Grace hid her blush in the folds of her turtleneck as she pulled it over her head.
He finished his task as he looked at her, fastening his belt around his waist. His evergreen stare bored into her soul.
“You belong to me now, Grace Sutter. Your allegiance is to me,” he said with a fierceness she felt all the way down to her bare toes.
Grace looked away and pulled her sweater over her head. Holy Mother Mary. He was even more primitive than she had imagined. He was suddenly acting as if he owned her.
“That’s old-fashioned,” she told him, waving her socks in the air as she looked for her boots. “Women don’t belong to men anymore. That practice stopped nearly two hundred years ago.” She pointed her socks at him. “I belong to myself, Greylen MacKeage. And my only allegiance is to my nephew and my dead sister.”
He picked up his shirt and put it on, appearing not the least bit put off by her declaration. “Why were you still a virgin?” he asked.
She stopped hunting for her boots and looked at him, feeling a flush climb into her cheeks again. Damn.
She lifted her chin. “I was saving myself for marriage.”
The left corner of his mouth kicked up. “That’s a bit old-fashioned, don’t you think, for a lass as modern as you consider yourself to be?” he asked, throwing her words back at her.
“It is not. A woman keeping herself intact until she marries is a very hip, very modern concept.”
He looked down at the pillows on the floor and then back at her. “Then I guess this means I’m the man you intend to marry,” he said, his voice washing over Grace with a resonance that made her skin prickle with shivers.
“Marriage means one of us would have to move, and I doubt you’d last a month in Virginia,” she told him, walking to a chair to put on her socks, careful to keep the couch between them.
“The question is, Grace, how long will you last here?”
She looked up, alarmed. “My life is in Virginia. I have work to do there.”
He stared at her another long minute and then turned and walked over to the opposite wall. He picked up both her boots and carried them to her, holding them out for her to take.
She couldn’t move. He had her pinned into place with his gaze again.
“You aren’t going back to Virginia, Grace. The moment you decided to bring Baby back here, the decision was also made that you would be staying with him.”
How could he possibly know such a thing? She hadn’t even come to terms with her own reasoning yet.
She had taken four months from work to come here and sort out her feelings. And now he was telling her just what those feelings were?
She took her boots from him, put them on her feet, and stood up. “I’m ready to go home now,” she said, walking to the door.
He walked over to the hearth and poked the fire down until it was safely banked, then he moved to the door and pulled the heavy prop away and opened it. Grace stepped out into the late-morning light and tilted her head back, letting the mist wash over her face. Grey stood beside her, looking around at the gently crackling, frozen landscape.
“I will grant you permission to ask my men to use our equipment at the tree farm,” he said, drawing her attention. “But I am only allowing this for Baby, not for MacBain. Eventually the farm will belong to your nephew, if you ever tell MacBain that Baby is his son.”
He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “I’m thinking you won’t do it until the boy reaches his late teens or thereabouts. That’s fine with me. I’m willing to raise him as my own son.”
He was assuming she was going to marry him. And that they would live happily ever after as a family, with Baby believing she was his mom and Grey was his dad.
And Michael MacBain none the wiser for their deception.
Well, that was far more than Jonathan Stanhope had offered her. He wanted her to dump Baby in his father’s lap and come running back to Virginia, maybe bear him his own carefully engineered child, and help him win his space race.
“I made a promise to my sister on her deathbed,” she told the man in front of her. “She wants Baby to be with his father.”
“Then you made a promise you never intended to keep, Grace. Otherwise MacBain would have him now.”
“He still might get him. I haven’t decided yet. Mary’s wishes are still stronger than my own selfishness.”
He was shaking his head. “You don’t hold on to a child for just a little while and then give him up. It isn’t possible. You already love him like a son.”
“Sometimes love can be painful,” she said, knowing personally just how truthful her words were.
Her heart was feeling so wounded at the moment she wasn’t sure it would ever mend properly. How could she love a man who was asking her to keep a secret that affected so many people? What would Baby think of them both then, when he reached an age where they could tell him he’d been living a lie?
How could you explain that his real father was just a mile down the road and had been there his entire life? How do you rob a child of his true heritage and his right to know who he really is?
“Justify your actions by thinking you’re doing it for Baby if you want,” she told Grey. “And I’ll say I’m saving your ski lift because my own conscience won’t allow me to walk away from a neighbor in trouble.
And let’s just leave it at that.”
“You’re a damn difficult woman to deal with, Grace Sutter. You’re far too independent for my liking.”
She gave him a sad smile and shrugged her shoulders, which broke her free of his touch.
“That’s probably the greatest thing Mary and I had in common. Welcome to the Sutter family, Mr.
MacKeage.”
Daar paced the length of his porch and stopped to look up at TarStone Mountain. The clouds had lifted just enough that he could see the summit.
He was feeling the energy again. Only this time it was not menacing. The air enveloping TarStone was charged with the white light of life.
This was good. He had heard the snowcat laboring up the mountain on a distant trail two hours ago, and that was when the first wave of energy had assaulted his senses. He had seen a halo of pure white light wreath the summit within minutes of the snowcat’s ascent, and he hadn’t needed a crystal ball to know that Greylen and Grace were up there.
Daar rubbed his hands together and cackled in glee. It was about time those two stubborn people got down to the business of making babies. He had maybe one or two centuries left in his tired old bones, and that was barely enough time to train a new wizard properly.
Daar counted forward on his fingers nine months from now, and his glee disappeared. The first of December. Close, but not near enough to the Winter Solstice. He suddenly smiled again. MacKeage had been late, content to stay in his mother’s womb an extra two weeks. The child conceived today would probably wish to do the same.
Yes, the MacKeage baby would be born on the Winter Solstice, and her birth would begin the quiet shift of power. It was a human misconception that winter was associated with males and summer with females. The strength, the patient power of life, was in the Winter Solstice.
All seven MacKeage girls would be born on that day, over the next eight years.
And the seventh child would be named Winter.
She was the one Daar intended to gift with the new cherrywood cane he was carving.
He buttoned up his Mackinaw coat and picked up his satchel of clothes, stepping off the porch and using his cane for support as he walked over the frozen crust toward the ski trail.
He intended to ride back down the mountain with the warrior and his woman. It was time he spent a few days a bit closer to civilization, getting to know Grace Sutter.
Chapter Thirteen