All That Remains

She winced. Her stomach muscles seemed to be shot, and she was definitely sore. Instead of sitting cross-legged as she would normally have done, she tucked both feet to one side of her and reached for the water.

“Is this all we have?”

“Yes, but we can catch some rainwater. Drink what you need.”

She guzzled enthusiastically. It was probably plain tap water, but it tasted like ambrosia. So did the peanut butter-flavored bar he peeled open for her.

“Want another one?”

“How many do we have?”

He counted. “Ten. You haven’t eaten since…?”

Wren had to think back. “It’s been…two days. And I was feeling unsettled then. My back was starting to hurt, and my stomach felt weird. So I ate only half the BLT I bought at a restaurant.”

“Then you’re definitely having another one.” He pulled an array of them out of the zippered bag he’d thrown through the window. “You have a choice of more peanut butter, apple and cinnamon or…” He squinted at one. “Chocolate.”

She sat up straighter. “Chocolate?”

“We have a winner.” Looking amused, he handed one to her. “Do all women love chocolate?”

Wren gaped at him. “Don’t you?”

“Not particularly. I don’t much care about candy.”

“Chocolate isn’t candy,” she assured him. “It’s a basic food.”

“Dairy, grains, fruits and vegetables, meats…and chocolate.”

She grinned. “Right.”

“I’ll remember that.”

Wren ate this bar more slowly, drawing out the pleasure. A cramping in her stomach made her really, really wish she had something with more substance to eat. Or maybe more comforting. Thick, steaming split-pea soup with bits of salty ham. Or a stew filled with chunks of potato and carrots and tender meat.

Her sigh was unconscious. She only became aware of it when she saw Alec raise his eyebrows.

“Oh…I was planning a menu for after we get out of here.”

“Ah.”

Wren frowned. “You haven’t eaten anything.”

“Unlike you, I’ve been getting regular meals. And I didn’t go through labor. I’ll wait until later.”

That gave her pause. He really was afraid they might be trapped here for days. If she didn’t get enough to eat, would her body fail to produce the milk her baby needed?

Again, he seemed to read her mind. Maybe it was easy, given the scared look she flashed at Cupcake.

“She’s going to be fine.” He gave a rueful grin. “Our biggest challenge may be finding enough cloth to keep her in some sort of diaper. Doing laundry isn’t exactly an option.”

“No. I didn’t think of that.” Wren studied the sleeping baby again. For the first time, she noticed that Alec had bundled her oddly, with a sleeve of the flannel shirt doubled over between her legs, while the other sleeve wrapped around holding the whole arrangement in place. He’d been remarkably clever.

Cupcake scrunched up her face, made a grunting sound, then gradually relaxed again. She had a surprising amount of hair, which clustered in stiff tufts. Wren wished she had one of those small knitted caps that babies always seemed to wear in hospital nurseries.

“I’m most worried about keeping her warm,” Alec said quietly, as if once again he was reading her mind. “I think that when night falls we’ll need to keep her between us. I don’t want to scare you, but I’m going to lie down next to you.”

Wren shivered, but she wasn’t cold. It was… She didn’t know. She was suffering from nerves, she guessed. And something that felt oddly like excitement. She liked the idea of lying stretched out beside him. Which, she supposed, shouldn’t be such a surprise, given how attracted to him she’d been from the minute he’d shoved back the hood of his rain slicker and looked up at her window, like the prince there to rescue Rapunzel.

The ridiculousness of that would have made her laugh under other circumstances.

Wow. Call me shallow.

Apparently her body was on board with the whole concept of offering herself to any guy who rescued her. She’d escaped from James only four days ago, and here she was eyeing another man.

Yes, but she hadn’t had sex in something like six months. No, more than that. James had been repulsed by her body once Cupcake’s presence showed in a slight thickening around Wren’s waist and then a bump below her belly button.

He had been furious from the moment she told him she was pregnant. In those first weeks, she’d still been delusional enough to imagine that he’d come around. That soon he would rejoice, too, in the life quickening inside her.

Instead, as the depths of his need to have her belong to him and him alone had become apparent, she’d finally seen how dumb she’d been. How blind.

The thought was enough to make her shudder.

Alec’s sharp eyes saw that, too. “You’re getting cold.”

