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  LOVING THE AMISH QUILTMAKER

  He wanted to kiss that jelly off her bottom lip so badly, he thought he might go crazy. His heart beat a wild rhythm as he stared at her mouth. She stopped breathing and stared at his. He curled his hands around her upper arms and lowered his face to hers.

  And got a ruler right in the eyebrow.

  Esther gasped and then giggled.

  Levi pulled back and rubbed the spot on his eyebrow where Esther’s ruler had gotten him. “Ow.”

  “Oh, dear,” she said, pulling the ruler from behind her ear. “I’m sorry. I was measuring stitches and forgot it was even there.”

  “Am I bleeding?”

  “There’s a little scratch, but you won’t have a scar.”

  “Gute, because I wouldn’t want to tell our children about how I got it.”

  Her eyes glistened with hope and promise. “Our children?”

  Levi wrapped his arms around Esther and pulled her close. “Will you marry me, my dear, darling quiltmaker? I love you more than you will ever know . . .”

  Books by Jennifer Beckstrand

  The Matchmakers of Huckleberry Hill

  HUCKLEBERRY HILL

  HUCKLEBERRY SUMMER

  HUCKLEBERRY CHRISTMAS

  HUCKLEBERRY SPRING

  HUCKLEBERRY HARVEST

  HUCKLEBERRY HEARTS

  RETURN TO HUCKLEBERRY HILL

  A COURTSHIP ON HUCKLEBERRY HILL

  HOME ON HUCKLEBERRY HILL

  The Honeybee Sisters

  SWEET AS HONEY

  A BEE IN HER BONNET

  LIKE A BEE TO HONEY

  The Petersheim Brothers

  ANDREW

  ABRAHAM

  Amish Quiltmakers

  THE AMISH QUILTMAKER’S UNEXPECTED BABY

  Anthologies

  AN AMISH CHRISTMAS QUILT

  THE AMISH CHRISTMAS KITCHEN

  AMISH BRIDES

  THE AMISH CHRISTMAS LETTERS

  THE AMISH CHRISTMAS CANDLE

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.

  The Amish Ouiltmaker’s Unexpected Baby

  JENNIFER BECKSTRAND

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  LOVING THE AMISH QUILTMAKER

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2021 by Jennifer Beckstrand

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  BOUQUET Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4201-5199-2

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4201-5200-5 (eBook)

  ISBN-10: 1-4201-5200-9 (eBook)

  Chapter One

  Esther Zook had four hundred and thirty-five reasons to run screaming from the house and never come back.

  But she wasn’t really a screamer, and she’d certainly never been much of a runner. She found it completely incomprehensible that people actually ran for fun. But most of them were Englischers, and she’d never been able to understand much of what Englischers did, so her confusion was expected.

  Instead of screaming or banging her head against the refrigerator, Esther stood in the middle of her tiny kitchen and read Ivy’s letter over and over again. After all Esther had done for her sister, this was how Ivy repaid her? The world had turned upside down, topsy-turvy in a matter of seconds.

  And then the buplie, the baby, started crying.

  Esther was going to throw up.

  And Esther wasn’t a thrower-upper. She’d never thrown up in her life, even that time Grossmater made her try cow’s tongue at the state fair.

  Esther growled and tore Ivy’s letter in half, then in half again. Then in half again and again. Then she scrunched all the pieces together in her fist, made a raggedy paper ball, and with a great heave, threw the ball across the kitchen. It landed in the only potted plant in the house, caught in the long, feathery leaves of her fern like a bug in a spider’s web.

  A strong knock at the front door startled Esther out of her thoughts and sent a wave of relief crashing over her. Ivy had changed her mind and decided to come back, which was just what Esther would have expected from Ivy. That girl couldn’t make up her mind about what to wear every morning. She was as flighty as a sparrow.

  Esther rushed to the door and threw it open. Instead of Ivy on the other side, a tall, handsome Amish stranger with wavy brown hair and a deep cleft in his chin stood on her porch. He wasn’t Ivy, but he’d have to do. Esther grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled him into the house. “Do you know how to change a diaper?” she said, because that was her immediate need, and she wasn’t going to waste time with unnecessary chitchat.

  Surprise and shock popped all over his face. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Can you change a diaper? Because I can’t, and my schwester has run off.”

  He took a step back and looked as if he was going to bolt like a skittish horse. She tightened her hold on his shirt. She couldn’t let him get away, not when she needed him so desperately.

  He raised his hands as if stopping traffic and slowly looked down at her fist balled around the fabric of his shirt. Hopefully, he wasn’t fussy about wrinkles. “Um. My mammi sent me to look at your bathroom. She says it needs work. There must be some mistake.”

