Awintry mix of freezing rain, sleet and snow peppered the
roof and rattled the windows of the old farmhouse. Icy
tentacles of cold snaked beneath the door to rush across
the hardwood floors and over the gray cat sleeping on the
colorful oval rug. Molly McCreight shivered, laid aside
her book, and rose from her cozy spot in front of the
blazing fireplace. The cat stirred, too, gazing up with
curious green eyes.
"Ah, be still, Samson. I'm just going to poke something
against that door. If Bart Crimshaw had fixed it last
summer like he was supposed to..." She let the words and
thoughts drift away. Bart, the beast, hadn't ever done
anything he was supposed to do. He'd disappeared like all
the others as soon as he realized she wasn't kidding when
she said she would never be interested in having
children. "But we don't care, do we, Samson? We're doing
fine, just fine, without any of them."
The cat's ears flicked, though he stayed beside the
glowing fire. She wasn't doing just fine and even Samson
knew it. She mourned for the loss of her once-close
relationships with her mother and her sister, Chloe, and
most of all, she mourned for baby Zack.
Since she'd taken the job at the Winding Stair Senior
Citizen Center things had been a little better, but the
estrangement from her family still lay like a rock in the
pit of her stomach.
As she mumbled to the bored-looking cat, Molly took a
towel from the bathroom, rolled the thick terry-cloth like
a jelly roll and stuffed it under the front door.
"Listen to that wind." Hunching her shoulders, she rubbed
her upper arms as if to ward off the outside chill. "It's
a miracle we still have electricity."
Above the incessant howl of winter came a low hum.
"What in the world?" Molly pulled the heavy antique-rose
drape away from the window and peered out. Though the time
was not yet six o'clock, outside was as dark as
sin. "Surely, that's not a vehicle way out here in this
storm?"
Thick layers of ice already coated the windows, the porch
and the front of the house. More of the icy pellets and
rain fell in such abundance she was hard-pressed to make
out the faint glow of lights in the distance. The hum of a
motor increased, coming closer. Since her farmhouse sat a
ways off the main gravel road, Molly knew the visitor was
headed in her direction.
When the freezing rain had begun early that morning, she
had done the sensible thing and prepared for the certain
storm ahead. She'd filled the wood box and piled enough
extra wood on the porch to keep her going for days even
though the propane tank was full. She'd run water into
buckets though the water had never frozen in the two years
she'd lived on the remote farm in Oklahoma's Kiamichi
Mountains. And she'd made a pot of vegetable beef stew to
die for just because the rich aroma of stewed tomatoes and
beef filtering through the house made her feel warmer.
"Looks like a truck of some sort," she muttered, frowning
through the narrow window in the front door. She flipped
on the porch light and strained her eyes against the
darkness camped beyond the yard.
"It is a truck, Samson. A delivery truck." Her frown
deepened. "Now, what kind of idiot...?"
The headlights disappeared as if they'd been sucked inside
the dying motor. A smaller light signaled the opening of
the van door. With a muffled thud, that light was
extinguished also.
Molly made out the hurrying form of a man, not overly
tall, but not short either, picking his way over the
crusty ice toward her front porch. Bundled against the
frigid weather, he looked thick and heavy but moved with
speed and agility, his arms crossed in front of him in a
posture Molly found odd for running.
He was carrying something. At times, she ordered a lot of
things, but come on.
"No package could be that important." When the man's feet
thudded against the wooden porch, Molly yanked the door
open, gasping at the sudden blast of frigid air. Shadowed
beneath the glowing yellow light with sleet and bits of
snow swirling around him, the man peered down at her from
under a brown bill cap. He was a uniformed delivery man,
all right. She recognized the familiar dark brown truck
that sailed up and down the country roads delivering
packages. The man himself looked vaguely familiar, but he
wasn't her usual delivery man.
"Ma'am, I was wondering if you could —"
She didn't give him a chance to finish. The cold air was
filling up her cozy little house, and she wasn't about to
stand on ceremony in this kind of weather. He couldn't be
a criminal. Even an ax murderer had better sense than to
be out in this weather. Only a working stiff would be so
dedicated.
"Get in here before you freeze." With one hand she shoved
the storm door wide and with the other she grasped his
thick, quilted sleeve and pulled. That's when she realized
what he was carrying against his chest. Not a package. A
bundle. A soft, quilted bundle decorated with yellow ducks
and pink rabbits. She yanked her hand away and stared long
and hard as the delivery man stomped into the house,
sprinkling ice pellets all over the floor. He ushered in
the unmistakable scent of cold air on a warm body.
