“A real love, a real marriage, is struggling to make life better for the person you love.”

“That’s just how women do it.” He ground out the words, crumbling. Hell, he was like a granite rock disintegrating. “They say all the right words. Do all the things meant to fool a man into thinking…”

He choked back the rest of the memories too bleak to examine. Images that whirled like black wraiths before his eyes. “Women know just what to do to make you think how wonderful they are. So sweet and dainty and feminine and loving until your heart is caught like a fish on a line and you don’t even know enough to escape until you’re out of the water. Struggling to breathe. Seeing the glint of the knife before it slices you wide open. So when I say get away from me, I mean get away from me!”

Rocky Mountain Man
Harlequin Historical #752

Praise for Jillian Hart’s recent books

High Plains Wife

“Finely drawn characters and sweet tenderness tinged with poignancy draw readers into a familiar story that beautifully captures the feel of an Americana romance.”

—Romantic Times

Bluebonnet Bride

“Ms. Hart expertly weaves a fine tale of the heart’s ability to find love after tragedy. Pure reading pleasure!”

—Romantic Times

Cooper’s Wife

“A wonderfully written romance full of love and laughter.”

—-Rendezvous

JILLIAN HART

ROCKY MOUNTAIN MAN

Available from Harlequin Historicals and
JILLIAN HART

Last Chance Bride #404

Cooper’s Wife #485

Malcolm’s Honor #519

Montana Man #538

Night Hawk’s Bride #558

Bluebonnet Bride #586

Montana Legend #624

High Plains Wife #670

The Horseman #715

Montana Wife #734

Rocky Mountain Man #752

Contents

Prologue

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

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Prologue

Montana Territorial Prison, 1879

Sweat crept like a spider down the middle of his back and stung in the open gashes made fresh with the edge of a bullwhip. Duncan Hennessey didn’t mind the harsh midday sun fixing to blister his skin. No, he’d grown used to the burning heat so that he hardly noticed it. Nor was he bothered by the thirst so strong his mouth had turned to sandpaper and his tongue felt thick and dry.

He did not feel hunger chewing through his stomach. Or the cuts on his calloused hands or the rough stones scraping away the calluses on the insides of his fingers. He’d grown accustomed to it because there was no other choice. For ten cruel winters and as many brutal summers, he’d bent and lifted, bled and labored behind the tall stone walls that caged him.

Today, at sundown, it would all come to an end. For at the end of the day, he would be set free. It was unbelievable, but it was true. His name was on the short list—he’d glanced at it over the shoulder of one of the prison guards. It was really going to happen. He simply had to make it through the rest of this day. That was all. When the sun inched behind the Bitterroot Mountains, his punishment would be over.

He’d been afraid to think of this day. Hopelessness was the killer here, more than the cold or heat or beatings. More rampant than sickness and the endless violence. His soul had hardened into impenetrable iron. He no longer felt. Not hope. Not fear. Not sorrow.

Not even today, as the sun crept along its course through the sky, did he feel a single hope. He knew better. He might be a free man come dusk, but he had to be alive to enjoy it.

“You!” A voice as hard as Montana granite seemed to come out of nowhere. As did the whip snap—the only warning of what was to come. “You’re not sweatin’ hard enough, you worthless rat. Don’t think you get outta puttin’ in your fair share a work. You ain’t free yet.”

It was a game to the guards. To brutalize especially those who were leaving. They thought it funny that while the Territory of Montana might grant a man his freedom at the end of his time served, they held the greater power, to keep him from it. Many had failed to live through the beatings that marked their last day. So he was not surprised by the hiss as the whip sailed through the air.

He knew better than to stop working. As he bent to lift a heavy rock torn apart by the pickax crew, he saw the whisper-thin shadow undulate across the yellow-hued earth. Like a snake rising back to strike and then attacking.

Duncan relaxed his back muscles, surrendering to the pain instead of bracing against it. Pain wasn’t as bad when you gave in to it. The lash sliced through his skin. He bit the inside of his mouth to keep from groaning, for the keen bite of the whip pierced bone-deep.

He breathed in, let the pain course through him until it seemed to flow outward and away from the wound. He heaved the chunk of granite into the wagon, a second slash gnawed into his shoulder blade. He hardly felt it. He was made of steel and no whip made could defeat him.

He chucked another rock into the wagon. More sweat trickled into the newer open gashes and stung like hell. This punishment was meant to reduce him, to defeat him, but he was stronger. Warrior’s blood of the proud Nez Perce tribe flowed through his veins. The Territory of Montana had done its best to strip him of all he held valuable, but it had failed.

He was Duncan Hennessey, grandson of the respected Gray Wolf, and no territorial law and no prison guard could take that from him or beat it from him.

He winced as his torn back muscles spasmed, but he refused to slow the pace of his work. He pushed harder and labored faster. Much awaited him outside the walls. He would not give the guards any further reasons to use their whips. Even as the sun began to slide down from its zenith, marking the day as half over, he controlled his thoughts.

He would not look ahead to seeing the outside world. It would make him yearn, and yearning came hand in hand with need. And need was like a sharp knife—one edge but two sides. It was both strength and weakness that cuts, either way. A man who showed any weakness did not survive.

He intended to survive. He made himself of stone, like the arrowheads of his mother’s people. Like the mountains that ringed the great prairie and rose proudly above the jagged foothills around him. His grandfather had named him “Standing Tall” for the mountains and their jagged profiles that seemed to watch over him as he struggled to lift what had to be a hundred-pound boulder and dispose of it with the other waste rocks.

His wounds could bleed. The guards could strike again. But those great mountains reminded him of who he was. He was strong. He was a warrior.

He would survive this day and then— He banished the image of lush green forests and the sweet tang of pine that rolled into his mind. Not yet. He would not dare to think of the day’s end, for he had the rest of the day to live through.

Only then would he dare to dream of home.

Light from the setting sun flared brightly, spearing over the faces of the mountains and painting the land and sky with bold pink and purple strokes. It was pleasant on Duncan’s face as he walked through the steel gate in the twelve-foot-high stone walls and listened to it clatter closed behind him.

Locking him out. Not in.

I’m free. Duncan found that he could not take a step. The sky stretched out in a brilliant celebration of the coming twilight before him. Such beauty, his eyes had not seen, for the prisoners were marched east at the workday’s end, to the food hall and cells beyond.

Whispers of his identity began to stir within him. Places he’d kept hidden and protected behind walls of steel. He took pleasure in watching an eager owl, spotted white on soft down of brown, glide through the shadows to roost on the top branches of a lodgepole pine. No wind stirred the drying grasses that fringed wagon ruts in the road.

The land seemed to be waiting, holding itself still, and like the owl, he waited. For what, he did not know. An eternity had passed since he’d been able to do as he pleased and go where he chose. For the first time in a decade he did not have to move, not until he wanted to. He could follow the road through the upslope of the rolling hill or take off through the fields or climb into the tree. Whatever he wanted, if he had a mind to.

He was free. Truly free. Gratitude stung his eyes. His throat thickened so he could not swallow. He looked behind him to make sure it was still real. Sure enough, the locked gate reflected the bold fire left from the setting sun. A guard in the tower overhead was watching with a rifle leaning against his shoulder. There was no mistaking the message in the man’s gaze—move along.

Duncan did. He followed the road, for it would lead through mountains and valleys and towns. It would lead him home.

As the last light bled from the sky and stained the faces of the great mountains so it looked as if they were crying tears, Duncan ambled past the owl in the tree. He lifted his tired feet and walked until the prison was nothing more than a small glint of light in the distance. He did not stop until there was no sign of it at all. Until that hellish place was good and truly behind him.

Only then did he kneel and untie the cheap shoes the prison had presented him with. The stiff new clothes rustled and tugged uncomfortably at his skin, the garments courtesy of the Montana territory. How generous. Bitterness welled up, draining his spirit and darkening the twilight. Stars winked to life as he cupped his hands as he knelt beside a small creek and let the coolness trickle over his skin.

The gurgling sound of the rushing water made his vision blur and the thickness in his throat grow worse. He’d never noticed before, but the music from a creek was a beautiful sound. He filled his palm with the fresh goodness and sipped.

He swore he’d never tasted anything more delicious. The clear, clean water wet his tongue, trickled down his throat and refreshed him. It had been too long since he’d tasted such water. While he drank his fill, he considered the grove surrounding him. Pines stretched upward, their sparse limbs and long, fine needles casting just enough cover from view of the road, although he’d encountered no other late-night traveler.

By the looks of things, he was not the only creature to visit the creek. In the damp yellow-brown clay, he recognized the small clefted tracks of deer and antelope and the larger elk, and the wide pads with claw marks of the great black bear. That told him fishing was good here. Yes, it would be a fine place to spend the night.

As he had not done since he was twenty-one, he chose a slim pine branch and broke it to use as a spear. He sharpened it well against the useful edge of a granite rock and chose a quiet place to wait, in an eddy where the creek widened before it whispered down an incline.

His eyes grew accustomed to the night as the last twilight shadows vanished. The pale, luminous darkness was like an old friend. He stirred the quiet water slowly, startling the resting fish. He speared a ten-inch summer trout on the first try.

Gratitude. It filled him like the slow, sweet scents of the night. It brought him hope as he watched the stars flicker to life between the coming clouds and the reach of the silent pines. Rain scented the night breeze, while Duncan cleaned the fish, built a fire and gathered wild onions and lemon grass greens for seasoning, as his grandfather had taught him.

While the fish roasted above an open flame, he made a shelter for the night. By the time raindrops stirred the pine needles overhead, Duncan turned the trout on the spit until it was done. Rain sang with the wind’s moaning accompaniment to tap a rhythm against the earth, while, beneath the thickest of the spreading pine boughs, he remained dry as he ate. The moist, tender meat tasted so good, his mouth ached with the flavors of the seasoned trout. Nothing beat wild lemon grass, his ma used to say.

Ma. I get to see you again. His chest filled with the old grief he’d locked away, for he hadn’t seen her since his sentencing. He allowed himself to remember, to pull out the image of that sad time and look at it. It had been a dark day, for he’d been awaiting transport from Dewey to the territorial prison, and his mother had come to see him.

A regal, proud woman, she’d worn a calico dress, her long dark braids coiled and hidden beneath the matching sunbonnet. No one could ever mistake her for being just a farmer’s wife. She was a warrior’s daughter. Her dark almond eyes, her delicate bronze face, her voice low and sonorous, spoke of strength.

She’d come to comfort him. She’d come to vow she would prove his innocence at any cost.

Through the bars of steel caging him in, he’d seen at once the future. His mother risking all the good that had finally come into her life on the impossible. No jury was going to believe him, for he was a half-breed, and the woman accusing him was the prettiest daughter of the finest family in the county.

The young lady was lying—he’d never touched her—but the chances of proving that…well, there was no way to prove it absolutely. Folks believed what they wanted to, and it was easier to see him as a rapist and a violent felon than to find a seemingly perfect lady guilty of perjury. A daughter of a judge didn’t lie.

He’d wanted to save his mother endless heartache. She’d had a happy life and she should not risk it. He’d done the right thing in telling her to leave and to never look back. To return to her house and her husband and tend her garden and raise her horses and live her days in happiness. To forget she had a son. For he’d been all but as good as dead.

After the first day laboring in the brutal winter cold, he’d realized that he’d told his mother the truth. The young man he’d been, the boy she’d raised, was dead. Only a man as hard and fierce as a Montana blizzard could survive. Only a man without heart or soul would last long in endless labor and brutal conditions. He was no longer Duncan Hennessey, Standing Tall, son of Summer Rose, grandson of Gray Wolf.

He stepped out from under the shelter. But as he lifted his face to the rain and let the soothing coolness wash the day’s grime from his skin, Duncan felt alive. He shucked off the government-issue trousers and button-up shirt, scratchy and rough with cheap starch, and the creek water rushed over his toes. The rain washed over him. And he dared to hope that maybe a part of that young man he used to be had survived.

Lightning burned through the angry clouds. He let thunder crash through him. The years of despair and defeat sluiced away and he lifted his arms to the sky, welcoming the deluge as it pounded over him. Hope winged up within him.

He was Duncan Hennessey, a free man, and he was going home. After what was behind him, what lay ahead could only be better. He had family waiting for him. A life to return to. A future to build. Joy lifted him up like the steam from the warm and wet earth.

Joy, he marveled at the emotion. From this moment on, what despair could there be for a man who had his life, his family and his hope returned to him?

He could not know that what lay ahead would be worse than the cruel years in prison.

Far worse.

Chapter One

Bluebonnet County, 1884

The ancient evergreens grew tall and thick, their wide limbs stretching overhead to block out the deep beautiful blue of the Montana sky.

Betsy Hunter, huddled on her buggy’s comfortable springed seat, pulled the Winchester rifle closer, so it was snug against her thigh. As many times as she’d traveled across the high prairie from her hometown of Bluebonnet to the rugged edges of the great Rocky Mountains, not one frightening thing had happened.

Still, she was jumpy. The wind moaned through the trees and those thick, dark branches swung like monstrous arms and thumped and scraped the buggy top as if those trees had come alive and were trying to get at her. Of course, it was only her fanciful thoughts getting away with her. They were trees rooted into the ground and not menacing predators with sharp claws and big teeth and an appetite for town ladies.

She was perfectly safe from the army of innocent pines and cedars and firs. Not that it made driving along this forgotten road any easier. There was always something about this part of the mountain that felt menacing.

Perhaps, it was because she knew he was close—Mr. Hennessey. A loner, a mountain man and the most rude human being she’d ever met, and since she was an optimist who believed there was something good to like in everyone, that was saying a lot.

Mr. Duncan Hennessey was the most cynical, caustic and bitter human being in existence, if he was human at all. He avoided her as if she brought an epidemic of small pox and the plague, so she didn’t see him often on her weekly trips to deliver and fetch his washing. Her first impression of the man was that he seemed more like a great black bear, although shaven and wearing a man’s clothes, snarling and growling at her from his front step.

“This is the way I want it.” He’d commanded as he’d handed her payment up front, plus additional delivery charges for driving out so far from town. “I’ll leave the bag of clothes here on the step. You come, get it, put the clean bag in its place and leave. Don’t knock on the door. Don’t try to talk to me. Just get in that frilly buggy of yours and go back where you came from.”

“But what if you need special services, like a repaired button?”

He’d seemed to rear up even taller at her perfectly necessary question, although he hadn’t actually moved a muscle. His face, his eyes and his entire mood had turned as dark as a moonless night when a storm was building.

“Just repair the damn thing and leave a note in the bag when you return the clean clothes. I’ll pay you next time around. Never—” he’d lifted his upper lip like a bear ready to attack “—never get anywhere near me, you hear?”

What a perfectly disagreeable man—no, beast. That’s what he was. Really. As if she would want to get anywhere near him! “There’s no need to shout. There is nothing wrong with my hearing,” she’d told him as sweetly as she could manage. “I’ll do as you ask, of course.”

She needed his business.

“See that you do!” His dark eyes had narrowed with a fierce threat before he’d turned and slammed the door to his log cabin shut with the force of thunder.

It was his mood that was tainting the forest, she was sure of it. Every time she drove the rutted and barely visible road, for it was always in danger of growing over, she was probably the only vehicle that used it, she could feel the hate like a dark cloud that emanated from him. It was a far-reaching cloud.

It was not only her imagination, for Morris, her faithful chestnut gelding was uneasy in his traces. He swiveled his ears and lifted his nose, scenting the wind. Alert for danger—alert for any sign of him. Morris didn’t like Mr. Hennessey, either. It was hard to imagine that anyone—or anything—could.

Oh, Lord, she’d reached the end of the road. The trees broke apart to make a sudden clearing. There was the small yard, the stable and paddock, and beyond that the little log cabin on a rise. Halfway between the stable and the house there was a bright honey pile of logs. And a man with an ax.

It was him. He had his back to her as he worked. Sunlight streamed from a hazy sky to shine on the finest pair of men’s shoulders she’d ever seen. Muscles bunched and played in smooth motion beneath skin as stunning as polished bronze. Mr. Curmudgeon himself, shirtless, his dark hair tamed at his nape with a leather thong, was splitting wood like an ordinary man, but there was nothing ordinary about her least favorite customer.

As sunlight worshiped his magnificent shape, he drew back the ax and sent it hurling toward the split log. A great rending sound echoed through the clearing as the blade of steel cracked the wood and two pieces tumbled apart.

The hairs stood up on Betsy’s nape as he set down his ax. He hadn’t looked around, but he’d sensed her presence, for he became larger and taller, if that were possible, so that he looked more than his impressive six-plus feet. His shoulders braced, his arms bowed, his big hands curled into fists. Even from her buggy seat, she saw his jaw clamp tightly and the tendons in his neck bunch.

She was early, she knew it. Judging from the grimace on Mr. Curmudgeon’s face, he was not only surprised, but also angry to see her. Well, that was too bad. He didn’t have to talk to her. She didn’t plan on saying a single word. She had his bag of clean and ironed laundry to deliver, neatly folded as always. He could be as unpleasant as he wished, it was his right and this was his property, after all.

But she didn’t have to let it bother her.

It was difficult, but she managed to nod politely as she drove past where he stood, unabashedly scowling at her unexpected arrival. She’d prepared for him not to be happy, but honestly, she’d never seen such an offensive sneer. His powerful dislike rolled over her like wind off a glacier and it seemed to dim the brightness and warmth of the sun.

Okay, he wasn’t just unhappy. He was furious. She shivered in the suddenly cool air. Where was she going to go? She was already here. Her dear horse had tensed and his soft brown coat flickered nervously as he broke his trot to speed away from the disgruntled beast starting to huff and puff, as if working himself up into a temper.

“I don’t blame you a bit,” she whispered to Morris as she pulled him to a stop in the shade of the cabin’s front door. She climbed out to calm him, the poor thing, and rubbed his forehead the way he liked.

Between the gelding’s erect and swiveling ears, she spotted him stalking toward her like an angry bear, head up, hair whipping in the wind—somehow it had come out of its thong—and his gaze was one black blaze of mad.

“Don’t you worry, Morris, I know just how to handle him.” Betsy lifted the large rucksack from the back of her buggy, careful not to disturb the others. She could feel his approach like a flame growing closer, but she wasn’t afraid. There wasn’t a creature on earth that she couldn’t tame—eventually.

“Mr. Hennessey, good day to you.” She tossed him her most winning smile.

He seemed immune to it. “You’re early.”

“No, this is my new delivery time. It’s changed. If you would have read last week’s note—”

“I have no time for reading idle chatter. Do I owe you more money or not?”

“Goodness, no, it’s just that I gained another client out this way, if you can believe that—”

“I can’t.” Duncan remembered to count to ten, but all he could see was red. Anger built in his head like steam. The top of his head felt ready to blow right off. “Then this will be your new regular time?”

“Exactly!” The woman beamed at him from beneath her yellow sunbonnet’s wide brim. She was everything he’d come to hate—it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t seem to understand how her friendliness provoked him.

He took one wary step back and kept going. Distance. It’s all he wanted. Distance from her. From town, where she came from. In fact, he’d rather be completely alone forever, until the day he died. He hated doing laundry almost as much, and in fact, he rather preferred the somber laundress who used to come. She was sharp, bitter and never had a kind word. He understood that.

But this new woman—he couldn’t get used to her. He didn’t understand her at all. She was naive. Sheltered. She probably came from one of those happy-looking families on one of those pleasant, tree-lined streets—nothing bad ever happened to those people. They didn’t end up doing hard time in prison for another’s crime. They didn’t fail their families. Those people had never lost everything.

The image of his mother’s grave, marked by only a small stone that did not even bear her name, flashed into his vision. Bitterness filled his mouth and choked him. His heart had stopped existing years ago. The fact that it was beating in his chest made no difference. Like a dead man, he had no future, no hopes, nothing at all.

Nothing but resentment for the slender female and those like her. She wore that frilly yellow calico dress—the one that irritated him the most—for it swirled around the toes of her polished black shoes. She left the rucksack of clean clothes neatly on the front step, as she always did, walking with light, bouncing steps as if her feet didn’t quite reach the ground.

Something so delicate and sunny did not belong anywhere near him.

He turned his back, hefted up the ax again and sank it into the pine log with all his strength. The wood rent, two halves flew into the air and tumbled to the ground. He took his time positioning the wedge before he struck again.

He could feel her watching him. Her wide, curious gaze was like an unwanted touch on his bare back. It was indecent, he knew, to work in the presence of a lady without wearing his shirt, but this was his land. He lived far away from civilization for a reason, so he could do what he wanted. There was nothing this woman, or any woman like her, had that he needed.

He didn’t care if he offended her, and if he did, then all the better. Maybe she’d leave faster.

But no, she was taking her time. Carefully positioning the laundry in the back of the buggy—apparently there was a complicated system. She seemed intent, half bent over the small boot of the vehicle, and he could only see the bottom half of her skirt. Good. That was an improvement. Maybe all of her would be gone and he would be alone and safe.

He learned long ago what a woman could do to a man. They were the fairer sex, or so he’d been told, but he knew better. A pretty face could hide a deceitful and ruthless heart more easily than an ugly one. He had to admit that Betsy Hunter was one of the prettiest women he’d ever seen.

Not beautiful, she wasn’t exactly that. He’d seen enough women in his time to know that beauty had its own aloofness. Betsy Hunter was not a cool vision. No, she was something far more appealing. She was like the sun. She shone from the inside out. Her lovely brown hair always seemed to be tumbling down from its pins to blow in the wind and tangle around her face. She was as slender as a young willow and she moved like a wild mustang, all power and grace and fire.

She straightened from her task and he could see more than just the swirling hem of her skirt. That was not an improvement. He was a man, and a man with needs long unfulfilled, and his eyes were hungry, he could not deny that. He watched her soft round bosom shiver as she hurried to her horse’s side. Her lush bow-shaped mouth had to taste like sugar, he decided, when she leaned close to speak to her gelding.

No wonder the animal preened and leaned into her touch. Duncan envied the gelding for the way it enjoyed the light strokes of her gentle fingers.

Desire pulsed in his blood, growing stronger with each beat. He watched her spin on her dainty black shoes. Her ruffled hem swirled, offering a brief look at her slim, leather-encased ankles. Which made him think of her legs. Walking as she was, with the wind against her, her petticoats were no protection. The cotton fabric molded to her form and his gaze traced the curve of her hips and the length of her fine thighs—

“I’ll see you next week, Mr. Hennessey!” she called cheerfully, waggling her fingertips to wave goodbye.

It was such an endearing movement, and it shocked him that he noticed. That longing roared up within him for what he could never have, for what he could never let himself want. What was wrong with him? He forced the heat from his veins. He turned into cold steel.

One pretty woman had cost him everything. He would never be fooled again, not by Miss Hunter or by anyone like her. It was fitting that she climbed into her fancy little buggy and hurried her horse down the road. Good riddance. He didn’t like how her gentle smile twinkled in her sky-blue eyes. He really disliked the lark-song music of her voice.

In fact, he hoped to never see her again. Next Friday at one in the afternoon he would make sure he was long gone. Out hunting or just out for a twenty-mile walk. Gunmen could attack, a wolf could stalk her, or she could break an axle on that expensive buggy of hers, and he wouldn’t care. He’d keep away from her.

No woman was his lookout. No, not ever again.

He gave thanks when the fir and pines guarding his land closed her from his sight. All he heard was the faint squeak-squee-eak of a buggy wheel and then nothing but silence.

Just the way he liked it.

Well, that hadn’t gone too badly, considering. Betsy waited until she was certain Mr. Hennessey was well out of sight before she retrieved her lunch pail from beneath the seat.

As she unwrapped her tomato, lettuce and salt pork sandwich, she felt sorry for her least-favorite customer—although, on objective terms, he was her best client. He paid extra delivery fees, for he was far out of her usual delivery area. It was nearly an entire afternoon’s round trip. Twenty miles one way. Mr. Curmudgeon—oops! Mr. Hennessey—paid more to have his laundry brought to him than for the actual washing and ironing itself. With the county having come upon hard times from storms and drought, she couldn’t afford to alienate a single customer.

Which is what troubled her as she bit into her sandwich. The crisp salty pork and sweet fresh tomato and her ma’s rye bread made her stomach growl all the harder, it was so good. She chewed, planting the water jug between her thighs to hold it steady while she worked the stopper with her free hand. It gave with a pop and she took a long cool swing.

Much better. Dealing with Mr. Difficult was always a trial, but she’d managed to do fairly well this time. He’d been surprised to see her—she’d known he would be. He’d growled and given a very intimidating scowl, but he hadn’t fired her. He wasn’t going to. He couldn’t fool her. She had taken his measure long ago. Her Mr. Curmudgeon was a wounded beast whose snarl was much worse than his bite.

He was simply an unhappy and distrustful loner. She wondered what had made him like that. Had he always been so bitter? What heartbreak could have possibly made him that way? What would compel a man to retreat from civilization and live alone in the wilderness, over twenty miles from the nearest town?

Whatever happened to him, it had to have been terribly tragic. Betsy tried to imagine the possibilities as she transferred the half-eaten sandwich into her driving hand and dug in her little lunch pail with the other. The image of Duncan Hennessey, shirtless, his glorious male form kissed by the brazen sun, troubled her. He was one fine-looking man. Too fine for the life of a recluse. It was a woman that had broken his spirit. Maybe she’d jilted him. Or maybe she’d died.

Yes, she knew that pain. Although she’d been a widow for over five years now, the sadness of losing Charlie remained. If she hadn’t had a loving family and wonderful friends to keep her firmly in this world, she could see how that painful grief could drive a person to a solitary life.

Losing a loved one hurt more than anything. It was one reason she’d never been able to remarry. The thought of being so vulnerable again frightened her. Her life, her heart, her very soul had been devastated. Maybe that was why Mr. Hennessey was so unpleasant. He never wanted to let anyone into his heart again.

Her heart twisted in sympathy. As beastly as he was on the outside only pointed to a deep, private pain. The poor man. That’s why she never allowed his surly behavior to trouble her. As she unwrapped her slice of strawberry pie, she vowed to be even friendlier the next time she crossed his path.

With her mouth watering, she took a rich, creamy bite. Sweet berries burst on her tongue and she moaned in delight. She savored the lovely flavors, for she believed that the enjoyment of a good dessert should never be rushed.

For no reason, Morris froze in the middle of the path and the buggy jerked at the sudden stop. She looked up in surprise as the fork tumbled out of her fingers, taking her next bite of pie with it. She watched the steel utensil and ruby-red strawberries tumble between the dash and the whiffletree. Before dismay could settle in, she realized her horse was twitching, as if a thousand flies were crawling over his warm coat, but there wasn’t a single fly anywhere.

What was wrong with Morris? There was no danger in sight, although it was very shadowy. The ancient trees blocked most of the light from the sky and they seemed to moan, but that was just the rising wind rubbing limbs together.

“It’s all right, sweet boy.” She reached to set the brake so she could hop out and retrieve her fork.

Morris’s ears swiveled, as if he heard some danger approaching, and he gave a frightened whinny. That simply couldn’t be a good sign. Betsy pushed her meal aside, her dessert forgotten and reached for the Winchester.

It wasn’t on the seat where it was supposed to be. Her tin lunch pail sat there instead, emitting the scent of wonderful strawberries. Where did the gun go? The tiny hairs along Betsy’s nape stood straight on end and tingled. She wanted her rifle.

As Morris whinnied again, she dropped to her knees on the floorboards. There it was. She grasped the sun-warmed barrel in time to see a shadow move between the trees—a tall figure with wide shoulders and brawny arms. She caught a glimpse of dark hair above harsh black eyes. That wasn’t Mr. Hennessey, was it?

The branches parted and it wasn’t Mr. Hennessey breaking through the thick undergrowth. It was a bear.

The blood rushed from her head as the great black bear reared up on his hind legs, using his powerful limbs and claws to break away the impeding evergreens. Thick boughs snapped like gunfire, but it was a small sound compared to the bear’s furious roar. His enormous jaws twisted open, exposing huge rows of teeth. Sharp, jagged teeth made for tearing his prey into small, manageable bites.

Time seemed to slow. She couldn’t lift the gun fast enough. The bear was reaching out with his enormous humanlike hands, except for the lethal claws at the tips. As he roared again, saliva dripped from his mouth. The beast was looking for lunch, and she doubted he wanted her sandwich or her pie, although they were both very good. He was eyeing her horse!

In a strangely eerie slow motion, the bear began to lunge and she positioned the Winchester against her shoulder and aimed. As the bear emerged onto the road, her finger found the trigger and, pulse thudding in her ears so hard she was shaking with the force of it, she squeezed. Light and smoke exploded from the steel barrel. The gun kicked hard against her shoulder and leaped out of her hands. The bear roared again and slapped at his left arm.

Like an indignant human, the creature gazed down at his fur, saw the blood, and attacked. Betsy fumbled for the gun, but her right arm was numb and didn’t move as fast as she wanted it to. Morris chose that moment to leap into a full gallop. The buggy jerked, she lost her balance and tumbled right off the floor, rolling head over skirts in midair. For the brief instant she was upside down, with her petticoats spilling over her face and the ground rushing up to meet her, she caught sight of her fork shimmering in the bright sunshine.

It was an odd thing to notice, she thought in the last few seconds she had left to live. The bear’s enormous hairy feet were pounding toward her and her thoughts flashed forward in time. If she somehow lived to tell this tale to her dear friends, whom she was to meet this afternoon for tea, she could imagine how they would laugh hysterically about the bear’s feet. It would sure make a funny story, how she was almost eaten by a bear while eating her lunch—

The ground stuck her hard in the back and seemed to jar some sense into her. Her body impacted next. Pain thudded through her. Air left her lungs in a whoosh. Suddenly a shadow rose over her and she squeezed her eyes shut. She no longer had hold of her gun. She was defenseless and this was it—this was death. She didn’t want to see the bear’s terrifying teeth and lethal jaw opening wide to take a bite of her. Fear turned her blood to ice and there was nothing she could do. There was no way to stop him—

A gunshot cannoned above the pounding sound in her ears. The bear roared a final time before the earth quaked around her. Betsy opened one eye and realized the bear, with blood oozing from a bullet wound between his eyes, was lying right beside her. Another creature was towering over both of them, casting them in his significant shadow.

For a moment Betsy wondered if it was another bear, for that was the impression he gave—of raw lethal power and wild fury. But bears didn’t wear leather boots and denims or carry a polished rifle.

Duncan Hennessey stared down at her with a grimace so terrifying he made the charging bear seem friendly. She tried to drag air into her spasming lungs and failed. As she coughed and gasped, she looked at the dead bear with longing.

She would have much rather dealt with that beast than the one towering over her, loaded gun in one hand and eyes black with rage.

Chapter Two

Duncan noticed the fork and the strawberries gleaming bright red in the middle of the grassy road and took in the scent of fried, crispy salt pork. Women. Most of them didn’t have a drop of common sense. Not that he cared.

He’d done the right thing in coming to her rescue, but it only made him more annoyed. He was doing fine alone. It was other people that brought misery. Today, he’d been content enough to work on his winter supply of wood. But a woman comes along and, by getting herself nearly killed, forces him to become involved.

He hadn’t run full-speed through the forest because he’d been concerned about her. Nope. He simply couldn’t let a pretty woman get hurt, because she was bound to be missed and someone would come looking for her and blame him for whatever happened.

Really. He was just acting out of his own best interests and not some noble code to protect the weaker. He didn’t care about her at all, even if her big blue eyes were wide with fear and her softly ample bosom rose and fell as she gasped for air. He steeled his feelings against her, because it was the only thing he could do. Women came with a cost. He’d paid with his life, his future and his family.

It had been too much.

She was safe now. What he ought to do was leave her heaving for breath in the road and let her find her horse on her own. Maybe that would teach her a lesson, he reasoned. What he really wanted was to get away from her before any misunderstandings occurred. You could just never tell what a woman was plotting. Even with something as innocent as this.

He pushed the panic rising within him away and headed for the downed bear. Fine, a bear had attacked her, but even this could get twisted around. All anyone might see was a horse and empty buggy fleeing the forest, the pretty young woman missing, and it would start all over again.

The images raced through his mind like a river at flood stage, speeding and fingering into little eddies so that more memories came to life. The noise of the crowds, the jeers of hatred, the cold metal encircling his wrists and the final clank as the marshal closed them.

He could feel the agony in his mother’s broken heart and, in bleak devastation, felt as lost as the darkness in the cell’s blackest corners. The rank odors of the windowless holding cell filled his nose, where he could not sleep because he couldn’t see the sky. He’d lain awake waiting for the night to pass.

Waiting to see if they would hang him come morning.

No, that wasn’t going to happen again. Never again. Rage made him as hard and as cruel as the mountains behind him. He refused to touch the woman. Her skirts were askew and her bare knee was showing. He made sure he kept his distance as he knelt so they were eye level. Her porcelain features crinkled as she fought to breathe. She looked at him with the question clear on her face. Help me?

Only so much, lady. He checked to make sure the bear was good and truly dead. No pulse beat in his throat and his chest was as still as the earth. Good. Now he could think about what to do with the woman. “Just relax. Try to breathe in slow. You’re gonna be just fine.”

Her gaze latched on to his, and he felt the impact as if she’d reached out with her soft dainty hands and grabbed hold of his throat. More panic zipped through his system as if he’d been struck by lightning. He felt her fear, and he understood. She’d had a pretty good scare. That could unsettle a person.

He’d done time as a soldier in the Great War between the states and had come across enough wounded there, in prison and in these mountains that he knew by looking she wasn’t hurt. Just scared. Fear could be a living thing, he knew, seizing up a person.

“C’mon now, you just got the wind knocked out of you.” He simply needed to get her thinking about something besides the dead bear beside her. “What did you think you were doing, eating in these woods? It’s feeding time for the bears. You know they hibernate, right?”

The fear glazing her eyes was fading. Air rasped into her lungs.

Being angry with her was working, so he kept on going. “Bears eat a lot before they hibernate. That means they are hungry. Any person with a speck of sense knows to stay away from hungry bears. But not you. You open up a salt pork sandwich and strawberries. Strawberries.”

He hated to think what would have happened if he hadn’t gone against his principles and come running when he’d heard her gunshot.

She was breathing nearly regular now and the color was back in her face. He fought the urge to help her up and to treat the cut bleeding on her hand. It was the same protective instinct that had gotten him in trouble long ago, so he straightened and began to back away until he’d put a few more yards between them.

Now what should he do? Her horse and vehicle were gone, and there was no telling where he’d find them. She was female, and they were alone together. He didn’t like her, he didn’t trust her and he didn’t want her anywhere near him.

He couldn’t leave her alone.

She was a little thing. He’d never studied her this close before. A tiny blanket of freckles lay on her nose and cheeks. Her eyelashes were thick and dark, and there was something so vulnerable in the way she sat up and wiped the grass seeds out of her hair with a shaking hand.

Something moved deep down within the iron weight that had replaced his heart. It wasn’t a feeling—he didn’t have feelings. He’d found no need for them, but he couldn’t rightly say what hurt where his heart used to be.

It was probably indigestion. That’s what he got for running hard through the forest right after his noon meal.

The problem was still before him. The woman. What should he do with her? “Can you stand?”

“I think so.” She smoothed her skirts as if gathering up her strength, but she didn’t get on her feet.

Fine, he’d carry her, saddle up a horse and make sure she was able to sit in the saddle—

Branches broke with a snap-snap in the woods behind him. The woman’s eyes flashed wide and utter fear twisted on her lovely face. Duncan pivoted, hauled his rifle up by the stock, but the big black bear was moving fast.

Too fast.

He got off a shot—missed the heart—and cocked, but that was all before the bear pushed away the smoking rifle barrel with the mighty swipe of one sharp claw.

Oh, hell. Duncan watched his favorite rifle crack apart and fall in two pieces to the rocky ground. Good thing he was prepared. He drew so fast, he got off a shot, but two bullets in the chest didn’t stop this bear. He charged, and both foot-wide paws scraped deep into Duncan’s shoulders.

Claws sliced him like a dozen razor blades. He was a dead man. Duncan tried to fight, but the bear was twice as strong and clawed through both shoulder muscles and downward, breaking ribs. Duncan fell to his knees as the bear knocked him to the ground and bent to sink his teeth into Duncan’s neck.

It’s over. Just like that. Duncan met the bear head-on, fighting even as the animal’s jaws parted for the death bite. He saw the woman out of the corner of his eye. She had climbed to her feet and was shouting and throwing rocks at the big animal, but the hunks of granite didn’t harm the bear. Or stop him. Still, Duncan appreciated the effort as his left hand groped along the top of his boot.

The first prick of incisor drilled into Duncan’s throat, but his fingers closed around the knife handle. He was dying, fine, but he’d take the bear with him. He’d make sure the pretty laundry lady with her sunshine and freckles would live.

With a roar, Duncan slid his bowie knife into the bastard’s ribs. He ignored the spray of blood as he twisted and turned the blade deep. He felt death come in a swift black wave that drained the light from his eyes and the strength from his body. He was falling. Vaguely he felt the brutal impact of hitting the rocky ground, knew blood was gushing out from his neck and chest, but the bear was dead. That was all that mattered.

He was drifting like a dying leaf on the wind. Her voice was the last thing he heard. She was speaking his name, calling to him, but he was already floating away.

When he looked down, he saw her huddled in the road, flanked by two dead bears, cradling a bloody man with his head on her lap. Her hair had tumbled free and her dainty yellow dress was stained crimson.

It was the sound of her tears that drilled deep into his steeled soul.

She was crying for him.

Betsy held on to him. She didn’t know what else to do. Blood was everywhere and her nightmare was happening all over again. Times she’d rather forget rolled forward and she couldn’t squeeze off the rush of memories. Years ago she’d held another dying man in her lap just like this and watched the blood drain out of him. The doctor had worked frantically but couldn’t save her husband.

How on earth could she hope to save Mr. Hennessey? Despair overwhelmed her. Trembling, she wiped blood from his face. His was a strong face, with high and sharp cheekbones and a profile like the Rocky Mountains that soared so strong and unfailing into the cloudy sky. But Duncan Hennessey was not made of granite, no, he was as vulnerable as any human. No growling demeanor and intentional rudeness could make him more immune to death.

Blood. There was so much of it streaming from the open tears in his flesh. Panic threatened to overtake her, but she couldn’t let it win. She couldn’t sit here, holding his head and fighting off a case of the vapors when she had to try to save him. She had to think. She had to remember what the doctor had done for Charlie.