“No, I’m okay. Just…feeling a little scared,” she admitted. “Not of what’s going to happen, but of what could have happened.” She tried to smile, but her lips trembled. “I haven’t said thank you yet, but… Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.”

“You’re very welcome,” he told her, with equal formality. “I should probably thank you. I’ll think of this at Christmas. If only we had a manger for a cradle and a heap of straw to keep Cupcake cozy.”

Blinking, Wren had to admit that their current conditions were every bit as primitive as that long-ago stable. Well, except for the energy bars and the scissors Alec had triumphantly torn from their sterile packaging.

Cupcake would have died if anything had gone wrong. Terror poured through Wren as she gazed at her daughter and let herself acknowledge a truth she’d managed to block out all day. She and Cupcake—mother and child—were incredibly lucky.

Blessed.

She very gently cupped her daughter’s head and waited for the fear to ebb, as the labor pains had. She closed her eyes and thought…thank you. God or whoever was listening, thank you.

A lump of emotion seemed to be caught in her throat. What was it Alec had said to set her off? I’ll think of this at Christmas. Where would he be at Christmas? With his sister and her family?

On another tremor of uncertainty that wasn’t so different from the earlier fear, Wren wondered where she would be at Christmas. Would she have found Molly by then? Or…or perhaps a motel room? Except, she didn’t have a cent. This was one time she would have to ask her mother for help. After that, if Wren couldn’t find Molly, maybe she could rent a room, if there were such things as boarding houses anymore. She would have to look for a job, too, of course. Finding one where she was allowed to bring a baby wasn’t going to be easy. Day care. There must be day-care centers around. Or maybe she could be a night janitor. No one would be around to be bothered when Cupcake got hungry or unhappy because her diaper was wet and cried.

The terror was surging again, building in power, because now she didn’t have to worry only about herself, but about another entire person. And she knew she was woefully unprepared to take care of her daughter. Especially knowing James would try to find them. She wished Alec was right and James wouldn’t bother, but Wren didn’t believe it. He hadn’t let her go the first time she’d tried to leave him, a month ago. If anything, he’d gotten more obsessed since then. She couldn’t imagine that he would be able to shrug and decide to let her go. And…she’d seen his violent side.

Don’t think about it, she decided. Not now. Not yet.

Here and now, she and Cupcake were safe. They might get chilly, and hungry, but they weren’t alone, and they were safe. She’d never in her life trusted anyone completely, but there was always a first, and this was it. Alec wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her or her baby, as long as they were with him.

“I think I need that applesauce jar again.”

With a low, deep chuckle, he rose to his feet and held out his hands to help her up. “Is that what it was for?”

“Well, some kind of preserves. In the old days, they canned green beans and things like that, too. The jar’s too big for jam.”

He hoisted her up, frowning when her face changed. “What is it?”

“I wonder if, um, I need to replace the T-shirt. Or refold it or something.”

“Ah.”

She loved the way he said that. Acknowledgement, understanding, no need to comment. He bent and produced another item of clothing from the shrinking stack. Boxer shorts? Oh, heavens, had she grabbed the former resident’s underwear?

“We might have to do some washing. I mean, between me and Cupcake. Maybe we could rinse things out in the rain….”

Alec shook his dark head. “I don’t think they’d dry.”

Worrying over the problem, she retired to the end of the attic, aware that Alec had politely turned his back again. Flushing with embarrassment, she used the jar, dumped the contents out the window he’d already opened and let the rain rinse it. Then, before she could struggle to close the window, he reached around her and did it. She felt the heat of his body behind her, the strength of the arms that momentarily caged her, and her stomach did a dip and roll.

Stepping back, he said in a curiously gentle voice, “All right?”

She bobbed her head and, without looking at him, retreated to her pallet. Her throat had formed another of those impossible-to-swallow lumps. Cupcake was so tiny, and Wren realized suddenly that she was exhausted. It had to be hormones that were causing her mood swings. Joy to fear to gratitude to lust and back to fear again in mere minutes. Realizing that she wasn’t altogether sure she could lower herself to a sitting position gracefully and without pain was enough to make her eyes burn. Had she torn? Alec hadn’t said, and why would he when he couldn’t do anything about it?

Before she could begin any kind of undignified maneuvering, Alec lifted her up and laid her down. She squeaked, and he smiled.

