The Baby Trail

Gwen gave herself a mental shake and told herself to slow down. She didn’t get infatuated with men, she reminded herself. She was picky, and a rugged face with a good body might turn her head, but it didn’t stay turned. She wanted substance.

You thought you had substance with Mark, a little voice reminded her.

She’d been so wrong about that. She’d been so wrong about a lot of things. But she was working on fixing them.

And then she opened the door to Garrett—and common sense flew out the proverbial window. She was attracted to him, plain and simple. She would have to watch every step she made….

Dear Reader,

I can’t imagine going through life without true friends. My best friend from grade school and I have kept in touch all these years. As I remember high school, I picture the group of girls I had lunch with, talked about boys with and studied with. We supported each other’s dreams. My college roommate and I have celebrated New Year’s Eve together for the past thirty years. Then there’s my husband: my very best friend. He believes he knows what I’m thinking and usually he does. But once in a while, I still surprise him!

In The Baby Trail, Gwen has relied on her friends all her life. When Garrett enters her world, she realizes she needs her friends as much as ever. Yet she discovers her attraction and deepening love for Garrett lead to a soul-mate friendship she never expected to find.

I wish my readers friendships of all kinds that last a lifetime.

All my best,

Karen Rose Smith

The Baby Trail

Karen Rose Smith

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KAREN ROSE SMITH

read Zane Grey when she was in grade school and loved his books. She also had a crush on Roy Rogers and especially his palomino, Trigger! Around horses as a child, she found them fascinating and intuitive. This series of books set in Wyoming sprang from childhood wishes and adult dreams. When an acquaintance adopted two of the wild mustangs from the western rangelands and invited Karen to visit them, plotlines weren’t far behind. For more background on the books in the series, stop by Karen’s Web site at www.karenrosesmith.com or write to her at P.O. Box 1545, Hanover, PA 17331.

In loving memory of my mom and dad—

Romaine Arcuri Cacciola and Angelo Jacob Cacciola.

I’m so grateful for your love and care as parents.

I miss you.

To my husband, Steve—

it was a trip of a lifetime I could only have taken and

appreciated with you. I’ll never forget our first sighting of

the wild mustangs in the Big Horns.

To my son, Ken—May your dreams always run free.

Thanks to my cousin Paul Arcuri, pilot and

my advisor on all things aeronautic.

For more information about wild mustangs,

visit www.wildhorsepreservation.com. For adoption

information go to www.wildhorseandburro.blm.gov.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter One

A baby’s cry tore through Gwen Langworthy’s small house. It only took a moment for her to realize the sound was coming from her sunroom!

Dusk had fallen and shadows were thick in the ranch-style house as she raced from the kitchen through the living room. As an obstetrical nurse practitioner, she was well aware of babies’ cries. They always ripped a corner of her heart. She longed to have a baby of her own.

The first cry whimpered into a second as she reached for the ceramic light on the wicker table inside the sunroom and saw a blue plastic bin sitting just inside her sliding glass doors. Rushing to it, she hunkered down. An infant with sparkling dark eyes, who couldn’t be more than a day or two old, stared up at her. Layers of newspaper lined the inside of the bin, but the baby was nestled in a pink blanket. A torn sheet of notebook paper lay at her feet with “Amy” written in block letters.

It was a little girl!

After pushing her auburn curls behind her ears, Gwen reflexively scooped up the child and cuddled her in her arms. Dreams of happily-ever-after and having the family she’d always wanted had evaporated like smoke after Mark had left her waiting with her dad at the white runner that was supposed to lead her to commitment and everlasting bonds. His abandonment still hurt, and she didn’t think she could ever trust a man again.

“So your name is Amy,” she murmured, the nurse in her already taking in every detail about the child’s physical condition. Her maternal instincts led her to notice the baby’s little sweater and hat fashioned of soft fuzzy yarn in variegated white, yellow and aqua. The set looked as if it had been hand-knitted. Someone had cared about this child.

And then abandoned her?

