M.J. Rodgers - Baby By Chance

“I know how to take care of myself, thank you. What are you even doing out here?”

“I’m an Eagle Scout trying to earn my merit badge,” he said in frustration. Hell, he was only trying to help.

She looked him straight in the eye in that arresting way of hers. “What, no little old ladies around to help across the street?”

“Only Boy Scouts get merit badges for helping little old ladies across streets. We Eagle Scouts have to contend with cantankerous photographers who insist on dropping out of trees.”

He hadn’t tried to keep the irritation out of his tone this time. He squatted beside her, grasped her legs, and proceeded to give her muscles a brisk massage, no longer caring whether she objected.

She didn’t bat his hands away this time. He could feel her eyes searching his averted face.

“When are you going to tell me what you’re doing here?” she asked.

“When are you going to tell me why you didn’t prepare yourself properly to descend that tree?”

When she didn’t answer, he looked up to find that she was glaring at him. The flash of spirit looked good on her. He switched his attention back to her legs. They weren’t bad either, strong and supple beneath his hands. Rubbing them was something less than a chore. Still, he kept his mind strictly on the business of getting the circulation back into them. Well, almost strictly.

“That’s enough,” she said after a moment.

He released her legs and stood. But when he held out his hand to help her up, she ignored the offer and instead grabbed hold of the tree trunk. With what seemed like more will than strength, she pulled herself to her feet. But she wobbled and leaned heavily against the tree for support.

“You’re dizzy,” he said, suddenly understanding.

Her face had lost color, and she rested her head against the trunk. But she delivered her next words with strong, sweet sarcasm. “Such amazing insight.”

“You didn’t eat breakfast, did you,” he demanded more than asked. “I thought you were a professional. You should know better than to begin a long assignment without any food in your stomach.”

“First a private investigator, then an Eagle Scout, and now a mother hen,” she said. “Such versatility.”

“You’re probably dehydrated, as well,” he said, knowing there was no probably about it.

“Don’t you have a wife you could be annoying?”

Despite her continuing attempt to be tough, she looked absolutely terrible. “If I did have a wife, and she pulled some stupid stunt like this, I’d—”

He stopped his tirade as he watched her sink back to the forest floor. Closing the distance between them, he swept her collapsing body into his arms. Her head rolled onto his shoulder as a soft sigh escaped her lips. She had fainted.

Her face was as white as the delicate flowers spraying the front of her jacket. Her bangs were wet with morning mist, and a silky strand of golden-brown hair from her braid tickled his neck.

A full minute passed before David’s heart stopped skipping beats.

What a fool she was. And what a fool he was for giving a damn.

He twisted around and grabbed her backpack. The thing weighed a ton. How did this woman lug around such heavy stuff? He slung the backpack over his shoulder and started down the trail.

SUSAN SLOWLY OPENED her eyes to find herself lying beneath a spectacular blue spruce. The hazy mist of the overcast morning curled through the heavy branches. She didn’t recognize the beautiful tree. She felt a soft, wool fabric beneath her fingertips. She didn’t recognize that, either.

“Don’t try to get up,” David’s voice commanded from behind her.

His voice she did recognize. Her memory came back with a bang. She’d gotten dizzy while descending from the blind. She’d let go of the steel stakes to drop onto the soft mound of moss beneath the tree. While lying there, trying to get her equilibrium back, David Knight had suddenly appeared to pester her.

Pushing herself to a sitting position, she fought the immediate dizziness brought on by her abrupt movement. When the earth and sky finally resumed their correct positions, she discovered that the red plaid blanket beneath her was next to a brown dirt road.

“I told you not to get up,” David said, scowling at her. He stood a few feet away, beside a silver Ford truck with an F250 logo on the side. He was pouring steaming, dark liquid from a thermos into a cup.

She glanced around her. This certainly wasn’t the clearing with the fox den. This place didn’t look familiar at all, and neither did that silver truck.

“How did I get here?” she asked.

He put the thermos down on the truckbed and walked toward her, carrying the cup. “You fainted.”

Had she? Odd. She’d never fainted before in her life. But maybe not so surprising. She had certainly been dizzy enough.

“You carried me here?”

He reached her, dropped to a squat and held out the cup. “Drink this.”

One whiff told her that he was offering her hot chocolate. She shook her head and leaned back. “No, thanks.”

He scowled at her. “If you don’t get something in your stomach soon, you’ll faint again.”

She scowled back. “The last thing I need is something in my stomach.”

He held out the cup again. “Trust me. You’ll feel better.”

“Trust me. I’ll puke.”

He pulled back the cup and regarded her closely. For a moment she could have sworn she saw something like discomfort flash across his face. But then his frown was back and she figured she was imagining things.

“Morning sickness?” he asked.

She nodded. “Nothing passes these lips until noon, and sometimes even then it has a round-trip ticket.”

He plopped down on the blanket beside her. “So that’s why you haven’t eaten.”

“And I had begun to think you’d lost all your detective skills.”

He sent her another scowl before turning his head away to stare at the line of trees along the dirt road. He was good at that scowling thing. Must have had a lot of practice.

As he sipped the hot chocolate he’d poured for her, she tested out her limbs and found them to be a little tender but otherwise okay. She looked around once again, trying to get her bearings. Where was east, west? Would have been a lot easier to determine if the sun were out. But then, it so rarely was.

“How far are we from where I was shooting?” she asked.

“About a mile and a half. If you’re worried about your camera, I put your backpack in the truck.”

A mile and a half. That was a long way to carry a one-hundred fifteen pound woman and forty pounds of her camera equipment. Looked as though his muscles weren’t just for show.

His concern for her welfare actually seemed genuine. He’d even been thoughtful enough to bring along her equipment. Maybe there was a heart hidden somewhere inside that hard chest, after all.

She studied the bold lines of his profile. Nice, straight, well-shaped nose. Full, well-defined lips. Not bad, actually. Maybe not a handsome face, but definitely not quite as forbidding as her first impression.

He turned his head and his eyes met hers.

“Feeling any better?”

“Some,” she admitted. “Thanks for being concerned about me.”

He looked quickly away. “Forget it.”

He was uncomfortable with her thanking him. What had she done to rub this man the wrong way?

“Time you answered my question,” she said, happy to hear herself sounding calm, reasonable. “What are you doing here?”

THERE WERE A LOT of things David knew he should say to Susan. Number one was the apology he owed her. But admitting he’d been wrong suddenly did not seem like such a good idea, not with her sitting so close to him, looking directly into his eyes in that bold way of hers.