She had to stop the bleeding, she knew that. But how? There were so many wounds, and the buggy was long gone. All she had were her petticoats, so she yanked them off and tore at the fabric. As fast as she could, she bunched wads of muslin into the wounds. The white material quickly wicked up the blood, turning red even as she pushed more into place.

Okay, that wasn’t going to work. Her fingers felt clumsy as she pulled her little sewing pack from her pocket. The needle was small, but she had enough thread to sew the worst wound.

She pressed her hand against the curve where shoulder met neck and the bleeding slowed. She broke off a length of thread with her teeth, working quickly. She couldn’t let him die. She wouldn’t. But she knew it was hopeless as she licked the end of the thread to stiffen it. She could feel his pulse quicken as she threaded the needle.

Crimson continued to pool on the earth beneath him, staining them both, making it impossible to see as she probed the gaping wound. Her stomach went weak and her knees to water at the sight of torn muscle and exposed bone. As if she were basting a collar, she nudged the edges of jagged skin together, fitting them as a seam and took one stitch deep. Then another.

Her heart beat as fast as his. A creature in the shadows howled. She couldn’t see it through the dense evergreens, but she could feel it. A wolf pacing and waiting for the right moment to strike.

She’d stopped the most profusely bleeding wounds. Encouraged, she kept going. He lay as if dead, but he was still breathing. It wasn’t enough. He was going to die, just as Charlie did. This time there was no doctor nearby. There was no one to help. Shelter was over a third of a mile through the woods where the brisk winds were quickly spreading the scent of fresh spilled blood.

If meat and strawberries had brought a hungry bear and his mate, then what would this bring?

Fear shivered through her. The forest had gone quiet and it felt as if the trees had eyes. Had every predator within a five-mile radius come to hunt?

Mr. Hennessey lay as limp as a rag doll, all six-feet-plus of him. The hue had washed out of his face and he looked ashen and lifeless. His chest barely rose with each breath. His pulse fluttered wildly in the base of his throat.

Death. It hovered close, waiting for him. Betsy knew. She had felt it before. She’d been there when it had stolen her husband away.

But this man, he had no woman to mourn him. He lived alone. If he were to die, then how sad that was. With no one to miss him, then it would be as if his life never was. He didn’t deserve that. Nobody did. She brushed her fingertips along the stubbled curve of his jaw. She stared into the shadows that were growing darker as the sun sank in the sky. The silence seemed to grow and lengthen. The small animals of the forest were hiding from the hungry creatures that watched and waited.

She had to prepare for the worst. She retrieved the handgun from where it had landed in the tall grass and checked the chambers. Five shots were left. She closed the chamber and cocked it.

Thank goodness she’d grown up with four brothers. She’d been around guns all her life. She took some comfort in that. The weapon was ready to fire and she was confident she could use it. If only she felt as confident with her aiming ability.

“Don’t worry.” She let her hand brush across his hairline and along his temple. She hoped if he was somehow aware of what was happening, that she could give him some comfort. “I promise, whatever happens, I’ll stay right by your side.”

There was no answer. She didn’t expect one.

Because the sun was slipping behind the tall trees, it felt as if the day were almost over. Long shadows crept across the ground, chasing back the scant amount of sunlight. The wild sunflowers with their petal faces began to bow.

It was as if the entire mountainside waited.

She had to move him, but memories haunted her—of the doctor and Charlie’s brother moving him from the barnyard to the house. That’s when the wounds had broken open again and there’d been no stanching the blood loss. Charlie had been dead less than five minutes later.

She thought she spotted a movement in the shadows. The glint of luminous yellow eyes behind a fern leaf, and then only shadows.

She had a small length of thread left. She’d work until it was gone and then she’d have to move him.

He didn’t know how it happened, but he was back in the quarry. The sun blistered his skin and burned through flesh and bone until he was on fire from the inside out. His eyes stung from the salty sweat pouring down his face and pain was a living enemy that could not be killed. The places where his flesh gaped open from the lash of the foreman’s whip throbbed fiercely. He was beyond exhaustion and thirst. Hunger and hope.

He heaved the rock from the ground into the wagon behind him again and again. Minute after minute, hour after hour without end. The sun was motionless in the cloud-streaked sky.

It was his second day as a guest of Montana territory. His second day serving time. The prison clothes were scratchy and too tight at the shoulders. His stomach twisted in nausea from the morning’s gruel. Although nearly ten hours had passed since he’d eaten, his breakfast remained a sour lump in his gut.

He left bloody prints on the twenty-pound boulder he heaved into the wagon. As he stepped back, his chains jangled and tore at the raw flesh above his ankles. The boulder, gaining momentum, rolled over the pile, bounced off the railing on the other side and sailed over the edge.

The quarry silenced. Duncan read the faces of the men surrounding him, chained as he was, and saw the knowledge of what was to come. He was not surprised by the piercing sting of the bullwhip or the burst of pain spraying across his shoulders. He stumbled beneath the force of the next blow; sagged against the wagon, clinging to the rail boards as the whip snaked and hissed and sliced.

“Maybe that’ll teach ya,” a hate-filled voice growled out. “Now git back to work.”

His vision was hazed. Dark spots swirled before his eyes and shock rolled through his body. He fought nausea and dizziness to kneel and heft another boulder into the wagon.

Across the rails, there was a hard thud. The boulder that had fallen was back in the pile, as it should have been, lifted into place by a man who was also bleeding. Duncan realized that he’d not been the only one punished for his mistake.

A week ago at this time of day, he’d been getting ready to close up his shop. He’d have been thinking ahead to getting supper over at the hotel—it was usually fried chicken on Fridays with fluffy biscuits and fresh buttered peas and mashed potatoes. As he did every evening, he would have followed the meal with coffee and a slice of pie and, content with his life, he would have settled down at his lathe to work before bedtime.

It seemed impossible that he’d lived that life, that it had ever been real. Now it seemed like a dream, Duncan thought hours later, when twilight fell. His old life was as if it had never been.

At the workday’s end, when the last light was wrung from the sky and it was nearly ten o’clock, Duncan stumbled along the path through the quarry and into the prison yard, where he lined up among the other men waiting to enter the dining hall. How was he going to eat feeling the way he did?

“Hey, you.” It was the man who’d returned the fallen boulder to the wagon. The whip’s lash across his forehead had clotted and left a rough black-red streak between his eyes.

Duncan didn’t see the first blow. It had come from another direction. The second punch had his knees knocking and he fisted his hands, but it was eleven men to his one, and he didn’t have a chance. He choked on blood as he fought off one blow after another until he caught a right hook beneath his jaw and landed face-first in the dirt. A kick struck him in the gut. The beating continued until the line moved forward, and he was left to huddle, bleeding and vomiting.

The young man he’d been had died in the dark prison yard that evening, wearing prisoner’s garb and a convict’s ankle cuff. The man who’d risen from the ground and wiped the blood from his eyes was someone else. There’d been no softness or emotion in the cold-eyed figure that took his place in line. Who’d turned his back on the small glimpse of sky above the high walls.

Like a dead man, he’d had no feelings, no dreams, no needs.

He was made not of flesh and bone, but of iron and will.

It was that iron will that remained as the pain changed and he fought to open his eyes. It was twilight. He was bloody and hurting. But he was not trapped in the nightmare.

He was in a forest, gazing up at a woman. Her features were blurred because he couldn’t see clearly. He hurt everywhere, as if he’d been lit on fire, but that didn’t bother him nearly as much as the woman. Who was she?

“Don’t you dare die on me, do you hear? Not that men ever listen to a woman, no, they wouldn’t dream of doing that, but don’t let me down, Mr. Hennessey. Stay alive for me, all right?”

Lustrous curls tumbled around her face, tangled and wild, and her sweet heart-shaped face was familiar. Worry crinkled the corners of her eyes and emphasized the dimple in the center of her delicate chin. She was a petite thing, and she smelled good. Like sunshine and clover and those little yellow flowers that used to grow on the fence in his mother’s backyard.

Pain scoured his chest. His thoughts cleared and he knew where he was. The dark shadows were his trees and it was his laundry lady kneeling over him with her riot of dark gold curls bouncing everywhere, thick and lustrous and rippling from the wind’s touch.

Another wave of pain crashed through him. He was here, in the present, the past vanishing like fog.

Her eyes, so blue and gentle, gleamed with an unspoken kindness. “Oh, thank Heaven. I knew you were too ornery to die on me.”

But the way she said it wasn’t harsh. No, it was tender, as if she didn’t think he was ornery at all. And he was. All he could think about was how he despised women like her, so delicate and soft and sheltered. She wanted something. All women wanted something. A woman like that had ruined him. Maybe it was bitterness, or maybe it was just his broken spirit that made him believe a woman could be no other way.

“What do you want?” he snarled as she whipped out a needle and stuck it into his neck. “I don’t have a lot of money.”

“Money? I might charge you a fee for doing your washing and ironing and mending, Mr. Hennessey, but I’m not about to bill you for patching you up. Not when you saved my life as you did.” She tugged the thread through his skin, quick and tight.

Agony drilled through him. He lifted his head and tried to get up, but his body wouldn’t move. He was wet with his own sweat and blood, and he began trembling. She leaned over him, giving him a perfect view of her white chemise. Lace edged the top where the soft creamy curves of her full breasts strained at the fabric.

Panic overrode pain. He was alone with a woman in her underclothes. That couldn’t be good. Memories rushed into his mind and he was too weak to stop them. Memories of another woman in her lace-edged chemise, memories of a pack of men shouting and beating down his door. The splinter of wood breaking. The rage of the crowd as it crashed through his shop—

“No!” He heaved to the side, but his body felt distant and wooden. His strength was gone. Gone. No, that wasn’t right. He had to move, he had to get away from her—

“Wait, oh, no! You’re tearing up my work. Please, Mr. Hennessey.” Her cool hands grabbed at him and pushed him back down. Her face hovered over him, full of concern, like an angel of mercy. He didn’t believe in mercy. “Please, you have to let me do this. You have to. I can’t watch another man die. So you have to let me help you. That’s all I want to do.”

“I don’t want your help. Get away from me.”

“You’d rather bleed to death, is that it?”

“Yeah, now get off me.”

“No. I’m going to save you whether you like it or not.” She rose over him and sat on his waist. Silver tears filled her eyes but they didn’t fall, and he could only stare.

Were those genuine? He remembered how it had seemed he was looking down on her and she’d been crying over him. He could see the faint tracks on her cheeks.

She meant to help him, he could read that plain enough on her face. But she would bring him harm, just the same. Whatever it cost him, he had to get up, he had to find her horse and buggy and send her on her way. She’d bound him with her dress and petticoats, and while any fool could see the yellow gingham wrapped around his wounds, it didn’t change the fact that she was alone with him—in her undergarments. And with his past—

He had to get up. He tried. He really did. His left arm moved and his left hand scrabbled along until he seized on something. He turned toward it. The low branch of a tree. It looked sturdy enough. He pulled, dragging his body along the gritty earth. Rocks jabbed into his spine, but he was moving. Something hard slid off his chest and poked him in his ribs.

His Colt .45. Relief made him forget about the woman trying to hold him down, talking a mile a minute as she kept on stitching. He pulled on the tree branch with all his might. The tree shook, the limb groaned as if on the breaking point, but he was sitting up. Now if he could just stand—

“No, hold still, I have to knot it.” Her words came in and out, fading along with his vision.

Duncan fought the blackness. Breathing hard, as if he’d worked a sixteen-hour shift in the quarry. He fought to stand. And then he saw movement in the shadows. A wolf leaped through the trees.

He let go of the branch and grabbed the Colt. Missed. His reflexes were too slow and his hand was no longer working.

There was a shot, a flash of fire, and the last thing he remembered was his laundry woman kneeling beside him, protecting him with her body, as she fired off a second round.

The darkness stole everything—his sight, his hearing, his thoughts, and even the pain. There was nothing but blackness taking him down like deep water.

But he wasn’t alone. He felt soft fingertips brush his brow. It was the woman.

Chapter Three

It was hard to look at this unconscious man and to not remember another. Betsy let the swell of sadness fill her up. Time had healed her grief, but she’d never forgotten. When Charlie had died, it had been a moonless night like this, too, and silent, as if the entire world had lain in wait for him to pass. She’d been just as helpless then.

Like Charlie, Duncan Hennessey had lost too much blood. He’d fought her, breaking open his worst wound. Getting him down the rocky road and shooing off the coyotes that were brazenly following them had drained every ounce of her optimism. She’d had to finally fashion a torch out of a branch and keep it lit to ward off the more dangerous predators.

It had worked, and now the stout log walls of his house protected them. But the animals were outside the door. Even with a torch, she didn’t dare head out into the night to fetch more water. She wrung the washcloth from the basin at her side and carefully cleansed the dried blood from his chest. His pulse thudded too fast at the hollow in his throat and his breathing was shallow.

He wasn’t nearly as disagreeable unconscious. He was a big man, over six feet, and his build was strong. Even slack, muscles were visible beneath his sun-bronzed skin. He radiated pure masculine strength, as if it came not only from his physical form but also from his spirit.

His skin was hot. The male scent of him—salty and woodsy—made her remember what it was like to be married. To share intimacy and morning cups of coffee and quiet evenings, of the immeasurable emotional bond that bound a man and wife. She hadn’t minded these years spent alone. That didn’t mean she liked it. Only that she hadn’t found a man who she could laugh with. One who seemed to fit with her.

The lantern light flickered. The oil was low. She should get up and search through his cupboards for more, but she didn’t want to leave him. Not unless she had to. He was dying, she knew it. She feared nothing could stop it. And it was her fault. He’d been protecting her.

He moaned low in his throat, troubled by dreams. Was a fever setting in? She leaned her cheek against his brow. He did feel warm, but not too warm. Yet. The pungent odor of boiling onions mixed with the nettles she had stewing on his stove—both smelled nearly done, she figured. Soon she would have to go check on them and see. She’d search for the oil can then.

“In the meantime, just rest.”

The flame writhed and swelled, and the strange orange light swept over the hard crags of his face and the vulnerable underside of his jaw. The shadows seemed to cling to him, as if he belonged to the night. As if there were only the shadow of him remaining.

She finished washing the blood from his chest and wondered, Did she finish stitching the lesser wounds? The horrible gashes spread nearly a foot and a half from his chest to his shoulder. Several were still seeping, but she feared by removing the bandaging, she would break open the clotted places.

He grew still. Was he breathing? Was his heart beating? Fear quickened through her veins as the long second stretched out and then his chest rose faintly, dragging in a ragged breath.

Thank goodness. Just continue breathing, all right? She couldn’t help stroking the iron curve of his face. The rough texture of several days’ growth abraded her fingertips. He was dreaming. His eyes were moving beneath his lids, and his mouth tightened. The hard thin lips that seemed to have been in a permanent frown twisted, not in anger but in agony.

The flame in the glass chimney flared with one last effort before the brightness waned and plunged the cabin into darkness.

Outside the thick walls, a wolf howled. Another answered. So close, she could hear the scrape of paws outside the window. Betsy did not consider it a good sign for the long night ahead. There was no way the predators could find their way inside, but still, it unsettled her to be in a wild land where only the strong and the cruel survived. What benefit did Mr. Hennessey—or any of the mountain men—see in living so far from civilization?

Shivering, and not with cold, she hurried to the warm stove where her home remedies simmered and seasoned. She knew there was a second lantern on the shelf next to the stove. As she struck a match, she heard a thump on the roof overhead and the scrape of claws digging into the wood shingles. A cougar.

The match flared, light glowed, and Betsy quickly lit the cold wick. Bright lemony rays pushed back the wall of darkness, but her fears remained. It was as if death were outside, looking for a way in.

Betsy knew all too well that was one predator no one could lock out.

Duncan saw the light as if from far away. A blurred image that hovered at the edge of consciousness. He felt weighted, as if the air had become heavier than he was and pressed down on him with a mighty force. He could not move. His mouth hurt with thirst. His tongue felt swollen and sandy. The acrid scent of blood filled the air and a noise rushed through the darkness. Something he couldn’t place.

Was he dreaming? Or awake? He didn’t know. Either way, it was memory that swept him backward to the crash of a door breaking open, the frame cracking into pieces. The drum of an enraged mob pulsed and shouted into his workroom. The hum of the lathe and the sharp, pleasant scent of walnut wood faded with the angry shouts and sweating men, the odor of whiskey strong on them.

“There he is!” Eldon Green’s baritone boomed deep with hatred. “Let’s string him up, boys.”

“Hanging is too good for him!” his brother Lindon shouted.

Duncan couldn’t move for a moment. He stared without believing what his eyes were seeing as men he called friends charged at him. Lindon held a rope coiled in one hand, a noose dangling at its end.

Shock numbed him as the table leg he’d been working on whispered to a stop, his chisel tumbling from his hand.

Pain sliced through his chest and he realized it was the noose closing around his neck. He grabbed it with both hands, desperate, panic roaring through him. He had to get it off. This was wrong. All wrong. Why were they doing this?

“Shh.” A low gentle sound tried to chase away the bad dream, which was no illusion but his life. A memory the cool brush of a cloth soothed into nonexistence.

He opened his eyes. He was in his cabin. In his bed. Staring at the circle of light on the open timbers of the ceiling, where lantern light gleamed. Pain began like a bullet, pointed and deep, then streaked outward. He took a shivery breath.

He already knew it was her. The tug of skin, the drag of thread through raw, ruined flesh. His fists clenched and his teeth ground together. There she was at the edges of his blurred vision, her hair falling over her shoulders and the white lace at her chemise. Her creamy skin looked as soft as silk and her sweet summer scent pounded in his head.

He heard the chink of a glass bottle and the glug-glug of liquid pouring. Whiskey. The sharp scent brought back the images of the memory as the noose burned into his throat, choking him as the end of the rope was tossed over the center beam and pulled. Some nightmares were real, and he was looking at another one.

It was night—his cabin was pitch-black. He was alone with her. There were signs of no one else in the room. Who else would be here? And she was in her underclothes, wearing one of his flannel shirts that, unbuttoned, slipped off her shoulders.

He tried to lift his head off the pillow. He couldn’t. His limbs felt as heavy and dull as lead. Weakness washed through his veins. He was too weak to move. Too weak to protect himself. Too weak to put Miss Laundry Lady on his horse and make her leave.

“I was beginning to worry that you would never wake up.” She chatted in that friendly way she had.

The way that he despised—because they weren’t friends. He didn’t want to be friends. He wanted to be left alone. Horror churned up inside him until he could taste the sourness of it filling his mouth. “Just go.”

“And leave you like this? Not for anything.” She seemed to float over him, but then he realized it was the light dancing on the wick. The golden glow lapped at her luminous skin and bronzed her shimmering hair. “I owe you my life. And I’m the kind of woman who pays her debts.”

“Git. Shoo.”

“Go ahead and growl. You don’t scare me a bit.” Her kindness warmed her soft words and added extra beauty to her serene face. She held a tin cup to his lips. “This will help with the pain.”

Whiskey fumes nearly had him coughing. His chest wheezed out and puffed in air, and agony drained him. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t push her away. He couldn’t move.

Shame filled him to the brim with darkness. He managed to turn his head away to stare into the shadowed room. He didn’t have the strength to do more than breathe. He was alone with a woman he couldn’t trust.

He’d rather bleed to death than let her touch him, and the truth was, he couldn’t stop her from it.

“You’ve lost a lot of blood.” She paused as, with a clunk of tin, she set the cup aside. “I’ve sewed up the worst of the gashes, but the truth is, you’re still bleeding. I’m afraid this is going to hurt quite a bit, but I’ll be as quick as I can. And as careful.”

He didn’t acknowledge her. He had his pride.

The first stitch hurt no worse than he was already hurting. He took it—he had no choice. She leaned forward and as she worked, he could feel her nearness like a breeze against his skin. The satiny tips of her curls danced and skipped over his arm and abdomen. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see the fullness of her breasts.

This was wrong. All of it. His vision blurred into darkness and back again. He tried again to tell her to leave him be, that dying alone was better than this disgrace, but he couldn’t form the words. His lips were too numb to speak.

“That’s it. I’m almost done with this one. That bear sure got you good.” Her voice was like poetry, like the sweeping cadence of Shakespeare’s sonnets. “I’m so glad you’re still with me. I’ll have you patched up, and then I’ll make a good hot soup. My ma says there’s nothing a good bowl of soup can’t cure.”

Great. Just his luck to be trapped with a talker. He liked his women silent—in fact, he liked his women to be absent. Was there any way to be rid of her?

A horse’s whinny pierced the darkness and even though the thick walls muffled the sound, he knew it was not one of his. He withered at the faint clomp of steeled shoes on the hard packed earth outside his front door. A light flared in the window, bobbing up and then away.

“What the—” The laundry lady set aside her needle and thread and the bed rope groaned as she stood. Her slender shadow fell over him.

With an ear-splitting crack, the door broke open, wood splinters flying into the air as wraiths and ghosts emerged from the night. Eerie dark shapes that became men as the light touched them. Wide-shouldered angry men, with rifles in hand and a lantern shining suddenly into his eyes. Onto the bed. Where Betsy Hunter stood, her hair tangled, her undershirt and skirt covered with spots of blood.

He knew what was going to happen next. He’d been surly and rude and horrible to this prim and sheltered woman, and now he was going to pay for it. He knew how this was going to go.

His mind leaped forward and he saw what was to come in a flash, but it was really the past. The murderous rage, the shouted accusations, the noose closing off his air. He would lose everything. His life, his home, his work, his freedom.

He remembered Ginetta Green’s tears as she’d spoken to the sheriff and how Duncan had had hope then, hope that reason would rule and it was all a big mistake. What else could it have been? He’d never hurt Ginetta. He’d never hurt anyone. Ginetta had used him, she’d lied about him, and she’d betrayed him for reasons he would never know.

Betsy Hunter stood in the shadows, radiant as a midnight star in a moonless sky, but he was not fooled. Not by a woman’s beauty. Not by her seeming goodness. Not by her kindness. She wanted something. What? How was she going to use this to her advantage?

Duncan saw the barred door close on his future once more. Her rescuer with his search party stormed through the dark main room. Beefy hands closed around his throat and Duncan knew the sting of a woman’s betrayal twice in his life.

At the edges of his vision he saw her. Perky Betsy Hunter, ready to condemn him. No one was going to believe him, a man convicted of rape. Defeat curled around his soul and from a distance he heard the men shouting, the flare of lantern light on a rifle barrel as it aimed directly between his eyes. He felt stitches at his neck tear, felt the hot rush of blood.

“No!” Suddenly she was there, her calm touch against his face, she was splaying the flat of her free hand against his wound. “What is wrong with you, Joshua? Put him down before you kill him.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Stop it. Didn’t you see the bears dead in the road?” Men. She would never understand them. She’d grown up in a houseful of brothers, she’d been married, and all the time in the presence of the species she could never figure out why they were so downright bullheaded and pushy and all male temper. “What’s wrong with you? I said, put him down.”

Her oldest brother kept right on choking the dying man. Duncan might be the bigger of the two, but he’d lost more blood than Charlie had, at least it seemed that way, and she couldn’t bear it, she simply couldn’t. “James! You get over here and help me. His stitches are torn. Isn’t that just like a man to rip out half an evening’s work.”

Joshua gaped down at her, some of the wild male protective rage leaving him. A small glint of intelligence came back into his eyes. “But he hurt you. Don’t try and defend him.”

“He saved me. Think, would you? Look at the wounds. Doesn’t that look strangely as if a bear clawed him?”

Betsy gave her brother a kick in the shins, and grabbed her other brother by the wrist. “That’s no way to treat the man who nearly died for me. Ease him down gently… That’s right.”

Her heart was breaking, that was it. It was a lost battle from the start, she knew that, but now all her work was nearly undone and fresh blood wet his chest.

The image of him standing tall against the great black bear—no man fought one of those creatures and lived to tell about it—he’d known he was forfeiting his life from the start. From the moment he must have heard her gunshot. And yet he’d come anyway, to save her.

His hand flailed, that’s how weak he was. His big fingers were cold as they closed over hers. “T-thank you.” He coughed, blood staining his bottom lip. “For the truth.”

Whatever could he mean? She watched his eyelids flicker. As silence filled the room, it seemed as if his life force was disappearing.

“You’re my very own hero,” she whispered in his ear. “You can’t leave me now, when I’ve only found you.”

But his breath rattled and his fingers went slack.

In the silence, Betsy waited for his chest to rise with his next breath. It didn’t, but she kept waiting.

“Come away from him now.” Joshua’s hand settled on her shoulder, a comforting weight in the darkness broken only by the lantern hung on a nail over Duncan’s bed. “You’ve done all you can.”

“It isn’t enough.” It could never be enough. She was banged up and bruised and bandaged, and without her favorite dress, but it was nothing—nothing—at all. The bear attack had been terrifying—beyond terrifying.

Now, safe in the cabin with her brothers at her side, the shock had worn off and horror clawed at her soul. The images of the huge man battling an enemy at least twice his strength tormented her. Images of how the predators gathered, drawn by the scent of spilled blood. Duncan, his life force rushing out of him and pooling on the dusty wheel tracks. Duncan, so still that death hovered in the room above him like an invisible smoke cloud, draining the brightness from the lantern and making the night seem more hopeless.

She could have died, and in terrible pain. She’d seen the damage on Duncan’s neck and chest and shoulders. He’d saved her from that fate and chose it for himself. She’d never met a braver man. What did a person do for someone who had not only saved her life, but also sacrificed his?

Thanks was not nearly enough. She’d made a promise that she wouldn’t leave him—the very least she could do was to keep her vow. No man should die alone, without someone to care.

“The doctor will stay with him.” Joshua, her sensible big brother, presented her with his coat. “We need to get you home. You can’t stay the night here, Bets. You have to think of your reputation.”

“I’m thinking of my honor.”

“Folks won’t understand. You know how some people can get. Quick to judge and quicker to condemn. I don’t want you to be hurt, Bets.”

“You are the best brother a girl could have.” She didn’t take his coat. She squeezed his hand that remained on her shoulder, a comforting presence.

For as long as she could remember, Joshua had watched over her and protected her, and she loved him for it, but sometimes the right choice wasn’t the easiest one. Some folks might hear about her staying the night with a mountain man. Then they would know what Duncan Hennessey did to defend her. They would have to see how noble he was.

It was that simple. How could this be mistaken for anything else?

“Go home, if you have a mind to.” She gently waved away the offer of his coat. “And thank you, for fetching the doctor.”

“I can’t leave you here.”

“You have responsibilities to tend to. Go home, get some sleep and see to them. I’ll be fine.”

“Mother would box my ears if I did.”

“Mother isn’t tall enough to reach your ears.” It was an old familiar joke, grown fond through the years, of how their tiny Irish mother had birthed such a collection of fine, strapping and tall sons. All of her children had looked down on her since they were eleven years old, including Betsy. “This is something I must do.”

“And how am I supposed to leave you?” Joshua straightened, losing the argument. For all his deep booming voice and big hulking presence, he was really not so fierce at heart. “I can see you owe this man the courtesy, but surely he has family.”

“I don’t see any evidence of it, do you?” She gestured at the bare walls and empty tables. Not a single tintype or photograph anywhere. No hints of birthday or Christmas gifts from a mother or sister. “Do you know what would help? Send Liam tomorrow with a change of clothes. I can’t ride back to town wearing naught but my drawers and Mr. Hennessey’s flannel jacket.”

“You’d cause a scandal, that’s for sure.” As if relenting, Joshua ruffled the top of her hair, as he always used to do when she was little. “I’ll be back. Let me know if you need anything. You know I’ll be ready to help with any…arrangements.” His gaze traveled to the bed.

He meant for the man’s burial. Betsy took a shaky breath. Joshua was only being practical, it was his way. But she couldn’t give up hope. Not as long as Mr. Hennessey drew one breath and another. It seemed an eternity between them, but her tough savior was still alive and so there was hope.

“You’d best go on with your brother, ma’am,” Doc Haskins told her as he packed his stethoscope into his medical bag. “I’ll stay on here until the end. It won’t be much longer now.”

“No, I will stay with him.” Sadness choked her. She said nothing more. There was nothing left to do but to hope her presence gave him some comfort. He’d never seemed to like her much. Well—to the point—he’d been extremely clear how much he didn’t want to be anywhere near her. But deep down, she didn’t believe him. Why would a man who hated her trade his life for hers?

Already grieving him, knowing that even her most fervent, optimistic thought could not spare him from the inevitable. She could feel it, too, how still his big body was, taking up so much room on the bed. And now, the space between breaths seemed a longer eternity. The doctor was packing up the rest of his things. It would not be long now.

She lifted his hand, lying so still at his side, onto her thigh and covered it with her fingers. Felt how cool he’d become. She moved away to find another blanket. She found a lined buffalo robe and added that to the top of his bed, smoothing it with care. When she returned to her chair to sit and took his hand in hers again, she was surprised when his fingers gripped hers. Strong. With need.

Something broke apart deep in her chest, like a shattering pain she’d felt once when she’d broken her wrist when she was eight. It was like that now, sharp and jagged pain centered so deep within her, it hurt to breathe.

There, where it had been as if dark, a small warmth glowed.

Chapter Four

It was shadow land. Duncan did not know if he dreamed or if he lived, but he could hear a soft sound. Low and bright, like the solemn call of a sweet bell, but it was a woman’s voice. His mother’s? He knew that wasn’t right even as he thought it.

No, his mother’s singing was deeper, with a lower note, the rhythmic roll of her native tongue like thunder and wind, rain and rivers running. Those were the sounds of his childhood and those memories returned with a stinging clarity. Rich green grass and hot sunshine and dry and dusty earth between his bare toes, and his mother singing while she worked.

It was the melody he’d woken to in the dark hole of prison, where for an instant he was caught in dream and happiness. Then the dream would break into wisps like smoke, blowing away to the real nightmare of the dank cave of his cell where mice skittered and bugs crawled.

He did not awake there. He could not seem to wake at all. The shadows held him, and there was no pain. But that voice—it was captivating. It held him as if the cuff and chain were once again tight on his ankle. There were no words, this was not singing, but a humming cheerfulness, and it glittered inside him like sunshine through rain. A melody that rose and fell and lured him back to the darkness of his life.

He did not want to go back. Here, in the shadows, there was no grief. Loneliness didn’t stick in his soul like a sharp rock, jabbing deeper and deeper with every step. Here, the bitterness seemed far away and he knew, if he simply let go, he would travel to what his grandfather had called happy hunting grounds, his father heaven, and his mother simply home.

His mother. Would he see her there? Was she waiting beyond the threshold? The thought of seeing her again made joy crackle inside him. Roaring and growing like a fire in dry grass.

But the humming melody called to him, too. Made him yearn with the heart of a man. He knew it was her, the woman and her corkscrew curls and her generous smile and kindness. He would not like her. He would not want her. He no longer believed in the good of any woman, and yet he followed the sound of her voice, innocent and sensual at once.

Pain slammed into him like an avalanche of snow…and he was falling. Then there was her. Standing over him like an angel in morning light, and her clear alto. It was a tune he didn’t know, and the brisk dawn’s sunshine was suddenly too bright. His eyes stung and he couldn’t seem to focus. Maybe it was the pain leaving him breathless, as if he’d been crushed at the bottom of that avalanche.

But it was strangely all right. For she was here, her hand in his, holding on to him, pulling him back, even as oblivion claimed him, it was only sleep.

Betsy knelt at the edge of the hand-dug well. The board frame bit into her knees as she unhooked the bucket. Cool, clear water sloshed over the side of the pail and onto her clothes.

Every inch of her seemed to ache, or maybe that was just sorrow brimming over the rim of her heart. Through the golden streaks of the sun rising at the edge of the forest, she watched the doc’s buggy bounce down the road. The stand of evergreens closed around him and she was alone.

The doctor’s prognosis echoed in her thoughts. I’ve seen this type of lingering before. He’ll not awaken. No man loses that much blood and lives. Remember Charlie.

Remember Charlie? She’d never forget. She hurt as if the doctor had reached out and slapped her, and she thought of the injured man still breathing, still living, and refused to give up hope. For without it, what good would life be? Without it, how could any good at all come out of this? He’d tried to awaken earlier, she was certain of it.

Perhaps it was the doctor’s job to be so practical, but he’d been drowsing when Hennessey had stirred. It had been slight, but there.

Cool water sloshed over the rim and onto her again as she unhooked the bucket from the rope. Exhaustion made her muscles feel heavy as she stood. Overhead an army of birds twittered and chirped and flitted from tree to tree, and the noise they made was as loud as the train rumbling through town. A body certainly wouldn’t need a clock living out here.

On her way back to the cabin she felt…well, watched. The nape of her neck prickled, but there were no obvious signs of danger. Goodness, how could there be with the breeze pleasant through the drying grasses and the tall trees waltzing with their branches outstretched and the sunshine warm and friendly? The splashes from the water bucket sprinkled across her bare feet and plopped onto the soft earth.

There, in the loose dust in the path, were tracks. As clear as her own footprints heading to the well, but those imprints hadn’t been there when she’d gone to fetch water.

She looked around carefully and shivered. Was it her imagination or did the wind have a mean edge to it? Nothing knelt behind the woodpile, not that she could see, or crept through the unmown grasses.

The giant cat tracks ambled along the road, as if the cougar had been heading to town and following the doctor’s buggy. Maybe the animal had continued on. Maybe not. Maybe it was watching her from the thicket of the crowded evergreens—and getting hungry.

She certainly had no notion of being any creature’s breakfast! Heaven on earth! She’d been out this way on her deliveries once a week for several years now. Before yesterday, the most wildlife she’d seen in these woods had been a few grazing deer. She picked up her pace and sprinted up the porch steps. With the stout wall to her back she felt safer as she looked back, at the fresh tracks—they looked just like her little kitty’s paw prints back home except each imprint was as big as her foot. She didn’t feel safe until she shut the door behind her.

“W-water.”

“Mr. Hennessey?” She nearly dropped the bucket in shock. Coming to her senses, she set it on the nearby table and was at his side without remembering crossing the room. His eyes were open and in them she read the agony he was in. “Oh, it’s so good to see you.”

His hard mouth curled into a frown. “Water.”

“Oh! Of course. I can’t believe it, but I wouldn’t give up hope for you. The doctor was less than encouraging, but I knew.” She was babbling, and she couldn’t stop the happiness from bubbling up. “You’re going to be fine. I know it. I’m so glad. You were so heroic, coming to my rescue as you did.” Her fingertips reached out—she simply couldn’t help it.

Emotion overwhelmed her and tears blurred her vision as she stroked the side of his face. Stubbled with prickly whiskers, it felt so good and right just to feel the very manly texture of several days’ growth. Her chest clenched tight with an odd longing. It wasn’t sexual—she’d tried very hard not to notice the incredibly perfect chest of his and more, much more.

It was something else, something amazing. Her very being seemed to quicken and that warmth new in her chest seemed bigger. It hurt, strangely, and she didn’t know what to say. How to tell him she knew he was weak and he would be bedridden for a long while, but she wouldn’t let him down.

He’d saved her, and she intended to save him right back.

“W-water,” he snarled.

At least he had the strength to snarl. That had to be a good indication, right? She smiled at him because nothing could dim her gratitude. She raced to the table and stole a tin cup from the shelf overhead. Her fingers were trembling, she spilled water everywhere, but she didn’t spill a drop when she eased down beside him on the wide feather bed and held the rim to his cracked lips.

He groaned with pleasure as the cool goodness ran across his bottom lip and over his tongue. He swallowed with difficulty and grimaced in agony at the pain it must have caused.

“Oh, I am so pleased,” she told him, holding the cup to his mouth again. “It is not every day a woman gets her very own hero.”

Hero? Hardly. Duncan growled and, although he’d only swallowed twice, it had exhausted him. He lay panting, eyes tearing, his entire body vibrating with unbearable pain and he remembered her humming. He remembered her at his side and how she’d told the truth.

This morning her eyes were red-rimmed and she was pale with strain. She was wearing his shirt and a pair of his trousers tied with a rope at her waist. The clothes engulfed her, but nothing could dim the sincerity as she eased over him, careful of his wounds and laid her head over his heart.

A sharper pain than he’d ever known bore through his chest. It was an odd thing, to feel tenderness for this strangely emotional woman who’d been honest. And the way she held him seemed just as honest as when the men had come and he’d thought, confusing the present with the past, that he was going to be wrongly accused again.

The sweet scent of honeysuckle filled his head and he wished he could move his arm. Because if he could, he’d lay his hand over her head and wind his fingers through her soft hair. He’d press her close and hold on tight, because she was surely a dream. Surely.

But too soon the outside door swung open and eye-stinging light filled the room. It was more people—he saw the swish of a woman’s skirts and heard the low murmur of a man’s voice—the same one from before. And she was leaving him, lifting her head and straightening it.

Longing pierced him, but it was impossible because he didn’t need or long for anything or anyone. Especially not a pretty and proper town lady who was everything he’d come to distrust. She stood. Her weight lifted from the mattress and he was alone. His chest ached with emotion, but it was impossible to know what emotion he was feeling.

He’d given up on feelings long ago.

“Granny!” It was Betsy’s voice, rising with excitement, moving away from him. “What are you doing here? I don’t understand. And Mama—”

“What were you thinking? Spending a night all alone with a mountain man. With any man!”

It was a mother’s scolding voice and through his foggy vision, he saw two women. One a matronly figure decked out in an enormous hat with a fake flower that bobbed with the movements of her head, which she nodded to emphasize nearly every other word.

Clearly, Betsy’s mother. Her ample figure suggested a life of being well fed and her brown dress looked to be of the finest material. He recognized the mother-of-pearl buttons that marched from her chin to her toes and the disdainful frown that withered her otherwise pleasant face.

She glared at him as if she smelled a skunk. That’s all it took and he knew what Betsy’s mother saw. She was a lady of means, probably the type that liked everything in its place including people in the slots where they belonged.

And she was right. Her daughter should keep a far distance from him. The stink of prison felt as if it had been ground into his skin and deeper. It had changed him. Tainted him.

Mrs. Prim and Proper shook her head from side to side as she studied him, the flower on her bonnet swaying to and fro.

He focused on that.

It was safer. Easier.

He wished for the strength to let it mean nothing. Nothing at all as the three women—daughter, mother and grandmother—gazed over him. He saw compassion in the elderly woman’s eyes and he knew. She knew. Shame rolled over him like a flooding river and the tide of it drowned out everything he’d worked to become. Washing away all the good he’d ever done, and he felt more naked than if he’d worn no clothes at all. And worse, he saw her pity.

