He went and knelt beside the bed, feasting his eyes on the two of them, mother and child. He picked up a strand of Mirabella’s hair and let it run like silken strands through his fingers. “Ah…Marybell,” he whispered. He’d never felt such a fullness inside. He touched the baby’s head with a single finger, wondering at the incredible softness of it, like the velvet fuzz on a butterfly’s wing. Amy Jo… He’d never felt such sadness. He wondered why it was he seemed destined to hold his sweet baby girls only once-just long enough to fall in love with them-and then lose them forever.


Mirabella awoke to the loveliest sound. Someone was singing “Greensleeves”-or rather the Christmas version, “What Child Is This?”-in a very nice tenor voice. Could it possibly be Jimmy Joe? No-the radio, of course. But what were such a nice voice and such a beautiful song doing on a country-music station? It had to be a country-music station, there wasn’t anything else out here in the middle of the Texas Panhandle.

Then she realized that she was hearing something else. Something amazing. For the first time in her life she was awakening to the sound of a man snoring in her ear. She listened to it in sleepy bemusement, finding it oddly pleasant, thinking how surprising that was. She’d always thought she would hate sleeping with a man who snored. She turned her head slightly…and felt the tickle of hair on her lips. Her heart lurched and warmth burst inside her. Oh, God, she thought. Oh, God…it’s true. I do love him.

And her logical mind quickly responded, Nonsense! It’s the circumstances. You only think you do because you were in trouble and he came to your rescue, dummy. Like a knight on a big blue charger. In fact, wasn’t that what they used to call truckers? The Knights of the Road…?

The baby nestled below her breast stirred, arching her tiny body and shooting out one fist like a miniature pugilist. So that’s what she’s been doing, her mother thought, gazing down in teary adoration. No wonder her legs had been going numb.

She moved her legs experimentally and was pleased to find that they seemed to be in working order, although they felt as though they each weighed several hundred pounds. Conversely, the middle part of her seemed light as a feather, if a little loose and jiggly, like half-set gelatin. And, when she laid an exploratory hand on it, it was not nearly as flat as she’d hoped. The lower part of her torso, the part diapered in thick layers of towels, it seemed wisest not to disturb.

Soon, she thought. It was getting light. Help would be coming soon.

She watched the light turn from blue-gray to mauve, and to a beautiful shade of rose…and then to gold. And suddenly streaks of blinding radiance shot across the sky and frozen landscape, splashed like molten fire over the dashboard and front seats and onto the bed where she lay with her baby in a sleeping man’s arms.

She gasped at the sheer glory of it, and Jimmy Joe’s snoring instantly stopped. He lifted his head from the pillow beside hers, his eyes going first to the baby then to her face. Reassured, he propped himself on one elbow and frowned at the light.

“Wha’ time is it?”

“Morning,” said Mirabella huskily. “That’s all I know. Christmas morning.”

“Everything okay?”

She nodded, unable to take her eyes from his face. For a long, seemingly endless time he gazed back at her without speaking. Then he leaned down slowly and kissed her.

She’d never been kissed like that-never. His mouth was so firm and warm and soft; strength and sensitivity wrapped in satin. It felt so wonderful. It made her feel like crying-like a beautiful sunset, a touching movie, a sad song, tiny children singing. It was nourishment-food and drink-and warmth and shelter and loving arms all rolled into one incredibly sweet, impossibly lovely touch. She wanted it to last forever.

But of course it couldn’t. Her cheeks and eyelashes were wet when he lifted his head. She gazed at him through a silvery blur, trying to read the messages in his glowing brown eyes, finding tenderness and puzzlement and wonder and fear, knowing they must be reflections of hers. Her lips trembled as she waited for him to say something. Anything.

Her heart was hammering so loudly she could hear it. Or was it his?

But he’d suddenly gone still, listening as she was. And she knew it wasn’t thundering pulses she heard. They both closed their eyes and their bodies relaxed together as the silent beauty of the morning, and that fragile and precious moment, were shattered forever by the clatter of a helicopter’s rotors.

Chapter 12

“Attention, K man shoppers, there’s a blue-light special at mile marker…” “We got a bear convention goin‘ on-bears in the bushes, bears ever’where!”


I-4U-Tennessee

The helicopter threw a long blue shadow across a sheet of unblemished white as it hovered above the rest-stop parking lot. The snow was frozen so solid even the chopper’s rotors couldn’t stir it up, and it set down like a dragonfly alighting on a sheet of frosted crystal.