Gwen knew all about that kind of abandonment, too.

Stepping toward the glass doors, Gwen slid one open. The evening’s breeze swept in as she stared deep into her yard. A street ran to the back of it. Was that a car engine she heard coughing, then starting up? She couldn’t see between the shadowed trees. Fall in Wyoming was closing in.

Little Amy wiggled in her arms, screwed up her face and let out another wail.

Hugging Amy close, Gwen went to the phone to call one of her best friends, who was a social worker. But she already knew what Shaye would advise her to do: call the sheriff.

Thinking about a sheriff who was more focused on his impending retirement than serving the residents of Wild Horse Junction, she decided if he didn’t make progress at finding Amy’s mother within a week, she’d take matters into her own hands.

She wouldn’t let this child go through life not knowing where she came from…never knowing why her mother hadn’t loved her enough to keep her.

“Mr. Maxwell,” Gwen called above the loud banging that made her cringe.

The noise suddenly ceased. In an instant Garrett Maxwell, if that’s who he was, went from hammering a floorboard to a standing defensive stance, his hammer held almost like a weapon. With dark brown hair, he was tall, over six feet, broad-shouldered in a black T-shirt, slim-hipped in well-worn blue jeans. His presence totally overwhelmed the small backyard shed and in the dim light, his gray eyes targeted and held her at the threshold.

“Can I help you?” His voice was filled with icy calm and she instantly felt like an intruder.

“I hope so,” she answered fervently and saw the interest in his eyes.

Garrett Maxwell had the reputation for being a recluse, working from his log house in the foothills of Wyoming’s Painted Peaks. She’d known about his credentials because of an article she’d read in the Wild Horse Wrangler a few months ago—he had helped locate a missing child in Colorado. Before driving up here, she’d searched for information about him on the Internet and found several articles noting how he helped search-and-rescue teams with lost children and aided in child-kidnapping cases.

When he didn’t move a muscle, when his strong jaw remained set, when he didn’t invite her to tell him her reason for coming, she plunged in, anyway.

“Are you Garrett Maxwell?”

“Who wants to know?”

Although she wasn’t sure if it was wise, she took a couple of steps forward.

His gaze raked over her lime-green blouse and khaki slacks. Even though this perusal of her took about a second, she felt as if he’d noticed every detail from the number of curls in her shoulder-length hair to her brown loafers.

Gwen was feeling as though she was poking her hand into a lethal animal’s cage but she extended it anyway. “My name’s Gwen Langworthy.”

He didn’t shake her hand; however, his grip loosened on the hammer and he dropped it onto the seat of the mower. “How can I help you?”

It had been five days since little Amy had been left in her sunroom. Gwen still didn’t know who had left her or why, but she did know the sheriff hadn’t gotten anywhere on identifying the infant. Impatient with him, she was now taking matters into her own hands. She didn’t want Amy going through life never knowing where she came from. Gwen had carried that burden on her own shoulders—she’d been abandoned in a church when she was only two. She knew all the self-doubt that went with not knowing her birth parents…the introspective questions no one could answer.

Quickly stuffing both hands into her pockets, she wondered why her stomach fluttered when she looked at the former FBI agent. Was she afraid of him? No. She was mesmerized by him. He reeked sensuality, power….

Grabbing on to her reason for coming, she explained, “I know you can find people. I need you to find someone for me.”

“I don’t find people.”

“You find children.”

Now he finally looked interested. “Did you lose a child?”

Was she imagining it or had his voice turned almost gentle? “No I didn’t, but I need to find a child’s mother.”

The gruffness returned. “I’m not FBI, anymore.”

She wasn’t about to give up without a fight. This man was good at what he did. He was the expert she needed and she would convince him that Amy needed him. “I know that. You have a security consulting business now. But you were an FBI agent and I need your help. Someone left a baby at my back door. I won’t let that little girl grow up never knowing who her birth parents were. And I know that each day that goes by the trail gets colder.”

