A Bride Before Dawn Read online

  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.

  Could he really be a Sullivan? His eyes were blue-gray, like Reed’s, but his hair was dark like Marsh’s and Noah’s.

  “How old do you think he is?” Noah asked.

  Reed made a few clicks on his computer. Eying the baby again, he said, “I would estimate him to be right around three months.”

  Although none of them were in a relationship at the present time, they did some mental math, and all three of their throats convulsed on a swallow. If Joey was indeed a Sullivan, he could conceivably have been any one of theirs.

  The baby fell asleep before the bottle was empty. Too agitated to sit still, Noah handed him to Marsh, who was sitting the clos
est to him. When the child stirred, they all held their breath until his little eyelashes fluttered down again.

  “I don’t see how I could be his father,” Marsh said so quietly he might have been thinking out loud. “I always take precautions.”

  “Me, too,” Noah said, almost as quietly.

  “Same here.”

  The baby hummed in his sleep. His very presence made the case of the reliability of protection a moot point.

  “We’re going to need a DNA test,” Reed declared.

  “I have a better idea,” Noah said, already moving across the room toward the kitchen and escape.

  “Not so fast!” Reed admonished, stopping Noah before he’d reached the arched doorway.

  It rankled, but Noah figured he had it coming for all the times he’d hightailed it out of Orchard Hill in the past. “Can you guys handle the baby on your own for a little while?” he asked.

  Two grown, capable, decent men cringed. It was Marsh who finally said, “We can if we have to. Where are you going?”

  Noah looked Marsh in the eye first, and then Reed. “I heard Lacey’s in town.”

  “Do you think she left Joey here?” Marsh asked.

  Noah couldn’t imagine it, but he’d never imagined that he and his brothers would find themselves in a situation like this, either. “I saw somebody on the front lawn when I buzzed the orchard earlier,” he said. “It was a woman with bags slung over her shoulders. She was hunched over, so I couldn’t see her well, but now I think she was hiding Joey under an oversize sweatshirt or poncho.”

  Reed got to his feet. “Was it Lacey?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. She was wearing a scarf or a hood or something. I couldn’t even tell what color her hair was.”

  “Why would Lacey leave her baby that way?”

  “Why would anybody?” Noah said. “I guess we’ll know soon enough if it was her. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

  He strode through the house, where the television was still muted and where diapers and bottles and other baby items lay heaped on the table and countertops. Pointing his old pickup truck toward town seconds later, his mind was blank but for one thought.

  If Joey was his, Lacey had some explaining to do.

  Just once, Lacey Bell wanted to be on the receiving end of good luck, not bad. Was that too much to ask? Truly?

  Looking around her at the clutter she was painstakingly sifting through and boxing up, she sighed. She was searching for a hidden treasure she wasn’t sure existed. Her father had spoken of it on his deathbed, but he’d been delirious and, knowing her dad, he could have been referring to a fine bottle of scotch. She so wanted to believe he’d left her something of value. Once a dreamer, always a dreamer, she supposed.

  She’d emptied the closet and was filling boxes from her father’s dresser when the pounding outside began. She wasn’t concerned. She’d spent her formative years in this apartment and had stopped being afraid of loud noises, shattering beer bottles and things that went bump in the night a long time ago. It had been the first in a long line of conscious decisions.

  Ignoring the racket, she swiped her hands across her wet cheeks and went back to work. After he’d died a year ago, she’d given her father the nicest funeral she could afford. She’d paid the property taxes with what little money was left, but she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of going through all his things, knowing he would never be back. A year later, it was no easier.

  He’d lived hard, her dad, but he’d been a good father in his own way. She wished she could ask him what she should do.

  She filled another carton and was placing it with the others along the kitchen wall when she realized the noise wasn’t coming from the alley, as she’d thought. Somebody was pounding on her door.

  Being careful not to make a sound, she tiptoed closer and looked through the peephole. Her hand flew to her mouth, her heart fluttering wildly.

  It was Noah.

  “Lacey, open up.”

  She reeled backward as if he’d seen her. Gathering her wits about her, she reminded herself that unless Noah had X-ray vision he couldn’t possibly know she was inside.

  She caught her reflection in the mirror across the room. Her jeans were faded and there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek. She wondered when the rubber band had slipped out of her hair. Orchard Hill was a small city, so it stood to reason that she would run into Noah. Did it have to be tonight when she wasn’t even remotely ready?

  “I’m not leaving until I’ve talked to you,” Noah called through the door.

