A Bride Before Dawn

“Aw, Lace, don’t cry.”

“I told you, I must have gotten something in my—” The next thing she knew, she was toppling into Noah’s arms.

Noah didn’t think about what he was doing, because what he was doing felt as natural as flying. Wrapping his arms around Lacey, he tilted his chin to make room for her head and widened his stance to make room for her feet between his. It wasn’t the vibration of flight he sensed, but her trembling.

He kissed her. It was demanding and rousing, and once it started, it was too late to ask what she was doing back in Orchard Hill, too late to ask her anything, or to do anything but pull her even closer …

Dear Reader,

Three of my favorite occasions are weddings, a new baby’s arrival and Christmas. My latest book, A Bride Before Dawn, contains all three. I’m a planner by nature, and yet one of the things I love most about these celebrations is their sheer unpredictability. Will it rain on an outdoor wedding? Will the baby arrive early or late? Will the kids notice if I buy rolls instead of make them from scratch? Maybe, yes and definitely.

In A Bride Before Dawn, Lacey Bell is a planner, too. At the top of her to-do list is: Resist Noah Sullivan. But when Noah and his brothers find a baby on their doorstep and ask for Lacey’s much-needed help, resisting this fly-by-night test pilot is even trickier when he has a three-month-old baby in his arms.

For me, one of the most meaningful aspects of special occasions is thinking of the perfect gift. My gift to you, dear reader, is Lacey and Noah’s story. Good things are going to happen. (They really are.)

Sincerely,

Sandra Steffen

SANDRA STEFFEN has always been a storyteller. She began nurturing this hidden talent by concocting adventures for her brothers and sisters, even though the boys were more interested in her ability to hit a baseball over the barn—an automatic home run. She didn’t begin her pursuit of publication until she was a young wife and mother of four sons. Since her thrilling debut as a published author in 1992, more than thirty-five of her novels have graced bookshelves across the country.

This winner of a RITA® Award, a Wish Award, and a National Readers’ Choice Award enjoys traveling with her husband. Usually their destinations are settings for her upcoming books. They are empty-nesters these days. Who knew it could be so much fun? Please visit her at www.sandrasteffen.com.

A Bride Before Dawn

Sandra Steffen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my seven wonders of the world: Anora, Leah, Landen, Anna, Erin, Dalton & Brynn.

Chapter One

Noah Sullivan understood airplanes the way physicists understood atoms and bakers understood bread.

He pulled back on the yoke, pushed the throttle forward and sliced through the clouds. He dived, leveled off and climbed, listening intently to the engine all the while, the control held loosely in his hands. This old Piper Cherokee was soaring like a kite at eighteen hundred feet. She had a lot of years left in her.

The same couldn’t be said for all the planes he flew. The first time he’d executed an emergency landing he’d used a closed freeway outside of Detroit. Last month he’d had to set a Cessna down on a godforsaken strip of dirt in the Texas hill country. He’d never lost a plane, though, and was considered one of the best independent test pilots in his field.

He wasn’t fearless. He was relentless. He couldn’t take all the credit for that, though. He never forgot that.

When he was finished putting the Piper through her paces, he headed down, out of the clouds. He followed the Chestnut River west, then banked south above the tallest church spire in Orchard Hill. Halfway between the citylimit sign and the country airstrip was Sully’s Orchard. It was where Noah grew up, and where he collected his mail every month or so when he flew through.

He buzzed the orchard on his way by, as he always did when he came home, and tipped his wing when his oldest brother, Marsh, came running out the back door of the old cider house, his ball cap waving. Their mother used to say Marsh and Noah had been born looking up—Marsh to their apple trees and Noah to the sky above them. The second oldest, Reed, stepped out of the office, shading his eyes with his right hand. Tall, blond and shamelessly confident, he waved, too.

Those two deserved the credit for Noah’s success, for they’d given up their futures after their parents died in an icy pileup when Noah was fifteen and their baby sister, Madeline, was twelve. Noah hadn’t made it easy for them, either. Truancy when he was fifteen, speeding and curfew violations when he was sixteen, drinking long before it was legal. They never gave up on him, and helped him make his dream of flying come true. Maybe someday he would find a way to repay them.