“Come, my sweet Bets.” The elderly woman turned her back to him and grabbed hold of Betsy’s slender arm and pulled her from his side. “You have worked all night, and I am here now. Go with your mama and your brother, and I will tend the mountain man.”

Yeah, he knew they’d take her from him. They should. His heart was steel again. His soul impenetrable. Strong again, he let no weak emotion live within him. He watched as her brother took her other arm.

“Come now, Bets,” the brother was saying, not placating, but with real caring. “You have your reputation. The doctor promised me he’d stay with you and he broke his word.”

“Joshua, he had other patients waiting for him. Please, there is no need to be so angry. How could my reputation possibly be damaged? Goodness, anyone would do the same if they were me.”

“Then think of your health, dear.” Granny slipped a thick shawl over Betsy’s shoulders, the fine wool wrapped her from chin to ankle. “That will do for now, until we get you home. You’ve been up all night, haven’t you? And with the weather turning, you’ll likely catch cold and fall ill. You let your mama take you home and spoil you.”

“Gran, I don’t need to be spoiled. I caused this man’s injuries.”

“Not you, dear, but the bear.”

“Bears.” It was important that Granny—that everyone—understood. “I have to make this right. I can’t leave him. He’s too weak to fend for himself, and there are no neighbors close. No one to come if he should need help.”

“There’s me.” The gleam in Granny’s green eyes said more.

Betsy understood. Mama was so…well, overbearing. She looked at Mr. Hennessey and saw a mountain man who was of no worth. For, as Mama said, what gave a man more worth than a good-paying job and the sense of responsibility to show up for it every day?

All anyone had to do was to glance around the dim one-room cabin to realize Mr. Hennessey wasn’t a wealthy man. But he was a worthy one. That was something Granny had to understand.

“I will tend him as well as you would do.” Granny pressed a kiss to Betsy’s cheek and secured the shawl pin beneath her chin. “Now, don’t worry, my sweet girl. This is for the best.”

“No, I don’t think—” She peered over her shoulder at the man who was more shadow than substance, lost in the dark corner where the light did not seem to reach. Her heart wrenched hard, bringing with it a suffocating pain. “He needs me.”

“He needs care, and I will give it to him.” Firmly, although there was no mistaking the love warming her stern ways, Granny turned her around and gave her a shove toward the door.

Exhausted and weak—she hadn’t eaten nor drank—her feet seemed to trip forward and she wound up in her brother’s firm grip. No, this was wrong. She needed to stay. She had to. “Please, Joshua. I can rest here and eat. That way I can be close—”

“You will do better in your own bed, and he has all he needs.”

Joshua lifted her into his arms, as if she were a child, and it was tenderness that gentled the fierce frown that made him look nearly as intimidating as Mr. Hennessey at his worst.

“No, please, you have to let me—”

“You are what matters to us. Come, let us take care of you. When you are stronger and rested, we’ll talk about you coming back.”

It sounded reasonable. Even sensible. She was light-headed, she realized, from lack of food. Maybe that’s why she was acting the way she was, as if everything was more intense than usual. Maybe that’s why it felt as if she were breaking from the inside out, as if something vital were being wrenched from her innermost being.

She strained to look over her brother’s shoulder as he carried her through the threshold, turning sideways so her dangling feet wouldn’t smack against the door frame. She saw that Duncan was awake, twisting his head on the pillow, watching her leave. Struggling to keep her in his sight, although he was too weak to do more. His shadowed face was furrowed, his eyes intensely following her progress away from him, and it was almost as if he couldn’t take her leaving.

As if he didn’t want her to go.

Their gazes met and the impact was cataclysmic. As if the moon exploded and the earth cracked into pieces and the sun burned into the greatest darkness. She felt as if her will had helped him through the night. She had made a difference, even a little, and she didn’t want to let him go. Didn’t want to stop hoping.

“Joshua, please, I have to stay.”

But he whisked her onto the porch and the well-built log walls stood between her and Duncan. She tried to push out of her brother’s arms, but it was as if she’d used up all her strength like kerosene in a lamp and it was gone. Tears blistered her eyes and she couldn’t see as he laid her in the back seat of the family’s surrey.

Joshua covered her with a wool blanket and kindly told her to rest, this was for the best, to trust him, but she felt betrayed.

How could her family do this to her?

The surrey jolted as the family horses leaped into a brisk trot, and on the leather-springed seat, she bounced and bumped and watched the cabin grow smaller. Her cheeks were wet and she felt as if she’d been the one clawed apart by a bear. It was wrong to leave him like that. When she’d promised him, she’d promised him, that she’d stay by his side.

Inside where Duncan Hennessey still fought to live. He’d made it to a new day and surprised the doctor, but he was too weak to lift his head from the pillow. Far too wounded to care for himself. Granny was magic—her home remedies legendary, and Betsy trusted her with all of her heart.

But I should be there, too. A vow was a vow, and when she made one, she kept it. Duncan needed her. It had been so long since someone had truly needed her. She knew Granny would go about tending him. Gently cleaning off the poultice Betsy had boiled up in the night, and the doctor had applied over the red swollen gashes of flesh held together by her hurried stitches.

Granny would bathe him while she steeped her special willow-bark tea and simmered chicken broth and herbs on the battered potbellied stove. She’d do her best to care for him with the same loving warmth she gave everyone. Duncan couldn’t be in better hands.

But she wanted to be the one to hold the cup to his lips. To sit by his side and comfort him, so he would not be alone. She knew, without knowing how she knew, that had she been injured instead, he would have moved heaven and earth to take care of her.

Mama perched on the front seat beside Joshua, who was driving the team through the eerily dusky woods where the shafts of the rising sun did not seem to penetrate. The dry grasses rasped. The limbs overhead groaned. Remembering, Betsy closed her eyes. She’d give anything to have Duncan as he was when she’d first arrived yesterday, growling and caustic and hostile. His horrid demeanor was starting to seem less beastly to her.

“Good, she’s asleep.” Mama’s voice cut fearlessly through the shadows. “We got her out of there just in time. No one knows she was alone with him.”

“The doc does. And the mountain man, of course.”

“They can be managed. What matters is our dear Betsy. She’s a fine girl, but you know how people are. They can be cruel, if they have the slightest reason, and I won’t have Betsy hurt.”

“I won’t allow it, Ma. You know that.” Joshua sounded fierce. “Since Pa’s passing, I’m the head of the household and I will protect my sister with everything in me. There will be no damage done. I’ll see to it.”

As if a person’s reputation—simply what other people thought—could be weighed against a man’s life. Betsy was too weary to argue and she knew the pointlessness of it. When Mama made up her mind, it would take an army more formidable than any on this earth to sway her from her course. She wanted to be angry with them, but how could she? They were acting out of love for her. Misguided, yes, but goodness, they loved her. She knew that. Her parents and her brothers had always wanted what was best for her.

Taking her from the mountain man was important to them, and she was too weak and weary to fight. Granny was there, seeing that Duncan lived. I can trust Gran, I know I can.

As the surrey jostled down the mountain road and into the bright expanse of prairie, the morning sun turned the insides of her eyelids orange. She screwed her eyes shut tight, but the brightness remained. All around her was life. The twittering larks and the cheerful robins and jackrabbits darting out of the road. Gophers popping out of their holes to stand on their back feet to watch the passing vehicle. Their gossipy chatter carried their excitement on the wind.

All of these things she always took such delight in. But on this new day, she felt as if a part of her had been irrevocably lost. It was foolish to think so much about a man who probably never wanted to see her again. But she felt as if a link of some kind had been forged between them and, like the sun to the earth, it remained.

Who knew what held the sun in the sky? It was the same with her heart. She did not love Duncan Hennessey. She did not like him. She knew he was an unpleasant loner who seemed to hate her.

But true need and sorrow had flashed in his eyes. It had been real, for she felt it still. A hard dark shell blotting out the light of day. As though a shadow had fallen permanently across the sun’s face, and nothing would ever seem as bright or as warm again.

Chapter Five

The side gate squeaked open, and Betsy leaned over the wooden rail on the back porch and squinted through the bright afternoon sun. She predicted it was Mother and resisted the urge to run into the house, bar the door and hide down in the cellar until her mother gave up and went away.

The only problem with that wish was the fact that Lucille Gable never gave up until she got what she wanted, so there was no point in hiding. Not that Betsy was someone who ran from her problems instead of facing them, it was just the hope of escape that was tempting.

Remembering how her mother had taken charge once they’d reached the edge of town, giving Joshua orders and escorting Betsy into the house and putting her to bed. She’d lain there to please Ma, but she hadn’t been able to sleep. Her mother had stayed, and she’d never seen her mother more determined. They’d argued, and Ma had charged off in a huff.

Betsy was certain her mother would return with renewed determination. Her stomach tightened. She loved her mother. She didn’t want to fight. But she couldn’t give up her life and her freedom, either. She loved this little home she rented. She even enjoyed being a laundress. It was better than living in her mother’s house as if she was still twelve and her doting and well-meaning Ma would spoil her and suffocate her and, well…she’d be as good as jailed.

Dreading a certain confrontation, Betsy tucked the needle into the trousers’ waistband, set it aside and tried to figure out how to manage it better this time.

But it wasn’t the imposing form of Lucille Gable that came around the corner of the house, but one of her dearest lifelong friends. Rayna Ludgrin Lindsay, glowing with her pregnancy, barely noticeable behind the gathers of her full skirt, nearly stumbled in her relief.

“Good afternoon!” Betsy had never been so glad.

“Oh, there you are! Your mother had me believing you were knocking on death’s door, but look at you. You’re in one piece. You’re safe. You’re not harmed?”

“Heavens no. I’ve lost one good night’s sleep, and that’s not so terribly serious. You know how my mother can be.” Betsy eased her steaming cup onto the flat of the porch rail. “I’m just sorry I missed getting together with everyone. And I was supposed to bring dessert.”

“I know. To think the lengths you will go to get out of baking.” Rayna, with a small basket on her arm, swept up the porch steps. “I’m glad you’re safe and sound. You have no idea how Mariah and Katelyn and I worried.”

“And all for nothing.” There was so much she could say, but she was ashamed to have come out of the ordeal with nothing more than a few bruises and scratches. “What about you? How are you feeling?”

“I hate to speak too soon but, knock on wood, I think my morning sickness is finally over.” Rayna set the basket she carried on the seat of the empty chair and wrapped Betsy in an exuberant hug. “It is so good to see you.”

“Me, too.” Warmth coiled tight in Betsy’s chest, making it hard to breathe. To think all this—her life, her friends, her pleasant days—could have vanished in a blink of an eye. She held on extra tight for a moment longer, grateful.

Rayna stepped back, her voice choked. “Oh, we were so scared when you didn’t show up. And then, when your horse came in with a lather, with broken traces and his reins dangling and no buggy, why, we all feared the worst.”

Betsy saw the genuine fear in her friend’s blue gaze. “I hate that anyone became so worried over me. I didn’t look beyond taking care of Mr. Hennessey. Rayna, he was incredible.”

“I heard what he did. Your brother told my husband last night.”

And that’s why Rayna was here bright and early with muffins and her comforting presence. “Any spare good wishes and prayers you have, please send them his way. I don’t even know how he’s doing.”

“Your grandmother’s taking care of him, isn’t she? Hasn’t she sent word with one of your brothers?”

“I don’t know because Mother thinks hearing anything about Mr. Hennessey will overset me. I just wish—” She couldn’t rid her mind of the images of him lying there in bed, his unblinking gaze like a lasso trying to pull her back. “I should have stayed with him.”

“But what about your reputation?” Rayna asked quietly, so different than her family’s boisterous concern. “What about your safety?”

“No, he’d never—”

“You don’t know him. You were alone with him out there in the wilderness. The few folks who know about him say he’s no gentleman.”

“No. He certainly isn’t.” She couldn’t imagine Duncan Hennessey in a jacket and tie. She couldn’t picture him as the local banker. Duncan Hennessey was everything that ought to be bad in a man—except he wasn’t a bad man. She’d never thought so. “There have been plenty of respected men in this town who have been less than gentlemanly since I’ve been widowed. You know how it can be.”

“I do.” Rayna, after her first husband’s sudden death, had had her share of troubles from a neighbor. So it was with honest empathy she said, “You enjoy your independence from your family. Staying with them after Charlie died was one thing. But it’s been, what, five years?”

Betsy nodded. She missed so many things about Charlie and being married to him, but time had dulled the ravaged edges of her grief. When she looked back, it was the good memories she felt. Their happy times together as man and wife, and there were so many. “I know what I’m doing, Rayna. This makes me happy. You don’t agree with my mother, do you?”

Rayna looked stricken. “No! Of course not. But there are bad men out there. We like to pretend that’s not true, but it is. And you can’t always tell. A man who behaves decently in public, in private may be completely different.”

“I can take care of myself. It wasn’t the man I had problems with. It was the bear! Goodness.” There she was, thinking of him again. And not just thinking—picturing him. The hard plane of his chest, the horrible wounds, the way he’d acted as if being touched by her—and having her sew up his wounds—was the worst insult.

She yanked open the pink mesh screen door and led the way into the kitchen. “Mr. Hennessey would have rather bled to death than let me close enough to touch him. The bear, however, came at me with his big shaggy paws and salivating at the sight of my strawberry pie, I tell you. My family should be on a campaign to keep me away from bears, not from people paying me good money to wash and iron their clothes.”

“We all love you so much. What would we do if anything happened to you?”

Betsy plucked the whistling kettle from the stove. “That goes for you, too. Now go sit down and put up your feet.”

“I’m pregnant, not sick. I’m perfectly fine.”

“So I worry. What would I do if anything happened to you?”

Understanding softened Rayna’s lovely face. “You’re trying to change the subject.”

“Yes, I am.” She poured steaming water into the delicate china pot. “Go outside, sit down and rest. We will pretend that you are trying to set me straight, so after you leave here, you can tell my mother that you tried your best.”

Rayna opened her mouth as if to protest, but then her lovely face softened. “If that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

“Then don’t forget plates for the muffins I brought.”

“Would those be your magic muffins? The best blueberry muffins in five counties?”

“It was four, and I took second place at the fair the following year. I wonder who took first?” As if she didn’t know the answer, Rayna shouldered open the screen door and the hinges rasped pleasantly as they laughed together.

The door slapped shut, leaving Betsy alone with her memories. Okay, so she’d won first place with her strawberry cobbler, but she’d never been able to match Rayna when it came to muffins.

As she set the teapot on her pretty silver tray that Mariah had given her for a wedding gift when they were all so young, just out of public school, she was grateful for this life she’d been given. Look at the friends and family who cared about her and fussed after her and mattered deeply to her. She’d had her sorrows and heartbreaks like anyone else, but she had so much.

When some people had so little.

Duncan Hennessey. She owed him a debt she could never repay. It was natural that she’d think of him. Natural that she couldn’t stop. As the warmth of an Indian summer’s sun sifted through the cottonwoods and the leaves sang in the warm breeze, she set the tray on the small table between the two porch chairs.

All the while they chatted of small everyday things, and as they enjoyed the flavorful muffins and the comforting goodness of freshly steeped English tea, Duncan remained in her thoughts.

It was as if an invisible rope connected her to him and tugged at her heart. At her conscience.

Was he in much pain or had the doctor’s laudanum helped? Was he gaining strength or slipping away? Did he awake to bright sunshine streaming through his windows and realize she wasn’t beside him? That she’d broken her word?

Or was he simply relieved she was gone?

“There now, swallow this.” It was a woman’s voice, but not the laundry lady’s.

He was still groggy, lost in the cloudy haze of a deep dreamless sleep, but he knew he was home. That he was in his bed. That pain raked from his back over his shoulder and throat to his chest. The only good thing about pain was that it let a man know he was alive. Some days, that was a victory.

Light seared his eyes and he could make out a woman’s silhouette. Curly hair and the scent of lavender, not honeysuckle. Before he could think on that, a wave of bitterness filled his nose. The cool edge of a spoon cut against his lower lip. Wetness spilled across his tongue. He’d never tasted anything so horrid. He choked, coughed, and what tasted like skunk spray remained thick on his tongue.

What was that and who in the hell was trying to kill him? He shoved at the spoon. “Get that damn stuff away from me.”

“Fine. So you want to be a tough man, go right ahead. I won’t stop you.”

For a brief moment, he heard Betsy Hunter’s cheerful voice, as light and weightless as the larks in the meadows, but the light shifted as the wind teased the boughs of the trees outside the window, and he saw Betsy’s profile become someone else’s. Someone with the same sloping button nose and rosebud mouth and dainty chin. Those thick locks of corkscrew curls gained the tarnished elegance of silver, and it was an elderly lady who smiled down at him with Betsy’s irresistible smile.

Not that her smile affected him, because he was immune. Immovable when it came to the charms of womankind.

“I suppose you’d like a bit of water to wash that nasty taste off your tongue?” Her eyes were Irish green, where Betsy’s were blue, and wreathed by smile lines etched deep into her papery skin. “Go ahead and be gruff about it. The likes of you don’t frighten me a bit.”

Apparently not only the curls and the smile were inherited, but that aggravating lightheartedness.

Shit, but he hurt. He had no more strength than a baby, and it was shameful and unmanly and weak—he hated weakness. He strained every muscle in his tortured body, but he couldn’t lift his head off the pillow. Shame burned in his eyes and smoldered in his chest and he had to look away as the tiny, fragile old lady handily lifted his head for him and held a cup to his mouth.

He swallowed and the tendons and muscles in his neck and throat resisted. Pain grew like a fire, crackling and consuming ever higher, and the moment his head hit the pillow, he screwed his eyes shut and cursed all women. If it wasn’t for a woman, he would be outside chopping wood, splitting and stacking and enjoying his peace and quiet.

That was all blown to hell. He was just glad that awful medicine was fading from his tongue. Maybe it was some powerful sleeping draught the doc left, and he’d be lucky enough to sleep long and deep and when he opened his eyes, he’d be alone. There’d be no women anywhere within fifteen miles. Just the way he liked it.

“Oh, you can’t fool me, mister, you’re still awake. Open up now, like a good patient.”

He slitted one eye. The lady was still here, amiable and chipper and as merry as the larks singing outside the window, holding a loaded spoon as if it would cure him of all his ills. “I’ve had enough of your medicine. Go away.”

“O-oh, you are a testy one. Betsy warned me you had a gruff manner, but fortunately for you, I married the roughest log skinner this side of the Mississippi. Growl all you want. I mean to get this soup in you, and I will.”

He wasn’t troubled by the tiny woman’s announcement. No one made him do anything he didn’t want to do. But what really troubled him— “You mean, that was soup?”

“My own mother’s recipe. Does the trick, don’t you worry. After a bowl of that, you’ll feel as right as rain.”

“After a bowl of that, I’ll be dead. I don’t eat poison.”

“It’s just what you need. Trust me. I haven’t been around for seventy years without learning a thing or two.” Those green eyes twinkled in the same glittering way Betsy’s did.

If it was soup, it was the least appetizing he’d ever eaten. The vile liquid slipped over his lip and clung to his tongue like a leech and didn’t let go. His stomach rolled, his vision blurred. He swallowed until he couldn’t. Until he was too exhausted and greedy sleep snatched him into darkness before he could try to look for Betsy in the room.

Alone, in the dark sanctuary of sleep, he dreamed of lying with his head in her lap and listening to the sound of her tears calling him back and keeping him here.

“Return the gelding when you get a chance.” Rayna leaned down from the buggy seat as far as she dared. “I’ll be all right driving with one for as long as you need him.”

“Only until Morris has regained his composure.” Betsy held tight to the big gray gelding’s reins as Rayna pulled away. The horse nickered, and it was a lonely sound. No doubt he was probably wondering why he was being left behind.

Rayna’s buggy kicked up dust that rose in thick chalky clouds and although Betsy couldn’t see it, she knew Rayna was waving farewell, and so she waved, too.

The gelding nickered again, this time a little more desperate.

“I’ll be good to you, I promise, you handsome boy.” She stroked his velvety nose and laughed as his nostrils flared, scenting her. “You know me. I’ve seen Rayna at least once a week for as long as you’ve been driving her vehicles. Goodness. I’ll give you back, don’t worry.”

The gelding did not seem comforted. He studied her with his intelligent brown eyes and snorted dismissively, as if to say he seemed to think he had a great deal to worry about.

“Goodness, it’s just a little twenty-mile ride. Nothing to worry about. You can make it before dark falls without a problem.” She took the cheek strap firmly in hand, to use the bit as leverage should the gelding decide to take off after his mistress and horse mate. But he came along when coaxed.

Morris, still traumatized by the bear, was huddled in his corner box stall, shivering even though he wore a heavy winter blanket. She comforted him, fed him his evening meal of hay, oats and mash, and watered him well. He nickered low to the gelding she’d tied in the shade outside the stable door. If horses had language, then whatever he said seemed to have made the big gray nervous.

“Like it or not, we’re going.”

She had no choice. It was a matter of conscience. With care, she hitched the animal to her old cart. The vehicle had grown dusty and the wheel spokes crisscrossed with cobwebs. The wood grayed with age showed the dents of Charlie’s hammer—it had been one of his first projects after they’d been married. And the happiness of that time came back to her as it always did, making her throat ache with the sweetness.

It was a feeling she carried with her like a weight on her heart as she organized her sacks of freshly laundered clothes—she was a day behind, but she intended to make up for that. Joshua had promised to make her pickups for her, and her delivery route should take her within five miles of Duncan’s cabin.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Joshua’s ire boomed like winter thunder—cold, formidable and final.

Good thing she was used to his dominating ways. She closed the door behind her and hooked the screen door shut. “Deliveries.”

“I thought this would make you see reason. It’s not safe.”

“I’ll be careful not to eat while I’m in the forest. One thing you can say about me is that when I make a mistake, I learn from it. I never make the same one again. Just different ones.” She wedged the Lofton brothers’ rucksack against the cart’s rickety tailgate and gave it a shove. It didn’t fall out. “What are you doing over here? Checking up on me?”

“What will it take for you to give up this menial service you’re doing and come live at the family house?”

“Are you happy there?”

“Sure.”

“You don’t look happy. That’s why you’re so difficult. A man your age needs a wife and a family.”

“No.” The thunder returned, harsh with a dark emotion that was harder to name.

Whatever it was, whatever had happened to turn her brother against finding love and marriage, made his eyes sadden. He looked away, his brow furrowing deep until his despair felt as tangible as the wind.

Gently, because she loved her big brother and because she knew what sorrow it was to live on with a broken heart, she laid her hand on his. “Then help me, please, or I will go alone.”

“You know I can’t allow that. I have to protect you, and that means your reputation. You were alone with him.”

“My reputation has survived just fine for the last few years I’ve been riding out to deliver his laundry. I wash the underdrawers of about…what, a third of the men in this county? I find that much more personal—”

“Betsy!” Joshua’s face twisted as if he was too angry or shocked to know what to say.

“Much more personal,” she repeated for emphasis, “than tending a man with life-threatening wounds. You saw how badly he was injured. A reasonable person would see right away how it would have been impossible for my reputation to be ruined in any way.”

“People aren’t always reasonable.” Joshua sounded exasperated, but he wasn’t. She knew he’d lost faith in too many people, been hurt too many times. He thought he could predict what was going to happen—folks would get to talking, some folks with nothing more constructive to do. The gossip would grow and she would lose not only the little business she loved but any chances to marry well.

He couldn’t watch over her forever. If this incident had shown him anything, it was that you never knew when your time would be up on this earth. He could have lost her yesterday. Betsy, his sweet and funny little sister. He could have been picking out a casket for her and making funeral arrangements today. The last acts of love he would have ever been able to do for her.

He wasn’t, and that put him in a bind. He was grateful the mountain man had come to Betsy’s aid. He was sad the man was injured. Might even be dead by now, for the doc hadn’t been hopeful. But he couldn’t risk his little sister, grown woman though she was, traipsing off into the mountains. Not again. Not after this.

He’d take her to the cabin. He’d let her say her piece, say goodbye, and it would be over. Whether Hennessey lived or died would not change the outcome. His sister would not be driving alone into that forest again.

Chapter Six

There was a reason her dear Charlie had often called her the most stubborn woman on the face of the earth, mostly while he’d been storming away with his boots smacking the wood floor in cadence with the rising steam of his temper.

She was stubborn. Sometimes it was a flaw, to be sure. A person shouldn’t always be stubborn. It was important to know when to give in, but in her experience, not often. Working hard, digging in her heels and refusing to give up was one of the only ways she knew to get what she truly wanted. That was no bad thing. Her stubbornness had a boon side, too.

When a fire had caught in the hearth, she’d worked so hard and furious, she didn’t give up until she’d beaten every flame and spark from the roof and chimney column. If she’d been one to give up easily, then their house would have burned to the ground, and perhaps she and Charlie right along with it.

When the crops were nearly lost to grasshoppers, she worked at her husband’s side to beat off the plague of those creatures, through an entire two days and nights and into the third day. When everyone else on the neighboring ranches gave in, she would not. Theirs had been the only ranch with a cash crop come harvest.

If nothing else, all those events just served as practice. Her stubbornness was as strong as ever, maybe stronger. Nothing was going to stop her from seeing Duncan. Not today. Joshua had come along, and he wasn’t happy, but he had to understand. She owed the mountain man, and Betsy Hunter was not one to shirk her obligations.

“We can turn around,” Joshua said, as if he expected her to be reasonable and give in. “It’s not too late. You can’t want to drive down that road after you were terrorized.”

“I am wise enough not to eat strawberry pie this time.”

“It’s dangerous country.”

“Life is dangerous. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t live it. Don’t worry, big brother.” She laid her hand on his dependable rock-solid arm. “Keep driving. I won’t start getting the vapors, as Mama is prone to do.”

That only made Joshua frown, his entire granite face grimacing with cold fury. He had a lot of burden on those invincible shoulders of his, she knew, taking care of the ranch and the brothers, keeping Mama cared for and comforted, for Papa’s death, soon after Charlie’s, had been a hard blow that had devastated them all. Joshua took his responsibilities seriously, but his heart was pure gold and she was counting that he wouldn’t disappoint her.

“I don’t understand you. I never have.” He growled, but it was a surface anger only.

She knew his fury did not go deep. So she was gentle with him as she gave his forearm a sisterly squeeze of affection. “There hasn’t been a male brain in existence that can understand a woman’s humors. I’m simply grateful you decided to come with me.”

“Because I was hoping to talk some sense into you and turn around before—” He ground his teeth.

Whew, he truly was angrier than she’d reckoned. Probably because she hadn’t come around to his sensible way of thinking. She couldn’t begin to measure the respect and affection she had for him. He didn’t understand because he was too busy protecting her, as he’d promised Charlie and their father before they’d both passed from this earth. Too determined to keep her safe to recognize that had the tables been turned, he’d feel the same way she did.

Joshua pulled back on the reins, slowing down as the long shadows of the forest fell into their path and it seemed as if there was something sinister in the shadows luring them closer. The surrey was hardly moving, but it was creeping toward the thick shadows where the sun had already sunk behind the great peaks beyond, turning late afternoon into a cheerless twilight.

Her blood cooled in her veins. Fear. She could feel it creep from the inside out until her skin prickled. Danger seemed to lurk in every shadow. Every sweep of a bough in the rising wind seemed to be a predator springing.

This is no different than before. She set her chin, her stubbornness at full steam. One time out of all the trips she’d come this way. Once there had been danger, and perhaps, as the mountain man suggested, it had been more her fault than not.

Well then she had nothing to fear, did she? When Joshua had purposefully slowed the horse to a near standstill, she didn’t know what to say. Her poor, overprotective brother, he simply would never understand her. She needed to do this, and he was doing everything in his power to pretend to help when he was really trying to do the opposite.

Well, she’d show him! She wiggled the whip in its socket with the toe of her boot. The sudden lashing, although harmless, convinced the horse to surge ahead. Perfect.

“Whoa!” Joshua yanked on the reins, nearly coming out of the seat as he looked behind them and around. “We’d best turn around, Bets. Look, the horses are spooked.”

“And it was me who did it!” She couldn’t help laughing, not that she was in a merry mood. No, she was far from it. But to think her brother so readily expected doom. “I’ve been traveling this road for some time. Here, give me the reins.”

“I’ll handle them myself.” He sniffed at her, his face lined harshly with disapproval. Joshua was far too serious for his own well-being. “You could get hurt.”

“True, seeing as I’ve never been one to drive my own team!” She couldn’t believe him, although she feared he needed her compassion more than her ire. Poor Joshua, he tried so hard. “I’ll be good. Go on, keep driving. I won’t try to take over.”

“How you test me, little sister.” Grim, he stared straight ahead, on guard and fierce-seeming as the light was blotted from the sky and the long tree shadows swallowed them.

“We all have our trials.”

He gave a huff of irritation. He was so fun to tease, she simply had to exert all her willpower to keep from tormenting him further. She sat quietly through the long twilight where she saw ghosts of memory—the charging bulk of a bear, Duncan Hennessey standing tall and the sobering image of holding him in her arms.

The darkness broke and the waning afternoon sun bled color through the tops of the trees and cast blue-gray shadows on the path to the log house nestled in a spot of sunshine, the stable and outbuildings huddled close by. There were no signs of life—no face looking from the open window, no curling smoke from the stovepipe, no front door swinging open in greeting.

Just silence that felt as thick as an autumn’s fog.

He can’t have passed yet, Betsy assured herself as the horses slid into a slow walk as they curved along the dusty path. There was the woodpile, half chopped, where Duncan had been splitting the enormous logs that lay neatly stacked next to the abandoned ax and wedge. The place had an abandoned feeling to it already.

Granny’s rail-thin figure filled the doorframe. Her silvered hair was tumbling from its tight knot and dark circles marred her nearly flawless face. Sadness had taken the sparkle from her eyes.

The tiny hope Betsy had nurtured began to flicker like a single candle flame in a heartless wind. As the wagon jerked to a halt, she braced herself so the bad news would not come as such a shock. It could not be surprising, since she’d seen the wounds with her own eyes. Yet she’d so stubbornly hoped—

“He’s drifted off.” Grief wreathed Adelaide Gable’s porcelain face. “You’d best be quiet, love.”

Out of respect for the dead. Of course. She felt as dark as a winter night, when bitter blizzards raged. Ice crackled through her blood and into her limbs, making it hard to climb down from the comfortable surrey. Harder still to pull her way up the simple wooden steps and into Granny’s arms.

“There, there.” Adelaide Gable was a hard woman who packed a Colt .45 on her hip, but her hugs were as sweet as spring’s wild violets. “You come in now and say your goodbyes to him. That man is no greenhorn, he’s survived in these harsh mountains for years. When he came to fight for you, my sweet Bets, he knew what he was doing.”

“How can I live with that?” As much as she wanted to stay safe in her grandmother’s arms, she stepped back. There was no true comfort for the guilt clawing through her like a hawk’s talons. “Duncan was right. This was utterly my fault. I was hungry and I just didn’t think.”

“There is one silver thread in this. You’ll never forget to save your meals until you are out of the wilderness, will you?”

“Heavens no, and, Granny, that is no silver thread. How could any good come from this?” She straightened her shoulders, tapped into her reserves of courage and made her way to the bed where her savior lay so motionless. He lay as if dead, but when she scooted onto the chair at his bedside and took his big scarred hand in hers, it was warm and supple.

So shallow was his breath that she could not see it. So weak his pulse, she could not feel it when she reached for his hand. Was he suffering? she wondered, breaking a little more inside. Or was he beyond pain? Would a man as disagreeable and as wounded find peace in heaven?

Or would he be banned to Dante’s purgatory? She could imagine him there, for perhaps he would be happier in the shadow lands than he would with wings in a happy and peaceful heaven. He lay with a frown dug into his face, perhaps that was his natural expression. Purgatory, definitely.

His hand in hers was heavy. So big and rough. She stroked her thumb over his wide knuckles. His fingers were broad and looked as powerful as if hewn from steel. When she turned his hand over, his broad palm was coarse with thick calluses. Remembering him shirtless, swinging the ax as he’d chopped wood, his muscles had bunched and rippled beneath his bronzed skin. Whatever this man was, Granny was right. He worked hard.

Tenderness glowed like a lamp’s flame given more oil to burn on a long wick. It was a painful experience, the way her chest felt as if it were burning. His hand in hers began to tingle and a strange tug and pull deep in her soul made her wonder. What would have been between them if he’d lived?

It seemed to her his skin grew cooler. His high, proud cheekbones jutted through his sun-browned skin as if it had become paper-thin.

She pressed a kiss in the center of his palm. He tasted salty. The flame within her writhed and fought to burn like upon a too-short wick. There was no way to hold on to him, so she let him go.

Cradling his hand in both of hers, she leaned close to whisper. “Thank you. It is so little for such a great deed. You are my only hero.”

There was nothing. No sound. No movement. She felt Granny’s presence behind her. “It’s done now, little chickadee. Leave me to tend his body, and go with your brother.”

“I ought to at least arrange for his burial.”

“That is for your brother to do. It would not be fitting.” Her grandmother knelt, wisdom alight in her Irish green eyes, and a surprising understanding. “I see how you feel, but it is too late for him. Do not grieve too hard.”

“How can I not?” She memorized the craggy beauty of his face. The pure black hair. The proud ridge of his nose. The surprising softness in his usually hard unforgiving mouth.

“Thank you,” she told him. “It is so little to say, I know. But I will never forget you. I will never forget.”

Sorrow crushed her. She cried until there were no more tears left. When she let her brother lead her to the surrey, night had fallen. There was no moon to light the sky and no stars twinkling to dust the lustrous black world; only a wolf’s howl in the night of defeat.

Joshua gripped his loaded rifle and, nosing the horse home, sent them into a fast trot. The cabin merged with the darkness. Even when she glanced backward as the surrey bumped around the curve in the road, it was lost.

As if forever.

It was a sound that woke him, but the sunshine in the window was gone, the elderly lady had nodded off in the chair beside the bed and no light burned to let him see her by. He listened for her breathing—she might have made a bed on the sofa.

But there were only two people breathing—the older lady and him.

Disappointment choked him and he struggled to sit. He felt the pull and tug of his stitches sewn tight as he moved—he remembered Betsy struggling with her needle as he’d fought her off.

He remembered her pleasant touch to his brow, her words warm against his ear and the sizzling heat of her kiss on his palm. Had he dreamed it? There was no sign of her, but as he’d dreamed he recalled how the air had shivered with an uncommon vibrancy whenever she was near.

He had an iron will. A man could not survive hard labor in the toughest territorial prison this side of Texas and be made of something less than steel. He’d hunted in the old ways of his grandfather, he’d fought in the War Between the States. He’d survived what should have killed him. If not even a great black bear could, then what?

He’d endured betrayal and injustice. Anguish and a banished life.

Sometimes he wondered if he lived at all. His heart had died long ago; his spirit had been blotted out with the dark of an endless winter night.

Until her kiss on his palm. He’d dreamed it—it could be nothing else but a dream. But awake he could sense the change in the air. She had brought lightness into this night-black cave. Her bright scents of sunshine and little yellow flowers lingered.

If he concentrated hard enough, he could conjure the image of her beside him, her head bent, her soft face leaning toward him. His palm burned with a strange life.

Oh, if he were man enough with a clear past and a whole heart. But he was not. He could not have her. He could never look upon her again. She was like freedom to a man robbed of it. She was the chance at life to a man who’d died in every way that mattered. She was beauty he did not believe in.

“Oh, so you live.” There was no pleasure in the old woman’s words as the chair creaked and the strong scent of sulfur stung the air. A match snapped to life, flame igniting the battered lantern on the floor. Sinuous orange light twisted across the crone’s face. “I had hoped that would be the end of you.”

“A man already dead cannot die again.”

“True.” Her thin mouth pursed, bracketed by lines made deeper by the shadows. “I know who you are. What you are.”

“You sent her away.”

“Betsy?” The crone’s smile was a dark one. “I did. You are as good as dead to her.”

“Then you told her.”

“You’re a monster. There’s no other word for you, and in my opinion, the law was too soft. It’s all the bleeding hearts that think a monster ought to have more rights than the poor innocent young woman you destroyed.”

“I didn’t—”

“Oh, don’t you play that hand with me. I’m wise to men like you. I know what you are. I say ten years wasn’t near enough for what you did. I would have let you hang, and that would have been too good for you.” Adelaide Gable had known sorrows her own mother would not acknowledge, and it was all she could do not to be rash and go against her own beliefs. “It would have been simple to let you die. Just to have let your wounds seep until they festered. Let gangrene take you, and believe you me, that’s a bad way to die.”

Duncan squeezed his eyes shut, forcing away the memories and the smell that over twenty years later still made his guts fist with nausea. He could taste the bile building, feel the quiver of his diaphragm.

“Betsy is a good girl. The best. She’s the apple of my eye, I’ll tell you that, and everyone who knows her loves her. You—” Her finger stabbed like a bone against the center of his chest where the last claw marks ended.

Fire consumed him and between the pain and the memory, he felt his abdomen clench. He would not vomit. He refused to give the old woman satisfaction.

“You want her. I can see it.”

“N-no.” It wasn’t like that. The old woman would never understand. Ever. The tiny glimpse of brightness Betsy had somehow left began to fizzle like a candle in a cold, hard wind. He wasn’t strong enough to hold the wind back and to protect the flame. He’d never hurt Betsy, he would never hurt any woman, but Betsy, she was like the noon sun, bold enough to warm the world.

“I can only thank the heavens above you didn’t try to hurt her before this—”

“I d-didn’t—”

“She thinks you’re dead, and you listen up. If you want to live, you’ll leave it that way. There’s no reason for her to come out here. Not to pick up and launder a dead man’s shirts. Do you hear me, you beast? If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay dead.”

He wanted to hate the old woman, like a demon shivering in shadows and hellish light, her narrow face taut so that she looked to be all but eyes, teeth and bone. His mouth was filling, his body trembling, he could feel the violence gathering in his fisted stomach.

“But if you don’t, on my grave, I’ll tell her everything. Is that what you want?”

Betsy would look at him with hate in her eyes, like this woman, her grandmother, someone she trusted. Someone she’d believe without question. He remembered the sound of her tears, he remember her words, Thank you. It is so little for such a great deed. You are my only hero. No one had ever said such things to him. It hadn’t mattered how he’d treated her, shame filled him at the memory. He’d only been trying to drive her off, to keep himself safe, but all he’d done was be cruel to a truly good woman.

No matter how vicious he was to her, she was irrepressibly cheerful, and he hated it and nothing, nothing would stop the agony of seeing Betsy, who’d held him in her lap and cried, pushing him away. Repulsed. Hate-filled. Seeing nothing but a monster.

