Intimate Surrender

Before they drove away, Clint rolled down the window. “If the power goes out, you’ll have to start up the generator,” he said gruffly. “Instructions are on the wall next to it.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said for what seemed like the hundredth time. Through the open window she kissed him on the cheek, enjoying his blush. “Give the little darling a kiss for me, all right? Be safe.”

He finally put the truck in gear and the four-wheel drive tires spit gravel as he headed down the long drive. Katie stood and watched them go while an unusually harsh wind for early March dug icy knuckles into her ribs inside her open canvas ranch coat. Despite her fleece hat, her head was freezing.

She should be used to this half-naked feeling after nearly three months without the heavy mane of hair she had always worn, but she still felt exposed with her new short, wispy hairstyle.

A few fluttery snowflakes settled on her skin and the canvas of her coat with deceptive gentleness. They might look lovely now, tiny swirling specks against the pale lavender twilight, but she knew a Wyoming winter storm could turn deadly with warp speed, even in March.

She had a feeling the weatherman was right about the storm. The air had a heavy, expectant quality to it, and thick dark clouds already concealed the tops of the mountains.

Katie filled her lungs with cold air that smelled of snow and lifted her face to the gossamer flakes.

She had always found peace out here and usually loved the view from the sprawling log-and-stone ranch house with its wide front porch and four gables along the steeply pitched roof. Even in winter, she could gaze for hours at the harsh and wild ring of snow-covered mountains that loomed over the ranch, the neat split-rail fences on either side of the driveway, the long row of bushy pine trees that formed a barrier from the endless Wyoming wind.

Try as she might, she knew she would find little comfort in the view this time. She was afraid peace would become a rare and elusive commodity in the coming months.

With a deep sigh, she reached a hand inside her coat and touched the tiny, barely noticeable bulge at her abdomen.

Just when, exactly, does a woman decide her life has spun completely and irrevocably out of her control? she wondered grimly.

Katie liked to think she was a fairly together kind of person. Sure, she had her problems. Who didn’t? So what if her best friend Carrie compared her to a hermit crab with agoraphobia and her mother still thought she was a fat, homely thirteen-year-old with bad vision and a serious addiction to comfort food?

She might lack the grace and poise one might expect from an offspring of one of the Northwest’s wealthiest families. But besides thick, gooey macaroni and cheese, Katie had always comforted herself with the immutable knowledge that she had something far more important than charm and beauty and a twenty-inch waist.

She was smart. Off-the-charts smart. She wasn’t arrogant about it—it was just a fact of life, like her brown eyes, her streaky brown hair, the tiny heart-shaped mole just above her left eyebrow.

She might not have grace and poise, but she had graduated summa cum laude from Stanford and become the vice president of research and development of one of the most powerful computer companies in the world. She knew her brother Trent relied on her logic and judgment at Crosby Systems and used her often as a sounding board.

So how, she wondered now as she gazed at the charcoal clouds gathering force, did she find herself in this predicament? Pregnant and alone and deep in the grip of a major panic attack?

Two days ago when her OB had confirmed the suspicion she hadn’t even dared admit to herself, that panic had virtually paralyzed her. She had told herself the queasiness that had plagued her for several weeks must be some kind of lingering bug, had attributed her missed periods to stress and fatigue.

Hoping she only needed time away from the high stress of her life, she had come to the ranch, her own personal refuge, to recharge her batteries. After several weeks of telecommuting, the fatigue and the nausea hadn’t abated. She returned to Portland for a meeting she couldn’t miss and finally decided to see her doctor, who delivered the stunning news.

She had somehow driven in a numb haze to her condo and had sat in her living room all night long with the curtains drawn and the lights off.

The next morning she could think of nothing but returning to this haven where she had always felt such safety and solace. Maybe the clean mountain air would help her figure out how to cope with the atomic bomb that had just detonated in her neatly ordered life.

In the last few days, she’d had more time to get used to the idea that she was going to be a mother in a little over six months but she still didn’t have the first idea how to chart out the rest of her life. She had always been one for blueprints and goals and lists, even as a little girl. So how was she supposed to pencil in an unplanned pregnancy at age twenty-eight, especially when her child’s father didn’t even know her real name?

She meant what she said to Margie. She was almost glad they had planned to leave for the birth of their new grandchild. As much as she loved the ranch caretakers, they tended to hover over her. Right now she desperately needed solitude—time to ponder and meditate and somehow shape an entirely new life plan for herself, one that included the tiny baby growing inside her.

