LITMIR.BIZ

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thankfully, was sound asleep tucked in her small bed in the girls’ room. Next year, when she turned twelve, Katie would move to her own room. She could have had it much earlier, but after her mother’s death, she had clung to Ruthie and new baby Grace, and he hadn’t had the heart to part them. But the room they all shared was crowded, and it was silly to continue the practice when there were four empty bedrooms in the house. Hannah had told him it was past time Katie had her own room and she would soon need privacy.

      A shiver went through him. Hannah loved her nieces and was always ready to lend a hand. In fact, she got more cooperation out of them than he sometimes could; her irrepressible spirit and her sense of humor usually had them laughingly complying with even the most onerous of tasks.

      He didn’t know what he’d do without her.

      He shifted his gaze to the two heads bent over the table, Katie reading intently, Ruthie scribbling words with a speed that had him thinking he’d be needing to check that paper before she handed it in.

      His girls. He loved them dearly, not just for their own sakes, but because they were all he had left of Annie. And he realized with thudding finality that he would never leave Paradise Ridge. He would never start over somewhere else, because it would mean ripping his children away from their only remaining solace, the loving support of the community. Every female in the village pitched in to help him with the girls. And if some of them, as Mrs. Yoder had warned, had eyes on filling Annie’s shoes, well, that just wasn’t going to happen.

      No, he would not be going anywhere. Even if he could tolerate the change himself, it would be too cruel to uproot the girls, whose lives had already been turned upside down, just because he wished he could escape.

      There would be no escape.

      Emma stopped on the path to Caleb Troyer’s house. Even in the fading light of dusk, the details were clear: the stone foundation, the covered porch that ran the width of the house, the evenly spaced windows. Smoke curled out of the chimney, a homey touch she hadn’t realized she’d missed until she saw it now. It was a simple house, as were all Amish homes, but it looked solid and well built. But she supposed a carpenter as skillful as Caleb would settle for nothing less.

      One of those windows by the front door glowed with light, and as she walked up the steps to the porch, she could see into the front room of the house. She paused on the top step. She could see the woodstove on one wall, obviously in use in this brisk almost-winter weather. But what caught her eye was the table before it, where two young girls sat in the surprisingly bright light of what appeared to be a gas lamp. Their heads were bent, one over a book she was reading intently, the other over papers spread on the table, one of which she was writing on with a tightly clutched pencil.

      Something about the simple tableau tightened her throat. She felt a yearning that startled her with its power, especially since she couldn’t even put a name to what she was yearning for.

      She was happy enough in Cleveland. Her work was rewarding, if a bit routine, something that would surprise most whose idea of the FBI came from film or television.

      Caleb wouldn’t have those ideas, she thought suddenly. Because he wouldn’t have been influenced by either of those things. Most times when she thought of life without the technology everyone relied on, it was with a wondering shake of her head. When people learned she had grown up in Amish country, they were often full of questions, mostly about how some people could stand to live like that. Her standard answer had always been that you don’t miss what you’ve never had.

      But now she wasn’t so sure they weren’t better off without the pervasive hammering of popular culture and the twenty-four-hour news cycle. The idea of simply unplugging held a lot more appeal than it once had.

      She gave herself a mental shake. She’d expected to feel at home here in this countryside she’d grown up in, but she hadn’t expected this wave of … what was it, homesickness? How could you feel homesick when you were, essentially, at home?

      “Because you know you’re not staying,” she muttered as she took that last step onto the porch. It was as solidly built as the rest of the house, the boards beneath her feet feeling even and level. In size and layout, it appeared to match most of the houses here in Paradise Ridge, yet it was different, because instead of the traditional and ubiquitous white paint, it was finished with a clear coat of some kind—

      The front door swung open. Caleb Troyer stood there, limned from behind in golden light. She was struck again by how tall he was. Struck by how lean he was. Struck by the strength of his jaw, the structure of his face.

      Struck dumb, apparently, she thought when she realized he’d been looking at her in polite inquiry for several seconds.

      “Miss Colton?” he finally said.

      She said the first thing that popped into her head. “Your house isn’t white.”

      His brows rose. “You came here to tell me this?”

      She felt beyond foolish. She’d interviewed terrorists, serial killers, kidnappers, yet she couldn’t seem to get her mind and her mouth in sync around this man.

      “I was just wondering why.”

      “My father built this house. It’s what he did, build houses. Not just here, but for outsiders, as well. He kept this house this way, with no paint to disguise any flaws, as an advertisement.”

      “That’s allowed?”

      His mouth quirked, and she wondered if she were going to get some kind of lecture about asking impertinent or intrusive questions that had nothing to do with why she was here. She told herself that was part of the job, too, to build a rapport of sorts, but she wasn’t convincing herself.

      “Many things are allowed,” he said, in a tone she guessed he probably used to explain things to his children, “if they can be shown to have a good purpose and not to be harmful to the community.”

      “It’s … beautiful,” she said, somehow stung by that tone, although she thought she hid it well enough.

      “I believe what sold the bishop was my father’s argument that showing the natural state of the wood, which is God’s design, could hardly be a bad thing.”

      Emma blinked. His tone had changed completely, was now warmer, as if sharing a confidence. As, perhaps, he was. It seemed to her a very clever argument.

      “Your father was a smart man.”

      “He was.” She thought he smothered a sigh. “Smarter than I, certainly.”

      “Are you going to invite her inside out of the cold, Father?”

      It was Katie who’d spoken. The girl had moved so quietly even her father seemed startled when she spoke practically from beside his elbow. Emma, facing the room, had seen the movement but said nothing. Watching the natural interaction of a family involved in a crisis like this one was often very illuminating.

      To her amazement, Caleb flushed slightly. “Of course,” he said, his voice gruff but not angry. Embarrassed, perhaps, at being reminded of his manners by his eleven-year-old daughter? “Come in,” he said, backing up and holding the door open.

      She stepped inside. The room was as warm and cozy as it had looked through the window. As with all Amish homes, it was simply furnished. Yet each wood chair, the storage pieces along the walls and the table the girls had been sitting at bore the signs of that fine craftsmanship she’d seen in his shopwindow earlier. The lines were simple, unadorned in the Amish way, but the quality shone through. She guessed those chairs would be as solid in twenty years as they were now.

      Ruthie abandoned any pretense at concentrating on what appeared to be schoolwork on the table before her, got up and approached them.

      “Aren’t you supposed to be looking for Aunt Hannah?”

      “Ruth,” Caleb said sternly, “don’t be rude.”

      Emma couldn’t help smiling. “I don’t blame her for asking. But let me ask you something,

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