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Chapter Two

Storm felt perspiration popping out on her forehead.

“Give,” her unexpected guest told her quietly. “You can’t win. You’re going to break your arm trying.”

Storm braced her elbow, closed her eyes, tightened her grip on his hand and pushed with everything she had.

Damn. He was holding her. Toying with her. She suspected he could put her down in a second if he chose.

They were arm wrestling over who was going to look after that diaper. Jake and Evan had been arm wrestling with her since she was a tot. They’d shown her a trick, a way to snap her wrist quickly at the very onset of the match, which gave her pretty even odds against superior strength.

And it often told her a great deal about a man, the way he accepted his defeat or his victory. And she needed to know something about this man.

She had never arm wrestled Dorian. A mistake. She probably could have saved herself a great deal of heartache if she’d used her regular measuring stick of character, instead of pretending to be something she was not. She nearly shuddered at the thought of that bright-red lipstick and thick black mascara that she’d hidden behind.

Still, it seemed to have been a terrible mistake to suggest an arm wrestle to this man, too.

Because when his hand had locked around hers, she had felt the strength in it. A pure strength. And she had felt something else.

Pure sizzle.

Right down to the bottom of her belly.

She’d arm wrestled just about every man in Thunder Lake and never, ever felt that sudden “woomph” deep in her stomach.

She glanced into the clear gray of his eyes and felt it again. A pull to him that was unfathomable given their circumstances, given the fact he thought he could make her stay here, and she planned to prove him wrong.

She told herself, sternly, she only needed to know something of him so she knew what to do once she had left here. Give him a few days with the baby to have his vacation? Or go down that mountain as fast as she could and come back with the law?

The very fact that she did not feel free to leave when she wanted should be telling her exactly what she needed to know.

But her intuition was placing her in a position of inner turmoil. Her intuition looked into the clearness of his eyes and saw, lurking just beneath the cool, still surface, strength of spirit.

The facts spoke of something else. The wound, his presence at her cabin not really explained, the baby most likely not his. He wasn’t even comfortable changing a diaper!

Childishly, she decided how the arm-wrestling match finished would make her decision for her. If he won, she would go down the mountain and forget she had ever seen him or that baby. If she won, she was coming back with Constable Jennings from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

She closed her eyes again, focused all her strength, felt her arm begin to tremble with effort and exertion. And nearly fell off her chair when he suddenly released her hand.

“Hey!” she said, miffed.

His eyes weren’t clear now, but deliberately hooded. “A draw,” he said blandly.

“It was not. I was about to take you.” She knew darn well the exact opposite was true.

“You were about to break your arm.”

“Oh, right.”

“I could see the white line of your bone right through your skin. Trust me. It was a draw.”

He had called the match because he thought he was going to harm her. That told her a reassuring little fact she needed to know. It would seem he wasn’t planning to hurt her. It would seem he was—the word noble flitted through her mind. She gave herself a shake.

She got to her feet abruptly, wiping her hand on her jeans as if she could wipe away the sudden feeling that had engulfed her when she had looked into his eyes.

They were the eyes of a dangerous man. Mysterious. Cool. Calm. And yet she could not help but feel the strength in them was linked to her own future.

He nodded at her. “You’re very strong.”

On the outside. Still, it was a good response. He had won the match, even if he was noble enough not to say so. He was sure of himself. He didn’t need to overpower her to nurture his own self-esteem. And he didn’t rub her face in his superior strength, either.

No surprises there. He oozed that standoffish kind of confidence of a man who walked tall and walked alone.

She spun away from that steady searching look in his eyes and looked at the baby. The aroma wafting off that wee individual was every bit as astonishing as the amount of noise he could make.

Gingerly, she picked up a clean diaper and studied it. “What’s his name?” she asked the man behind her.

And then realized she didn’t know his name either.

“You can call him Rocky. You don’t have to change him. I’ve managed before.”

“A deal’s a deal. And what can I call you?”

Hesitation. “Ben.”

