Chapter One #2
He crossed back to the door and peered through the small window again but he couldn’t see anything. He flipped on the outdoor lights, and saw what he expected to see: swirling snow coming down on the other side of his porch, and nothing but darkness beyond it.
Though something tugged at him.
Knox frowned as he realized that it looked a lot like someone or something had been out there. He couldn’t think what sort of animal would be out walking around right now. Much less up onto his porch in weather like this.
Still, what he could see was that there were impressions on the stairs, like some kind of tracks.
He reached for the rifle that he kept by the door, because this was Montana and grizzlies were no joke, then pulled the door open and let the blast of the winter cold rush in.
But he hardly noticed it. Because there wasn’t a grizzly bear waiting for him on the other side of the door.
There wasn’t anything at all out here save what looked like the portable car seat he’d seen Harlan and Kendall carry their baby boy around in.
His first thought was that they must have come down and left the baby here—because he heard, next, that little cry that must have been what had stopped him inside.
It was high-pitched, not quite a wail.
But that was ridiculous. His brother wasn’t going to leave his child on a doorstep strapped into a car seat. No child should be on a doorstep in this weather.
Or at all.
Knox shot a look around the snowy, blustery dark, but he couldn’t see anything or anyone else. And what must have been the footsteps of whoever had left this baby here on his porch steps were filling in rapidly, so there would be no track to follow even if he wanted to run out into the dark.
Which he couldn’t do, because there was now a baby here who needed him a lot more than he needed to satisfy his curiosity.
He picked up the car seat with one hand and stepped back inside. He slammed the door behind him, then put his rifle back up on the wall where it belonged.
What Knox Carey knew about babies was pretty much zero. But he did know a thing or two about the cold in general and Montana winters in specific, and how dangerous these things were even if someone was fully grown.
He carried the car seat over to the rug laid out before the fire. Then he crouched down with it as he set it there in the heat that the fireplace threw off.
All he’d seen on the porch was a hint of a little round cheek nestled in layers.
But now, as he squatted down, he could see that those cheeks were flushed and that the baby was wrapped up in a whole lot of what looked like fleece.
And that fleece was mostly pink, so Knox concluded that he was looking at a baby girl.
“Hey baby girl,” he murmured, and her eyes fluttered open at the sound of his voice, then fixed on him.
Her eyes were a fascinating shade of amber-brown ringed with a darker green. Her mouth was a perfect little rosebud, and was working a little. Her cheeks were chubby and round and he thought, for some reason, that it was probably a good thing that they looked flushed instead of cold and pale.
He realized after a moment that she was wiggling in her seat, batting her arms and legs. And then that tiny little face screwed up and she let out a wail that was so loud it was more like a howl.
Knox panicked, because he had no idea what to do.
But then he thought about visiting Kendall and Harlan a couple of months ago when little baby Ezekiel James, named after his grandpa but to be known as Kiel, was brand-new.
Kendall had laughed at him, told him he looked poleaxed, and said, He’s a baby, Knox.
Not a poisonous snake. You know what to do with baby cows.
Baby humans aren’t really that different.
So he reached in and found the straps that were keeping her in her car seat, undid them, and then picked her up. When he did, he held her before him for a moment and looked at her seriously.
She fussed and shook her arms a little like she was dancing in place in midair. And also like she was mad. But then she seemed to be staring right back at him.
“This is not an ideal situation,” he told her gravely, and she blinked in much the same way. “We are going to have to get through this together, you and me, and it might be a little bumpy. Where is your mother?”
But of course, she was a baby, no matter how intently she seemed to be staring back at him. She didn’t reply, beyond blowing a few bubbles at him.
And he couldn’t stop thinking about how cold it was out there. How quickly the snow had filled in what tracks there were, which made him hope that the baby had only been out there a few minutes.
But he didn’t know that for sure.
What he knew about cold exposure had nothing to do with babies specifically, but he figured it might be the same thing. Skin to skin was always the way to go, to make sure that everyone was warm and toasty and getting blood into all the extremities.
He peeled off his flannel shirt. Then he set the baby down on her back, carefully.
She didn’t like that very much, and started kicking and making noise.
