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The guttural cry sounded as if it was being wrenched from Susannah’s throat. She’d propped herself up on her elbows, her head thrown back and every tendon in her neck standing out in rigid relief. She cried again, and he could see the agony etched on her contorted features.
“You’re doing fine, Suze,” he rasped, knowing as he spoke how inadequate his words were. “You’re doing great. Keep pushing, honey.”
About to check on the baby’s progress again, out of the corner of his eye he saw a large, cream-colored blur speed by. Where did that come from? he thought in sharp alarm, flicking an automatic glance at the revolver on the floor. The Cadillac receded into the distance without slowing, and he frowned.
She’d been a woman alone on the road, in an unreliable vehicle and with a baby due any time. She might have glimpsed the same car at different gas stations along the way, and out of that concocted a fearful scenario that had grown bigger in her mind with each passing mile. When she’d been at her most vulnerable he’d come along—a jeans-and-leather-clad—
His heart stopped. It started up again, crashing so hard against his ribs it felt as if it was trying to escape.
“His head’s out, Suze,” he said hoarsely. Without conscious thought, he put a swift hand beneath the small skull to support it, just as he heard another incoherent cry issue from her throat.
When he’d been fifteen he’d broken his leg wiping out in a curve on a borrowed motorcycle without a license. During his year at the Double B Ranch he’d been thrown from Chorizo, a hammer-headed Appaloosa gelding Hawkins had expressly forbidden them to ride. Last year he’d taken a bullet in the ribs.
He’d figured he knew what endurance was. But he was a male. He had no idea what toughing it out meant, Tye realized now.
The baby was coming out on its side. Instinctively he lowered the fragile head a fraction, and an incredibly tiny shoulder popped into view. Again acting on instinct and hoping desperately that his instincts were right, he raised his supporting hands slightly.
The bottom shoulder emerged, so suddenly that for one frantic moment his cautious hold almost slipped.
“Turn—turn him on his back,” Susannah gasped. “Bag. Swabs. His nose—”
The little sucker was slippery, Tye thought disjointedly. This was like trying to hang on to a wet football in the rain, and one-handed it was even harder. Groping around in the bag by his feet, his fingers came into contact with a package.
“Cotton swabs,” he muttered. “Touchdown.”
There was some kind of gunk in the little guy’s nose and in the tiny mouth. Presumably the gunk had to come out.
“Of course, you could be a girl,” he said under his breath. He willed his hand to stop shaking, and swabbed at the minute, perfectly-formed nostrils, the goldfish lips. “If you are, no offense, okay? But until we know for sure I’m going to think of you as a—”
“Granny Lacey, help me!”
Even as he heard Susannah’s high-pitched plea to a woman who wasn’t there, Tye felt the small body slide completely into his hands, and frantically he adjusted his hold on—on him, he thought, feeling a grin spreading across his features. It was a boy. They’d had a boy!
“He looks just like me,” he said stupidly. “Just like me, Suze.” He met her pain-sheened gaze, unable to stop smiling despite the moisture he could feel prickling at the back of his eyes. “I mean he’s a boy,” he amended. “We—you’ve got a brand-new baby boy.”
“Is he breathing okay, Tye?” Concern overrode the fatigue in her tone. “Rub his back.”
Apparently it wasn’t like the movies. You didn’t introduce them to the world with a hearty slap on the rump. With infinite care he rubbed the little back and the crumpled lips pursed out, as if they were trying to blow a bubble. The miniscule eyelids squeezed even more tightly shut. A weak cry, more like the mew of a kitten than anything else, came from those crumpled lips.
In the space of a heartbeat—a skipped heartbeat, Tye thought shakily—the kitten-cry became an outraged squall that seemed far too big to have come from such a tiny body.
“Oh, Tye, let me hold him.”
Susannah was propped against the back of the car seat, her arms outstretched. Carefully he leaned forward and placed the small squirming body against her opened bodice before standing back and looking down at them.
Her hair hung in strands, her face was still red from her exertions and her bottom lip had either split slightly or she’d sunk her teeth in too deeply and bitten it at some time during the past hour. The cherry-strewn dress would never be presentable again.
She was so beautiful she took his breath away.
Those hazel-gold eyes were luminous with joy as she looked upon her new son for the first time. With no self-consciousness at all, tenderly she shifted the baby in her arms to her breast. As if a switch had been turned off, the crying stopped…and suddenly everything fell into place.
This was what it all came down to, Tye thought—a mother, a baby and a man watching over them. Why hadn’t he ever figured it out before?