He still enjoyed getting a rise out of them from time to time, but today he didn’t subject them to any grandstanding or showing off. He simply flashed his landing lights hello and started toward the airstrip a few miles away. He’d barely gotten turned around when a movement on the ground caught his eye.

A woman was hurrying across the wide front lawn. She was wearing a jacket and had a cumbersome-looking bag slung over each shoulder. He tipped his wing hello, but instead of looking up, she ducked.

That was odd, Noah thought. Not the snub. That he took in stride. But it was the middle of June, and too warm for a jacket of any kind.

And not even company used the Sullivans’ front door.

Thirty years ago Tom Bender looked out across his ramshackle rural airstrip five miles east of Orchard Hill, Michigan, and saw his future. Today the pasture that had once been a bumpy runway, where he’d landed his first airplane, was a diamond-in-the-rough airfield operation with tarmac runways and hangars for commuter planes, helicopters, charters and hobbyists.

With the stub of a cold cigar clamped between his teeth and all that was left of a sparse comb-over swirling in the June breeze, he was waiting when Noah rolled to a stop along the edge of the runway. “How’d she do?” Tom asked as soon as Noah climbed down.

Running his hand reverently along the underside of the Piper’s right wing, Noah said, “She handled like the prima donna she was destined to become.”

“I’m glad to hear it. The paperwork’s on the clipboard where it always is,” Tom said, his attention already turning to the biplane coming in for a landing on the other runway. “As soon as you fill it out, Em will cut you a check.”

With that check, Noah would make the final payment on the loan for his Airfield Operations Specialist training, a loan he’d been whittling away at for nine years. Anticipating the satisfaction he would feel when he read Paid in Full on his tattered IOU, he headed toward the small block building that comprised the customer waiting area and Tom’s office.

All eight chairs were empty and Tom’s wife, Emma, was verifying a reservation over the phone on the other side of the counter. She waved as Noah took the clipboard from the peg behind Tom’s desk and lowered himself into a cracked leather chair beside it.

He’d barely started on the checklist when the airstrip’s best mechanic moseyed inside. “You aren’t going to believe what I heard today, Noah,” Digger Brown said before the door even closed. As tall as Noah, Digger had a good start on a hardy paunch he was in the habit of patting. “You care to guess?”

Noah shook his head without looking up. “I’m in a hurry, Dig.”

“Lacey’s back in town.”

Noah’s ears perked up and the tip of his pen came off the page. Lacey was in Orchard Hill? For a few moments, he completely forgot what he’d been doing.

Digger was wearing a know-it-all grin when Noah looked up. “I figured that’d get your attention.”

A few grades behind Noah, Lacey Bell used to walk to school with a camera around her neck and a chip on her shoulder. Back then she’d worn her dark hair short and her jeans tight. Noah had been doing his best to get kicked out of the eleventh grade, so other than the fact that the boys her age used to taunt her, he hadn’t paid her a lot of attention. He’d heard a lot about her, though. Whether in bars, at air shows or loitering around watercoolers, men liked to talk. They’d said she was easy, bragging about their conquests the way they bragged about golf scores and fishing trips and cars. Noah’s relationship with Lacey had taught him what liars men could be.

One night after he’d come home following his Airfield Operations Specialist training in Florida, he’d noticed her sitting on the steps that led to the apartment over the bar where she’d lived with her father. They’d talked, him at the bottom of those rickety stairs, her at the top. He’d been twenty and by the end of the night he’d been completely enamored by an eighteen-year-old girl with dark hair, a sharp mind, a smart mouth and a smile she didn’t overuse. When he returned the next night, she moved down a few steps and he moved up. By the third night, they sat side by side.

She was the only girl he’d ever known who’d understood his affinity for the sky. She’d left Orchard Hill two-and-a-half years ago after the worst argument they’d ever had. Coming home hadn’t been the same for Noah since.

