The Baby Trail Karen Rose Smith

The Baby Trail
Karen Rose Smith
Silhouette Special Edition 0373247672
Baby Bonds series

Gwen Langworthy had been abandoned as a child then left at the altar. She had given up on love and marriage and the entire baby-carriage thing.

Garrett Maxwell had lost his child and his marriage and now he spent his life reuniting other families.

And somewhere a down-on-her-luck new mother was longing for the baby she had been too frightened to keep--and had left on Gwen's doorstep.

Three people lost in the world...and one baby to bring them all home again.

"Ms. Smith writes with an engaging, good-humored, and graceful style. As a good woman and a tiny baby pull Garrett's heart out of cold storage, let THE BABY TRAIL warm your own heart. ~ Jane Bowers, Romance Reviews Today

"Karen Rose Smith continues her Baby Bonds trilogy with The Baby Trail (4). The pairing of appealingly strong-minded Gwen with tough-but-tender Garrett works very well, and their story their story is sure to touch many hearts." ~ Catherine Witmer, Romantic Times Bookclub

   A baby's cry tore through Gwen Langworthy's small house. Startled, she dropped the tomato in her hand and it bounced in the sink.
   The first cry whimpered into a second one and Gwen raced toward the sound, mystified as to why it was coming from her sunroom.
   Dusk had fallen and shadows were thick in the ranch-style house as she hurried through the living room. As an obstetrical nurse practitioner, she was well aware of babies' cries. They always ripped a corner of her
heart. She longed to have a baby of her own.
   Curious, she reached for the ceramic light on the wicker table inside the sunroom and saw a blue plastic bin sitting just inside her sliding glass doors. Rushing to it, she hunkered down. An infant with sparkling dark eyes, who couldn't be more than a day or two old, stared up at her. Layers of newspaper lined the inside of the bin, but the baby was nestled on a pink blanket. A torn sheet of notebook paper lay at her feet with "Amy" written in block letters.
   It was a little girl!
   Gwen reflexively scooped up the child and cuddled her in her arms. Dreams of being a mother had evaporated like smoke after Mark had left her waiting with her dad at the white runner that was supposed to lead her to married life and a family. His abandonment still hurt.
   "So your name is Amy," she murmured, the nurse in her already taking in every detail about the child's physical condition. Her maternal instincts led her to notice the baby's little sweater and hat fashioned of
soft fuzzy yarn in variegated white, yellow and aqua. The set looked as if it been hand-knitted. Fall in Wyoming was closing in. In the shadow of the Painted Peaks, at night the temperature in Wild Horse Junction dropped. Someone had cared about this child.
   And then abandoned her?
   Gwen knew all about that kind of abandonment, too.
   Stepping toward the glass doors, Gwen slid one open. The evening's breeze swept in as she stared deep into her yard. A street ran to the back of it. Was that a car engine she heard coughing, then starting up? She couldn't see between the shadowed trees.
   Little Amy wiggled in her arms, screwed up her face and let out another wail.
   Hugging Amy close, Gwen went to the phone to call one of her best friends who was a social worker. But she already knew what Shaye would advise her to do: call the sheriff.
   Thinking about a sheriff who was more focused on his impending retirement than serving the residents of Wild Horse Junction, she decided if he didn't make progress at finding Amy's mother within a week, she'd
take matters into her own hands.
   She wouldn't let this child go through life not knowing where she came from...never knowing why her mother hadn't loved her enough to keep her.

