baby, Ines," Jason ordered. "Be careful of Caroline's left arm."
Caroline smiled weakly at Ines as she took the child from her arm. "Isn't he the most beautiful baby you've ever seen?"
"Sim, Senhora," Ines agreed, her eyes filling with tears. "Out of the way!" she commanded as she made her way back through the sea of men.
Jason moved beside Caroline, carefully arranging the sheet he'd wrapped around her to replace the ruined skirt he'd had to cut away last night. The pressure of her eyes drew his gaze to hers as he carefully slipped his arms underneath her and lifted her off the bed. Immediately she twined her arm around his neck and rested her weary head against his shoulder.
Fear clutched his heart as he held her to him, trembling through his being, a fear greater than any he'd ever known before. All his life, the things he'd cared about had been stripped from him. He didn't think he could endure it if he lost her, lost them.
He should put them on a boat and take them to New Orleans himself, as soon as they were strong enough to travel. He should take them far from him and see to it that they had a comfortable home and everything money could buy before taking himself out of their lives forever. But if they were so far away, how could he keep them safe?
Never had he been so confused, so trapped by a situation that brought him the fiercest joy and deepest fear he'd ever experienced.
He knew from the rhythm of her breathing that Caroline had fallen asleep again. She'd surrendered herself into his care last night because she'd had no choice. But how could she continue to trust him after what he'd done, what he'd almost done, what he was? He didn't deserve it, any of it. He didn't deserve her or a perfect son or her unreserved trust.
Winding his way through the smiling, gaping men who moved aside to let them pass, he tried to clear his mind, tried to think rationally, but in the blink of an eye, he had lost every ounce of logic he'd ever possessed. In the blink of an eye, he'd been transformed into something he didn't understand or particularly like.
There were no more walls, nothing to protect him from his own emotions. All he had to do was look at his son or at this extraordinary woman who had believed in him when he didn't believe in himself, this woman who had taken his seed and given him a child.
Every time he gazed at them or thought of them, the walls dissolved and the emotions he'd tried so hard to cut off assaulted him with a vengeance.
It was as if his heart had been turned inside out and all his feelings lay bare and unprotected for all to see.
It scared the hell out of him.
Caroline awoke with a start, listening intently for any sound from the crib at the end of her bed. When none came, she relaxed back on the pillow once again.
She'd been dreaming about the storm. Over the last few weeks since Jason brought her back to the fazenda, she'd been slowly remembering things about that terrible accident. The memories came to her in the form of hideous nightmares. Tonight she'd dreamed of falling through the air, helplessly buffeted by fierce winds. When her body slammed into the roiling water, the impact had awakened her.
How had she ever survived, she wondered for the hundredth time. Why had she lived when the others had not?
Shivering in the darkness, she remembered waking on the riverbank, covered with mud, racked with pain, unable to move. If Jason hadn't found her, she'd have almost certainly died. He'd saved her life, hers and their child's.
Pushing the covers down, she climbed out of bed, careful not to jostle the injured arm that Ines had set properly following Caroline's instructions. Her heart swelled with joy and love as she gazed down at her little Jase.
Caroline wondered how Jason would react to her decision to name the baby after him. It wasn't official, of course, but she couldn't continue thinking of him as the baby or the child, as if he were an object instead of a little person. And since Jason had chosen to avoid them both, she'd picked a name herself. Even if Jason objected strenuously, she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to think of him by any other name.
Running her hands lovingly over the raw-wood