Текст книги "Charming The Highlander"
Автор книги: Джанет Чапмен
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
Damn. She didn’t want him feeding his son. Or holding him. She especially didn’t want him unwrapping Baby and discovering the child had twelve toes. The man might look a bit primitive, but there was intelligence written all over his face. He would know immediately that Baby was his.
“Sit,” he said, indicating the chair across from him. “I’ll feed him.” He looked at her, waiting for the bottle. One corner of his mouth rose, not in a smile but in understanding. “I know new mothers can be protective, but you have nothing to fear from me, Grace,” he said, using her name for the first time. “I had six younger brothers and sisters. I can feed your son.”
She reluctantly handed him the bottle. If she made a scene, he would get suspicious. She sat down and wondered if those six brothers and sisters were eight hundred years dead.
“What’s his name?” he asked, watching Baby eagerly latch onto the nipple.
“Ah…it’s Baby, for now. I haven’t decided on a permanent name yet,” she told him, carefully moving the cookie tin to the side of the table so that it wasn’t between them. She turned it until the front of the tin was facing Michael MacBain, foolishly thinking her sister would like to see her lover feeding their son.
He looked up from his task. “He’s a month old and you haven’t named him?” he asked, sounding appalled.
Grace wanted to close her eyes and shake her head at the thought of repeating this particular lie yet again. She did neither. She simply spoke from rote.
“A name is very important. He’s going to have to live with it the rest of his life. I’m waiting for the perfect one to come to mind.”
“Why is he in clothes that still have the price tag on them?” he asked, lifting the tag on the sleeve with his fingers.
Grace did close her eyes then and covered her face with her hands. She was so tired. After returning from the store, she’d thrown herself on the couch and managed to get only four hours of sleep before this man had broken into her house. She pushed the hair away from her face and looked at him.
“It’s the only thing he has to wear,” she explained with tired patience. “All of his clothes, and mine, are up on North Finger Ridge getting covered with ice. Our plane crashed there yesterday.” She looked at the clock on the wall. It was just past midnight. “Make that two days ago now. We just got here this afternoon. Yesterday afternoon,” she amended. “They only had two outfits at the store that fit him. I wasn’t thinking about tags when I dressed him.”
He looked from her to Baby, clearly surprised. “You survived a plane crash? Both of you?”
“Greylen MacKeage was with us. He saved our lives.”
His face immediately hardened. “MacKeage was with you?”
Grace didn’t know what to make of the sudden change in him. She recalled that Mary had said there was no love lost between her neighbors and Michael, but looking at him now, Mary’s account of the animosity had been understated. Michael MacBain looked like Grey had when he had wanted to kill the pilot all over again.
“We wouldn’t be here, either one of us, if it weren’t for him,” she said, lifting her chin and looking Michael right in the eye so that he would understand that she would defend Greylen MacKeage to him or to anyone else. “He carried Baby down the mountain and then returned for me. He saved our lives,” she repeated, just in case he hadn’t caught that little fact the first time.
He grinned at her anger. “I’m glad for you,” he said. He suddenly sobered, taking a deep breath. “Tell me more about Mary. Where is she buried? And why didn’t you bring her home to lie beside her father and mother?”
“I did bring her home,” Grace said. “Only not to be buried. Mary wants her ashes spread over TarStone Mountain. But not until Summer Solstice.”
Michael MacBain sat up straighter. “Her ashes? You’ve turned her to ash?”
She could already see the horror building in his expression. He was going to have the same reaction as the MacKeages. Only Michael had been in love with Mary. He would likely want to break something.
Grace looked at the wall where the bat was leaning.
“Yes,” she told him.
“Where is she?” he asked, craning his head to look toward the living room.
Grace stood and took Baby out of Michael’s arms, laying the child on her shoulder. “He needs to be burped,” she told him by way of explanation as she inched her way toward the broken kitchen door, appearing to soothe Baby as she looked out through the still intact storm door. “And Mary’s…well, she’
s sitting on the table beside you, in the cookie tin.”
She closed her eyes and waited for the explosion.
It didn’t come. The only sound in the room was the gentle crack of the house settling under the weight of the ice building on its roof.
Grace opened her eyes to see Michael MacBain carefully pick up the cookie tin and hold it, painful sorrow drawing his features into taut, harsh planes of despair. He tried to pry off the cover, but it wouldn
’t budge.