  Esther clenched her teeth as the wails from the other room got louder. “We can sort out the mistakes later. Can you change a diaper or not?”

  “I can,” he said tentatively. He was wise to be suspicious. She was about to draft him. “But I don’t especially like it.”

  She pulled him into the baby’s temporary room and pointed to the portable crib. “The baby is in there. Her diapers are in that suitcase.”

  He drew his brows together and gazed at her, his expression a mixture of confusion and panic. “This is a little . . . I don’t know what to say . . . my mammi said to come look at your bathroom.”

  Esther huffed out a short and impatient breath. “Enough about t
he bathroom. I need you to change the baby’s diaper. Then we can talk about the bathroom. Is that good enough for you?”

  He must have sensed her frustration, or maybe he thought it was best to just agree with the crazy Amish woman. “I suppose so.”

  “Gute. I’ll get a diaper.”

  The stranger looked into the crib as if its contents would jump out and bite him. His mouth immediately relaxed into a dazzling smile. “Well, aren’t you sweet?” he said, and it took Esther a fraction of a second to realize he was talking to the buplie and not to her. He reached down and picked up Ivy’s baby and cradled her in his arms like Esther had seen gute mothers do. The baby immediately stopped crying. Esther caught her bottom lip between her teeth. She probably should have tried that.

  The stranger cooed and bounced the baby like he knew what he was doing. Did he have his own children? He didn’t have a beard, so he probably wasn’t married, but for sure and certain, he seemed like the fatherly type.

  He laid the baby on the twin bed next to the crib. The baby kicked and grinned at him as if he had a whole bag of lollipops in his pocket. “What’s her name?”

  Esther clenched her teeth again as she felt her face get warm. “Winter.” It was embarrassing just saying it.

  The stranger raised an eyebrow. “Winter?”

  “I don’t know what my schwester was thinking.” But that was nothing new. Esther was never sure what her sister was thinking. She handed him the diaper.

  He smiled at the baby and talked to her in that soft little voice people always used with buplies. “Well, Winnie, you sure are a beautiful baby.”

  “Winnie?” Esther said. “That’s much better.”

  The stranger glanced at Esther as if she was a distraction, as if she’d been the one to barge into his house and not the other way around. He slipped the wet diaper off Winter—Winnie—making a crackling sound as he pulled the tabs on each side of the diaper. Then he wrapped his fingers around Winter’s ankles and lifted her bottom so he could slide the clean diaper under her. In a lightning-quick motion, he fastened the diaper around Winnie and onto itself. It happened too fast. “Could you do that again? I’ll watch more closely.” Not that she was planning on changing any more diapers. For sure and certain, Ivy was bound to walk back through that door within the hour.

  He frowned. “How have you managed this long? Your baby must be at least three or four months old.”

  Esther pushed a long and frustrated sigh from her throat. “She’s not my baby.”

  He picked up Winter, being careful of her floppy head, and bobbled her up and down on his hip. “She’s cute.”

  Esther glanced at Winter. She had a shock of fine black hair that floated around her head like a patch of ragweed. And even at four months, she had dark, well-defined eyebrows that made her look older than she was. “Of course she’s cute. That doesn’t mean I know how to change her diaper.”

  The stranger smoothed his thumb down Winter’s soft cheek. The baby studied his face as if he was the most interesting thing she’d seen in her short life. He was definitely the most interesting thing Esther had seen since she’d come to Colorado. “She looks like you,” he said.

  Was that a compliment? Winter was cute and all, but her head was unusually big for her body. Did the stranger think Esther had a big head? “Jah. I guess she looks like me.” Esther’s temper flared at the thought of her schwester’s betrayal. “My schwester showed up last night with Winter. She asked if she could stay for a few days. What could I do? You don’t turn away family.”

  “Of course not.”

  Winter was done being fascinated with the stranger. She squirmed in his arms, made a face, and started crying in earnest. “Do you think she needs another diaper change?” Esther said, because out of the two of them, the stranger was the expert.

  One side of his mouth twitched upward. “I expect she’s hungry.”

  “Hungry? She can’t be hungry. I don’t have anything to feed her.”

  The stranger held Winter close and patted her back gently. It was a sweet gesture, but it did nothing to quiet the crying. “Is there formula in the suitcase?”

  Formula! Esther had watched Ivy make a bottle last night. She knelt down and stirred the contents of the suitcase until she found a white and blue plastic container with a picture of a baby on the front. “This is it. And there’s a bottle on the dish drainer in the kitchen. Ivy washed it last night.” How nice of her. Esther nearly growled out loud. Ivy had abandoned her baby and left Esther with a very serious problem, but at least she’d been thoughtful enough to wash the baby’s bottle before she left. Esther was going to explode with the injustice of it all.

