Jodi O'Donnell - When Baby Was Born

As for no longer being alone—well, that’d be nice, too.

Yup, despite this blizzard and the prospect of losing cattle to it, Cade was aware of a certain…expectancy in the air that augured better times in the new year.

In any case, he sure as hell was ready for a change.

If he had the gumption, he’d see midnight in, just for the curiosity of finding out whether this hopeful impression would bear out. But he was just too dog-tired to stay up another minute, much less three hours.

Casting the towel in his hand toward the doorway and giving the one around his waist a fling in the same general direction, he eased under the thick covers.

That’s when he did smell something for real: the faintest waft of wood. Sandalwood, to be specific. He knew only because his brother had favored it, even if Loren had taken any amount of grief from Cade for being so city-slickered as to choose a “scent.”

Lying on his back, Cade again put out a hand, finding the letter on the bed stand and bringing it to his nose. It smelled only faintly of ink and paper, nothing more.

He shook his head at such foolishness, much unlike him. What was he waiting for, anyway? He may as well open it and get it over with.

But he was waiting for something, he realized, even as he pushed himself up onto one elbow to turn on the lamp on the opposite bed stand. He was waiting for, wanting, expecting, something more—

Cade’s heart stopped cold. He stared, blinked, then stared some more.

For lying on her side in the bed, her back to him, was a woman, sound asleep.

He was too stunned at first to move. Had he got so chilled out in the storm he was imagining things? Except he felt in perfect command of his senses.

From his vantage leaning over her, he could see that she was fairly young, with skin as smooth and white and flawless as the snow-covered plain outside. Long lashes lay against her cheek like tiny feathers. A dark braid of hair curled over her shoulder. She’d evidently been pretty chilled herself, for she’d drawn the down comforter up to her chin, making her look like nothing so much as an ebony-haired Sleeping Beauty in the midst of the hundred-year sleep whose end would come only with the kiss of her princely hero.

But he was no hero, princely or otherwise.

Truth be told, though, the whole scene she presented, sleeping peacefully in his bed as if truly secure in the trust that a certain someone would soon ride in whose return would make everything right in her world, had a feeling of…of rightness about it—like the answer to a question he hadn’t even known he’d asked.

She must have heard him, for the woman stirred, brow furrowing in momentary distress, making him wonder what dream he’d disturbed her from. He couldn’t tell whether it had been good or bad from the little sound she made in the back of her throat, half sigh, half moan. Half pleasure, half pain.

It occurred to Cade that it was one of the most intimate things you could do, watching someone wake up. He was helpless to look away, though, even if it made him feel like a voyeur in his own bed.

Her lashes fluttered, then opened. She glanced around drowsily before settling her gaze on his hand, propped on the mattress in front of her. Her eyes followed a path up from wrist to forearm to biceps to shoulder to neck before finally meeting his own gaze.

And Cade found himself looking into a pair of the biggest, deepest, darkest blue eyes under the sun. He’d never seen anything like them, nor the expression in them, completely, utterly trusting.

“You’re home,” she said simply. As if she had been waiting for him. Or someone else.

Which seemed highly unlikely, given the way she closed her eyes again, as if to fully savor his chest pressed against her spine, her backside nestled against his—

He realized only then that he was naked as the day he was born. And just as vulnerable. At the mercy of the elements, so to speak.

At the mercy of this woman.

It had been a long time since he’d been surprised into such a disadvantage. Seven years, in fact.

If his face hadn’t already been red from windburn, it surely was now as Cade cast around for something to make him decent. Luckily—if you could call it luck, which he was beginning to think he was on the wrong end of—there was the pair of jeans he’d thrown over the footboard earlier before heading into the shower.

With a mumbled “Pardon me,” he swiftly reached for the jeans and pulled them on under the covers before swinging out of the bed, back to her, to zip them up, barely preserving his modesty in the process, and only a fraction of his composure.

For when he turned around, it was to those singularly captivating eyes staring at him as if he were the answer to a wish.

But hadn’t he been the one doing the wishing?

Without a doubt, the cold had done a number on his reason, Cade decided. He noticed the letter on the coverlet, where it must have slipped out of his hand. It had gotten crumpled, probably during his exertions getting his jeans on. He snatched it up and tossed it back onto the night table, making a mental note to be sure and read it as soon as he had a private moment. Best to get back to reality with no more delay.

“If you don’t mind my bein’ nosy, just what’re you doin’ in my bed?” Cade asked, embarrassment making him short.

She pushed herself halfway up on the headboard, the thick comforter mounding around her. “There wasn’t another one made up in the house,” she said, as if that explained everything.

Once more, sarcasm got the better of him. “Not much reason for a man livin’ out in the middle of the Texas Panhandle to keep a guest room ready on the off chance some strange woman’ll want to make herself at home.”

He immediately regretted his abruptness. Even with her face half in shadow, he marked the shock in her expression, as well as another emotion he couldn’t make out.

“You are Cade McGivern, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I am,” he said, wondering how she knew his name. Of course, one had only to look on the mailbox at the end of the lane, or on any number of papers and such lying around the house.

Yet she murmured on a breath of relief, “At least I’m in the right place.”

Her words sent up a flag of warning. Who was this woman? How did she get here? More important, why was she here?

Well, he was more than ready to end the mystery.

“You mind tellin’ me what’s going on here?” he asked, gesturing toward her and the bed.

She pushed herself the rest of the way upright with some difficulty, swinging her legs over the far side of the bed and rising. “Actually, I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

He took a hit of confusion when she turned and he saw what her position in the bed and the comforter had hidden from him: She was pregnant. Heavily so.

He must have stared, for her arms went protectively around the burden under her navy corduroy jumper.

“T-tell me how you know me,” she said, that unnamed emotion coloring her words and sending up another flag of warning.

“Ma’am, I’ve never seen you before in my life,” Cade said in dead earnestness.

“I…see.” She closed her eyes briefly, as if absorbing another shock. Her mouth trembled in fear.

That was the other emotion he’d spied a minute ago: fear. Again, the warning went off in his head, like an alarm, but at least now he understood what it was about.

For in the next moment an unmistakable shiver of pain crossed her delicate features.

“Oh no,” she moaned. Her hand shot out to grab the bedpost as she bent forward, clutching her belly.

Cade didn’t need a medical degree to know what was happening. In an instant he was around the foot of the bed to take her elbow. “It’s the baby, isn’t it?” he said. “That’s why you stopped here.”