“You were giving the problem more thought than it deserved.”

“My body is holding a major protest.”

He crouched over the first-aid kit. “It hadn’t occurred to me, but—” He made a pleased sound. “Here we go. Aspirin or ibuprofen?”

“Really?” Wren struggled up to her elbow, careful not to shift Cupcake, who she’d snuggled against her.

“Yeah, I thought about it earlier, when you were in labor, but I wasn’t sure what was safe for you to take.” He grimaced. “Or how much good either would do. Sorry that I’m only now remembering it’s here.”

“I haven’t hurt that bad. But I won’t say no to some ibuprofen.” She took the two capsules, popped them in her mouth, then swallowed them with a sip of water. “Thank you,” she murmured, settling back down.

“Hey, these dressings should work as menstrual pads for at least a few changes.” He sounded pleased. “I should have thought of it.”

Paper rustled as he laid out a small pile of sterile dressings then closed the velcro fasteners on the case, and stood. “I’m sorry, but I need to…” He gestured toward the window.

“Feel free.” Wren curled more comfortably around Cupcake and tugged the blankets higher over them. One of them was particularly scratchy wool, but it was warm. She tried not to listen to the sound of Alec lowering his zipper and then, a moment later, pulling it up again, and was grateful she couldn’t hear what he did in between.

The window grated as he shoved it down, and then his footsteps neared.

“The sun is going down, isn’t it?” Wren whispered.

“Yeah.”

She’d hardly noticed the deepening of the gray light.

“Is it still raining?”

“Yeah,” he said again.

“If we’re going to be biblical, it’s poor Noah we ought to be identifying with. And his wife. Doesn’t it figure that nobody can remember her name? She probably took care of all the animals and still put dinner on the table every night for him, and all anyone remembers is her husband because he built the boat.”

Alec knelt beside her. “I suspect he’s remembered because the vision was his.” Amusement roughened his voice.

“Who says? Maybe it was her idea. Wouldn’t it figure he took the credit?”

He sat and untied his boots. “As it happens, I know her name. Emzara.” He tugged off the first boot and set it aside. “Don’t ask me why that stuck from Sunday school.” In the act of pulling off the second boot, he paused. “Come to think of it, I know why. It was Mom. She said something pretty similar to what you did.”

“Smart woman.” Wren was beginning to feel drowsy, even though she wished there was a whole lot more padding between her and the floor.

Jeez. Talk about ungrateful.

Alec dropped the second boot, then in a quick move lifted the blanket and stretched out beside Wren, sandwiching Cupcake between their chests.

“She won’t smother under there, will she?”

“No. These blankets feel like wool. Wool breathes. And warm air would be better for her.”

“Okay.” She couldn’t help being disconcerted by how close his face was to hers.

“I’m using the first-aid kit for a pillow,” he said unnecessarily. “Why don’t I stretch my arm out, and you can pillow your head on it?”

She noticed the careful way he spoke. Just as politely, she said, “Oh, but it’ll go numb.”

“I’ll retrieve it if it does.” She couldn’t tell if that was amusement again in his voice, or something else.

But she lifted her head as he slid his arm beneath it. After a few wriggles, she settled far more comfortably onto his bicep. As if doing so was entirely natural, he curled his arm around her and she felt his big hand clasp her shoulder.

“Let me know if you get cold,” he said. “I’ve got on a heavier shirt than you do. I can give you the vest. Or we can find some other things for you to wear.”

Although she had no intention of taking his down vest, she said, “Okay.”

He squeezed her shoulder. “Go to sleep, Wren. I’ll watch out for Cupcake.”

She snuggled into him and let her eyes drift closed. She could smell male sweat overlying soap and a hint of forest. She liked how he smelled. “Okay,” she heard herself murmur again, drowsily.

Falling asleep hadn’t been so easy in a long, long time.

CHAPTER FOUR

ALEC SLEPT IN SNATCHES, an hour here and there. He was uncomfortable, but unwilling to disturb Wren or the baby by moving. The floor seemed to get harder as the night wore on, the cushioning beneath him thinner and more inadequate. He felt as if he was pillowing his head on a square rock. Tomorrow night—if they were still here—he’d find something else. His arm did go numb under Wren’s head, and sharp pains stabbed his right shoulder, the one he’d landed on when he fell through the window.