She unfolded the diaper and flipped it trying to figure out which way it went on. What kind of man didn’t even want to tell you his name? Perhaps the arm-wrestle test had failed to reveal his character to her after all.

Really, all she had to remember was one thing.

She was a terrible judge of character when it came to men. Arm wrestling or no.

Suddenly, he was right behind her. He had come on leopard-quiet feet, and so she gasped with soft surprise when he reached around her and took the diaper, laid it out flat on the counter and contemplated it for a moment.

His arm was brushing her shoulder.

She could feel the corded muscles in it, the heat coming off it. He smelled of the forest and of man, and compared to the other smell in the cabin it was pretty heady stuff.

She gritted her teeth.

And reminded herself. His wound was suspicious. She was a terrible judge of men. Whose baby was this, anyway? She moved slightly so that she was out of range of that muscular arm and his masculine potency.

“Like that,” he decided, placing the diaper, and then casually, “And what should I call you?”

“Storm, just like it says on the brochure.”

“Storm.” He repeated it, looking at her as if he was looking deeper, trying to see beyond what his eyes told him. “A nickname?”

“My brothers always called me that.” Her brothers had always said the name accurately reflected her temperament, though she didn’t share that with Ben.

He nodded at that, satisfied she suspected that his own assessment of her character, arrived at in less than fifteen minutes, had just been confirmed.

“Well, Storm, I think the moment of truth has arrived.”

Great. Just spill the beans.

But that wasn’t the truth he was talking about. He scooped the baby off the floor, held him at arm’s length for a moment and then laid him on the counter. “Somehow we’ll figure this out together. Any suggestions for step one?”

Rocky gurgled and smiled, somehow not in the least intimidated by this intimidating man.

“Very helpful,” Ben told the baby, and she detected there might be a sense of humor behind all that steel.

“How about the snaps on the sleeper?” she suggested, trying not to smile, trying to remember her most important step was to get out of here. She could contemplate what step two would be after she had accomplished step one.

“Even better.”

She watched his hands, strong and brown, make short work of the snaps. They were not, she decided, hands accustomed to this kind of work, and yet he was not a man who would do anything hesitantly.

Her own shirt, western-style, had snaps on it.

She ordered her mind not to go there.

Ben stripped off the sleeper with the same let’s-get-the-job-done efficiency. The baby was pink and dimpled all over. He waved his arms and legs, apparently delighting in the little explosions of odor his every vigorous movement caused.

“Have you got any clothes-pegs?” Ben asked.

Her lifestyle often required drying things on an inside line. She found the tin with the clothespins in it and brought it to him.

She had thought he intended to use them as diaper fasteners, and despite her desire not to let him win her over in any way, she burst out laughing when he carefully put one on the end of his nose.

“Want one?” he asked, his voice only marginally less sexy for the nasal twang in it.

“Does it help?”

“Yeah.”

So she nodded and found a clothespin clipped on the end of her nose. She was willing to bet she looked a lot less sexy—not, she realized, that she had looked that sexy to begin with. Not that she even wanted to think about why she might care if she looked sexy or not.

The clothespin helped. It hurt, but it was worth it.

“All right. Flap one, down.” He pulled the plastic tab, and the baby’s right leg sprang free of the diaper. She listened to his voice and heard a clue there. She would take money that there was something military in his background.

“Flap two, down,” he said in that same pilot-preparing-for-takeoff tone. He pulled number two. With lightning speed he had the diaper down and off and had handed her the damp cloth. He was running for the door.

She thought she might embarrass herself by puking, but oddly enough the chore didn’t bother her.

In seconds the baby was clean. She looked at the little jar of petroleum jelly, dabbed her fingers in and swabbed a generous amount on the baby’s little pink bottom. Ben was back.

“What did you do with that thing?” she asked.

“I put it in your fire pit. It puffed up like a big marshmallow and disappeared.”

“Great, do the same with this.” She handed him the washcloth.

“Isn’t it brand new?”

“I don’t care.”

He gave her an approving look and went back out. She plopped the baby on the fresh diaper.