Oh, no. The force was gathering inside him. Pain, worse than any he’d known, blackened his soul, roaring up from the bottom of his spirit, tearing through his body, filling his mind. The realization made sweat break out anew. He’d never see Betsy again. Never need to hide out in the forest or in his workshop during her weekly visit. No more grumbling. No more abrasive fury. No more sunshine yellow dresses and charming smiles.

Bile flooded his mouth, his abdomen jerked, his head lashed and physical pain made his eyes fail. There was only blackness and burning fire and desolation as he became sick, turning his agonized body to the side of the bed. Shame filled him.

Drained him.

Betsy wished she could stop crying. It made no sense to weep for a perfectly not-nice man. No, no one with a lick of common sense would be choking on sorrow at the thought of never again seeing the scowling, growling and vicious-mannered mountain man. But all she could think about was how vulnerable he’d looked in death, and sorrow clawed through her like an eagle’s lethal talons.

He wasn’t such a bad man. No, not at all. For all the times she’d dreaded driving into the far-reaching cloud of his hate that hovered over the forest like a fog, she would give anything to have him alive. Alive to scowl at her and to spit and hiss like a cornered mountain lion whenever she arrived a bit too early or late with the laundry delivery and caught him by surprise. Or like last time, when he hadn’t even been expecting her. He’d come to her aid like a real hero. She pushed her face into her hands, sobbing, more agony shredding her until she was like a spider’s web blowing in the wind, unwinding.

The gentle sounds of the night did not calm her. She let the tears fall and they kept rising through her in hot, twisting sorrow as the moonlight washed through the open window to gleam like a pearl on the lacy curtains and paint the intricate pattern of the lace onto the polished wood floor. The warm wind puffed through the mesh screen and brought with it the smell of ripe apples from the orchard and honeysuckle sweetness from the trellis where the vines clung to the sides of the house. The near silent glide of an owl cut through the moonlight and flickered a total brief darkness onto the window.

“Don’t grieve him overly much,” Joshua had told her when he’d seen her safely home. “He was no good. An outcast. He lived far away from decent people for a reason.”

Oh, how wrongly Joshua assumed. He saw only the outside Duncan Hennessey. Her least favorite customer was everything unpleasant, but she’d seen inside him to the man she’d always suspected was there. A great wounded man who would give his own life to defend a woman he didn’t even like.

That was rare indeed.

She wanted to say that it was admiration and gratitude that had her crying so that tears turned to sobs that turned into a place where there were no tears. She wrapped her arms around her waist, hurting inside with the same intensity she’d felt when Charlie had died, trying to deny the simple truth. Why her heart recognized Duncan Hennessey, she didn’t know.

All she knew for certain was that something had changed deep within her. That no matter what anyone said, she would always see the good in the mountain man who’d saved her. Who’d made her spirit stir.

Chapter Seven

Betsy tried to pretend the bright afternoon sun did not scrape against her sand-rough eyes, which were sore from the past few nights’ crying and from too little sleep. She couldn’t help it, she was grieving the mountain man, and as she studied her long-time friends since their early days in the public grade school, she wasn’t certain they would approve.

Rayna Lindsay with her expectant mother’s glow as she moved with grace from table to counter, and dug for the hot pads always hidden in the back of the top drawer. Not that they were exactly hiding there, but through all the opening and closing of the drawer and the contents sliding around, and after she’d gotten done rummaging for whatever she was looking for, they always inexplicably slid to the back.

Mariah Gray had started the laundry business when her father died. Then she’d gotten married and sold it to Betsy and rented her the house, too. Mariah, a take-charge kind of woman, took it upon herself to grab enough plates from the sideboard. “You still look worse for the wear, Betsy. Sit. Relax. You look so fragile.”

“I should say so!” Rayna stepped around a bag of laundry to lift the boiling coffeepot from the stove. The heat it gave off made it much too scorching to sit in the kitchen, so she carried the pot between the rows of bagged garments that lined the inside of the kitchen to the door.

The screen hinges squealed as she shouldered the door open and paused to tsk. “Betsy, I can’t think of what a harrowing ordeal that must have been. And to think you came away from a bear attack with little more than a few scrapes.”

“And easily mended.” She held up her hand. Already the skin was healing over, red and tender but healing well beneath the bandage. “My mother forbade me to work. She was terrified I’d get a festering from my hand being in wash water all day and they’d have to cut my arm off to save me from gangrene.”

“Your mother has an imagination.” Rayna politely said the only thing she could before twisting out of sight, leaving the screen to bang shut behind her.

“An imagination, ha!” Mariah scooped up forks to go along with the dessert plates and spoons for the coffee. “Your mother is so headstrong, she makes me look like a wish-wash. I’m proud of you for sticking to your guns. You are doing a great business. I’ve heard nothing but compliments.”

“Goodness, I sure try, but it isn’t easy.” She’d gotten behind after the buggy wreck. The vehicle had been towed to the livery but there was no telling if it could be salvaged.

Her kitchen was crammed with ironed laundry freshly folded, stacks of stiff, dried garments yet to be sprinkled and ironed, and the huge bags of laundry she’d picked up just this morning, blocked the lean-to door. Her friends had come, since she’d missed their usual weekly afternoon gathering, and this time it was her turn to host. She’d been glad enough that she’d been able to whip up a cake in time.

“Joshua is insisting on driving me everywhere. He’s a cautious driver and it took forever to come back from the west plains. He’s going to put me out of business.” She lifted the pedestal cake plate, carefully holding it steady—it was such a lovely thing—and let Mariah hold the screen door for her.

“Do you think it’s intentional?”

“I know it is.” Betsy waited while Rayna moved aside the coffee cups to make just enough room on the small coffee table for the cake plate.

It looked so pretty next to her china. A gift from Charlie she would always cherish, the pattern of butterflies soaring above cheerful sprays of flowers was just right. She reached for a cup now, slipping into the wooden rocker and cradling the scorching hot cup, not caring that it stung her fingers. Not caring at all.

The blue and yellow butterflies reminded her always that life went on, from caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly, and then on to the next life, which had to be more beautiful yet.

It was hope, and she clung to it, for Charlie’s sake and now for Duncan Hennessey’s.

Rayna stirred sugar into her cup and pushed the delicate sugar bowl across the little table to Betsy. “Joshua is a big brother. Of course he’s going to protect his baby sister, even if she is over thirty years old.”

“And widowed, self-sufficient, independent and a businesswoman to boot!”

“Oh, I can see you’re frustrated.” Rayna sympathized and began to cut the cake. “All I can offer you is a slice of your own cake. It’s temporary, but it is comfort.”

“Angel food cake. It is comforting. So sweet and light and spongy.” Like hope. Betsy sighed. She thought of the man she’d left still and lifeless in the mountain cabin. She felt drained of hope. Nothing seemed to make sense like it did before. “My family worries and frets, but the truth is, I’m a grown woman. If I were married with a family of my own, like James, then no one would be knocking down the fence to see what I’m up to.”

“Does your mother still want you to give up the business and move in with her?” Mariah took the sugar bowl, dumped three teaspoons into Betsy’s cup.

“You know she does. I love my mother, but I can’t live with her.”

“A saint couldn’t live with your mother.” Mariah meant it in a kind way, but the truth was the truth.

Mother was difficult, there was no denying it. “I haven’t been able to live with her since I was fifteen. She’s bossy and wrong at least half of the time. When I lived with her after Charlie’s death, you remember how I was. As crazy as a loon.”

“We remember.”

“Ten times a day it was ‘Betsy, a decent lady does not let her ears show.’ ‘It’s not eighteen thirty-two, Mother!’ ‘Betsy, a decent woman doesn’t sit with her knees gaping.’ ‘Mother, my knees are half an inch apart, not three feet and gaping while wearing no drawers in the middle of Pearl’s House of the Red Curtains.’”

“Or simply on the bench outside the mercantile,” Rayna added dryly, and they all burst into laughter.

“She went on like that all the live-long day. Without end. The woman was like to drive me mad. Until finally I reached the point that if I’d stayed much longer, I’d have gone running screaming down Main Street with my skirt over my head and my drawers showing. And here Mama was worried about my knees!”

Rayna laughed so hard she had to put down the cup. “That would have ruined your reputation for sure.”

“Yep. Everyone would have said, ‘Forget it, take Betsy Gable Hunter off the marriageable widow list!’”

“But everybody knows your mother,” Mariah pointed out. “You still may have saved some of your reputation. You know, tarnished, but still marriageable.”

Betsy sighed, no longer laughing. “Yeah, everyone knows Lucille Gable is a proper woman, but she pecks like a vulture.”

“She means well, at least you have that. My mother didn’t,” Mariah sighed.

Reminding Betsy how fortunate she was. “Exactly. My mama would crawl to China on her hands and knees if it would make me happy, but she is headstrong and I love her much better when we are under separate roofs.”

It was the way her family was. All of them. From the aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins. Nosy, every last one of them. Always getting involved in one another’s concerns. But at least it was done out of love. It was just one of those facts of life that love wasn’t always soft and mushy and gooey. Real love took grit, and it wasn’t easy to love someone no matter what in spite of their imperfections, but that was one of life’s challenges.

And the good part was that her family loved her the same in return, even if she was independent-minded and stubborn. Boy, could she be stubborn and sentimental. Lord, was she!

That overwhelming sentiment began to build up when she looked at the fluffy angel cake topped with powdered sugar and drizzled with strawberry syrup.

It was the strawberries that reminded her. Oh, Duncan. Her heart cracked wide open. She opened her mouth and it all came out. All of it. The way she’d thought it was him attacking her initially before the bear emerged from the thick foliage. How he’d come to her rescue only to be mortally wounded, protecting her. Always protecting her, even in his death.

“And he passed away, about the time I got there the other night.” She pushed the cake aside and sipped the coffee, rich and bitter; it was comforting, simply breathing in the smell of it. To let the warm liquid seep into her stomach and spread through her middle.

“How heroic.” Rayna looked thoughtful as she reached for her piece of cake, which she’d set aside to listen to the long tale. “Not many men would behave so gallantly. That’s how I knew my Daniel was a worthy man. His noble honor. It sounds as if your mountain man had a great spirit, too.”

“I’m sure many wouldn’t agree,” she teased, just a little, to hide what she felt too shy to say. “He was very embittered. I think he had a great sadness in his life.”

“His family was murdered, his mother, her husband and two daughters. Burned alive in their house.” Mariah shivered. “Horrendous, what some people are capable of.”

“You mean, someone did that on purpose?”

Mariah nodded. “No one was ever found guilty of murdering those poor people. Can you imagine, finding your family tortured and killed?”

Well, no wonder. She knew he’d endured a terrible tragedy, but to be left alone in the world, by means of injustice. She couldn’t blame him a bit for his anger. What was sad, though, was that no one had been left to soften his grief. To make gentle his world.

“…but that’s about all I know. It happened to the south, near Great Falls. I remember my father talking about it but I can’t recall any of the details.”

Mariah had laundered Duncan’s shirts for many years. Before Betsy had taken over, of course. As if she were trying to remember every important detail of her time delivering his shirts, Mariah forgot her fork was suspended in midair with a bite of delicious cake.

She looked very distant for a moment. “I was never sure about Mr. Hennessey, but I tell you, he amused me. He was so taciturn. So caustic. Actually, sometimes he was really funny. He’d say something like ‘Not so much starch next time, I’m no preacher.’ And I’d drive away before it hit me, the image of dour Mr. Hennessey in a stiff white collar and coat, preaching up a Sunday sermon. I can’t imagine how well that would go over, unless he deleted some of his especially vulgar swearwords.”

“I have increased my vocabulary because of him.” The tattered shreds of her heart throbbed with sorrow. “My brothers are always so gentle around me, and so was dear Charlie, that I had no notion of what Mr. Hennessey would be shouting whenever I’d drive up and startle him and he’d swing his hammer and hit his finger. I didn’t know words like those existed. I had to make James tell me what they meant.

“Boy, was Duncan hard to surprise, but once, when he was pulling honey from a hive and obviously concentrating very hard, I rounded the corner quite a bit earlier than usual and you know how my old wagon rattled louder than a stampeding herd of cattle? He didn’t hear me until I was almost upon him and he started, jumped and got stung. He was swatting and jumping and cursing and wouldn’t let go of the honey.

“About any other man would look like a fool, but he did it with great dignity. And, somehow, he charmed the bees because they stopped stinging him and started swarming again. Very impressive. But I’ll never forget the look of horror on his face when he saw me coming down his road. From his perspective he probably preferred the bee stings, and it wasn’t the bees he was cursing.”

Betsy swallowed hard. “He was everything opposed to what a perfect gentleman ought to be and yet I preferred him.”

“At least he was never two-faced. He said what he meant. You can’t say that about a lot of men.”

Rayna seemed thoughtful as she reached for the coffeepot. “Betsy, I think you owe this Mr. Hennessey a great debt. When is his funeral service?”

She didn’t know. “I don’t know if there even is one. I only know of Mariah and I who even knew he lived out there.”

“Surely he needed supplies for the winter,” Rayna persisted, filling each cup with care. “Someone must know him.”

“I don’t know if he ever came to town.” Betsy reached for the sugar bowl.

“No,” Mariah said thoughtfully. “I know he came to town a few times a year. To trade in his furs for staples, of course. But also to put his woodwork on consignment.”

Betsy forgot her fingers were holding the spoon and it slipped into the bowl. She left it, coffee drips and all, her mind skidding to a dead halt. “What kind of woodwork? Like whittling?”

“No. He makes furniture for the furniture store on Second Street.”

What kind of furniture? Betsy was dying to know. It was wrong, this interest in him. He was gone. Dead. Probably buried by now. But Rayna’s words troubled her greatly. She might be one of the few people who even knew him. Maybe that accounted for the strange way she felt moved inside…not sexually, goodness, she hadn’t thought that way for years, but in her heart. As if something had changed between them on the night of so much death.

On her way out of town, she’d convince Joshua to take her along Second and she would see for herself. She couldn’t say why she felt compelled to do so. Only that she did.

The afternoon sky felt changed, although the sunshine was lovely.

Mariah felt it, too. “Looks like we’ll be in for some rain.”

The furniture was beautiful. She knew it was his without explanation. Bold pieces, masculine and strong. As stalwart and as breathtaking as the mountains where he’d lived. As the man had been.

I never knew. She pressed her hand against the window glass, the sounds and smells and heat of the brilliant Indian summer’s day faded to nothing. Nothing but the beat of her heart, the tug of her soul. They were chairs made for sitting on a porch. A pair of deep-backed, low-slung seats made out of rich cherry gleamed like sleek marble.

It’s so beautiful. Her fingertips itched, anxious to slip along the polished armrests. To admire the crafted slats fit perfectly together. To trace the carved trail of climbing roses up the leg, along the back and across to the other side.

How could fierce and rugged Duncan Hennessey be the same man who put blade to wood and created something so fine and delicate it was hardly visible through the pane of glass?

“Bets!” It was Joshua, impatient with her again. Did he not have a ranch to run?

She ignored him, drawn back to the matching side table, equally exquisite. How comfortable those chairs would be, with cheerful yellow cushions, and it would look perfect on her back porch, where she so loved to spend a few moments of an afternoon. Dragging her kitchen chairs in and out of the house was cumbersome. But to have something more permanent…

You can’t afford it, Betsy Ellen! Don’t even reach for the door handle. Her hand seemed to be moving of its own will and the knob was sun-warmed brass against her palm. With a tug and the jingle of an overhead bell, she found herself inside the store. She caught a flash of the image of Joshua reflected in the door as it closed. His outrage contorted his chiseled face, and then she saw it. All of it.

There were more. Many more pieces than she could have imagined. No, there was no way one man could have done all this. She imagined a factory back East where men would work patiently for months to churn out such breathless pieces. She must have been wrong. It was wishful thinking, was all. Wishing she could have something to remember him by.

The tap of expensive boots on the polished floor behind her should have been a warning, if she’d paid enough attention. But no, she was too busy recoiling from the disappointment she’d created herself by wrongly believing this was Duncan’s work. Instead of pivoting right out the door and escaping his clutches, she didn’t move fast enough to elude the man who scraped to a stop behind her.

“Betsy, this is the most fortuitous occasion. I’d heard of your ordeal. And to think there’s not a scratch on you, or so it would appear.”

She grimaced, dug deep for enough courage and faced her nemesis. Ray Hopps, resplendent as always with his black coat and perfectly ironed trousers. He wore a white shirt and vest and a black string tie. His thinning blond hair was combed back at a jaunty angle. Perhaps he thought it made him debonair and attractive to desperate women.

But she was not that desperate for a man. In fact, there was only one reason she could think to even marry a man again, and that was for love. She sincerely doubted she’d ever feel more than mild repulsion for Ray Hopps, who blushed furiously as he brushed nonexistent lint off his jacket.

It was situations such as these where she admired her mother. No-nonsense Lucille would have had no problem managing any man. She simply would have spoken her mind, and Betsy wondered what the store owner would do if she simply said what she was thinking, “You have a better chance of getting a wrinkle in your knickers than me taking a spark to you.” It was Ray Hopps’s luck that she wasn’t her mother.

Instead she looked past him, making it clear she was not interested in him again. It was the bane of being a young widow in a territory where unmarried men outnumbered unmarried women by at least five to one.

She tried to be sympathetic with poor Ray. He’d never snare a wife when he wore such ironed garments that seemed to hint at a man with rigid standards. The creases down the front of his trousers were as perfect as a surveyor’s property line. She knew, because she was the one who ironed his garments weekly—and he was very picky when it came to the perfection of his ironed clothes.

Oh, he was waiting for an answer. What had he asked her about? That’s right. Her “ordeal,” as her mother had dubbed it. “I’m fine, thank you, but my buggy was damaged and I’m an entire day behind on my work schedule. I am supposed to be delivering your laundry this afternoon, but I intend to come tomorrow morning, early, if that’s acceptable?”

“My, Betsy. Of course. If you’d rather, you could make it later in the day.” He laid his long fragile hand against his heart, dramatic, but he hadn’t been raised in Montana. Maybe he thought it was a dashing gesture. She tried not to fault him his foppish manner. “If you preferred, you could make your delivery the last of your day, on your way back into town, and I know my mother would be pleased to have you to supper. She is quite fond of you.”

“Well, I do take care to starch her crinolines and mend the tucks in the seams of her corsets without charge.”

Ray’s face bloomed bright red. “I’m sure my mother appreciates that greatly.”

“I’m so glad. She’s been a wonderful client and I do want her to be happy.” Betsy knew she’d derailed Ray’s wooing and cast her gaze around the cramped, overly warm store.

There were gleaming oak tables and sideboards and heavy horsehair sofas and rich tapestry rugs of jeweled colors. Nothing that looked as if it had been made by a caustic mountain man. It looks as if you raised your hopes for no good reason. It seemed like such a small thing, to want to see his furniture, what was she going to do had she found it? Buy it? She was scraping a living together. Barely.

But she turned to the still-blushing storekeeper and the question rose up as if she were destined to ask it and there was no way to stop the rush of words. “Perhaps you could tell me if you have any furniture from a local craftsman.”

“Why, these pieces right here. Lovely, don’t you think?” He gestured to the stunning cherrywood porch set and to the gleaning oak pieces. “We are unusually lucky to have such a skilled furniture maker in our midst. He lives in the county.”

Don’t get your hopes up. It could be another craftsman. The blood pounded in her ears and she heard herself say as if from a great distance. “Up near the Rocky Mountain Front?”

“Why, you must have heard of him. He’s anonymous. To tell you the truth, he wants it that way and that’s how we prefer it, too.” A shadow passed over his elongated face. Narrow, thin features squinted, as something seemed to occur to him. “You don’t happen to be looking to purchase these pieces, do you?”

“Yes, I am.” Her obviously wicked, less than sensible side must not see the folly of buying expensive furniture she couldn’t begin to afford. But did that halt her rash behavior? Of course not. “I would have to have the pieces lain away.”

“Oh, I think Mother and I could trust you to make payments.” Ray, as if happy to be of service, puffed out his narrow chest like a robin after gobbling the biggest worm in the garden. “Of course, we don’t often accept payments, but we are all too happy to make exceptions for our special customers.”

He slipped his fingertips into the shallow side pockets of his vest and looked very pleased with himself.

Say no, the sensible side of her urged. He will only see it as an opportunity to push for more than a proper chaperoned supper to something more suitable to a courting man—like a Sunday drive. If she agreed to his payment suggestion, then she would be in his debt for as long as she made those payments open to his advances.

There was nothing visibly wrong with Ray Hopps. In fact, if she did not launder his clothing she would have found him to be pompous, but perfectly decent and kind. She knew he was very generous with his donations to both the school’s yearly fund-raising and her Ladies’ Reading Society’s campaign to raise funds for a lending library.

Except for the fact that she’d found in his vest pocket upon several occasions small match tins from the brothel on the far side of town, she would find no real fault with him whatsoever.

Sadly, she would not let a man court her who frequented such establishments.

“Perhaps you could give me a monthly sum on the porch chairs in the window. And, oh,” she breathed in wonder as she turned to the display corner and saw the most beautiful bedroom set.

The high poster bed was hewn of gleaming dark oak and carved painstakingly so that the legs of the bed frame were roots of the climbing rose’s stems rising up to the ceiling where graceful buds opened and dew rested on dainty leaves.

How could the man who’d wrestled a great black bear and won have made something like this? The man she’d held dying in her arms, the one who’d panicked in her presence, the one who’d lain motionless in near death—he had been the woodworker who’d done this. His soul had stirred hers.

This was why. Her eyes stung as she let her fingers caress the smooth varnished leaves and flowers budding across the headboard, etched and cut as if the hard unyielding wood had been bought silk. How many hours had he labored with tremendous patience and care?

I have to have this. Absolutely. She would give up anything to own it, not because it was beautiful, but because when she felt the warm wood solid against her hand, her soul stirred again.

And again.

“Uh, Mrs. Hunter. Can I call you Betsy?”

It felt odd to see how this man failed to move her in any possible way. Duncan Hennessey was gone, and she’d said goodbye to him. She’d thanked him. But seeing the exquisite loveliness he’d made with his rough, broad hands made her all the more certain she’d met the real Duncan Hennessey.

“No, you may not.” She cleared the ragged emotion trembling in her voice, but nothing would shake the aching deep within. “Mrs. Hunter is fine. When can you deliver?”

“Perhaps after supper tonight, if you’d care to grace our dinner table with your presence?”

So much hope in his invitation. It had nothing to do with selling furniture and everything to do with another man offering her something she could not stomach. Settling for the average. Not when marriage was so important and the love that ought to support it.

“That is a very tempting invitation, for I know you mean it sincerely, but no, I am content to dine alone in my own kitchen. Will your delivery men perhaps be available tomorrow?”

Ray Hopps’s chest deflated, but it was with dignity that he led the way to his pristine, polished desk. “Of course. What time would be convenient for you?”

They made arrangements, and she could feel Joshua glowering at her through the thick outside walls.

He could wait. He was the one insisting on escorting her on her boring delivery route through town and across the prairie. She took one more look at the bed and the matching bureau and drawers and side tables. Such a bed was meant for a bride, for a wedding night joining a man and woman in true love.

Why did she feel as if she’d spend the rest of her life alone in that bed, wondering what it would have been like to be loved intimately by Duncan Hennessey? To know the spice of his kiss and the wild tenderness of his passion?

She wanted to tell herself it was only a woman’s needs making her wonder, but she knew better. Having been a happy wife and a lonely widow, she knew her soul’s match when she found it. For she’d felt this way only once before.

Was it rare to find more than one soul mate in a lifetime?

Afraid she knew the answer, she signed Ray’s paperwork, not even noticing the purchase price that would only make her panic. The instant she stepped foot outside the door, the sky broke wide open and cold bitter rain pounded over her.

It felt as if the heavens had answered.

Chapter Eight

It felt as if autumn were holding off, giving way to the bolder demands of the summer sun. Any number of slow weeks had crept by, with each day more agonizing than the last.

Duncan cursed the heat that baked him from the inside out. Seeing to his basic daily needs of washing and eating, or tending the livestock, left him wrung out by midday. He slumped, panting and weak as a trickle of water trying to head uphill.

The deer and elk had disappeared from the mountainside when the dry season hit, and they had not yet returned. That told him the autumn would be long and the unforgiving sun would dominate the days left before frost crisped on the wild grasses. Before the bears curled in their dens and the herd animals returned.

There was a chance he’d have time enough to reach town before the blizzard snows trapped him in. His woodpile lay as he’d left it, scattered, and with endless hours of splitting and stacking needing to be done. It would have to wait until next spring. He was not strong enough to wield an ax and even if he was, there was barely time for the wood to season for adequate winter burning.

No, somehow he’d have to buy coal and haul it here. When he had no strength to hitch up the horses. He was too weak to sit aboard a bouncing wagon for twenty miles in one direction. He could never unload the coal when he returned.

The crone’s bitter farewell mocked him now, like the echoing caw of the crows that scavenged along the mountainsides. “You live, and I saw to it. But no more. If you survive beyond this point is your lookout. Either way, you are nothing but a dead man. Step foot in town or approach my granddaughter in any way, and you will discover firsthand the fury of a woman protecting her own.”

The tough old bird had spit at his feet and left him, barely able to sit.

He could not blame her. When Betsy was his to protect, he’d been deadly. The memory of the fierce wildness within him, the murderous need to keep her safe, had made him feel twelve feet tall. The lessons learned during two years serving in the Union army’s infantry had surged through him, and he’d been that soldier again, fighting for what he held dear.

No, he did not think a pampered sunbeam of a woman was dear. And he would say that over and over until he believed it. Until it was true.

Hell blazes, his head was killing him. It had throbbed with a dull pounding at the temples and across his forehead ever since he’d been hurt. He hadn’t hit his head, he didn’t know why it hurt, or why the cursed thirstiness never seemed to leave him, no matter how much he drank. All he knew was that the snows would come, regardless of the sun shining as if it were midsummer. These were the Montana Rockies, some of the toughest winters anywhere, and he had to be prepared.

He had to figure out a way to get his strength back.

Maybe it was his headache, but it seemed the sound of the forest changed. With his luck, it was the wolves that seemed to hover around his land by day and circle his cabin by night. Maybe those animals knew his future more than he did. As did the vultures that would check in on him from time to time, spiraling in the cloudless sky overhead as if in foreboding.

His grandfather would have turned to the Old Ways, the Traditions of their People. Duncan couldn’t imagine Grandfather would see any good news in a bunch of waiting vultures. Or the way birds startled from their daily work to perch in treetops, safely out of harm’s way.

The wind rustled the tinder-dry grasses and they rattled like dried bones. He could have sworn there was a whistle coming from the road. And yet, no one had traveled down that overgrown path that served as a road for what had to be a month, maybe more. The old crone was gone and there was no one who cared enough to visit. His extended family, who did care, he’d pushed away long ago.

The wind’s rustle became the whispering squeak-squeeaak of a buggy wheel. No, it couldn’t be. He had to be hearing things, wishful thinking of a lonely man. The squeaking grew stronger and louder until the drum of a horse’s hooves accompanied it and there, breaking from the overgrown branches, was a chestnut gelding and the front dash of a fancy black buggy.

With the top up to block the beat of the sun, it was impossible to see the figure who held the thick leather reins, but he could see her hands, which were extended enough so that the shade didn’t hide them. He recognized small dainty gloves of tan kid leather and the yellow curve of a sunbonnet’s brim.

I have to be dreaming. He blinked, but she was still there, close enough to see how the gelding’s skin twitched in fear. Near enough that Duncan could make out her silhouette beneath the canopy top. Betsy Hunter, her jaw slack, leaning forward so that the sun found her, and kissed the soft golden skin of her face.

This has to be a dream, he thought, desperate, already looking for the brothers to come riding up behind her, shotguns at the ready, sent by the granny who’d threatened to ruin his life if he ever saw Betsy again. If she ever found out he was alive—

“Oh, God, I don’t believe this.” The buggy hadn’t stopped but she flew out of it, her skirts billowing. A glimpse of snowy-white petticoat flashed beneath the butter-colored skirts. Her black shoes, perfectly polished, hit the earth, dried to powder, and dust flew like flour. “You’re alive. What are you doing here? Oh, my God.”

She was running, not noticing that her gelding had veered off the overgrown driveway and was circling back the way it had come.

Panic ripped through him, like a bandage from a wound, opening it anew. He tried to scramble to his feet, to get as much distance from her as he could, but she went down on her knees on the bottom step and her face fell to his knees.

He recoiled as if she were poison seeping through his trousers and into his skin, but she had a tight hold on him, her arms clasping his legs tight, and the fear faded. His self-lies silenced. He could pretend all he wanted but she was dear and he couldn’t say why.

From his angle he saw the back of her head, covered in the matching light yellow of her dress, and the hint of golden brown hair escaping from the pins in gossamer wisps at her nape. Her neck was a slender column so small, the width of it could fit in his palm, and the bumps of her vertebrae and the arrow of her hairline showed how small and vulnerable she was.

She was petite as a fairy, and he didn’t know what devil possessed him but he ached to press a kiss right there, at the nape of her neck where the collar of her dress began. And mocked him by hiding away her satin-warm skin and everything that dress covered.

Her breasts had flattened against his shins and he could feel their heat, the soft mesmerizing fullness that a man in his position really oughtn’t to be thinking about. He wanted to blame it on his weakened condition, but there was no excuse for the yank on his heart as she lifted her face, streaming with tears, and laid a hand against his jaw.

So small and slender, but the wave of caring he felt left him paralyzed. He knew he had to push her away, demand she leave, scare her enough so that she would never return to these woods and the dangerous man he’d become.

The man he used to be, who’d lain dormant and patient, still knew how to wish. How to feel. It came to him in a flash, how she’d sat at his bedside and he’d known, upon awakening, she’d been there. This is how he knew. The way his spirit rested, as if it had been searching endlessly all his life and, weary, was home at last.

But he was no longer the craftsman who loved to carve and etch and sand a curve until it was just right. No longer a man who saw poetry in the world. Nor beauty.

He was no longer a man with a heart left, so he could not love.

But if he could, then it would be Betsy. In a different world, perhaps.

“Oh, they told me you were dead. I was right at your side, I couldn’t feel your heartbeat. You didn’t seem to be breathing and I’d thought you’d just passed into the hereafter.”

“I remember.”

“But you weren’t awake.”

“No.” But my soul was. He grimaced and wanted to laugh out loud at his stupidity. What was wrong with him that he was sitting here mooning over some woman who’d brought him nothing but pain? Hadn’t he been destroyed enough times over a pretty little woman? “What are you doing here if you thought I was dead? You didn’t come to pick up my laundry.”

“No, but I gained a new client out this way, south a bit, toward the Big Bear Mountains.”

“You call that nearby?”

The bite in his combative tone made her realize what she was doing. She was wound around him as if they were lovers. She pulled back, and it was like taking a step into darkness. The wind was as warm, she knew, but to her skin it was cooler than it had been a moment ago. She studied the hard, chiseled features of the man before her and she saw a man suffering.

He’d lost too much weight, so that his cheekbones seemed to hold out his skin, and his jaw was rough and covered with an untrimmed beard. His black eyes had sunk deeper into his skull, and on any other man it would have been ugly.

Duncan Hennessey looked compelling. There was no other way to describe the fire crackling in his black irises and the proud granite set of his chin. Like the warriors who used to ride their ponies bareback and without bit or reins, his spirit shone through. Vibrant. Unyielding. Unconquerable.

I cannot believe he is here. She dared not touch him again, but she ached to pull him into her arms. For all his ferocity, he was turning ashen. The reason she’d come forgotten, she straightened and took his arm.

“You need care. How long have you been on your own out here? And why did Granny leave you here? Why did she say you were gone?”

Duncan did not answer as he searched her with his brutal gaze. How his eyes seemed to bore past her skin to her very being was something she couldn’t explain, but she felt it like a bruise deep inside. She wilted like a flower too long in a hot sun, without relief or water, as she watched the change come over him. As powerful as a storm from the south, rising faster than a horse could run, turning darker and more dangerous. Until she could feel the zing of the earth waiting for the lightning’s touch.

His mouth twisted and there was no artist in the beast that shoved her away and stumbled to his feet. Like the bear he’d defeated, he rose over her, all hulking power and mighty rage. “Get out of here. What do you think you’re doing? You don’t fool me. You’re not bringing ruination to my door, no way in hell. You turn around and get outta here.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” She toppled back, her heel catching on a rock, and she lost her balance. Pain winged up her ankle, but her good, tight shoes protected her from twisting it any further and she tripped sideways, as if fate had wanted her at a safer distance.

Hate. She felt the emotion roll over her like smoke. He hated her? Her mind wasn’t working, she couldn’t move beyond the notion that he hadn’t died at all. Then why had Granny said he was gone? Why had Joshua said he’d paid for a decent casket and buried him here, on his land?

She trusted them beyond all things, she couldn’t reconcile the fact that they had to have lied to her, when neither Joshua nor Adelaide Gable were ones to make up falsehoods. Why had they done this? Had Granny only thought he was dead?

Well, that didn’t make sense because Joshua clearly hadn’t buried him.

Had they left Duncan mortally wounded to fend for himself as best he could? Outrage left her paralyzed as she watched the wounded man stumble up the stairs, catch his toe on the lip of the top step and go down like he’d been sucker punched. He hit the porch with a thud that sounded like a woodpile clattering down and lay there, motionless except for the rapid rise and fall of his rib cage and the jagged rasping of his strained breathing.

“Duncan!”

She dropped to her knees beside him, but he was already shoving at her, the flat of his hand at her knee and thigh, pushing her like a bucket across a floor. Making it clear. This connection she felt with him was like a one-way train track.

He averted his face, as if he thought so little of her, as if he couldn’t tolerate the sight of her. He had to know she cared for him, and as weak as he was, he was bandaged at his neck, still, for she could see the white muslin poking up from his undershirt collar. He wanted nothing to do with her, even to accept help from her.

She thought of Ray Hopps and how she’d deftly done the same thing, putting him in his place, letting him know she was simply not interested.

Oh. She sat there for a moment, letting the realization sink in.

As if in great pain, Duncan limped through the open doorway and she watched in disbelief as he disappeared, hunched and ambling, into the deep shadows inside the cabin. With her mind spinning, her emotions in shock, she felt the tears on her cheeks at the image of the once proud, once mighty giant of a man gravely wounded, still.

The image of him lingered, of how his right arm had shook with effort and weakness as he’d fought his way back onto his feet. And how he moved as if broken, protecting his side and one arm and favoring his leg, made it undeniable how injured he’d been. He was suffering and she was not.

“But I don’t understand.” She followed him through the open door and into the deep shadows of the main room that smelled stale and was illuminated only by the faint glow from the sunlight curling around the edges of the heavy window shades.

Furniture hulked like monsters in the corners and the kitchen felt as if ghosts hovered over tabletops and counters. An odd chill misted around the rooms, as if Death were watching and waiting.

The ghosts became piles of dishes left undone. Clods of dirt from Duncan’s boots crunched and powdered beneath her step. She could smell the dust and stale air. “Granny was here. Why did she think you’d died? Is that why she left you?”

“Sure, that’s what she did. She thought I was dead.” Sarcasm dripped like fester from a wound as he disappeared into the back of the cabin. “I was damn lucky she didn’t put me in a coffin and bury me.”

“What are you saying? We all thought you’ve been dead. I’ve been mourning you.”

“Sure you have. Your family’s still wearing black, huh?”

“No, but Joshua said… He said…”

“What did he say?” Duncan wished to hell he could keep the hate from his voice. The hatred and anger and disillusionment that no matter where he lived, no matter what he did, human beings were the scourge of the earth, how God could ever have given them life was a real puzzle.

It was not simply the matter of the settlers and the natives, the Union and the Confederates, the right and the wrong. Where there was no reason and no sense, some folks went right ahead and did as they pleased. Destroying others and taking pleasure that they’d gotten away with it.

“I bet your brother managed to shed a tear of pity after lying about what a Good Samaritan he was to pay for a good coffin for my worthless hide to rot in.”

“No, he wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t lie.”

“Is that what he told you? Am I right?” Yeah, it was about what he’d figured. “Well, I’m alive, right? So obviously he lied. What do you think I did? Come back to life, break out of a coffin and dig my way to the surface?”

Her eyes rounded, mortified and shocked. Her bottom lip began to tremble and shock and disbelief rolled off of her like radiant heat from a potbellied stove and he refused to feel pity for her. He refused to soften the vile truth of what her loved ones, so good and honest on the outside, had so easily done.

“Your grandmother and your brother both threatened to ruin my life if I ever showed up in town alive, so that you would find out.” He was driven by an old rage that had less to do with that vicious but understandably protective old woman and more to do with bitterness that was obliterating him from the inside out. A bitterness that wanted to deny the honest shock as Betsy Hunter turned and walked out of his life.

Yeah, keep on walking, he thought, letting the acid within him take over. Drained, his knees gave out and he slid onto the edge of the mattress. Too feeble to manage his boots, he simply lay back and let his legs dangle.

His head cracked like thunder resounding through his skull. His guts knotted, making him taste bile. The bed began to rotate, or that’s how it seemed. Even when he closed his eyes, the spinning remained, and he was whirling faster and faster as the darkness took him.

She was gone, good riddance. So what if he hadn’t spotted a speck of an apology on her face? It didn’t matter to him one whit if she didn’t believe him. Sure, she’d walked away. It was exactly what he’d expected. He’d saved her, and she was just like any woman he’d ever met, except for the rare few, who were out for their own gain. Careless and self-concerned, all those skirts wanted was a man to fulfill their shallow whims. Why would Betsy be any different?

Blackness surged upward like a tide washing away the places within him he could still feel until it was only a dark, drowning hatred no different than the years after he’d returned from prison. The injured muscles in his neck, shoulders, arm and chest thrummed from overuse.

Hell, I hurt. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to acknowledge the twitching pain, sharp like a blade and as crackling like lightning as the nerves vibrated up and down the length of his injuries.

What he needed was a few hours’ rest. Then he’d be strong enough to break open a can of beans and stumble back to bed. If only he could get the pain to stop, the nerve endings from snapping, the beat inside his head to cease.

He didn’t hear her as much as he sensed her. Felt her from the length of the cabin away. Even though she moved with hardly more than a whisper-soft pad of her shoes on the puncheon floors and the leaves-in-wind sound of her skirts, he perceived her nearness like the softest of touches.