His right eyebrow quirked slightly as if she’d finally made a dent in the shield he’d wrapped around himself. “Why do you care so much?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Because I was adopted and never knew who my birth parents were. And neither did anyone else.”

The September wind whistled through the lodgepole pines and Russian olive trees, then gusted through the door of the shed, sending leaves scattering.

After a few moments of thoughtful consideration, the ex-FBI agent said, “Let’s go to the house.” He motioned outside at the granite stepping stones that led to his back deck.

Although Gwen’s surroundings might have taken her attention any other time—there was something primitively beautiful about the property—she couldn’t keep her gaze from Garrett Maxwell’s broad back or the way he fit his jeans. Something about him, maybe that innate sensuality she’d sensed, stirred a deep womanlike corner inside of her. It was a terrifically odd, exciting, confusing sensation.

They passed a gazebolike structure on the deck. At the back door, he stopped and stepped aside to let her precede him. He was scowling and she couldn’t imagine why.

Inside his kitchen, the pleasing knotty pine atmosphere surrounded her immediately. A small round wooden table and chairs stood in a breakfast nook with windows overlooking the back of the property.

When she turned her gaze back to him, he was watching her. A free-fall sensation made her catch her breath as she looked into his very gray eyes.

He broke eye contact and motioned to the counter. “Coffee?” he asked as if he was aware he had to be civil to a guest.

Her mouth had gone dry and she needed something to wet her tongue if she was going to tell her story. She nodded.

Pouring coffee into two large mugs, he motioned to the counter. “I only have powdered creamer. Sugar’s in the canister beside it.”

When Gwen opened the stoneware canister, she found her hands were shaking. She’d never found herself in quite this situation before—highly attracted to a stranger and alone with him in his secluded house.

The lid on the canister flipped and clattered onto the counter.

Garrett Maxwell picked it up, held it and pinned her with his stormy eyes. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. I’ll listen, but I might not be able to help.”

“I’m not nervous,” she returned defensively. She was used to handling everything that came her way—her parents’ divorce, her dad’s drinking, her attempt at intervention to make Russ Langworthy finally face reality.

“Then you’re doing a good imitation. How much sugar?”

She blinked, forgetting why she was standing at his counter.

“In your coffee.” He nodded toward the mug he’d poured for her.

“A teaspoon.” Her voice came out thready.

When he reached around her, his long arm brushed her hip. She swallowed hard, frozen for the moment.

Opening the drawer beside her, he pulled out a spoon and handed it to her. After he closed the drawer and leaned away again, she finally released her breath, took the utensil without allowing her fingers to brush his and spooned sugar from the cannister. He was watching her and she didn’t like the idea that he was trying to “read” her.

With a half smile, he took a pack of creamer from a jelly jar. “One or two?”

“One is fine.”

This time when he handed it to her, their fingers did brush. The expression on his face didn’t change, but she glimpsed a sparklike flicker in his eyes. Could he be attracted to her, too?

So what if he was. She’d come to enlist his help, not to step into another romantic quagmire.

Maxwell let her precede him to the table in the breakfast nook. When she was seated, he dropped into a ladderback chair across from her, took a few sips of his coffee and assessed her over its rim. “So…tell me what this is about.”

After her own sip of coffee, she told him how she’d found baby Amy in her sunroom.

“And you didn’t hear anyone outside?” he asked.

“No. I just heard the baby cry. After I found her, I looked out and thought I heard a car start up. But it was getting dark and I couldn’t see.”

“A smooth start or a rough start?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do. Think about it.”

As she tried to take herself back to that evening, she remembered holding Amy in her arms and attempting to search through the dusk. She’d heard a chug-chug, then a va-room, before the vehicle sped away. “It wasn’t a smooth start. There was chugging first.”

Maxwell seemed to make a mental note of that. “You said your friend, Shaye Malloy, who is a social worker, arrived. And then the sheriff came. What did he do with the note with the baby’s name on it?”

“He looked at it, then slipped it into his pocket.”

