Winter Baby. Kathleen O'Brien

perfect time to be making a new start.

      She had landed at the Albany airport this morning with fairly high hopes, but now, after two hours of mountain driving, she was beginning to wonder whether she should have stayed in Florida. What exactly had she accomplished by running away? And why here, so far from home and everything she understood? What if her memories of Firefly Glen were romanticized by time and youth? What if it was just a grim, bleak, cold little hole in the mountains?

      All of a sudden, like a spectacular surprise designed by a movie director, her car finally broke through the gap, revealing the valley below.

      Sarah pulled onto the overlook, letting the car idle as she stared, utterly enchanted. Firefly Glen lay before her like a toy village arranged on a coffee table, too perfect to be true.

      It was a clear, crisp morning, the sun round and winter-white. The snow glistened like crushed diamonds on the branches of trees, the rooftops of houses and the steeples of the churches. That tall one, on the eastern edge of town—that was the Congregational Church, Sarah remembered suddenly. The golden bells in that steeple had rung out the hours here for more than two hundred years.

      The whole village was heavily wooded, as if it had nestled itself into these mountains back in the 1700s without disturbing a single leaf. On the western border of town, the Tallulah River winked in and out of white-frosted elms and hickory pines like a ribbon of silver sequins.

      The entire scene exuded beauty, permanence and peace. Sarah leaned her head against the car window, overcome by a strange sense of longing. It would be good to belong to a place like this.

      But she didn’t. She wasn’t sure she belonged anywhere anymore. Suddenly she felt intensely isolated here on this mountain, removed from the simple charm of Firefly Glen, exiled from those solid, cozy homes with soft gray plumes of smoke rising from their red-brick chimneys.

      Alone. She fought back stupid tears and uncomfortable nausea with equal determination.

      It’s hormones. Just hormones, she reminded herself bracingly. Everyone knew that pregnant women were irrationally emotional. She had to stop giving in to it, stop this maudlin self-pity. She was alone on the mountaintop only because she had stopped to appreciate the view.

      But the nausea…

      That was very real.

      She stumbled out of the car and lurched over toward the trees, her boots crunching on snow. In spite of the freezing air, sweat beaded on her forehead and upper lip. She leaned against the smooth white bark of a birch, closed her eyes and concentrated on taking deep breaths.

      To her dismay, she heard another car approaching. She held her breath, hoping it would go on by, but it didn’t. It paused, slowed, and then, tires rolling over the snow, eased onto the overlook.

      It was a rather large black SUV that dwarfed her small rental car. Firefly Glen Sheriff’s Department, the gold lettering across the side panel announced. Two people were in it, a male driver, and a female passenger next to him.

      The driver had rolled down his window and leaned his head out.

      “Everything okay here?”

      “Yes, I’m fine,” Sarah called, glad to discover that it was almost true. The wave of nausea was passing. It would return, she knew, but for now the relief was blissful. She smiled at the man, noticing the gleaming gold star on his black leather jacket.

      The sheriff himself. She tried to remember any stories her uncle might have told about this man, but came up blank. She moved closer to the Jeep, to demonstrate that she was safe and unharmed…and harmless. “I’m really fine. I was just enjoying the view.”

      He smiled back. Even from this distance, she could tell it was a dynamite smile, white and wide and charmingly cocked toward one side. For just a flash of an instant, she forgot she was a recently ditched, slightly desperate, pregnant schoolteacher. For one lovely second her stomach did a very different, very pleasant little flip, the kind it used to do when she was a teenager.

      “It’s nice, isn’t it?” He glanced toward the Glen below them, then returned his smile to her. “We look even better up close,” he said, apparently completely unaware of any double entendre. “So. Are you headed our way?”

      She nodded, knowing that underneath the friendliness he was appraising her, as any good sheriff would, deciding whether she was a problem that needed controlling. “In a few minutes.”

      “If you’d like, we can follow you.” He waved a hand toward the winding mountain road. “Make sure you’re okay.”

      But she didn’t want to do that. Her stomach was settled for now, but what if it started acting up again once she was back in motion? She couldn’t imagine herself screeching to a halt, tumbling out of her car and getting sick on the snowbanked side of the road—all right in front of the horrified eyes of this man.

      It had nothing to do with how good-looking he was, she assured herself. In her condition, she was hardly in the market for any man. It was just—well, it just wasn’t the first impression she wanted to make on the residents of this town.

      “I’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Really. I don’t want to hold you up.”

      “I’d hate for you to get lost,” he began, but suddenly the woman next to him broke in.

      “For heaven’s sake, Parker, maybe she doesn’t want a sheriff’s escort. It’s one road, less than a mile. A straight shot. No forks, no detours, no nothing. Even a woman can handle that.”

      Sarah looked curiously toward the female who was speaking, but the shadows in the SUV were too dark to make out much. One of his deputies? She wasn’t taking a very subservient tone for a subordinate.

      The sheriff shook his head and tugged at his ear in frustration. He looked a little embarrassed. But he was still smiling. “It has nothing to do with whether she’s a man or a woman, Emma.”

      “Oh, really?” The female voice was equal parts amusement and sarcasm. “Is that so?”

      With a sigh, the sheriff turned back to Sarah. “I’m sorry. I certainly didn’t mean to…to be patronizing…I mean, to imply…” He gave up, chuckling helplessly. “Well, anyway, welcome to Firefly Glen.”

      Then, with a smile, he shifted his Jeep into reverse and prepared to exit the overlook.

      He paused in a shaft of sunlight that spotlighted the most amazingly gorgeous man Sarah had ever seen. Black hair, blue eyes…and that smile so sexy it had the power to transform a beleaguered woman into a giddy teenager. But, she saw now, it also had warmth. Warmth enough to make a total stranger feel suddenly befriended.

      “I’m Sheriff Parker Tremaine,” he said. “And if you need anything at all while you’re visiting our town—”

      The woman, a pretty twenty-something with hair as dark as the sheriff’s, leaned back, letting out a laughing groan. “Oh, brother. Dudley Do-Right.”

      The sheriff shook his head. “Sorry. This is my sister. She’s a little crazy. Recently escaped. I’m taking her in.” He lifted his right elbow to fend off a friendly blow from the woman. “But don’t let her scare you away. Most of us down there in the Glen are perfectly sane.”

      EMMA HAD ATTRACTED quite a crowd with her story, and Parker thought if she didn’t shut up pretty soon he really was going to toss her in jail.

      Not that they had any room in the jail. Suzie, his part-time clerk, had turned the one holding cell into a replica of the Bethlehem manger, complete with papier-mâché cows and a baby-doll Jesus that, if anyone touched him the wrong way, said in a rather disturbing, machinelike voice, “Betsy needs a new diaper.”

      He had hoped that Suzie would take it down now that the new year was here, but she had bristled at the suggestion. Suzie, a seventeen-year-old high school junior, was gunning for an interior design scholarship to NYU, and she expected her manger to clinch the deal. She wasn’t letting anyone