“Oh, God! He’s dead!” she wailed, staring at the motionless lump in his jacket.

“He is not,” Grey snapped. He unzipped his jacket, and her lifeless nephew fell into his hands. “He’s just had the breath knocked out of him,” he assured her in a much calmer voice.

She watched as Grey lifted Baby up and covered his mouth with his own. He blew tiny, shallow breaths into the child, pulled back, then gently turned him from side to side. He repeated the breaths, set Baby on his lap, and began massaging his chest.

Grace could only watch in horror.

The infant suddenly began to gasp. His arms and legs started to windmill, and he let out a bellow that echoed throughout the forest.

Grace scooped him up and hugged him to her chest, tears streaming down both of her cheeks. She kissed every inch of his head and face, ignoring his outraged struggles as he threw up all over her. She laughed and cradled him closer, looking at Grey over his head.

“Thank you,” she said. “You saved his life. You saved mine. Thank you.”

Grey didn’t look at all pleased with himself. Actually, he looked downright livid. She watched him push against the side of the fuselage with amazing force, breaking it open and falling out onto the snow-covered forest floor.

He stood up and looked in the front of the plane where the pilot should have been. Grace watched as he slowly looked around the crash site, then suddenly started walking away.

She scrambled out the hole he had made in the plane, Baby in her arms, and immediately sat down. Her legs would not cooperate with her brain. She couldn’t stand up, so she sat in the snow, leaned against the plane, and pulled on the string attached to Baby’s shirt. His pacifier appeared at the end of it. She stuck it in his mouth, and he immediately stopped his wails, instead putting his energies into ferociously sucking.

Satisfied that he was truly okay, Grace pulled his cap out of her jacket pocket and slipped it on his head, being careful to tuck his ears back against his head. Then she took off her jacket and tented it over them both to shield herself and Baby from the freezing drizzle. She looked up to see Grey plodding through the deep snow in ever increasing circles around the plane.

“What are you looking for?” she asked, her voice carrying in echoes through the old-growth forest.

“The pilot,” he said, not looking at her. He stopped, scanned the area, then started off to his right. He rounded a large pine tree and stopped again, about twenty feet away.

“Here he is,” he said, just standing and staring down at something on the ground.

“Is he okay?” Grace asked.

“He’s dead,” Grey said, his voice cold. “Too bad. I wanted to kill him myself.”

“What?”

He didn’t look at her but continued to stare at the ground. “The bastard’s not quite so cocky now, is he?” he growled.

“The poor man is dead, and you’re cursing him?” she asked, not able to believe that anyone could be so insensitive.

Grey turned his glare on her. “He had no business taking off in this weather.”

“He was doing his job. No one tied you up and threw you into this plane. I distinctly remember you climbed in on your own two feet.”

He turned to face her, his hands on his hips. “Yeah, well, so did you.”

“So this is my fault?”

He stared at her for a silent minute, then blew out a harsh breath and rubbed his face with both hands.

“Dammit. As God is my witness, I am never getting into one of your confounded airplanes again. If man was supposed to fly, he’d be born with feathers.”

Her confounded planes? So he was blaming her. “Even birds have accidents,” she ventured lightly, attempting to diffuse his anger.

It didn’t work. His glare was back and meaner than ever. He looked down at the pilot again, kicked the ground at the base of the tree, then plodded back to her, stepping in his same foot tracks, avoiding several large branches that had crashed to the ground with the plane.

Grace forced herself not to flinch when he knelt down in front of her. She didn’t have much experience with angry men, especially angry strangers who admitted they wanted to kill people.

“Where are you hurt?” he asked, his tone warning her to answer truthfully.

“I’m not sure I am hurt,” she said honestly. “I think I’m just weak in the knees from the…ah…landing.”

She did flinch then, when he reached up and brushed the hair from her face. “You’re bleeding,” he told her, lightly rubbing a finger over her cheek. He held up his bloody hand for her to see.

“So are you,” she told him, nodding at his forehead.

As he gazed into her eyes, he reached up with the same finger that wore her blood and slowly rubbed his own wound. Then he held his hand up between them and rubbed his fingers together, mixing their blood.

And still he stared at her.

For the life of her, Grace could not look away. Nor could she breathe very well at the moment. He moved his finger back to her face and rubbed her cheek again, further combining their blood.

Something…a feeling she couldn’t name…like a surge of energy maybe, passed between them.

What was he doing? And why did she suddenly feel that her torn-up, grief-ridden, uncertain world had just tilted on its axis yet another ninety degrees?

“Grace,” he said, his hand now cupping her chin so that she couldn’t turn away even if she found the strength to. “I will never hurt you.”

“I…I know,” she said, wondering where she found the nerve to lie to him now.

“You’re afraid of me.”

“You were wanting to kill a man.”

“I wouldn’t have.” The right corner of his mouth lifted. “Not with a witness around, anyway.”

She tried to pull her chin free, but he spread his fingers along her jaw and turned her face to him, making eye contact again. “I won’t hurt you, Grace.”

What did he want from her? A grateful thank-you? Acknowledgment that she believed him?

“I won’t hurt you, either,” she said.

Her absurd promise caused the other side of his mouth to lift, and he gave her an enigmatic smile. “You’ll do, Grace Sutter,” he said, finally releasing her and standing up.

Grace pulled her jacket back over her head and watched him as he stood ten feet away, facing her and the plane as he surveyed their surroundings.

He really was a strange man. And big. He had long legs, strong hands—she knew that from personal experience—and shoulders wider than any of her brothers’. His overlong hair was nearly black now that it was wet, and it curled over his collar. But earlier, in the terminal, it had been a beautiful, dark mahogany with lighter streaks running through it, as if he spent a lot of time outdoors without a hat. The two-day growth of beard on his face showed signs of having red in it as well.

But his eyes were what really made Grace’s heart beat just a little bit faster. They were a deep, pine-forest green that spoke of intelligence and strong character. Those eyes said Greylen MacKeage was a man who lived life on his own terms and made up his own rules as he went.

“I’m trying to figure out where we are,” he said, looking around the dense pine forest.

Grace looked around, too, and discovered a wonder-land that would have been beautiful in any other circumstance. The old-growth forest, draped in a freezing mist that made it look otherworldly, presented a very real problem for their continued survival. Ice was building on everything, weighing down the stately old trees, crackling in gentle rhythm with the stirring breeze.

It was late afternoon in February in Maine, which meant that what little daylight was left would soon be fading. Fog shrouded the treetops. Grace couldn’t see much more than fifty yards in any direction, and what she did see was sloping quite steeply.

“We’re on the side of a mountain,” she said lamely. She suddenly sat up straighter. “Hey. I have my computer and satellite link. I can get our coordinates.”