“I got sterile thread to tie off the cord when the afterbirth comes out,” Susannah murmured, not taking her gaze from her son. “But Granny Lacey always said it was best to wait. Isn’t he perfect, Tye? Isn’t he just the most perfect baby you ever saw?”
“He’s better than perfect, Suze.”
When had he started calling her that and when had she started calling him Tye? he wondered, before dismissing the question. It didn’t matter. All he knew was that it seemed right. Despite the fact that they’d barely touched, he’d never felt closer to any woman in his life.
No ring on her finger doesn’t mean she’s not married.
A second ago he’d felt as if he’d just drunk a whole bottle of champagne. His euphoria came crashing down to earth.
He was a stranger who’d happened to be passing by, and the bond he’d thought he sensed between them was all in his imagination. This baby was some other man’s son.
“I’m going to name him Daniel, after my daddy.” Her voice was ragged with exhaustion. “I’d like his middle name to be Tyler, if that’s all right with you. I figure you’re a big part of why he’s here in my arms, safe and sound.”
For a moment Tye couldn’t say a word. Then he pulled himself together.
“His father had a bigger part, Susannah. I’m sure he wouldn’t want his son bearing a stranger’s name instead of his own.”
“His father’s dead. And since everything else he told me was a lie, I can’t even be sure the name I knew him by was real.”
She looked away, but not before he saw a shadow cross her features. “I didn’t shame myself with Frank Barrett,” she said softly. “We were married. But even if he’d lived, I know now he wasn’t the type to raise a child—maybe because inside he’d never really grown up himself. I want my son to be proud of the name he bears.”
She raised her eyes to his. “My daddy was a man,” she said simply. “He stood up for what he believed in, he would have given his life for the ones he loved and whenever he had to make a choice between taking the easy way out or doing what he thought was right, he went with his conscience. I think you’re the same kind. I’d take it as a honor if you let me name this little one Daniel Tyler Bird.”
Less than an hour ago that steady gaze holding his had made him feel off balance, Tye thought. But it had been everything else in his life that had been spinning out of control.
Most people would say the baby in her arms had come into this world with the cards stacked against him. He didn’t have a father. His mother couldn’t be much older than twenty—far too young to take on the responsibility of raising a child alone. He’d been born in the back seat of a broken-down car at the side of a dusty road.
But Daniel Tyler Bird already had everything he would ever need. His young mother had a wisdom far beyond her years, rooted in the values and morals of the family she’d spoken of.
And Daniel Tyler was loved by Susannah Bird.
“The honor’s mine, Suze,” Tye said huskily. “I’d be proud to have your son carry my name.”
“FROM WHAT you described, sounds like both mama and baby came through the whole thing just fine.” The gray-haired man wedged between Tyler and the driver on the front seat of the ambulance shot a glance in the direction of Tye’s clenched jaw. “Me and Wesley here saw the California plates on that fancy chopper you parked outside my clinic. You in these parts scouting movie locations?”
Tye shook his head. “I’m just here to look up an old friend,” he said, not taking his eyes from the highway ahead.
He didn’t elaborate. As if sensing his preoccupation, Dr. Jennings let the subject drop, and as he and the driver fell into conversation Tye’s thoughts returned to the woman he’d left nearly an hour ago.
Susannah had nodded when he’d told her he saw no choice but to leave her and Danny while he went into Last Chance to get medical help. “That May sun’s going to turn this car into an oven, Tye,” she’d said, concern darkening her gaze. “You’re right, we can’t just hope someone’s going to come along. Except for you, there hasn’t been a vehicle go by the whole time I’ve been here.”
He hadn’t corrected her. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he’d promised. “There’s nothing else left to tie off or take care of or—”
Her laughter had been low. “No, that’s it. Granny Lacey couldn’t have done a better job of cutting the cord.” She’d hesitated. “I—I’m glad it was you who stopped, Tye. And not just because of how you helped Daniel and me.”
He hadn’t told Doc Jennings anything close to the truth, Tyler thought now. He hadn’t come back to Last Chance to look up Hawkins, he’d come because Del had called him with an urgent and unprecedented request for his help. But even before Del had called he’d been trying to find some excuse to make the trip back here to New Mexico, because for the past few years everything he’d worked for, everything he’d thought he wanted out of life, had begun to seem meaningless. And when one day last month he’d looked into his shaving mirror and for a split second had seen the face of his father, he’d felt real fear.
He’d needed answers. He hadn’t really been sure what his questions were. But when he’d put Susannah Bird’s newborn son into her arms and she’d given him that glance of purest joy, all his unasked questions and unknown answers had been swept away.
