Mary J. - And Baby Makes Four

“You can do anything you want.” Lee’s voice glided along his senses. “Long as you don’t touch the controls.”

Pinching his eyes shut, he folded his arms, tried not to clutch the fabric of his suit coat.

Perspiration dampened his forehead. His stomach whirled.

“I’m right beside you,” Lee said into the headphones when the plane began to move.

He listened to her voice while she gave their coordinates to the Seattle tower, and the plane skimmed the ocean, lifted, buzzed into the sky.

He listened to the tone of her words more than their meaning. That assured tone. The quiet, steady tone.

And when he bit the inside of his cheek, he felt her fingers curve around his forearm. “You’ll be okay with me.”

And in that heartbeat, Rogan believed her.

He really did.

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Dear Reader,

In this second installment of my HOME TO FIREWOOD ISLAND miniseries, I wanted to write about a woman working in a predominantly male field. So I made my heroine a pilot, though not just any pilot. She flies single-prop seaplanes across mountains, canyons and forests…and lands on rivers, lakes, fjords and inlets.

And Baby Makes Four is her story. However, Lee Tait—eldest of the three sisters on Firewood Island—has come to a roadblock in her life. She must piece together her past with a man who could tear apart her future—or chance losing every dream. Will she take the ultimate risk?

Warm wishes,

Mary

PS—Their Secret Child (Addie’s story and first in the series) is available at online bookstores. Details about Kat—the third sister—are on my Web site at www.maryjforbes.com.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Her rural prairie roots granted Mary J. Forbes a deep love of nature and small towns, a love that’s often reflected in the settings of her books. Today, she lives with her family in the Pacific Northwest where she also teaches school, nurtures her garden and walks or jogs in any weather. Readers can contact Mary at www.maryjforbes.com.

With many thanks to my editor, Susan Litman

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

The man stood watching her in the early-April twilight.

Had he been alone, Lee Tait might have worried. This was, after all, the third time in as many days he stopped to observe her tinker on the Cessna 206 seaplane docked at the end of the boardwalk that curved within Burnt Bend’s tiny cove. As before, the child accompanied him, a boy of perhaps six or seven whose dusty blond hair caught the sun’s setting rays. His eyes, Lee noted, were plate-round with curiosity.

Still, the guy’s presence—yet again—couldn’t stop the cold sluice of adrenaline down her torso. What did he want? Why didn’t he continue along the shoreline path, which extended from the marina and wended past a smattering of cottages before looping back into the village, a distance of a quarter mile?

Why stop each time to stare at her for five minutes, and then turn around?

He stood in the fading light, rangy as a mountain climber, attired in gray cords, brown boat shoes and a black pullover. Except for a pair of gym shoes, the child emulated the dress code.

Obviously, father and son.

Two peas in a pod, her mother would say—if Lee explained the strange visitations to Charmaine. Which she would not.

The boy murmured something and, while low and indistinct, she heard the man’s quiet response drift down the wooden dock.

Trying to avoid the duo, she opened the seaplane’s door, stepped on the pontoon and hopped inside for a final check before tomorrow’s flight across the Puget Sound.

Last fall, she had signed a year’s contract with the Burnt Bend post office to courier expedited mail and parcels to the mainland. The daily service ensured a steady paycheck, while weekend visitors and tourists to the region kept her fledgling charter company viable. One day soon—when she could afford rising fuel costs—she hoped to include a scheduled weekday passenger service.

Lee winced at the thought. Cutting into Lucien Duvall’s passengers-only ferry service would not make the old guy happy.

Hopefully, when the time came, they’d be able to work something out.

Scanning for forgotten items left by passengers, she thought how the Cessna was the only good thing to come from her ex-husband. She hadn’t selected the best of his Abner Air fleet out of spite, or because he’d impregnated that cocktail waitress three years ago.

Then again, maybe she had….

Truth was, she’d picked the six-seater seaplane as the cornerstone of Sky Dash, a company she’d dreamed of founding since her twentieth birthday.

Spotting a crumpled island brochure under the farthest passenger seat, Lee recalled her last customer clutching the pamphlet in a death grip. Ah, well. Edgy fliers came with the territory.

Reaching down, she snagged the leaflet.

“Hello, there,” a deep voice said from behind.

Snapping around, she bumped her head on the cockpit’s ceiling.

She hadn’t heard him approach, but there he and the boy stood on the weathered pier, gazing at her rump in army-green coveralls, no less, as she leaned over the seat.

Swell. The guy wanted a tête-à-tête now? While her backside hung in his face?

Ignoring the warmth climbing her neck, she scrambled into the pilot’s seat.

“Hey,” she said, as if they hadn’t seen each other three times at precisely 6:30 p.m. in the past seventy-two hours. Be friendly, Lee. He could be a future weekend fare.

His eyes held humor. “Are you Amelia Earhart the Second?”

“I’m Lee Tait,” she stated, a little irked the guy would zero in on a nickname the townsfolk had given her when she received her wings fifteen years ago. “Owner and pilot of Sky Dash.”

“Sorry, ma’am.” He looked askance as if another thought chased through his mind. Then, with the boy close to his side, he offered a handshake. “Nice to meet you, Captain Tait.”

She leaned out the door. His grip was firm, large. A frisson of electricity shot up her arm. “No apology needed.” I’m used to the nickname. “And you are…?”

Shaking his head, he issued a short laugh. “I’m losing it. Rogan Matteo.”

“Rogan.” She tested the name, found it oddly pleasing. But…something niggled. Where had she heard his last name…?

He had quiet, gray eyes and soot-black hair. Although his voice suggested the South, his face revealed a none-too-genteel life. A nose too brash to be handsome, a square, tough jaw and cheekbones embracing the genes of a Spanish ancestor. Not handsome, yet appealing in a rudimentary sense.

Disregarding a scurry of nerves at how his eyes imprisoned hers, Lee jumped out of the plane. On the dock, she saw he was taller than she assumed; she could lay her head on his chest, if she chose.