“It’s not funny. I’m apologizing here.”

“Ah, lass. I’m not really laughing at you,” he said with a lingering chuckle. “Well, I am, but mostly I’m laughing at myself. I stopped because I was done, Mercedes.”

“Done what?”

Well, hell. He could see that he was going to have to be blunt. “I was done making love to you. The shout you said I made was really a sound of pleasure and fulfillment, when I poured my seed deep inside you.”

“You poured your… ” She suddenly snapped her mouth shut. Her eyes crossed, and her face sort of turned green—just before it went completely white.

“You… you didn’t use any protection, did you?” she asked in a whispered squeak.

“No.”

Her face turned green again. Morgan leaned back when he saw her hand go to her belly, afraid she was about to be sick.

“I could be pregnant.” She looked at him, her glare angry enough to make him lean back even farther. “Dammit to hell. I will not get pregnant.”

She jumped off his lap, making him grunt in surprise and cup himself protectively. She whirled and pointed her finger at him.

“I will not make my mother’s mistakes!” she all but shouted, her anger flushing her face back to a flaming red. “And I’m sure as hell not making my baby sister an aunt before she’s even three months old.”

She stomped off after that outburst, in the direction of the river. Morgan leaned back and scrubbed both his hands over his face, attempting to wash away the still lingering echoes of their anything but successful truce. But then her last words finally caught his attention. What baby sister? He counted nine months forward on his fingers, then subtracted three.

And finally it dawned on him what her words meant.

Well, hell. Charlotte Quill was pregnant.

Chapter Fourteen

Charlotte Quill paced the length of Sadie’scabin porch, the concern obvious in every taut line on her face. Callum stood in the door of the ransacked cabin, watching his woman work herself into a fine state of worry.

She stopped in front of him. “Who would do such a thing?” she asked with motherly outrage. “And where’s my daughter? Callum, there was blood on the floor,” she whispered, digging her nails into his arm.

Callum reached out and pulled her into a mighty embrace. “It’s old blood, Charlotte,”

he assured her. “And Sadie is fine, I promise you,” he added. He pulled back and leaned down to look her in the eye. “I know for a fact that Morgan was coming out to see her. And this was the act of only one man, so you’ve nothing to worry about.”

Charlotte pulled free, took a step back, and stared at him. “How do you know that?”

“The muddy footprints he left. This happened this morning, after the storm.”

She resumed pacing, rubbing her hands up and down her arms, but stopped again and whirled to face him. “I’m going to find my daughter,” she suddenly announced. “I won’t have any peace until I see for myself that Sadie’s okay.”

Her tone was that of a woman expecting resistance, and Callum kept his smile to himself. Charlotte was almost as predictable as the sunrise. In fact, he’d already been mentally planning their camping trip into the valley since the moment he’d seen the destruction to Sadie’s cabin.

The first sign of trouble had been the door torn from its hinges. The second thing had been the odor of freshly opened food emanating through the gaping hole. The family of raccoons, whiskers caked with crumbs, had come running out of the cabin the moment Callum’s boots had hit the steps.

Charlotte, ignoring his command to go back to the truck, had silently followed him inside and silently looked around at the destruction. Furniture was overturned, a window was smashed, the bed slashed by a knife. But it wasn’t until Charlotte had seen the model of the valley that she had helped Sadie build that she had finally found her voice. She’d become a mother on a mission then, to avenge the violation of her daughter’

s home. She was mad, worried, and just daring him to contradict her plan.

Callum reached out and pulled Charlotte back into his arms. “I’ll drop you off at home so you can pack your gear,” he told her, freeing his smile when she gasped in surprise.

“I’ll get my own things together and then pick you up again.” He pulled back and looked at her. “Any idea where Sadie might be headed?”

Still looking shocked that he was being cooperative, Charlotte could only shake her head.

“Doesn’t she carry a cell phone?” he asked.

Charlotte nodded but scowled. “She does. But I haven’t been able to reach her on it once in these last ten weeks. She’s either misplacing it, breaking it, or letting the batteries run down.”

She pulled away from him, her motherly outrage returning threefold. “I swear that girl has the sense of a pine cone sometimes. She spends her time walking around with her mind in either the past or the future but never in the present. If she’s not wallowing in guilt, she’s planning absolution for her imagined sin.” She angrily waved at the woods surrounding the cabin. “Like this stupid park she’s trying to build. It’s not a work of joy for her but an obsession to obtain her father’s forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness for what?” Callum asked, trying to follow the woman’s logic.

“For killing Frank and Caroline.”

Callum was stunned. “Sadie didn’t kill her da,” he said. “Or Caroline. I thought it was a house fire.”

“That she started. Sadie went to bed and left a candle burning in the study.”

“But Frank died only three years ago.”

“From a weak heart,” Charlotte explained, worry and lingering grief etched into the lines of her face. “The fire damaged his lungs, and he never fully recovered.”

Standing stone-still and staring at his woman, Callum was appalled. “Do you blame your daughter, Charlotte?” he asked.

Outrage returned, and Callum watched as she balled her fists against her sides, as if restraining herself from striking him.

“Of course not,” she snapped. “I love my daughter.”

Charlotte’s anger suddenly deflated, and she threw herself into his arms, burying her face in his shirt with a loud wail of anguish. “Oh, Callum. I don’t know how to help her.

She’s lived so long with this guilt, and nothing I say or do will change her mind. And now this obsession has turned dangerous. Somebody ransacked her cabin,” she ended with another wail.

Callum clutched her to him and rocked her back and forth. “Ah, woman,” he soothed.

“There is nothing you can do. This is Sadie’s journey to take.” He pushed Charlotte back, wiped her hair from her face, and gave her a warm smile. “But she’s not traveling alone anymore, little one. Morgan is with her. He’ll keep her safe from whoever did this.”

He gave her a quick kiss on the forehead and then smiled at her again. “And if I know my cousin, he’ll have your daughter so distracted she won’t have time to dwell on either the past or the future. She’ll be too busy trying to cope with the present, and with his undivided attention.”

She looked as if she wanted to believe him, as if she wanted to put her faith in Morgan MacKeage. Callum kissed her again, this time on the lips, this time much more passionately.

Aye, but he loved this woman who’d come storming into his life just six short months ago when she’d accidentally dumped an entire bowl of baked beans in his lap at the grange supper.

He hadn’t been looking for love at the time. Hell, he hadn’t even thought it possible.

Since the storm had brought them all here six years ago, Callum had tried to keep himself detached from this strange new world, to stay strong in the face of fear and uncertainty and the loneliness that came with both.

Charlotte Quill had scattered every one of his vows to the wind when her dinner had landed in his lap. Charlotte had thrown a fit of worry. She had been like the blow of a mace to his chest that night. Which was why Callum had taken Charlotte up on her offer and had taken his soiled clothes to her home the next day for her to clean.