   The loud banging made Gwen cringe. The mid-September breeze tossed her curly auburn hair across her chin as she came to an outbuilding and stood at the doorway. The day was cloudy, but gray light filtered through the structure's two windows. The contents of the shed were shoved to one side--a riding mower, hedge trimmers, tools of all shapes and sizes. To the left, a man hunkered down, pummeling nails into a new floor board.
   "Mr. Maxwell," she called above the hammering.
   The noise suddenly ceased. Mr. Maxwell, if that's who he was, was on his feet in a defensive stance, his hammer held almost like a weapon as his gray eyes targeted her and held her at the threshold. He was tall,
over six feet, broad-shouldered in a black T-shirt, slim hipped in well-worn blue jeans. His hair was a rich deep brown and looked as if it had been ruffled by the wind.
   "Can I help you?" His voice was filled with icy calm and she instantly felt like an intruder.
   "I hope so," she answered fervently and saw the interest in his eyes.
   Garrett Maxwell had the reputation for being a recluse, working from his log house in the foothills of the Painted Peaks. She'd known about his credentials because of an article she'd read in the Wild Horse Wrangler a few months ago--he'd helped locate a child in Colorado. Before driving up here, she'd searched for information about him on the Internet and found several articles concerning how he helped search-and-rescue teams with lost children and aided in child-kidnapping cases.
   When he didn't move a muscle, when his strong jaw remained set, when he didn't invite her to tell him the reason for coming, she plunged in anyway.
   "Are you Garrett Maxwell?"
   "Who wants to know?"
   Although she wasn't sure if it was wise, she took a couple of steps forward.
   His gaze raked over her lime green blouse and khaki slacks. Even though this perusal of her took about a second, she felt as if he'd noticed every thing from the number of curls on her shoulder-length hair to her brown loafers.
   Gwen was feeling as though she was poking her hand into a lethal animal's cage but she extended it anyway. "My name's Gwen Langworthy."
   He didn't shake her hand, however his grip loosened on the hammer and he dropped it onto the seat of the mower. "How can I help you?"
   It had been five days since little Amy had been left in her sunroom. Gwen still didn't know how or why, but she did know the sheriff hadn't gotten anywhere on identifying the infant. Now she was taking matters into her own hands. She didn't want Amy going through life never knowing where she came from. Gwen had carried that burden on her own shoulders--she'd been abandoned in a church when she was only two. She
knew all the self-doubt that went with that...the introspective questions no one could answer.
   Quickly stuffing both hands into her pockets, she wondered why her stomach fluttered when she looked at the former FBI agent. Was she afraid of him? No. She was mesmerized by him. He reeked sensuality... power...
   Grabbing onto her reason for coming, she explained, "I know you can find people. I need you to find someone for me."
   "I don't find people."
   "You find children."
   Now he finally looked interested. "Did you lose a child?"
   Was she imagining it or had his voice turned almost gentle? "No I didn't, but I need to find a child's mother."
   The gruffness returned. "I'm not FBI anymore."
   She wasn't about to give up without a fight. This man was good at what he did. He was the expert she needed and she would convince him Amy needed him. "I know that. You have a security consulting business
now. But you were an FBI agent and I need your help. Someone left a baby at my back door. I won't let that little girl grow up never knowing who her parents were. I know that each day that goes by the trail gets colder."
   His right eyebrow quirked slightly as if she'd finally made a dent in the shield he'd wrapped around himself. "Why do you care so much?"
   She didn't hesitate. "Because I was adopted and never knew who my real parents were."
   The wind whistled through the lodge pole pines and Russian Olive trees, then gusted through the door, sending leaves scattering.
   After a few moments of thoughtful consideration, the ex-FBI agent said, "Let's go to the house." He motioned outside the shed at the granite stepping stones that led to his back deck.
   Although Gwen's surroundings might have taken her attention any other time--there was something primitively beautiful about the property--she couldn't keep her gaze from Garrett Maxwell's broad back or
the way he fit his jeans. Something about him, maybe that innate sensuality she'd sensed, stirred a deep womanlike corner inside of her. It was a terrifically odd, exciting, confusing sensation.
   They passed a gazebo-like structure on the deck. At his back door, he stopped and stepped aside to let her precede him. He was scowling and she couldn't imagine why.
