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“Why…there’s a light, way off to the north. Looks to be coming this way, too. Who on earth…?”
“Is it Mel? Maybe she got turned around and wandered—”
“No, it’s too far away to be Mel. Besides, that little flashlight wouldn’t shine so far, not in this weather.”
Maya closed her eyes. Maybe it was Caleb. God, she wanted him so much right now. And it made no damn sense whatsoever, but there it was. He’d been her first thought when she’d felt the initial pangs. And he’d been on her mind constantly ever since. She’d been lying here foolishly fantasizing that he would show up, like some knight in shining armor. That he would fight his way through a storm that even emergency workers couldn’t penetrate just to be with her. She kept envisioning him bursting through the bedroom door.
She was hopeless. If he had a clue how she really felt about him, he would probably take his offer of marriage and run screaming back to Tulsa just as fast as his feet could take him. She’d always been so practical. When had she turned into this emotional, needy, lovesick basket case?
But she knew the answer to that. She’d been that way since she first laid eyes on Caleb Montgomery. And she didn’t think there was any cure in sight.
And yes, she needed him tonight, and no, he wasn’t there. But she knew now that she couldn’t judge him by that. If he knew what was happening, he would be there. If there was a way to get there. His not being there didn’t mean he would turn out to be a man like her father was, or that he would let her down or walk out on her children. It didn’t mean that at all.
“Whoever it is, they’re coming this way,” Vidalia said.
“I hope it’s a team of paramedics with radios and a whole suitcase full of drugs,” she said, as yet another contraction tightened its fist around her.
“You are such a liar,” her mother told her. “You hope it’s Caleb.” She licked her lips, shook her head slowly. “And frankly, daughter, so do I.”
* * *
The bulldozer moved at the speed of molasses, and with every snowdrift it crushed beneath its tracks, Caleb felt more certain that something was wrong. Terribly wrong.
His stomach was tied up in knots, and the cold wasn’t the only thing causing his shivering.
What if something happened to the babies?
What if something happened to Maya?
A shaft of red-hot pain sliced right through his frozen body to lay open his heart. Damn, he was a mess, wasn’t he?
“Shouldn’t we see the house by now?” He leaned close to Tom Cooper, and shouted the question. Between the noise of the dozer and that of the storm, he wasn’t sure the man could hear him even then. Besides, they were both wrapped in hoods and scarfs and a solid half-inch layer of snow at this point
Cooper turned slightly and yelled back, “Maybe. If there were any lights on.”
Hell, if there were no lights on, then what the hell did that indicate? Nothing good, he bet. A brief image of Maya lying frozen in her bed, still and white, her skin like glass, crystals forming on her eyelashes, floated into his mind. Like Sleeping Beauty, he saw her. He squeezed his eyes tight and gave his head a hard shake to rid himself of that image.
She was okay. She had to be okay, and the babies, too.
Cooper held up one mitted paw, sort of pointing.
Caleb squinted into the cutting snow to try to see what he did and finally made out a dim speck of light in the distance. “Go toward it!” he yelled.
It probably was an unnecessary instruction.
The dozer belched and bucked, inch by inch, nearer the light. And the light didn’t move. More and more it seemed to be coming from ground level, and the fear in Caleb’s belly churned harder. Then the spotlights mounted on the dozer were pointing directly at the smaller light so it vanished altogether. But the edge of the house came into view, and he could see lights at last in one of the upper windows.
“Thank God,” he whispered. “Thank God.” At least it looked as if someone was alive in there.
The dozer rocked closer, and its lights picked out a lone form, struggling against the wind…with what looked like a rope tied around it. Turning to face the dozer, the form waved its arms frantically, held its hands flat out, made a pushing motion.
“Stop, Tom,” Caleb shouted. “Shut her down, but keep the lights on.”
Cooper did so. Caleb climbed off the machine, amazed at how difficult it was to bend or unbend anything. Every joint in his body seemed to have frozen over. His legs sank hip deep in snow as soon as he hit, but he waded forward, fumbling in his big pocket for the flashlight, grabbing it as clumsily as a bear cub in boxing gloves, and finally flicking it on.
The figure with the rope around it was bundled beyond recognition, until he got all the way up in her face. Then her eyes, peering over the top of a scarf gave her away as a Brand woman, and her height told him which one.
“Kara? What are you doing out here?” he said, loudly, over the wind.
