long drawn out moan as the baby’s shoulders came free and the rest of her small body slipped into Faith’s hands.

“You have a daughter,” Faith said. Mark had wanted their first child to be a girl.

“The baby’s not breathing,” Jamie whispered.

At the words, Beth—who’d dropped her head against his shoulder—jerked upright. “She’s not breathing. She’s all blue. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. She’s cold, that’s all.” Faith said another silent prayer that she was speaking the truth. She wiped the baby’s face and head with one of the clean sweatshirts, then bundled her into a second, careful not to entangle the umbilical cord. She took a cotton swab and cleaned out her mouth and nostrils as gently, but as thoroughly as she could. It wasn’t ideal, she really needed a suction bulb, but it would have to do. She tapped her middle fingernail against the soles of the infant’s feet, then a second time a little harder. The baby’s eyes popped open and she looked directly at Faith. She blinked once, then opened her mouth, took a deep breath and began to wail. The cry was weak and thready but the most beautiful sound Faith had ever heard.

“Look. She’s turning pink,” Beth murmured. “May I hold her?”

“Of course you can.”

Faith placed the baby in her mother’s arms, pulling the edges of the sleeping bag more closely around them both.

“She’s awfully tiny.” Jamie’s voice cracked as he spoke.

“She’s perfect,” Beth murmured. “Just perfect.”

Faith handed the matches to Jamie, who couldn’t seem to take his eyes off his daughter. “Here, sterilize the knife blade with these. The afterbirth will be coming soon and we’ll need to get the cord cut and tied. Do you want to do it?”

He shook his head. “You do it.” His expression was suddenly grim.

Faith didn’t press the matter. Beth was already beginning to breathe heavily with the beginning of another contraction. “This won’t be as bad,” Faith promised. “It’s the afterbirth, the placenta.”

Beth shook her head, smiling down at the tiny infant in her arms. “It’s okay. I can handle it. Now that she’s here, it’s worth it. Oh, Jamie,” she whispered, looking up at the boy with love shining from her sky blue eyes. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

Jamie didn’t smile back. He looked as if the entire weight of the world had shifted onto his shoulders. “She’s so tiny. How will we take care of her?”

“We’ll manage,” Beth declared.

Jamie didn’t speak again.

Faith delivered the placenta a few minutes later. It appeared to be intact and there was little bleeding. She recited a silent prayer of thanks. With any luck she would have her charges safely in the hands of the competent staff at Bartonsville Medical Center in a very short while.

She bundled the afterbirth into the oldest looking of the sweatshirts Jamie had brought from the car. “We should take this along to the hospital for the doctor to check. You do realize that Beth and the baby need to be seen by a doctor? Your daughter is very tiny,” she said quietly, so that only Jamie could hear. “She seems to be healthy but she might have some difficulty with her breathing, or regulating her temperature. Newborns sometimes do. She should be where she can be monitored.”

“Problems breathing?” His nostrils flared and he swallowed hard. “Like needing oxygen and everything?”

Beth had overheard. “No. She’s fine. We don’t need to go to the hospital.”

“Even if she is okay, we don’t have any bottles or milk or diapers—”

“We can get them. And I’ll nurse her,” Beth said defiantly.

“You don’t even know if you can. What if she gets too hungry? Or something like Mrs. Carson just said happens? We wouldn’t know what to do.”

“We’ll learn.”

“I’ve never even held a baby. She’s so tiny.” There was real panic in his voice. “We only have about sixty dollars left.”

“It will have to do,” Beth said, her eyes glued to the baby.

“That’s barely enough for gas. No way can we stretch it to buy food and formula and diapers. I don’t even know what else we need. I can’t use the credit card—” He broke off realizing that he’d probably said too much. He glanced at Faith and his eyes were desperate, the reality of responsibility overwhelming any joy he felt at his child’s birth. “Maybe it would be better if we—”

“No!” Beth’s refusal cut off what he meant to say.

Faith interrupted. “We can work everything out when Beth and the baby are safe at the medical center.” The ice storm had hit in earnest while Faith had been preoccupied with the baby’s birth. Already a silvery sheet of ice covered everything in sight. It was going to be tricky walking home for her car, but there was no way she and Addy could fit into the sports car for the ride to the hospital.

Beth looked up from the baby to the car in the parking lot. “I don’t know if I can carry her that far,” she said. “I feel all wobbly.”

“Give the baby to Mrs. Carson. I’ll carry you.”

“Please be careful with her, Jamie. If you should slip on the ice…” Faith let her voice trail off.

“I’ll be careful,” he promised. His face was chalk white. Once more he refused to meet her eyes.

She ought to press him for some answers now that the immediate danger to mother and child was past. Where had they come from? Where were they going? The infant cried out again, and it sounded weaker than before. She had waited this long to ask those questions, surely a few minutes more wouldn’t make any difference. When Beth and the baby were safely in the small, but up-to-date maternity ward of the hospital there would be time for answers.

Beth had eyes only for the baby held tightly against her breast. Faith brushed her hand softly against the infant’s cheek. Her baby’s skin would have been this soft and rosy if she’d lived. There was dried blood under her fingernails just as there had been that awful day six months before. She dropped her hand quickly.

“It’s time to go.”

Beth’s blue eyes darkened to the color of a twilight sky. “Couldn’t we stay with you? You must live nearby. Just for a few hours…”

Faith shook her head. She couldn’t have a baby in her house. Not today. “We might get trapped there by the storm. There’s a bad one coming.” She gestured to the icy scene beyond them. “It’s already here. I promise you I’ll come to the hospital as soon as I can get back to my home and get my car. There’s no room in yours.”

“We’d better get going,” Jamie said. “I’m going to carry you, and Faith will bring the baby.”

Beth’s mouth tightened but she didn’t protest again. “Okay.” She lifted the small bundle toward Faith as though offering her the most precious gift in the world.

Faith swallowed hard again, but this time against the tears she could not let fall. How wonderful the fragile little body felt cradled against her breast. A tiny hand worked its way out of the folds of the sweatshirt and clamped onto Faith’s cold finger. The baby was a fighter, stronger than she looked. She could feel the baby nuzzling, searching for nourishment. Warmth pooled in her womb and her heart, melting a bit of the ice that sealed her emotions away.

Jamie scooped Beth into his arms, sleeping bags and all, and started down the slope at a quick pace. Faith looked down at the baby she held. “I wish you were my baby,” she whispered very, very softly. “I would love you and care for you as best I could if you were.”

But she was not. Faith’s baby was dead. Her husband was dead and she was alone.

That was the reality of her life.

Addy began bouncing up and down, straining at her leash, barking in short, frantic yips. Shelties were herd dogs, bred for centuries to protect their flocks. And when they didn’t have sheep to watch over they transferred those instincts to their human companions. She did not want to be left behind by her mistress, and she wasn’t shy about letting Faith know. “Sh, Addy. It’s okay. I’m not leaving you. I’m just taking the baby to the car. Then we’ll take the shortcut home through the woods.”

Faith turned her back on the indignant dog and stepped out from under the shelter into the stinging sleet just in time to watch Jamie open the driver’s door and look back at her over the roof of the car. “We can’t take her with us, Mrs. Carson. Not all the way to Texas. I know you’ll take good care of her. Keep her for us. We’ll be back. I—” His voice broke. “I promise.”

What happened next would stay in Faith’s memory until the day she died. The sleek blue car sprayed ice and gravel from its back wheels as Jamie roared out of the parking lot and fishtailed down the steep, narrow drive toward the county road that led to the state highway. For a split second Faith saw Beth’s face, her hands pressed against the window as if she were trying to escape, her mouth open in a soundless scream of anguish and protest.

“Don’t go! Don’t leave the baby.”

But they were already gone.

Faith was alone in the storm.

But not really alone.

For she held in her arms the one thing she wanted most.

CHAPTER TWO

Two and a half years later.