“I wondered if you’d already heard, or if Lacey’s return was news to you, too,” Digger said.

“Where would I have heard that? Air-traffic control?” Noah asked, for he’d spent the past month crop dusting in Texas, and Digger knew it.

“There’s no need to get huffy,” Digger groused. “Maybe you ought to pay Lacey a visit. I’ll bet she could put a smile on your face. Wait, I forgot. You’re just a notch on her bedpost nowadays, aren’t ya?”

Ten years ago, after saying something like that, Digger would have been wearing the wrench he was carrying. Luckily for everybody, Noah had developed a little willpower over the years.

Eventually, Digger grew bored with being ignored and sauntered back outside where the guys on the grounds’ crew were moving two airplanes around on the tarmac. Noah’s mind wandered to the last time he’d seen Lacey, a year ago.

He’d been home to attend the air show in Battle Creek. That same weekend Lacey had been summoned from Chicago to her father’s bedside after he’d suffered a massive heart attack. Noah had gone to the burial a few days later to pay his respects. Late that night, she’d answered his knock on her door and, like so many times before, they’d wound up in her bed. She’d been spitting mad in the morning, more angry with herself than at him, but mad was mad, and she’d told him the previous night had been a mistake she had no intention of repeating. She’d lit out of Orchard Hill again with little more than her camera the same day.

Now, if Digger was right, she was back in town.

Thoughts of her stayed with Noah as he finished the paperwork and pocketed the check Em Bender handed him. For a second or two he considered knocking on Lacey’s door and inviting her out to celebrate with him. Then he remembered the way she’d stuck her hands on her hips and lifted her chin in defiance that morning after her father’s funeral.

As tempting as seeing her again was, Noah had his pride. He didn’t go where he wasn’t wanted. So instead, he pointed his truck toward the family orchard that, to this day, felt like home.

The Great Lakes were said to be the breath of Michigan. As Noah crested the hill and saw row upon row of neatly pruned apple trees with their crooked branches, gnarled bark and sturdy trunks, he was reminded of all the generations of orchard growers who’d believed their trees were its soul.

He parked his dusty blue Chevy in his old spot between Marsh’s shiny SUV and Reed’s Mustang, and entered the large white house through the back door, the way he always did. Other than the take-out menus scattered across the countertops, the kitchen was tidy. He could hear the weather report droning from the den—Marsh’s domain. Reed was most likely in his home office off the living room.

Since the den was closer, Noah stopped there first. Marsh glanced at him and held up a hand, in case Noah hadn’t learned to keep quiet when the weather report was on.

Six-and-a-half years older than Noah, Marsh had been fresh out of college when their parents were killed so tragically. It couldn’t have been easy taking on the family business and a little sister who desperately needed her mother, and two younger brothers, one of whom was hell-bent on ruining his own life. Despite everything Noah had put him through, Marsh looked closer to thirty than thirty-six.

When the weatherman finally broke for a commercial, Noah pushed away from the doorway where he’d been leaning and said, “What’s a guy got to do to get a hello around here?”

Marsh made no apologies as he muted the TV and got to his feet. He was on his way across the room to clasp Noah in a bear hug when a strange noise stopped him in his tracks.

Noah heard it, too. What the hell was it?

He spun out of the den, Marsh right behind him, and almost collided with Reed. “Do you hear that?” Reed asked.

As tall as the other two, but blond, Reed was always the first to ask questions and the first to reach his own conclusions. He’d been at Notre Dame when their parents died. He’d come home to Orchard Hill, too, as soon as he’d finished college. Noah owed him as much as he owed Marsh.

“It sounds like it’s coming from right outside the front door,” Reed said.

Marsh cranked the lock and threw open the door. He barreled through first, the other two on his heels. All three stopped short and stared down at the baby screaming at the top of his lungs on the porch.

A baby. Was on their porch.

Dressed all in blue, he had wisps of dark hair and an angry red face. He was strapped into some sort of seat with a handle, and was wailing shrilly. He kicked his feet. On one he wore a tiny blue sock. The other foot was bare. The strangest thing about him, though, was that he was alone.