  “I’m busy,” she said with more conviction than she felt.

  “This won’t take long.”

  Silence.

  “Please, Lace?”

  A shudder passed through her, for Noah Sullivan was proud and self-reliant and defiant. Saying please had never come easy for him.

  “I’ll break the damn door down if I have to.”

  Knowing him, he would, too. Shaking her head at Fate, she turned the dead bolt and slowly opened the door.

  Noah stood on her threshold, his brown eyes hooded and half his face in shadow. He was lean and rugged and so tall she had to look up slightly to meet his gaze. The mercury light behind him cast a blue halo around his head. It was an optical illusion, for Noah Sullivan was no angel.

  Before her traitorous heart could flutter up to her throat, she swallowed audibly and said, “What do you want, Noah?”

  His eyes narrowed and he said, “I want you to tell me what the hell is going on.”

  Chapter Two

  Noah was as ruggedly handsome as ever in faded jeans and a black T-shirt. His dark hair was a little shaggy, his jaw darkened as if he hadn’t had time to shave, but that wasn’t what made it so difficult to face him tonight.

  “Have you been crying?” he asked.

  Lacey tried not to react to the concern in his voice. It was dangerous and conjured up emotions she wasn’t ready to deal with. “I must have gotten something in my eye. I’m in the middle of something here. Now’s not a good time.” She moved as if to close the door.

  He narrowed his eyes and looked at her so hard she almost believed he could have X-ray vision. “This won’t take long.”

  “I mean it, Noah. You’re going to have to come back tomorrow. Or the next day,” she said, praying he didn’t hear the little quaver in her voice. The backward step she took was pure self-preservation, for the man was a weakness for which she had no immunity. “I’ve had a lousy day and I’m not in the mood for company.”

  She was taking another backward step when he reached for her hand. Her senses short-circuited like a string of lights at the end of a power surge. His fingers were long, his grip slightly possessive. It brought out a familiar yearning born of loneliness, need and a great sadness.

  “Aw, Lace, don’t cry,” he said, tugging lightly on her hand.

  “I told you, I must have gotten something in my—” The next thing she knew, she was toppling into his 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. For once, it wasn’t the vibration of flight he sensed, but her trembling. At first she held herself stiffly, but slowly the tension drained out of her. He didn’t know what she’d been through since he’d last seen her, and he didn’t want to guess what was at the root of her tears. In that place where instincts lived and survival reigned, he knew only that she needed something as simple and basic as a human touch.

  It had been a year since he’d inhaled the scent of her shampoo, since he’d felt her warm breath against his neck or held her soft curves against the hard length of his body. He heard the rush of blood in his ears and he knew the cause.

  He needed to stop this. He’d come here for a reason, a damn good one.

  She sighed and lifted her head from his shoulder. Splaying her fingers wide against
his chest as if to push away, she opened her eyes and looked up at him. For a moment, neither of them moved, not even to breathe.

  Her eyes were luminous and her lashes were damp. Noah’s heart skipped a beat then raced in double-time. Without conscious thought, he swooped down and covered her mouth with his.

  He didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Okay, he knew. He’d been imagining this ever since Digger told him Lacey was back in town.

  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 and tip her head up and plunge into the heat and hunger springing to life between them.

  She opened her mouth beneath his, and clutched fistfuls of his shirt to keep from falling. He wasn’t going to let her fall. Keeping one arm around her back, he moved his other hand to her waist, along her ribs, to the delicate edges of her shoulder blades. He massaged the knot at the back of her neck until she moaned. It was a low, primal sound that brought an answering one from deep inside him.

  The kiss stopped and started a dozen times. Raw and savage, it tore through him until his heart was thundering and holding her wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

  His ears rang and his lungs burned and need coursed through his veins. He was guilty of slipping his hands beneath her shirt, guilty of succumbing to her beauty and his need. His right hand took a slow journey the way it had come, along her ribs, to the small of her back and lower. She locked herself in his embrace and buried her fingers in his hair, as guilty of wanting this as he was.

  He covered her breast with his other hand, the thin fabric of her bra the only barrier between her skin and his. He massaged and kneaded until she moaned again, her head tipping back. His eyes half-open, he made a sound, too, his gaze going to the boxes lining the room.

  “You’re packing,” he said, easing the strap of her tank top off her right shoulder. “Where are you going?”

  “It’s no concern of yours.”

  “You leave a kid on my doorstep, it’s sure as hell my concern,” he said against her skin.