How long had it been since he’d slept cuddling a woman? Two years, maybe? No, longer than that—closer to three. Oh, who was he kidding? He and Carlene hadn’t been that friendly in bed for a while before their divorce. And his few sexual encounters since hadn’t included sleep—or much in the way of cuddling, either.

Early on, Wren had snuggled onto her side and shifted her head to his shoulder. He had a suspicion she would have been nestled against him if not for the small lump that was Cupcake between them. Wren, he thought, was a cuddler.

She was also a quiet sleeper, or maybe simply exhausted to the point where her body had decided to suspend all but essential operations. Once she settled in, she went boneless. He couldn’t even hear her breathe. Every so often, to reassure himself, he tilted his face so that he could feel a soft stir of warm air on his cheek when she exhaled.

He’d never slept in bed with a baby, although he’d been known to snooze on the sofa with one of his daughters on his chest, their knees tucked up and thumb in mouth. Remembering the sweet weight of a baby gave him a piercing pain beneath the breastbone that was sharper than the one in his shoulder. That memory led to others, even less welcome.

Maybe he hadn’t been the best father in the world, not given his working hours. The last straw for Carlene had been when he’d missed India’s fourth birthday party.

“You’ll be here when I blow out the candles, won’t you, Daddy?” India had begged him, her blue eyes wide. “You will, right?”

“I’ll do my best,” he’d promised, giving her a big hug and kiss on the nose before he went out the door.

But there had been a shooting, not an especially ugly one—he didn’t even remember the specifics, except that Benson was out because his mother was dying and Molina had come down with the flu, so Alec and his partner had gotten the call even though they shouldn’t have been top of the rotation yet. It was his job. Somebody had died. A kid’s birthday party didn’t cut it as an excuse.

India hadn’t been that upset. Her Grandma Olson had been there, and half a dozen friends from preschool with their parents chiming in the birthday song. She’d gotten lots of presents, and when he did finally make it home had taken great pleasure in showing them to him one at a time, putting each carefully away before presenting the next. That was India, congenitally organized.

It was Carlene, predictably, who was furious, certain that Alec was teaching his daughters that they couldn’t depend on him. The words she’d said that night still gnawed at him when he let his guard down. It was only a few weeks later that she’d packed one day while he was at work and announced when he got home that she and the girls were going to her mom’s.

He swore under his breath and tried surreptitiously to flex muscles that ached.

Cupcake was considerably more restless than her mommy. Having her under there was unsettling, like sleeping with a cat that had burrowed beneath the covers. She snuffled and wriggled and periodically woke crying. The first couple of times, Wren barely regained consciousness, and only after Alec shook her awake. He had to unbutton the front of her shirt and help the baby find a nipple. The whole experience was weird and so intimate he tried not to think about the fact that he was groping in the dark for this woman’s breasts and moving her body around so that the strange small creature between them could suckle on her.

He tried to keep the blankets pulled high to maintain the baby’s body temperature. The air outside the coccoon they’d created was winter cold. During one of his periods of wakefulness Alec realized that he couldn’t hear the rain. Incredulous, he lay listening to the silence. Had it finally stopped? Forty days and forty nights. No, it hadn’t actually been that long. He remembered Wren saying that the day felt surreal, as if it had gone on forever and only now mattered. He felt that way about the storm. After the days of gray, slanting rain, bobbing on floodwaters, hauling soaked, scared people until their faces were interchangeable and his tiredness grinding, this attic was an oasis.

He should have slept like a baby, he thought, then smiled as he gently settled Cupcake on her back and pulled blankets higher over her mother, who was already burrowing onto his shoulder. Okay, maybe not. If he had made it home to his own bed, he might have slept like a log. Not a baby.

Probably he should have checked if Cupcake was wet, but he was damned if he was going to bare her butt or try to figure out an alternative he could wrap her in.

With a groan, he did slide his hand under her to make sure she wasn’t soaking the comforter, but so far it was dry, thank God. He seemed to remember that a woman’s breasts didn’t produce much actual milk the first day or so. The trickle of colostrum apparently wasn’t overwhelming Cupcake’s bladder.

