He took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “I’m thinking you won’t do it until the boy reaches his late teens or thereabouts. That’s fine with me. I’m willing to raise him as my own son.”

He was assuming she was going to marry him. And that they would live happily ever after as a family, with Baby believing she was his mom and Grey was his dad.

And Michael MacBain none the wiser for their deception.

Well, that was far more than Jonathan Stanhope had offered her. He wanted her to dump Baby in his father’s lap and come running back to Virginia, maybe bear him his own carefully engineered child, and help him win his space race.

“I made a promise to my sister on her deathbed,” she told the man in front of her. “She wants Baby to be with his father.”

“Then you made a promise you never intended to keep, Grace. Otherwise MacBain would have him now.”

“He still might get him. I haven’t decided yet. Mary’s wishes are still stronger than my own selfishness.”

He was shaking his head. “You don’t hold on to a child for just a little while and then give him up. It isn’t possible. You already love him like a son.”

“Sometimes love can be painful,” she said, knowing personally just how truthful her words were.

Her heart was feeling so wounded at the moment she wasn’t sure it would ever mend properly. How could she love a man who was asking her to keep a secret that affected so many people? What would Baby think of them both then, when he reached an age where they could tell him he’d been living a lie?

How could you explain that his real father was just a mile down the road and had been there his entire life? How do you rob a child of his true heritage and his right to know who he really is?

“Justify your actions by thinking you’re doing it for Baby if you want,” she told Grey. “And I’ll say I’m saving your ski lift because my own conscience won’t allow me to walk away from a neighbor in trouble.

And let’s just leave it at that.”

“You’re a damn difficult woman to deal with, Grace Sutter. You’re far too independent for my liking.”

She gave him a sad smile and shrugged her shoulders, which broke her free of his touch.

“That’s probably the greatest thing Mary and I had in common. Welcome to the Sutter family, Mr.

MacKeage.”

Daar paced the length of his porch and stopped to look up at TarStone Mountain. The clouds had lifted just enough that he could see the summit.

He was feeling the energy again. Only this time it was not menacing. The air enveloping TarStone was charged with the white light of life.

This was good. He had heard the snowcat laboring up the mountain on a distant trail two hours ago, and that was when the first wave of energy had assaulted his senses. He had seen a halo of pure white light wreath the summit within minutes of the snowcat’s ascent, and he hadn’t needed a crystal ball to know that Greylen and Grace were up there.

Daar rubbed his hands together and cackled in glee. It was about time those two stubborn people got down to the business of making babies. He had maybe one or two centuries left in his tired old bones, and that was barely enough time to train a new wizard properly.

Daar counted forward on his fingers nine months from now, and his glee disappeared. The first of December. Close, but not near enough to the Winter Solstice. He suddenly smiled again. MacKeage had been late, content to stay in his mother’s womb an extra two weeks. The child conceived today would probably wish to do the same.

Yes, the MacKeage baby would be born on the Winter Solstice, and her birth would begin the quiet shift of power. It was a human misconception that winter was associated with males and summer with females. The strength, the patient power of life, was in the Winter Solstice.

All seven MacKeage girls would be born on that day, over the next eight years.

And the seventh child would be named Winter.

She was the one Daar intended to gift with the new cherrywood cane he was carving.

He buttoned up his Mackinaw coat and picked up his satchel of clothes, stepping off the porch and using his cane for support as he walked over the frozen crust toward the ski trail.

He intended to ride back down the mountain with the warrior and his woman. It was time he spent a few days a bit closer to civilization, getting to know Grace Sutter.

Chapter Thirteen

The snowcat stopped in front of what Grace could only describe as a castle. It was built completely of stone, four stories high, and it was the darkest, ugliest structure she had ever laid eyes on.

It had to cover nearly four acres in footprint, with towers marking each of the four corners and slits for windows rising up each rounded turret in a diagonal procession, as if following the rise of stairs. The stones that made up the walls were black and gray speckled granite. But arched over the doorway and each window the stones were pure black, only slightly less rough than the walls.

The architect they’d hired must have thought he’d died and gone to heaven, being able to design such a huge, modern-day castle. He also must have been drunk.

There was even a moat. Sort of. Grace stared at the bridge that ran over a wild, frothing brook roaring past the castle’s foundation.

So this was Gu Bràth.

Grace wondered if Grey thought she would marry him and actually live here. Talk about regressing. The man she’d fallen in love with lived in a castle, for crying out loud.

Ian came out the front door and across the bridge, hurrying over to help Father Daar out of the snowcat.

He handed the old priest over to Callum, who had followed him outside, and then Ian descended on Grace.

“Well? Did ya find what you needed up there?” he asked.

She stared at him blankly. No, she had found heartache, and she hadn’t needed that at all. She suddenly blushed as his words sank in. She hadn’t even seen the ski-lift shed on the summit.

“Ah…I…” She darted a look at Grey, who had walked up beside her.

“She’ll fix the lift,” he told Ian, taking her by the arm and leading her toward his home. “After we do a small chore first, she’ll save the damn ski lift for us.”

Grace let him lead her away without protest. Truth be told, she wanted his support to walk across the narrow, high, slippery-looking bridge that ran over the churning brook.

She walked ahead of him the minute she saw the inside of the castle. Having expected the worst—a dank, dark, chilling interior to match the outside—Grace was amazed at what she found inside.

It was magnificent. Beautiful. The foyer was larger than her house and ran the full four stories up to an oak-beamed ceiling. A stairway as wide as a train ran up the right wall, curving onto an open balcony railed with hand-hewn timber. She walked to the center of the room and turned around, trying to take it all in.

It was so bright inside it hurt her eyes. Lights—tens of dozens of bulbs—shone into every nook and cranny, glistening off the black stone that shined like the ebony keys of a piano. Grace recognized the rock. It was from the mountain. TarStone got its name from fissures of black rock that ran like rivers through the granite. Instead of absorbing the light, the rock had been polished to reflect it.

The effect was so magical it made her dizzy.

She closed her eyes and lowered her head to get her bearings, only to open them up to see five men watching her with grins on their faces.

“You’re not the first to have such a reaction,” Morgan told her. “Stunning, isn’t it?”

“It’s beautiful. I never would have guessed, looking at it from the out-” Grace snapped her mouth shut before she finished insulting their home and quickly walked through the archway opposite the entrance.

She found herself in a very large, tastefully and comfortably furnished living room. There was a big-screened television in the corner, three leather couches arranged into a sitting area facing it, and a desk in the other corner that held a computer.