That wasn’t exactly helpful when he needed to get her layers off her tiny little body, but Knox had in fact spent a lot of his life wrangling calves—as baby cows were more commonly known—and all other kinds of farm animals.
Little mammals had more in common than not.
He found himself murmuring soothing things, nonsensical or not, as he found her little zippers and tiny snaps and stripped the baby down until she was wearing nothing but her diaper.
A diaper he could smell, which he was pretty sure was another problem, but not one he had to deal with right this hot minute. Not yet, anyway.
He picked up the baby again, remembering what Kendall had told him about babies’ heads and necks and how fragile they were, and then he nestled her into his chest. Then wrapped his shirt around her, for good measure.
And after a few moments, the little sounds she was making—of distress and protest, if he had to guess—eased.
He could feel her tiny little fingers against his skin, her little fists that had looked perfect and impossible to him. He looked down and found her staring up at him again, with those big, solemn eyes of hers, like she was taking his measure.
Knox felt something in him melt, then seem to expand, like his heart needed more room in his chest. He held her close, and kissed the top of her head, where there was a little tuft of reddish hair that struck him as possibly the cutest thing he’d ever beheld.
She smelled soft and sweet, and he could feel the way she breathed against him with the whole of her tiny body.
He outlined what he knew about babies in his head, which was not much.
What he knew about baby animals in general was that they needed to eat and sleep a lot, and that they spent a significant portion of their young lives doing only those two things.
He had no way of telling how old this baby was, but he knew that she was bigger than little newborn Kiel had been when he’d first met him.
If he had to guess, she’d been born sometime in the last couple of months.
If the weather was better, he would have gone over to Kendall and Harlan’s place, up the hill past the ranch house where his parents lived, to take advantage of what they’d learned since September.
Or maybe not, he corrected himself, because Harlan had told everyone that Kendall and the baby had caught something and were lying low.
His next call would have been to Ryder and Rosie.
Rosie had raised those twins on her own and they had more babies on the way, but of course, they were down in Marietta and as far as anyone knew, about to give birth.
He could have called his parents, because they knew what to do with children of all ages, but it was just about midnight on Christmas Eve and anyway, he knew that they were taking care of Levi and Eli.
Wilder and Boone were probably the closest to him, but what did either one of them know about babies? Neither one of their wives had one. Knox figured they’d know pretty much what he did. Not much more than they could rustle up with an internet search.
That did not feel sufficient.
If this was the middle of summer, he probably would have taken the baby straight down into Marietta to have her checked out, because what if she was sick? What if she’d been sitting out there for too long and something had happened to her that he couldn’t see?
The moment he thought that, he had another thought, and had to blow out a breath when it took hold.
Because he knew that it was too dangerous to drive down Copper Mountain in the middle of the night with a snowstorm pounding its way over Paradise Valley.
He’d grown up here on the far side of Cowboy Point, a tiny village hidden away behind Copper Mountain that didn’t have much in the way of services.
Especially not this time of year. Folks around here often had to take things into their own hands medically, because no one was coming to save them.
There was no calling 911 and thinking an ambulance was going to show up.
There was no getting anywhere in this weather without a truck with a tough four-wheel-drive and the determination to make it where he needed to go for the baby’s sake. Knox had both.
And there was only one place that he could go that didn’t involve skidding off the side of Copper Mountain like too many people did every winter.
But that was complicated.
Knox kept the baby tight against his chest as he got to his feet, then walked back down the hall to his office to find his phone. He swiped it open, scrolled through, and then stopped when he found the name he was looking for.
But he didn’t connect the call.
He could feel himself tense, everywhere, but then the baby moved in his arms and he reminded himself that this wasn’t about him.
It didn’t matter how complicated this was, because it didn’t have anything to do with him, personally, or the past year and a half.
But because that wouldn’t necessarily be obvious if he called this number, he swiped over to the internet instead, found the business number and connected that call.
It rang twice, and when she picked up, Knox braced himself.
“It’s Christmas Eve, Knox,” came her voice. As cool as ever. He had to close his eyes. “And I’m pretty sure I told you not to call me again.”
“I’m calling the clinic,” he managed to say, somehow keeping his voice even when that had never been something he was good at around this woman. “I have a situation, Doctor. And I need your help.”