Snowbound Baby

“You’re not seducing me!”

“Why? Because I ignored you this afternoon? Honey, what’s going on between you and me has nothing to do with getting along, or making a commitment or even exchanging phone numbers. And right now your body’s telling me you feel the same things I do.”

“You are so crude!”

“I’m certainly not hearts and flowers.” There. It was out. The thing Cooper had wanted to deny all day. The thing he wanted Zoe to understand. The thing he needed for both of them to get beyond.

“I’m a hearts-and-flowers kind of girl.”

“Hey, I didn’t say I wouldn’t be romantic.”

“I don’t want romance. I want love.”

Dear Reader,

As the days get shorter and the approaching holidays bring a buzz to the crisp air, nothing quite equals the joy of reuniting with family and catching up on the year’s events. This month’s selections all deal with family matters, be it making one’s own family, dealing with family members or doing one’s family duty.

Desperate to save his family ranch, the hero in Elizabeth Harbison’s Taming of the Two (#1790) enters into a bargain that could turn a pretend relationship into the real deal. This is the second title in the SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE trilogy. A die-hard bachelor gets a taste of what being a family man is like when he rescues a beautiful stranger and her adorable infant from a deadly blizzard, in Susan Meier’s Snowbound Baby (#1791)—part of the author’s BRYANT BABY BONANZA continuity. Carol Grace continues her FAIRY TALE BRIDES miniseries with His Sleeping Beauty (#1792) in which a woman sheltered by her overprotective parents gains the confidence to strike out on her own after her handsome—but cynical—neighbor catches her sleepwalking in his garden! Finally, in The Marine and Me (#1793), the next installment in Cathie Linz’s MEN OF HONOR series, a soldier determined to outwit his matchmaking grandmother and avoid the marriage landmine gets bushwhacked by his supposedly dowdy neighbor.

Be sure to come back next month when Karen Rose Smith and Shirley Jump put their own spins on Shakespeare and the Dating Game, respectively!

Happy reading.

Ann Leslie Tuttle

Associate Senior Editor

Bryant Baby Bonanza

Books by Susan Meier

Silhouette Romance

Stand-in Mom #1022

Temporarily Hers #1109

Wife in Training #1184

Merry Christmas, Daddy #1192

*In Care of the Sheriff #1283

*Guess What? We’re Married! #1338

Husband from 9 to 5 #1354

*The Rancher and the Heiress #1374

†The Baby Bequest #1420

†Bringing up Babies #1427

†Oh, Babies! #1433

His Expectant Neighbor #1468

Hunter’s Vow #1487

Cinderella and the CEO #1498

Marrying Money #1519

The Boss’s Urgent Proposal #1566

Married Right Away #1579

Married in the Morning #1601

**Baby on Board #1639

**The Tycoon’s Double Trouble #1650

**The Nanny Solution #1662

Love, Your Secret Admirer #1684

Twice a Princess #1758

††Baby Before Business #1774

††Prince Baby #1783

††Snowbound Baby #1791

Silhouette Desire

Take the Risk #567

SUSAN MEIER

is one of eleven children, and though she’s yet to write a book about a big family, many of her books explore the dynamics of “unusual” family situations, such as large work “families,” bosses who behave like overprotective fathers, or “sister” bonds created between friends. Because she has more than twenty nieces and nephews, children also are always popping up in her stories. Many of the funny scenes in her books are based on experiences raising her own children or interacting with her nieces and nephews.

She was born and raised in western Pennsylvania and continues to live in Pennsylvania.

Snowbound Holiday Punch

2 tsp whole cloves

1 tsp allspice

4 sticks cinnamon

½ c sugar

2½ c water

1 c frozen lemonade

1 c frozen orange juice

2 pint cranberry juice

1½ quarts ice water

Combine spices, sugar and 2½ cups water in saucepan. Simmer ten minutes, strain and cool. Combine lemonade, orange juice and cranberry juice and add to spice mixture. Just before serving, add ice water. Pour over ice in punch bowl for serving.

