Son of a Gun. Joanna Wayne

Belle’s bottles of formula behind.”

       Durk’s eyebrows arched. “I thought you said you were driving a car.”

       “It’s an SUV,” she said, as if that explained it. “Anyway, it’s imperative that I go into town and get bottles and formula for her.”

       “No use to go into town for that,” Carolina said. “My neighbor Karen has a son about the same size as your Belle. She’s over frequently since we’re both on the library committee and planning a new extension. I keep bottles and formula here for her. Disposable diapers, as well.”

       “She uses Similac,” Sybil said. “What kind of formula do you use with Belle?”

       “Similac.”

       “Now, that’s luck,” Sybil said.

       Grandma Pearl clicked her tongue against her false teeth. “Luck has nothing to do with it. The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

       “Indeed he does,” Carolina agreed.

       “I’ll go stoke the fire,” Tague said.

       Carolina walked over to the counter. “I’ll get a bottle ready.”

       “I don’t want to interrupt your dinner,” Emma said. “Just point me to the formula and I’ll take care of feeding Belle.”

       “Nonsense,” Carolina said. “I’ve finished my soup. And dessert and coffee can wait until you’re ready to join us. I’ll get the bottle. You just take Belle to the fire so the both of you can get warm.”

       “Thanks so much,” Emma said. “And thankfully we’re warmer already. My teeth have totally stopped chattering.”

       “Did you say you have false teeth?” Pearl asked.

       “No,” Emma said. “My real ones were chattering from the cold.”

       “Mother, are you wearing your hearing aids?” Sybil asked.

       Pearl smiled. “I might have left them on my dressing table.”

       “Do I just follow the directions on the can of formula?” Carolina asked.

       “Yes. And you can’t imagine how I appreciate this.”

       Unexpected tears began to well at the back of her eyes. Simple acts of kindness and words of faith had become foreign to her. Now they were warming her heart and making her feel guilty at the same time.

       Grandma Pearl left the table and joined them at the counter. “Don’t you think you should call your aunt?”

       “I will once I’ve fed Belle. She’s not actually expecting me until tomorrow, but when the weather forecast said snow in Dallas tonight, I decided to come up a day early. I’d planned to make it before dark, but the Friday afternoon traffic was much worse than I’d expected.”

       “Is that blood on your arm?” Sybil asked.

       Emma had tried to position the rebozo so that no one would notice the blood, but there was no hiding the fact now.

       “I scratched my arm while climbing through the fence,” she said. “I’m sure it’s nothing to be concerned about.”

       “It looks like you lost a lot of blood to me,” Sybil said. “You better let someone take a look at it.”

       “It’s okay, really.”

       “It needs to be checked,” Damien said, the authority in his voice leaving little room for argument.

       “Okay,” she agreed. “As soon as I finish feeding Belle.”

       “Perhaps you shouldn’t wait that long,” Carolina said. “You may still be losing blood. Sybil and I can handle feeding Belle or at least get started at it while Damien checks your injury. There’s a fully stocked first-aid kit in the hall bathroom.”

       “Tague, how about taking care of King for me?” Damien asked. “I left her just outside the back door.”

       “No problem. I’ll tuck her in for the night.”

       Reluctantly, Emma unwound Belle from the folds of cloth so that she could hand the baby to Carolina. Placing Belle in Carolina’s hands made her uneasy, though Carolina surely knew more about tending to a baby’s needs than Emma did.

       What she knew about babies could be composed in a tweet.

       A tweet. It had been months since she’d even thought about that social form of communication. Caudillo had made sure she hadn’t had access to the internet, a phone or anything else that could have connected her to the outside world.

       He, on the other hand, came and went freely on his yacht and small plane as if he were your ordinary multibillionaire CEO.

       When Emma looked up, her nerves tightened to coiled steel. The look in Damien’s eyes said he had more on his mind than first aid.

       He hadn’t given her away, but he was not fooled by her performance. She’d be lucky if he didn’t call the sheriff and have her picked up before he bandaged her arm.

      Chapter Three

      Emma followed Damien down the hallway to the sounds of Carolina crooning to Belle behind them.

       She glanced around the room. Heavy wooden bookshelves lined two walls, and bulbs of blooming paper-white narcissus rested on a wide window ledge. The drapes were open, revealing a glimpse of falling snow.

       Emma suspected it was Carolina’s taste that spilled so gracefully over the decor—soft, earthy colors, intricate moldings, paintings of hunting dogs on the walls. Silver-framed family pictures were scattered like valuable trinkets among the books.

       Damien motioned her to an overstuffed armchair in a muted plaid that sat near the window next to a beautifully crafted antique end table. She rearranged the throw pillows and settled into the chair, certain her web of lies was going to spin out of control at any minute.

       “There’s no use for you to bother with this,” she said. “If you’ll point me to the bathroom and give me a Band-Aid and a tube of antiseptic, I can take care of it myself.”

       “Remove the shawl.”

       Damien’s tone suggested he was used to being in control, or perhaps he was just tired of playing rescuer. She yanked impatiently at the wrap, tightening instead of loosening the knot that had secured Belle.

       “Let me help you with that,” Damien said, his tone not quite as brusque as before. Before she could protest, he leaned in close and his hands brushed hers as he took hold of the looped fabric.

       His touch ripped along her nerves, partly the automatic cringe she’d developed to the nearness of Caudillo. But there was also a heady factor involved that she couldn’t explain, perhaps an instinctive reaction of a desperate woman to her rescuer.

       “You’re as tangled as a calf in a downed mesquite tree,” Damien quipped.

       “I’m sorry. Just cut it. It’s going straight to the trash anyway.”

       “Good idea.” He walked to a mahogany desk on the other side of the room and took a pair of scissors from the top drawer. “You might have bled a lot more if you hadn’t had the shawl putting pressure against the cut.”

       “I’m surprised it bled as much as it did,” she said. “I’m sure the cut isn’t bad or I’d be in a lot more pain.”

       “If that’s the case, I’ll just clean the injury, apply some antiseptic, bandage the tear and you’ll be back in business. But I’m guessing it’s going to need stitches.”

       Stitches were not an option. She couldn’t deal with all the questions the E.R. personnel would ask. Besides, she no longer had health insurance, and even if she had, she couldn’t give them her real name.