As she hesitated at the foot of the bed, towering over him, her breathing in time with his own, he wondered what she’d come to say. If she was gathering her nerve to tell him to go to hell, to condemn him for lying about her loved ones. Then, he wagered, she’d proceed to tell him how worthless of a man he was. No job, no impressive house, no high-stepping horses. He was just a half-breed, more garbage than man.

Yeah, he’d heard it all before and worse. So much worse.

He heard the rustle of fabric, the hush as she laid something on the bed beside him and the scrape of her heel as she spun. The swish of her startched petticoats as she walked away, leaving him, shutting the door firmly behind her as she went.

His head screamed with pain, but he opened his eyes anyway. Waited until they’d adjusted to the after-midnight darkness in the room.

She’d laid three roses on his bed.

Flowers she must have brought for his grave.

The grave that didn’t exist.

Chapter Nine

“Betsy! Hell, I’ve been worried about you.”

Joshua was sitting on her front steps, his hat in his hands, looking not the least bit guilty. And after how he’d behaved! “I do not need a babysitter, thank you.”

“Aren’t you in a snit.”

“Actually, I feel downright uncivil.”

“You? You’re never uncivil. You always are and always have been my own sweet Bets.”

His nickname for her, when he was three and she an infant had amused their parents greatly, and the nickname had stuck. It was an endearment she’d known all her life, one that expressed affection between her and Joshua; they’d always had a strong bond. But she stared at her big, bold, powerful brother and saw a man who looked invincible, not in the same way as Duncan did, but Joshua was every inch a capable man.

She’d always been so proud he was her brother, as she was of all her younger siblings.

Surely the Joshua Gable I know and love would not have deceived me. She hopped down from the buggy, refusing his hand to help her and led Morris by the bridle’s cheek strap through the side gate to the stable out back.

Clearly, Joshua had deceived her. Calmly, so he would not suspect, she tossed the question over her shoulder. “I was delivering out near the Rocky Mountain Front, you know—my new client down at the base of the Big Bear Range?”

“Oh, that’s right.” Smoothly, as if there was nothing amiss, at least not in his world, he bounded ahead to haul open the heavy double doors and began releasing the harness buckles the instant Morris stopped moving.

“It reminded me of that poor mountain man. He was always gruff, but he tipped so well. I miss the income.” And she waited.

Perfectly timed, as if he’d counted to five, Joshua released the traces and rose, working easily with the leather harness. The honest and salt-of-the-earth man he appeared to be.

“Are you hurting, Bets? I can always lend you money. Better yet, you should come live with Mother. She’s lonely and you know she’d love having you.”

“Lonely? How can she be with every one of us but me and James living with her?”

“We’re a big family. She’s used to all of us.”

Hmm. Interesting. She knew he would turn the conversation to his advantage, always gently pushing her to give up her independence. This home that was hers alone. “It’s been—what?—a month, since the poor man died. I had never asked if you’d seen to a headstone for his grave.”

“I had not thought of it, since he has no relatives.”

“My friend Katelyn’s husband’s surname is Hennessey. I wonder if they are related.”

“I doubt it. If that recluse would have had family, surely he would not have lived alone in the wild.”

He is not himself, she realized as he led Morris to the corner stall, so nice and boxy and filled with fresh straw. The dried stalks rustled and whispered as the gelding ambled to the feed trough and began crunching on his oats. Morris’s ears were swiveling and alert, and he kept a good close eye on Joshua.

See? Morris sensed it, too. Joshua was tense beneath the smooth motions as he shook out the thick leather harness and hung it to air with the ease of a rancher who had done the same act several times a day for the last decade.

Joshua was not making eye contact. That was it. That was what seemed different as he hefted the shoulder collar and lifted it onto the storage frame.

“Still,” she persisted, “I would rest easier knowing the man had at least a properly marked grave. Would you see to it?”

“Yes, but why all this curiosity?”

There was suspicion in his eyes as jeweled as her own. Well, he ought to be suspicious! He was lying to her. Duncan Hennessey had been one-hundred-percent correct. How could this man have the same blood flowing in his veins and act as if he were not being duplicitous?

Joshua waited, the stable work done, his rugged hands fisted on his hips. He looked like a general in command of his troops, and she burned with anger, as hot and bright and cruel as the midday sun during a two-month-long drought.

He was bossy and he’d always been that way. His heart was in the right place, she knew, but she thought about how difficult it must have been for Duncan. “I’m not curious. I’m simply thankful. I don’t want to forget or take for granted what he—”

“For God’s sake, the mountain man was an outcast from society. I don’t know why we all didn’t put a stop to this foolishness of yours before this. Mama is worried about you. Granny is worried about you. I have enough responsibilities without having to be half-sick with fear that something is going to happen to you.”

“Like washing a mountain man’s shirts?”

“He was dangerous. What if he’d decided to hurt you? You could never have defended yourself against his advances, even with that old rifle of Charlie’s. Hell, he fought a black bear and lived long enough to tell about it. With that kind of savagery, how could you ever be safe?”

“Because he hates people, Joshua. He never got close enough to me. He wasn’t interested in me. I believe he harbored great distrust for women. I’d always wondered if a woman had broken his heart badly.”

“See? There you go! This is the reason I’m here come to check on you instead of putting up my feet and relaxing after working in the fields until sunup.”

Thank goodness the Indian summer had been long enough for Joshua to get a rare fourth cutting of the grasses for hay. It had necessitated his stay on the family property so she could return to driving alone. “Nothing has happened yet. Nothing will happen.”

“Not now.” His eyes narrowed. “Did you drive out there? Is that why you’re late?”

“I’m late because I stopped by Mariah’s on the way home. She’d invited me out to discuss a few things for the next fund-raiser. You know we’re both in charge of the next lending library supper.”

“Oh.” He visibly relaxed.

Liar, she wanted to rail at him, and whack him hard alongside his head so that maybe whatever rock was loose in there would jar back into place and he wouldn’t be a jackass. “You’ll see about the headstone?”

“I promise.” In a big-brother way, he cupped her chin. “We all love our dear sister so much. Stop making us worry.”

“As much as I love you right back, you can’t control my life, Joshua.”

“I’m not trying to control you, Bets. Just protect. You could always remarry. You’ve been without Charlie for a long time. There are so many good men in this county, solid, working men. You could get married.”

“I will when I want to.”

She shoved bags of dirty laundry into his powerful arms. She might as well take advantage of having him here, since he was giving her a royal headache. But at least she knew why. He’d done such a terrible thing. Out of a misplaced sense of love. And a man had suffered because of it.

Oh, it made her furious as she filled her arms, juggling the bags so she could see her way to the door. Furious and frustrated. How lucky she was to be so loved by so many people.

So many overprotective, overbearing, impossible liars!

“When you want to? What kind of arbitrary attitude is that?” He hurried to catch up with her, but she was in a good steam, marching so fast he had to work to keep up. “Bets, I’m making you mad, I can see it.”

“Mad? No, I wouldn’t call this mad. Outraged. Furious. Ready to cover you in hot honey, stake you in the middle of the plains and let the ants and bees and bears do what they will with you.”

“Whoa, you really are mad.”

Men were brilliant, truly. She smacked open the side gate and stomped along the stones and up the steps and into her very own house.

“You,” she announced in a voice that even he could comprehend. “You are not welcome here.”

Genuine hurt washed over his face. He wasn’t bad; he was just a man.

The rage dribbled out of her, becoming smaller as she shut the door instead of slamming it, realizing she’d dropped the six bags she’d juggled at her feet and had a hard time stepping over them.

Joshua was still out there, she could see him through the kitchen window, holding the stuffed pillowcases and rucksacks full of other people’s laundry.

He looked confused, continuing to stare at the door as if he’d either imagined her tirade or expected her to feel bad, which was what she was doing, and open the door. To apologize and invite him in so he could railroad her and boss her and interfere. He meant well, but he didn’t understand. This was her life. Hers alone.

She wasn’t about to let him in and apologize, which is exactly what she always did every time she lost her patience with anyone in her family. They loved her, she knew, because she loved them. But she was a grown woman and what she wanted wasn’t simple. Did he think she treasured listening to her movements echo in the evenings when the shadows lengthened? When she’d used to spend lovely evenings like this with Charlie.

After the supper dishes were done, she and Charlie, exhausted from work and dealing with problems and crises and debts, would enjoy cool tea on the back porch side by side, stealing those few minutes, sometimes as much as two whole hours, just basking in one another’s company.

Listening to the beauty around them, the birds on their last-chance hunt for bugs and worms before nightfall. The cat curled up on the cool shade. Charlie’s hand warm and reassuring around hers. Knowing that whether they read or talked or simply sat in silence, they were content to be together.

And come bedtime they would go upstairs together in their little house on the high plains north of town and make love, the sweetest way to end a day spent in paradise—because what else could it be to have the privilege of spending a day with the one you loved?

She’d do anything to bring those days back, to have one more evening and one more night in Charlie’s arms. It was a sad fact of life that a person couldn’t go back, only forward.

Did Joshua or anyone in her family really want her to marry someone like Ray Hopps? Someone who seemed hard-working and pleasant enough, except for the secret brothel habit, but he was not a man she would want to sit next to every evening in the long shadows and soft golden and often rosy glow of twilight. Fulfilled and happy and so much in love, it hurt.

No, she wasn’t about to try to imagine a man like Ray Hopps on her back porch, sitting at his side, holding his hand as night fell. She wasn’t about to settle for almost good, when she’d had the best love life had to offer.

She might be alone, she might be washing other people’s worn clothing, but she wasn’t beside a man she’d wished would fulfill her simply by meeting her gaze across the room.

Simply by holding her hand.

She surveyed the laundry bags she’d dumped on the floor. She grabbed up the Landers’s laundry. Pulled out a small garbage pail and began sorting. Whites, colors, intimates, sheets. She checked every pocket and found a nickel, which she would return taped to the weekly bill, a wadded-up handkerchief, which she held by the corner and tossed into the white pile, and a familiar match tin from the Red Curtain. It was apparently the brothel of choice among many of the county’s male citizens.

“Betsy?”

Goodness, was he still out there? She leaned across the table, straining to see if he was still standing where she’d left him

Yep. He even still held the laundry bags.

“I’m not apologizing to you,” she said after she’d opened the window to let in the cooler twilight air. “Go home and think about what you’ve done.”

“What did I do? Wait, is this about the talk I had with Ray Hopps?”

“What talk?”

“I just assumed you might be sweet on him, since you bought that furniture you couldn’t afford—”

“Stop assuming.” Suddenly the pieces fell into place to make a whole realization that made her even madder. “You want me to marry Ray.”

“He’d be a good husband, no doubt about it. He’s very successful with that store of his.”

“It’s his father’s store.”

“Well, he’s a good partner, then. C’mon, Bets, let me in.”

“No.”

“Can I at least put down these bags?”

“Sure. Leave ’em against the door. ’Bye.” She shut the window, her hands shaking, trying to keep from losing her temper. Yelling at him wasn’t going to mend the wrong he’d done.

He’d done it for the right reasons, she knew, but he’d left a wounded man to fend for himself. And Granny, too. Why?

Because they, of the marriage-minded, didn’t think Duncan Hennessey, loner and terse mountain man, was in any way good enough for their little Bets.

When in truth, she thought he was the only one.

Duncan awoke to sunlight. Bright blocks of it angling into the room as if Rembrandt had painted it, bold and vibrant and holy. He couldn’t remember if he’d left the shades up to let in the cooler night air. He couldn’t remember much of anything.

Except for her.

The new depth of bitterness he’d achieved had drained all his strength. He was still on his back, with his boots on and his feet in them, on the floor. The only stroke of luck was that she’d closed the front door behind her, as if to say she wasn’t coming back.

Of course she wasn’t. She didn’t believe what he’d said, and as for the old woman and the jackass brother of hers, he was surprised they hadn’t come with the dawn, with a lynch mob and a coil of rope.

At least Betsy wasn’t the kind of woman who’d outright lie. He saw that now, how horror-struck she’d been when he’d told her what her loved ones had done. Lying seemed to be a huge sin in her eyes, for the way she’d been affected.

Not that she minded much about him, about the fact that they’d left him to die…or so they’d hoped.

It was time to be moving on. If he could sit up. He strained, he groaned, he tried leveling his body up with his good arm. Nothing.

He gave up, panting and sweating. Looked as if he’d be here for a while, staring up at the open beams in the ceiling he’d built from logs he’d cut down and skinned. The thought of starting over somewhere else—again—had the bile rising in his throat.

A sound rasped from the other room. It wasn’t a normal sound, not the wind at the eaves or the low fir bough scraping against the corner of the house. It wasn’t a cougar crossing the roof. It wasn’t a moose rubbing his great horns on a tree outside. It wasn’t a mouse digging in the pantry—although that’s what it sounded like.

Except mice didn’t make shoe falls or have petticoats that rustled like a spring breeze.

The old woman. She was back. He’d slept through her arrival, but she’d come as she’d promised. To make good on her threat. She was here to defend her granddaughter, and he hated her for it, and envied Betsy.

Although she cared so little for him, enough to walk away when she knew he was alive. Enough to have let her brother take her away in the first place, he felt a singular force when he was in her presence.

It was as if she were near. Simply thinking of her made the place new and tender in his heart move as if a current directed it. Like the rush of a river’s stream. Like the lap of a mountain lake’s tide. Like the moon drawn from horizon to horizon across a star-spangled sky.

The old woman was coming. Her step, light and delicate, tapped steadily in his direction until she cut through the brightness spilling through the window and he felt her shadow fall across him.

He waited. He was in no hurry to talk to her. He didn’t want to hear what she had to say at all. So by now Betsy Hunter knew the truth about him. Fine. She wasn’t here for him to see the disgust on her face. The hatred. How he’d go from hero to liar to rapist in her opinion.

He turned his heart to steel. His soul to cold iron.

Finally, the old woman spoke. “I would have removed your boots so you were more comfortable, but I didn’t want to disturb you.”

It was not the crone’s voice.

He listened to the warm cadence of Betsy’s voice, the gentle resonance of her, and he was sure that he was trapped in some cruel level of Dante’s purgatory, where he would be forever haunted with dreams for the woman he longed for and could never have.

He squinted through one eyelid. The sun glowed around her, as if she were made of the same light. Good and strong and pure. Brilliant enough to change the world from night to day.

“Here, let’s get you sitting up.”

His head was ringing, his body boneless. He saw her coming and panicked. Her small, dainty hands curling around his good elbow, her other grasping him carefully around the chest. The scent of her hair was like a spring garden and he breathed her in. Her sweetness filled him until he had to turn away or she would know.

He did his best to move on his own, accepting little help from her as he dragged his seemingly wooden body along the mattress to collapse, exhausted, on the pillows. The softness felt good, so damn good, and that was why his chest gave a hitch of gratitude. To be lying properly in bed against a pile of pillows.

Sitting up, his head didn’t drum as much. He let his head roll to one side and he stared at the walls. The careful chinking he’d spent weeks on when he was building this place. The logs had matured to a rich dark honey and the thought of building another cabin had him angry all over again.

This time he’d build something he didn’t care about. Something like those tiny shanties that pockmarked the prairie. They looked more like piano boxes than houses. They were simply one half of a little house, with the slant of roof going in one direction only to encourage the winter’s barrage of snow to not accumulate. And the shanty itself nothing more than the length of the boards it took to make it. Eight feet by ten feet. Some were larger.

Yeah, that’s what he’d do. Slap something together that would be good enough for the coming winter, wherever it was he settled, and when it came time to pack up and leave, it wasn’t something he’d miss.

That is, if the Hunter family decided to chase him off instead of bringing vigilante justice. Not that he’d touched Betsy, but the thought that he could would be enough to drive them into a frenzy. Fear changed people. He’d seen it.

Whatever was coming, he had to be prepared.

“Here, let me help you to get comfortable.”

As she leaned over him, escaped curls from her hair knot bounced against his cheek and caught on his scruffy beard.

Hell, she was nice. He held on tight—he would not give in to this flooding river of wanting that seemed to take over. He was a strong-willed man, and still it overwhelmed him. The beat of his heart sounded tinny in his ears. His blood like hot springs bubbling up from the earth.

His groin, as weak as he was, hitched as he inhaled her scent. As he felt the subtle heat of her skin. It took every ounce of his warrior’s will not to lift his arms the few inches separating them, pull her down to his chest and leave the troubles of the world behind—for a while—and lose himself in her.

No other woman had affected him this way. She melted his will like steel in a forge and he wanted to curse her for it. But like the pure beam of light she was, she didn’t have any inkling of his thoughts as she plumped his pillows and moved away to tug off his boots.

He wouldn’t look at her. He could never cast his gaze upon her again without tasting this hunger. Wanting to spend his passion in the warm comforting heat of her body. Holding her so tight, it felt as if they could never be apart again, even after they pulled apart.

He wanted her with a fire he’d never felt burning before. It was greedy and selfish and consuming. He feared it because it was not lust. No, the emotions went deeper than that.

“Here, I brought you coffee.” The mattress dipped on her side and he felt the distinct curve of her hip and upper thigh fit against his side. “I don’t know about you, but if I don’t have a cup of coffee first thing in the morning, just to sit and sip and soak in the beautiful dawn, then my day turns out to be a load of horse dooey. Every time.”

“Horse dooey?” He’d never heard that term before. But why was he surprised? She didn’t look like a woman who’d ever said the word “crap,” much less the more colorful terms he could think of.

No, Betsy was…amazing, his heart wanted to say, but the hard cold truth was he had no business thinking anything about Betsy Hunter. She obviously hadn’t been told what he’d done. Who he was. Or she wouldn’t be anywhere near him or lifting a battered tin mug to his lips.

“Careful, it’s hot.”

She was close enough to kiss. He couldn’t help thinking it. Her face hovered close to his and he could see that her skin was creamy and her freckles lay like tiny dainty snowflakes across her nose.

He wanted to kiss each freckle. To nibble the dimples that accented her smile. He wanted to run his hand down the graceful arch of her neck and tug at the prim buttons at her collar.

He’d bet all he had that Betsy Hunter was anything but prim.

The vibrant taste of coffee spilled across his tongue and he savored it. Hell, that was good. She sweetened it, he liked a couple spoonfuls of sugar, and that surprised him because he didn’t keep sugar in his pantry. He didn’t need it. He didn’t bother to buy extras that had stopped mattering long ago. But the sugary taste was welcome.

“There, it’s not so full. Do you want to hold it? Or I could put the cup down on the table?”

“I’ll hold it.”

“Good. I’ll be right back.” She hustled away, skirts swishing, shoes tapping.

The sunlight seemed to follow her as she disappeared from his sight.

That’s when he noticed she’d moved the roses she’d brought to the night table, where they leaned to one side in his army field cup of water. The yellow buds had opened and the delicate inner petals unfurled like hope in a place where hope could never be.

He heard the clang of a pan and realized the cabin was so hot because the kitchen stove was lit. The sizzle told him she was frying meat—sausage patties by the smell of it. His stomach growled like a furious bear. He was so hungry for real food that his mouth wouldn’t stop watering even as he drank the coffee until the mug was empty.

She returned with a plate heaped with food. He knew he ought to shout at her and frighten her away, but she’d turned his will to “dooey,” as she would say, and he hadn’t had real food since the bear attack.

“I’ll fetch more coffee, too,” she said, dragging a pillow over his lap to set the plate on. It made a rickety table, but it was enough to hold the plate level as he grabbed the fork, stabbed a slab of greasy, spicy sausage and shoved it into his mouth.

Damn, but it was good. Sunny-side up eggs, fried potatoes and three flakey biscuits with butter dripping from the center cut. He hadn’t eaten like this since he’d lived at home. Since he was a real man with a real life just like anyone else. He’d have eaten anything—as evidenced by the stack of empty cans tossed in the kitchen—but this, it was too much, too good to be true.

He wanted to savor it, to enjoy the tastes and textures. Betsy was an amazing cook. The potatoes were buttery and peppery, with something else he couldn’t name, but he couldn’t eat them fast enough. The eggs were perfect, just a little runny, mostly soft and the whites fluffy.

And the biscuits… Lord, he’d gladly go to prison for another ten years just to have more of the moist, rich, buttery flavor.

She poured the coffee, draining the pot. He watched out of the corner of his eye as he polished his plate clean. She stirred sugar in his coffee, took the plate and disappeared into the other room. He heard the splash of water, the clink of dishes, and then she returned.

Every place within him burned—not with the fire of anger or the inferno of lust, but a heat that was altogether more powerful.

“I’ve cleaned your kitchen and left a basket on the table. It’s enough food for your lunch and supper.”

She reached for her sunbonnet, a thoroughly female motion of shaking out the hat and pulling it in place over her lush dark hair. The blue bonnet framed her face, bringing out the jeweled sparkle in her eyes and the pink of her rosebud mouth.

The mouth he hungered to taste.

“I have to hurry. I have to get home before anyone notices I’m gone, and then I have my washing and ironing and deliveries. But I’ll be back tomorrow morning, I promise.”

She paused at the door. “Is there anything you want me to bring back with me? Oh, and I’ve already watered and fed your horses, so don’t worry. Just rest and heal.”

His throat ached. She flickered her fingertips in that endearing wave, the one he told himself to hate, and then she was gone, humming as she closed the door, her voice growing faint as she called out to Morris, who must be her horse. Who would name a horse Morris, the poor creature.

Duncan listened to the rattle of her buggy and the squeak of her wheel, which was getting worse, until there was only silence and sunshine spilling into his cabin.

As if trying to fool him into believing there were nothing but blue skies ahead.

Chapter Ten

Why was it the man looked like an archangel while asleep? Betsy resisted the urge to brush the tangle of black hair away from the hard angle of his face so she could admire him better. His features were hard, but the muscles beneath the bronzed skin were relaxed. Not exactly soft, his face could never be mistaken for that, but the bitterness was gone along with the anger and the ferocity. What remained carved in his features and etched in the grooves and character lines on his face astounded her.

Nobility. Strength. Integrity.

Vastly different from the man who burned with so much hatred that the fury emanating from him would make the fires of hell seem tepid by comparison.

It didn’t look to her as if he’d moved since this time yesterday, but the basket on the table was empty. Good. She couldn’t resist laying her hand on his brow. Not overly warm—just warm from sleep, not from fever. He made a low noise in his throat, not exactly a moan but definitely a sound as if he’d liked being touched and pressed against her.

Her heart gave a little sigh. Why on earth she felt affection for this difficult bear of a man, she wished she knew. He couldn’t seem to stand her when he was awake. The total sum of their interactions had been, in large part, him trying to escape her or telling her to keep away. No, he definitely didn’t feel this floating awareness, like a summer’s cloud sailing along. But she’d been in deep love before and it was not so long ago that she didn’t remember how it started.

Just like this.

What she didn’t know was what to do if the man didn’t feel the same way. With Charlie, it had been evident from the start the way their souls stirred when they were together that they were destined to marry. To spend a happy loving life together.

And they had.

The problem was that she thought her marriage to be so special and rare, the bond she and Charlie had, that finding that again would be impossible. Didn’t a soul mate imply there was only one match? That as soul mates, there could never be anyone better for the other?

And what happened to Charlie, waiting for her in heaven, when she was falling in love with someone else? These things troubled her greatly. It was a sign she was thinking too much. The one thing she knew for sure was that she never had to worry about replacing Charlie. Duncan Hennessey hated her. It was that simple.

And that sad.

She withdrew her hand to lay her palm against the center of her chest, between her breasts, where she hurt as if a serrated blade had sunk deep behind the bones. When she ought to be getting something accomplished, she was sitting idle, watching him sleep. Staring at the way his mouth, a hard, terse frown by day, had transformed into a pliable, soft-arched upper lip, with a pronounced dip that made her want to lay her lips on his, and a bottom lip that was made to bring pleasure to a woman.

Not that she should be considering his mouth whatsoever. Or his kiss. Or wondering how his lips would feel grazing over her bare flesh….

Whoa, right there. She’d certainly missed the marriage bed, but that was no reason to let her mind wander in that direction. Because Duncan wasn’t just male, he was a man. In every possible meaning of the word. His frame was big, his muscles corded. His abdomen flat, his arms, while relaxed, showed the cords of muscle and sinew. A lesser man would not have survived his injuries, but even those were healing. Beneath the edge of the bandage she saw the red tender places of new skin.

His hands were big like the rest of him, and so were his feet. Big, thick toes. Before she started wondering if he was like-size anywhere else, she bounced off the bed and made herself gather up the pile of clothing tossed in the corner, stuffed it into his rucksack and went outside to load it into her buggy.

On her return trip she carried in the second basket, heavy with food. She saw him stumbling up from the bed. His long hair tangled, his clothes twisted and wrinkled. He wasn’t exactly gray, which was an improvement over yesterday. A harsh spark flashed in his dark gaze and his jaw tensed. A muscle twisted along his jaw.

She perched on the top step. She could set her chin, too. She could make a fierce challenge with her eyes. “Are you going to slam the door and send me packing?”

“Tempting.”

“In your weakened state, you never know. I might be able to push you around.”

His left brow arched. Did she really think she could ever push him around? “I could just take your basket, shut the door and lock you out.”

“You could try it, but then I wouldn’t bring you more food.” A furrow dug between her eyes, above the bridge of her nose, and it was adorable how she pulled her eyes into a frown as she thought. He had her wondering, he knew, if he was teasing or serious.

He should take her basket, snarl the meanest words he could think of and send her on her way for good. That was the only solution. She couldn’t keep coming out here. Her family was bound to figure it out and they wouldn’t approve. It was only a matter of time before she knew the truth. He should end it now.

Besides, associating with women like her was against his principles.

So what did he do? Did he snarl and shout and terrify her? No, he didn’t do that. It was an impulse, he blamed himself for later, an impulse of a man living too long alone. He did the only thing he could, ravaged as he was. Knowing how he looked to her in clothes he didn’t know how long he’d been wearing, unwashed and unkempt. He couldn’t even stand up straight.

He had no business opening the door wide. “I don’t have the patience to argue with you today. Maybe tomorrow.”

“How gracious of you. I knew you were gentle as a kitten. Why else would you roar so loudly?” She could tease, too, and watched the indignation streak across his face. Gone were the glimpses of the noble Duncan—the real Duncan.

His features hardened. Sharpened. “You mistake me for someone else. Don’t tell me you read a lot of those dime novels.”

“I do. I am a great fan of the romantic novel.” With a sigh, Betsy stormed her way inside, knowing it was the food he wanted. But goodness, she intended to feed him until he was well.

She stumbled her way in the dim light; the sun seemed to have disappeared. The kitchen echoed with shadows—not just emptiness. It felt to her as if a great sorrow hung in the air like cobwebs in the corners, needing to be chased out.

Remembering what Mariah had said of Duncan’s parents, she understood him more. Home is a sad place when the people you love are gone forever.

She set the basket on the table next to the first one she’d brought in. Leaving Duncan to paw through the contents, she went straight to the shades, drew them up and sighed at the soft light shining through. Clouds were crowding together at the rugged faces of the mountains spearing up through the green forest, so close, Betsy had to tilt her head back to see, but their peaks were hidden.

“What are you doing?” Duncan scowled at her as he opened a canning jar with his bare hand—one twist was all it took.

And she had to beat them open. Hmm. She ignored how he dug a peach slice out of its syrup with his fingers and popped it into his mouth. It was tempting to comment on his manners, even to rummage around in the dishes she’d left to drain on the board after washing them for a fork for him to use.

Tempting, but she was grateful to see Duncan’s appetite improved. He’d gotten some good rest, maybe even some deep sleep, and his face wasn’t as hollowed.

How, she thought angrily, could Granny and Joshua have left him out here to fend for himself? She couldn’t get over that. She’d seen how helpless he’d been…and because of her.

For her.

Duncan sank into the closest chair, trying to hide how his knees were quaking. The soft daylight caressed the side of his face and she realized he’d shaved. The lean cut of his cheeks and the golden bronze of his skin combined with the way the hushed light shrouded him, she realized why he appeared noble, when he wasn’t scowling. His heritage. He had to have some native blood in him.

He opened a wrapped loaf and made a choked sound. “Apple bread?”

“And I put apple butter in there, too. My first batch of the summer. Oh, it’s sweet. That’s for later in the day… No, I put breakfast in there, keep digging.”

“You brought all this for me?” He looked from the crock of raisin-oatmeal cookies to the wrapped fried slices of bacon, and the honey-cured ham and the boiled eggs and more of the biscuits. A ball of butter. A jar of fresh milk, still warm from a cow.

There were slices of bread and he realized she’d made him sandwiches for lunch. Thick slabs of roast beef and juicy red slices of tomato—how long had it been since he’d had a tomato? And homemade pickles and relish and mustard. And for supper, a wrapped half chicken, coated, spiced and fried. A bowl of potato salad and another of baked beans.

“There’s enough for days.”

“That’s the notion. I can’t drive out here every day. That should see you through to midweek, don’t you think?”

“I can’t believe this.” His head was pounding, he wasn’t thinking clearly. He wasn’t thinking at all. His stomach was growling and she was here, setting a clean plate before him, from the drainer full of the dishes she’d done yesterday.

She set a knife and fork on the table and poured him a glass of milk. “I’ll have this heated up, if you want to wait.”

“This is fine.”

She set out a good portion of the bacon strips and the ham slices. Broke and peeled three eggs. He buttered a biscuit and ate it in two bites. He was ravenous. He drained the glass of milk and she filled it again and while he ate she set out half the remaining peaches in a small bowl and lit a fire in the stove. He smelled fresh coffee grounds.

“A good appetite is a good sign.” Betsy measured out the dark grounds and pumped fresh water to boil it with. “I can only hope it’s a proportional thing. The hungrier you are, the better you must be getting.”

“I have to get on with my work. Don’t tell me what day it is today. I don’t want to know how much time I’ve lost.”

“Work time?”

“Yeah. I had the winter’s fuel to get in, but I’m not gonna be able to do that. Look out the window.”

The daylight was thinning, and from where he sat behind the shaded end window, he could see out the smaller one where she stood, outlined by the gentle haze as the storm clouds gathered, moving swiftly, merging to form one giant darkening mass. The mountains had disappeared, leaving wisps of clouds to devour the tops of the pines and firs marching up the mountain slopes and out of sight.

“You’d best get going if you want to keep ahead of the storm. It’ll be a cold one.”

“How do you know?”

“See the low bottom clouds streaming through the trees?”

She turned her attention to the window, where the world continued to darken in degrees of gray. The sky blackened. A sudden wind blasted the north side of the house, driving the trees to bow before it and rattling the glass in their frames.

Duncan loved a good storm and he was not one to miss the first of the season. But he couldn’t look beyond her. Beyond Betsy like a summer garden with her calico dress of sky-blue sprinkled with a thousand tiny flowers. Pink rosebuds. Yellow marigolds. Tiny green leaves.

She’s so beautiful. Her hair was down, tumbling like magic over her shoulders and breasts. The tangled thickness was drawn back to her nape and secured with a broad pearl pin.

He wanted to unsnap the barrette and watch her thick locks bounce and shimmer. He wanted to dig his fingers into her silken hair and hold her hard to his kiss. To a kiss that would make the proper Miss Hunter burn the way he was burning. From the inside out, half-blind with a want that he didn’t understand.

He understood lust. He understood want. This, it was more.

It was something he could never have.

So it was right to want to send her away. “That’s snow.”

“Is it? It’s beautiful the way it falls at such a distance. Like magic.”

He’d seen it hundreds of times, but he was a man to appreciate beauty. If it was his to appreciate. And Betsy with her sensuous hair and her lovely spirit and the way she made him want… No, the best thing to do was to send her on her way.

“The snow is coming. Do you see it?”

“Oh.” Her eyes widened. “You mean it’s going to be here pretty soon?”

“Yeah.” He regretted the change.

“What do you mean?”

“The winds are blowing down the mountain. This way.” He pushed onto his feet. Then he pushed until he was standing straight. “The low bellies of the clouds are slipping lower. See the foggy stuff? That’s snow. It’s moving fast. C’mon. I’m not moving very quick yet, but I can help you get on your way.”

“I’ll do it. You shouldn’t be lifting anything heavy like a shoulder harness.” Betsy had never seen anything so beautiful as the view from the window in this dark little house. It was like glimpsing a paradise that was serene and majestic.

The solemn evergreens marched up the steep mountainside, their tops bent with their effort. The haze of snow and cloud mixing shades of white against the bruised sky. “How can you look at this every day and not be in a better mood?”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.” He couldn’t fool her with his Mr. Curmudgeon routine. Not anymore. Not ever again.

Not that she was going to argue with him about it. He needed to conserve his strength and anyone who wished to argue with her had to be ready for a long, hard row. She needed to get out of the mountains before the wall of snow decided to trap her here.

She unhooked her coat from the wall hook in the living room, poking her head around the corner where he sat. His hands dwarfed the coffee cup he cradled as he stared out the window at the wall of white that was moving so fast, it looked as if it were coming straight for the cabin—

The storm hit the kitchen wall with the force of a hungry tornado and the speed of a runaway train. The windows rattled. The house rocked. The floor beneath her rumbled. The daylight faded as utterly as if it had been a lamp’s flame to extinguish. Darkness made brooding shadows of the furniture and stove and the man seated at the table.

Ice pellets scoured the thick logs and struck like bullets against the windows. What kind of blizzard was this? She’d lived on the high Montana plains her entire life. She knew what a blizzard was—what other kind of snowstorm was there on the desolate prairie where winds swept down from the northern mountains with enough force to blow over shanties?

But this. This was like an apocalypse. Like the storms at the end of the world. No horse could outrun it. No human or animal stood a chance exposed to it. The crack of ancient trees breaking echoed like cannon fire above the howling rage of the killing winds. How was she going to get home now?

The acrid scent of sulfur scorched the air and the single candle flame danced and struggled against the encroaching darkness. The timid light caressed the planes and lines of Duncan’s hard-set features. There was no missing the harsh frown drawing deep lines around his mouth.

He wasn’t pleased with the turn of events? He was, at least, home. She had dinner at her mother’s, as was the custom every Sunday afternoon, and she was to bring the baked beans and strawberry cobbler.

Which were sitting wrapped and waiting on her kitchen counter. What was Mama going to say about this? “You could have told me when you said I’d better start heading home while I could, that you meant racing as fast as Morris could go. And still being caught in it.”

“I haven’t seen one move in that fast in a long while.” He lit a battered tin lamp and the reflector cast the steady light into a bright glow that only better illuminated the cruel slash of his mouth. “What are we going to do now?”

“I obviously can’t drive home.”

“Yep.” Smoke puffed out the seam in the stove door, driven down by the wind. The damper must be wide open, and that was a problem. Pain wedged through his ribs as he leaned forward.

But she was already there, Miss Spring Garden, as she knelt and pushed in the knob. Whispering to herself, “It’s hot. O-oh, good one, Bets,” she sprang up to plunge her fingertips into the bucket beneath the hand pump.

Why can’t I stop wanting her? Duncan wanted to curse the fates that had brought the storm down the mountain. The interfering Great Spirits that seemed to have offered him the chance to an untold dream.

And that dream dabbed her dainty fingers on her flowery skirt and went about pulling open drawers in search of what, he didn’t know. He only knew that he seemed entranced by the soft curves of her breasts. They were full and ripe enough to fill his hands with plenty to spare. The soft curves jostled ever so slightly as she withdrew a dish towel, saw how it wasn’t clean and pulled out more until one met her exacting standards.

“Do you want some?”

Her question made his jaw drop before he realized she was unaware of where his gaze seemed to be glued. Embarrassment seared his face as he looked hard at the edge of the table where the pool of the lamplight could not touch. He traced his forefinger along the carved edging he’d etched.

She was still waiting with an empty cup in one hand and the steaming ironstone pot in the other. “Well?”

He didn’t trust his voice, so he nodded. All he knew was that he hungered to lay his head between the valley of her breasts, to breathe in their woman’s fragrance of salty skin and sweet, scented lotion and heat.

He longed to know the feel of her fingers cradling his head, and wondered if she would hold him to her plump rosy nipple and let him suckle until she moaned and arched against him. Or was her passion the quiet kind, of big glowing eyes and soft sighs and laying back to surrender her body to her man’s lustful will.

No, he couldn’t imagine Betsy surrendering, quiet or otherwise. She poured his cup with a flourish. She apparently never did anything the way any normal person would. She withdrew a small covered bowl from the second basket and nudged it toward him.

“Sugar,” was her explanation before she went in search of a second clean cup.

He was loath to lift the lid because he knew he’d find the fancy white sugar, expensive as could be. Had she dipped into her special sugar kept for company and special occasions? Or was this the way she lived, used to white sugar for her coffee? Fringe on the roof of her buggy. Tassels on her fine leather shoes.

Beneath her pretty flowery dress, he’d wager his year’s consignment income that she wore fancy lace undergarments. And her skin would feel like warmed satin when he touched her. When he laid her out on his bed and stripped off her lace and silk and kissed his way from lips to her generous breasts spilling into his hands, to her softly curved stomach. He bet that she would moan for him and enjoy the sensation just as she made a low hmm in her throat, as she tasted her cup of sweetened coffee.

Yep. He had just as much of a chance making love to Miss Betsy as he did being named honorary son to her family.

She took the chair across the table from him and wrapped her hands around the cup’s warmth. “How long do you think the snow is going to be like this?”

“Hard to say.”

“Okay, then give me a good guess. It blew in fast, so it should blow out fast, right?”

“Who knows? I’ve seen storms like this last two hours.”

“Oh, what a relief.” Her lush mouth parted as she sipped.

Duncan envied the cup. What would it be like to have her agile, sensual mouth softly opening around his bottom lip? Would she let her eyelids drift shut and savor him? Could he make her sigh deep in her throat, the way she did after she swallowed the rich, sweet coffee?

Shameful desire roared through him like the blizzard through the mountainside. Obliterating everything until there was only the wild need of a man so lonely, so in need of human touch and physical and emotional bonding, that he would throw away his life and risk more, just to hold Betsy in his arms. To take her to his bed for one night.

Just one.

But he’d learned his past lessons well. He knew exactly how Betsy’s family would respond to his seduction of their precious girl. He had no interest in bedding a virgin. Worse, a woman from town with her tassels and satin ribbons and lace. Those women were nothing but trouble. Nothing.

So why did his blood remain hot and pulsing through his veins? Why, when he was injured and in a weakened condition, did his groin ache with need and his trousers grow tighter?

“I may as well get busy while I’m here.” She set her half-empty cup on the table and glanced around with purpose. “I think I can get quite a bit done.”

“You’re going to do my laundry here?”

