Megan walked over to the duffel bag. “Well, there was somebody out back. You’d think they’d have come to the front door. Jasper must have scared them off because they left a bag of stuff behind.”

“The only thing that’s back there is the old shed that’s housing the well casing and the pump. We aren’t having any water-flow issues, and besides, you know I do most of that servicing myself. What’d they leave behind?”

Beside the shed, Megan saw something in the dirt that sent a surge of fear through her. “Oh, Frank. Whoever was here, they left a pair of bolt cutters beside the shed. They must have been trying to break in!” She peered inside the duffel bag. “And there’s a duffel full of boxes of rat poison pellets. What in the world…”

“Honey, I want you to go back in the house and call the sheriff right away. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Make sure you keep the shotgun with you, just in case.”

Megan snapped her fingers at Jasper. “Come on, you good boy. You were just protecting your mama, weren’t you? Let’s go call the sheriff and clean up your face from what that bad man did to you.”

###

Steve Chalmers held Olivia’s hand and stared at the screen the OBGYN had turned toward them. He almost didn’t believe his eyes. “You’re really pregnant.”

The doctor shifted the angle of the ultrasound transducer sitting on Olivia’s gelled belly and said in a heavy German accent, “I would say that based on these measurements, young Miss Olivia is about twelve weeks pregnant.”

Olivia beamed, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks. But Steve had only one thought on his mind.

How is this possible?

Steve had first met Olivia in London; she was one of the cancer patients who had enrolled in his clinical trial.

At the time, she was nothing but a living skeleton, very much reminiscent of pictures he’d seen of Holocaust survivors. The twenty-eight-year-old had lost all of her hair from the aggressive chemo and radiation treatments she’d previously undergone. Yet even then, from within that walking corpse, stared blue eyes full of life.

Eyes that looked to him with the hope of a miracle.

That had been nearly half a year ago. Those eyes still sparkled when they glanced his way, and now there was something more there. Love. And he couldn’t deny the feelings that stirred within him when he looked at her.

The trial had been a fantastic success. Her cancer was in remission, her features had filled out once more, and her thick brown hair promised a future waterfall of perfectly straight hair.

But because of the earlier chemo and radiation, she was supposed to be sterile.

Being a parent hadn’t been in his plans. Could he be a parent?