Jimmy Joe watched it from the wind-sheltered side of his truck, squinting into the just-risen sun and puffing out clouds of vapor. Being a Southern boy through and through, he was convinced air that cold could kill you, and he was trying his best to figure out how to extract enough oxygen from it to live on without actually letting it into his lungs.

When the chopper’s rotors had slowed to a lazy thunk-thunk beat, the door opened. Two men-one of them the pilot, wearing orange coveralls and a knit ski cap and carrying a paramedic’s kit, and the other an older guy in a fur-lined parka, a Stetson hat and earmuffs-jumped out and headed for the truck with their heads down, walking fast, half jogging. Both were wearing sunglasses. Jimmy Joe stepped forward to meet them, wishing he’d thought to put his on. The cold and the glare were making his eyes water.

The guy in the parka stuck out a mittened hand. He had a large cold-reddened nose and a thick brown mustache that seemed to spread across his face when he grinned. “Howdy. Mr. Starr-it sure is a pleasure to talk to you face-to-face for a change.” He laughed at the “Beg your pardon?” look on Jimmy Joe’s face. “Dr. Austin-I was on the other end of that phone relay last night. How’s ever‘body doin’ this mornin’?”

“Good-doin’ just fine,” Jimmy Joe mumbled. He nodded at the paramedic, who told him his name was Travis, shook his hand, then gestured toward his truck. “Been waitin’ for ya.”

He went to the passenger side and opened the door, stepped up and called softly, “Marybell? You ready for company?”

She was sitting up, swaddled from the waist down in his mother’s old quilt, the baby cradled in her arms. He saw that she’d brushed her hair and fastened the top and sides back from her face with a clip of some kind. She looked about sixteen years old, radiant and a little apprehensive, like a little girl getting ready to take her first trip on an airplane.

“Okay,” she said breathlessly. But her eyes clung to him as if for reassurance, pleading with him-for what, he didn’t know.

He stepped down and gestured for the doc and the EMT to go on in, wondering as he politely held the door for them why it was resentment he felt more than relief. As if they weren’t rescuers, but intruders. He felt like there was a primitive being inside him that wanted to be standing in front of that door snapping and snarling. Like a wolf, guarding his mate and their young in his den. His mate. His woman.

He heard the doctor sing out, “Well, hello there, little lady, how are you doin’ this mornin’? Let’s have a look at this pretty girl, here. You two all ready to go for a ride?” Then he slammed the door shut and turned away with his chest aching and his heart pounding.

He was pacing up and down alongside his truck, grinding his teeth and swinging his arms, too cold to think about anything except how to keep from freezing to death, when the door opened up again and Travis, the EMT, hopped out.

“You wanna give me a hand with the stretcher?” he called out as he loped off toward the chopper.

Jimmy Joe grunted, “Sure thing,” and took off after him.

“That’s one tough little ol’ gal,” Travis said as they were wrestling the basket stretcher out of the helicopter. “Sure is pretty, too.”

Jimmy Joe grunted. “Yeah, she is.”

“This your first baby?”

Jimmy Joe didn’t know quite how to answer that. He stammered around and finally decided it wasn’t worth explaining, so he mumbled, “Uh…no, I got a little boy-”

“No, I mean first one you ever delivered.”

Then he felt a little sheepish and had to grin. “Oh. Yeah, it sure is.”

“Yeah, well…it’s always a thrill. Always a miracle.” Travis bent down and picked up one end of the stretcher and Jimmy Joe got a grip on the other and they headed back to the truck at a jog-trot. Travis threw a look over his shoulder. “Must’ve been quite a night for you.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy Joe panted, “it sure was.” Quite a night. One he wondered if he was ever going to be able to get over. One he sure as heck knew he would never forget.

The cab of Jimmy Joe’s truck had suddenly gotten terribly crowded-full of noise and way too many strangers. Mirabella felt lost in all the confusion. She longed for the soft sounds of Christmas songs on the radio, Jimmy Joe’s snoring, the tiny squeaks Amy made when she nursed. She wished they could go back to the way it had been; just the three of them together, cocooned in the truck, isolated from the world and swaddled in intimacy and warmth, magic and-daringly her heart whispered it-love.

Now all of that had been lost, the peace shattered, the cocoon stripped away. She felt jangled and panicky, lonely and unprepared. The world seemed to be spinning too fast, out of her control. She was bundled and lifted and settled and strapped, more like a parcel than a person. People talked around her and over and about her, never to her. She found herself retreating into dazed isolation, cloaked and protected by the paranoia of her newly awakened maternal instincts, clinging to her baby with primal ferocity, her eyes daring anyone to take her from her. Perhaps understanding, no one tried.