Ginger ale can be substituted for ice water.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Chapter One

“Son of a…”

Cooper Bryant cut off his curse, needing all of his mental and physical energy to maneuver his eighteen-wheeler around a Toyota that was stuck in the middle of the snow-covered mountain road. Passing the car, he peered down, ready to make a gesture to let the driver know exactly how he felt about people who blocked the way. But he saw the stranded motorist was a young woman. And she had a baby in the back seat.

Shoot!

Well, he couldn’t stop to help. Ironically, the shortcut that he’d cajoled from the turnpike tollbooth attendant hadn’t allowed him to outrun the storm, but had, instead, slowed him down. The twisting, winding route up the Western Pennsylvania mountain couldn’t be taken with any kind of speed. The curves all seemed to hug the edge of the world. And once a semi lost speed climbing a steep slope, it was impossible to get it back. If Cooper stopped now, his truck would stay exactly where it was until the state plowed away the snow.

He made it another couple hundred feet, but his wheels began hesitating. Cooper knew his truck wasn’t going to reach the top. Unlike the driver in the Toyota who had simply parked where her car had stopped, he eased his vehicle onto the first shoulder he found that had more than six inches of space between his truck and a cliff, and cut the engine.

He didn’t like wasting precious hours like this—however, lost time was better than a wreck. He didn’t have one of the elaborate, expensive trucks with sleeping quarters, but he’d passed several hunting cabins. One of them, if not all of them, probably had a woodstove. He had two sandwiches, a thermos of coffee, soap, towels, a blanket and a shaving kit. He could be comfortable for the night, and rested when he got back on the road tomorrow.

Hoisting his backpack of supplies, Cooper jumped out of the cab and into the crystallized white snow. He had switched his trademark cowboy boots for thick work boots at the truck stop off the turnpike exit, but he still had his black Stetson and denim jacket. Unfortunately, they weren’t much against the bite of the unforgiving mountain wind. Cooper was an Arkansas boy, born and bred, but he’d transplanted himself to Texas where he and a buddy had bought a ranch. For the past three years he’d been saving the money he made driving truck to increase the herd and he’d been everywhere from Oregon to Florida. He’d experienced cold, wind, even snow…but not like this.

He tucked himself more tightly inside his jacket as he made his way down the hill. Only about twenty feet from his truck he saw a cabin. Small, with chipping white paint and a sagging roof, the structure was nonetheless good enough for the night. He was about to turn down the snow-covered lane when he remembered the young woman in the Toyota.

And her baby.

Shoot!

He sighed. He wasn’t much on company. Ever. His beliefs were so far out of sync with those of the general population that every time he opened his mouth he seemed to get into an argument. In his reckless youth, that had led to some nasty bar fights. Even his own brothers had said he was always making trouble and kicked him out of their lives eight years ago.

Determined to keep his world peaceful, he wasn’t somebody who went looking for human contact. So, fate should have known better than to throw a stranded woman in his path. He might be able to help her find shelter, but he wasn’t about to play gin rummy until the snowplow came through. If she was a chatterbox who needed constant entertainment, she’d get on his nerves and he’d probably end up making her cry.

Yeah, this was going to be peachy.

Still, he started walking to her car. He didn’t get too far before he realized it was at least two football fields away. If he went down the mountain to offer the woman the opportunity to share a cabin, he wouldn’t simply be going the length of two football fields to get her. He would have to walk those two football fields back up again.

Shoot.

He didn’t want to let a mama and baby freeze to death, but she should have known better than to travel on a day like this.

Cooper continued down the mountain anyway. Slipping and sliding as the powerful wind pushed him along the steep slope, he traveled the distance in what he knew had to be record time. In only a few minutes, he rounded a curve and saw the Toyota. It was now covered with snow, and he could see no sign of exhaust coming out the back. Cooper guessed the driver was either gone or she’d quit running her motor to save gas for the long night. Though he knew having her along would be nothing but irritation to his already frayed nerves, he couldn’t stop a surge of male ego. If she was still in that car, she would be really glad to see him.

