Santa's Seven-Day Baby Tutorial. Meg Maxwell

those thugs off the street and behind bars—that’ll take everything I’ve got. If I had a wife or children, my attention would be split.”

      She gaped at him. “Split? But your heart would belong to your family completely.” Wouldn’t it? Jobs were important, of course. Money was necessary to live. But family was the most important thing in this life. Family came first.

      The silver elevator doors opened and Colt pushed the stroller inside. Anna stepped next to him, Noah playing with the string of her bonnet.

      “I would hope so,” he said, running a finger across Noah’s big cheek. “But since my heart belongs to my job, I’m sticking with that.”

      Unsettled, Anna shifted Noah in her arms and pressed her own cheek to his head. She wanted her own family so badly. “Not badly enough that you’ll say yes to a gut man who loves you,” her aenti Kate had said more than once. “Not badly enough that you’ll commit to being Amish and spending your life as a wife and mother in our village.”

      She’d even said no to her best friend, Caleb. Handsome. Kind. Loyal. They’d grown up together, but even when she was a girl she didn’t dream of marrying Caleb Yoder. She dreamed of what was up the road beyond her sights. She dreamed of hiding in Grass Creek so that the buggies would leave without her. And last year, when Caleb had said he’d waited long enough and had given her an ultimatum, agree to be his wife or he would ask someone else, Anna’s heart had broken in two as she’d sobbed that she was sorry but she couldn’t marry him.

      “If you can’t marry Caleb, your best friend, who can you marry?” her onkel Eli had asked as he’d dropped off a crib for her to paint. “Who will ever be the right man if not him?”

      Those words had gotten inside her and scared her like nothing had. She couldn’t say yes to anyone until she knew what life was like outside their village. If she was meant to be Amish. If she was meant to be English. If she was meant to be an Englisher’s wife, as she believed deep in her heart.

      Maybe not this dashing, 007-type Englisher, who hunted mobsters and vacationed in Macchu Pichu.

      Definitely not this Englisher. Who wasn’t looking for a wife anyway.

      Maybe she would meet her soul mate while in Blue Gulch, and she would know, instantly, that he was the one, that she was meant to be in the English world.

      But how could she feel more attraction for any man than she felt for Colt Asher without spontaneously combusting? When she looked at Colt, she felt what she never had when she’d looked at Caleb, who was very good-looking. Who’d sat with her to look up at the stars. Who’d brought her wildflowers. But who didn’t really wonder what was beyond their village. He was an Amish man with a wonderful sense of humor and a sparkle in his dark eyes, but he was content. Anna had never been. For the past year, when she ran into Caleb, he would be polite, but unusually reserved, and make an excuse to walk the other way. He was seriously dating someone now, but still hadn’t proposed to her, a fact that made her feel guilty. She wouldn’t flatter herself to think he was waiting for her. But part of her did wonder if he was waiting to see what happened, if she would leave and return disappointed, the way her mother had when she’d taken her own rumspringa at age sixteen.

      Would Anna want to go home at the end of her time away? She really had no idea. How many times had her aenti and onkel told her she was romanticizing the English world and that a week out there would show her how wonderful and simple life was at home?

      You’ll know soon enough, she told herself as the elevator doors opened. But so far, every moment of this rumspringa felt like Christmas morning.

      And in moments she would be inside Colt Asher’s home. A whole new world.