“Grace. You’re not in a sauna,” Grey said from beside her.

She turned back to him. “It’s hot.”

“You’re at the cabin I told you about. Do you remember the plane crash?”

She thought about that. Yes, she remembered the plane crash. And she remembered the snow cave. She gasped, looking up into Grey’s eyes. “I waited for you,” she told him. “But you didn’t come.”

“I did,” he said fiercely. “You went to sleep, Grace.”

“I did not.”

“Your eyes were shut tight when we found you, lass. We thought you were dead.”

She turned to glare at the man making that claim; it was the same man who had said she was daft. His fierce face was smiling, though, as he nodded his head at her. “So if you weren’t dead, you must have been sleeping,” he added.

“You were supposed to be thinking of a name for Baby,” Grey told her, drawing her attention again.

“I’m calling him Baby,” she said, lifting her chin. By God, he had taken his good old time returning for her.

Oh, she remembered everything now. The cold. The dark when the battery on her computer died. And the terrible sense of loneliness.

“Who are these people?” she whispered to Grey, her gaze moving to the four men who rudely kept staring at her.

“The old man with the wild white hair and the prayer beads is Father Daar. This is his cabin,” he told her, nodding toward a man who looked older than time. Except for his eyes. Father Daar had the brightest, clearest blue eyes she had ever seen. He smiled at her when Grey introduced him.

“And this is Callum,” he continued, nodding at the man beside Father Daar.

Grace looked at him. Callum grinned past a bushy beard, his hazel-green eyes echoing his smile, his shaggy, dark auburn hair wet and dripping on his shoulders. He looked to be fortyish, and, like all of them, he was well over six feet tall.

“And Morgan,” Grey said, moving along to the next man.

Grace turned her attention to Morgan. He was young and clean-shaven, his wet, blond-red hair sticking out as if he’d been running a hand through it. He shot her a crooked grin and winked at her.

Grace quickly looked at the next man.

“And Ian,” Grey finished.

Ian was the one who had told Grace she’d fallen asleep. His hair was a brighter red than the others’ with gray highlights beginning to show near his ears. He had a beard, too, peppered with white and in dire need of a set of clippers. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was looking at her as if she were a bug under a microscope. So Grace smiled at him instead.

She knew all of them. At least she knew of them. Mary had told her about the MacKeages and Father Daar, five men who had moved here a little over three years ago when they had bought TarStone Mountain as well as most of the forested land for miles around. They kept to themselves for the most part, Mary had said, and nobody in town could find out much about them.

Grace stared at them, unblinking. They didn’t look related, although four of them had the same last name.

Except for the youngest one, Morgan. There was something familiar about him, the way he carried himself, maybe. A mannerism. An expression. The way the corner of his mouth lifted in amusement.

Actually, he reminded her of Grey. Yes. Morgan had the same dark, penetrating, evergreen eyes.

Grace turned her head enough to see Father Daar. Her sister had also told her about the priest who lived like a hermit halfway up the mountain. Mary had said he was positively ancient, and she had often worried that he was too old to be living alone.

All of them were strangers to her, and although some of them were larger than her half brothers, they seemed harmless enough and sincerely concerned for her welfare. Grace relaxed back into the softness of the bed—until she discovered a rather alarming fact, given the company she was in.

“I’m naked,” she accused, turning to glare at Grey. “How did that happen?”

“Is your modesty worth dying over?” he asked.

She closed her eyes and wondered if she could turn any redder than the lobster she must look like already. She also wondered if she might possibly die after all, but from embarrassment, not cold.

“Are you not wondering about your son?” the man named Ian asked.

“Oh my God! Baby. I forgot all about him. Where is he?” she asked, suddenly frantic as she craned her neck to look around the room.

“He’s here,” Father Daar said, moving aside for her to see Baby. “He’s sleeping. He’s fine.”

Grace closed her eyes and thanked God for that miracle. She also asked him to get her out of the mess she had just made. These men would all think she was an unfit mother for forgetting her son.

Well, she was. Those should have been the first words out of her mouth when she woke up. Instead, she had been too focused on finding herself naked while sharing a bed with a man, her hormones zinging around like crazy, and an audience—part of which was a priest, no less—watching her.

Grace burst into tears. Huge, gut-wrenching sobs shook her body with painful results. Every square inch of her hurt like the devil. But it was nothing compared with the pain she felt in her heart.

She had forgotten Baby.

“Now look what you’ve done, Ian,” Callum accused. “You’ve made the lass cry.”

“Grace. He’s okay,” Grey told her, brushing the hair away from her face.

She couldn’t even look at him. She couldn’t look at any of them. She was scum. Just scum. She didn’t deserve the child.

“You do,” Grey said, his voice sounding harsh. “Anyone who has been through what you have these last few hours would be disoriented. And you’ve not been a mother very long.”

She must have said her thoughts out loud, and Grey was scolding her for them. She tried to roll over to bury her face in the pillow so she could bawl in private, but she couldn’t turn over. Her muscles wouldn’t work. The attempt did tell her one thing, though. Greylen MacKeage was as naked as she was.

“Could you…could you maybe let me have the bed to myself?” she asked in a strained whisper, hoping her shock didn’t show in her voice. “I, ah, would be more comfortable.”

He laughed out loud, shaking the bed as he did. Grace stifled a groan. Even that movement hurt.

“I will. Just as soon as you tell me where you hurt.”

“I’ll tell you just as soon as you leave the bed,” she countered, still keeping her eyes closed to the pounding in her head.

Silence was all the answer she got. Finally, she felt the bed dip and heard him scramble up and away.

She let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding, and the ache in her head suddenly dulled.

“Ho-oh. It’s started now,” Ian said. “The MacKeage is already backing down from an argument with her.”

Grace heard something hit the wall across the room with a plop, followed by good-natured laughter.

Gingerly, and in great pain, she pulled the blankets tight to her neck and concentrated on each inch of her body, taking stock of just where she ached.

She concluded that she was one massive bruise. The muscles in her legs and back were cramping with a will of their own, and the tips of her toes and fingers tingled with needle-pricking intensity.

She had come very close to getting frostbite. If not for the protection of the cave Grey had made her and the pilot’s waterproof boots, they would probably be cutting her toes off in less than a week. She had kept her hands warm with the heat from the battery on her computer. But if Grey hadn’t arrived when he had, she would be dead now.

He’d saved her life. And he had saved Baby.

How was she ever supposed to repay that kind of debt?

“Are you hungry?” Father Daar asked her in a whisper, leaning close to the bed. “I have some stew ready.”

“No, thank you, Father. I’m just sleepy.”

“I wouldn’t be going back to sleep if I were you,” he said in a co-conspirator’s tone. “Grey would have a worried fit. You scared ten years off his pagan life this morning.”