“Oh, no.” She could have been an Irish fairy for the way her sapphire gaze shimmered with mischief. “You saved my life, Duncan Hennessey, and for that you will have my eternal gratitude.”

“Hell, give me anything but that. Gratitude.” As if he hated her, he grimaced harshly and stared into the gray mass of the cruel storm. “You’re here for the duration of the storm. We both know it. There’s no way to change it.”

“My, you sound pleased.”

“Just stating the facts. I don’t like ’em. If I had my way, you’d be home where you belong. Bothering some other undeserving man.” He snarled out the words so there would be no mistake. She couldn’t think it was fine to just drive up and invite herself in as if they were friends.

He didn’t want her friendship. He didn’t want anything to do with her. He had to hate her, because if he didn’t, then the consequences would be too grave to endure.

He’d had enough devastation in his life. Lost too many people he’d loved. Seen too much ugliness and evil in the hearts of both women and men to begin to trust another human being. Another woman. Another chance for happiness.

No, all he had to do was to look at Betsy Hunter. She wasn’t a spinster yet, she may be unmarried but she was heart-stoppingly beautiful. And charming. And funny. And alluring. And everything.

Everything he could not have. Everything he could not trust.

He would hate her, and he would invent reasons if he had to, until the sight of her stopped the heat in his blood. Until the thought of her had him snarling so fierce and mean that she’d run out of his cabin the instant the blizzard stopped.

He would hate her. Even if it destroyed what remained of his soul.

Chapter Eleven

He’s been horribly hurt, Betsy reminded herself as she tapped the excess soapy water from the bucket. But even her sympathy was wearing thin. He wanted to push her away. He wanted to hurt her.

And now he appeared even more miserable staring at the fire writhing in the stone-crafted fireplace. A frown pulled his hard mouth into an unforgiving line that said, Don’t tempt me.

His words carved at her like a whittler’s knife while she scrubbed the brush along the beautiful polish of the wooden floors. She’d never seen puncheon flooring, although she’d heard of it, and how Duncan had managed to perfectly split an ancient pine in two and sand it to perfection was a mystery.

The trees must have been enormous, judging by the widths of the halves that each stretched a good eight to twelve feet, and had been laid in such a way to emphasize the marbled beauty of the grain. The tough varnish protected the soft wood and gave it a honeyed gleam.

“You don’t have to scrub the floor just because you’re unhappy about being trapped here with me.”

“I didn’t say I was unhappy.”

“What else could you be?”

That was a very good question. Anyone could see he was expending a lot of effort to make her miserable. Betsy’s chest tightened with too many emotions to name. Sympathy, yes. Concern, yes. Affection? She sighed, returning her attention to the floor. Scrubbing hard, she felt the blaze of his attention. Did that kind of emotional power come naturally?

Or did he have to work at it? His fury felt larger than the winds battering the cabin. He might fool everyone else into thinking he was a fierce bear of a man by this concentrated effort of disagreeable behavior.

But she wasn’t fooled. “I’m very grateful to be here.”

“You’re not impressing me by scrubbing my floor.”

“Good. I wouldn’t want to do that.” She couldn’t imagine what it would take to wipe that grimace off his face.

He must not have liked her answer because he kept staring at her, like a cougar watching its prey. And she had the distinct impression that he was trying to figure out the next step in his attack.

That was probably what he was going to try to do. When Mariah had told her about what happened to Duncan’s family, it only proved her assumptions about him had been right all along. He’d survived a terrible tragedy, the kind of heartbreak that cut a man to the soul.

How could anyone overcome losing his entire family? With the taste of loss she’d had, she couldn’t truly imagine. Charlie had been her world, but she hadn’t been alone. Her family was overprotective and bossy, it was hard to deny, but they were also loving and caring to a fault.

But Duncan clearly had no one. Or if he had, he’d pushed them away.

So, Duncan, do your worst. He could snarl, hiss, swear and insult her all he wanted. Fine. She was grateful he was alive to do so. And until he was fully recovered, she intended to do all she could for him. If he didn’t like it and if he would rather be alone with his growly self and even if he didn’t want her in his presence, that was simply his burden to endure. He was stuck with her and not only because of the storm.

Because when she stopped to dunk the brush into the soapy water, she could feel a flutter in her deepest being.

Maybe Duncan Hennessey had saved her in a more important way. And he didn’t even know it.

“I don’t care if my floor is filthy. I don’t care if rats think my floor is filthy. Stop doing that.”

“No.” She was nearly done anyway. She attacked the last section of the kitchen floor—of course, there was the rest of the cabin. But she had a plan to clean room by room and to get everything in perfect order for Duncan. So it was simple to say no.

His baritone boomed like a dynamite explosion and made the deafening blizzard’s howl seem tranquil. “Did you tell me no? In my own house?”

“Boy, you are honestly giving extra effort to your beastly manners, aren’t you?” She crawled back through the threshold, dragging the bucket with her. “I know that usually terrifies most people, but I’ve been around you enough not to be perturbed by it.”

“Perturbed?”

“Yes. You know what it means, don’t you?”

Duncan saw red and he let his teeth clench together with a loud clack and hissed out the steam of his rage. “That’s it. Stop your infernal cleaning right this moment. I told you, I don’t care. This isn’t impressing me.”

“I heard you the first time. Besides, I doubt very much if anyone ever could impress you. You seem to have very low expectations.”

His dark brows pulled together as he rose up from the chair where he’d collapsed near the fireplace. And for an instant he resembled the great black bear that had nearly taken his life. The darkness in the room seemed to grab at him and she could see only the piercing hatred of his unfeeling black eyes.

“What have you seen in the world, little miss? What do you know about men? You live safe and protected with your family doting on you. The worst thing that ever happened to you was eating strawberries in a forest in September. You don’t know what cruelty a man is capable of. Or a woman. Especially a woman.”

“Your insults are not going to work. Just so you are aware. I’m headstrong enough to resist words.”

She doesn’t understand, Duncan thought. She was everything he’d ever wanted and never thought he could find. She was beautiful and smart.

In a different world, if he was a different man, the Duncan Hennessey who had his own furniture shop, then maybe. Maybe, when he’d been a man who’d spent his days quietly at the lathe and the blade, gluing and pressing and patiently sanding. The man who went to his mother’s for supper on Sundays when his shop was closed, that innocent young man would have fallen irrevocably in love with Miss Betsy Hunter.

He was no longer that man. And he could not pretend he was. Could not dare admit that the reverberation of emotion sitting dead-center in his chest was love.

No, because a woman like her could never love him. And no amount of her scrubbing his floor was going to change that. He figured her family was going to find out she’d been alone with him, and they would assume the worst. That’s what folks tended to do.

He doubted her family would demand a shotgun wedding to salvage her reputation. Thinking about everything that could happen…that made the old panic overtake him. He fought it until he was as unfeeling as the granite stones that broke from the great faces of the mountains and rolled downward, fracturing apart as they tumbled.

Breaking and breaking again, and there was no outcry, no roar or cursing. After the pieces had finally stopped, there was merely silence. A rock could feel nothing.

Nor could he.

“There. That room is done.”

She plopped the brush into the bucket with a splash. When she stood, her dress shivered around her slender curves, full and soft in all the right places and she moved like a metaphor in a poem, like snow on a calm morning, and his pulse beat with desire. To pull her into his arms, fold her snug against his chest and breathe in the warm scent of her.

Why was he doing this? He was only hurting himself. He tried to will the longing from his blood, but his soul kept throbbing. I want you. I want you so much.

And I cannot have you. He gritted his teeth, ground his jaw and closed his eyes, but he could still see her. The last image of her twisted at the waist, stretching out her back. The extension from side to side emphasizing the curves of her breasts, soft and full and made to fill his hand.

And if that wasn’t enough to drive him out the door and into the blizzard to cool down the tightening thrum of his noticeable erection, her skirt clung to her hips and backside. She had a sassy little fanny to match the rest of her and there was nothing he wanted more than to keep her.

You have to stop thinking like this. It was killing him. He twisted away so she could not see the agony on his face. He could hear her sigh of relief. She must have stopped stretching out her tight muscles, and the clink of the bucket as she hiked it up and, finally the swish and tap of her was a thoroughly feminine sound that made him want to turn and follow her.

To reach for what he wanted more than anything.

She clanged and clattered around in the kitchen, humming a tune he didn’t know, but the alto of her voice lilted above the roaring storm. His skin prickled into little bumps, as if cold, but he wasn’t. His blood had heated up hot enough to melt steel, and he could feel his will buckling, like a horseshoe laid to the smithy’s fires.

You should have never allowed her to step foot in this door. He cursed himself for his own stupidity, raking his hand through his hair and breathing with the effort. He hauled his uncooperative body up from the chair and limped to the door.

She was still humming and making noise in the kitchen. It sounded as if she were pumping water. Good luck, he wanted to tell her, since the temperature was rapidly dropping. If the water froze, what difference would it make to him?

He wanted her to stop cleaning. Stop this effort to show him how well she could clean. No woman had enough integrity to do so much free work without wanting something in return.

Yeah, he knew women, he thought bitterly as he laid a hand on his fur coat. The question was, What did Miss Betsy Hunter want? She emerged from the kitchen, her apron at her waist. She’d apparently found his broom and started sweeping up the month or so’s accumulation of dust, dirt and anything else that had hit the floorboards with the determination of an army general close to victory.

“I cleaned the chamber pot, so you don’t need to go outside.”

“Lady, I wouldn’t piss in a pot that you’d scrubbed. Damn this hell-blasted storm!” He retreated into rage again, stuffed his injured arm into the sleeve and then his good one, moving as fast as he could, working the buttons, remembering she’d taken his boots off.

“Shit!” He did his best to storm across the wide room, but the pain was mounting. He’d been up too much, done too much, and he couldn’t boom through the house like he wanted to. Every time he stomped on his bad leg, agony shot in white-hot streaks along his leg and up through his abdomen all the way to his pounding head.

But he didn’t let that stop him, not when he had a point to make. He didn’t want her. And since his steel will was bending, he was going to make damn sure the pretty little miss wouldn’t want to be in the same room with him. That was the best way to ensure, if his good sense failed, that they wouldn’t end up in his bed together.

Because he wanted her with a force that was blinding him. So it was up to her to hate him so much there was no possible way she’d look at him with those big doe eyes and smile with her lush beautiful mouth he wanted to kiss. He had to make sure she’d recoil in disgust because all he wanted to do was to feel her luscious mouth on every inch of him—

Damn it! Stop thinking like that. He had no control, it was completely gone, and it enraged him even more.

In a full temper he bent to grab hold of a boot; he didn’t give a crap about his wounds or the fact that when he bent over to yank on his shoes, pain flashed black across his vision. He dragged in a moan and fought to keep it silent.

“What is the matter with you?”

She was there, all softness and light, her skirt swirling around her lean hips, curved just right, touched by the firelight as she knelt before him, uncurled his fingers from the boot’s heel. It was concern on her face, and he knew she was only worried about her last chance for marriage.

At least, that’s what he told himself as he tried to steal the boot back, but the damnable woman held it out of his reach. “It’s my boot. Give it.”

“What are you going to do, go out in this storm?” She wasn’t in a bad mood at all, she was so hellfire cheerful. The mahogany curls framed her lovely oval face, and the bright sapphire of her eyes made her seem the dearest woman he’d ever come across.

All he had to do was to lean forward two feet—twenty-four inches, that was all—and he could capture her lush mouth with his. Find out if she tasted like dew on a morning’s garden and if her kiss was as luxurious as a rose’s velvety petal.

What was he doing? Stop it, you cannot have her. He reined in his desire, stopped his thoughts and launched forward, bullying the boot from her surprisingly strong grip. The not-so-delicate Betsy Hunter snatched the boot right back and flung it across the room.

“You’re not going out. I’ll go bring in more wood.”

As if he were completely as crazy as a loon and she was the sane one, she shook her head at him in a scolding way, bouncing up, pure fire and charm, and he felt his will liquefy as she swished away.

Leaving him breathless and weak, pulling away every thought from his head. He couldn’t even think to stop her and by the time his mind started working she’d wrapped up and was unlatching the door.

That damnable woman! He was on his feet as the wind caught the door and ripped it from her hands, the blizzard punching in, stealing Betsy from his sight. That woman was going to be the death of him one way or another, that was for damn sure.

Swearing with every step, he raced headlong into the whiteout that blew out the lamp and brought down darkness and ice. There was nothing but wind pushing him back and he fought it, reaching out, finding only darkness and stinging snow, and suddenly there she was, a soft shelter against his chest.

He held her there with his injured arm and caught the edge of the door with his good one and growled, bucking the wild storm that felt strong enough to topple them both.

With every drop of his strength, he wrestled the door closed. Snow fell to the ground. The winds disappeared and there was silence and darkness and only the impotent flare of the fire in the frigid room.

“Oops.” Betsy resembled a snowbank more than a fancy town lady, but the shrug of her slim shoulders sent an avalanche of ice from her face and neck, revealing her delicate bobbin of a chin.

Oops? What kind of an answer was that? “You could have killed yourself!”

“Well, not killed, but perhaps a little frostbite on my nose, anyway!”

She didn’t look the least bit repentant. “Well, that didn’t solve anything. You open the door, if you will, and I’ll go outside—”

“You’re not going outside!” She had no common sense. It only went to show she was just as he figured she’d be—a pampered, sheltered princess—and it made him even madder because he wanted her to be different—and couldn’t face it if she was it.

She needed someone to take care of her; her old crone of a grandmother and her ass of a brother weren’t here to do it, and he hated to be stuck with the job.

He didn’t want a woman. He didn’t want to feel hot and hungry with need every time he was around her. “What are you gonna do? Carry in one stick of wood at a time?”

“No, I mean, why did you say it like that? As if I weren’t perfectly capable of carrying more than that?”

“Because look at you!” He couldn’t stand the way she stood there so serenely, not understanding at all. “You’ll freeze to death, and then I’ll have to explain how I let a little woman like you go out into the blizzard and freeze to death. Believe me, your family isn’t going to be too kind if I let that happen.”

“My family. They can be difficult, but I love ’em.” She sighed, blowing at a spiraling strand of hair that had frozen to her nose…and remained. Ice crackled as she tried to blink her eyelashes.

“Hold still.” He took her by the shoulder and used his sleeve cuffs, as ice-driven as they were, to brush the snow frozen to her lashes and eyebrows. To rub away the layer disguising her face.

It was strange, Betsy thought, to watch him go from yelling barbarian to gentle man. For the moment he was tame, and she watched him through her lashes, not daring to move, feeling the hard, possessive grip on her shoulder—and the answering curl in her heart.

He was lost in the dark, hardly more than a shadow, but she could feel every inch of him as if she saw him. Felt him with the awareness of one soul mate recognizing its other.

How often does a gift like this come along? Her throat closed up tight and she struggled for breath, but he kept stroking the fraying cuff on his sleeve—she’d have to remember to mend that—over the bridge of her nose, rubbing as if to scrape away every particle of snow.

She’d clamped her teeth together to keep them from chattering and a knot of cold cinched round her middle and yet she was warming, melting like ice in the sun, and it was his doing. The air in the cabin was slowly warming, but their breaths rose in foggy clouds.

A powerful heat seemed to flow from his hand on her shoulder straight into her spirit, into the deepest part of her. How was that possible?

She watched in fascination as an entirely new Duncan, one neither beast nor savage nor fierce mountain man, quirked the corner of his mouth into a real smile. “That’s a freckle. I guess that isn’t gonna come off.”

She fell—just like that. Between one breath and the other, between one beat of her heart and the next. A love so strong surged through her, more silent than the blizzard that had blustered through the cabin, but tenfold more powerful. She saw him in the darkness—the real Duncan Hennessey—a tender soul who nudged her to his snowy chest, so wide and strong, and enfolded her against him.

Her cheek lay on his sternum and beneath it the fast pulse of his heart. Too fast for a man not affected. For a man not in love.

She knew, for it matched the rapid flutter of her own.

He looked down at her, meeting her gaze, and it was as if he’d penetrated her, although it made no sense, did it? She felt the connection and it was as if they were lovers, joined in that rare, amazing intimacy, and her heart fell wide open. Oh, why do I love him so much?

He cleared his throat and she could feel the rough edges of his emotions surging through her as he cupped her face in his broad palm. “I don’t want you going out into the storm. Do you understand?”

She heard what he didn’t say, knew it with certainty as if his thoughts had somehow entered her mind, too. What would he do if she became blown off course and lost in the forest?

Pain worse than he’d ever known coursed through him and he felt ten feet tall, ready to tear the world apart if he had to, to keep her safe. He didn’t want her cold or lost or afraid. He didn’t want her struggling against an impossible wind.

He wanted to keep her warm and safe forever.

Then it happened, the most amazing thing of all. He bent to her, as the inches separating them shrank and her pulse fluttered with his. Her breath caught at the same exact moment. Neither blinked. Neither broke their gazes.

Already as if joined, it was no surprise when his mouth captured hers in a brief, thrilling taste. The caress of his rougher, firmer lips fitting over hers and gently sucked.

On a sigh, she surrendered, parting her lips for a deeper kiss, to give him anything he wanted because she was already his. But he didn’t invade with his tongue and he didn’t take what she was offering.

Instead he kissed her again, tenderly, dragging it out as if he could not stand for it to end. Then he pulled away, kissed the tip of her nose and held her as if she were the most precious thing in the world to him.

Because she was.

Duncan held her until she stopped trembling, from cold or passion, it didn’t matter. The fire was flickering down, the cabin was chilly, and he could not seem to let her go.

In his entire life he’d never felt like this, as if his heart were on the outside of his chest instead of inside. Exposed. Vulnerable. Maybe, for this one moment in the dark, it was all right to taste her kiss one more time.

And to treasure the knowledge that kissing her was sweeter than morning dew on roses, than dawn on the craggy peaks of the Rockies, than any single thing he’d ever known before.

Or ever would again.

Chapter Twelve

Even hours later, the kiss remained an unspoken tension between them. Not mentioned, but felt. An invisible cloud of smoke that seemed to choke the air and make Duncan seem distant, when he was only on the other side of the kitchen stove.

The wood he’d brought in was nearly gone to feed the greedy fire, and the main room had proved impossible to reheat in the rapidly dropping temperatures as evening came. They’d retreated to the kitchen where, with the door closed, the potbellied stove could burn more efficiently, but it didn’t seem to be driving out the cold.

In fact the chill seemed to creep like a thousand cold, black hairy spiders through the minute cracks in the solid wood floors and beneath the bear fur blanket. And under her petticoats to bite her skin.

If she were this cold, then how frozen must Duncan feel? He’d braved the vicious winds and lethal temperatures to bring in the wood that was by now almost gone. And because he’d refused to say a word to her other than “Stay by the stove, don’t you move!” it was hard to know how he was truly doing. Although the way he sat with jaw clamped and trembling beneath his fur seemed pretty clear.

He was colder than she was, and soon he would have to face that wind again.

The fierce set of his face told her she should not volunteer to go out into the storm again. He was not in a good mood.

No, that was an understatement. Duncan exuded such a powerful rage that one glare could send a pair of grizzlies running in the other direction.

That’s how he looked at her—the woman he’d deliberately kissed. The tingling thrill of it remained on her lips like a fiery brand. Never had she been kissed like that. And how did it affect him? It made him glare at her with distaste and anger.

It’s a good thing I’ve kept my real feelings to myself. She felt shame roll through her and she stared at the shadowed wall, the chinking stripe between the logs was perfect—she turned her attention to that instead of on the man a few scant feet away. Maybe she could forget the sinking disappointment weighing her down and the shame that she’d let him so easily kiss her when it wasn’t about love. It wasn’t out of affection. When it was something he regretted an instant later.

She rubbed her face with her hands, as if she could rub away the tears building behind her eyes. Her throat ached and she was glad he refused to speak with her for the only reason that the emotion aching in her throat would give her away. She was in love with him. And he wasn’t in love with her. He didn’t even like her. In fact, he seemed to detest her even more that she’d allowed that kiss.

Her mother’s scolding echoed in her head, words she’d heard a thousand times before while growing up. Give a man a reason to disrespect you, and he will. A decent man will be disgusted by a forward woman.

Apparently, Duncan was a very decent man because he refused to look at her or even in her direction. And his sneer…

Her stomach tumbled and shame filled the void where it used to be. She was miserable as she wrapped her arms around her knees and shivered, growing ever colder beneath the thick, flannel-lined fur. Did he think she’d been hoping for a kiss? For more? That she was the kind of woman who gave her affections easily, as if they were nothing?

Why was his opinion of her so deeply important? Because his kiss burned on her mouth as powerful as if it hadn’t been three long hours ago? She let her head roll forward and rested her forehead against her knees. If she closed her eyes she could still feel the intoxicating caress of his surprisingly gentle mouth on hers and the surge of his tough tenderness that rolled from him into her.

So much tenderness. She sighed, wanting and wishing for a second kiss just like it. To close her eyes, surrender and know true love again.

Except it wasn’t true love for him.

She felt him move before the rustling sounds and the groan of pain told her he’d stood. Awareness sparked through her like sunlight through a creek and nothing could stop it, nothing could dim it. Not even her will as she tried to still her heart. Silence her feelings. She told herself over and over again, He doesn’t want you, Bets, not that way, but there was no other way she would be with a man.

The hinges of the old potbellied cookstove groaned and the flames flared, licking dangerously around the top edges of the door, as if trying to escape. She lifted her face and the blast of heat tightened the skin on her cheeks, and she welcomed it. Her face felt hot, but the rest of her shivered.

“There.” Duncan broke the silence between them after he’d used the last of the wood, filling the stove full. He brushed the bark from his sleeves, lumbering away from her.

He stopped at the door to jam one arm into his fur coat. “Stay by the fire until I return. I don’t want you near the door. I won’t be able to see. You understand?”

It wasn’t his tone, which was brusque, but the harsh glaze to his black eyes that warned her his temper was on a short wick. So she nodded, not trusting her voice, shuttering her heart so he couldn’t see the truth. Why do I love him so hard it hurts?

There was no answer as the wind and dark stole him from her sight.

She tried to imagine what Mama would think of him. Lucille Gable would take one look around this dark cabin, give Duncan a doubtful arch of her left brow and say, “You could do much, much better than this.” For it had been something her mother had said numerous times before.

No one—not even Charlie—had been good enough for Lucille’s only daughter. Why not that nice banker? He’s a widower and there’s no one more respected in the county.

That was something Mama liked to say, too.

Betsy felt the cold blast of arctic fury as the door slammed open, the sounds of Duncan struggling to dump wood on the floor lost in the deafening noise. Then suddenly the driving ice bits fell, the air cleared and there was only the sweep of inches-thick snow settling to rest on the floorboards and on the armful of wood tossed out of the way of the door.

Somewhere in the dark reaches of the far room, a musical bong counted off the hours, a dulcet soothing chime that surprised her. Duncan seemed the type that would have an abrasive, booming clang. Not something so musical it made her yearn for her piano back home.

It could have been the first strains of a Brahms or Bach concerto—but the bells silenced at the second chord. It wasn’t anywhere near two o’clock. The wind raged like a snarling beast outside, ever louder and harder than before.

It had to be noon. What she should be is back home by now and arriving at her mother’s house, no one the wiser for her quick jaunt up into the mountains. This dang storm! It was the only reason she wasn’t driving Morris up her family’s long curving drive and into the shade of the magnolias.

Sundays at her mother’s was a big event. Her brothers would already be there. Betsy closed her eyes and knew that at this exact moment, because Mama lived on a rigid schedule, that she would be in the kitchen, bustling around, ordering Anya the maid to hurry with the pie crust.

About this time Betsy would walk through the doors of her childhood home, into all the warm memories of her life growing up. Upon seeing her, Mama would drop whatever she’d been preparing, wipe her fingers on her apron swathed around her fashionably plump waist and march like a general across the sunny kitchen.

“Oh, it’s my Bets, come home. It’s about time! You’re late, as always.” Mama would wrap her in a wonderful hug, scolding even as she pressed a kiss to Betsy’s cheek. “Come, tell me all about it and peel the potatoes for me.”

The wisps of memory tore apart as the door banged open, more snow and wood and wind exploded through the dark cavern of the door and then as suddenly closed. Alone in the impossibly colder room, Betsy’s stomach rumbled. It was early, but there was no better way to warm up than to eat some nice hot food. Duncan told her not to move, but that was because he wanted her to stay out of his way.

Maybe once he got a nice steaming cup of coffee—no, she’d best make him some soothing tea. If she got to work now, she’d have something hot for him when he returned, since he was seven times more headstrong than her mother and meaner than a wounded bear by insisting he’d be the one to risk the storm.

Surely it couldn’t last much longer. Usually, back home on the plains, a mere twenty-two miles away, the more violent the storm, the shorter its duration. Maybe by the time she’d washed and wiped their supper dishes, she’d be able to head home. Although what about the buggy? There was no way those wheels could work in any real depth of snow.

She filled the teakettle and set it on the stove to heat. Perhaps she’d simply ride Morris barebacked home. Not that she knew how to ride on a horse—Mama was adamantly against anything that involved a female parting her thighs in any way.

But surely Morris would be accommodating, he was such a sweet old fellow. She couldn’t imagine him objecting since he truly hated traveling up the mountain now that they’d been attacked. Likely as not, he’d be ecstatic to be heading home.

The door swung open and the driving gale pierced through her layers of cotton and muslin as if they weren’t there. As if she were standing naked in the kitchen. A chill crawled inside her, curled up and took root in her abdomen. Teeth chattering, she held out her hands but could not feel the stove’s heat.

She saw in the weak flicker of the single lantern’s light Duncan’s furious face and his mouth growling words she could not hear over the blizzard. He pointed one fur-gloved hand at her place where the blanket lay abandoned and spit out an obvious curse word. The slam of the door made the wild storm seem meek.

He’s mad. It was hardly a new concern. He’d been angry and cursing since the day she’d met him, so what did it matter now?

When he returned, he could shout all he wanted. She hardly cared. She was hungry and she was going to eat. And, with any luck, get enough food inside him to warm him up, since he was cold on her behalf. She was not the wisest woman to care so much, but she’d always placed more importance on heart than intelligence.

By the time he’d fought the door closed for a final time, she had beans heating in the tiny oven, the tea steeping and the sandwiches warming on the stovetop, along with the jars of pickles, relish and mustard that were trying to freeze. Wrapped in a damp cloth, it took no time at all for the bottoms of the jars to warm. And as Duncan shook off the layers of ice and crackling snow from his wraps, she deftly popped open the lids and set them aside to hand him a steaming tin cup.

The cup looked miniature cradled in his huge hands. Hands scarred and rough. Hands that looked capable of great violence and great strength.

And incredible tenderness. Betsy swallowed, trying to will away a rising desire she couldn’t give in to. It would only lead to heartbreak. See how he wasn’t even looking at her? He didn’t thank her. Somehow he was grimacing at her while he was slurping down the hot tea, certainly no easy accomplishment.

And here she was hoping…for what? She turned away before he could see the blush on her face, hot and scalding even in the frigid air. Her breath rose in great foggy clouds as she flipped the sandwich over, checked to make sure the meat was warm and no longer partly frozen, and then, satisfied, slipped several slices of tomatoes between the meat and the bread and handed him a plate piled high.

He crooked one brow, as if in a silent question, but did not speak. He did not look at her. He seemed more a part of the shadows and the storm. As if irrevocably lost. He retreated and the darkness seemed to thicken as it did in the desolate hours after midnight until she could not discern him at all.

Lonesome in the light of a single flame, Betsy turned the wick higher but the lantern did not shine more brightly. The blackness seemed to devour it until there was only the faintest of golden light struggling to burn.

His voice, when he spoke, sounded as merciless as a snarling wolf. “I’m not fooled.”

“Fooled?” The man was harder to understand than if he were speaking a completely different language. He might as well be speaking in his ancestor’s language. She had no notion, no notion at all, what he meant.

She spooned the steaming beans from the crock into a chipped bowl. “Duncan, you’re going to have to explain. I’m too tired, cold and starving to try to figure out your meaning.”

“I suppose the helpless, can’t-understand-anything act works with other men.”

“What other men? You mean, my laundry customers?”

“Customers? Is that what you call them?”

The booming insinuation in his voice made it sound as if…as if… Fury snapped her to attention, searching for any sign of him in the nearly hopeless dark. “Why do you say it like that? As if I’m not a proper businesswoman making a living laundering shirts!”

“Well, I wasn’t talking about that…not exactly.” He jerked the bowl from her hands, as if he stood directly before her.

She could not see him, only feel the cold radiating off him. Not only the ice from the storm but that which was his heart. It was a shocking thing, to feel something so barren. Sympathy welled up in her so fiercely, she wanted to wrap her arms tight around him and hold him until he’d thawed, until he was no longer bereft.

And yet she knew he would not want that from her. He did not want her. Already there was the faintest whisper of a footstep far in the corner of the room, where the blackness was deepest.

Aching for him without knowing why, she filled a bowl for herself. Cupped her hands around the warm stoneware and, stomach growling, eased to the floor where her blanket lay crumpled, no defense against the creeping cold.

“I mean, a woman like you. Of a certain age.” His accusation came flat, emotionless and cruel. “Your laundry business must be a good way to meet eligible bachelors. Widowers. Men you could marry.”

“Whatever has given you that notion?” She pretended his words didn’t hurt at all. “You sound as if you’ve been speaking to my mama.”

“I’ve never met your mother, but I know a lot about you women.” He spooned the rich syrupy beans into his mouth, ignoring her.

Savoring the exquisite taste of sweet molasses and beans done to perfection, breaking apart on his tongue. A tang of what had to be a homemade sauce of some kind and the salty goodness of real bacon. Not salt pork, which was cheaper.

Yep, she sure went all-out to impress him. To show him what a good wife she would be. “There was a spinster who owned your business a few years ago. She married one of her customers, did she not?”

“Well, not exactly. Mariah is a dear friend of mine, and when a man who’d wanted to court her when she was young became widowed, he proposed to her. It had nothing to do with her trapping him… Wait a moment.” She stood against the light like a wraith, trapped between this world and the next.

The sparse light played on the pleats of her skirt and she looked as though she floated instead of walked toward him and into the darkness. He could barely make out her silhouette, but there was no mistaking the hard line of her shoulders and the hot rage steaming from her like heat from a teapot.

He was in no mood to be yelled at by some opinionated woman. “I wish you luck, Miss Hunter, in finding that husband you’re posturing for, but I will swear on my grave that husband will never be me. So keep your distance, stop your infernal cleaning and cooking and stay the hell away from me. Got that?”

And he left, taking the last of the beans with him. Stepping over the empty plates and past her rigid shape in the dark. Stalking despite the exhaustion and pain and heartsickness into the frigid front room, where the blizzard had frozen the room so solidly, a crust of ice crackled on the floorboards beneath his feet.

By the time he heard the intake of her first sob, his heart was granite. His soul, marble. He closed his eyes and covered his ears against the sound. The beans forgotten, the delicious food she’d prepared an indigestible lump in his gut.

He’d never done anything so rotten in his life. Hurting women went against everything he believed in, everything he’d been taught, but there was no other way to save them. No other way to make certain he did not give in to his baser impulses and his burning need to hold her and wind up covering her body with his, end up loving her with everything within him, of ruining her reputation, of bringing endless shame upon them both.

I’m so sorry, Betsy.

As she exhaled the sob, the sound thin and vibrating, he became less like a stone and more like the dark. The cold enveloped him and he could feel the icy sting upon his face—but that was it. He could feel no more as he became nothing at all.

The second sob rang more strangled. It had a strange tone to it. Not exactly anguish… He listened hard, but could not hear her as the winds crescendoed.

It was just as well. He’d survived enough heartbreak without listening to hers, too. Even if he caused it.

That made him a bastard and worse. The thought of hurting sunny, cheerful Betsy, with her jeweled eyes and dazzling brightness… He hated himself. Unable to stand it, he buried his face in his hands.

It was as if the cold couldn’t touch him. It was as if he wasn’t alive. As if he were no longer made of flesh and blood and bone. No longer mortal. No longer a man.

How could a man be anything real, when all hope had fled?

Betsy wiped the dampness from her eyes before her eyelashes froze. Goodness, was that all that was troubling him? He thought she was trying to entice him into marrying her? Ha! Wait until she told her friends this one. They’d be laughing for months….

And then she realized, as the lantern flickered and the low flame died, that there was nothing amusing about a man with so little heart. And even less faith in humanity.

What had seemed ludicrous dried up and broke into dusty, blown-away pieces. He thought she wanted to marry him? That she was using her business to meet eligible men? Did he think her cleaning and cooking and her care for him had such a petty motivation?

He couldn’t see the truth, she realized. The truth that she was grateful to him. That she wanted to do something, however small, to thank him for his noble deeds. His acts of bravery. To let him know that her respect for him would never falter, even if all she had to offer him were baked beans and a sandwich.

Wasn’t it the thought that counted?

And Duncan, alone in the freezing dark, so determined not to be fooled by a woman trying to trap any poor man into matrimony. What did someone do to you?

She finished wiping her eyes, felt through the drawers with care in case she came across a sharp knife, and found a candlestick. The smooth wax and the trimmed wick told her there was a holder somewhere around, although she had to use a match from the tin beside the stove to light the taper. Then she searched with the flickering candle in hand until she found the plain glass base not in the same drawer but tossed in the back of the pot cupboard.

Fortunately in her search she ran across the kerosene can. The fuel echoed in the tin, and it sounded suspiciously as if there was very little left. She set it aside to deal with later, after she’d set Duncan straight.

With the buffalo fur draped over her shoulders, she filled the last clean cup, stirred in a generous teaspoon of honey and, heedless of the danger, crossed the threshold and into a darkness so stark, it was like death.

Chapter Thirteen

“Duncan?”

She’d already predicted he wouldn’t answer her. But did he have to be so difficult? So stubborn? It was a good thing she was used to people like that.

And besides, there wasn’t a creature on this earth she couldn’t eventually charm. Although, she sensed it might take all her strength and will to lure Duncan from his dark, icy prison.

“I brought you some more tea. It’s scalding hot. I put in extra honey.”

There came a scrape from the far corner, as if his boot heels grated on the varnished floor. Was he near the bed?

“Put it on the night table.”

He sounded eerily hollow, as if a ghost spoke, and yet Betsy knew how it felt to be hollowed out like a log made into a canoe. Hollow and empty and torn wide open. As if everything important within had been scraped and lashed away.

She did as he requested, feeling her way across the room. She stubbed her right big toe on the foot of the couch. Hit her knee on the wooden bed frame and felt with careful fingers along the carved edge of the night table for a safe place to rest the cup.

Except the carving…it was intricate and masculine. She could tell as her fingertips traced the pattern that it wasn’t the same as the bed set in her modest upstairs room. But it was similar enough that she had to see it.

She released the cup safely in the center and dug into her skirt pocket for the little match tin. But it wasn’t in her right pocket, so she plunged her hand into her left.

“Are you still here?” he barked. “Go. Leave me.”

“What, is a big strong man like you afraid I’ll try to trick you into proposing?”

“Yeah.”

“Trust me, you’re in no danger.”

“You mean, you aren’t a desperate spinster who’d do anything for a husband. Hell, you look like one to me.”

“Me? I look like a spinster? Goodness, thank you for the compliment.” Really, she thought, rolling her eyes. She found the tin in her apron pocket and struck a match.

A brief light flared, and in the moment it fought for life, it illuminated only the angles and planes of a face that looked more gargoyle than human, more snarling predator than man. The deep grooves etched around his mouth gave the illusion of jowls opening in the moment before an attack, and the flame sputtered out, as if terrified by the sight.

She did not turn and bolt. No, she struck another match and lit the bedside lantern. A soothing brightness cast a soft circle over the table, ebbing to where Duncan sat as motionless as stone on the edge of his unmade bed. “Thank you so kindly for that lovely compliment. Every woman who’d celebrated her thirtieth birthday likes to be told she looks like a spinster. And a desperate one at that.”

“It’s the plain truth. I know what you are.”

“Do you, now?” Betsy didn’t grow up with five brothers and stay happily married by not understanding that men were unintelligible.

It was a given fact that a woman simply had to accept or the confusion of it all would drive her mad. Men and their illogical brains required infinite patience…and a little artfulness. So she knelt to study the masculine and bold carving of river rocks so exquisite she couldn’t believe this stubborn mountain of a man could have that much poetry in him.

She cast her smile wider, so her dimples showed. She was bound and determined to wipe the bitter pain from his tortured face…but how? “This is beautiful. The furniture.”

His gaze blackened. “I’m going to say it again. I’m not going to marry you.”

Apparently he thought it was very important that she understand this. She could feel his agony. She laid her hand on his granite-hard knee and felt him flinch at her woman’s touch. Saw the distrust well up through the bleakness.

Gently she said, so he would finally believe her, “We’re in agreement, Duncan. Don’t worry. I don’t want to marry you.”

“Agghh!” He shot off the bed, pretty fast for an injured man. Maybe that was proof of how het up he was.

Lost in the reaches of the room, and any noise he made obscured by the screaming storm outside, Betsy would have sworn she was alone if she didn’t know any better. When she spoke, she wasn’t even certain if he was listening. “Why do you think I want to marry you?”

“What woman isn’t trying to trap a husband? Get him to pay her bills and provide a house for her to clean. What? Why are you looking so shocked? Isn’t that the damn truth?”

“What have I ever done to suggest I’m that horrible of a person?”

“You came. You—you cleaned. You didn’t leave when I told you to.”

“I came because all that time you were here alone and injured, I thought you were dead. I can never pay you back, ever, for what you did in the forest. So I am doing what I can while you’re recovering from the wounds you incurred on my behalf!”

“You cooked! Baskets of food.”

“So you wouldn’t have to fend for yourself. You know that’s true. If you’d settle down enough to feel what’s beneath your very offensive anger, you’d see—”

“Offensive? It’s not offensive! It’s justified!” Red exploded behind his eyes and he slumped against the wall, too weak to stomp out of the room like he wanted, and he gave thanks for the shadows that hid the truth. Summoning up the loudest, most vicious tone he could manage, he roared like a mountain lion. “You shove your way in here. Manipulate to spend the night in my cabin—”

“Manipulate? O-oh, it’s true! I have powers over the weather and I made the blizzard come down the mountain so fast, that I had to stay or be frozen to death on the road back home.”

“You damnable woman!” The red behind his eyes exploded into a swirl of heat and hot, searing white. “Don’t make a jest of this! I’m not about to let you tempt me. Get this straight—you stay far away from me. Now. Do it. Go into the kitchen and stay there. You’ll keep your virginity, do you hear?”

