A Bride Before Dawn

Reminding herself that this arrangement wasn’t permanent, and that she would return for her baby the moment she was able to, she crept out from beneath the weeping-willow tree near the road and started back toward the car parked behind a stand of pine trees half a mile away.

She’d only taken a few steps when Joey’s high-pitched wails carried through the early-evening air. She paused, for she recognized that cry. It had been three hours since his last bottle. She’d tried to feed him an hour ago, but he’d been too sleepy to eat. Evidently, he was ready now. Surely it wouldn’t take his father long to find his bottles and formula and feed him.

Rather than cause her to run to the house and snatch him back into her arms, Joey’s cries filled her with conviction. He had a mind of his own and would put his father through the wringer tonight, but Joey would be all right. He was a survivor, her precious son.

And so was she.

In five minutes’ time, life as Noah, Reed and Marsh Sullivan knew it went from orderly to pandemonium. Joey—the note said his name was Joey—was crying again. Noah and Marsh were trying to figure out how to get him out of the contraption he was buckled into. Reed, who was normally cool, calm and collected, pawed through the contents of the bags until he found feeding supplies.

When the baby was finally freed from the carrier, Noah picked him up—he couldn’t believe how small he was, and hurriedly followed the others to the kitchen where Reed was already scanning the directions on a cardboard canister of powdered formula he’d found in one of the bags. Marsh unscrewed the top of a clear plastic baby bottle and turned on the faucet.

“It says to use warm water.” Reed had to yell in order to be heard over the crying.

Marsh switched the faucet to hot and Reed pried the lid off the canister. “Make sure it’s not too hot,” Reed called when he saw steam rising from the faucet.

Marsh swore.

Noah seconded the sentiment.

The baby wasn’t happy about the situation, either. He continued to wail pathetically, banging his little red face against Noah’s chest.

Marsh adjusted the temperature of the water again. The instant it was warm but not hot, he filled the bottle halfway. Using the small plastic scoop that came with the canister, Reed added the powdered formula. When the top was on, Noah grabbed the bottle and stuck the nipple in Joey’s mouth. The kid didn’t seem to care that Noah didn’t know what he was doing. He clamped on and sucked as if he hadn’t eaten all day.

Ah. Blessed silence.

They moved en masse back to the living room. Lowering himself awkwardly to the couch, Noah held the baby stiffly in one arm. All three men stared at Joey, who was making sucking sounds on the bottle. Slowly, they looked at each other, shell-shocked.

Last year had been a stellar season for the orchard. Sales had been good and the profit margin high enough to make up for the apple blight that had swept through their orchards the year before. Their sister had survived the tragic death of her childhood sweetheart and was now happily married to a man who would do anything to make her happy. The newlyweds were expecting their first child and were settling into their home near Traverse City. Noah had the money in his pocket to pay off his loan. Somewhere along the way he’d finally made peace with his anger over losing his parents when he was fifteen. All three of the Sullivan men were free for the first time in their adult lives.

Or so they’d thought.

“It says,” Reed said, his laptop open on the coffee table, “that you’re supposed to burp him after an ounce or two.”

Burp him? Noah thought. What did that mean?

“Try sitting him up,” Reed said.

Noah took the nipple out of the baby’s mouth and awkwardly did as Reed suggested. A huge burp erupted. All three brothers grinned. After all, they were men and some things were just plain funny. Their good humor didn’t last long, though. Dismay, disbelief and the sneaking suspicion that there was a hell of a lot more trouble ahead immediately returned.

Looking around for the baby’s missing sock, Noah laid him back down in the crook of his arm and offered him more formula. As he started to drink again, Joey stared up at him as if to say, “Who in the world are you?”

Noah looked back at him the same way.

Could he really be a Sullivan? His eyes were blue-gray, like Reed’s, but his hair was dark like Marsh’s and Noah’s.

“How old do you think he is?” Noah asked.

Reed made a few clicks on his computer. Eying the baby again, he said, “I would estimate him to be right around three months.”

Although none of them were in a relationship at the present time, they did some mental math, and all three of their throats convulsed on a swallow. If Joey was indeed a Sullivan, he could conceivably have been any one of theirs.

The baby fell asleep before the bottle was empty. Too agitated to sit still, Noah handed him to Marsh, who was sitting the closest to him. When the child stirred, they all held their breath until his little eyelashes fluttered down again.

“I don’t see how I could be his father,” Marsh said so quietly he might have been thinking out loud. “I always take precautions.”

“Me, too,” Noah said, almost as quietly.

“Same here.”

The baby hummed in his sleep. His very presence made the case of the reliability of protection a moot point.

“We’re going to need a DNA test,” Reed declared.

“I have a better idea,” Noah said, already moving across the room toward the kitchen and escape.

“Not so fast!” Reed admonished, stopping Noah before he’d reached the arched doorway.

It rankled, but Noah figured he had it coming for all the times he’d hightailed it out of Orchard Hill in the past. “Can you guys handle the baby on your own for a little while?” he asked.

Two grown, capable, decent men cringed. It was Marsh who finally said, “We can if we have to. Where are you going?”

Noah looked Marsh in the eye first, and then Reed. “I heard Lacey’s in town.”

“Do you think she left Joey here?” Marsh asked.

Noah couldn’t imagine it, but he’d never imagined that he and his brothers would find themselves in a situation like this, either. “I saw somebody on the front lawn when I buzzed the orchard earlier,” he said. “It was a woman with bags slung over her shoulders. She was hunched over, so I couldn’t see her well, but now I think she was hiding Joey under an oversize sweatshirt or poncho.”

Reed got to his feet. “Was it Lacey?” he asked.

“I don’t know. She was wearing a scarf or a hood or something. I couldn’t even tell what color her hair was.”

“Why would Lacey leave her baby that way?”

“Why would anybody?” Noah said. “I guess we’ll know soon enough if it was her. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

He strode through the house, where the television was still muted and where diapers and bottles and other baby items lay heaped on the table and countertops. Pointing his old pickup truck toward town seconds later, his mind was blank but for one thought.

If Joey was his, Lacey had some explaining to do.

Just once, Lacey Bell wanted to be on the receiving end of good luck, not bad. Was that too much to ask? Truly?

Looking around her at the clutter she was painstakingly sifting through and boxing up, she sighed. She was searching for a hidden treasure she wasn’t sure existed. Her father had spoken of it on his deathbed, but he’d been delirious and, knowing her dad, he could have been referring to a fine bottle of scotch. She so wanted to believe he’d left her something of value. Once a dreamer, always a dreamer, she supposed.

She’d emptied the closet and was filling boxes from her father’s dresser when the pounding outside began. She wasn’t concerned. She’d spent her formative years in this apartment and had stopped being afraid of loud noises, shattering beer bottles and things that went bump in the night a long time ago. It had been the first in a long line of conscious decisions.

Ignoring the racket, she swiped her hands across her wet cheeks and went back to work. After he’d died a year ago, she’d given her father the nicest funeral she could afford. She’d paid the property taxes with what little money was left, but she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of going through all his things, knowing he would never be back. A year later, it was no easier.

He’d lived hard, her dad, but he’d been a good father in his own way. She wished she could ask him what she should do.