HUGH DAMON RESTED his forearms on the steering wheel of his much traveled Blazer and looked out on the tapestry of farm fields that stretched toward the low hills on the horizon. In the shallow valley below him a century-old brick house sat squarely in the middle of a grove of massive oaks and maples.

Painted Lady Butterfly Farm and Guest Lodging, stated a tasteful white-and-gold-lettered sign on the grass verge of the sleepy county highway he’d been driving since he’d left Cincinnati an hour ago. He hadn’t expected his search to bring him this far east, but it had.

The house itself was a monstrosity of Victorian overindulgence that made the engineer in him cringe. Elaborate gingerbread gables and bay windows abounded. There was even a widow’s walk on the roof. But the native red brick had mellowed with the years, allowing the building to blend into its surroundings, and the ornate trim was painted a pale cream instead of white, softening the effect still more.

On the other hand the red, clapboard barn behind the house was a masterpiece of function and design. Set on a native stone base, it was large and imposing, with a high-pitched slate roof and the same cream paint on the doors and windows. A working barn from the looks of it. Through the open double doors Hugh could see a big green tractor and what looked like an even bigger combine, dwarfing a minivan. Farmers didn’t build barns like that anymore. They couldn’t afford to, and it was to the owner’s credit that she spent the necessary money for its upkeep.

Beyond the barn were fields of soybeans and corn, the beans barely higher than the lush green carpet of lawn that abutted them, and the corn knee-high only to a small child at this stage of growth. There was also a pond complete with a small dock and an angled telephone pole with a long rope attached, just perfect for swinging out over the water on a hot summer’s day.

A large fenced-in area several acres in size directly behind the big house wasn’t planted in any cash crop, as far as Hugh could tell, but seemed to be left as meadow. Spindly, dried pods of milkweed provided sentinel posts for red-winged blackbirds. Red, pink and yellow flowers bloomed among the waving grasses. At the very edge of what he now recognized as a naturalized garden, there was a greenhouse-type building.

The butterfly house he’d read about on the Internet, he supposed. Along with the three small, fifties-era tourist cabins to his left, it gave Painted Lady Farm and Guest Lodging its claim to fame.

Butterflies.

Beautiful, ethereal, innocent. And in many cultures said to represent the souls of lost children.

The stuff of his sister’s nightmares.

They were what had drawn him to this place.

Did it hold the answers he sought? Or was it just another dead end?

He’d find out soon enough. He turned his attention to the vintage cabins, one of which, the largest, he’d already reserved. They were painted the same cream color that highlighted the house and barn, but were accented in pine-green with window boxes filled with red geraniums, just coming into bloom. Round-backed, metal lawn chairs flanked the front doors inviting weary travelers to sit a spell and watch the sun set behind the hills.

The cabins, a reminder of times when travel cross-country was an adventure, not a blur of fast-food restaurants and strip malls glimpsed from a super-highway, were as carefully preserved and maintained as the barn and house. It was just good business to keep the place in top-notch shape, Hugh reminded himself. It was no indication whatsoever that the owner was a good and caring person who loved the land and its buildings. None at all.

A small sign, hanging beneath the larger one, proclaimed the farm and cottages the property of one Faith Carson and directed guests to the butterfly house for check-in, or to the back door of the main house if the butterflies weren’t in season. But butterflies were very obviously in season this late May afternoon. A big yellow school bus was parked in the gravel lot beside the barn. Small children raced around the yard, some brandishing what appeared to be large, colorful foam butterflies attached to sticks, the boys attempting to fight duels, the girls swirling around like ballerinas. It seemed he had arrived in the midst of an elementary school outing to see the butterflies that Faith Carson raised.

Now was probably not the best time to announce his arrival. He wanted to meet the object of his search alone. If he had to wait until nightfall to gain that advantage he would.

He put the Blazer in gear and drove up the gentle rise to the top of the hill. An old but well-maintained cemetery occupied the crest, weathered marble stones warming in the sunshine. The lettering on most of the markers was so faded he couldn’t read them from the road except for the newest one. The name engraved on the granite stone was Mark Carson and the date of death, just days short of three years before. It was the grave of Faith Carson’s husband.

Hugh pulled the Blazer onto the grass and opened the door. The air was humid, filled with the scents of newly turned earth and the sound of birds. A gigantic red pine shaded the oldest of the stones. As he walked, he realized many of the graves belonged to Carsons, some predating the Civil War if he was reading the faded numerals correctly. Probably all related to the dead man whose headstone drew him closer almost against his will. Hugh had no idea what it was like to have roots this deep.

He’d left home at seventeen. And after their mother had died in a car accident five years ago he’d had no one but his half sister, Beth, in his life. To his eternal regret he hadn’t returned to Texas to take care of her then. Instead he’d sent her off to the father she’d barely known in Boston. She’d been miserable and lonely, and like many miserable, lonely teenage girls she’d gotten pregnant. And run away. The flight had ended in a terrible accident that had killed her boyfriend and robbed Beth of her memory and almost her life.

And had sent him in search of a child she didn’t remember.

A newborn baby that had disappeared without a trace.

Hugh hunkered down on the balls of his feet and peered more closely at the lettering on the stone.

Mark Carson

Beloved Husband of Faith

and

Father of Caitlin

The question that had driven him to this place wasn’t whether the dead man was the father of Faith Carson’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. But whether Faith Carson was actually her mother.

Or was the child she called hers, really his sister’s baby?

That was what he’d come to Painted Lady Farm to find out.

Faith waved the Bartonsville Elementary School bus out of the yard. Having 35 eight-year-olds underfoot for an hour and a half was exhausting. She wondered how teachers could do it all day, every day. Still, she enjoyed having the school groups come to the butterfly house. It was the kind of thing Mark would have loved to see happen.

She turned back to the T-shaped glass-and-metal building that had been specially designed by an entomologist friend of her late husband. The top portion of the T was a greenhouse, open-sided now that the weather was warm. It contained a small gift shop where she sold butterfly and hummingbird feeders and figurines along with gardening books and paraphernalia. It also contained tables of colorful bedding plants and shrubs that especially appealed to butterflies and hummingbirds, along with vegetable plants and kitchen herbs.

The butterflies themselves were housed in the back half of the building in a gardenlike setting that Faith had spent the entire winter after Caitlin’s birth creating on paper, and the summer after bringing to reality with hours and hours of backbreaking work.

It had taken a sizable portion of Mark’s life insurance settlement to build the greenhouse and butterfly habitat. Perhaps too much, but it had been for the best that part of her comfortable nest egg had been spent, since that had forced her back into working two days a week at the Bartonsville Medical Center. And being back at work had forced her back into society, which was important for Caitlin if not for herself.

At first she had avoided anything to do with the small farming community where members of her husband’s family had lived for four generations before his grandparents had moved to Cincinnati after the end of World War II. Now she was the only Carson who shopped along Main Street, belonged to the garden club and attended the church where one of the stained-glass windows had been dedicated in the family name, but she felt at home. She had put down roots. No more crisscrossing the country as Mark moved from one troubleshooting systems project to the next for the huge software conglomerate he’d worked for. Next year she’d enroll Caitlin in Sing, Giggle and Grin Preschool two mornings a week. Her daughter was bright and quick for her age. A slender, elfin-faced bundle of energy with silver-gilt hair and her own green-gold eyes.

The center of her universe appeared at the back door of the house. “Hi, Momma,” Caitlin called in her piping, toddler’s voice.

“Hi, Kitty Cat,” Faith called back, lifting her hand to shade her eyes from the bright spring sun. On the western horizon storm clouds had begun to form, not an unusual occurrence for this time of year, but it wouldn’t hurt to check the weather forecast when she got back into the house. It was tornado season after all. But for now the spring afternoon was perfect, warm and only a little humid.

“I awake,” Caitlin announced unnecessarily.

“I can see you are.”