The next time he opened his eyes, it was to the gray light of day and to the contented sound of a baby nursing. What the hell…? Alec blinked gritty eyes a couple of times and oriented himself. Attic. Childbirth. Brown-feathered Wren and her wrinkly, red-faced baby.

No weight on his shoulder. He turned his head and saw Wren curled on her side supporting Cupcake’s head. She smiled at him, her face so close he could see the lighter flecks in her brown eyes.

He stretched and discovered that pretty much every muscle in his body ached and he was hungry.

“Damn,” he muttered. “What I’d give for a heaping plate of scrambled eggs, crispy bacon and country-fried potatoes.”

“After a hot shower.” Longing suffused her voice.

“Yeah. Definitely after a shower.”

WHO NEEDED TELEVISION or a morning newspaper when you had a new baby and a gorgeous man around?

Since waking, Wren had spent most of the time—well, half the time—minutely studying her daughter. Less exhausted this morning, she felt wonder bubbling in her like champagne shaken until it threatened to pop the cork. To think that she had created this beautiful, perfect, little person! Wren loved everything, from the tiny, fuzzy eyebrows to the pink lips that pursed and occasionally smacked, to the curve of cheeks and high forehead. When she nursed or bobbed against Wren’s shoulder, Cupcake’s head fit in the cup of her hand as if made for it. She weighed hardly anything, but as Alec had pointed out yesterday, she was doing well, so if she was a week or two early it obviously hadn’t mattered. Wren could tell how relieved he was when he said that. She suspected he, too, had hidden a few shudders at the thought of how many things could have gone wrong.

Astonishingly enough, watching him sleep, and gradually wake, had been almost as engrossing as staring at her beautiful baby. Every so often she looked away from Cupcake to study Alec’s hard face, only slightly relaxed in sleep. No open mouth or drooling; somehow he managed still to seem guarded. And yet there was something about his closed eyelids, the dark lashes fanned on his cheeks, that gave him an air of vulnerability. He was dreaming; his eyelids quivered, and a couple of times his nostrils flared and his mouth tightened. One hand lay on top of the covers, and she saw his fingers twitch, make a fist, then relax again.

At last his lashes fluttered and his eyes opened. For a moment he stared blankly at the empty rafters before his head turned sharply and his deep blue eyes pinned her in place.

She smiled as if it didn’t feel even a tiny bit strange to wake next to him.

His first words told her their minds were in sync. A chocolate energy bar didn’t sound nearly as good this morning as it had yesterday. She could almost smell the bacon.

Wren sighed. Hungry as she was, she’d give up breakfast for a hot shower.

“Oh, well, we don’t even have soap.”

Alec laughed, a low, husky sound. “What would you do with it if you had it? You can’t tell me you want me to dip some floodwater up for you to bathe in.”

Wren scrunched up her nose. “I suppose it’s cold.”

“Safe to say.” The humor left his face. “Not very sanitary, either. The town septic system got overwhelmed, and God knows what’s floating around out there.” He rose to his feet as easily as if he hadn’t spent the night on a hard floor the way she had. “It’s not raining.”

“No. I noticed it quit.”

“Damn,” he said softly. “I should have filled some jars with rainwater yesterday.”

“Will we run out of water?”

He went to the window. “No.” The tension in his voice had dissipated. “No, it’s still drizzling. I’ll start collecting water.”

He figured out how to hang a jar out the window before coming back to discuss breakfast.

“I’ll have apple and cinnamon,” she decided.

“Not chocolate?”

“Who has chocolate for breakfast?”

He chose peanut butter. Suspicious, she asked if he was trying to leave the tastiest ones for her, but he insisted he didn’t care. There were more peanut-butter bars than either of the other flavors, so that’s what he’d eat.

Then, before Cupcake fell asleep, they took advantage of daylight to refold and smooth their bedding, pile the wet or bloody clothes in one place, sort through what was left for suitable diaper or menstrual pad material and continue searching boxes for anything that might be the tiniest bit useful.

“Hah!” Alec exclaimed when he unearthed a trunk of old quilts.

Taking them out, one by one, Wren breathed, “Ooh, look at these. They’re handworked. This one is from the 1920s, I think. Look at these fabrics. And I’ll bet this one’s even older. Alec, the fabric is so fragile. I hate to use them.”