Charming The Highlander

Now that she was home in a warm, secure, nonthreatening environment, she could think of a hundred things they could have done instead of trying to walk off the mountain on their own.

But that was water under the bridge.

It was now time to move on. She needed a bath, and so did Baby. Then she would have to see if Mary’s old pickup parked in the barn would start, so she could go to town and get baby formula, more diapers, and food for herself.

She picked up the bag Grey had set on the floor by the door and carried it over to the table. She pulled out her computer and plugged it into the outlet on the counter to recharge the battery. She hoped the cold and the freezing rain had not ruined it. All of her work was on that machine, and her backup disks were still on the mountain.

She hoped her disks survived, too, until the MacKeages could go and fetch them. They were in her satellite link suitcase, in a waterproof case of their own. They should be okay.

She took the cookie tin out next and set it in the middle of the table. She smiled at her sister.

“Honest to God, you could have heard a mouse sneeze in that cabin, Mare, when Grey told them you were in the tin,” Grace said. “Ian almost fell out of his chair. He kept looking at the bed as if you were going to jump out and bite him.”

She turned the tin to face her. “They said they were sorry you died and that they would miss you. I thanked them for both of us for their friendship to you and told them how much you appreciated their helping you with the roof.”

She dumped the contents of the bag on the table as she continued to talk. “I like your neighbors.

Especially Ian. He’s such a grumbling sourpuss he’s actually cute.”

Grace sat down at the table with a groan, cradling her aching back as she did. “They’re all a bit weird, don’t you think? And I can barely understand them for their accents. Except Grey. His is mild most of the time.” She cocked her head. “And that’s the weirdest thing. Why would a person deliberately change his accent?”

Grace closed her eyes and laid her head on the table. If she didn’t get up and get into the shower, she and Baby would be sleeping in the kitchen.

Her nose twitched as the familiar, subtle scents of lavender and spice wafted around her, awakening some long-dormant memory from childhood. Grace lifted her head and slowly looked around the silent kitchen.

Home. She smelled home—years of her mother’s cooking, her sister’s herbs drying on racks hung from the ceiling, the lingering odor of countless winters of wood burning. All the smells, the scarred table, the grandfather clock standing silent in the corner waiting to be rewound, the huge propane range that had fed a family of ten; all of it made this the loving kitchen she’d grown up in.

Home. It settled over Grace like a bulky wool sweater of warm security.

It was so silently empty, except for the memories that swirled like flames on candles lighting individual moments in time. Timmy holding a six-week-old Mary as he carefully fed her a bottle, Brian convincing Mom he needed her car for a special date that night, Paul and David wrestling on the floor until they cracked the glass in the china hutch, and her dad holding Grace on his knee while he dunked her banana in the sugar bowl to reward her for eating her turnip.

Home. She had waited too long to return. Everyone was gone. Even the memories, the scents, the sounds had begun to fade, becoming ghosts of a past life she could never revisit.

Grace laid her head on her arms on the table again, closing her eyes to keep the tears from escaping. She missed her family, her mom and dad’s unconditional love, her brothers’ combined strengths, and Mary’s no-nonsense command of life. All of them the foundation of her existence today.

And all of them out of her reach now.

All except for Baby.

She had brought her sister’s child to this wonderful, sometimes magical, always sheltering home. She could live here with Baby and watch him prosper and grow from the roots her family had already laid down in these densely wooded mountains. It could be that simple; she could walk away from her life in Virginia and devote herself to Baby without question or regret. She already loved him more than life itself.

She already wanted to break her promise to Mary.

The shower helped immensely to revive Grace’s spirit, recenter her thinking, and soothe her bruised and aching muscles. Baby liked his bath as well. It was fun bathing him in a sink half full of warm water. She was glad his little belly button had finally healed; she had always been afraid of hurting him there. The house had warmed up nicely, and she allowed him to splash about wildly until he was tired again.

She was finally getting the hang of this mothering thing. Now that she was on her own, with only herself to rely on, it was just as Emma said. Her instincts were kicking in and giving her confidence. That was all she had needed, time alone with Baby to find her own path in dealing with him.

Still, she hoped the book Emma had given her was not lost on the mountain. She wasn’t quite ready to go it completely alone.

“Only one more bottle after this one,” she told Baby as she fed him. She looked out the window and sighed. “I hate to go back out in that weather, but it doesn’t look like we have a choice.”

The incessant rain wouldn’t let up. The windows on the north side of the kitchen were glazed with ice, making it impossible to see out. She fed Baby the whole bottle and burped him with the skill of a mother of nine, then laid him back in his overstuffed chair while she tried to decide what to put on him to go out.

She found his pack on the table with the other stuff from her bag. It was still damp. She held it up to her face and breathed deeply, pulling in the familiar scent she had been surrounded by since yesterday afternoon. It smelled like Grey; she remembered the scent from when he had held her under the spruce tree, from the sweater he had put on her just before he tucked her in the cave, from the bed she’d shared with him in Daar’s cabin, and from the fla

It was a smell that soothed her senses, silently speaking of friendship, security, trust, and even adventure.

She was keeping the shirt. She had washed her body, and she had to wash this pack, but she wasn’t washing Grey’s shirt, and she wasn’t returning it. It was a pretty plaid made up of gray and red, dark green and lavender stripes. She had never seen that combination of colors before, but she’d been immediately drawn to it the moment she had put it on. Yes, she was keeping it, and if he asked for it back, she would say she couldn’t find it.

She was going to hell for the lies she’d been telling. But here in Pine Creek, at least, she should be able to keep them straight. After all, there was only one that was important—that Baby was hers.

She washed the pack in the kitchen sink and set it near the furnace register to dry. She bundled Baby up in one of Mary’s old T-shirts, used a fla

That was when she discovered yet another problem. Baby’s car seat was still on top of North Finger Ridge. She looked around the old barn at the eclectic assortment of junk until she found an apple crate large enough for the four-week-old child. She laid Baby inside it, then strapped it into the passenger seat of the pickup. It probably wouldn’t pass Consumer Reports’ standard safety test, but it passed hers.

Baby wasn’t going anywhere by the time she was done using the seat belts to secure him.

And Baby, good little uncomplaining infant that he was, was simply watching her as she worked.

“Oh, sweetie. I promise the chaos will stop now that we’re home. Just this one trip to the store, and we’ll both settle down for a well-deserved rest,” she whispered to him, ru