Garrett Maxwell shook his head and his jaw tightened. Then he asked her, “What was the baby wearing?”

The former agent’s face had lines around his eyes and mouth. Gwen guessed he was nearing forty. Had he left the FBI because the job had taken its toll? His face was so interesting, so ruggedly angular, she could look at him all day.

But that wasn’t why she was here.

“Amy was nestled in a blanket, but she had on this cute little sweater and hat and one of those one-piece terry playsuits…in yellow.”

“Why did you call the social worker? Wouldn’t the sheriff have done that?”

“Shaye and I have been friends a long time. I wasn’t about to let Amy out of my hands without knowing someone who cared was looking after her.” Before Shaye and the sheriff had arrived, Gwen had cuddled Amy, rocked her, crooned to her, and it had been very difficult to let Shaye take her.

When Garrett Maxwell’s penetrating gaze focused on her, Gwen felt turned inside out.

“Where is she now?” he asked.

“In the hospital’s nursery.”

He leaned back in his chair and it creaked. “Does she need to be in the hospital?”

Suddenly Gwen decided she wouldn’t want to be interrogated by this man. He was methodical and thorough. “The doctor examined her and found she was jaundiced. She’s over that, but now they’re trying to find a family to take her. I would have liked to, but—”

“What?” Garrett asked, his gaze probing.

Gwen felt she was too close to him, though the distance of the table separated them. “I have to work, and I’d have to find someone to babysit. Besides that, I’m a firm believer a child should ideally have two parents—two parents who are going to love her forever. And it’s just me, so I couldn’t give her that. Shaye says they can easily find a couple who will…if we don’t find the mother.”

Garrett’s gaze closely appraised her again until she felt like shifting in her chair. Finally he commented, “If you do find the mother, the child will be taken away from her, anyway.”

“Maybe. But Shaye says it depends on the circumstances. It’s not like she abandoned her in a dumpster or in a cold alley. I’m racking my brain to figure out who might have known me and why they would have left the baby with me. I’ve met a lot of unwed mothers.”

“How so?” He took a long swallow of coffee.

“I’m a nurse practitioner, and I specialize in obstetrics. I help set up programs for unwed mothers.”

“In Wild Horse Junction?”

“All over the state.”

After he seemed to absorb that information, he stood. “There’s not much here to go on.”

Gwen wasn’t ready for this meeting with him to be over. Because of Amy. Because… Simply because. “I read you’re good at what you do. I know you can find her.”

“Miss Langworthy—”

“Gwen,” she corrected him, forestalling him, not wanting him to tell her he wouldn’t take the case. “I’ll pay you,” she hurried on. “I’ll pay you somehow, whatever you charge. This little girl deserves to know who her mother is. She deserves to know why her mother left her with me. If she goes through life always wondering—” Gwen stopped abruptly.

Rounding the table, Garrett Maxwell stood close by her side. “What will that do to her?” His eyes were suddenly compassionate.

“It will make her unsure of who she is and where she came from. And who she might become,” Gwen murmured, unwilling to reveal too much.

“We’re not talking about Baby Amy now, are we?” The question was rhetorical, and he was trying to make a point.

Looking him squarely in the eyes, Gwen answered, “We’re talking about any child who doesn’t know his or her roots.”

Neither of them looked away. The moment palpitated with Gwen’s passion for the search along with man-woman awareness.

Finally Gwen asked, “Will you help me find Amy’s mother?” That was the bottom line for her and all that mattered.

“I usually search for children, not parents.”

There was steel in his tone, and she had the feeling he didn’t change his mind once he made a decision.

“Can you make an exception?”

Time ticked by in interminable seconds until he assured her, “I’ll think about it and get back to you.”

Her stomach sank and she stood. Pulling a business card from her pocket, she laid it on the table. “When?” she asked, aware of the we’ll-get-back-to-you line and professionals who never did.

“You need an answer soon because you’re going to find a P.I. to do this if I won’t?” he guessed.

“Exactly. I don’t give up easily, Mr. Maxwell. And I don’t have much time.”

