Awol Bride. Victoria Pade

was almost there before I got cell reception, figured I might as well go the rest of the way to get your stuff.” He set everything down, took off his gloves and coat and opened the front door again to shake the snow from them before laying them near the fire to dry.

      “You kept the fire going—that’s good. I didn’t think I’d be out this long. And what are you doing over there? You’re supposed to be resting,” he said, surveying things.

      “I’m fine,” she insisted. “I’m cooking. And you brought dessert.”

      “I did?”

      “That pink box. It’s the top tier to the wedding cake. My friend Rachel Walsh made it. We met in college.”

      “I wondered what that was. I just figured I’d bring everything I found. I have to make a confession and ask a favor, though,” he added.

      “What?”

      “I, uh... I got into your purse to find your cell phone.”

      Maicy did not like the idea that he’d gone through her purse. But there was something grim in his attitude as he removed his boots and put those by the fire, too, so she curbed her own reaction to that and gave him an excuse. “Were you thinking that mine might work better up here than yours?”

      “I already tried that on the way back. It doesn’t. But the favor I need is for your phone to be a backup so when my battery is drained, I can use yours while I recharge in the car—which we shouldn’t do often because we don’t want the car battery and the gas depleted, either.”

      “Bottom line,” Maicy said, “is that even if I can get service on mine at some point, you don’t want me to use it.”

      He bent over so his head was toward the fire and ran his hands through his hair to rub the water out of it with a punishing force.

      Maicy couldn’t help the glance at his rear end—until she realized that was what she was doing. Then she put a stop to it by putting the cornbread in the oven.

      When she turned back to the utility table Conor was standing with his back to the fire, apparently to get warm.

      “I’m sort of sitting on a powder keg,” he told her. “And the phones—for what little good they’re doing—are my only hope.”

      A single explanation occurred to Maicy and it hit her hard enough to make her blurt out, “You have a pregnant wife somewhere who could deliver any minute.”

      And why had there been a note of horror in her voice?

      Or, for that matter, horror at the thought. She’d been about to get married. She would be married right now had things gone differently. Why was it unthinkable that he might be?

      But it didn’t matter. She still hated the idea.

      “No. I’m not married and nobody is pregnant,” he said as if he didn’t know why she would even suggest such a thing.

      “Do you have kids?” Another burst she couldn’t stop.

      “No,” he repeated, adding a challenging, “Do you?”

      “No.”

      “This is about Declan,” he said then, getting back to the issue.

      “Your brother,” Maicy said, trying to follow what he was saying while gathering her scattered thoughts.

      “Declan was hurt in Afghanistan a few months back. In an IED explosion,” Conor explained.

      “That’s a bomb, right? An IED?”

      “Right. It stands for improvised explosive device.”

      “And he lived?”

      “He did, thank God. But he’s been critical for a long time—”

      “I’m so sorry. Is he going to be all right?”

      “I thought so. I took leave time to follow him from hospital to hospital to make sure everything was done right—he was so messed up that I worried something minor might be overlooked while his major injuries were being dealt with.”

      Some things about Conor clearly hadn’t changed—like his need to control any potential problems.

      “I wasn’t going to let that happen,” he added.

      She’d heard that from him before.

      “I can’t treat family,” he was saying, “but I could damn sure be with him through it all and get everything that needed to be done, done.”

      The right way—it wasn’t what he said but for Maicy it was an echo from the past.

      The right way according to Conor.

      He definitely hadn’t changed, which left Maicy with no doubt that he’d been vigilant on his brother’s behalf.

      “We’ve been stateside for two weeks and he was doing well enough that he wanted me to make this trip to meet Kinsey in Northbridge. Yesterday I checked with him the minute the plane landed. He sounded a little off to me, but he said he was okay. On the way up here—before I lost service—I called again and discovered that he’d developed a fever.”

      “Not good,” Maicy said, interpreting his dire tone.

      “Really not good,” he confirmed. “A fever that comes on that fast is a red flag on its own. But then I couldn’t get through again until today and when I did, the news was what I was afraid of—he has sepsis.”

      “I don’t know what that is.”

      “You’ve heard of blood poisoning?”

      “Sure.”

      “Well, that’s sepsis. An infection has gotten into his blood stream, and depending on how his body fights it and how it’s treated, it could kill him. He hasn’t gone into septic shock but he’s back in intensive care, and he could go into shock in the blink of an eye and—”

      “You’re trying to keep tabs on what’s going on with him.”

      He nodded. “I have to stay on top of it. VA hospitals here are overcrowded—the staff doesn’t have enough time for sufficient individual care. I can’t let Declan go down because something gets missed or mishandled. Plus he’s allergic to a lot of the antibiotics it would be best to use and I need to make sure he gets the combination he can tolerate that’s still strong enough to give him a chance.”

      “I’m so sorry,” Maicy repeated because she didn’t know what else to say.

      “I should have gone with my gut and stayed with him,” Conor said, more to himself than to her. “But there’s been stuff with Kinsey and...” He sighed disgustedly. “And then I was up here, stuck in this damn storm.”

      Ooo. Maicy had never heard him curse the way he did following that statement. He was really upset.

      Collecting himself, he shook his head, drawing back those broad shoulders and stiffening up as if it helped contain some of his stress. “I also got through to Rickie while I had service to see if he could get up here, if he could get me to somewhere I could fly out of.”

      “Could he?” Maicy asked hopefully.

      “Not any chance in hell,” he said with disgust. “The Billings airport is still closed—along with most of Billings—and now so is the highway between here and there. And there’s been an avalanche and rockslide just outside of Northbridge, on the only road in or out. That’ll keep everybody stuck there until the storm passes. Then they’ll have to bulldoze through the slide before anybody will be able to get to us from that direction. That’s why I went the rest of the way for your things—we’re looking at being here longer than I thought.”

      And he was irritated and more shaken up than she’d ever seen him. More like she’d been yesterday when she’d realized what was going on and