“I—I sealed it with glue,” she said softly.
As if he didn’t hear her, he pushed his thumb against the cover, holding pressure until it gave. He took the cover off and dipped his hand inside, lifting out some of the ash and letting it sift through his fingers back into the tin.
Grace wiped at the tears streaming down both of her cheeks. This man was looking at all his hopes and dreams for the future having been turned into ash.
Except for the child she now held in her arms and her heart.
Michael’s anguish appeared so raw, so heartbreakingly painful, that Grace very nearly blurted out her secret right then and there. She held the power to take away part of Michael’s pain by giving him a son.
Which would keep her promise to Mary.
But break her own heart for the second time this month.
Grace quietly walked out of the kitchen and into the downstairs bedroom, softly closing the door behind her. She lay down on the bed with Baby in her arms and let her tears flow freely. Michael MacBain could say his goodbyes to Mary in peace. He deserved this time.
And she could no longer witness his grief.
Chapter Nine
Aterrible racket startled Grace awake at dawn. There was a dog barking in her yard, chasing something that was protesting being chased even more loudly. A man hollered, and if she wasn’t mistaken, she could hear a goat bleating.
Grace climbed out of bed and set a pillow where she’d been to block Baby from rolling off the bed. She slipped into the pair of Mary’s shoes she had hunted up yesterday and headed out into the kitchen. She didn’t have to dress; she had slept in her clothes.
She opened her broken kitchen door just as a chicken went flapping by in a panic, a huge black dog slipping and sliding on the ice right behind it.
“Ben!” the man hollered again. “Leave that bird and get over here!”
He slammed the tailgate of his pickup truck and started toward his still open driver’s door. “In the truck, Ben,” he said again.
Grace scrambled off the porch toward him, nearly falling as soon as her feet hit the icy driveway. “Wait!
What are you doing?” she hollered after the man, who was just getting into his truck.
He got back out and faced her, his stance defensive. Grace slid to a halt in front of him, having to grab the fender to keep from falling. She took a tiny step back.
He smelled like a farm, and from the looks of his clothes, he’d been sleeping in the barn with his animals.
His weathered face was scrunched up into such a glower Grace couldn’t tell if he was red from the weather or if a cow had stepped on his cheek. The right side of his mouth bulged out as if he had a golf ball stuck in it.
“I’m returning your blasted animals,” he told her, spitting a wad of brown tobacco juice on the ground.
Grace took another step back.
He raised his blunt, calloused hand and counted off on his dirty fingers. “Three cats, one goat, and sixteen hens. Two of them died, and I’m not replacing them. They’re old hens, and they don’t produce enough eggs to keep them in feed.”
“But…but why are you bringing them here?”
“They’re Mary’s,” he told her succinctly, just before he spit another wad of tobacco juice on the ground.
“I saw the porch light on last night. She’s home now, she can have them back.”
He pointed at the detached barn at the end of the yard. “That damn goat is a menace. She’s managed to break every fence in my place. And she ate my best pair of long johns,” he finished, signaling to the huge black dog, who had finally obeyed and come running and jumped into the front seat of the truck. The man climbed in behind him and slammed the door shut.
“Wait! Mary’s not here. And I don’t know anything about taking care of these animals.”
He rolled down his window and looked at her. “Just give them food and water. They’ll take care of themselves until Mary gets back.” He looked up toward the barn. “And don’t turn your back on that Jezebel of a goat. You’re liable to find yourself not able to sit down for a week.”
That said, he had the truck started and was racing out of the driveway before she could protest. The ice-coated gravel caused his truck to slide first in one direction and then the other. He never stopped, even when he reached the main road, skidded around the corner, and slammed into the opposite snowbank. Grace cringed at the sound of tires spinning for traction. The man swerved his truck back onto the road and roared out of sight.
She stared at the spot where he had disappeared until something pecked at her foot. She looked down to see a plump, mahogany-red chicken interested in eating her shoe. Several more birds quickly joined it, descending on Grace as if someone had suddenly rung the dinner bell.
“Shoo. Get, you birds,” she said, backing away. She slowly headed toward the barn and retrieved the two half-empty bags of animal feed she could see sitting just inside the door, being careful not to fall for fear the birds would eat her.
She unrolled the tops of the paper bags and looked at the pictures on them. One had chickens all over the front of it, and the other one had a herd of goats grazing placidly in a pasture.
