Penny smiled. Even with her windburned cheeks and bedraggled brown hair, the smile transformed her face to a very pretty one. “Maddie Sue, it’s your aunt Penny. Do you remember me?”
Maddie Sue frowned and looked at Penny with wary eyes.
“Maddie Sue, it’s Pa.” Cam smiled and rushed forward. He reached out and she screamed. She turned her face away and clung to Gwen, screaming as if a longhorn was charging her.
Although truth be told, she’d probably be more comfortable with longhorns.
Cam tugged at her. Maddie Sue’s screams grew louder.
Little Ronnie howled in sympathy and nearly crawled over Gwen as if to hang on to her back where he could better hide from this scary man.
“Mr. Scott, please let her go,” Gwen said. She tried to sound calm, but a thread of desperation underlined it. “You’re scaring her.”
Cam didn’t seem to hear Gwen. He was too intent on trying to hold his daughter.
Deb could only imagine how much he’d missed his child.
Trace came up and clamped a hard hand on Cam’s shoulder and dragged him back.
Cam whirled around, a fist clenched. “Let me go. I haven’t seen her in . . . in . . .”
“You’re scaring her to death. Just calm down. Let her get to know you a bit first.”
Deb braced herself for Cam to throw that fist.
Cam’s chest heaved, breathing too fast. Deb could see the fight for control. He was furious, but more than that, she could see he was devastated, brokenhearted.
“I have a daughter who doesn’t even know who I am. I’m nothing but a frightening stranger to her.” Cam ran his hands over his face, thick with beard stubble, his hair overlong and uncombed.
“I don’t blame her for being terrified of me.” Cam’s head dropped so his chin rested on his chest. “I abandoned her.”
The screaming kept up. Both children were clinging to Gwen, their faces red and streaked with tears.
With his shoulders slumped, Cam turned away and found where he’d shed his coat. He grabbed it and, dragging it on, headed for the door. “I’ll go see if I can help outside.” He left the house, swinging the door shut.
Deb couldn’t even hear over Maddie Sue, whose face was pressed against Gwen’s chest, howling louder than the loneliest wolf.
Epilogue
Deb crawled into bed with Trace. Dragging the covers up over both of them, Trace whispered, “I thought I was going to end up in the bunkhouse with all the other men.”
Deb threw her arms tight around him. “I was afraid you might. You know there’s not much room in this house anymore.”
Groaning, Trace rolled onto his back and drew Deb along so that her head rested on his chest and her arm surrounded his waist. “No one in a hundred miles is tough enough to get me to give up holding you in the night.”
Deb giggled, and Trace covered her mouth and hissed, “You be quiet. There are too many ears close by.”
Wriggling away from his hand, she said, “Listening to Maddie Sue and Ronnie cry so hard reminded me of a voice crying in the wilderness. Maybe you’re too tough to cry. And I’m certain you’re too tough to admit it if you did.”
“Darn right I am.” Trace kissed her on the neck in a way that made her giggle again, but she was going to have her say.
“But fighting this snow, Trace, how did you survive it? From Missouri? You couldn’t have had any idea what you were facing.”
“Not really, but Pa had talked of stocking up food for the winter. And we’d lived up on a mountainside in Tennessee, so we got some snow there. But you’re right—I wasn’t ready at all. It was only hard work and a whole lot of prayers that got me through.”
“Well, your experience saved lives when you guarded that trail. It also saved my life along with Gwen’s and the children’s. And it provided you with a wife. And this home is going to help poor Cam get to know his children.”
“They didn’t even get near him at supper. They were almost as scared of Penny. They act like Gwen is their mother. They love you too, but it’s her they go to.”
“Yep.” Deb rested her head comfortably against his shoulder. “But I don’t mind that at all. They love us both, though I’m glad they picked one of us for a special attachment. That seemed better for them, yet I don’t know how they’re going to act when Cam and Penny try to take them away.”
“I know how I’m going to act.” Trace kissed her before she could ask what he meant. He went on, “I’m going to jump up and down and cheer at the thought of having all those people gone out of my house.”
She laughed again, but much more quietly this time, and Trace silenced her with his lips. “I love you, Deb.”
Deb gasped and pulled back. “You do?”
In the dark, she could see Trace’s brow furrow. “Well, a’course I do. It’d be a foolish man who’d have such a wife as you and not count his blessings every day and love her with all his heart. I never dreamed such a wonderful thing could happen to me. Didn’t you know I love you?”
When he put it that way, she almost felt like she’d done wrong. “The thing is, you never said you loved me. I didn’t know if a man would speak of such a thing, and I was afraid I’d never hear those words from you.”
“You like me saying it?”
“I like it very much. My father never spoke kind words to my mother or to Gwen and me. The words are so nice to hear. I wish you’d just say it about every night at bedtime. It gives me a warm and happy feeling to hear it. And it makes it easy for me to say it back. I love you, Trace. With all my heart.” She snuggled closer. “I have a husband. Imagine that.”
“I don’t think we
