“We voted,” Grey told him for the hundredth time, getting tired of Ian’s predictions of doom. But Grey and the others usually forgave the old warrior his flaw. It couldn’t be easy suddenly, at fifty-eight years of age, to be uprooted from family the way Ian had been.
Ian was the only one of them who had lost a wife, two daughters, and two fine sons four years ago.
Callum had been a widower, Morgan had still not decided to settle down, and Grey had not been in any hurry to find a wife back then, either.
One unfaithful fiancée had been enough.
Still, Ian’s black view of everything was wearing thin. If they had become loggers as he often suggested, the man would be worried about forest fires instead.
“You may thank me now, Grey,” Daar suddenly interjected into the quiet. “My prayers have worked.
Your woman is awake.”
Grace was dreaming she was in the sauna at her gym. Only something was wrong. She must have fallen asleep and cooked herself, because she was so hot she couldn’t move a muscle in her body.
“Open your eyes, Grace,” a deep, demanding voice suddenly whispered.
There was a man in the sauna with her? More out of curiosity than obedience, Grace slowly opened her eyes to see who had dared enter the sauna while she was in it. She was going to give him hell for intruding on her privacy.
She screamed instead.
There were four male giants staring down at her.
“Easy, Grace. You’re safe now,” the same voice said.
Safe? There were men in the sauna with her. She turned in the direction the voice had come from, keeping a watch with the corner of her eye on the other four men. But she suddenly gave her full attention to the one leaning over her. It was Greylen MacKeage, the man from the airplane. And he looked as warm as she was. Sweat glistened off his broad, impressively naked, hairy chest.
“How did you get in here? This is the women’s sauna.”
“Sauna?” he repeated, looking confused.
“I told you we should have warmed her brain up first,” another voice said from above her. “Now she’s daft.”
Frowning, Grace turned to see who had spoken. “Do you work here?” she asked, trying to sound authoritative, wanting to scare him half as much as all of them were scaring her. By heaven, she would bluster her way out of this.
“Grace. You’re not in a sauna,” Grey said from beside her.
She turned back to him. “It’s hot.”
“You’re at the cabin I told you about. Do you remember the plane crash?”
She thought about that. Yes, she remembered the plane crash. And she remembered the snow cave. She gasped, looking up into Grey’s eyes. “I waited for you,” she told him. “But you didn’t come.”
“I did,” he said fiercely. “You went to sleep, Grace.”
“I did not.”
“Your eyes were shut tight when we found you, lass. We thought you were dead.”
She turned to glare at the man making that claim; it was the same man who had said she was daft. His fierce face was smiling, though, as he nodded his head at her. “So if you weren’t dead, you must have been sleeping,” he added.
“You were supposed to be thinking of a name for Baby,” Grey told her, drawing her attention again.
“I’m calling him Baby,” she said, lifting her chin. By God, he had taken his good old time returning for her.
Oh, she remembered everything now. The cold. The dark when the battery on her computer died. And the terrible sense of loneliness.
“Who are these people?” she whispered to Grey, her gaze moving to the four men who rudely kept staring at her.
“The old man with the wild white hair and the prayer beads is Father Daar. This is his cabin,” he told her, nodding toward a man who looked older than time. Except for his eyes. Father Daar had the brightest, clearest blue eyes she had ever seen. He smiled at her when Grey introduced him.
“And this is Callum,” he continued, nodding at the man beside Father Daar.
Grace looked at him. Callum grinned past a bushy beard, his hazel-green eyes echoing his smile, his shaggy, dark auburn hair wet and dripping on his shoulders. He looked to be fortyish, and, like all of them, he was well over six feet tall.
“And Morgan,” Grey said, moving along to the next man.
Grace turned her attention to Morgan. He was young and clean-shaven, his wet, blond-red hair sticking out as if he’d been running a hand through it. He shot her a crooked grin and winked at her.
Grace quickly looked at the next man.
“And Ian,” Grey finished.
Ian was the one who had told Grace she’d fallen asleep. His hair was a brighter red than the others’ with gray highlights beginning to show near his ears. He had a beard, too, peppered with white and in dire need of a set of clippers. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was looking at her as if she were a bug under a microscope. So Grace smiled at him instead.
She knew all of them. At least she knew of them. Mary had told her about the MacKeages and Father Daar, five men who had moved here a little over three years ago when they had bought TarStone Mountain as well as most of the forested land for miles around. They kept to themselves for the most part, Mary had said, and nobody in town could find out much about them.
Grace stared at them, unblinking. They didn’t look related, although four of them had the same last name.
Except for the youngest one, Morgan. There was something familiar about him, the way he carried himself, maybe. A mannerism. An expression. The way the corner of his mouth lifted in amusement.
Actually, he reminded her of Grey. Yes. Morgan had the same dark, penetrating, evergreen eyes.
Grace turned her head enough to see Father Daar. Her sister had also told her about the priest who lived like a hermit halfway up the mountain. Mary had said he was positively ancient, and she had often worried that he was too old to be living alone.
All of them were strangers to her, and although some of them were larger than her half brothers, they seemed harmless enough and sincerely concerned for her welfare. Grace relaxed back into the softness of the bed—until she discovered a rather alarming fact, given the company she was in.
“I’m naked,” she accused, turning to glare at Grey. “How did that happen?”
“Is your modesty worth dying over?” he asked.
She closed her eyes and wondered if she could turn any redder than the lobster she must look like already. She also wondered if she might possibly die after all, but from embarrassment, not cold.
“Are you not wondering about your son?” the man named Ian asked.
“Oh my God! Baby. I forgot all about him. Where is he?” she asked, suddenly frantic as she craned her neck to look around the room.
“He’s here,” Father Daar said, moving aside for her to see Baby. “He’s sleeping. He’s fine.”
Grace closed her eyes and thanked God for that miracle. She also asked him to get her out of the mess she had just made. These men would all think she was an unfit mother for forgetting her son.
Well, she was. Those should have been the first words out of her mouth when she woke up. Instead, she had been too focused on finding herself naked while sharing a bed with a man, her hormones zinging around like crazy, and an audience—part of which was a priest, no less—watching her.
Grace burst into tears. Huge, gut-wrenching sobs shook her body with painful results. Every square inch of her hurt like the devil. But it was nothing compared with the pain she felt in her heart.
She had forgotten Baby.
“Now look what you’ve done, Ian,” Callum accused. “You’ve made the lass cry.”
“Grace. He’s okay,” Grey told her, brushing the hair away from her face.
She couldn’t even look at him. She couldn’t look at any of them. She was scum. Just scum. She didn’t deserve the child.