Santa's Seven-Day Baby Tutorial. Meg Maxwell

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      “I am Amish.”

      He looked confused, and she realized she was in her barn clothes instead of the usual long dress and head covering. “These are my daed’s old overalls. I wear them when I’m caring for the calves or painting furniture that our community makes to sell at market in Grass Creek.”

      “Ah, now I understand. My line of work doesn’t bring me into contact with the Amish so I don’t know all that much about your culture. I suppose I’m just used to seeing Amish women in long dresses and bonnets.”

      For a moment, they stared at each other. Anna couldn’t take her eyes off the man, and granted, she had earned the unfortunate nickname of Fanciful Anna, but he seemed unable to look away from her, as well. While wearing coveralls and a baseball cap and smelling like the barn? She almost laughed. Fanciful Anna, indeed.

      “Agent Asher, I’m sorry that your time was taken up by this. And I appreciate your kindness to my cousin. I think she was overcome with desire to have something from the English world. Not that I’m excusing her behavior. But I do try to understand Sadie so that I can better guide her.”

      “Colt,” he said. “Well, the moment I return Sparkles, I’m on vacation, so no worries about my time.”

      “Vacation,” she repeated, hearing the wistfulness in her own voice. “Are you going somewhere special?”

      “I haven’t decided. I have two weeks off, so the first ten days or so I plan to spend somewhere amazing, like Rome or Machu Picchu or a Hawaiian island.”

      She sighed. “I would love to eat pasta in Rome.” She imagined herself tossing coins in the Trevi Fountain. Seeing the Colosseum with her own eyes.

      He smiled. “Vacation coming up?”

      She shook her head. “The Amish don’t vacation. It’s not our way to spend money on such things. Sunday is our day of rest and that’s plenty.” She turned to the acres of farmland, which always made her feel connected to the world. Usually. “I’ve never been beyond Grass Creek...well, except for the hospital in Houston. I’ve read about all the places you’ve mentioned, though. Must be hard to come back home from such special destinations.”

      “Well, wherever I go, I am actually looking forward to returning to Texas since I’ll be spending a few days visiting with my twin brother and his family. I was adopted as a baby and just discovered he existed a few months ago. I’m still grappling with it a bit, to be honest.”

      Anna gasped. “I have a cousin I didn’t know existed until a few months ago. She was shunned before I was born and she fled the community. She was only seventeen.”

      “Shunned?” Colt said. “What did she do?”

      Anna shrugged. “No one will talk about it. But it’s not hard to break the rules of our community. It makes me very sad to think about, though. I wonder if she misses us. She must.”

      “I’m sure she does,” he said. “I met my twin brother, just briefly, for the first time back in May. Turns out he didn’t know about my existence until recently, either. I’ve thought about him so much these past few months. I can’t imagine your cousin doesn’t miss all of you like crazy. And she never even got to meet you.”

      Lately, Anna often thought about her cousin Mara. Her aunt and uncle never talked about their niece, but Anna had found some of her things while helping to clear out Kate and Eli’s attic, and her aenti had finally told Anna about Mara.

      “Is your twin brother your only sibling?” she asked to change the subject. She didn’t want to talk about herself. She would much prefer to learn more about Colt Asher.

      “I have a sister. She was also adopted by my parents. She’s married with twin boys herself. They’re seven months old now. Very cute.” He gestured at her painting area in the back corner of the barn. “I see you’re painting a cradle. I bought my sister cribs from the Amish market in Grass Creek.”

      She smiled. “I might have done the finishing. I love working on baby furniture. I have a special weakness for infants. The past couple of months I’ve been helping to care for the Sanderson triplets. Their parents have three young ones and now three babies.”

      “Must be a noisy house. It’s quiet here,” he said, glancing around. From his expression, she could see that he appreciated the quiet and the land. The Amish community stretched for miles in this rural area, and Anna could barely see the roof of her aenti and onkel’s house in the near distance. Sometimes she loved the solitude, when it was just her and her thoughts and her books. But other times, she yearned for conversations like this one, where she’d hear things she’d only read about.

      “Ja. I live alone. My parents are gone. It’s just me now. Do you live in Grass Creek?” She wanted to know everything about him. A glance at his left hand told her he wasn’t married. She wondered if he had a girlfriend. Or a fiancée. Sex before marriage was forbidden in her community, but it wasn’t in his world. Her thoughts traveled in a direction that made her toes tingle and her cheeks flame. His hard chest, flat stomach and muscles were obvious through the shirt he wore.

      “Next door, in Houston,” he said, reminding her that she’d asked a question and shouldn’t be ogling the man. “In a skyscraper condo on the thirty-second floor.”

      She sighed again, this time inwardly. He lived in the sky and chased bad guys for a living. He was unlike anyone she knew. Anyone she’d ever know...here. But he was like her, too. He had close family he didn’t know—his twin brother. Just like she had close family she didn’t know, her cousin Mara. She wished she could talk to him more about that, over coffee. But she couldn’t exactly invite the man inside her home. His car had been parked by her barn long enough that someone must have spotted it. She had no doubt they were being watched by the curious and the worried.

      Ignore them, she told herself. This gorgeous specimen of a man is here, right now, so talk to him while you can.

      “The thirty-second floor,” she said, imagining being in a building that high up, looking out on the lights of a city like Houston. “That sounds wonderful. I’ve always dreamed of seeing the world outside this village, outside of Grass Creek. My aunt, Sadie’s mother, thinks I should take my long-put-off rumspringa—experience life as an Englisher—so I can commit or not to the faith.”

      “Why don’t you?” he asked.

      Before she could respond, one of the calves mooed and she realized she still had one more calf to feed. She could stand here and talk to the agent all day. Stare at the agent all day. But why prolong this? He would leave any minute now and she would never see him again unless she happened to cross his path at the Amish market. Fanciful Anna needed to be realistic, as her aenti and onkel always said. “I’d better feed the little guy or he’ll come charging. Which is good—he’s in perfect health now and ready to go home.”

      The agent nodded—and held her gaze a beat longer than the usual. She wasn’t imagining his attraction to her, coveralls and paint stains and calf poop and all. This interaction with the agent would sustain her a good long time. No matter how unsettled she might be feeling about her life and what she wanted, her thoughts were her own and now they’d be filled with this man.

      “And I’d better get Sparkles back,” he said. “Thank you again for your help. You handled the situation very kindly.”

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