“What fool would throw a jacket onto the side of the road?” Mild as it was, Jennings’s quizzical question broke into Tyler’s thoughts.
“Tourists.” At the wheel, Wesley snorted. “More money than—”
“Turn around.” At his terse command, Tye saw the driver and Jennings exchange glances. He spoke again, his tone still sharp. “I think that’s my jacket. I left it on the roof of her car.”
“I thought you said her vehicle had broken down.” As Wesley maneuvered the ambulance onto the hard-baked shoulder and began executing a cautious three-point turn, Jennings frowned. “Besides, a woman who’d just given birth couldn’t hop into the front seat and drive off, Adams.”
“I know that.” Tye felt the knot in his stomach tighten. “But this is where I left her, I’m sure of it.”
Unwilling to wait, he opened the ambulance door and jumped out. Sprinting the hundred yards or so back to the discarded leather jacket Jennings had seen, he picked it up.
It was his. High up on the right sleeve was the gaping slash where her bullet had sliced through. At his feet was a darker patch in the parched dust, and on either side of the patch were the shallow impressions where her heels had dug in.
“I can’t explain now, but it appears like someone’s looking to bring harm to me and my baby….”
Despite the heat, suddenly he felt encased in ice.
He’d left her and Daniel Tyler unprotected. And now they were gone.
Chapter Two
“Do you know what today is, little one?”
Susannah adjusted the flame of the oil lamp on the dresser until the warm glow reflected off the adobe walls just enough to illuminate the two objects hanging on their otherwise unadorned smoothness. One was a large canvas, its jewel-like colors shimmering richly. On the opposite wall hung a plain olive-wood cross. Walking to the handmade cradle by the bed, Susannah bent over her sleeping son.
“You’re a whole week old today, starshine,” she said softly. “Happy birthday, Daniel Tyler.”
She’d made the right decision, she told herself, stroking a fine curl of hair from his delicately veined temple. She and her baby had disappeared without a trace. She’d bought them time, and for now Danny was safe.
That safety had come at a cost.
“I know there’s people who don’t believe in miracles, Danny, but that’s like not believing in rain or puppies or fresh-baked bread,” she murmured. “God gives us presents every day. He gave me you. And the day you were born, two more miracles dropped into my life.”
She bit her lip, her gaze darkening. “One of them was Tyler Adams, the man who made sure you came into this world safely,” she whispered.
When he grew old enough to ask questions, what would she tell her little boy about the man whose name he bore? she wondered. That even when she’d first laid eyes on him, convinced he was working for the killers who’d been hunting her for the last nine months, she’d thought he was the handsomest man she’d ever seen? That his hair had been the color of burnished gold, his eyes bluer than the sky? That he’d been so tall and broad-shouldered he’d blocked out the sun?
He’d stood there gazing down at her, his perfectly chiselled features remote and unreadable, his skin slightly windburned. Under his unzipped leather jacket she’d seen the white of a T-shirt. There’d been an oil smear high up on one hard cheekbone, and his jeans and boots had been grimy with road dust.
He’d looked dangerous and beautiful at the same time. He’d looked like a picture she’d seen long ago in a children’s book of Bible stories, of an angel who’d fallen from grace.
She’d come close to blowing her miracle away with a .38 caliber bullet.
“I could have killed him.” In the quiet room her voice was hoarse with remembered horror. “He must have thought I was crazy—but still he stayed.”
He’d not only stayed with her, he’d delivered her baby. And when he’d gently put Daniel Tyler into her arms, he’d looked at her as if she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Unconsciously Susannah pressed her palms to her cheeks, feeling hot color rise under her fingertips. After a minute, the heat subsided and she dropped her hands to her sides.
She had to have imagined that part, she told herself.
“You were the first miracle,” she said to the tiny sleeping form in the cradle. “Tye was the second. And Greta was the third.”
“As a hard-headed Minnesota Swede, I don’t believe in miracles.” The comment came from the tall blonde in the doorway. “I certainly don’t see myself as one.”
Her stride, long-legged and elegant as she approached, was in contrast to the paint-smeared jeans and shirt she wore. Platinum strands escaped the careless braid hanging halfway down her back.
“But if I did, I’d say this angel definitely qualified.” Placing a finger on the edge of the cradle, she gave it a gentle push. “I would have liked to have had one just like you, little man. I would have traded everything else for that.”
The ice-blond braid swung forward over the denim-clad shoulder. She met Susannah’s gaze. “Instead I had ten years on the covers of Vogue and Harper’s, and when I walked away from it all I was free to devote the rest of my life to my painting.” Her smile was crooked. “I should be ashamed of myself, crying for the moon.”