“She did take a nice nap.” Faith’s older sister, Peg, appeared behind Caitlin and hooked her finger inside the collar of the child’s pink Winnie the Pooh embroidered sweatshirt to keep her from tumbling headfirst down the porch steps. “And she went potty like a big girl, too.”

“You did?” Faith clapped her hands, making her tone excited and incredulous.

Caitlin nodded vigorously. “Big girl.”

“You are a big girl. Mommy’s so proud of you.” Faith opened the wrought-iron gate that separated the old herb garden she was slowly restoring and Caitlin’s play area on the other side of the brick walkway, from the rest of the yard.

Faith gathered the little girl into her arms and hugged her tight. Caitlin was the most precious thing on earth to her. Her whole life revolved around her daughter. Having her to love was nothing short of a miracle.

Caitlin hugged her back then wriggled to be free. “Cookie,” she said emphatically. “I want a cookie.”

“I could go for a cookie myself. How about you, Aunt Peg?”

Peg glanced at her watch. “No cookies for me. I’m dieting as usual.” Peg was two inches taller than Faith and full-figured. She had their mother’s dark-brown eyes and rich auburn hair. She was five years older than Faith’s thirty-one, and had dropped out of college to raise her younger sister when their mother had died of kidney failure when Faith was fifteen. Their quiet, hardworking father had died just a few years later—of a broken heart, Faith often thought.

A year and a half earlier Peg and her two boys had moved to Ohio from upstate New York to be closer to Faith and Caitlin. At Christmas she’d married Steve Baden, who farmed Faith’s acreage for her, and whose large and close-knit family had taken all three of them under their wing.

Peg was also the only other person who knew that Caitlin was not Faith’s biological daughter.

They walked back into the kitchen, and Faith went to the cookie jar.

“Two cookies,” Caitlin demanded.

“I think I’m raising a Cookie Monster here,” Faith lamented, handing over the demanded treats.

“Are you kidding? She’s an angel compared to Jack and Guy at that age.” Peg rolled her eyes. Her boys were seven and nine and every bit as ornery as their mother proclaimed them to be.

Peg looked at her watch again. “I’d better be going. Steve’s cutting alfalfa at his uncle’s place, and I should be home when the boys get off the school bus, or they’ll trash the kitchen making snacks.”

“I really appreciate your watching Caitlin this afternoon.”

“I love watching my adorable niece.” Peg had never once let slip by word or action that Caitlin wasn’t Faith’s daughter. Despite her profound misgivings over Faith’s actions, she’d accepted Caitlin completely. “What’s on your agenda for the rest of the afternoon?”

“Caitlin and I are going to gather up the feeding dishes in the butterfly house to wash them for tomorrow, and then we’re going to walk up the lane to make sure the big cottage is ready for our new guest. He’s supposed to be checking in this evening.”

Peg’s eyebrows went up a fraction. “Is he by himself?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. Why do you ask?” But Faith thought she already knew the answer to that question. Peg worried about her.

“Just curious. You’re so isolated out here.”

“I’m not isolated. You spend too much time watching those women-in-jeopardy movies on the Lifetime channel. I’m as safe here as you are a mile down the road.”

“I have a husband. You’re alone.”

“But not lonely,” Faith said, firmly, if not altogether truthfully. She had loved Mark, and with that love she had given him faith and trust and honesty. She couldn’t envision a relationship that didn’t contain all those elements, and she could never be honest with a man again, not completely. She had a secret to keep. Now that Peg was married again it added another layer to Faith’s burden. Because of what she had done two and a half years ago, Peg could never be totally honest with her new husband—for her sister’s sake.

“Okay, I know when to change the subject.”

Faith shook off her heavy thoughts. “And if my guest puts one foot wrong I have a vicious watchdog to protect me don’t I, Addy?” At the mention of her name, the sheltie pricked up her ears and wagged her tail. She’d been pouting a little all afternoon because Faith had made her stay in the house while the schoolchildren were visiting. Not all of them appreciated being herded around the yard by a wet nose.

“Watchdog, my fanny. She’d let the devil himself inside if he called her a pretty girl,” Peg snorted. “Well, I’m off. I need to run into the IGA and pick up some bread and milk to feed the horde. Anything you need I can drop off on my way back out of town?”

“Not at the moment, but thanks for asking.”

“Bye-bye.” Caitlin, her mouth still full of cookie, hugged Peg’s plump thigh.

“Bye, sweetie. See you Friday.”

Caitlin ran to the breakfast nook’s bay window and watched Peg get in her pickup and drive off. “Watch Blue’s Clues now,” she announced as the sound of the rough-running engine faded away.

“I have a better idea. Want to go see the butterflies?”

“Yes.” Caitlin clapped her hands and nodded so hard one of the little butterfly-shaped clips in her hair came loose and the silken strands floated around her face. Faith sold the clips in the gift shop in a myriad of sparkling colors. They were very popular with the little girls who visited. “See ’flies.”

Faith smoothed Caitlin’s hair back from her face and secured it with the retrieved clip. “Come on, then. We’ll go before any more customers drive up the lane. We’ll have them all to ourselves.” She carried Caitlin outside and into the greenhouse, then placed her in the lightweight folding stroller she kept just for this purpose. Caitlin loved the butterflies, but the insects were far too fragile for the toddler to be let loose among them.

They crossed through the greenhouse and Faith opened the first door to the butterfly sanctuary, automatically glancing to the left into her tiny cubbyhole of a breeding room. An array of gray-and-brown chrysalises hung from a foam board in an alcove, carefully suspended from a pin with a head color coded to the species waiting to emerge. To a casual observer they appeared wizened and dead, but inside they pulsed with life and in a few days a new batch of jewel-winged butterflies would be ready to release into the habitat.

This was her second shipment of tropical and ornamental butterflies this season. Their life spans were short, and she needed to restock the habitat every few weeks with specimens she ordered from a breeder in New Jersey. Someday she would like to raise the exotic forms of the species herself, but she would need a much larger operation and more disposable income to house and winter over the specific plants each species needed to breed.

Caitlin chuckled as the gentle puff of air from the specially designed door—which blew air back into the habitat so that the butterflies couldn’t escape—lifted the fine strands of her hair. It was very warm in the glass house, more humid than the outside air, at least for the time being. Faith turned on the exhaust fan in the far gable of the building. The opening was covered with fine netting so none of the butterflies could be sucked outside.

“Pretty!” Caitlin squealed, reaching for a huge blue morpho as it glided swiftly by. The spectacularly colored tropical butterfly was one of the visitor’s favorites.

“Daddy liked them, too,” Faith said. To everyone else, Mark was Caitlin’s father, just as Faith was her mother, and it wouldn’t be natural not to talk to her about him. Above all else Faith wanted everything she did for Caitlin to seem natural.

She glanced through the chrysalis-room window that gave a view of the parking lot. It was empty. She’d probably have a spate of customers again in the early evening if it didn’t rain, but now the two of them were alone.

She picked Caitlin up and sat down on one of the rustic wooden benches that were scattered throughout the habitat. She’d made the butterfly house as near to a tropical garden as she could manage. There were paving stone pathways, raised beds of verbena, impatiens, butterflyweed, rudbeckia. The plants all in shades of pink and blue, purple and yellow that butterflies loved. She’d added large specimen plants, ferns, small trees and host plants like dill and parsley, Queen Anne’s lace and African milkweed, to encourage the laying of eggs and as food for emerging caterpillars.

Steve and Peg had helped her build two waterfalls of lightweight landscaping rock—it was how they’d first met—a small one directly across from the door, and a much larger one that climbed almost to the ceiling in the farthest corner of the house so that the sound of falling water was everywhere. She loved this place, and Mark would have loved it, too. If he’d lived.

But if Mark had lived she would not have Caitlin.

She seldom let herself think of the dark days after Mark had died anymore. She preferred to believe her life had started the day Caitlin was born. It was a task she was mostly able to accomplish.