With the wind urging him on, he half ran the rest of the way, almost losing his balance twice on the icy incline. When he reached the car, he tapped on the driver’s side window. The snow-covered glass began a very slow descent, but it stopped after about four inches. Then the barrel of a gun greeted him.

Cooper jumped back. What the hell!

“Get lost,” the young woman yelled. “I don’t have any money and I’m not willing to share my car with you. I have a baby.”

“I don’t want to share your car. My truck’s parked just up the road.” Cooper paused long enough to curse under his breath because his heart was jumping like a jackrabbit. Only an idiot used a gun so carelessly. “Look, I passed three hunting cabins on my walk down the hill. I saw you on my way up but couldn’t stop. If you want, you can spend the night in a cabin with me, and I’ll take care of the woodstove. If you don’t, that’s cool, too.”

He waited for a response but got none. Fool woman! Just like a mare he’d bought two years ago. Didn’t have a whit of common sense.

He gave her another thirty seconds. Still nothing.

“Suit yourself,” he called, then turned and began re-climbing the hill, the howling wind nearly blowing him down again. He knew it couldn’t be any warmer than ten degrees. When the sun set even that scant heat would disappear. With the wind chill it would be so far below zero the number would be irrelevant. Anyone without proper shelter would freeze to death. Even if that kid had a blanket—four blankets—she and her baby would freeze to death.

Shoot!

He let the wind blow him back down to her car, then tapped on the window and jumped out of the way as the glass lowered, just in case she aimed the barrel of the gun at him again.

“It’s going to be below zero tonight. You are not going to survive in that car.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“No, you won’t!” Getting angry now, he tried her door but it was locked. “If you didn’t have a baby, I wouldn’t give a flying fig about you freezing to death. But you’ve got a kid. You have to be reasonable.”

“I am reasonable.” She sighed and rolled down the window. Cooper couldn’t help noticing her blond hair, clear pink skin and cornflower blue eyes. “Look, I called a friend. Any minute now I’ll be rescued.”

At that Cooper laughed. “Rescued? Haven’t you heard the weather?”

Her pretty eyes narrowed. “Yes and no. I heard about a snowstorm, but it’s always snowing here. I live on the other side of this mountain. I’m so used to the snow I hardly pay attention.”

“Well, you should have paid attention because this is a blizzard.” He drew in a quick breath and his lungs rebelled at the cold. “The temperatures are falling faster than normal. They’re predicting two feet of snow. If your friend is smart, he’ll stay home.”

Waiting for her reply, he blew on his hands. Even with gloves his fingers were going numb.

When she said nothing, his patience suddenly evaporated and he yelled, “Come out in thirty seconds or I’ll break your car window to save your kid.”

He swore he heard her sigh with disgust, but decided it had to be the wind. Then she kicked open her door and pushed herself out. A blast of air caught her pale hair and fanned it away from her head.

More concerned with getting them safely to shelter, he barely noticed the pretty feathery locks. “Where’s your hat?”

She turned and her blue eyes pinned him with an exasperated look. “It’s in the car.”

“Good, put it on and let’s get the hell going. It’s cold.”

She said, “Right,” then bent and reached inside her vehicle. Her red leather jacket only came to her waist and when she stretched he got a full view of the enticing curve of her bottom.

Cooper quickly turned away. Since she had a baby, the woman was obviously married, and staring at her behind, no matter how nicely rounded, was inappropriate.

The wind kicked up. From the back of her car, the woman pulled out a white plastic contraption lined with pink and navy blue plaid padding. She set it on the driver’s seat, then reached into the back again and extracted a baby wearing a pink snowsuit and wrapped in a pink blanket. She sat the kid in the padding of the white plastic thing. When she looped a handle from beneath and snapped it into place, Cooper guessed the contraption was some kind of baby carrier.

“I should take her,” Cooper said, assuming the baby was a girl because of all the pink.

“I’ll carry her,” the woman disagreed, leaving the baby on the front seat of her car so she could dig out an enormous diaper bag. Pink plaid to match the travel seat, it was stuffed to capacity and looked more like a trash can with a strap. “You take this.”

