A Babe In The Woods

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.

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