The sun disappeared behind a cloud and the butterflies disappeared from the air almost as swiftly, settling on leaves and flowers and feeding dishes to await the sun’s return. Faith stood up, deciding to come back for the dishes later, and set Caitlin back into the stroller, then checked her backside in the long mirror beside the door. Butterflies often landed on visitors unawares and had to be carefully removed before anyone left. Today no colorful hitchhikers had attached themselves to her.

A rumble of thunder came rolling across the fields, so faint and far away it was felt more than heard. The wind had shifted while she was inside the butterfly room and the big baskets of red and white impatiens and trailing blue lobelia were swinging wildly from their hangers.

“Darn, I should have asked Steve to take them down for the afternoon when he was here earlier,” Faith muttered half to herself, half to Caitlin. The hanging baskets were some of her best sellers and she didn’t want to see them ruined by a storm. Her brother-in-law was six foot five and he’d hung the baskets high enough so they weren’t a hazard to the skulls of customers, but they were out of Faith’s reach, even standing on her tiptoes.

“Stay put like a good girl and I’ll take them down,” Faith told Caitlin, wishing she’d remembered to bring a cookie along with her. Caitlin had been an inquisitive baby and now, in the midst of the terrible twos, she was always on the go, poking her little snub nose in every nook and cranny the moment Faith’s back was turned.

Faith retrieved the big stepladder that she used to open the vents in the roof of the greenhouse and set it up under the hanging baskets. But she’d positioned the ladder just a little too far from her objective and had to lean precariously to reach the first basket. To make matters worse the chain refused to come free of the hook. “Drat,” Faith muttered, wishing she could give voice to something a little more stress-relieving, but she’d learned the hard way that Caitlin was a perfect mimic when it came to swear words.

She wrestled the first basket free, making a mental note to get Steve to lengthen the chains, customer liability or no, and reached over to take down the second. A flicker of movement from the direction of Caitlin’s stroller caught her eye at the same moment a dusty black Blazer turned off the road and started down the lane. A last-minute customer stopping in on the way home from work, or the man who had rented the cottage? It didn’t really matter who it was, she’d rather not be seen struggling down off the ladder with the two heavy baskets swinging from each hand.

“Caitlin, honey,” she said over her shoulder. “Are you being a good girl and sitting still for mommy?”

A tremor of movement and a piping voice directly below her sent Faith’s heart into her throat. “I help you.” A small hand tugged on the leg of her slacks. Caitlin had crawled out of her stroller and climbed up the ladder. Now she was perched a good four feet off the ground, and blocking Faith’s way.

“’Fraid,” Caitlin mumbled suddenly, clinging like a limpet. Faith would have to lower the heavy baskets by their chains as far as she could, let them drop the rest of the way to the floor, then twist around and pull Caitlin into her arms. But as she shifted her weight one of the ladder’s legs began to sink into the soft earth. Faith let out a gasp as she pitched forward.

“Can I help you with those?” a male voice asked.

Faith looked toward the source of the voice. The occupant of the black Blazer was standing just inside the greenhouse entrance. He wasn’t a tall man, but solidly built with broad shoulders that tapered to a narrow waist, and long blue-jean clad legs.

“No, don’t bother.” Faith swallowed to ease the lump of anxiety that had lodged itself in her throat. She could feel Caitlin wobbling on the step behind her as she attempted to look around at the stranger. “It’s…it’s what’s behind me I’m worried about.” She was going to have to drop the heavy baskets, there was no help for it. The ladder was sinking more deeply into the soft earth each time she shifted her weight. In another few seconds it would tumble over taking both of them with it.

The stranger in the doorway took two long steps forward to see what she was talking about. His eyes widened a moment at the sight of Caitlin clinging to Faith’s pant leg.

“So that’s what has you treed. Come here, little one,” he said, his voice slightly rough around the edges, but with a Southern lilt underneath. “Time to get down.”

“Hi,” Caitlin said, brightly and to Faith’s surprise she held out her arms to the stranger.

“Hi, yourself.” He lifted her up into one arm and steadied the ladder with the other.

“I climb high,” Caitlin informed him smugly.

“Too high.” Faith started down the ladder. It was still tilted at an awkward angle, but she made it without making a fool of herself by falling, even when he reached out and laid a steadying hand on her elbow.

A strange shiver went up and down her spine. Not because his hand was cold or his touch too personal. It wasn’t. His hand was warm, slightly rough against her skin and he let go of her the moment she was steady on her feet. But still his touch unsettled her.

“I go high. I big girl.”

“You are a very brave girl,” he said in a wondering tone. He had a strong face, stern looking, all masculine lines and angles. Not a handsome face, but an intriguing one. As she watched, it softened and relaxed as Caitlin’s laughing giggle coaxed a smile to his lips.

“I Caitlin.”

“Hello—” he hesitated for a brief moment, “—Caitlin.”

Caitlin wrapped her arms around the stranger’s neck. She was a loving child, but she was usually reserved around people she didn’t know, especially men. Caitlin planted a kiss on his cheek. “I like you,” she said.

Faith dropped the heavy baskets and held out her arms. A rush of protectiveness coursed through her. The instant connection between her child and this stranger unsettled her even more than his touch. “Thank you. I’ll take her now.”

He placed Caitlin in her waiting arms. “I don’t think she’s suffered any harm from her climb.”

Faith’s sudden anxiety attack faded away once she held her daughter. She tried to summon a smile and thought she mostly succeeded. “She climbs like a monkey.”

“And you’re all right, too?” he asked, fixing his dark gaze on her directly for the first time. His eyes were blue, like dark, still water, or the color of the sky at twilight. “You look a little pale.” Once more Faith’s breath caught in her throat. Whatever had made her think he wasn’t a handsome man? When he smiled it took her breath away. She would have to be a dead woman not to respond to that smile. “No strains or sprains? Those baskets look heavy.”

“I’m fine, really,” Faith insisted, although her left shoulder was aching a little. She fell back on formality to hide her continuing confusion. “Thank you for your help. I’m Faith Carson.” She shifted Caitlin’s slight weight and held out her hand.

He gave her his. “Hugh Damon. I’ve reserved one of your cottages for the week.”

“Yes, Mr. Damon. Please wait a moment. I’ll get you the key.” She attempted a smile of her own. “Let me thank you for your rescue of me and my daughter one more time. And, of course, welcome to Painted Lady Farm.”

THE STORM ROLLED through quickly leaving the air fragrant with the scent of wet grass. Twilight lingered a long time, the sky shading from red to orange to dusky pink and purple-gray, before the stars twinkled to life in the east. Hugh stood beneath the shelter of the high-pitched overhang at the back of the cottage. Beneath his feet were fieldstones that formed a small patio edged by a low stone wall and flowering plants, fragrant with scents that were heady but unfamiliar. He stared down at the lighted windows of Faith Carson’s house.

He’d almost given himself away earlier, when he’d let his reaction to seeing Beth’s child for the first time get the better of him. She was Beth’s child; he was convinced of it, although he couldn’t say how he knew.

Caitlin Carson looked a great deal like his sister had at that age, the same elfin shape to her face, the gossamer fine hair. But Caitlin’s eyes were not blue, like Beth’s, like his. They were green-gold and changeable, exactly the same color as the woman who called herself her mother. Otherwise there was little resemblance between them. Faith Carson’s hair was brown, her face more rounded. Her figure, too, was rounded. In all the right places he had to admit, but her body type was not the same as Caitlin’s, who would grow up as slender and petite as Beth. But if he commented on that fact Faith Carson would say her daughter took after her dead father, not her mother, and her suspicions would be aroused.

She was Caitlin’s mother according to all the laws of the land. He’d seen a copy of the child’s birth certificate. Everything about it seemed to be in order. But still he knew his hunch was right. Even though the accident that had killed Jamie Sheldon and taken Beth’s memory, had occurred a hundred miles away in another state, he was convinced she had been in this place. Here she’d given birth. And for some reason she’d left her child behind. Despite all the damage to her body and her mind, that memory had not been completely erased. She remembered the baby crying in the snow. And she remembered butterflies.