Well, that was easy enough. She scooped a handful of the chicken feed out and scattered it over the floor of the barn. The entire bunch of chickens immediately started flocking inside, quickly gobbling up the feed. Grace spread a few more handfuls for good measure.
She stood inside the door, out of the rain, and looked back down the driveway. She was stunned. The entire world for as far as she could see was covered in ice. Trees bowed with the weight of the freezing precipitation, some of their tops touching the ground and now frozen into place. The forest crackled around her as if in pain, the sound carried on eerie, moaning echoes through the cold but very humid air.
The sky was low, completely masking the mountains that surrounded Pine Creek, so low in places that even the tops of tall trees were hidden. And her house looked as if it was covered in a crystalline skin.
An urgent, angry bleat came from inside the barn behind her. Grace turned to see the head of a goat, with two pointed horns and two huge black eyes staring at her from behind a half-chewed wooden stall door.
The Jezebel. She grabbed the other bag of feed and dragged it over to the impatient animal. She dumped several handfuls in a pail by the stall door and opened the door to set it inside. But she didn’t even get the latch sprung before the pail went flying and Grace found herself sitting on the floor. The goat jumped over her, just missing her head with its sharp little hooves, and ran out of the barn before she could scream.
Dammit. She didn’t know a thing about handling animals. She stood up and brushed herself off. Let the stupid beast run around in the rain if it wanted. She righted the pail and refilled it with more food, then pulled down a bale of hay that was stacked in the next stall. She spread it out over the barn floor, away from the chickens.
As she was leaving, Grace saw the baby monitor. Mary must have used it to monitor the animals at night.
Grace unplugged the transmitter and took it down off the shelf. The receiver would be in the house someplace. She could use this with Baby. She’d put this transmitter in her bedroom and carry the receiver on her belt whenever she had to come outside and tend these blasted animals. She’d have to look for a book on animal care while she was at it. She hoped Mary had an entire library of them.
Grace hurried back to the house to check on Baby, nearly tripping over three cats who were determined to beat her inside. Damn. She hoped there was cat food in the cupboard.
“There you are, sweetie,” she whispered to the just waking baby. “That was a good nap you had.” She laughed as she picked him up. “It’s the first time in a long time you’re actually waking up in the same place where you went to sleep.”
She kissed his warm, soft cheek and cuddled him against her, inhaling his unique scent. He was so precious. She hoped for some quiet time for just the two of them, so they could get to know each other on a one-to-one basis.
Wishful thinking. Their peace lasted less than an hour.
Grace looked up from the book on animal husbandry she was reading aloud to Baby when she heard the now familiar sound of the snowcat making its way up her drive. She set the book aside and carefully rearranged Baby in her arms as she stood up.
As she walked into the kitchen, she heard the engine shut off and then the voices of men talking. The murmurs suddenly turned into a shout of surprise. She looked out the only window not covered with ice just in time to see Morgan running for his life from Jezebel.
She didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to know the outcome. The man lost the race. Grace heard what sounded like a curse, only in a language she didn’t recognize, and then Morgan was sitting on the frozen gravel, shouting at the triumphant, retreating goat.
Grey, carrying Grace’s two bags from the plane, simply walked past him, chuckling. He strode onto the porch and suddenly stopped, staring at her kitchen door.
Grace used her foot to pull it open and greeted him with a smile. “My bags. You’ve brought my stuff.”
“What happened to your door?” he asked, not moving, still looking at the broken wood.
Grace walked away so he would come in. Morgan, rubbing his butt, followed him.
“It…ah, I had a visitor last night. He broke it.”
“Who?” Grey asked with anger in his voice, setting her bags down.
What could she tell him without adding fuel to the apparently old, ongoing battle between the MacKeages and Michael MacBain?
She almost wanted to shake her head at the absurdity of it. They were like modern-day Hatfields and McCoys, with only a name being mentioned to set them off. She had witnessed that firsthand last night, when she had innocently told Michael that Grey had saved her and Baby.
“I’m waiting,” he said, his stance telling her he might be waiting but his patience was waning.
“Michael MacBain was looking for Mary,” she told him, setting Baby down in the overstuffed chair and securing him with the pillow again. She really was going to have to come up with a more respectable crib.
Before Baby was three.
“MacBain,” Morgan snarled from behind Grey, turning to examine the door himself. “That bastard broke into your home?”
“Do you own a gun?” Grey asked, still unmoved, still looking at her.