She shoved the two-ton diaper bag into Cooper’s arms just as a gust of wind hit him and he nearly fell backward. But he didn’t. He didn’t fall. He didn’t curse. He didn’t even yelp. Instead he saw the nice, quiet evening he could have had blow away on a frigid blast of air.

He nodded up the hill. “The cabins are this way.”

He turned to begin the upward trek, but she caught his arm with her glove-covered fingers.

Everything inside of Cooper stilled. It had been so long since anybody had dared to touch him—except in a fight—that his hands automatically curled into fists. But before he instinctively took a punch, he looked into her round blue eyes and a tingling sensation exploded in his gut. Now he understood why she mistrusted him. She was gorgeous and he was about to spend the night with her.

With her body shielding the open car door and Daphne from the wind, Zoe Montgomery stared at the man in front of her, pretending her shivers were from cold, not from fear. She shouldn’t have touched him. Until she’d touched him he’d seemed like a grumpy Kola bear. Now he looked like an angry panther. His green eyes glittered, his hands were fisted and his body was stiff, poised and ready to strike.

Tall and lean, with a black Stetson pulled low over his eyes, her rescuer was definitely all male, but he also had an air of trouble. For all she knew he could be an escaped convict. Well, actually, he’d said he drove a truck and she’d seen an eighteen-wheeler pass her about ten minutes after her car had simply stopped. But truckers weren’t always reputable. Some were hellions who took advantage of roaming the country doing all kinds of crazy things and this guy obviously had a hair trigger.

Still, not all truckers were bad. Some were Good Samaritans. Touchy though he was, this man could be one of those who saw it as his responsibility to help anyone on the road when problems hit.

Also, her options were limited. Whoever he was, he was right. If her car hadn’t died because it was old, but because it couldn’t handle the snow on the mountain, then LuAnn—her rescuer—wasn’t getting up here, either. And if the temperature was about to plummet, Zoe knew she and Daphne would freeze to death in the car.

She wasn’t sure she was any safer in a cabin with a stranger, but technically she didn’t have to “stay” with him. There were lots of hunting cabins on this mountain. Many of them were in clusters. He could sleep in one. She and Daphne could sleep in another.

She took a silent, life-sustaining breath. Not only was that a safe plan, but also it was a smart plan. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who wanted anyone invading his space, and she didn’t need anyone helping her. When her ex-husband had discovered Zoe was pregnant and left her, she’d gotten a crash course in taking care of herself. Brad had moved on so quickly, he hadn’t bothered divorcing her. She’d had to divorce him. And even though there was a court order filed for child support, Brad didn’t honor it.

Zoe knew some men saw responsibility as a frightening trap, but more than that, she’d learned the value of standing on her own two feet and she wasn’t letting anybody steal her independence away from her. She liked taking care of herself. This trucker didn’t want her around and she didn’t want him around. Separate cabins worked.

She pulled her fingers off his forearm and smiled slightly to take the sting out of her forwardness of touching him. “Or we could go down the mountain with the wind rather than against it. I live around here, remember? This part of the mountain is used almost exclusively for hunting. We’re bound to find more cabins on the way down. In fact, we’ll probably find clusters of cabins,” she added, preparing him for the fact that they would stay in different shelters, if he hadn’t already decided that himself.

He grunted as he hoisted the diaper bag on his shoulder where it settled beside his backpack. Then he turned and began walking down the hill.

Zoe grabbed Daphne’s baby carrier from the front seat of the car, slammed the door, and followed him. The wind picked up. Swirling along the ground, it gathered fallen snow and propelled icy crystals upward, causing them to slap against Zoe’s face. She pulled Daphne’s blanket loosely over her head to shield her from the blasts, then lifted the carrier to chest height and slanted it toward her to provide even more protection for her baby.

“By the way, I’m Zoe Montgomery,” she shouted to be heard above the wind. “And this is my daughter, Daphne.”