It was the slightest of hunches that had brought him here. A baby born to a woman alone, during a terrible ice storm. A woman who was a nurse. A woman who could have delivered a frightened teenager’s baby. A woman who raised butterflies. A young widow who, perhaps, despaired of ever having a child of her own and who would take the desperate risk of keeping another woman’s baby.

He didn’t know the details, but nothing he had learned led him to believe that Faith Carson was a cold-blooded baby snatcher. He was determined to find the truth for Beth’s sake but he had to proceed carefully. He didn’t want to bring the law down on his sister for abandoning her baby, anymore than he wanted to see Faith Carson jailed for kidnapping—at least not yet. The whole situation was a minefield. One misstep on his part could spell disaster for all of them.

Faith Carson was wary of him, and he would have to be careful to earn her trust before he brought Beth here. He was convinced his sister’s well-being, and certainly her happiness, depended on learning the truth of the events that were the basis of her nightmares.

But he wasn’t the only one searching for Beth’s baby. Jamie’s parents were determined to learn the fate of their lost grandchild. And they would not stop with merely learning that truth. They wanted the baby. And they were rich and powerful enough to take her from Beth, from Faith Carson. From him. If they discovered where she was.

CHAPTER THREE

“CAITLIN SEEMS TAKEN with your renter,” Peg said, peering out the window above the kitchen sink. Hugh Damon had been staying in the cottage for several days now, over the long Memorial Day weekend, and the third anniversary of Mark’s death.

“She’s taken with anyone who spends time swinging her.” Faith was standing in front of the open refrigerator, enjoying the blast of cool air as much as searching for juice for Caitlin’s afternoon snack. It was 85 degrees, and the still air was heavy with humidity and the threat of approaching storms.

Faith snared the plastic bottle of apple juice from behind the milk where it had been hidden and shut the refrigerator door, coming to stand beside her sister. She had made up her mind to ignore her first disquieting reaction to Hugh Damon, but it didn’t mean she was comfortable talking about him.

Faith watched him push Caitlin in her tire swing, as Addy lolled in the shade beneath the picnic table. The muscles in his back and shoulders moved smoothly beneath the light fabric of his shirt. His thick, dark-gold hair lay heavy and straight against his forehead. He wore no jewelry except a serviceable-looking wristwatch. That was another direction she didn’t want her thoughts to take. He was a good-looking man, who didn’t wear a wedding ring.

“She’s usually a little shy around strangers,” Peg observed, running cold water into a glass she’d taken from the cupboard. Peg had started a wallpapering and painting business when she’d moved to Bartonsville and it was doing well. She was on her way home from a job and was wearing paint-splattered jeans and an old, long-sleeved white shirt of her husband’s. Her hair was tucked up under a ball cap and the smell of solvent and paint scented the air around her.

“She likes him,” Faith admitted. She rubbed the back of her neck with her hand. A storm coming always affected her that way, a tightness in her muscles, pressure behind her eyes.

“She’s female. Even a two-year-old woman can spot a stud like that one.”

Faith laughed. “Hey, you’ve only been married five months. You aren’t supposed to be ogling other men already.”

“I’m married, not blind. Steve’s a dear but not fantasy material. Put a leather kilt on that guy, give him a sword and he’d give Russell Crowe a run for his money any day.”

“Does this mean you’re taking back your warning about renting the cabins to single men?”

Peg drained her glass and shook her head as she set it in the sink. “Nope.” She tilted her head in Hugh’s direction. “Men as good-looking as that one are trouble. I ought to know—I married one the first time around, remember.”

“Men like that one are engineers,” Faith said, putting two Oreos on a paper plate for Caitlin.

“Engineer? I admit that sounds respectable enough.” If Peg had been a grasshopper her antennae would be quivering. “What kind of engineer?”

“The kind who build shopping malls, I guess. He’s working on that fancy new complex they did a feature on in the Cincinnati Enquirer a couple of months ago. You know, the one with all the high-end stores.” He’d told her that much the afternoon he’d inquired about continuing to rent the cottage for the month of June, since his work on the project would last several weeks.

“Has he asked you out yet?”

“No. Of course not.”

Her sister didn’t look convinced but she didn’t say any more. Faith had perfected the talent of sounding very sincere when she lied. And this was just a little white lie, not a universe-size one, like taking another woman’s child to raise as your own. Hugh Damon hadn’t asked her out on a date. Not officially, so her conscience was clear.

But he had offered to take her and Caitlin out to eat. It was while he was helping to rehang the baskets the day after he’d arrived. They had talked as he worked and she tallied the day’s receipts. She was alone in the greenhouse and it would have seemed churlish to refuse his offer of help. Or so she told herself.

He’d been wearing an old University of Texas T-shirt that stretched tight across his chest and shoulders, she remembered, and faded jeans that hugged his long legs. “Where do you find a good meal in Bartonsville?” he had asked. She brought out muffins and bagels, orange and grapefruit juice, and made coffee in the greenhouse every morning for herself and Steve and Peg, or whoever was around. Guests at the cabins were welcome to them, as well. Painted Lady Farm was as close to a bed-and-breakfast as you got in Bartonsville.

She had replied without hesitation. “The Golden Sheaf. It’s run by a family of old order Mennonites who make everything from scratch. The mashed potatoes are my daughter’s favorite. I’m surprised you haven’t found it already. All you have to do is follow your nose down Main Street.”

Caitlin had been sitting at the small table Faith kept for her behind the counter coloring in a SpongeBob SquarePants book. “Eat,” she’d said at the mention of food.

“Maybe the two of you could join me for dinner there this evening?” Hugh had said as he tested the strength of the chain extension before rehanging the planters. The invitation was offhand, but it caught Faith by surprise and she immediately said no. The refusal hung harsh and unfriendly in the air between them and she hurried to soften its uncompromising sound. “I mean, thanks, but I already have dinner started.”

“Some other time then. Do you recommend the meat loaf?”

“It’s the specialty of the house.”

He’d looked pleased. “Homemade meat loaf. Nothing better.”

“Don’t forget to try the pies. The coconut cream is to die for.”

“I’m a banana cream man myself,” he’d answered with a smile.

Faith had managed a smile in return. Her eyes had been drawn to the hard muscles of his thighs as he worked, and suddenly, from out of nowhere, she remembered the feel of legs and bodies tangled together in lovemaking, and she nearly dropped the stack of receipts she held in her hand. The flash of eroticism had come and gone in a heartbeat, but the aftereffect left her shaken. In her vision the arms holding her hadn’t been Mark’s. They’d belonged to this man.

She’d mumbled something about liking banana cream, too, and made some excuse to leave the greenhouse. Her legs were wobbly as she picked Caitlin up to carry her to the house, her breath coming in quick little gasps that couldn’t be blamed on the heat or the slight weight of the child in her arms. It was lust. Something that for three years had been completely absent from her thoughts.

That incident wasn’t the last erotic thought she’d had about Hugh Damon, but it was the last one she had let get the best of her. Perhaps because she also couldn’t quite forget the disquieting certainty that he was here, not just to avoid spending several weeks at an interstate off-ramp motel, but for some secret reason of his own.

A rumble of thunder announced the arrival of the storms that had been predicted all day. Peg angled her head to check the sky visible between the branches of the big maple outside the kitchen window. “Nasty-looking clouds,” she said, forgetting, at least for the moment, her fixation with Hugh Damon. “I have a feeling we’re going to get a real bad storm out of this cold front.”

“I think you’re right,” Faith agreed.

“You’re sure you don’t need me to watch Caitlin Wednesday and Thursday?”

Those were the days Faith was scheduled to work at the hospital. It was going to be her last week of duty until the fall. She would be busy with her own businesses from now on and had taken a leave of absence until September. “No, thanks. Martha’s going to watch her.” Martha Baden was Peg’s mother-in-law.