Molly shut the door and kicked the towel against it, all
the while staring in disbelief at the bundle in the
delivery man's arms.
The man went straight for the fireplace and stood close,
his back to her. Molly followed him, keeping her eyes on
the bundle. Maybe it wasn't what she thought it was.
"The roads are so bad, I was afraid I wouldn't make it
back to town. Don't need to tell you what would happen if
I got stranded and ran out of gas in this weather."
"No."
There would be enough horror stories in the days to come
of motorists or other hapless folks who'd gotten caught
out in this. The occasional Oklahoma ice storms were
notorious for paralyzing entire sections of the state.
Sometimes weeks would pass before the roads were cleared,
power back on, and life returned to normal. Aunt Patsy,
the farm's true owner, had spent her share of days
stranded up here while waiting for the ice to melt or the
road grader to arrive in this remote portion of the county.
"I'm sorry to intrude on you this way." A pair of sincere
blue eyes — worried eyes — peered at her. Normally she
would have considered such eyes, rimmed as they were in
black spiky lashes, especially attractive. And the rest of
his face — clean-shaven, lean and honest — was only made
more ruggedly attractive by a narrow scar that sliced one
eyebrow and disappeared upward into a neat crew cut. She
found the scar intriguing — and appealing.
The bundle in his arms was an entirely different matter.
"You're the closest house for miles," he said, as though
that gave him the right to remind her of what she could
never forget.
Most times she loved the solitude of living miles from
nowhere, driving in to her job and then hurrying home to
her little farm. In town she could always feel the stares,
the eyes of suspicion, and hear the not-so-subtle
whispers. No matter that the tragedy happened two years
ago, a small town never forgot — or forgave — such a
terrible transgression. How could they when she couldn't
even forgive herself?
"You got a telephone?"
Her gaze flickered up to his and quickly back to the
bundle. Yellow ducks and pink rabbits. Foreboding crept up
her spine, colder than the outside temperatures. "Phone's
been out since noon."
"Figures. My communication system is down, too, and cell
phones are impossible up here in the hills."
Molly knew that. No one in these mountains even considered
buying a cell phone.
Tormented by thoughts of the bundle, she turned her back
to the fire and tried not to think too much. Please, Lord,
please. Let that be a doll. Or a puppy.
The bundle stirred; a soft cooing issued from the quilt.
Molly's pulse rate jumped a notch. That was no
puppy. "Ma'am..." the delivery man began.
"Molly," she interrupted, stepping back, terrified of what
he was about to say. "I'm Molly McCreight."
"Pleased to meet you, ma'am, and I'm Ethan Hunter." He
thrust the bundle toward her. "Do you know anything about
babies?"
Her heart stopped beating for a full three seconds. She
couldn't breath. There really was a baby inside that mass
of quilts and blankets.
In all his thirty-three years, Ethan had never seen a
female react this way to a baby. The red-haired woman
turned deathly pale, her brown eyes widened in panic as
she backed slowly toward the crackling fireplace behind
her. Usually, little Laney was a regular chick magnet,
drawing unwanted female attention even when he stopped at
the supermarket for a carton of milk or a bag of diapers.
But tonight when he actually desired that little bit of
magic, the woman in question looked as if she'd rather
jump into the fireplace than touch his baby daughter.
"I know this is unusual, ma'am."
"Molly," the woman whispered through white lips, her gaze
never leaving Laney's blankets.
"Molly," he tried again. "I'm sorry to intrude on you this
way, but I have a delivery that must be made tonight."
Her eyes widened in panic. "Here?"
"No, ma'am. To Mr. Chester Stubbs."
She looked up, interested, concerned, though her blanched
face never regained its former peaches-and-cream color. "I
know Chester. He lives about as far back into the
mountains as you can get and still be on this planet."
"Exactly. And the roads up in there are little more than
winding trails." Every inch of the way from town, over
slick and ice-packed roads, he'd prayed, believing with
all his might that he was meant to deliver this gamma. For
the last half hour he'd prayed to find some safe place to
leave Laney. When he'd seen the glow of this farmhouse,
the only place for miles, he'd been certain this was the
Lord's answer. But now, given Molly McCreight's
reluctance, he wasn't so sure.
"Can't the delivery wait until this ice storm thaws?"
"No, ma'am. It's gamma, and gamma can't wait." Her
startled eyes flicked from Laney to him.
"What in the world is gamma?"