“Don’t try and do up those tabs with petroleum jelly on your hands,” he called over his shoulder.

Too late. “Why not?”

“They won’t—”

The grease-slicked tab refused to cling to the diaper. She tried to wipe it off. No dice.

“—stick.” He came back in and looked over her shoulder. “Beginner’s mistake. But I have a short supply of diapers. I can’t throw any of them out.”

“You can always use moss,” she said.

“Really? And if there’s no moss, maybe a spider’s web or two?”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No, ma’am.” But he turned quickly from her and began rummaging in the first-aid kit. When he turned back to her, roll of gauze in hand, the glint of amusement that had leaped in his eyes was gone. It was just as well. When these small traces of personality pushed through his surface remoteness, she saw a man who could be altogether too charming.

“I think it’s wonderful that the native people knew how to use what was around them—weren’t dependent on stores and factories to provide them with something so simple as a diaper,” she informed him.

“You won’t get any argument from me.”

“Good,” she said with great dignity.

“Just as long as you don’t start mixing up the turpentine and brown sugar as a substitute for baby powder.”

She glared at him, reminding herself it was a good thing if he thought she was some kind of backwoods bumpkin. The last thing he would be expecting would be a daring, midnight escape. The last laugh would be hers.

The only part that was too bad was that she wouldn’t have the enjoyment of seeing his face when he woke up in the morning to an empty cabin.

He flashed her a grin that nearly stole the breath out of her lungs and then ignored her as he wrapped the gauze around the waistband of the baby’s diaper, finally tying it in a neat bow in the front. “How’s that for using the resources at hand?”

She tried not to smile, but that ridiculous bow got her. She smiled. And then she laughed.

And so did he.

And she knew three things about him. One, he did not laugh often.

Two. He had removed the clothespin from his nose and she had not. She snatched off the clothespin.

Three. He was a complete novice at changing diapers.

The laughter died in her, and it did in him, too. They regarded each other warily.

“This isn’t your baby, is it?” Stupid to ask. She wanted to lull him into a false sense of security, and yet she needed to know. At least that.

He hesitated, shot her a look out of the corner of his eye. His features were suddenly closed. He carefully folded the baby’s arms back into the sleeves of his sleeper and tucked his legs back inside the fabric.

“No,” he finally said. “He’s not my baby.”

“Then why do you have him?”

“It’s a long story, Storm.” His voice was laced with weariness and remoteness.

She ignored the way she felt when he said her name, his voice deep-timbered, as sexy as the touch of hot hands across the back of her neck.

“I seem to have some time on my hands.” She folded her arms stubbornly over her chest.

“The less you know the better.”

She took in her breath sharply at that, and he watched her narrowly, then looked away, ran a hand through the rich darkness of his hair, sighed and looked back.

“I can tell you this: I’ve been entrusted with his care. I’m not one of those dads you read about in the paper. Or a kidnapper.”

“How long have you had him?”

“A few days.”

“Is his name really Rocky?”

Hesitation. “No.”

She studied him long and hard. He did not flinch under her scrutiny but met her gaze evenly. Still, there was something hooded in his eyes. A place that was hard and cold, that had seen too much.

Sometimes intuition was a curse.

Because beyond all that she thought she saw a man dying of loneliness.

She reminded herself that a woman could die of perpetual stupidity, too.

“What’s his real name?” she asked.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Won’t.”

“All right. Won’t.”

“And for how long have you been entrusted with his care?”

“I don’t know yet.”

She realized she had better not press him anymore. She did not want to alert him to the fact she could not stay under these circumstances.

Ben discovered he liked looking at her.

Those wide eyes were incredible. He was not sure he had ever seen human eyes so close to turquoise in shade. They tilted up at the corners. She had taken off the hat, and her hair was dark and shiny like a river of braided black silk. Her features were even and pleasing, a faint scattering of freckles over a pert little nose. Her lips were full and sensuous, and he wondered what it would be like to taste them.