“Well, then she’ll probably end up at my house part of the day anyway.”

“Probably.” Faith laughed as they headed outside.

“Introduce me to your engineer,” Peg said under her breath as she held the screen door open for Faith.

Faith continued on into the yard, setting the paper plate of cookies and the sippy cup on the picnic table. She introduced her sister to Hugh Damon and then followed her to her truck to say goodbye.

“My Lord, he’s even better looking up close than he was from the kitchen window,” Peg said fanning her cheeks with her fingertips. “If he asks you out while he’s here, you go. You’ve been alone for three years, that’s long enough.”

“I don’t want another man—”

“That’s what I said, too, until I met Steve.” Peg switched on the engine and drove off. She loved having the last word.

Faith walked slowly back to the big maple. Caitlin dragged her little sneakered feet in the wood chips layered under the tire swing to slow its movement. She was wearing a pink top and darker pink shorts. Her fine silvery hair was in pigtails, and she looked like a spun sugar angel to Faith. An angel, but a mischievous one.

“Juice,” she squealed as Hugh stopped the swing so that she could hop out and come dancing across the grass to Faith. “I want juice. I’m hot.”

Faith bent down and gathered her daughter against her heart. “That’s because it’s hot outside and you’ve been swinging and laughing and talking real hard.”

“Hugh’s hot, too.” That went without saying. Faith was glad she had her face buried in Caitlin’s neck. She was having more and more trouble controlling such unsuitable thoughts. “He needs a juicy,” Caitlin declared.

“I’ll settle for a drink of water.” Hugh moved toward the old-fashioned hand pump that stood by the gate. Once there he took the antique ladle off the hook and began working the long handle up and down. The well was as old as the house, but the water was pure and spring fresh. Faith had it channeled into the greenhouse to water the plants and keep the waterfalls topped off.

As soon as a steady stream of water began to rush out of the pump into the shallow stone trough that had once held chicken feed a century before, Caitlin wiggled out of Faith’s arms and darted over to Hugh. “Swim,” she said loudly. “Let’s swim.” She squatted down and started to untie her shoes to wade in the trough.

“No way, Kitty Cat. The water’s too cold and I’m too big for the basin.”

Faith followed Caitlin to the pump. She wondered when Hugh had started using her pet names for Caitlin. The endearment came so naturally to his lips she felt churlish in mentioning anything about it. “No playing in the water now. It’s going to storm and you have to help Mommy bring in the plants and shut up the greenhouse.” Peg had offered to help before she left but Faith knew she was anxious to get home before the rain so had assured her she could manage on her own. Besides, she didn’t want to answer any more questions about Hugh Damon. Since she’d remarried, her sister’s mind was focused entirely too much on sex, especially Faith’s lack of it.

“Would you like a drink of water?” He rinsed and refilled the ladle and held it out to her.

She took it gratefully. It was hot and she was thirsty for something that wasn’t full of sugar or caffeine. Her hand brushed his knuckles and she felt a tremor like a tiny earthquake rattle her bones, just as another long rumble of thunder boomed overhead.

“It’s getting close,” Hugh said, raising his eyes to the sky.

“I have a feeling the cold front is going to get here ahead of the weatherman’s prediction.” She handed the ladle back to him. “Please excuse me, Mr. Damon. I think I’d better batten down the hatches in the greenhouse.”

“I’ll help. And I think we’ve known each other long enough to drop the honorifics. My name’s Hugh.”

“Thank you, Hugh.” She liked the way his name sounded on her tongue. “And please, call me Faith.”

Addy grabbed her much chewed Frisbee in her teeth and trotted along at Hugh’s heels as they walked toward the greenhouse, obviously hoping for a game of catch. So Faith could add her faithful sheltie to the list of females at Painted Lady Farm who had fallen for her guest.

“I can manage,” she started to say, but he was already moving the remaining flats of bedding plants off the old farm wagon she used to display them. It had grown noticeably darker in the ten minutes they’d been standing in the yard. And the clouds were moving fast, roiling like water in a saucepan. The green cast to their undersides was more pronounced than ever, a sure sign of hail.

Faith deposited Caitlin at her table behind the counter and went to help Hugh. They were both soaked by the time all the bedding plants were inside. She struggled to close the wide panels that were usually folded back against the side of the greenhouse. Hugh reached a hand over her shoulder and unhooked the panel, then tugged them into place. He had just closed the final one when the hail came pelting down.

The roof of the greenhouse was made of the same industrial weight plastic as the sides and the hailstones, small ones thankfully, bounced off harmlessly. But the roof of the butterfly habitat was made of glass. It was reinforced and supposedly shatterproof, but so far it hadn’t been put to the test. Faith picked up Caitlin and hurried into the chrysalis room. The sound of hailstones on glass was deafening. She’d reached for the handle of the pressurized door when Hugh spoke from behind her.

“It might be better if we get back to the house in case there’s a tornado.”

“Oh, God, don’t say that.” Ohio wasn’t technically a part of Tornado Alley, but they still had their share of the deadly storms.

“Back in Texas this is the kind of weather that has us heading for the nearest storm cellar. You do have a cellar, don’t you?” His tone was ordinary, for Caitlin’s sake, Faith realized. There was even a tinge of laughter beneath the faint drawl, but his eyes were grim.

“Yes, there’s a cellar. Have you always lived in Texas?” Faith kept her tone as light as his. She was determined not to allow her own fear to be transmitted to Caitlin.

“From time to time,” Hugh said. He turned to go back into the greenhouse. “My dad was in the military. We lived in a lot of places, but Texas was where I went to high school and college. My mom and my half sister stayed on there after I left home. When I got back to the States last time it seemed as good a place as any to hang my hat.”

“Back to the States? You build malls overseas then?”

His laugh was short and held little amusement. “I’ve only been building malls the past couple of years. Before that I worked all over the world. Dams in China, bridges in South America. Never more than a year or two in one place, and most of them were pretty far off the beaten track.”

Faith wanted to ask him more about what sounded like a fascinating life, but a blinding flash of lightning and the earsplitting crack of thunder that accompanied it brought her back to the situation at hand. This was no time for conversation, fascinating or otherwise. She gave one more troubled glance through the chrysalis room window into the habitat. The insects were on their own now. She couldn’t risk injury to Caitlin staying where they were. But how was she going to get her daughter safely back into the house?

The hailstones weren’t that large but they were coming down so thickly she had to shout to be heard. And the wind was picking up, too. There would be blowing leaves and twigs, perhaps even falling tree branches to contend with between here and the house. She didn’t even dare to consider what damage the storm was doing to the crops in the fields. “I can’t take Caitlin out into the storm.” She indicated the sleeveless top and shorts her daughter was wearing. Caitlin had her face buried in Faith’s shoulder. She didn’t like thunder and lightning, but she wasn’t unduly afraid of them. That might change if she had to go out in it unprotected.

“No umbrella or raincoat in the greenhouse?”

“Nothing like that.” The radio on the counter began to vibrate with the sirenlike alert that signaled a weather update. A disembodied voice announced a funnel cloud had been spotted about ten miles west of Bartonsville. It was moving northeast at thirty miles an hour. Everyone in the area was to take immediate cover.

“If it stays on course it will probably miss us but we need to get into the cellar,” Hugh said. She didn’t for a moment question the accuracy of his pronouncement. It had taken Faith weeks to orient herself to the land around Bartonsville after she’d moved to the farm, but it appeared Hugh had had no such difficulty.

She racked her brain for something to use to cover Caitlin. “I suppose we could wrap her up in one of the those nylon garden flags. They’re heavy enough to give her some protection.”

“It’s better than nothing.” Hugh reached out to slide the nearest off its pole, a springlike design of pink and yellow tulips on a green background. Faith’s eyes flicked past the display to the shelf of hummingbird and butterfly statues.