For several seconds the trucker said nothing and Zoe worried that he wouldn’t tell her his name. Not that she really needed to know his name, but if he wouldn’t tell it, there could be a reason. Which took her back to her concern that he might be a criminal. Or worse, he could be a sex offender who had unspeakable plans for her. His not telling her his name was not a good sign.

Adrenaline pumped into her bloodstream and she remembered the gun in her jacket pocket. As a single mother, who lived alone on the edge of a small town that was too close to the turnpike, she frequently carried. Her cousins had shown her everything she needed to know about guns when they’d taught her to hunt, so she wasn’t an amateur. And she also wasn’t a hothead. She wouldn’t arbitrarily shoot this trucker, but if he tried anything she wouldn’t hesitate to defend herself and her daughter.

But right now, because they weren’t too far from her car, simply running back to her vehicle and locking herself in was much smarter than shooting somebody.

She was formulating her plan of how to most effectively bolt when he said, “I’m Cooper Bryant.”

So grateful she nearly collapsed with relief, Zoe said, “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Cooper Bryant.”

But Cooper Bryant said nothing. Either he didn’t agree that it was nice to meet her or he wasn’t the kind of guy to make small talk. Fine. She’d already figured out he was a loner. She respected that. He would probably jump for joy when she told him she preferred her own cabin and was perfectly capable of keeping a fire going all night.

They struggled another ten feet down the mountain. With every step they took, the temperature seemed to fall. The inside of Zoe’s nose began to freeze. She huddled the baby carrier closer to her chest, protecting Daphne. She didn’t need a thermometer to know it was much colder than it was even ten minutes ago. This storm was worse than any she’d ever seen.

The stranger beside her tapped her arm. Rather than try to speak above the wind that now roared through the trees and hollows, he pointed to the left. Cuddling Daphne’s carrier against her, Zoe squinted, trying to make out what he apparently saw, but the only things in her line of vision were the black trunks of barren trees and swirling white snow. Visibility was down to about three feet. And that was another problem. If the wind and snow took away their ability to see, they could easily get lost in the woods.

She shook her head, indicating she saw nothing, and he caught her arm and hauled her across the road and up the slope into the woods.

Clinging to the baby carrier, which bounced precariously because of the trucker’s hold on her arm, Zoe barely kept up with him. Fear churned through her at the way he was dragging her as if she were a kidnap victim. In her head she said every prayer she knew, hoping she hadn’t gotten herself and her baby into terrible trouble, as the stranger propelled her through the woods, almost toppling her when he turned her to walk into the oncoming wind again. She gasped for breath, and righted herself, tightening her hold on Daphne. But as she did, she suddenly saw what he must have seen—what had motivated him to shove her through the forest.

A house!

Even if they had to spend the night, they would have a bathroom, food…and be among people! She wouldn’t be alone with him!

Trying to run in the deep snow while hugging a bulky baby carrier, Zoe nearly fell twice. But her escort was running, too. She’d never felt the temperature fall so quickly and knew they had to get to shelter now or die.

With her boots clumped with snow, she stumbled on the front porch steps. When Cooper Bryant reached the top, he turned and grabbed the baby carrier from her hands, hauling it to his side before he caught Zoe’s hand and pulled her up, too.

Still holding Daphne’s seat, he ran across the plank porch to the door and pounded. Huddling into her insubstantial leather jacket and shivering violently, Zoe noticed there were no lights on in the house. A new fear tumbled through her. If there was no one home, they were in big trouble. God only knew how far they would have to go to the next shelter. And even if they did easily find another building, there was no guarantee it would have a stove. And if they found a cabin with a stove, there was no guarantee it would have wood.

If this house didn’t pan out, there was a very good possibility she and Daphne would die.

“Here!”

Cooper Bryant shoved Daphne’s baby carrier at Zoe and she caught it in trembling hands, again clutching Daphne close to her to protect her from the freezing wind. Cooper Bryant reached into his back pocket and retrieved his wallet. Just as quickly, he pulled out a credit card. Before Zoe realized what he was doing, he was sliding the card into the space between the doorknob and wood frame.