“Do you often mistake a woman for a dog? Or for a bridled horse?”

“Is there no end to your sass? No wonder you’ve never married! Any man with a lick of sense would run as fast as he could in the opposite direction. Which I wish I could do right now.”

“Me, too, because you’re so pleasant. And for your information, just so you know, in case you’re trying to trap a woman into marriage so she’ll cook and clean for you? Stay away from me. Don’t tempt me. And what else did you say?”

Framed by the soft glow of the lamplight, she cocked her head to one side as she thought, causing the thick, long riot of abundant hair to bounce enticingly over her full breasts and along the curve of her tiny waist. “Oh, I remember. Don’t worry. You’ll keep your virginity.”

“This is no joke!”

“I see that.” Calm, so annoyingly calm, she flashed him a gentle smile with dimples and charm, and made his toes curl and his soul stir.

Desire surged through his blood and he was rock-hard. Damn it, aroused was the last state he could risk being in. How could she affect him this way when he was roiling with rage and wished to hell that he’d never met her?

Because he wanted nothing more than to wrap her in his arms. To kiss her until she made low moans in her throat, until she was soft and wet and accommodating beneath him. And then he could push his way inside her tightness, love her until they were both spent, hold on to her forever so the world and its cruelty and sorrow stayed forgotten.

He felt ready to shatter into small, irretrievable pieces with wanting her. To feel her kisses, to surrender to her gentleness, he would give anything. Do anything. He wanted her so much.

Her touch came out of the dark, as if from a dream. So magical he thought he was imagining it and he straightened, inviting her silently closer. She came behind him, her fingertips exquisite brushes of heat along the outer curve of his shoulder.

“Do not worry, Duncan. I’m not trying to trick you into anything.” When she should have been furious with him, for the way he was treating her, she was kind. Her voice warm when it should have been hateful. “I am no spinster or virgin. I’ve been married and widowed.”

“No. I don’t believe it.”

“Too bad, for it’s true. I have my own house, I run my own business, I’m happy. I have no need to bring heartache upon my life by marrying for any other reason than true love.”

True love? He scoffed. Acid flooded his mouth, tasted sour on his tongue. Unrelenting on his soul. “There is no such thing.”

“You’re wrong.”

“There’s no way you can be a widow.”

“Why not? Because I’m not in my later years?”

Because you’re so beautiful. The words caught in his throat, unspoken. Words he could never say. Because she was lovelier than anyone he’d ever known. Because love and trust, even for one moment, brought with them consequences he could never endure again. Because once the storm was ended, there would be consequences enough without his ever laying a hand on her. Without another singular kiss.

“I’m a widow. Not out of choice, mind you, so don’t even try to pick a worse fight with me, because I will not fight you, Duncan.” Gentle her words, alluring her voice, warm her heart.

How was he going to resist her now? He swallowed hard against the emotion in his throat but found he could not speak. He was trapped in silence and darkness and ice while her petticoats whispered like a temperate spring breeze. And he squeezed shut his eyes and turned his chest to impenetrable steel. And what good did it do?

She was still here, her hand on his shoulder, her spirit a gentle presence against his.

“Charlie was my true love. Maybe my only love. I don’t know. I suspect there is only one great love meant for each of us. That somewhere in this world is our true match. I found mine, and when you think about it, it must be rare, in all the places of this world, of all the people alive and dead and yet to be born, I found my perfect soul mate.”

“Sure. Whatever you say.”

His bitterness gathered around them like the blizzard that swarmed the cabin. Closing them off, blocking out all light and hope. As barren as a vast glacier field.

What did she do to you? Betsy knew there had been someone he’d loved once, long ago. But what could break a man’s heart so that, instead of beating despite the breaking, it was as if the very core of him had been obliterated. She could feel the edges of the abyss and the hopelessness that plunged into his soul.

How could anyone—man or woman, strong or weak—live with this mortal wound? She knew darn well he wanted to be alone, and she knew why. Because being alone was safe. Being alone meant you didn’t have to hand over what remained of your heart. Being alone meant you never had to trust again. Hurt again. Lose again.

Alone meant that the worst thing that could happen was nothing. Nothing at all. Sometimes, that was the wisest, safest choice.

But not today.

When she should have left him be in peace, she placed her hand on his chest and, fingers splayed, felt the dependable, mighty thud of his heart.

And it was as if she could feel the devastation. Feel the agony that twisted through him at her touch. He didn’t move. She was aware as his every muscle stiffened.

It was as if he’d shielded himself behind an iron wall. And although she was close enough to feel his warm breath across her cheek and the rhythm of his life force against her palm, the essential part of him seemed to be hundreds of miles away.

Please, let me help you.

If nothing else, she wanted to do this for him. He did not love her, this she knew and even understood, but she could not leave when the blizzard was done knowing she had made his existence more painful.

That beyond his physical wounds, which she could never be sorry enough for, there lay a wound of his spirit. It was as if being close with her and having her in his house reminded him of a time in his life that had been like an autumn’s first hard frost, killing all green things struggling to grow.

It was the very least she could do for this man who was so great.

“Never think that I’m going to make something of my entrapment here, all right?” Gentle she spoke, so he would listen and hear her meaning. So he would turn toward her and, like a wounded animal in the wilderness, let her close enough to save him.

“Why should I trust anything you say? You’re a woman. The only thing a woman can give a man is pain.”

“I suppose there are women who might try such a thing, such a horrible thing, but I am not cut from that poor quality of cloth. I married Charlie because there was no other choice to make.”

“Oh, he had money, did he?”

“No. He was poor. That was why my family objected to his courting me.”

“I’ve met your family. I can’t imagine how you ever trapped him into marrying you. Unless it was with sex.”

“Oh, Duncan.” Her laughter rippled as alluring as a high mountain creek.

She wasn’t angry or amused or mocking, and it shamed him. His chest swelled and there was no room for anything but his bitterness. He hung on to it with all his might. It was the only thing protecting him from the world. The only thing saving him from giving in to needs too long denied and reaching for daylight—for her.

“Hasn’t that happened to you? The startling telegraph of connection that just fills you up and turns you inside out?”

Yes. Once. With you. Duncan wrenched away from her touch, turning so that, although she was nothing more than a silhouette in the storm-dark room, she couldn’t see inside him. So that the arc of connection that seemed to flow from him to her would stop.

Forever. He had to stop it now. Panic rose up and he could feel her turning with him, moving in the dark, as if they were waltzing in the light, heart to heart, moving in synchrony and all he wanted, all he needed, was to break away and be alone. He could not stand to have her so close. So near.

But did she understand the hint? No. Duncan kept moving and she kept following, her hand always touching him, lighting on his shoulder. And he shrugged that away, and she touched down on the middle of his spine. Like lightning through an unwilling sky, that’s how she sparkled through him, a harsh piercing of light that was blinding.

And still, she kept speaking. “A real love, a real marriage, is struggling to make life better for the person you love.”

“That’s just how women do it.” He ground the words out, crumbling. Hell, he was like a granite rock disintegrating. “They say all the right words. Do all the things meant to fool a man into thinking…”

He choked back the rest of the memories too bleak to examine. Images that whirled like black wraiths before his eyes. “Women know just what to do to make you think how wonderful they are. So sweet and dainty and feminine and loving until your heart is caught like a fish on a line and you don’t even know enough to escape until you’re out of the water. Struggling to breathe. Seeing the glint of the knife before it slices you wide open. So when I say, ‘Get away from me,’ I mean get away from me.”

Her hand flew off his back as if he’d slapped it away. He waited, panting, as she stepped away and disappeared into the darkness.

She fled, staying out of the reach of the only lamp. Her rustling skirts faintly marked her progress across the room and into the kitchen, where she remained, a light in his darkness he could not extinguish.

Or ignore.

Silence. How loud it seemed when her ears were no longer filled with the savage sounds of the storm. The blizzard had blown out but snow obliterated the windows in the kitchen, so she could not see out to be certain if it was safe to venture home.

Well, I can’t stay here all night. Her mother would be worked up into a flurry, wondering why her daughter hadn’t arrived for the noon meal as promised and why, when she sent one of the brothers, which she would predictably do, the house in town would be empty, as well. Betsy added more wood to the fire. There was no doubt her family would be hunting her down, and how was she going to confront them about Duncan?

Women know just what to do to make you think how wonderful they are. So sweet and dainty and feminine and loving until your heart is caught like a fish on a line. She remembered how combative he’d been and how silent in the hour or so since. Her rifle-toting grandmother and her overprotective brothers had said something horrible to him.

But what? And if they’d told him he wasn’t good enough for her—wasn’t that all they seemed to do, try to find her eligible men to marry or to eliminate the unsuitables?

How dare they decide that for her? How dare they hurt the one man who’d made her wish? The one man who’d made her feel again in all the long, lonely years of her widowhood?

A floorboard creaked and there he was, slicing through the shadows as if he were part of them. Hardly discernable as he grabbed his coat from the hook by the back door. Ice broke from the fur to tinkle to the floor. His boots crushed the ice slivers as he came near, into the small glow of light.

“Why do you have the lamp turned so low?”

She tried not to jump at his hard words and how they reverberated in the room. “That’s the last of the kerosene, unless you have an unopened tin somewhere.”

“No.”

“We have wood enough for a spell. Let me warm your wraps before you put them on.”

“Damn it, woman, stop meddling.” He eased into the coat, still frozen nearly stiff from his earlier trip outside.

He truly did not seem as if he could tolerate her presence. Had she been wrong to push him? To try to let him know that he may not feel that special twinkling lightning strike for her, but some woman in the future, perhaps. His future need not always be lonely. If she could save him from his hopelessness, then maybe she could repay how he’d saved her.

“I think the snow is—”

Too late. He yanked open the door before she could finish her sentence and she had the distinct feeling he would refuse to listen to her anyhow. Snow glistened from the bottom of the threshold to the top. Snow packed so solidly, it was not going to be easy to move.

Without a word to explain, he slammed the door closed and stomped through the cabin. The other door opened and slammed, leaving behind an empty sound.

Maybe it was time to go. Betsy stood, bringing the blanket with her. Should she try to leave for home? She padded through the darkness to the mantel clock and squinted—it was nearly five o’clock. It seemed like midnight, for it was so dark she couldn’t see through the window. Her face reflected darkly back at her and the wilderness outside was one enormous hush, as if nature were holding back for an even more dangerous act.

I definitely ought to go while I can. She thought of Duncan so quick to be rid of her. He’d probably reached the stable and was preparing her horse at this very moment. She thought of the chores left to be done—the supper meal to warm for him, a new pot of tea to steep for when he came in, the main room to clean and dust and mop. The laundry she meant to gather to take with her.

Before she could take another step, thunder exploded so hard the entire cabin seemed to lift up and drop. The floorboards heaved. The walls moaned. The timbers overhead groaned as if alive. The thunder came not from the sky, but from the mountains behind them.

She heard the roar of the snow, the crack of ancient trees snapping like toothpicks and the ring of wind and fury. The cabin seemed to explode and she dropped to her knees. Something hard struck her against the back, pinning her to the floor, but it was only the safe end of a rack of antlers that must have been mounted on the wall above.

She moved it safely aside as the cabin continued to buck. Duncan. He was outside in this. What if he were swept away? The cabin bucked and jostled, and around her, the world broke apart.

Glass shattered and she didn’t see the tree coming until it was too late. Until the limb slapped her across the jaw. She felt the sting and then a greater pain. Like a sledgehammer pounding against her head. And then there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

Chapter Fourteen

Safe in the hayloft tucked in the steeple of the stout log stable, Duncan witnessed the avalanche explode down the mountainside.

While no star glistened from the black sky, the night had hues of its own. Shades of shadow and night that made his sensitive eyes pick out the polish of the hard-packed snow, the somber specters of the giant evergreens and the unforgiving peaks of the rugged Rocky Mountains.

The avalanche was not a big one—he’d built his stockade tight to direct the deadly power of the snow around the house and stable. But it was the first of the season and brought with it the crack of trees weakened by age or conditions through the temperate summer.

So when he heard the gunshot-like report of a tree shattering, he figured, by the ear-ringing loudness, it was an ancient cedar, the kind large enough to take other trees with it when it rolled with the lethal force of the snow.

Right for the house.

He saw the dark length of the giant tree, rolling and breaking apart as though it were a mere stick. He watched the supple top of the tree snap and crash into the blockade barrier protecting the house. It was a hard blow, and he was surprised the huge tree took a small portion of the logs imbedded into the earth with it and crashed into the house.

Betsy. Betsy was in there. And if she’d been anywhere in the front room… Duncan couldn’t see the damage from where he stood, but he couldn’t get the ringing tinkle of breaking glass out of his mind. And how he heard such a delicate sound over the savage roar of snow and broken trees, he could not explain.

Or maybe because his entire being was focused, not on the destruction to his house, but on the woman inside. The woman in his protection, because that was the only reason he cared. If something happened to her, then worse would happen to him.

He would not allow for any other reason or any other emotion as he stood helpless to hold back the destruction as the cascade thundered by. His eyes strained to see anything more in the utter bleakness and there was nothing but the lump of shadow that was the house and what looked to be a gigantic cedar, as large around as a locomotive, butting into it, held there by the force of the avalanche.

She’s all right, he told himself. She’s probably safe in the kitchen where it was relatively warmer. It was senseless to be worried. She was fine. Simply fine.

Then why could he not feel the buzz of awareness in his soul? The one Betsy put there? The place that felt like spring to his tired old spirit. What had happened to her? Betsy, you stayed in the kitchen, didn’t you?

And he knew she hadn’t. She would have wanted to leave right away. He’d treated her abysmally and of course she’d want to flee as fast as she could the instant she could. Sick fear gripped his stomach and stayed holding on. He wondered what the horse sensed, the gelding seemed deeply attached to his mistress. Yeah, fella, I know just how you feel.

The night clung like death to the world where there were no stars, no moon and not a single light anywhere. Nothing but shades and shadows and the quiet roll as the last of the high country snow crumbled from somewhere far above on the peaks and silenced.

The wilderness rang with it. As if the trees were alive and stood in wait, not quite daring to release their held breaths. No creatures stalked the forest, no hawks or owls hunted the skies. Nothing moved as the mountainside remained hushed. Was the danger past?

Duncan didn’t care. He was already out the door and crossing the pathway between the stable and the house. Let the snow come, nothing was going to stop him from reaching his Betsy. He kept one ear cocked for the half second of notice he would get if there was a second avalanche, but the mountain waited until he was safely in the door.

“Betsy?”

He could smell the desolation and the fresh scent of broken tree bark and inner fiber. The feel of danger in the air. The ice crunched beneath his boots as he followed the hush to where the tree had angled in, broken trunk first, thrust through the main window and into the front room.

Furniture was knocked aside. Books, open and ragged, had tumbled from their shelves, and glass from the lantern crunched beneath his feet. He could smell the faint acrid scent of smoke.

It was sheer luck that the snow and wind must have dowsed the flame.

“Betsy!” He bellowed her name, but she didn’t come running, as she would have done had she been in the kitchen. That had him dropping to his knees, frantically feeling through the destruction.

He couldn’t feel her. His heart was silent. He had to find her. He had to—

He felt the softness of cotton against his fingertips, lost beneath the hard wedge of a thick lower bough. He found her motionless beneath the flanged branches with the weight of the tree pinning her to the ground. Was she breathing?

But no, he would know if she were gone. There remained in the center of his soul a small light burning.

Hope lived, after all.

Hope.

The sweetness of it rushed through him as her fingers tightened around his. She was alive. She could move.

Hell, he was grateful for that. He closed his mind against the possibilities of severe wounds—he couldn’t tolerate the chance of it.

He splayed his palm gently against the side of her face, her dear, beloved face. “Lie still, my darling. I’m going to lift this damn tree off you, okay?”

She moaned and he went hard with fear. Then hot with rage. How dare this damned tree hurt her?

Irrational rage pumped through him and in an instant he’d hefted the treetop’s weight from her fragile form and protected her with his body from the limbs as he hurled it up, through the window, jamming it back the way it had come as hard as he could. He ignored the pain, ignored everything.

“Duncan?”

He could hardly hear her over the roar coursing through him, but he forced a deep breath into his lungs and left the tree where it protruded through the window—he’d have to wrestle it out from the outside. Later.

What mattered at this moment was this woman. Only this woman.

He went to her gently, kneeling at her side to support her head. “You shouldn’t move. Shh. Tell me what hurts.”

“My pride is all.”

“No, you took quite a blow.” His fingers skimmed over her. Her hair was wet…but not sticky from blood. He sniffed and couldn’t scent it. He’d fought in the Civil War, so he knew something about injuries. Still, that didn’t mean she wasn’t injured in other ways— “Lie still, damn it!”

“I’m fine. I merely took a branch upside the head. It smarted, but I don’t think—”

“Where?”

She flinched. What was he so angry with her for this time? Did the man have any other emotions than either stoic or enraged? “Right here in front of my temple.”

“Let me see—” He swore and rose away. “Stay there. Don’t move. Do you hear me?”

“I haven’t gone deaf, so you don’t need to yell as if I have.”

“Hellfire! What did I do to bring you to my door?” He swore more viciously, using words she’d never heard before—if indeed they were words.

She wasn’t about to be bossed around by any man so she sat up—and her head swam. She hadn’t been hit hard, but it had been enough.

She hissed through her teeth—heavens, did that hurt!—and tenderly felt the sore spot with her fingertips. The raised bump was unmistakable.

So was Duncan’s temper. She didn’t blame him. He hadn’t asked for any of this—not one thing, except to have his clean laundry delivered weekly and his dirties washed and ironed, and all for a very generous fee.

He was her best customer, and look what she’d brought down on him. He’d had to wrestle bears, deal with her family and now was stuck through both a blizzard and an avalanche. She didn’t blame him one bit, no, but she was relieved to see him moving around, stiff but still moving.

How had he lifted that tree without tearing open his wounds? Well, it had been over a month, perhaps he was healing better than she imagined.

Light accompanied him on his return from the kitchen. The meager flame danced over the wreck of the room and over the harsh lines carved deep in Duncan’s masked face. He looked as distant as the granite peaks of the unforgiving mountains behind his house.

Yet, as he knelt to study her forehead, his nearness made her skin prickle. Her entire being opened like a new spring flower to dawn’s light.

“Do you see one or two of me?”

Not even his acrid tone could stop the flow of what felt like warmed honey through her veins. “Just one.”

“And that’s more than enough, huh? You’re not bleeding. You’re bound to get a bruise, but it’s a small bump. How about your fingers? Can you wiggle them? Your toes?”

He moved to her feet, as caring as a doctor, his hand lighting on her calf. His touch was intimate, even through the layers of stockings and petticoats and skirt.

He unlaced her shoes and removed them, taking care. “Let me see.”

“I’m fine.”

“Move them.” The deep creases gouged into his face eased when he saw her toes bend and flex. When he spoke, his voice came out ragged and strained. “Oh, thank God. How about your abdomen? Does it hurt to breathe?”

“I told you. I’m fine.” Her voice came ragged, too. He was acting as if…as if he had some affection for her. But how could that possibly be?

“Are you sure?” He pressed the heel of his hand gently against the curve of her belly. “Any tenderness?”

She moved her head and her dark curls shook and bounced. He picked a broken cedar needle from her hair. The weak light caressed her creamy throat and face, bringing out the luster of her inner being.

She was beyond beauty. She was everything he held dear—the only thing. And, God help him, he could not stop the sob of gratitude that shattered him as his head fell forward onto her lap.

Her skirts were soft and her thighs firm, and he gritted his teeth, holding back the burning gratitude that made his eyes smart. If anything had happened to her, he wouldn’t have been able to go on. He couldn’t lie to himself. He couldn’t do it anymore.

He knew he was acting like a fool, like a man in love with an enchanting woman he could never deserve, but the steel within him was not so strong, after all. Not if one small woman could bring him here, to his knees.

“Oh, Duncan. I was terrified for you, too.” Her fingertips feathered through his hair and it took a moment for her meaning to penetrate the wave of emotion drowning him.

He straightened, seeing the most amazing emotion alight in her eyes so blue, on her face so dear. For him. Her love for him.

He swallowed, not trusting his voice. There were no words, anyway, no mere pittance of sounds and syllables that would begin to illustrate to her the depth of his feelings.

Like the snow that had broken away with such force from the granite peaks of the mountains above, his love for her cascaded through him. Obliterating all his barriers and defenses, breaking him until he was like that tree laid open and revealed, and he didn’t care; he covered her mouth with his without thought or intention.

Suddenly her lips were against his, a gentle caressing so exquisite he choked on his own air, cradling her jaw so he could kiss her again, plunge into her mouth and taste her sweetness.

Feeling the race of her heartbeat against his and how she was kissing him in return, her hands winding into his thick hair, and she was pulling him along as she lay back in the snow and broken branches and he came with her, his rock-hard shaft caught between them.

Lost, there was no control, no logic, no ounce of common sense. He cupped her breast with his free hand and she moaned, surrendering beneath him, compliant and supple, and he knew without asking what she wanted.

He took the time to unbuckle his belt, unbutton his trousers and, hands trembling, smooth her skirts and petticoats up over her hips. Her creamy thighs were trembling, too, and she watched him with huge eyes, saucer-wide with emotion.

No woman had ever gazed upon him that way. No woman had given him that slow, secret smile as she reached down to untie the waist of her drawers.

There was no need for words as he covered her. The lightning shock of his hardness against her ready heat jolted through him and into her.

He did not trust himself to speak, as she reached with both hands to pull him down to her kiss, down into the resisting heat of her body, as she opened to him, the wind storming through the night outside, battering the small house, but it could not touch them.

It could not stop the beauty of this as Betsy wrapped her thighs around his hips, to keep him inside her.

They moved together, more than lovers in the night, lost in their own storm. In the ancient tempest of man and woman joined.

When it was over, he held her while the last waves of her pleasure ebbed through her. Then, holding her so they remained as one, he lifted her, carefully because he was still recovering, and carried her into the warmer kitchen.

Where, in the dark, he loved her all over again. With everything he had. With all the tenderness within him he didn’t know was there. Until he lost himself, his past, his pain, his sorrow, and there was only her. No past. No present. No dawn when she would have to go home.

Only now. Buried within her tight heat. Surrendering to her gentle passion. He would not think of what was to come.

Only now. And only this woman he treasured most, who was honestly and sweetly loving him.

Betsy wished she could hold him forever. The blankets could only provide so much protection and somewhere along the way they’d lost all their clothes.

The furs felt luxurious against her skin, almost as good as Duncan. She rubbed her knee against the down of his thigh and he growled low in his throat, tightening his arms around her.

Snug against his chest, content, lulled by the cadence of his breathing, she tried to hide her smile and couldn’t. She hadn’t been this happy in so long and it made her realize how empty her days had been. How lost the years since Charlie’s death.

She had found purpose enough for her life; she had family and friends and activities that filled her days. But her heart…

She’d found her heart again.

Ever grateful, she pressed a kiss to his warm, textured skin and hugged him with her whole body. He was a warm, delicious weight, his shaft heavy inside her.

She liked how he moaned, this Duncan who was tender as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. She tipped her mouth to meet his and he kissed her like a man who means it. He growled low in his throat as he curved his hand around her hip and tilted her to slide more deeply within her.

Thrilling pleasure shot through her, but as wondrous as it was, it paled against the emotional pleasure of being with him.

He was a powerful tenderness as he caressed her breasts. Kissed the tip of her nose, each freckle that marked her cheeks and the small dimple in her chin.

She shivered, soul-deep, for being with him like this, it felt right, as if it been fated long ago. She traced her fingertips along the muscled length of his back, enjoying the solid male feel of him.

Exploring how his spine dipped between the lengths of definite muscles. Discovering that when she tickled the small of his back, he tried to hide his reaction and turned a laugh into a growl and he was hard again, moving deeper still, his gaze penetrating hers.

Hilt-deep, he froze, holding her there on the flare of his shaft, and he knew it would make her shiver with pleasure.

“You like that, huh?” Duncan asked, although he’d already tortured her like this before. He leveled his weight on his elbows and slipped both big hands beneath her head and cradled her, this woman he loved. He loved how she blushed. He liked how she locked her ankles tight around him as if she never intended to let go.

Hell, he could not think of the dawn to come. Not yet. He brushed the tip of his nose to hers and her smile grew. Dazzled, he was helpless as she moved to rock against him, her body supple, her fingers sliding along his chest and cradling his face.

He matched her pace, rolling against her. He was rewarded by a low purr of pleasure and her tantalizing kiss.

“Oh, Duncan,” she sighed, clinging to him, this precious and beautiful creature; and he loved her, and, helpless, he moved to her demands, her quiet mews of pleasure and the quickening of her inner muscles hugging him too tight.

He could not find words to speak of the depth of love he felt for her. He did not know how to measure anything so large. He never knew a man could feel this for a woman. Beyond devotion and affection and faith.

Nothing else in his life would ever mean so much, and nothing ever had.

Every breath he took, every thing he did and every word he said would be, from this moment forth, for her.

“Oh, yes.” Sheer love glowed in her eyes as she began to arch.

Her gaze never left his as her release washed through her and he felt the first shuddering wave rippling through her and into him.

“Oh, oh, I love you so much,” she whispered, her words broken by the second and the third current of her climax.

“What did you say?” He had to hear it again, to be sure. To be absolutely certain he wasn’t imagining those rare words.

“I love you.”

She smiled and held him tight while he came. Found, when he should have been lost. Whole, when he should have remained broken.

Healed, when he thought nothing or no one could save him.

Chapter Fifteen

Was there a way to hold back the dawn? Betsy couldn’t think of one as she lay in the warmth of Duncan’s arms, snug against him. Their legs entwined, they were naked and satisfied.

Oh, she’d missed this part of marriage, not that it was the most important part, but the intimacy, the closeness, the sharing…and yes, the passion. How lucky she was to find this bond again. She’d all but given up hope. Love was too important to settle for anything less, and this man…

Oh, this man. Her grin broadened and she could feel the stretch of it on her face.

She could feel him stir awake. The ripple of awareness, the intake of his breath, the realization it was her he held. And how his big masculine body burned against hers. He nuzzled her hair. “I thought I was dreaming for a moment.”

“Hmm, if this is a dream, then it’s the best one I’ve ever had.”

“Me, too.” He leaned back, fixing a hand on her fanny to bring her with him as he stretched out. His arousal was obvious and quite substantial.

She couldn’t help the smile that widened until her entire face hurt. Joy shone inside her like first light and she gave him access to her breasts and kissed his forehead and he suckled and pleased her.

“Are the birds loud enough for you?” He peered over the crest of her bare bosom.

He was substance in the prelight shadows and she welcomed him into her body. Sighed as his thickness stretched her. “Are they this loud every morning?”

“I don’t know. I can’t seem to pay attention to them.”

“I wonder why?” She liked that he chuckled, that in the dark he was revealed. A tender, gentle giant of a man.

Love so pure left her breathless as they moved together, his hand firm on her hip to guide her. Whatever this connection was between them, it was more than sex, more than passion.

Her heart felt wide open, her entire being shimmered and never had anyone mattered to her so much. He buried his face in her shoulder, clutching her as his big body stiffened, driving into her as deep as he could go, so deep she swore their souls touched.

As joy spiraled through her and she came, crying out his name, the first golden rays of light broke through the shades drawn at the window and she saw him illuminated.

The grave, honest love in his eyes was unmistakable as he brushed the tangled curls from her face. She was his now, they both knew it, and she could not bear to part from him. She pressed her face against his throat, one last effort to hold back the day from coming, but it was coming anyway.

Duncan pulled out of her and in the intimate morning shadows, regret lined his face. He moved slowly, climbing out from beneath the thick furs and into the frigid air where his breath rose in great clouds and his skin goose-fleshed. He hurried into his clothes, pulling on layer after layer.

Sadness filled her up until she couldn’t speak.

“Stay in the blankets until the room warms up a little.” He’d fed the fire through the night, and he filled it full, leaving the damper and the oven door open to encourage hot flames. “I’ll tend the horses.”

He meant harness her dear Morris. She could only nod and hide her face in the furs. She waited until the back door clicked shut—apparently the snowdrift had shifted and he was able to leave. The twilight shadows lengthened, as if pushing back the dark.

Outside the shrill cacophony of more birds than she could name or count chattered and squealed and whistled and sang in great disharmony. The sound was so loud, it was as if every winged creature in existence had perched in the trees just outside the back door.

Dawn was arriving in new bits of color. Or the first hues of purple and magenta giving way to a rosy light. The birds silenced. The world became multicolored again as golden new light spilled through the windows, bringing with it the reality of the outside world.

Her family would be looking for her. Probably organizing a search party—no, a lynching party if they’d known what she’d been willingly doing with the highly inappropriate, for her, mountain man. That, of course, would undoubtedly be her mother’s opinion. But Mother would simply have to alter her opinion, for the impossible had happened.

If only I could stay. She glanced around the kitchen and saw it for the first time. She gathered the furs around her, holding them tight to keep in her body’s heat, and released the shutters.

Once the main window was uncovered, she saw that the high drifts had been blown away in the night. Light slashed through the hand-carved windowpanes and into the room. The gentle light warmed the honey log walls and shone on the floor. She noticed the table first, shimmering varnish pine of a heavy masculine design. Simple and striking and matching the chairs tucked neatly into place. When Duncan had been up to feed the fire, he must have picked up some of the mess.

What surprised her were the books. Tucked beneath the window seat were two shelves of leather-bound volumes. Shakespeare and Chaucer. Dickens and Jules Verne. Hawthorne and Twain. She eased onto the wooden seat and, trembling with the chill in the room, looked through the brand-new volume of Twain’s latest, The Prince and the Pauper. She’d been saving up to buy this very book before she’d bought furniture instead.

It was so easy to dream. Dreaming was something she hadn’t dared to do, and now it came so readily. How pleasant it might be to sit here on a winter’s morning, when there was little work needing to be done, with the breakfast dishes finished and a second pot of coffee set to boil, and read.

She could make pillows and cushions and this would be a beautiful place to spend hours, soaking up the sunshine and reading. And, when she stopped to fill her and Duncan’s coffee cups, to look at the view. The mountainside sloping past the house was littered with chunks of rock and broken boughs, but the scenery was breathtaking. Regal forests and somber mountain peaks painted with the bronzed light.

What perfect happiness there could be to spend her life here, with Duncan. Her eyes burned and she rubbed at her tears. Mama was always saying she was too prone to extremes of emotion, but she was like the sun. Shining so brightly, she could not keep it all in.

She’d been well loved, her body felt that thrilling exhaustion and the awareness of where he’d been lodged deep within her remained.

She felt him before she heard his boots on the hard packed snow. She knew before he pushed through the door that he was already searching the room for her. He still limped and favored his wounded side. Even more as he dropped into the chair nearest to her.

Sadness made his eyes black. “I put my runners on your buggy. I hope you aren’t mad, but there’s no other way to get you home.”

“Thank you.” She carefully closed the crisp volume. “Have you read this yet?”

“As soon as I brought it home. I had to order it from town.”

“From the mercantile? It’s hard to convince the McIntyres to order a book without payment up front. I had been saving up to do the same.”

“You like Mark Twain?”

“I do.” She swallowed, as if it were painful to talk.

Yep, I know just how that feels. Duncan cleared the thickness from his throat. Betsy had already knelt to replace the volume where she’d taken it from the shelf, and he covered her hand, stopping her. “Why don’t you borrow it?”

“Oh, it’s too costly to borrow. I couldn’t afford to replace it if anything happened to it.”

Duncan had to stop for a moment to study her. Was she truly being sincere? He thought of Ginetta, the young woman who’d destroyed his life with a lie. He’d been enamored of her and she’d used that knowledge to manipulate him and the circumstances. She was the type of woman he thought only existed. The kind out for gain and advantage and nothing more.

But Betsy, after a night of passion, was assuming nothing. Was asking for nothing. Was not the kind of woman who borrowed routinely, not by the worry pinched into the adorable creases in the corners of her eyes. The old bitterness was still there, and he had to fight it back, had to bite his tongue to keep from saying that she was acting that way simply to hide the fact that she wanted the book. But he knew it wasn’t true.

The Betsy he’d held in his arms, the woman who’d given him her love freely, was the same one stubbornly replacing the book with a smile. The fur wrapped tightly around her began to slip off her shoulder, revealing the fragile line of her collarbone and the curve of her neck where he’d kissed and stroked countless times through the night.

Love pulled him down and he was suddenly with her, handing her the volume. Hell, it was only a book and, right now, to keep her here, he would give her anything. Everything. If only she could remain his for a while longer.

“Keep it,” he urged, because he could not ask her to stay.

Because he had to let her go.

“I’ll borrow it. And I’ll be so careful, I swear it.”

“No. It’s yours.” He brushed her lush mouth with his and drank in her passionate taste. He loved how she sighed against his lips. How her spine arched and she surrendered, and they were both breathing faster.

“My family is going to be worried about me.”

“I know.” There would be consequences for loving Betsy. He was ready for them. Duncan held back all the things he wanted to tell her—about how wonderful she was, how he wanted to keep her right here with him forever and how she’d saved him.

But she was no longer his. The sun was rising, her horse was harnessed and her buggy awaited her. She had a life and a family. She did not need him.

And from this moment on, he could not need her. He gathered up her clothes for her and, while she shivered into them, adjusted the stove, put on some coffee. Hiding the pain from his healing injuries.

Hiding the pain in his soul.

A man with a future to offer would let her know how much she meant to him. But he had nothing, and he could not know what consequences were to come from loving his Betsy. But whatever trouble came his way, he would bear it gladly. If he never saw her again, if he never had the privilege of holding her through the night, or of being together in the most intimate way, then it would be a great sorrow.

But he would never regret her.

At last, when she was dressed and bound up in her coat and muffler and scarf, he poured the steaming coffee into his thickest cork jug, a drink to warm her on her long, icy ride home. There was nothing left to do but to tell her goodbye. And he could not.

So she wouldn’t know how it shattered him, how he wasn’t made of steel in truth, he simply walked away. Brought her horse and buggy, mounted on the sled runners, to the door and held the gelding’s bridle while she climbed aboard. Since she didn’t have a blanket, he wrapped her snug in one of the furs. Not looking at her. Not daring to speak.

“Thank you.”

He didn’t answer her. He handed her the thick reins, holding the straps so she could easily place them through her fingers.

“Oh! I forgot your laundry.”

His jaw worked. He shook his head and deliberately looked away toward what remained of the road that wound through the forest and down the hillside and far away from his cabin.

She saw what secret hid in his heart, for it was the same within hers. Encouraged, she pressed a kiss to his gloved hand, wishing more than anything she could stay. And knowing she had obligations and a day of work ahead of her.

“I love you.” She let those brave words into the air, knowing he needed to hear them.

He smiled, no longer the bear of a man she’d mistaken him for. “If you don’t come back, I’ll understand.”

It wasn’t possible that there would ever be the chance to keep her as his, but he was merely a man and he had one thing he hadn’t had in over half his lifetime: hope. He had hope.

“Hungry bears couldn’t keep me away.” She smiled.

And it was his future he saw.

When she drove down the road and out of his sight, it was his heart that went with her and his soul, which would never be his again.

Betsy had been worried during the long ride home. Anxious over leaving Duncan behind to fend for himself. Half-sick over the expectation that Mama would be waiting for her with news of the search party looking for her broken and wrecked buggy.

Her only consolation was that the snow remained deep and hard-packed all the way into town. The blizzard may have come here, too, and if that were the case, then of course she wouldn’t have shown up for Sunday dinner.

And maybe Mama would have no notion of where Betsy had spent the night. It was unlikely, but a girl had to hold on to whatever hope she had.

When she saw her mother’s imposing surrey, also on runners parked in the lee of the small stable, she knew there was no escape. Mama would be waiting for her inside the house and she’d immediately see that no morning fire had been lit. The bed had not been slept in. That she—Elisabeth Gable Hunter—had spent the night experiencing passion with a man her mother would never accept.

And what a passion it was. Betsy sighed, savoring the glow shining through her body. The wisps of memories from last night remained and her body felt forever marked. Claimed. As she pulled Morris to a halt in front of the stable door, she stood and was reminded of places where she was deliciously sore.

There, where Duncan had been inside her, she still felt textured by his seed. And it was an amazing, intimate sensation, remembering well how he’d emptied into her more times than she’d thought to count.

Not that anything would come of it. That made her sadder still. She and Charlie had never been blessed with children. And there was no reason to believe that events might turn out differently with another man. No, it was a hope she couldn’t let in, for it was one that would only lead to disappointment.

Yet somewhere deep within her spirit she harbored that tiny wish. The image of a child of Duncan’s for her to hold. With his beautiful bronze complexion and eyes dark like the night—

“Elisabeth! There. You. Are.” Mama marched around the corner of the house, her skirts flying, her mouth pursed into a furious line and looking more like a battlefield general than one of the most respected women in town. “I. Was. Worried.”

“Goodness, there was no reason to be.” Ducking so as to keep her face hidden, for her mother was an excellent face reader, Betsy industriously worked the buckles of Morris’s harness. “Wasn’t the storm something?”

“I sent Joshua over to make certain you had enough dry wood and he said you were not here.” Out of breath, with both rage and the effort of moving too quickly with a too tight corset, Mama was barely able to manage her usually imposing, “Humph!”

“I am perfectly capable of bringing in enough coal to keep the house warm. Did everyone make it over for dinner yesterday?” She was not trying to deceive her mother, for if Mama continued to demand the truth, Betsy was not one to foster lies. However, if Mama happened to become distracted and forgot to keep pestering…that was a different matter entirely. “How are James and his new wife?”

“Miserable.” The strategy worked, for Mama wrapped her arms around her middle, scowled as if she’d gotten a particularly strong whiff of the soiled straw pile. “I told him he’d be absolutely wretched if he married her, but would he listen to his own mother who loves him more than her very life? No, of course not! He’s a man. Men don’t listen to anyone. They think they know everything, but they don’t. And now he’s sorry!”

It was better that Mama went on about James’s wife than about Duncan Hennessey. If her mother went into a conniption over the admittedly selfish Eileen, then Betsy hated to think how Mama would react if she found out her only daughter had just crawled from a mountain man’s bed and still had the scent of him on her.

Besides, there were matters to sort out. The fact that her family had left Duncan injured and alone made her quite angry. She yanked the last buckle loose, startling Morris, and she had to reassure him before she could lift off the heavy shoulder harness. “What did Eileen do this time?”