“Wait a minute. I have a better idea.” Faith darted around the counter. She pulled out a roll of packing material. “Bubble wrap! I keep it around to pack the figurines. We can wrap her in it.”

She was rewarded with one of his heart-stopping grins. “Great idea. Here, give her to me.”

Faith didn’t let herself hesitate. She couldn’t hold on to Caitlin and wrap her head and shoulders at the same time. Hugh held out his arms and Caitlin tumbled into his embrace. “Bubbles,” she giggled. “Poke the bubbles.”

“You can poke all the bubbles you want in the house, Kitty Cat,” Faith promised. “Just hold still now like a good girl.” Thirty seconds later Caitlin grinned out at her from a cocoon of packing material.

“Hey, you’re Cocoon Girl now,” Hugh said admiringly.

Faith laughed despite the anxiety that made her hands shake and her throat close. “Not Cocoon Girl. She…she needs to be Chrysalis Girl. We don’t want to take the chance that she’ll hatch into a plain old moth. We want her to be a beautiful butterfly, don’t we, sweetie?” She leaned forward and touched noses with her daughter. The spontaneous movement brought her close enough to feel the heat of Hugh’s body and the evocative smell of his soap and aftershave. She straightened quickly, taking a step back.

Hugh didn’t seem to notice her awkward movement. “Okay, Chrysalis Girl it is. Up, up and away!”

Faith tugged open the main door, the swirling wind working just as hard to keep it closed. Addy started barking, backing away, stiff-legged, as hailstones clattered on the paving stones just inside the door. “C’mon, dog. Move,” Faith ordered, but Addy was too excited and too frightened of the storm to be her usual tractable self. Faith made a dive for the sheltie but Addy bounced out of range. “Addy! Come. Or you’re going to get blown to Oz.” This time Addy obeyed the stern command and Faith lifted the little dog into her arms.

Hugh motioned her through the open door first and then pulled it shut with one hard jerk. The sting of hailstones against her cheek and head made Faith gasp. She took off across the gravel parking lot at a run, the dog squirming and whimpering in her arms. Hugh’s Blazer was parked under the big maple that shaded the back yard. Faith hoped a limb didn’t come down on it. Thank heaven, her own dependable Caravan was parked in the barn.

The ground was an inch deep with marble-sized hailstones. The footing was treacherous, almost as bad as it had been the day Caitlin was born. What a terrifying trip home that had been, the tiny newborn clutched tight to her chest, nothing to protect her from the sleet and wind but the sweatshirt she was wrapped in.

Faith didn’t dare look back to see how her daughter was faring in Hugh’s arms for fear of turning an ankle and ending up on her bottom with an armload of indignant sheltie. She shoved open the wrought-iron gate to the yard and went directly to the house. Inside the kitchen she motioned Hugh to follow her down the steep, narrow cellar steps. The big whitewashed room contained her washer and dryer, the hot water heater and a huge old boiler that she was hoping would provide heat for one more winter before it died. Otherwise, the low-ceilinged, stone-floored room was empty except for some of Caitlin’s toys, an old castoff sofa and a small TV and VCR. She often brought Caitlin down here to run around and let off steam on rainy days. Faith hit the light switch inside the door. Thankfully the two overhead lights came on.

She kept a powerful flashlight and some candles and a lighter on a shelf by the stairs for an emergency such as this, but she hoped they didn’t have to use them. She turned on the TV, and muted the sound so that Caitlin wouldn’t become alarmed by storm bulletins. A map of the county filled the screen, and a dark red blotch, the indication of the strongest storm cell, was superimposed over Bartonsville, but it had begun to move off to the east. “I think the worst of the storm’s passed, thank goodness.” She glanced out one of the small windows, placed high in the thick, stone walls of the cellar. The hail had stopped; now it was only raindrops hitting the wavy glass.

She turned back to find that Hugh had set Caitlin on her feet and hunkered down beside her to unwind the bubble wrap cocoon.

As soon as she was free Caitlin bolted for the stairs. “Need Barbie.”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” Hugh’s long arm shot out and his fingers curled around the child’s wrist. Faith’s heart leapt to her throat. Caitlin was such a tiny thing, her bones so delicate he could easily hurt her and not even realize it. She almost cried out, but she needn’t have worried. His grip on Caitlin’s wrist was so light it scarcely touched her skin.

“I think I see Barbie over there.” He pointed to the seat of the old couch and let Caitlin go skipping off to retrieve the doll.

“She’s smart and fearless, isn’t she?” he said with a note of wonder—and love?—in his voice that sent shivers through Faith.

“She was born in the middle of a terrible ice storm.” Faith hadn’t meant to let that slip. She had perfected her story of Caitlin’s birth, but she never volunteered details. His actions had thrown her off balance, and it was too late to take back the words.

“Tell me about it,” he said, standing up, towering over her it seemed, although there was no more than three or four inches difference in their heights. The tone of his voice didn’t change, nor the look in his eyes, but Faith felt compelled to answer as though bidden by some unspoken command.

Suddenly she was afraid, completely and unreasoningly afraid, and the fear had nothing to do with the storm, but was caused by the man before her. She felt for a moment that he could see right through her and that he knew what she would say next was a lie. Her throat closed and the litany of carefully constructed half truths and fabrications that was her fortress, as well as her prison, wouldn’t come.

CHAPTER FOUR

FAITH OPENED HER MOUTH but no sound came out. She was suddenly thrust into the midst of her worst nightmare. In it, she was standing in a huge echoing chamber. Stern, shadowy figures sat in judgment of her, demanding to know why she had taken another woman’s baby. No matter how eloquently she tried to explain her actions, her motivations, no matter how she many tears she shed, slowly, inexorably, one of the shadowy figures would pluck Caitlin from her arms and melt away, leaving her alone. She would wake in terror, tears running down her cheeks and only a trip to Caitlin’s room and the warmth of her baby’s skin could dispel the dread.

It was the middle of a late May day, and she was wide-awake. This was not her dream. This was reality, and she had told the story many times before. Today would be no different, unless she allowed it to be. “There was no one to help me when Caitlin was born,” she said as lightly as she could manage. “My husband had died six months earlier. I…I was here alone.”

Raindrops glistened in Hugh’s dark-blond hair, the harsh light catching steaks of lighter gold that she hadn’t noticed before. He didn’t seem menacing anymore, although his dark gaze held hers. “You must have been very frightened.”

“It was terrifying.” The words were heartfelt. She had woven as much of the truth into her story as possible. She had become a very good liar, but she did it only when necessary.

“Did you try to contact the emergency squad? Bartonsville has one, I imagine.”

“There wasn’t time.” She forced herself to keep eye contact. She was back in stride now, back on script. “Contrary to conventional wisdom about first babies, labor went very quickly. The ice storm hit and a broken tree limb brought down the phone line. Thank God, the electricity stayed on.” That was true, too, but it had happened after she made her nightmarish trek across the ice-slick fields to the house, with the tiny infant barely clinging to life in her arms.

Faith couldn’t help herself, her eyes sought her daughter across the room. She was seated in front of the old TV, oblivious to their conversation and the dying storm, engrossed in an episode of Rugrats. “We were cut off from the outside world for the first three days of Caitlin’s life.”

She had made diapers from an old flannel blanket she’d found in a back bedroom. Then she’d taken a plastic sandwich bag and poked a hole in one corner with a pin. She’d dissolved a little sugar in warm water and put the glucose solution in the bag, twisting it into a cone, as though she were a chef preparing to frost a fairy cake. She had coaxed Caitlin’s tiny mouth open with the tip of her little finger and pushed the makeshift nipple inside. Fortunately, Caitlin’s sucking reflex was strong and Faith was patient. Eventually the baby swallowed an ounce of the liquid.

After she’d held the newborn close to her breast and wrapped them both in blankets until the worrisome blue cast to the baby’s skin had been replaced by warm pink. They’d stayed snug and warm in their isolated cocoon as the storm raged, and when they’d emerged a transformation had taken place that was as complete and life-altering as that of a caterpillar changing into a butterfly.