“A gun?” Alarmed, she turned to face him. She shook her head. “No. And I wouldn’t use one if I did. I’
m not going to shoot anybody. That’s barbaric. And it’s not legal, either.”
“It is if you’re defending yourself,” he countered.
“From Michael? He was just looking for Mary.”
“And what was his reaction when he didn’t find her?” he asked, taking a step closer to her.
“What do you think it was?” she asked back, moving closer to him herself. Dammit, she didn’t like his posturing. He was acting as if she was an idiot for not being afraid of a grieving man. “He was devastated,” she told him. “Thank you for bringing my things,” she added.
Her change of subject did not deter him. He moved even closer, taking her by the shoulders with his huge, warm hands. “Stay away from him, Grace. Michael MacBain is trouble.”
She pulled away from him immediately. His simple touch sent shivers coursing up and down her spine.
And those shivers had nothing to do with fear.
It was lust. Pure, stupid lust.
She hadn’t seen him for nearly twenty-four hours, and here she was acting like a silly schoolgirl with a crush on the giant. Maybe she was the one experiencing separation withdrawal.
Grace walked to her bags, mentally telling herself—and her hormones—to give it a rest. Grey was acting as if he wanted to kill Michael MacBain, and she was busy fanta-sizing about his touching her again.
Morgan beat her to the suitcases, lifting them up and setting them on the table for her. She smiled her thank-you and busied herself opening one of them while she spoke.
“Michael was the man my sister was coming home to marry when she died,” she informed Grey, who now had his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes narrowed. “And that makes him almost family to me.” She turned and looked at Morgan, so he would know she was talking to him as well. “Michael’s hurting,” she said. “And I’m not going to ignore him or his pain just because you don’t like him.”
Grey didn’t like her very much right now, if his expression was any indication. Grace suddenly gave into her urge and laughed out loud.
“I wish you could see yourself. You’re like a pouting little boy whose mother won’t take him seriously.
This…this feud between you and Michael is childish.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said through gritted teeth. His evergreen eyes drilled into her. “And you are not my mother.”
She held up her hands in supplication. “Fine. Feel the way you want. But I’m having no part of it.”
She walked up to him and looked him in the eye, staring at him just as fiercely as he was staring at her. “I owe you for saving my life, but I’m remaining neutral in this. Those are my terms. Take them or leave them.”
He stared down at her for so long Grace was afraid she had just lost her new friend. She didn’t want that. She liked Greylen MacKeage. Heck, who was she kidding? She was strongly attracted to the man and felt they shared a special understanding. They’d had quite an adventure together and had beaten the odds. The bond that had formed between them up on the mountain was sacred to her, and she was loath to let her principles destroy it.
But she would. Because if she backed down now, she was in danger of losing more than just the principles that had always guided her through the major decisions in her life.
She was in danger of losing her heart.
And she couldn’t do that, either. She was here for four months, until Summer Solstice, and then she and Baby were going back to Virginia to begin their new lives together.
“Very well,” he said finally. “You may speak with MacBain. But you’re to be careful around him. He’s not to be trusted.”
She wanted to ask him what had happened to make him hate Michael so much, but Grace kept her questions to herself. She doubted he’d tell her anyway. Michael hadn’t told Mary, and that little fact was revealing enough, considering what he had told her. Whatever it was between these men, it wasn’t pleasant.
Grace returned to the task of sorting out her things on the table. Grey walked over to Baby and picked him up.
“You shouldn’t bother him when he’s sleeping,” she admonished. “The poor kid needs the rest.”
Grey lifted a brow at her. “He’s resting. See, he hasn’t wakened,” he said, tilting Baby so she could see his face.
The infant sighed in his sleep and cuddled comfortably against Grey’s chest.
“He likes the heartbeat,” Grey told her, smiling at her frown. “Babies need to feel the closeness of another life.”
Grace wondered where the man got his information. He said he had younger siblings, but was that enough to explain his ease with Baby? She knew he wasn’t married, but he had to be older than thirty.
Maybe he had an ex-wife and six kids out there somewhere.
“We brought you some food,” Morgan said, coming back through the door with two bags of groceries in his hands.
She hadn’t even realized he’d left. “Thank you.” She indicated that he should set them on the counter.
“But that wasn’t necessary. I went out yesterday and got some.”
“You went out?” Grey asked. “In this storm? The driving’s abominable.”
