But the wails intensified. The baby sounded distraught.
What was he to do with such a tiny baby? Colton remembered the bottle and grabbed it. Stuck the nipple in the crying mouth.
The baby choked.
Colton’s face turned cold. His heart forgot to beat. In his ignorance had he drowned the wee mite?
* * *
Twenty-three-year-old Rebecca Sterling reminded herself to keep a cheerful smile and a hopeful heart as she headed down the street toward the orphanage. She was the one who had received the anonymous check, so she was the one in charge of the orphanage-building project, and she was determined to make it a success.
True, she knew nothing about building, but a year ago, she had known nothing about finding homes for orphan children, either. Her assignment with the Orphan Salvation Society—a New York–based organization that rescued orphaned city children from the streets and found families for them out West—had changed that in a hurry. Now all but one of the orphaned children placed in her care had been settled with families. The last child, ten-year-old Heidi Strauss, was at her side as they crossed the street to the orphanage building site. Half a block later, Rebecca’s heart sank and her smile faltered when she could see that no lumber had been delivered.
“No more wood,” Heidi announced.
“So I see.” No lumber. Things gone missing. Boards destroyed and made to look like an accident.
Someone didn’t want her to succeed at getting the orphanage built. Rebecca fought against her feelings of frustration. They were running out of time. The specially appointed U.S. marshal would soon return with the rescued orphans who’d been forced by Baxter into virtual slave labor for unscrupulous miners and farmers all over Nebraska territory.
The children deserved more than rescue. They deserved a warm place to live where they would be welcomed and protected. She intended to see that they got it. The orphanage would be built. Somehow.
She tucked her chin toward her chest in a sign that anyone who knew her would recognize as a sign of stubbornness. Whoever was at the root of her troubles would soon learn that Rebecca Gwendolyn Sterling expected people to do as she asked.
Her chin sagged. Here in small-town Nebraska, the name Lawrence Sterling III didn’t carry the weight it did back in New York. Few people here had heard of her father. Fewer knew or cared that he was a rich importer of European goods.
She again drew her chin back. She would not accept defeat.
Through the framework of the building, a dark figure lurched from side to side.
“Someone’s there,” Heidi whispered as she tugged on Rebecca to stop her.
Rebecca jerked to a halt and clung to Heidi’s hand. Was he the one responsible for the mischief at the site? Or was he there to help?
Realizing that she was alone except for the small girl, who squeezed her hand hard enough to numb her fingers, Rebecca glanced around, but saw no one. No one to help her...but no one to aid the intruder, either. There was only one of him, after all. No reason to be all trembly inside. She’d had enough of delays. If his intention was anything but working on the building...
A horse whinnied as she and Heidi trod past him.
A cry reached her ears. A thin wail. She stopped and listened. “What is that?”
Heidi listened, too. “It sounds like a baby.”
“Must be coming from an open window.” She moved on until she reached the corner of the framed building, where she paused to study the man. A big man, broad at the shoulders. Something stirred within her. A sense of recognition and more—a sense of eagerness and curiosity.
Nonsense. She pushed away everything but caution and determination. Whoever he was, whatever he was up to, she had a job to do on this building. It was time everyone involved realized that she was in charge and would not relent until her job was done.
“Come along,” she murmured to Heidi, who hung back, afraid of the man. Rebecca led her forward.
At that moment, the man turned.
Rebecca recognized him—Colton Hayes, a cowboy she’d seen in church, in the store, riding down the street, driving a buggy with an older man and woman she’d been informed were his parents.
Her admiration of the way he gently helped his parents from the buggy was her justification for why she’d studied him so intently. Noted his strong build, his thick black hair. The few times she’d seen him without the black cowboy hat he now wore, she’d noticed that his hair dipped in a wave. Today he wore a soft-looking blue shirt and denim trousers faded across the thighs, darker at the seams.
Surely he wasn’t the one responsible for the mischief.
Not a tall, handsome man like that.
He considered her across the distance. Too far for her to see the color of his eyes, though she knew they were as green as emeralds.
Rebecca Gwendolyn Sterling, have you taken leave of your senses? Staring shamelessly at a man? What would your father say? She scolded herself in her mother’s voice and words. Her mother had died seven years ago, yet Rebecca still heard her and listened to her. But that was not to say that she always followed what she knew would be her mother’s advice. If she heeded her mother, she would demurely approach the man and speak quietly and gently. Perhaps ask if he needed assistance. Instead, she lifted the hem of her navy blue skirt and stepped quickly and confidently across the rutted ground. She circled the corner and approached the man. Heidi followed on her heels, trying to be invisible behind Rebecca’s skirts.
“Am I ever glad to see you,” the rancher said at their approach.
She jerked to a halt. Confusion clouded her thoughts. What on earth did he mean? And what did he have in his arms? Something alive, if the movement inside the quilt indicated anything. The cry she’d noted before came from that bundle. The squalling intensified.
“What is that?”
His crooked grin seemed both amused and desperate, which didn’t make any sense. She couldn’t imagine this big, bold man uncertain or desperate about anything.
“It’s a baby.” His voice carried a definite note of tension. “A crying baby. I tried to give it a bottle but nearly choked it to death.”
“I see.” She didn’t. Why did he have a baby?
“Perhaps you can help.”
“Me?” Her voice squeaked and she swallowed hard, forced calmness to her words. “What would you like me to do?”
“I don’t know. Something. Anything.”
She closed the remaining distance and looked at the small, scrunched-up face. Two little fists quivered beside the red cheeks. “It’s very tiny.”
“I figure it can’t be very old.”
“Is it a boy or girl?”
He shook his head as he continued to jiggle the infant. “I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
He chuckled. “Maybe because I haven’t seen anything more than the bit that’s not wrapped up.”
“You mean to say—”
“I found it here in that basket. Can’t you make it stop crying?”
He expected her to know what to do? Of course he would. After all, as an agent for the Orphan Salvation Society, she was deemed an expert on children. Only one problem. Until her father had signed her up for this trip, she’d had very little to do with children except in the company of their mothers or older sisters. Never had she even seen a baby so tiny.
Still she told herself, I can do this.
She would do this.