And chastised himself for wondering. He had a job to do: to keep that baby safe until some semblance of sanity returned to Crescada, until whoever had murdered the baby’s father, Noel East, was safely in custody, where he could not harm the baby, Rockford. Ben knew his focus had to stay crystal clear, and contemplating the taste of lips would not keep his focus crystal clear.

He forced himself to study her analytically, to figure out if she was going to be an asset or a liability if things went sour.

An asset.

There was strength in her face. Independence. Intelligence.

And she was strong physically, as well.

He had been totally taken by surprise by the power in her arms when she had innocently suggested an arm wrestle. He’d been so taken off guard by the quick and powerful flick of her wrist that had she pressed her advantage she might have taken him before he knew what hit him.

He had better keep that in mind. He needed his guard up or she could take him before he knew what hit him.

The question was, take him where?

A question he really did not want an answer for. At all.

A mystery. She was a mystery. Even her name held some of her mystery, something brewing within her that was elemental and fierce, a force of nature that a man would be foolish to underestimate.

In his experience women who looked like her walked the runways of the world. What was she doing running a string of horses, alone, in this remote and beautiful north country?

Why had she challenged him to an arm wrestle, when she could have gotten him to do anything she wanted, up to and including handling that disgusting diaper all by himself, with a bat of her gorgeous tangled lashes?

One thing his life did not need was any more intrigue.

His whole life had been intrigue. Dark secrets. Danger. He’d been recruited to do federal intelligence work at age twenty-one. He had thought he was embarking on a career of high romance and adventure.

Instead the road had been a lonely one that had turned him hard and cold. Much too hard and cold to be entrusted with something so fragile as a baby.

Or this woman.

Still, here he was, and if there was one thing he had learned—and learned swiftly—it was that it was very rare for a man in his line of work to ever be handed circumstances that were to his liking. He learned to make do with what he was dealt.

This time the cards had turned up a baby whose family was dead and who needed his protection. And a woman with far too many questions making her eyes burn brilliant.

He spent ten years living by the military adage, “Need to know.” What you didn’t need to know, you weren’t told. And what others didn’t need to know, you didn’t tell them.

And this woman in front of him wanted to know everything. For her own safety, and that of the baby, he would tell her nothing for as long as he could.

Oddly, the way her eyes were resting on him, he suspected she already knew things about him that he did not know about himself.

And it scared the living daylights out of him.

He thrust the baby at her. “Maybe you could try and shovel some of that green stuff into him.”

She looked awkward with the baby, and yet her face softened with tenderness when she looked at him.

And for a blinding moment a renegade yearning shot out from under the steel trap of Ben’s hard-earned control—a yearning to walk away from this life of loneliness and be a part of a circle of love.

It occurred to him he’d given Storm his real name, evidence that his thinking was already being clouded by her presence, by that restlessness within himself that had made him take the job with Rocky’s father on pure whimsy, instead of reason. He’d liked the man. And look where that had gotten him. He should know by now that forming attachments was something he should guard against.

Cursing inwardly, he turned away from her and the baby and went outside.

He listened. The forest was dark and silent. He listened inside himself. His heart told him he had not been followed. And that he was in danger of a different kind.

A kind he had never faced before, and was not trained to defend against.

Storm spooned the green stuff into Rocky, who slurped it back with relish. He waved his hands wildly in the air in between bites.

Ben had gone outside. She was glad. His presence did things to her. Made her aware of something deep, dark and dangerous inside herself.

Something that had never been tapped or touched.

Not even by her infatuation with Dorian.

The baby finished eating, and she dampened a cloth and wiped his face. She took him and rested his head against her shoulder and rocked him, and he went to sleep almost instantly. She liked the puddled warmth of him in her arms. Only after he had started to feel heavy did she lay him carefully back on the sleeping bag on the floor.

The night was turning chilly as it would do in the mountains in the spring, and even in the summer.

Ben came back in, the load of firewood he carried effortlessly showing the corded muscles of his arms to distinct advantage. “It’s cold out,” he said briefly.

He put down the wood carefully, so as not to wake the baby, then went and gazed down at him for a moment, unaware of how his hard features softened with momentary tenderness.