Grace threw the suitcase she’d just emptied onto the floor. “I couldn’t very well feed Baby canned soup,” she informed him. “And my truck has four-wheel drive.”
“It’s not the going that’s dangerous,” Morgan added into the discussion. “It’s the stopping that’s impossible.”
“I discovered that,” she admitted. “I’m going to put the chains on the truck this afternoon.”
“You know how?” the younger man asked, looking not only surprised but skeptical.
“I grew up here,” she reminded him. “I know how to handle bad weather.”
Morgan looked at Grey. Grace saw Grey nod his head in the direction of the attached barn. She unzipped the next suitcase. If it made the men feel better to put the chains on for her, she wasn’t about to complain. She sorted through her things in the second suitcase, adding items to the pile of ruined clothes.
Her silk blouses had not weathered the freezing rain well at all. She found what she had been searching for and hit the switch on her PDA. Nothing happened.
“Darn. This didn’t make it.”
“What is it?” Grey asked, coming to stand beside her, Baby cuddled contentedly in his arms. “Another computer?”
“It’s my PDA. And either the batteries are cold or it’s ruined.”
“PDA?”
She pulled it out of its leather case and opened the back. “It’s a personal data assistant,” she explained.
“It’s my calendar book, task list, and all my contacts. Without it, I’m screwed.”
“Wouldn’t it just be easier to keep this information in a book?” he asked, leaning over her shoulder as she replaced the batteries with spares she had bought yesterday at the store, having anticipated this possibility as well as the likelihood that they’d eventually lose the electricity.
“Maybe,” she said, shrugging. “But paper would be just as ruined, too.” She looked at her computer sitting on the counter, charging. She opened it and turned it on.
“Well, at least this works.”
Grace decided she needed a cup of cocoa. She grabbed the kettle, filled it with water, and put it on the burner. “I’m lucky the computer is okay and that only the battery got ruined.” She patted her computer affectionately. “I don’t blame the battery for dying,” she said. “Leaving my computer running in the snow cave finished it. Electronics don’t like the cold, and they don’t like getting wet. But it did a marvelous job keeping me alive.” She looked at Grey. “I hugged it to me, using its warmth.”
He gave her a strange look. “You were hugging the cookie tin when I found you, Grace. Not the computer.”
She shook her head at him. “No. That’s impossible. I distinctly remember feeling a great warmth against my chest and my hands. That’s the only reason my fingers didn’t get frostbite. It had to be the computer.
There’s no way a tin full of ashes could generate heat.”
“Maybe it was your sister’s spirit protecting you,” he suggested softly. “It’s possible that Mary was with you in that cave in more ways than just her ashes. You were hugging her tin, Grace. I know what I found.”
She looked at the table, at Mary.
Only she wasn’t there. Grace rushed to the table and moved the pile of clothes out of the way. Then she moved the suitcase. The table was empty. She looked around the kitchen but couldn’t find the tin. It was nowhere to be seen.
“He took it,” she whispered to herself, still scanning the kitchen counter and shelves.
“Who? Took what?” Grey asked, moving up behind her. “What are you looking for?”
She swung around to face him. “Mary. He took Mary.”
“Who took Mary?” Morgan asked, walking into the kitchen. He had a hammer and some nails in his hand. He pounded the broken door casing into place.
“MacBain took the tin holding Mary’s ashes,” Grey answered for her. He handed her Baby. “Come on,”
he said to Morgan.
“Wait! You are not going over there,” she said quickly, running to block his path. She looked Grey squarely in the eye. “This is between him and me. I don’t want you going there and starting a fight.”
“He’s got your sister, lass,” Morgan said, sounding appalled. “He stole her right out from under your roof.”
Grace looked at Morgan. “But it’s not Mary he stole. Not really. It’s just a tin full of carbon and minerals and potash. Mary left her body behind the moment she died.”
“You’ve been looking after those ashes for days now,” Grey reminded her. “I know what that tin means to you.”
“I was just being foolish.” She shook her head as she looked down at Baby in her arms. She looked up again. “It’s not worth causing a scene over. Mary’s death is new to Michael. In his mind, he just lost her last night. I know what he’s going through, and if he needs her ashes for a while, then I can understand that.”
“What about your plan for Summer Solstice?” Grey asked.
“That will still happen. He’ll give the tin back before then. I know he will.”