After a few more beats of studying her, he muttered, “I guess you don’t. I’ll call you tomorrow evening with my answer.”

They were close enough to touch…close enough to breathe the same breakfast-nook air…close enough that his scent—male mixed with outdoors—was a potent fantasy generator. But Gwen didn’t indulge in fantasies anymore—not since her last vestige of trust in men had been crushed.

Garrett Maxwell’s words were an obvious dismissal. When he motioned toward the front of the house and said, “I’ll walk you out,” she went that way, illogically curious about how this enigmatic man lived.

She didn’t have time to take in every nuance, but she did spot the hall that must have led to downstairs bedrooms, the loft with a Native American blanket hanging over the railing, the stone fireplace.

At his front door now, she extended her hand to him again. “It was good to meet you, Mr. Maxwell.”

This time he took her hand and when palm met palm, she felt a jolt of attraction that was so electric her breath caught. If she had to say how long their hands were clasped, there was no way she could. Ten seconds…twenty minutes…a half hour. There was no time, only the deep gray of Garrett Maxwell’s eyes, the heat of his skin against hers. It was a moment she’d remember for a long time to come.

Suddenly he dropped his hand, and she turned to the cooler outside air so he wouldn’t see the heat burning her cheeks. She didn’t know whether to hope Garrett Maxwell took the case or didn’t. Yet she knew if he did, he’d find Amy’s mother.

Chapter Two

Garrett stared through the glass window of the hospital nursery at Baby Amy, and a lead stone turned in his gut. If everything had gone as planned, he would have been the father of a five-year-old right now. But everything hadn’t gone as planned. Cheryl had miscarried and blamed him. His divorce had made him rethink his work and his life and that’s how he’d ended up back in Wild Horse Junction, Wyoming.

Why this baby had brought up the past, he didn’t know. Maybe simply because she was a baby. It was a good reason to stay away from her and the case. An even better reason was his adrenaline-rush attraction to Gwen Langworthy. Okay, so maybe his hammering had made her approach inaudible. But nobody had ever snuck up on him like that before without his gut alerting him. On top of that, he’d been so rattled he’d let her follow him to the house. He always covered his tail. He never let anyone get behind him.

Old habits died hard.

As a nurse exited the nursery, Garrett approached her. Her name tag read Dianne Spagnola, R.N. Her gaze ran over his black jeans and snap-button shirt.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m working on the Baby Amy case with the sheriff’s department.” He and the sheriff weren’t working on it together, but they were both working on it. “How’s she doing?”

“I can’t give out any information,” the nurse said solemnly, “Not to anyone without written authorization.”

Regulations and security were much tighter than they used to be. That was a good thing.

He motioned to the little girl. “She looks healthy, and she’s not in isolation. From what I understand, she’s waiting for a family. Gwen Langworthy told me that. You know, the woman who found her?”

The woman’s shoulders seemed to relax a bit. “You know Gwen?”

He nodded.

“Amy’s doing okay, eating better than she was. She needs a home.”

“Can you tell me what happened to the clothes she was wearing when she was brought in?”

“Clothes?” the nurse asked, looking puzzled.

“Gwen told me she was wearing a playsuit with a sweater and hat.” She had on one of those suits now, but it was pink, not yellow. “I wondered about the sweater and hat and the blanket she was wrapped in.”

The nurse thought about it. “They might be in one of the storage closets.”

If he took the case, he’d analyze them. If he took the case, he’d need to know the baby’s blood type and whatever else her medical records could tell him. That would require a trip to the sheriff’s office and legal maneuvering, or help behind the scenes.

If he took the case.

Handing Nurse Spagnola his business card, he asked, “Can you give me a call on my cell phone if you find the clothes? I’ll be around town and can stop back.”

The nurse checked his card and nodded.

Thanking her, he headed toward the elevator. Good old-fashioned footwork paid off in a town the size of Wild Horse Junction. He’d investigate a little more, then make up his mind.