   Inside his kitchen, the pleasing knotty pine atmosphere surrounded her immediately. A small round wooden table and chairs stood in a breakfast nook with windows overlooking the back of the property.
   When she turned her gaze back to him, he was watching her. A free-fall sensation made her catch her breath as she looked into his very gray eyes.
   He broke eye contact and motioned to the counter. "Coffee?" he asked as if he was aware he had to be civil to a guest.
   Her mouth had gone dry and she needed something to wet her tongue if she was going to tell her story. She nodded.
   Pouring coffee into two large mugs, he motioned to the counter. "I only have powdered creamer. Sugar's in the cannister beside it."
   When Gwen opened the stoneware cannister, she found her hands were shaking. Because she was alone with Maxwell in his secluded house? Or because she was highly attracted to him and trying to deny it?
   The lid on the cannister flipped and clattered onto the counter.
   The man beside her picked it up, held it and pinned her with his stormy gray eyes. "There's nothing to be nervous about. I'll listen, but I might not be able to help."
   "I'm not nervous," she returned defensively, used to handling everything that came her way--her parents' divorce, her dad's drinking, her attempt at intervention to make Russ Langworthy finally face reality.
   "Then you're doing a good imitation. How much sugar?"
   She blinked, forgetting why she was standing at his counter.
   "In your coffee." He nodded toward the mug he'd poured for her.
   "A teaspoon." Her voice came out thready.
   When he reached around her, his long arm brushed her hip. She swallowed hard, frozen for the moment.
   Opening the drawer beside her, he pulled out a spoon and handed it to her. After he closed the drawer and leaned away again, she finally released her breath, took the utensil without allowing her fingers to brush
his and spooned sugar from the cannister. He was watching her and she didn't like the idea he was trying to "read" her.
   With a half smile, he took a pack of creamer from a jelly jar. "One or two?"
   "One is fine."
   This time when he handed one to her, their fingers did brush. The expression on his face didn't change, but she glimpsed a spark-like flicker in his eyes. Could he be attracted to her, too?
   So what if he was. She'd come to enlist his help, not to step into an involvement-trap again.
   Maxwell let her precede him to the table in the breakfast nook. When she was seated, he dropped into a ladderback chair across from her, took a few sips of his coffee and assessed her over its rim. "So...tell me what this is about."
   After her own sip of coffee, she told him how she'd found baby Amy in her sunroom.
   "And you didn't hear anyone outside?" he asked.
   "I heard her cry. After I found her, I looked out and heard a car start up. It was getting dark and I couldn't see."
   "A smooth start or a rough start?" he asked.
   "I don't know."
   "Yes, you do. Think about it."
   As she tried to take herself back to that evening, she remembered holding Amy in her arms and attempting to search through the dusk. She'd
heard a chug-chug, then a va-room, before the vehicle sped away. "It wasn't a smooth start. There was chugging first."
   Maxwell seemed to make a mental note of that. "You said your friend, Shaye Malloy, who is a social worker arrived. And then the sheriff
came. What did he do with the note with the baby's name on it?"
   "He looked at it, then slipped it into his pocket."
   Garrett Maxwell shook his head and his jaw tightened. Then he asked her, "What was the baby wearing?"
   The former agent's face was lined around his eyes and mouth. She guessed he was nearing forty. Had he left the FBI because the job had taken its toll? His face was so interesting, so ruggedly angular, she could look at him all day.
   But that wasn't why she was here.
   "Amy was nestled in a blanket, but she had on this cute little sweater and hat and one of those one-piece terry playsuits...in yellow."
   "Why did you call the social worker? Wouldn't the sheriff have done that?
   "Shaye and I have been friends a long time. I wasn't about to let Amy out of my hands without knowing someone who cared was looking after
her." Before Shaye and the sheriff had arrived, Gwen had cuddled Amy, rocked her, crooned to her, and it had been very difficult to let Shaye take her.
   When Garrett Maxwell's penetrating gaze focused on her, Gwen felt turned inside out.
   "Where is she now?" he asked.
   "In the hospital's nursery."
   He leaned back in his chair and it creaked. "Does she need to be in the hospital?"
   Suddenly Gwen decided she wouldn't want to be interrogated by this man. He was methodical and thorough. "The doctor examined her and found she was jaundiced. She's over that, but now they're trying to find a family to take her. I would have liked to, but--"
   "What?" Garrett asked, his gaze probing.
