Stand-In Mum. Marie Ferrarella

prayed that it was.

      “No offense, Sydney, but are you sure that this thing is going to be able to hold together long enough to get us back to your place?”

      She’d been horrified when she first saw the plane and was reminded that there was no other way to reach Hades this time of year. But she had tried her best to appear unfazed by the ordeal she faced.

      Being engulfed by the ordeal was another matter.

      Momentarily turning from the view of the perfect sky before her, Sydney flashed Marta an encouraging smile. Poor Marta. She could remember her own first reaction to Shayne’s plane. She’d been sure they were going to die before she ever got to Hades. But the plane, for all its unique noises, was as sound as the little foreign car Marta loved so well.

      Sounder, Sydney was willing to bet. Shayne had just gone over it with a fine-tooth comb last weekend in one of those rare islands of time that usually eluded them. He’d pronounced the craft safe enough for her to use.

      Which was good, because Sydney loved flying. To her it was like becoming one with the air—the closest thing to gliding through the clouds on her own power, unencumbered. It was a rather nice feeling these days, considering the weight she was carrying around when she walked.

      “Don’t let the noise fool you,” she told Marta gently. For emphasis, Sydney patted the dashboard. “This is a very sturdy plane.”

      “It sounds as if it’s about to rattle apart at any second.”

      “All small planes have their own melody.” Sydney shifted back around in her seat. “Distract her, Ike.”

      Now there was an instruction Ike would have loved to follow. But he seldom went where he wasn’t welcome, and Sydney’s friend did not look welcoming. Yet. “Much as I’d dearly love to comply, darlin’, I don’t think your friend wants to be distracted by me at the moment.”

      If it hadn’t been for Alex messing up Marta’s life so badly, Sydney thought, mentally calling down curses on the other man’s unworthy head, Marta would have been more than receptive to Ike and his easygoing charm. It would do Marta a world of good to be around someone like Ike. Whether by a word, a look or something far more intimate, Ike had the gift of making women of all ages feel special.

      But Alex Kelley had done a number on her friend, taking her heart and using it as a basketball to be played with anytime he was on home court. His faithfulness lasted as long as his attention span, which, as Sydney recalled, had never been very great. The breakup had happened shortly after she’d left Omaha. Sydney wished she could have been there for Marta. Despite everything, she knew how hard it must have been for her to end the two-year relationship, especially after investing so much of her heart in it.

      Because of him, Marta had sworn off any and all men, which was a crying shame. Marta had a huge heart and a great deal of love to give. To the right man.

      “Don’t worry about me, Sydney. I’m all right.”

      Marta would sound far more convincing if her voice wasn’t shaking, Sydney thought. “We’ll be there before you know it,” she promised.

      Too late for that, Marta thought nervously. She was trying very hard not to look down, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. The snow looked so soft, but it wouldn’t be if they fell out of the sky.

      With the window on one side and Ike on the other, there was nowhere for her to look but straight ahead. At oblivion. That didn’t help, either.

      Marta moistened her lips with the last bit of saliva she had. Her throat felt as if it were closing up. “Are you positive there isn’t any other way to get to Hades?”

      “Positive.” It was Ike, the native, not Sydney, who answered. “At least, not in the winter.” It was one of the things that had driven so many people, including his own sister, Juneau, out of Hades. The isolation. “The snow blocks the roads for weeks at a time. We become our own little world out here.”

      Marta shivered and looked at Sydney. “That kind of makes Shayne and you like Tarzan and Jane, except with snow.” Her cosmopolitan heart would get cabin fever within a week. “How can you stand that?”

      Again it was Ike who answered her. “Oh, it has its advantages.” For instance, he knew he surely wouldn’t have minded being snowed in somewhere with the petite woman sharing the back seat with him.

      What did it take to melt her down? he wondered. To turn that iciness she was displaying toward him into fire? If he knew his women—and he liked to think without any undue vanity that he did—there was a warm, quite possibly even passionate, woman somewhere beneath that No Trespassing sign she wore so boldly.

      It was, he mused, definitely a challenge. One he wouldn’t mind taking on.

      Ever since he could remember, Ike had always loved women. All women. In his opinion there was something of beauty to be found within every woman, no matter who. It just took the right man to find a way to bring that beauty out. He had no idea why he’d been blessed the way he had, but he found himself endowed with that ability—to make the most somber of women smile, to find their charms, hidden or otherwise, and make them aware of it. Grateful for it. Women always seemed to bloom around him, and he never bothered denying that he had a grand weakness for flowers.

      But this flower was going to need a little cultivating, he thought as he silently studied her. She was going to require a little careful feeding to make her open up. She made him think of a blossom that had not been properly nurtured. Certainly not properly appreciated.

      Ike made a mental note to ask Sydney a few pertinent questions about her friend at the first opportunity.

      “Advantages?” Marta echoed in disbelief. What kind of advantages could there possibly be to being snowed in and cut off from everything? She ran her hands up along her arms, as if that would ward off the chill that went far deeper than any outside cold could create. “I don’t see how.” Knowing it had to sound critical, she still couldn’t help the question that rose to her lips. “How do you keep from going stir-crazy?”

      Ike smiled broadly. His eyes took slow, languid measure of her, moving down her body like a warm breath. “Oh, there are ways to occupy yourself in Hades.”

      It seemed impossible, given the temperature, but she felt herself growing warm. It was almost as if he were looking right through her heavy parka and the bulky sweater and jeans she wore beneath. Looking right at the red silk undergarments she had on.

      “Yeah, I’ll bet.” Trying her best to shut this man and his X-ray eyes out, Marta leaned forward in her seat again. “Are you sure you should be flying in your condition, Sydney?”

      The question made Sydney smile broadly. Those had been Shayne’s exact words to her this morning. It had been the husband, not the doctor, who had asked them. She was right at the cut-off point, even though she’d declared that she was more than capable of making the run. Though she was accustomed to being independent, the concern that motivated Shayne had warmed her, reminding her just how much she loved the man fate had thrown into her life.

      She glanced down at the steering wheel that was all but resting on her protruding belly.

      “Right now, I’d say I can fly a lot better than I can walk,” Sydney said, sighing. “No one told me how badly I’d be listing when I reached my last couple of months.”

      “You don’t list, darlin’, you just glide a little less swiftly, that’s all,” Ike assured Sydney with a soft laugh that seemed, at least to Marta, to seductively fill the small cabin. “But a hundred babies wouldn’t rob you of your grace, and you know it.”

      Though she was trying vainly to ignore him, Marta couldn’t help looking at Ike, a bemused expression on her face. Her eyes shifted toward the back of Sydney’s head. “Does he talk like this all the time?”

      “Most of it.” Sydney laughed. The man had a very special place in her heart. He had been the one not only to encourage her to stay, but to point