Katie liked children—always had, though she’d been raised an only child with no younger cousins to play with. There had been the neighbor kids, though, younger than she, a veritable gold mine of babysitting money. This child took the cake, however. She was not only physically attractive, but she was charming and trusting and her eyes twinkled.
Katie hugged Lily tighter and, instead of resisting, the child relaxed. Her body grew heavier, the string of the story faded into words interspersed with yawns until there were no more words, just soft breathing and a heavy head on Katie’s shoulder.
Katie knew she should carry the child off to her bed, but the temptation to hold her in front of the crackling fire was too great to resist. Besides, she didn’t want to be alone. Where was Nick?
What she wanted was for him to come home and reassure her with something along the lines of: “That face in the window? Not to worry, that’s old man Petrie, a harmless recluse. The old coot likes to wander around in snowstorms looking for aluminum cans.” That would be great. She could handle old man Petrie…
Resting her cheek atop Lily’s spun-gold hair and kissing her forehead, Katie closed her eyes, listening to the storm outside. Both the anxiety concerning the face at the window and worry about her mother’s welfare took a back seat as exhaustion caught up with her, spinning her thoughts into ever-more-distant circles.
She must have fallen asleep, for the next thing Katie knew, a door slammed her back to consciousness. Nick Pierce stood just inside the room, the expression on his face unfathomable.
“What are you doing with my daughter?” he said, striding across the room.
A sudden stab of guilt made Katie flinch. She should have put the little girl back in her bed, but honestly, was it really such a big deal?
Katie said, “I—”
He leaned over and picked Lily up, shifting her in his arms, his embrace of his sleeping child as tender as it was protective.
“What’s your problem?” she snapped, her voice a sharp whisper. “Your child needed comforting and so I—”
“Lily is—”
“Your daughter. I got that. This place is a nuthouse! How she turned out so endearing—”
“No one asked you to come here,” he said, his expression so intense it would probably start a blaze if directed on one spot long enough.
“You’re right,” she said, standing. “And trust me, as soon as I can figure out a way to leave, I’ll be out of your hair. You don’t know anything about your father, do you? I bet you don’t know anything about anyone, especially not yourself!”
“What the hell does that mean?” He kept his voice as low in volume as Katie did.
She glowered at him in response.
“I’m going to put Lily back in her bed. You stay here.”
As though she had anywhere else to go!
Chapter Four
Nick tucked Lily into her bed, kissed her cheek and closed the door, leaving it open just a crack in case she called out. Then he stood in the hall and ran his hand through his hair.
That blasted woman! Coming into his house, scaring away his housekeeper, waking his kid, acting as though she owned the place, as though she had rights, as though she was an invited guest and not an interloper and a troublemaker and a major pain in the neck.
He had to get rid of her.
Oh, hell, he knew in the back of his mind that Lily sometimes woke up during storms and wandered out to see if anything interesting was going on without her. He should be grateful that Katie was there to comfort his baby, that Lily had felt comfortable enough to go to her, to sit on her lap, to fall asleep in her arms, but he wasn’t grateful. He didn’t know for sure what he felt, but it wasn’t gratitude.
Taking a deep breath, he went back to the living room. Katie was still in the red chair. She looked up when he entered. “Your phone is dead,” she said.
“I know. I should have told you it went down early in the storm. Listen, what do you want to know?” he asked, claiming a matching chair to the left of hers. It was time to get this over with.
“There’s nothing you can tell me,” she said without looking at him. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, and snippets of things she’d said about herself over the past few hours suddenly came back to him. She hadn’t known her mother until recently? Her sister was in the hospital with a gunshot wound? And her limp. Why did she limp?
“Listen, let’s start over again,” he said.
She darted him a quick glance. “What’s the point? You resent my being here. You’re right, I foisted myself on you and your family. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ve made everything worse instead of better and now I’m stuck.”
He chuckled. “You’re pretty good,” he said.
This earned him a longer look. “What do you mean?”
“Anger hasn’t worked. Buttering me up with a poignant little vignette featuring my kid didn’t do it. Now you’re going to try humility.”
He expected her to jump to her feet and strike out at him. Face it, it was the reaction he hoped for. Caring feelings toward this woman were impossible to entertain. She was trouble. Or to be more fair, she would bring trouble to his life and his family if given half a chance, so reason said push her far away using any method available.
He couldn’t throw her out of the house, because she’d freeze to death. With the county roads in their current snowed-in condition and with no one to watch Lily, he couldn’t even drive her back into Frostbite’s lone hotel though, now that he thought of it, why hadn’t he deposited her there instead of bringing her out here? He couldn’t call her a cab or send her off on a snowmobile. Physically, he was stuck with Katie Fields, so the only method to get rid of her was to anger her beyond reason so she’d stalk off to the guest room and leave him in peace.
But she didn’t jump up or turn nasty. “You really hate your father, don’t you?”
He stared right into her blue eyes and smiled. “I really do.”
She sighed. “First things first. Did you stand outside and look through that window over there a few minutes ago? Fifteen maybe, a half hour tops?”
“Absolutely not,” he said quickly.
“I didn’t think so.”
“You saw someone?”
“Yes. He looked right through the window but by the time I blinked he was gone. Then Lily showed up so I kept her in here with me. I’d like to say it was for her sake, but truthfully, I just didn’t want to be alone and she was so damn sweet and trusting—”
He held up a conciliatory hand. “I’ve fallen under her spell a time or two myself. Let’s get back to the man at the window. What did he look like?”
“He had dark eyes and a haggard, unshaven look. That’s all I could see. I think he was wearing a hood of some kind. He looked—intense, I guess. I went over to the door to check the chain and listen, but I couldn’t hear anything.”
Nick had walked to the door as Katie spoke. She was right behind him. Taking a lantern from the table, he unhooked the chain and pulled open the door, letting in a blast of cold air and a few snowflakes. He shone the light out into the dark, cold night.
It was still snowing. Four or five new inches had accumulated on the porch railing. The grounds were blanketed in white, broken by the tall shapes of waving trees and long lines of fences all obscured by the storm. The eight guest cabins