Neither man wanted to believe her. And they both looked frustrated that they couldn’t act. She quickly handed Baby back to Grey to ensure that he didn’t suddenly go after Michael despite her wishes.
“The kettle’s boiling. Do you gentlemen want cocoa?”
“No,” Grey said, laying Baby back in his chair. “The ice is building on our ski lift, and we need to keep an eye on it.” He turned from Baby to face her. “Don’t go out. The roads are treacherous, with broken trees blocking them in places.”
“You got here okay,” she reminded him, disgruntled by his order but relieved that the subject of Michael and Mary seemed laid to rest.
“We’re traveling in the snowcat.” He took her by the chin and lifted her face to his. “Call us if you need anything.”
Grace shot him an overbright smile. “I will,” she said so sweetly it was a wonder her teeth didn’t hurt.
“Lord, woman, you’re reckless with my good intentions,” he muttered, scooping her up in his arms and kissing her.
Her head was spinning by the time he let her go.
It took Grace a while to gather her wits. She barely made it to the door before Grey could climb into the snowcat.
“MacKeage!”
He stopped and looked back at her.
“I want your promise you’ll stay away from Michael.”
She could see his face darken with guilt. Dammit. He’d been planning to go there. “Your promise, Grey.
Or don’t bother coming back here again.”
She wasn’t sure if he would heed her words. He probably didn’t even care. She touched her lips.
Maybe…maybe he did.
She saw him standing in the icy rain, getting soaked, staring back at her. He finally nodded and climbed into the snowcat. It roared to life and growled down her driveway, spitting up chunks of ice in its wake.
Grace closed the door softly and leaned against it. Well, that was something to ponder. It appeared Greylen MacKeage wanted to see her again.
Chapter Ten
Grace stopped in the act of folding Baby’s clothes and turned up the volume on the television. Scenes of devastation in four states and the province of Quebec were being played out on the newscast. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
There was footage of an entire high-tension power corridor falling like stacked dominoes, the metal towers crumbling from the weight of the ice and the loss of support as the power lines snapped. Trees, completely covered in sleeves of ice, broke under the stress, blocking roads, taking down cables, and crushing cars and buildings. Everything was covered in white, frozen into place like marble statues. It looked like scenes from Antarctica or the top of Mount Washington.
And still the rain continued to fall, freezing on everything it touched. The weatherman was saying it had to end soon, but he couldn’t say when. Mother Nature was being stubborn.
Hundreds of thousands of people were without electricity now, and they were predicting the number would rise into the millions. Northern New England, northern New York, and Quebec were under a state of emergency.
Grace looked away from the television and out the living-room windows. It had been raining for four days, and the ice continued to build. She couldn’t see out the windows facing north or west, and out the south windows she saw only ice. Her childhood home was constantly settling, shifting to bear the weight it already carried, groaning occasionally, and snapping every so often.
It was time, she decided, for a trip into the attic to check on the roof supports. She looked in on Baby and saw that he was sleeping off his lunch like a contented cat. As a matter of fact, the three cats she’d inherited from Mary were also sleeping, curled up in front of the fireplace, dreaming cat dreams. She smiled at the picture of them, then picked up the baby monitor and clipped it to the waist of her jogging pants.
She found a flashlight in the kitchen and started her climb to the attic. As soon as she opened the door, a swirling draft of cold air engulfed her, and Grace closed the top button on Grey’s flannel shirt, which she was wearing.
She had pulled the shirt out of its hiding place under her pillow this morning, feeling like a ninth-grade schoolgirl with a crush. She missed him already, even though he had been here just yesterday, kissing her senseless again.
Would he come back to check on her and Baby today? And kiss her again?
Well, heck. She needed to get a grip here. She had to keep repeating her mantra; Wrong man, wrong time. She couldn’t fall in love with one man while she held the child of another in her heart. Not if those two men hated each other.
There was simply no way that Grace and Baby and Grey and Michael could ever share their lives together.
And if she fell in love with Greylen MacKeage, there was no way she could avoid it. Besides, she had to return to her normal life in Virginia after the Summer Solstice.
Grace turned on the flashlight and closed the attic door behind her to keep the warm air below from escaping. As she shone her light around the expanse of the cold room, she was amazed at the accumulation of junk scattered over the entire attic. Years’ worth of it, broken chairs waiting for repair, boxes of clothes, lamps, pictures, Christmas decorations, and even an old eight-track tape player the size of a couch.