Marsh, Reed and Noah had been told they were three fine specimens of the male species. Two dark-haired and one fair, all were throwbacks to past generations of rugged Sullivan men. The infant continued to cry pitifully, obviously unimpressed.

Noah was a magician in the cockpit of an airplane. Marsh had an almost ethereal affinity for his apple trees. Reed was a wizard with business plans and checks and balances. Yet all three of them were struck dumb while the baby cried in earnest.

He was getting worked up, his little fisted hands flailing, his legs jerking, his mouth wide open. In his vehemence, he punched himself in the nose.

Just like that he quieted.

But not for long. Skewing his little face, he gave the twilight hell.

Reed was the first to recover enough to bend down and pick the baby up, seat and all. The crying abated with the jiggling motion. Suddenly, the June evening was eerily still. In the ensuing silence, all three brothers shared a look of absolute bewilderment.

“Where’d he come from?” Marsh asked quietly, as if afraid any loud noises or sudden moves might set off another round of crying.

Remembering the woman he’d seen from the air, Noah looked out across the big lawn, past the parking area that would be teeming with cars in the fall but was empty now. He peered at the stand of pine trees and a huge willow near the lane where the property dropped away. Nothing moved as far as the eye could see.

Every day about this time the orchard became more shadow than light. The apple trees were lush and green, the two-track path through the orchard neatly mowed. The shed where the parking signs were stored, along with the four-wheelers, wagons and tractors they used for hayrides every autumn, was closed up tight. Noah could see the padlock on the door from here. Everything looked exactly as it always had.

“I don’t see anybody, do you?” Marsh asked quietly.

Reed and Noah shook their heads.

“Did either of you hear a car?” Reed asked.

Noah and Marsh hadn’t, and neither had Reed.

“That baby sure didn’t come by way of the stork,” Marsh insisted.

A stray current of air stirred the grass and the new leaves in the nearby trees. The weather vane on the cider house creaked the way it always did when the wind came out of the east. Nothing looked out of place, Noah thought. The only thing out of the ordinary was the sight of the tiny baby held stiffly in Reed’s big hands.

“We’d better get him inside,” Noah said as he reached for two bags that hadn’t been on the porch an hour ago. A sheet of paper fluttered to the floor. He picked it up and read the handwritten note.

Our precious son, Joseph Daniel Sullivan.

I call him Joey. He’s my life. I beg you,

take good care of him until I can return for him.

He turned the paper over then showed it to his brothers.

“Our precious son?” Reed repeated after reading it for himself.

“Whose precious son?” Marsh implored, for the note wasn’t signed.

The entire situation grew stranger with every passing second. What the hell was going on here? The last one to the door, Noah looked back again, slowly scanning the familiar landscape. Was someone watching? The hair on his arms stood up as if he were crop dusting dangerously close to power lines.

Who left a baby on a doorstep in this day and age? But someone had. If whoever had done it was still out there, he didn’t know where.

He was looking right at her. She was almost sure of it.

Her lips quivered and her throat convulsed as she fought a rising panic. She couldn’t panic. And he couldn’t possibly see her. He was too far away and she was well hidden. She was wearing dark clothing, purposefully blending with the shadows beneath the trees.

A dusty pickup truck had rattled past her hiding place ten minutes ago. The driver hadn’t even slowed down. He hadn’t seen her and neither could the last Sullivan on the porch. Surely he wouldn’t have let the others go inside if he had.

From here she couldn’t even tell which brother was still outside. It was difficult to see anything in this light. A sob lodged sideways in her throat, but she pushed it down. She’d cried enough. Out of options and nearly out of time, she was doing the right thing.

She had to go, and yet she couldn’t seem to move. On the verge of hyperventilating, she wished she’d have thought to bring a paper sack to breathe into so she wouldn’t pass out. She couldn’t pass out. She couldn’t allow herself the luxury of oblivion. Instead, she waited, her muscles aching from the strain of holding so still. Her empty arms ached most of all.