One that certainly didn’t include the child’s father, no matter how much she might wish things could be different.

Kate shook off the foolish thought. A smart woman could never believe she and her baby’s father would ever have more than the one incredible night they had shared.

An hour later she had just added another log to the fire in the massive river-rock fireplace of the great room and was settling onto the comfy couch with a mug of hot cocoa and a book she knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on when she heard the bass rumble of a vehicle approaching.

What had Margie and Clint forgotten? she wondered. At this rate, they would find themselves stuck out here in the middle of the approaching blizzard.

A blast of cold air hit her as soon as she hurried to open the door for them. She shivered and saw that in the short time since she had stood in the driveway watching them leave, a half-inch of snow had fallen. The sun had slid behind the mountains and in the pale lavender twilight, she could make out a late-model SUV approaching the house.

Not Clint and Margie, then. Odd. They hadn’t mentioned they were expecting anyone.

From the entryway, she watched a man climb out of the vehicle and had an impression of lean, muscular strength. She saw only dark wavy hair and a leather aviator jacket, then he turned to face her and the stoneware mug slipped from her clumsy fingers.

She reached for it just in time to keep the whole thing from gushing out all over the wood floor. Hot cocoa splashed her jeans but she barely registered it. She could focus on only one horrifying realization.

He had found her!

She couldn’t seem to draw enough breath into her lungs as Peter Logan slammed the door to the SUV and stalked up the porch stairs. The blood rushed away from her oxygen-starved brain and she swayed, fighting a panicked urge to slam the door and shove the heavy hall table across it as a barricade against his anger. It took every ounce of concentration to keep her hands clenched tightly at her sides, not covering the tiny, barely there life growing inside her.

“Hello, Celeste.” Her middle name came out more like a snarl.

Celeste. The name she’d used the night of the auction gala, when she’d kept her true identity a secret from him.

“Peter. Th-this is a surprise.” She hated the stammer but couldn’t seem to help it.

“I’ll just bet it is.”

She couldn’t think what to say, could only stare at him as wild memories crowded through her mind of how that tight, angry mouth had once been tender and sensual, had once explored every inch of her skin.

“Are you going to stand there staring at me all night like I’m the Abominable Snowman come to call, or do you think you might condescend to let me inside?”

Did she have a choice? If she did, her vote would have been for locking him out on the porch rather than face a confrontation with him. But since she had a pretty good idea that a man like Peter Logan wouldn’t let anything as inconsequential as a locked door keep him away, she had no choice but to surrender to the inevitable. She stepped aside.

“What are you doing here, Peter?”

“You mean how did I figure out who the hell you really were?”

Despite her best efforts at control, she shivered at the menace in his tone. “That, too.”

“Don’t you read the papers, sweetheart?”

She stared at him blankly. Across the vast room, she was oddly aware of a log breaking apart in the fireplace with a hiss and crackle. After a moment he yanked a folded newspaper from the inside pocket of his snow-flecked leather jacket and slapped it down on the narrow hall table next to her.

She eyed it like he’d just let loose a wolverine in the Sweetwater great room. Warily, her pulse skipping with sudden trepidation, Katie picked up the newspaper. It was a copy of the society page of Portland Weekly, the independent tabloid that delighted in poking fun at the city’s movers and shakers.

Her gaze went to the photo first and her already queasy stomach dipped. It was a photo of her and the man now standing before her, both of them in elegant evening wear. Her back—bared in a glittery emerald-colored designer gown she’d borrowed from her best friend—was to the camera, but anybody who saw the picture could clearly identify Peter Logan—and could see the two of them were locked in a passionate embrace.

She had seen it before. The newspaper had run the photo months ago as part of a feature spread of a bachelor auction and charity benefit for Children’s Connection, a Portland adoption agency and fertility clinic. The caption had said only something about Peter being photographed in a hot kiss with a mystery woman. When they ran it the first time, she had seen it and thanked her very lucky stars that she hadn’t been recognizable.

Apparently someone had figured it out. The headline above this photo read “Mystery Solved: Crosby, Logan scions put aside famous feud long enough for kiss.”

Oh, no. She drew in a shaky breath. This was bad. Seriously bad. She read on.

“We first brought you the juicy tidbit a few months ago that Logan Corporation CEO and oh-so-sexy bachelor Peter Logan was caught in a very heated embrace with a mysterious glamour-gal during a chi-chi gala for Children’s Connection, a cause the Logan family notably supports. The two of them disappeared together soon after.