“I think she said Samuel was the oldest,” Ian told him, scratching his beard. “He’s the one with the crooked nose.”
“You suppose he got that in a fight?” Callum asked.
“Could be,” Morgan agreed, his esteem for the man obviously high. A broken nose was as good as a badge of honor in the warrior’s eyes.
“None of them looks like Grace,” Ian observed. “They’re bigger and much rougher around the edges.
And one of them, what was his name? Brian, I think she called him. He looks as if he eats babies for breakfast.”
Grey noted the inflection of praise in Ian’s voice for that possibility. “He lives in Alaska,” he told Ian.
“Brian works on an oil rig. It’s a demanding job.”
The four of them looked at the tall, boisterous, powerful-looking man Grace had introduced them to yesterday as Brian.
“Do ya think they noticed she’s with child?” Callum asked. “None of them has mentioned it.”
Grace was just starting to show. She had come to Grey frantic last week when her pants weren’t fitting, wailing that her brothers were going to kill her—right after they killed him for getting her pregnant without a wedding first. He had refrained from laughing at her and had taken her shopping instead. She had bought pants with elastic waists and oversized sweaters and shirts.
He didn’t know who she thought she was fooling. It wasn’t her belly that showed she was pregnant, it was her face. Grace Sutter positively glowed with the promise of new life.
Grey thought back to his heated talk with Daar after their adventure at the lake. Grey had told Daar that he didn’t care who he was or what he was doing messing with their lives, only that it stopped. There would be no more magical storms, no more interference, and no more talk of heirs not yet born.
Grey knew his decree had lasted all of six days, when the old priest had gone to Grace’s for a visit. But he hadn’t said anything to Daar because Grace’s spirit had lifted after her talk with the old man.
She had actually come to Gu Bràth for a visit the next day, unsure at first of the welcome she’d get from Ian and the others. Grey had had another little talk with his men, about a father’s right to have his son and a woman’s courage to see that he did.
Ian had been contrite, and when Grace arrived, the old warrior had nearly tripped over himself promising he held no ill will to her for being somewhat related to MacBain. Ian and Grace had actually become fast friends since then, working together on building the new ski lift and planning the grand opening.
“Don’t tell me you four big powerful men are afraid of my brothers,” Grace said, all but skipping over to them.
“We’re not wanting to intrude on your reunion,” Ian said.
She waved that away with a smile and walked up to Grey. “They’re asking about you,” she told him, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “They want to know about the man who dared make me break a promise.”
“What promise?” he asked, thinking hard on what she could be talking about. Near as he knew, she’d kept every damn promise, even the heartbreaking ones.
“The promise we browbeat her into making when she was twelve,” Samuel Sutter said as he approached.
He wasn’t smiling.
And his brothers were following him over.
“It’s a known fact that Grace was saving herself for marriage,” Paul Sutter interjected, now standing beside Samuel and frowning at Grace.
“It’s cold over here,” Grace said, grabbing Grey’s hand and pulling him toward the fire. “Let’s make some cocoa.”
Grey let her lead him away, smiling at her glaring brothers as he walked past them. The six Sutter men turned in unison and followed, and the three MacKeages, not to be left out of what might possibly turn into a rousing fight, followed them.
As soon as they reached the fire, Grey sat down and pulled Grace onto his lap, ignoring her faint little gasp, wrapping his arms around her to trap her in place.
“Are you nuts?” she whispered to him, trying to wiggle free. “They’re already mad that I’m pregnant.
You’re going to upset them more.”
He tightened his hold on her and effectively stopped her struggles. “I’m Superman, remember?” he whispered back, pleased to feel her shiver sensuously against him when his breath teased her ear. “It’ll take a bit more than these six to intimidate me, lass.”
She turned a frown on him, and just because she looked so cute in the glow of firelight, he kissed her on the end of her nose.
“She actually told you she was saving herself for marriage?” Morgan asked, unable to comprehend a woman being so bold with her brothers.
“Well, she didn’t exactly tell us,” the youngest Sutter brother said. Grey thought his name was Timmy.
“We more or less wrung the promise from her.”
“Did you make Mary give this same promise?” Callum asked.
Grey guessed Callum’s esteem for the men had just gone up another notch. There wasn’t a big brother alive who would not wish the same thing for his sister.
“We did,” David Sutter said.
Morgan snorted. “Fat lot of good it did either of them. They both got pregnant.”
The woman on his lap was getting restless, and Grey felt an ultimatum coming on in hopes to get them to change the subject.
They were saved when Michael MacBain appeared out of the darkness, walking up the moonlit trail from the resort.
“Michael,” Grace said, jumping up to greet him.
Grey let her go. She ran to Michael and unzipped the pack he had on his chest, pulling little Robbie MacBain into her arms.
“Thank you so much for coming, Michael,” she said, reaching up and kissing his cheek. She turned to her brothers, who were now standing again.
“This is Robbie, your nephew,” she told them, walking over to the fire to show them the babe. “He’s five months old next week. And he can already sit up by himself.”
Five Sutter men crowded around to see Robbie, who was staring wide-eyed at all the faces staring at him. He clung to Grace’s shirt with his fist, then suddenly turned and buried his face in her hair.
Samuel Sutter was not watching him but was looking at Michael MacBain instead.
“So you’re the man who got our baby sister pregnant,” Samuel said in a low, guttural voice.
The five other Sutter men turned to join their brother. With a snort of disbelief at what he was about to do, Grey found himself going over and standing beside Michael MacBain. Even more unbelievable was that Morgan and Callum and even Ian joined him, until the five men formed a united front against the six Sutter men.
Grace had to blink several times to believe what she was seeing. She had just been about to step in front of Michael to defend her sister’s love for him to her brothers, but every one of the MacKeages was already doing it for her.
The fact that Ian was there warmed Grace’s heart the most. She and Ian had run into Michael and Robbie in town one day a month ago, and when Ian had turned to leave, Michael had stopped him.
Grace had held her breath, expecting a fight. But Michael had said, in a quiet, gentle voice, that he had something he wanted Ian to know. Stern-faced and rigid, the older man had waited with his hands balled into fists at his side.
“Maura didn’t kill herself,” Michael told him then. “We were running away to get married. She was coming to meet me when she wandered off the path and onto the rotten ice of the loc. It was an accident, Ian. And a tragedy that I have regretted all my life. I should have come to you and openly asked for her hand.”
Ian had only stared at him then, stone-still and silent.
“I loved your daughter, old man,” Michael had said, his hand lovingly supporting Robbie in the pack of his chest. “And I’m sorry for you. For both of us.”