And certainly unaware of what that softening of those features did to her.

Filled her with something.

Yearning.

“I guess we should eat,” she said abruptly. “I’ve got plenty of grub in my pack boxes. I’ll go get them.”

She didn’t know if he accompanied her out of a sense of chivalry or because he was guarding her, but they went together to where she had left the pack boxes by the corral. He went unhesitatingly and held out his hand to her old horse.

“That’s Sam,” she said, disarmed by the look on his face. What was it? Wistfulness?

He turned and gave her a look, the wistfulness replaced by a look of dry amusement. “So this is Sam.”

She shrugged, watching how he stroked the horse’s forehead, scratched along his mane. “You like horses,” she said. “You’ve been around them a bit, too.”

“We used to raise quarter horses when I was a kid. I grew up on a ranch in Wyoming.”

“I should have known.”

“What?”

“Cowboy. You can take off the boots and the hats, and you can put years between you and the range, but it’s still there.”

“What’s still there?”

She was sorry she had blurted out the thought, sorrier still he was pursuing it into her private thoughts about him. “Arrogance,” she said. But she thought mystique, strength, self-reliance. The way they held themselves. The pride in their eyes.

A slight frown creased his forehead. “You’re an expert on cowboys?”

“I was raised by two of them.”

“I should have known.”

“What?”

“Cowgirl.”

“And you’re an expert on cowgirls?”

“No. We were pretty isolated where we were. I don’t know the first thing about cowgirls. But if I had to pick one to put on a poster, I’d pick you.”

“I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not.”

“I think it is.”

“Why would you pick me?” She knew she was treading a fine line here between getting his guard down and letting hers down.

“Because you look like you could rope and ride as easily and effortlessly as most women could sew a button on a shirt.”

“Sew a button on a shirt? Are your views of women that archaic?”

“Beautiful but slightly prickly,” he went on, as if she hadn’t interrupted.

“I am not.” She meant beautiful.

“Believe me prickly is not nearly as deep a character flaw as arrogance.”

“That’s true.”

“You look like you could shoot a bear without blinking—”

“I did so blink. My eyes were shut tight when I pulled the trigger.”

He laughed, a good sound, rich and deep, a sound that could chase away a good cowgirl’s suspicions. And make her trust someone who had not proven he could be trusted.

“How old were you when you left the ranch?” she asked him.

“Sixteen.” The remoteness snapped back into place, but not before she caught a glimpse of regret.

“You miss it.” She thought of her time in Edmonton, where not a day had gone by when she didn’t miss her brothers’ laughter, the warm breath of her horse and being able to walk outside to a space so big you could never fill it, and air so clean and crisp it was like inhaling champagne.

He shrugged, invulnerable. “I suppose. Parts of it.”

A note in his voice told her things of him. That he was a long way from the boy who had grown up on a ranch in Wyoming and that he would do anything to find his way back to that kind of simplicity.

Was that how he had found his way here?

No. There was nothing simple about him being here. With a baby who was not his.

“So,” she said casually, “what did you do after you left the ranch?”

He came out of the corral, his face completely closed now, hefted the pack boxes, one in each hand, and went back toward the cabin. “This and that,” he said. “Saw the world. You know.”

But she didn’t. And she knew he would not tell her anything further. In this little two-step they were doing to see who could get whose guard down further, she suspected she had just lost round one. She was determined to keep her mouth shut and her eyes open.

Supper was ready in short order. He took over completely, managing the cranky stove like an old hand. Canned stew and biscuits, coffee, strong and hot, and tinned peaches afterward.

“You’re used to doing this,” she commented.

“Cooking?” he asked.

“Making do. Roughing it.”

“This isn’t what I would call roughing it,” he said, and then looked like he regretted saying it, as if it was a crime to reveal even the tiniest little things about himself to her.

After they’d eaten, they moved out on the porch with their coffee cups and watched the moon rise over the black silhouette of the mountain. A toad croaked hoarsely, the horses made the odd noise, the rocking chairs squeaked.