  Since his hands were busy, Esther placed the tub of formula in the crook of the stranger’s elbow. “Do you know how to make a bottle?”

  “You’ll have to hold the baby.”

  Esther never did anything unless she was confident in her ability to do it perfectly, and she wasn’t about to mess up with the baby, especially not with a stranger watching. She snatched the formula from its place on his elbow. “You hold the baby. Tell me how to make the formula.” It couldn’t be that hard.

  The stranger bounced the baby more zealously. Winter cried fiercely. “You just have to read the directions.”

  Directions. Esther knew how to read directions. She made intricate quilts that required concentration and strict following of directions. She could make formula. She read the directions twice, just in case she missed something the first time. “How warm does the water need to be? I have a cooking thermometer.”

  “I don’t think the cooking thermometer will help.”

  “Why not?”

  The baby was getting hysterical, but the stranger stayed as calm as a summer’s morning. How did he do that? “You just have to guess.”

  “Guess? You can’t guess with a baby.”

  Still patting Winter’s back, he strolled into the kitchen and turned on the tap water. “You wait for it to get pleasantly warm, then you fill your bottle.”

  Esther frowned. “Shouldn’t you use purified water? I think we’re supposed to use purified water.”

  That quirky little smile appeared again. “Tap water is fine, and Winnie is too hungry to be picky.”

  Esther sidled up to the sink as if it would bite her and put her hand under the running water. It was a good thing she had a solar-powered water heater. She had all the warm water she wanted.

  “Is it warm?” he said.

  “I can’t decide if it’s lukewarm, pleasantly warm, or unseasonably warm.”

  “Good enough,” he said.

  “Good enough? For someone who claims to know a lot about babies, you seem to be quite irresponsible about bottle temperatures.” Esther opened her gadget drawer and started searching for her cooking thermometer.

  “I never claimed to know anything about babies.”

  “Well, maybe you should have told me that before you barged in here and changed Winnie’s diaper.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “As I remember it, I didn’t barge. You dragged me in.”

  Okay. He had a point, but that in no way excused the tap water idea. “We don’t have time to argue about it now.” No time at all. Winnie’s high-pitched screams would soon break all the windows in Esther’s house. Esther didn’t need any extra house repairs. She’d only just moved in.

  The stranger glanced up at the ceiling and expelled a puff of air from between his lips. He cradled Winnie in one arm, tested the water temperature for himself, and grabbed the bottle from the dish drainer. “Good enough,” he repeated, and at that point, Esther had to agree. It was either tap water or new windows. He filled the bottle with water and handed it to Esther. “Now put the formula in.”

  “How much?”

  A glance up at the ceiling again. “Read the instructions.”

  A little embarrassed that she was so flustered, Esther read the instructions two more times, pulled out the little scoop, and poured three scoops of formula
into the bottle. She spilled quite a bit on the floor, but cleaning up would have to wait. Poor Winnie was out of her head with hunger, and she couldn’t have been looking forward to a bottle tainted with tap water.

  Esther screwed the nipple onto the bottle and started to shake it up, just like the directions said. She shook vigorously, as instructed, and tiny droplets of milk flew from the hole in the nipple. Esther squeaked as formula splattered her nose and cheeks. She glanced at the stranger. A solitary drop of milk hung precariously from a strand of the curly hair that fell over his forehead, and four more drops trickled down his cheek.

  “You have to cover the hole,” he said, calmly wiping the milk from his face. The big drop slipped from his hair and plopped onto Winnie’s cheek. Winnie momentarily stopped wailing.

  For some inexplicable reason, the look on the man’s face struck Esther’s funny bone. She couldn’t keep a smile off her face. “It doesn’t say that anywhere in the directions.”

  He laughed. “They probably should have mentioned it.” He reached out and dabbed at Esther’s cheek with his thumb. Something sweet and warm trickled down her spine. She ignored the sensation and the surprise that followed. She hadn’t allowed a man to break through her defenses in a very long time.

  “Okay, cover the hole,” she said, gathering her scattered wits. She placed her finger over the hole on the nipple and shook the bottle hard.

  Winnie’s face was red, and she took great halting breaths in between screams. Bless his heart, the stranger was doing his best to quiet her, though nothing was working. “That’s probably enough shaking,” he said, wincing at a piercing scream directed into his ear.

  “Ach. Okay.”

  Esther handed him the bottle, and he stuffed it into Winnie’s mouth while she was still upright. Winnie sucked ravenously on the bottle, and the stranger slowly maneuvered her into a supine position in his arms. Carefully, he sat down at the table in one of Esther’s four kitchen chairs and shot a grin in Esther’s direction, flashing his extra-white teeth. “Success,” he whispered.