Caitlin had become Faith’s child as surely as if she had given birth to the infant. She had labored to bring her to safety through the storm. She had fed her and bathed her and held her close so that she slept against the beating of Faith’s heart.

She’d loved her.

But she’d known she couldn’t keep her.

The ice melted the fourth morning after the storm, and life began to return to normal, but Faith remained closeted in her big, old house.

She knew Beth and Jamie would lose custody of the infant the moment Faith stepped into the sheriff’s office and told her story. The baby would go into the system, into foster care. If she was lucky it would be to a loving home. But it could be months, even years, until all the technicalities were sorted out. Sometimes bad things happened to children caught up in the system. Faith didn’t want to think of that. So she stayed put, telling herself it was still too dangerous to drive. She would wait for the phone to be repaired and to give Jamie and Beth time to change their minds. For a little longer she could make believe she had what she wanted most—a child of her own.

And then the newspaper had come.

Faith closed her eyes and could see as clearly as if it were still in front of her—the headline about the ice storm. Below it was a sidebar of storm-related deaths in Ohio and surrounding states. In Indiana, the story read, a hundred miles from Bartonsville, there had been a pileup on the interstate during the height of the storm. Eleven cars had been involved, but as of press time there was only one death, a seventeen-year-old male from Massachusetts. His companion, a teenage girl, was not expected to live. The couple was identified as Jamie Sheldon of Boston, and Beth Harden of Houston.

Jamie and Beth.

Was it only a coincidence that the first names were the same? Or was the child in her arms an orphan?

There were no further details of the accident that she could find. No mention of Beth having recently given birth, or any indication that a search for the infant had been started. Faith waited all that day and the next for someone to come and claim the child. With each passing hour it became evident that it was not going to happen. The young parents had died without telling anyone about their baby.

It was as if she didn’t exist.

It was as if she were really Faith’s.

And in the end it had been remarkably easy to make Caitlin legally hers.

In Ohio, she learned from the Internet, either parent could register the home birth of a child simply by appearing, within ten days, at the records office of the county in which the birth had taken place. No other witnesses were required, no medical records were needed. Only her own declaration of parenthood. That was her first lie, but one she told gladly. Within fifteen minutes of arriving at the courthouse she’d left with a birth certificate that declared Caitlin Hope Carson was her daughter.

She became aware she had been silent a long time, too long. As it sometimes did the guilt at what she had done burst out of the locked corner of her mind. She didn’t want to talk about Caitlin’s birth anymore. She didn’t want to lie to Hugh anymore. “The storm’s passing. I think it’s safe to go back upstairs.”

He made no objection so she turned off the TV and took Caitlin in her arms. Once back in the familiar surroundings of her yellow-and-white kitchen she felt her confidence returning and the guilt retreating.

“Do you have other family in the area in addition to your sister?” Hugh asked, leaning back against the granite countertop, arms folded across his chest. His shirt was still damp from the soaking they’d gotten. It pulled tight across his chest with the movement and Faith’s mouth went dry with need and wanting. She carried Caitlin to the bay window that faced the fields and watched as the dark menace of the retreating storm clouds broke into tatters of gray smoke.

“My husband has a few distant cousins in the area, but otherwise, no. Peg and her boys are my only living relatives.”

Caitlin wriggled to be free, so Faith set the little girl on her feet. Caitlin then bounced over to Hugh where she began to tug on his pant leg. “Cookie, please.”

“She wants an Oreo. They’re behind you.”

Hugh swiveled his head and shoulders and spotted the big plastic jar filled with cookies. “May I?” he asked.

Faith nodded. He didn’t look out of place at all in her kitchen. He leaned down and lifted Caitlin into his arms, letting her open the cookie jar and extract two of them all by herself. “Bite for you,” Caitlin said and pressed the cookie to Hugh’s lips for him to take a bite. Hugh went very still for a moment, then opened his mouth to nibble on the cookie. Caitlin shoved the rest of the cookie into her mouth. “Good?”

“Very good.” He lifted one hand and smoothed it gently over her hair. “Thank you, Caitlin.” Faith went all shaky inside. It looked so right somehow, Hugh holding her daughter in his strong, tanned arms.

He put Caitlin down and she raced through the archway into the dining room, where they never ate, but where she kept many of her larger toys.

Silence stretched between them, and it made her nervous. She returned to the subject of family because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. “You mentioned a half sister, I remember. Do you come from a large family?”

He grew very still. “My parents are dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded shortly. “Beth is my only sibling. She’s twenty.”

“Beth? Is it short for Elizabeth?”

“No, just Beth.”

A little shiver skittered across her nerve endings. She could never hear that name without associating it with Caitlin’s sad and pretty mother, especially when she had just been thinking of her such a short time ago. “It’s…it’s a pretty name. Are you close?”

“As close as she’ll let me get.” This time she didn’t imagine the pain in his voice. It was raw and real. “She’s got a lot of problems right now, both physical and emotional. She was in a bad accident some time ago. It’s been a long road back. I wasn’t there for her when I should have been and now…”

“And now she won’t let you be there for her?” Another Beth. Another accident. Another stinging memory evoked.

“Not as much as I want to be.”

“I’m sorry.” Impulsively she laid her hand on his arm and immediately wished she hadn’t. His skin was warm as sunlight. The feel of rough hair and the solidness of bone beneath her fingers reminded her that she was a woman who had been alone for three years. “I know it’s none of my business but perhaps, it would be better if you spent the next few weeks with her instead of remaining here.”

“She’s in Texas. I need to be available to the architect in Cincy on two hours’ notice, or I would go home.”

“She has no one else?”

“Her father.” His brows drew together in a scowl. “My stepfather is living, but he and Beth are estranged.”

“I see.” His expression warned her not to inquire further. “You could bring her here.” She spoke the words without thinking.

He looked down at her hand, then lifted his gaze to hers. He watched her for a long moment, his eyes as shadowed as the stormy sky had been. “You mean that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. This place brought me comfort and peace after Mark died. It might do the same for your sister.”

“Comfort and peace. She could use both of those.”

“She would be most welcome.”

He leaned closer and Faith felt herself drawn to him as though by an invisible magnet. He reached out and she held her breath certain that he meant to touch her cheek or even to take her in his arms. But she was mistaken. Hugh let his arm fall and took a step backward, leaving Faith feeling chilled. He was silent a long time, then his jaw tightened and he gave a short, sharp nod, as though coming to a decision that had been difficult to make. “You’re right, Faith. I think it’s time I brought Beth to Painted Lady Farm.”

HUGH PROPPED HIS FEET on the knee-high, stone wall that bordered the tiny patio behind his cabin and leaned back in the red metal lawn chair, slouching down far enough in the seat to rest his head against the round back. It was getting to be a habit sitting out here at twilight. The only other guests, a middle-aged couple in a car with Michigan plates staying in the unit next to his, seemed settled in for the evening, and he had the place to himself. He looked up at the faint scattering of summer stars. Off in the west the last of a glorious orange-gold sunset had faded into purple and gray. The storms of the afternoon had passed off to the north and east, taking some of the humidity from the air.

He’d been sitting in the same spot for the past hour observing Faith go about the business of closing the greenhouse. He’d watched as a tall, dark-haired man and two small boys in a pickup had driven down the lane and walked to the edge of the cornfield with her. He could hear the boys whooping and hollering in the backyard, running up to the pond to throw something into the water, then scurrying back down the bank. Caitlin had followed close on their heels, her small legs pumping to keep up.

Faith had called out a warning to the boys and obediently they had each taken Caitlin’s hand and led her back to her mother. Faith gathered the toddler into her arms. She’d waited, cuddling her daughter, as the boys ran off again, and the man waded into the rows of new corn to check for damage. Steve, the brother-in-law, Hugh had decided, and the boys would be his stepsons, Faith’s sister’s children.

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