   Gwen felt she was too close to him, though the distance of the table separated them. "I have to work, and I'd have to find someone to babysit. Besides that, I'm a firm believer a child should ideally have two parents--two parents who are going to love her forever. I couldn't give her that. Shaye says they can find a couple who will, if we don't find the mother."
   She had the feeling Garrett Maxwell could ferret out details without half trying.
   His gaze closely appraised her again until she felt like shifting in her chair. Finally he commented, "If you do find the mother, the child
will be taken away from her anyway."
   "Maybe. But Shaye says it depends on the circumstances. It's not like she abandoned her in a church or in the cold. I'm racking my brain to
figure out who might have known me and why they would have left the baby with me. I've met a lot of unwed mothers."
   "How so?" He took a long swallow of coffee.
   "I'm a nurse practitioner, and I specialize in obstetrics. I help set up programs for unwed mothers."
   "In Wild Horse Junction?"
   "All over the state."
   After he seemed to absorb that information, he stood. "There's not much here to go on."
   Gwen wasn't ready for this meeting with him to be over. Because of Amy. Because... Simply because. "I read you're good at what you do. I know you can find her."
   "Miss Langworthy--"
   "Gwen," she corrected him, forestalling him, not wanting him to tell her he wouldn't take the case. "I'll pay you," she hurried on. I'll pay you somehow whatever you charge. This little girl deserves to know who her mother is. She deserves to know why her mother left her with me. If she goes through life always wondering--" Gwen stopped abruptly.
   Rounding the table, Garrett Maxwell stood close by her side. "What will that do to her?" His eyes were suddenly compassionate.
   "It will make her unsure of who she is and where she came from," Gwen murmured, unwilling to reveal too much.
   "We're not talking about Baby Amy now, are we?" The question was rhetorical, and he was trying to make a point.
   Looking him squarely in the eyes, Gwen answered, "We're talking about any child who's adopted and doesn't know his or her roots."
   Neither of them looked away. The moment palpated with Gwen's passion for the search along with man-woman awareness.
   Finally Gwen asked, "Will you find Amy's mother?" That was the bottom line for her and all that mattered.
   "I usually search for children, not parents."
   There was steel in his tone, and she had the feeling he didn't change his mind once he made a decision.
   "Can you make an exception?"
   Time ticked by in interminable seconds until he assured her, "I''ll think about it and get back to you."
   Her stomach sank and she stood. Pulling a business card from her pocket, she laid it on the table. "When?" she asked, aware of the we'll-get-back-to-you line and professionals who never did.
   "You need an answer because you're going to find a P.I. to do this if I won't?" he guessed.
   "Exactly. I don't give up easily, Mr. Maxwell."
   After a few more beats of studying her, he muttered, "I guess you don't. I'll call you tomorrow evening with my answer."
   They were close enough to touch...close enough to breath the same breakfast nook air...close enough that his scent--male mixed with outdoors--was a potent fantasy generator. But Gwen didn't indulge in fantasies anymore--not since her last vestige of trust in men had been crushed.
   Garrett Maxwell's words were an obvious dismissal. When he motioned toward the front of the house and said, "I'll walk you out," she went that way, illogically curious about how this enigmatic man lived.
   She didn't have time to take in every nuance, but she did spot the hall that must have led to downstairs bedrooms, the loft with a Native
American blanket hanging over the railing, the stone fireplace.
   At his front door now, she extended her hand to him again. "It was good to meet you, Mr. Maxwell."
   This time he took her hand and when palm met palm, she felt a jolt of attraction that was so severely electric her breath caught. If she had to say how long their hands were clasped, there was no way she could. Ten seconds...twenty minutes...a half hour. There was no time, only the deep gray of Garrett Maxwell's eyes, the heat of his skin against hers. It was a moment she'd remember for a long time to come.
   Suddenly he dropped his hand, and she turned to the cooler outside air so he wouldn't see the heat burning her cheeks.
   As he closed the door and she hurried to her mini-van, she breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't know whether to hope Garrett Maxwell took the case or didn't. Yet she knew if he did, he'd find Amy's mother. He was the kind of man who had a goal, set a course, and didn't stop until he achieved it. He was a man who took no prisoners, didn't dally, and kept himself detached from the work he did.
   And kept himself detached from women, too?
   She started her van, telling herself she didn't need to know the answer to that question.

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