“But sometimes the moon’s so pretty, isn’t it?” Unnecessarily Susannah adjusted Danny’s blanket again. “Sometimes a body just can’t help wishing she could haul it down from the sky and hold on to it for a while.”
Greta’s cat-green gaze softened. Slinging an arm over Susannah’s shoulder, she steered her toward the door. “If it really was the moon either one of us was talking about, the solution would be easy. There’s going to be a full one tonight and I thought we could sit out on the portale and watch it rise over the desert. White wine for me, guava juice for you,” she added, her perfect nose wrinkling.
As they entered the spacious, stone-flagged kitchen, she shot Susannah a glance before opening the refrigerator door. “You still feel guilty about that Adams man, don’t you?”
“He did me a kindness.” Susannah looked away. “I don’t feel right about the way I repaid him.”
“You did what you had to.” Chunking a couple of cubes of ice into a tall glass, Greta filled it to the brim with pink juice. Pouring a glass of wine for herself, she took a sip. “Salut,” she said briefly. “Let’s go smell my roses and howl at the moon.”
Startled into laughter despite herself, Susannah followed her new friend into the living room. A traditional kiva fireplace and exposed beams on the ceiling were striking focal points, as were the three unframed abstracts hanging on the walls—abstracts, she’d learned from Greta’s offhand comments, that would each bring a small fortune if they were ever placed in a New York gallery. Blocks of color danced joyfully across the canvases. Only on second look did a viewer notice the underwashes of dark blues and purples anchoring the backgrounds.
They were like their creator, she reflected. Although she had to be in her forties, Greta Hassell’s beauty was still the first thing a stranger would see, but behind that flawless facade was a compassionate woman with her own hidden pain.
Tye had been gone less than ten minutes when the pickup had pulled over and the slim blonde had gotten out. Her perfect features had paled in shock as she’d taken in the situation—Susannah, her obviously newborn baby at her breast, freezing in the act of grabbing for the revolver at her feet as she realized the newcomer was a woman. The blonde’s lips had tightened.
“You’re in trouble,” she’d said shortly. “And your baby should get out of this heat. I’m taking you to my place.”
Automatically Susannah had started to explain the situation. Then she’d stopped, her gaze going to her son.
“I—I need to disappear,” she’d said after a moment, her tone low and rapid. “Disappear completely—right down to this no-good vehicle that stranded me here. If you can help me do that I’d be obliged, ma’am.”
“There’s a tow-hitch on the back of my truck.” The emerald eyes had narrowed to slits, but Susannah had seen faint humor in them. “The deal is you tell me what this is all about when you and your baby are rested up.” The woman had leaned into the sedan, one arm going around Susannah’s shoulders to help her up. “And call me Greta, not ma’am, sweetie.”
Just like that they’d become friends, Susannah thought, entering the miniature courtyard—what Greta called the portale—attached to the house. Wrought-iron gates set into the enclosing adobe walls kept the outside world at bay, the walls themselves pierced here and there with small openings. Inside each opening sat a small flickering candle in a votive holder.
“If your little guy wakes up we’ll hear him easily enough.” Greta set Daniel’s baby monitor on the glass-topped table, two tiny lines between her brows. “You know I’ve been careful not to buy Danny’s diapers and supplies in Last Chance, Susannah, but when I ran into town yesterday to get turpentine I kept my ears open. No one was talking about a woman and a baby going missing.”
“Maybe after Tye sent the ambulance to get me he decided to continue on his journey instead of waiting around. Heaven knows he didn’t owe me any more of his time.” Susannah looked toward the house, her glance going to the window of Daniel’s room. “I guess it wouldn’t be the first time the paramedics went out on a call that didn’t pan out, so they wouldn’t have seen any need to raise a hue and cry about it. But that doesn’t change the fact I did him a wrong, Greta.”
The other woman hesitated. When she spoke again she seemed to be choosing her words with care. “I didn’t hear any gossip about strangers poking around, either,” she said quietly. “Tell me—how sure are you that someone’s after you?”
“As sure as I am of the fact that Frank Barrett was killed,” Susannah said flatly. “I identified his dead body, Greta. And a few weeks after I had him laid to rest I saw the owner of the diner where I worked killed by a bullet meant for me.”
Restlessly she stood. Through the iron lace of the gates the moon Greta had promised hung, full and orange, over the desert. “I just don’t know who’s after me or why, which is why every time I’ve gone to the police I sound like a crazy wom—”