When the last of the men who’d gathered on the porch finally went inside, she took several deep calming breaths. She’d done it. She’d waited as long as she could, and she’d done what she had to do.

Their baby was safe. Now she had to leave.

“Take care of him for me for now,” she whispered into the vast void of deepening twilight.

Reminding herself that this arrangement wasn’t permanent, and that she would return for her baby the moment she was able to, she crept out from beneath the weeping-willow tree near the road and started back toward the car parked behind a stand of pine trees half a mile away.

She’d only taken a few steps when Joey’s high-pitched wails carried through the early-evening air. She paused, for she recognized that cry. It had been three hours since his last bottle. She’d tried to feed him an hour ago, but he’d been too sleepy to eat. Evidently, he was ready now. Surely it wouldn’t take his father long to find his bottles and formula and feed him.

Rather than cause her to run to the house and snatch him back into her arms, Joey’s cries filled her with conviction. He had a mind of his own and would put his father through the wringer tonight, but Joey would be all right. He was a survivor, her precious son.

And so was she.

In five minutes’ time, life as Noah, Reed and Marsh Sullivan knew it went from orderly to pandemonium. Joey—the note said his name was Joey—was crying again. Noah and Marsh were trying to figure out how to get him out of the contraption he was buckled into. Reed, who was normally cool, calm and collected, pawed through the contents of the bags until he found feeding supplies.

When the baby was finally freed from the carrier, Noah picked him up—he couldn’t believe how small he was, and hurriedly followed the others to the kitchen where Reed was already scanning the directions on a cardboard canister of powdered formula he’d found in one of the bags. Marsh unscrewed the top of a clear plastic baby bottle and turned on the faucet.

“It says to use warm water.” Reed had to yell in order to be heard over the crying.

Marsh switched the faucet to hot and Reed pried the lid off the canister. “Make sure it’s not too hot,” Reed called when he saw steam rising from the faucet.

Marsh swore.

Noah seconded the sentiment.

The baby wasn’t happy about the situation, either. He continued to wail pathetically, banging his little red face against Noah’s chest.

Marsh adjusted the temperature of the water again. The instant it was warm but not hot, he filled the bottle halfway. Using the small plastic scoop that came with the canister, Reed added the powdered formula. When the top was on, Noah grabbed the bottle and stuck the nipple in Joey’s mouth. The kid didn’t seem to care that Noah didn’t know what he was doing. He clamped on and sucked as if he hadn’t eaten all day.

Ah. Blessed silence.

They moved en masse back to the living room. Lowering himself awkwardly to the couch, Noah held the baby stiffly in one arm. All three men stared at Joey, who was making sucking sounds on the bottle. Slowly, they looked at each other, shell-shocked.

Last year had been a stellar season for the orchard. Sales had been good and the profit margin high enough to make up for the apple blight that had swept through their orchards the year before. Their sister had survived the tragic death of her childhood sweetheart and was now happily married to a man who would do anything to make her happy. The newlyweds were expecting their first child and were settling into their home near Traverse City. Noah had the money in his pocket to pay off his loan. Somewhere along the way he’d finally made peace with his anger over losing his parents when he was fifteen. All three of the Sullivan men were free for the first time in their adult lives.

Or so they’d thought.

“It says,” Reed said, his laptop open on the coffee table, “that you’re supposed to burp him after an ounce or two.”

Burp him? Noah thought. What did that mean?

“Try sitting him up,” Reed said.

Noah took the nipple out of the baby’s mouth and awkwardly did as Reed suggested. A huge burp erupted. All three brothers grinned. After all, they were men and some things were just plain funny. Their good humor didn’t last long, though. Dismay, disbelief and the sneaking suspicion that there was a hell of a lot more trouble ahead immediately returned.

Looking around for the baby’s missing sock, Noah laid him back down in the crook of his arm and offered him more formula. As he started to drink again, Joey stared up at him as if to say, “Who in the world are you?”

Noah looked back at him the same way.