“Do! She came into my kitchen yesterday afternoon, as pompous as you please, and gave orders to my servant. Mine! I pay her wages. I provide room and board. Then that woman had the audacity to ask for Anya’s help this Wednesday for a ladies’ luncheon she’s hosting. That woman presumes far too much!”

“I don’t even ask to borrow Anya.”

“That’s what I said! Look to my dear little Bets for a fine example in a young lady—”

“Mama, I’m no longer so young.”

“You are lovely, my sweet, and that woman could use a few lessons from you!”

Thinking of her behavior last night, Betsy bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing out loud. “Yes, Mama. Would you like to come in? I’m afraid I have a lot of work awaiting me this morning. Monday is my busiest workday.”

“I have no desire to sit and watch my only daughter work her fingers to the bone scrubbing other people’s drawers!”

Dramatic was one word to describe Mama. The other was deeply loving. The only way to handle the combination was to be tolerant. Her mother meant well, regardless if her actions brought the opposite result. “I scrub shirts and trousers, too. And sheets. Towels. Dishcloths. All sorts of things besides people’s undergarments.”

“What am I to do with you?” Mama gave her muffler a hard yank to tighten it around her throat. “The first snowfall of the season and it was a blizzard! I had visions that you had become lost in the storm and blown off course and had frozen to death somewhere on the desolate prairie. And when Joshua said you were not at home this morning! Oh, Bets, you must stop driving all over tarnation or it will give me heart palpitations.”

“I know you worry, Mama. But I worry about you, too.” She pressed a kiss to her mother’s cheek. There had to be a way to break the news gently, that she was in love again. It would be very difficult for Lucille Gable to accept, Betsy knew. But the silver lining was that James’s Eileen might not seem so bad after acquiring a rugged mountain man for a son-in-law.

Her poor, well-meaning mother. “I’ve got to get scrubbing, Mama, but thank you for coming over. Are you certain you couldn’t do with some hot tea? I bought the kind you like.”

“You’re my good sweet girl, but I’d best get back home so that woman doesn’t try to steal away my housekeeper!” With a wave, Mama was off, climbing into her surrey, whistling to the team and speeding out of sight.

Whew. Close call. Betsy couldn’t begin to imagine what Mama would do if she’d discovered the truth. As for how Granny and Joshua would react—well, she still had them to deal with. Later, she thought as she rubbed Morris down and forked extra straw into his stall for comfort.

“Where were you?” Joshua was dismounting from his fine black gelding, his gaze as righteous as a hanging judge’s. He was a big man and could be intimidating when he wanted to be. “And those aren’t your runners. I know because I came over this morning to put them on your buggy box for you.”

“That was thoughtful of you, Josh, but as you can see, I’ve got it managed.” Betsy leveled her oldest brother with a hard stare. He was no villain, but he behaved that way. No doubt out of some overprotective-loving-brother motive, but she had to wrestle down her temper as she unlocked her door. “I have work to do, but you’re welcome to come in if you want.”

“That’s not exactly a welcoming invitation.”

“Sorry.” She was through the door and sending silent suggestions—Don’t come in, Joshua, go home—but his boots knelled on the steps.

As she peeled off her wraps, she could see him through the window. He was shoveling off the snow that had accumulated on the porch and on the steps. Red rage flared before her eyes, blinding her, and she shook the ice from the damp morning air from her coat and muffler and hung them on the pegs by the stove to dry.

A fire was already crackling in the stove. Judging by the looks of things, it had been going for some time. How early had Joshua come over and let himself into her house? He would have known, if it had been early enough, that she hadn’t spent the night upstairs. She needed time to get control of her emotions. How she handled this situation had long-reaching effects on all the people she loved.

Especially for Duncan. Duncan, who had experienced cruelty from her family already.

There was no question in her heart. He was the man she intended to spend the rest of her life loving. He was already a part of her, as if a part of him had remained inside her, and her spirit was no longer hers alone. She thought of him, wondering what he was doing right now. Had he enjoyed some of the breakfast out of the baskets she’d packed for him? Had he already been fixing the damage the avalanche had done to the front room of his cabin?

She worried that he was working too hard. Although every movement brought him great pain, he hadn’t complained. He had done his best to pretend he wasn’t wounded at all.

She’d return the first chance she got. He needed a woman to take care of him, to soften his life, to let him know what a fine man he was. But there was Joshua, opening her door and stomping the snow off his boots before stepping onto her kitchen floor—Mama had trained him well.

He took off his hat and hung it on the coat tree next to the door. “I don’t suppose you’ve got coffee going?”

“I’m measuring the grounds right now.” She finished her work, keeping her back to him. The silence thickened between them, so the sound of his boots crossing to the table rang like cannon fire.

“So do you want to tell me where you were last night?”

She grabbed a loaf of cinnamon bread from the pantry and sliced it. “I didn’t know it’s your business.”

“Damn it! I’ve never known you to act like a loose woman! What’s gotten into you, Bets?”

“I’m not ready to discuss this right now.” She slipped the slices onto the top oven rack to toast and then reached to slip the frozen-solid butter ball into the heat to thaw.

“You are going to talk about this!” Joshua’s anger crackled louder than the flames inside the stove, but he was worried for her. “Maybe I know. You had a close brush with death when that bear came after you and now you need to feel alive. Sometimes that happens. But don’t do something you’ll regret. If word gets ’round of what you’re doing—”

“What am I doing?”

“You had to sleep somewhere last night. I was here before dawn and I saw you weren’t here. You hadn’t been in your bed all night, but you’re looking satisfied and chipper this morning. Fine, you had your night of passion, but it’s over and no more. You don’t want folks disrespecting you or trading gossip about how loose your morals are. It will hurt your business, I can promise you that.”

“I thought you hated my business. That you’d like nothing more than for me to fail and have to move back in with you and Mama so that all of you can keep a better eye on me.” She slammed the clean plates onto the table with enough force to crack them. “And clean up your thoughts. I wasn’t out having passion, as you call it. I’m not wanting to throw caution to the wind because I came face-to-face with my own mortality.”

“Then would you tell me what the hell is wrong with you? That way I can stop worrying myself sick that someone is going to hurt you or rob you or mug you or rape you or something.” He jabbed his fingers through his hair, distraught, pain twisting his handsome face until he looked like a hung criminal.

“Oh, Josh, stop. Please. I’m all grown up. I don’t need you to be a big brother to me anymore.” She wrapped her arms around him from behind, she couldn’t help giving him a hug when she ought to be smacking him alongside the head with her fly swatter. “I’d much rather have you as my friend. Not my protector.”

“Oh, you’re going to be the death of me.” He shook his head, refusing the weakness of normal human emotion. “Tell me this isn’t what I think. That I’m not going to have to grab my shotgun and force whatever lowlife had his way with you to marry you.”

“He’s not a lowlife and it’s not like that. I’m in love.” She hurried away to rescue the toast and butter, careful to keep her back turned.

The new affection was tender and the relationship with Duncan precious. She needed to protect him, until she was certain her family would accept him. And they would, she knew, if she asked them to. But for now, he was all hers. To cherish and honor and love.

“Is this man you’re smitten with going to propose?” Joshua fetched the cups from the shelf and stood next to her at the counter. His presence was comforting, his tone caring. “I’m not about to let anyone break my sister’s heart.”

“Oh, stop. He’s in love with me, too. I’ve been a widow for a long time, and you know how sad I’ve been.”

“That’s why we’ve been wanting you to settle down.”

“I will. Just let me have my privacy, Joshua. Please. After years of sorrow, I’ve found someone to fill my heart again. Someone I can’t stop thinking about. A wonderful man who I want to be with more than anything. Please, don’t spoil this. It’s like magic. It’s so rare, and I just want to enjoy it.”

“You mean enjoy sex without benefit of marriage? That’s it, I’m gonna hunt down this fellow and make it clear. It’s a wedding or his funeral—”

“Josh!” She kicked him in the ankle to get his attention and ignored his protest of pain. “This is the real thing. Be happy for me, because I never thought I would be again.”

“Are you? Happy?” His gaze searched hers and, for all his faults, he wanted the best for her.

She could read it so clearly. “I’m blissful. Now sit down and eat while I get started on my work. And tell me what happened with Eileen. Did she really ask for Mama’s housekeeper?”

Her big brother relented, gave her a smacking kiss on the forehead, and took the plate stacked high with sweet, spiced bread. He began the tale of yesterday’s drama while she put her wash water on to boil.

She tried to listen, she really did, but her thoughts kept drifting back to the man who’d left his mark on her. Who had claimed her, whether he knew it or not, for the rest of her life.

She couldn’t wait to see him again.

Chapter Sixteen

Duncan hoped he’d never see her again.

And, as the days passed, it looked as though he might get his wish. There was no sign of Betsy. He’d watched the clearing and imagined the sight of her coming around the bend until he thought she was coming. But when he blinked, the image in his mind was gone and there was only the lonely forest and empty road.

It was for the best that she’d forgotten him. It was what he wanted. This is what he told himself as he went about his work. What had happened between them had been plain wrong—even if she’d accepted him with the same emotional and physical hunger that had him lifting her skirt.

Women, even someone with as much integrity as Betsy, were emotional beings. He was prepared for her to regret what they’d shared. He expected that she’d see making love with him as a mistake.

Too much disaster could come from it—her family discovering she’d come to him, her reputation would be ruined, she’d probably lose her laundry business and there was always the possibility of a pregnancy. He’d marry her, of course, he’d give anything to have the right to call her his own, but…no, she hadn’t come.

She would not come.

He accepted it. It was for the best. It was what he wanted—and if he said that enough times to himself then he was bound to start believing it. Eventually the memory of her smile would fade. The rare joy of making love to her would disappear. The punch of devotion in his chest would lose its power.

He might even forget how it felt to hold her against him in the night, their bodies entwined, her soft curves and silken hair on his chest and her magic as she’d surrendered to him….

He didn’t have to close his eyes to remember how she’d opened her soul to him as the dawn came and merciless orgasm gripped her so hard she’d cried out his name. Her fingers digging into him, her heat tightening around him, demanding his release.

And he’d spilled into her, unable to hold back, and she’d smiled, a slow, satisfying grin that he could still see although he’d awoken alone for several mornings in a row now.

Although he stood in broad daylight with the snow melting in a song of cheer, and he leaned the ax he’d been using to plane a smooth windowsill to replace the one broken by the rogue tree.

Betsy. His entire being cried out for her. He died a little more each day, trying to forget her. Trying to pretend it didn’t matter that she’d changed her mind. Maybe even regretted giving herself so freely.

Letting the old bitterness wrap around him like a comfortable, familiar coat, he went back to work. Eventually he’d be able to whittle the pretty dark-haired beauty from his memories.

Yeah, maybe when he was a hundred years old.

Pretending it didn’t matter, pretending he wasn’t hurt, he grabbed the wooden handle and sunk the ax into the wet meat of the fallen cedar.

She’d been keeping an eye on the snow clouds all the way from her last delivery west of town, but the closer she came toward the stunning wall of the Rocky Mountains, the more uncertain she became. The early snow had melted and she was back to her squeaking buggy wheels, but she didn’t trust the leaden clouds massing along the northern sky.

It wouldn’t be fair to have to turn around for fear of a blizzard and miss her first chance this week to see Duncan.

Morris sensed the danger, too, or, as likely dreaded the trip through the dark forest where they’d come across so much peril, so she talked low to him, soothing him as she always did while the prairie fell away and the mountain rose up to meet them.

She’d struggled hard over how to handle her family. She’d kept her distance from them, unable to forgive them for their lies and their cruelty. She knew why they’d done it, but she’d never felt so alone as after she’d returned from the mountains. The man she loved was far away, her workload had doubled with temporary laundry work one of the boarding houses had needed when an employee fell ill, and keeping away from her family meant she was lonelier than she’d been since she’d been newly widowed.

Anticipation thrummed through her, keeping her quite warm, so she didn’t notice the sting of the icy wind. Tiny flakes of snow crystallized in midair and caught on her nose and eyelashes as the road began to steepen. Duncan was just beyond the trees.

Had he been missing her? Had he spent his days and his nights remembering their time together? The closeness they’d shared? She seemed starved for the sight of him and the moment Morris broke through the forest and into the clearing, she cast around for signs of him.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

A hard crust of snow covered everything, the place where he’d chopped wood that fateful day was wiped away…by the avalanche and he’d not cut more trees for fuel. Perhaps, with his wounds still tender and newly healed, he would not be able to use an ax. But that wasn’t all that was amiss.

There was a vacant feeling to the place. As if it had been abandoned. The stable was closed up tight. The house was dark. No smoke curled from either the chimney or stovepipe.

Had he fled? Surely he hadn’t packed up and moved away because of what they’d done? What if Joshua had figured it out and had threatened Duncan….

Or heaven forbid, what if Mama had learned of her affair and had come to give him a piece of her mind? The mere thought sent chills through her.

It was not fair. She needed to speak to her love, so he would know. He would understand. She wanted to protect this new love she felt, not subject him too soon to her meddling and messy family.

“Duncan?” She climbed down, tossing the reins over the dash and leaving Morris standing in the cool sun. Her breath rose in great white clouds as she hiked up the steps. A layer of snow crunched beneath her feet. He hadn’t shoveled the stairs for whatever reason. She knocked on the door.

No answer.

What if he was gone for good? Her entire being recoiled at the thought. No, she thought fervently, he wouldn’t have vanished. Not without saying goodbye. Not unless he regretted what they’d done—

The door snapped open without warning and there he was, his face inscrutable as he towered over her. Her heart soared. It was so good to see him. To let her gaze wander over the craggy features of his handsome face and to take delight in his surprised scowl.

He looked stronger, as if the regular meals she’d left him had helped. But then love was the greatest cure of all.

Joy exploded and she wrapped her arms around his neck, holding him tight, savoring the hard masculine feel of his iron chest and steeled arms folding her close. “Oh, I missed you! It feels like forever since I’ve seen you!”

“W-what are you doing here?”

“Don’t sound so surprised. I told you I’d be back as soon as I could. I got an extra job that kept me busy, but that’s over now.” She didn’t let go of him. She continued to hold him tight, it was as if she’d never let him go.

Duncan’s throat thickened. All the angry words he’d been storing up over the days were trapped there, below his Adam’s apple, and he couldn’t seem to force them up. He should be angry with her. He ought to send her away. He could list several sensible reasons why it would be better for both of them if she knew the truth right now. So she’d leave and never come back.

He cleared his throat, ready to end this for good. When she released her hold on his neck, framed his face with her soft, small hands and gazed up at him with light sparkling so pure in her eyes, he forgot to breathe. His heart forgot to beat. His soul stilled. How could it be possible that she felt that depth of emotion for him?

“Did you miss me, too?”

He knew how vulnerable she felt. It would be so much easier on him to lie and say no. To lie and send her back the way she came. He could not do it. He fought to keep control of his heart as he nodded once. And felt the relief shiver through her.

Her sweet mouth went tender. Her lips covered his and he drank her in, holding her so tight that if he could just pull her close enough, he could keep her with him forever. His lonely soul ached in her presence and he kissed her with all the tenderness he was capable of. With all the love he didn’t know was in him.

She did this to him. Made him feel. Forced him to come alive, and he breathed in the rose scent of her hair. Ran his fingertips over her petal-soft skin. Hated that he could never peel off her clothes and love her until she was crying out his name. Clinging to him, one with him.

How could he do the right thing by her and turn her away?

“You’re looking so much stronger.” She teased her fingertips across his chest. “You’re feeling better?”

“Remarkably.”

“Good. I brought another food basket, so I know you’re eating right. And your book. Thank you so much for lending it to me.”

There was no stopping the sun and there was no stopping her. He shouldn’t let her in. He already knew how this would end. Not even Betsy, as wonderful as she was, would understand.

No, it was a given. Her family would find out she’d been coming to him. All anyone would need to do was to gaze upon Betsy and know they’d been lovers.

All hell would break lose. Her grandmother would make good on her promise. Betsy would learn the truth and despise him. She would hate that she’d ever trusted him with her heart.

Tell her now. He knew it was the right thing to do. Stand firm, be honest. Let her know there could never be a future. There would be no proposal. No wedding ring or vows. No happily-ever-after spent in this house as man and wife.

It was what she wanted. What she believed could be. He didn’t have to be able to feel her emotions to know. It was there on her face, the hope of someone who’d given up. Only to be given that final, perfect chance.

“Oh, you fixed the window. It’s beautiful!” She turned in a circle in the middle of the room, cleaned and put to rights, the outside window and wall repaired.

He hadn’t replaced the shades and weak sunlight streamed through the panes to caress her springing coils of thick hair and burnish gently the curve of her face. Her yellow wool skirt flared and swirled around her slim ankles and he caught her by the wrist, halting her before she could spin another circle. Framed by the sunlight and the silent forest through the large window.

A perfect picture his heart would never forget.

“Oh, I was hoping you’d want a little closeness.” A mischievous grin shaped her perfect mouth. Trouble lit in her eyes as blue as forever.

Closeness? Hell, he wanted to get as close to her as he possibly could. He wanted to please and pleasure her until he couldn’t take any more. He wanted to make her love him enough so that nothing—not her family and not the truth of his past—could ever rip her away from him.

What kind of love would be strong enough for that?

Nothing could be, he realized with a sinking heart. She may have come back to him, but he had to be a strong enough man to let her go.

“I’ve never seen this room in full light. The windows were always shuttered. You did all this?”

He lifted one big shoulder in a casual shrug.

She wasn’t fooled. She’d never seen anything so lovely in her life. From the scene carved into the massive mantel, the theme continued in the high-backed sofa and the matching chairs, the low tables and the coffee table, and again in the bedstead and the heavy wardrobe and bureau.

From the shelves to the molding to the trim at the windows. Stunning work of hard and soft woods combined and carved to depict an entire forest scene. Of creek and meadow. Grazing deer and hunting wolf. Of mountain peaks and deep, still mountain lakes.

“I like to work with wood,” he explained.

He was an artist. Betsy could find no other word to describe what she saw. The furniture she’d bought was lovely, but this… “How can it be that someone of this amazing skill isn’t selling his furniture in one of the bigger cities? Why? You’re so gifted.”

“No. It’s not a gift, it’s a hobby.” He turned away, wishing there were shadows in the room to retreat to, but the shade had been damaged by the tree and he’d had no time to order another from town.

The sunlight faded as a cloud must have moved across the sun, but there was still the lovely day’s light that allowed no truths to remain hidden.

“But you could sell your furniture…oh, I don’t know, to important people, and make a lot of money.”

“I had that dream once, but it was not meant for me.” Sorrow filled him and he lifted the baskets, filled with the dishes of hers that he’d washed and the cloths he’d neatly folded. “Thank you. The meals came in handy.”

“You seem to be moving better now, and better able to take care of yourself. I know you’ve probably cooked your own meals for a long time, but I couldn’t help fussing. And no, not because I want to impress you. But because I love you. If there’s any way I can make your life better, then that’s what I want to do.”

Not even his hard-won cynicism could stand up to Betsy Hunter’s dazzling sincerity. Doubting her would be equal to doubting that the sun could shine. It shone, not for its own selfish reasons, but to give warmth and light to the world. How could he not love her so much? Every moment that passed, he loved her more.

Why would fate be so cruel as to give him this chance for happiness, when it was not possible?

“Forgive me.” She came to him like the snow to the mountain, inevitable and natural. As if there were no other choice than for her to step into his arms. “I didn’t mean to sound pushy. You’re not the kind of man who likes living in town. I seem to remember you saying something about that once.”

“It’s true. Living in town brings with it…bad memories.”

They had to be very bad. Betsy hurt for him as she held the door open for him. As she watched him hop down the steps with barely a trace of his limp and amble across the yard to set the baskets snugly in her buggy’s boot, she couldn’t help remembering all Mariah had told her about Duncan’s family.

“I only meant to compliment your work,” she said when he returned. “I’ve never seen anything so amazing.”

“It’s just wood. I whittle.”

“Well, I love it. I didn’t realize you could see me coming.” She gestured to the wide window he’d repaired that offered a sweeping view of the forest sloping downward to the prairie that stretched forever and in the far, far distance, mountains she didn’t even know the name of. “That’s how you knew when to skedaddle.”

“Guilty. I do find that view useful when I’m expecting a certain woman.”

“Because you wanted to avoid me.”

“Yes. Because what chance does a man like me have with a woman as lovely and as good as you?”

Her heart tumbled, and if it were possible to fall in love with him again, she did. “Even when my family left you here alone? I don’t think I can ever forgive them, and yet you had no problem forgiving me.”

“You would have stayed, I know. But they wouldn’t let you. And your grandmother was right.” It was now or never, and Duncan was a man who did not skirt, who did not crumble. “I have a past I’m not proud of.”

“You’re such a good man. What possible bad thing could you have done?” She had no notion how her words were killing him, driving deep like tiny blades into his vital organs. “I promise that when my family comes to know you the way I do, they are going to see how horrible they’d behaved. It was plain wrong, leaving you out here. I can only imagine what they told you.”

“Something about how beloved and precious you were to them. I didn’t understand it at the time, but since I’m starting to develop a slight fondness for you, I guess I see their meaning.”

“You’re not angry with them? I surely am. Furious. I can’t trust myself to talk to them without losing my temper. Do you know they make a habit of this…this meddling, and they always will. You said you were in love with me, well, they are likely to be the test of it.”

“I cannot blame them, because I have come to see their point.”

“What point?”

She didn’t know, he realized, that it was impossible not to love her. He’d wanted to hate that meddling grandmother of hers and that overbearing brother, but if the situation were reversed, he would do more than lie and issue threats to keep Betsy safe. Even before he realized he was in love with her, he’d been willing to die to protect her.

“So if they come here and raise a fuss about all this,” she went on, trying to heft a full basket from the buggy’s crammed boot. “Ignore them. Please. They mean well, which is their saving grace.”

He reached around her, and it was intimate the way she turned toward him to brush her lips against his cheek. “Maybe they have a damn good reason for wanting me to keep my distance.”

“They are like this with everyone they don’t think is good enough for me. Mama would prefer I married a wealthier man this time around. My grandmother thinks that is the best suggestion she’s ever heard. And Joshua… I hope he understands.”

“He understands just fine. I’m not good enough for you.”

“And why do you think that? Unless you’ve decided that you don’t want to see where this bond between us leads?” Please, don’t say it’s over. Betsy ached with the words, putting her entire heart into them.

Her worst fears were confirmed as Duncan turned his back to her, his arm muscles bulging against his long-sleeved, insulated shirt as he hesitated, as if debating her words.

Then he put the basket in the compartment where he’d gotten it and walked away. Leaving her standing alone by the buggy.

Was it something a member of her family had said to him? Or was it that he was afraid, because she mentioned marriage, that she was angling for a proposal, just as he’d initially feared?

She found him in the kitchen, the lovely room framing the stunning mountain and forest views. His back stayed to her as he opened a case of bullets and began counting them out onto the table.

“I didn’t realize what I was saying.” She felt as helpless as she had the day the bear had charged from the forest’s shadows. Except the man before her exuded a cold emotion she didn’t understand, but whatever it was, she’d done this to him. She’d made him walk away.

She had to fix this if she could. “I shouldn’t have mentioned getting married at all. The truth is, as much as I’ve come to love you, I would never want to marry anyone who doesn’t want me. Do you understand?”

“Is that why your brother didn’t show up with a shotgun the morning after we…” He grabbed his Winchester, snapped it open and slid in the first cartridge. “They didn’t know you spent the night here.”

“I didn’t think it was any of their concern. I’ve been married and widowed. I worked side-by-side with my husband to make a successful farm, and now I work hard at my own business. I love my family, but they don’t dictate my life. I’m wise enough to know a good man when I see him.”

He couldn’t be beguiled by her words; at the same time he wanted to be. “You’re just saying that because you want another husband.”

“Yes. I want you.” She pulled the rifle out of his grip and set it on the counter. Then pushed the bullet cartridges out of the way. She eased her fanny onto the table so that she had his complete attention. “Now I just have to convince you to want me.”

“You don’t know who I am.”

“You are the man I love.” She wrapped her arms around him and breathed him in. His integrity. His honor. “There is nothing that could ever make me stop loving you. Please, love me in return. Just love me.”

“You seem so sure.”

“I am.” She kissed the center of his chest. Like a promise meant to be kept, she kissed an inch lower. And then another inch. Tugging at his buttons to get at his bare flesh.

His groin tightened. Desire thrummed through him as quick as a whip’s lash. Love so pure made him catch her mouth with his, lay her back on the table. I would give anything for you. He took her hand in his and kissed the backs of her knuckles. It was wrong to take this any further. But how did he tell her the truth?

“You don’t know me at all.” He choked on the words.

“I know what matters. If it’s real love, Duncan, then it can’t break. Then nothing will destroy it. Trust me.” She caught hold of his belt and worked the buckle loose.

He was lost the instant she curled her hand around his arousal. He loved her with enough power that it made him trust that she meant what she said. That she meant it when she guided him into her tight heat and whispered in his ear. “I love you more than anything. No matter what. Is that how you love me, too?”

“Yes.” His voice broke as he covered her mouth. He kissed her with all the gentleness in his soul.

She loved him no matter what, she’d said. As they clung to each other, lost in their love, he found hope. Because if this wasn’t worth fighting for, then nothing was.

Chapter Seventeen

Betsy hurried down the hallway, her steps echoing in the emptiness. The meeting had started without her. Not that she minded being late, but everyone was going to watch her slip in late—there was no way around it. Mama would notice.

What was her mother going to say? Betsy paused, cold with dread, outside the door to the church’s auxiliary room. Her hand remained in midair as she contemplated the wisdom of leaving her lover and speeding straight here without benefit of even a mirror.

She could have sex hair, the curse of her long bouncing locks. They were untamed enough as it was, but add ecstasy and a couple of climaxes and not even her best bonnet—which she was wearing—could cover the disaster. I’d better take a trip to the necessary room, she thought. Some generous patron had donated a wall mirror.

The instant she spied her reflection in the polished looking glass, she was very glad she’d thought to check her appearance before waltzing into the crowded room full of proper and prim church-going ladies.

Heavens, I look like a well-loved woman, and I’m not a married woman. Her cheeks glowed a very bright pink, flushed from the three orgasms Duncan had generously given her. Her curls were a tangled mess from how his fingers had wound through her hair.

Her soul sighed, remembering how he’d cradled her head while they’d made love. And he’d thrust his wonderful thickness into her, gazing into her eyes the whole while. She’d come, pulling him down into orgasm with her, and still, he had not looked away.

I love that man. Her heart sang with the power of it. How was she going to walk into that room and pretend as if nothing extraordinary had happened? How was she going to act normal, speak sensibly, and give a whit about the upcoming funding when she wanted to be alone? She wanted to savor every image, every sensation, every word Duncan had said, and every loving act he’d committed this afternoon.

Most of all, she wanted to cherish the sweet intimacy that lingered in her body and in her soul from being joined with him. Maybe she ought to go home and cry off the meeting entirely. She’d been out on deliveries, it was a legitimate excuse she could stretch into a little white lie so that she could keep Duncan all to herself for a little while longer.

Mama was going to throw a conniption. Joshua was going to get his gun. The rest of her brothers would hunt down the preacher. And all she wanted was to enjoy every step of this lovely courtship. Because that’s what this was. Duncan was courting her. He’d promised to come by her house for supper.

Duncan. In town. Eating in her house. He had to be seriously in love with her to agree to that.

“Betsy?” came Rayna’s voice from outside the door. “Is that you in there?”

“Guilty.” Betsy unlatched the narrow door. “How did you know? How are you?”

“Needing in here. The bane of every expecting woman.” Not unhappy at all, Rayna stroked her tummy hidden beneath the full gathers of her skirt. “I couldn’t catch up with you in the hall. Are you all right? You look warm. You’re not feeling well. It’s the change of weather.”

“No, not the weather.” Betsy knew she shouldn’t say one word. She loved her friends, but secrets didn’t stay secret for long, and… Oh, she couldn’t help it! She was bursting to tell. “I was seeing a certain gentleman and—”

“What gentleman? Oh!” Rayna’s eyes went wide with shock. “You look like a well-pleasured woman. You haven’t been…”

Betsy blushed rosily and nodded. “Please, don’t tell anyone.”

“This is too good to keep to myself! Wait—I’ve got to go!” Rayna hurried into the water closet and closed the door behind her. “Are you going to tell me which gentleman?”

“My family hates him.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down much.” Even though she spoke quietly, Rayna’s voice echoed in the small room.

Betsy splashed cool water onto her cheeks, but to no avail. Her face wasn’t quite so bright but her eyes glinted with the greatest of happiness. Looking at her swollen lips from hours of Duncan’s tender kissing, she realized there was no way to hide the fact that she was dangerously in love. With a man who loved her in return.

What had she asked him? I love you more than anything. Is that how you love me, too?

Yes, he’d said, his voice breaking, his hands sliding down her hips and beneath her skirt and—

Her face flamed remembering how he loved her so thoroughly, she’d been changed. She would forever be a part of him.

Betsy frowned in the mirror and splashed more cool water on her cheeks. If she kept remembering making love with him, then she’d never appear demure enough to join the Ladies’ Aid weekly meeting.

The door opened and Rayna emerged to wash her hands and splash her face. “That feels good. I suppose it will help me more than you. After all, I haven’t just come from my lover’s bed. You are a shady type of woman, Betsy, and I’m afraid I can’t associate with you any longer.”

“I know. I lost all self-respect. I guess that’s what happens when a widow goes too long without remarrying.”

“It was bound to happen. Sad, but true. So are you going to tell me which gentleman you’ve chosen? Wait, it’s not that furniture store owner, is it? What’s his name? Hipps?”

“Hopps. He’s on Mama’s list of desirable son-in-laws—”

A knock rapped on the outer door and there was Mariah, shaking her head. “I could hear you two through the wall. You’d better not say you’re frolicking with Roy Hopps—”

“It’s Ray, not Roy and no, it’s not him.” Betsy shivered. “Never him.”

“I used to find incriminating items in his trouser pockets!” Mariah, who’d started the laundry business over a decade ago, obviously had found the same match tins.

“It’s not him.” She took a deep breath, debating. Oh, she couldn’t keep a secret like this from her best friends. But she had to protect this new tender romance. She wasn’t ready to share it just yet. But soon. “He’s coming to supper tonight. I was out on deliveries and got carried away when I saw him—”

“You mean, when you behaved like a trollop.” With a wink, Mariah made a point of looking in both directions down the hall before stepping into the tiny room and closing the door. “He’s a customer, isn’t he? That’s why you’ve been able to get away with this romance. You’re out delivering and picking up laundry and so you have time to dally.”

“Tell us,” Rayna prodded, releasing several hairpins from Betsy’s tangled hair. “Or we can go through your customer list until we guess the right one.”

“Oh, I don’t know. My family isn’t ready to know about this. Not yet.” Betsy didn’t know what to call the confusing tangle of emotions that felt more like rage…and then sadness. She knew that when the time came, she would need to make a decision between her overbearing family and Duncan. She already knew what that choice would be.

Mariah, efficient as always, grabbed the comb from Betsy’s open reticule. “I’d wish you luck, but I know you don’t need it. I can see how happy you are.”

“I haven’t been this happy for so long. I’d almost forgotten what it was like.” Betsy knew her friends understood.

Mariah had been a spinster for many painful years caring for her father, and then alone for more years after his death. The right man had transformed her life, and where Mariah had been a quiet, prim spinster, she was now a wife and mother. She smiled. She laughed.

She blushed, as she was doing now. “I can see by the satisfied grin on your face, that you’ve been…how shall I put this delicately? Testing out your marital candidate?”

“Well, the passionate relationship between a man and wife is extremely important.” Betsy felt her face heating, but she didn’t care. She knew, unlike her family or the other women in town, her friends would understand.

“Very important.” Rayna flushed as she set the hairpins aside and stroked her swollen tummy. “I didn’t get this way by accident, but from a lot of practice.”

“I miss a lot of things about being married. The emotional bond, you know, when you look across the room and your eyes meet and you know him so well, you know what he’s thinking. I miss the companionable evenings and I do miss the passion. Very much.”

Betsy didn’t know how to speak of the emotions that ran so deep and vast beneath the surface. “I’m just doing my best to be sensible and I’m failing miserably. I just want him.”

“I think it’s wise. To test out your future husband to make sure he is up to your standards.” Mariah bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing, but her eyes were merry as she confessed, “Wifely duties are a very serious matter. You need to know that you will be well satisfied with your husband. Look at all the practice we married women are getting.”

Rayna blushed rosily. “Love is a very, uh, thrilling condition.”

Mariah’s grin spread across her face until she glowed. “Yes, it certainly is, and I seem to have fallen victim to the same malady as Rayna. And all from too much practice being a good and passionate wife.”

As Mariah’s announcement sank in, a brief, rare silence fell between them. Then Rayna laughed.

“You’re expecting?” Betsy couldn’t help the flow of happiness for her friend…and it gave her a little hope for herself.

There was no telling what could happen in the future. Five years ago, Mariah had been a spinster living in the same house Betsy was renting, running the laundry business, and alone. Without a husband. A family. Children. And now she was a mother of three, and expecting another child.

Was it too much to hope for a similar kind of future?

The conversation turned to Mariah, to when she was due, and all the excitement that went with such talk. When Betsy’s hair was finally tamed and demure, the three of them ambled down the hall, falling quiet outside the auxiliary room’s main door. Mama was in that room and she was as sharp-eyed as a hungry eagle.

“Are you sure I look normal?” she whispered.

“There’s no way to hide the glow of a woman in love.” Rayna leaned close to answer. “Whoever he is, your mother isn’t going to approve. But don’t let that stop you, all right? Life is too short to spend it alone, not if you’ve found your heart’s match. Don’t waste any time, just enjoy the rare gift of love come a second time.”

If anyone understood, it was Rayna, who’d buried a husband and mourned him. And found happiness again. Betsy pitched her voice low as she stood behind Mariah, who was opening the door. “It seems too good to be true. There are so many obstacles.”

“True love finds a way. Believe.”

Rayna’s promise remained even after they slipped into their seats behind the long cloth-covered tables. Her words remained strong in Betsy’s mind as the meeting progressed and her mother, seated across the room, studied her with knowing eyes.

Betsy hadn’t been gone more than a few hours and as the afternoon shadows grew long through the trees, Duncan could no longer pretend he didn’t miss her. It was as if she’d taken all the life in him with her and he was an empty shell.

He missed her laughter. He missed her sunny presence. He wished he could keep her here on his silent mountain forever. It was amazing how one vain woman’s lie had irrevocably changed his life. Brought him the taste of severe injustice and taught him the brutality and the hurt that lurked within the human spirit.

That was why he was here. Not because he was hiding. But because he’d lost hope entirely. What good could ever come out of a world plagued by that brand of evil?

His grandfather had often said there is justice, it is not swift but it is evenhanded in the end. Through his haze of grief and killing bitterness, he’d retreated.

He would rather live among the wild animals, among predators that hunted and devoured one another, because it made sense. They were protecting their young, their territory or they were hungry. But people…

People were not so logical. He’d had enough of people who enjoyed the harm they caused. The destruction and devastation and death, and all because they could do it. He wanted nothing to do with civilization. With laws and rules and people who said one thing and did another.

And then the Great Spirit had brought him Betsy. There wasn’t an ounce of malice in her. She was like the warm winter sun on his face, burning bright and clear regardless of the crusted snow on the ground. The clouds massed and fought, but still the sun found a way to shine through, in thick heavenly rays that could not be conquered.

She’d accepted him. She’d saved him. She’d reminded him what it was like to be alive. Her soft woman’s scent remained on his skin, and breathing in the faintest scent made his groin tighten and his soul stir. He’d tried to tell her that her family was never going to allow this, but she hadn’t cared.

She’d made her own decision, he realized, and made love to him. Making it clear, as she’d laid back on the table and guided him into her heat, that she’d chosen.

Incredibly, she wanted him. They’d moved together, creating something much more than passion and as he’d watched and felt pleasure roll through her in tight waves, he hadn’t been able to tell her the truth.

He’d had more than enough opportunities. Before he’d made love with her, after he’d made love with her. The entire time she’d sparkled in his arms and she’d served them lunch from her big basket, and while he’d been kissing her goodbye, he could have said the words. But for some reason, saying “I was convicted of rape and sent to prison for ten years,” didn’t roll easily off his tongue.

He was a hard man—hard, but honest. For whatever reason fate had given him a great chance. And he wanted to tell her. He intended to tell her. Hell, he’d started to tell her why her family objected to him so vehemently. But when he’d gazed into her trusting eyes and read the love for him twinkling there, as bright and everlasting as the brightest stars in the sky, he just couldn’t make himself say the words he’d known would drive her away for good.

He never wanted to change the way she lit up inside whenever she looked at him. She touched him with immense trust, and she treated him like a man without his godforsaken past.

If Grandfather had lived, the wise old man would have said that the ancestors had been watching over him during those bitter years in prison. Now they had chosen to balance that great wrong. To make right the injustice. To give him back the family that he lost.

While he worked stacking the wood he’d salvaged and cut from the rogue avalanche, he thought. And as he thought, it became clearer. He had two choices. To take what time he could with her and accept that it would end when she found out about his past—which she surely would the instant her overbearing family figured out where she was spending her spare time.

Or he could tell her and hope she would understand. That, as impossible as it was, she would be the one person who could look past the lies and see the man he was. The man he’d always been.

Yes, it was strange how one woman could change everything. Maybe Grandfather had been right. One horrid woman had ruined him. One lovely woman had saved him. It was evenhanded. It was the chance to make right the wrongs of the past. And while it could not be undone, the wound to his spirit could be healed.

He was Duncan Hennessey, Standing Tall, son of Summer Rose, grandson of Gray Wolf. And he would fight for this woman he loved.

He could almost feel his mother’s approval as the finest snowflakes kissed his cheek. He could hear his grandfather’s voice in the thunder overhead.

And he was made whole.

“Yoo-hoo! Betsy!” Mama may think her false cheer appeared to be genuine.

Betsy wasn’t fooled. She’d watched the calculations and the questions pass across her mother’s face throughout the meeting that had gone overlong. If Mama noticed anything incriminating, well then good, because she had a few things on her mind to tell Mama.

She waved to her friends, letting them know she was ready. She’d had time to think on the way back to town and then to consider Rayna’s words through the nearly two-hour meeting. She accepted her friends’ good-luck wishes, but since they didn’t know whom she’d been with this afternoon, they couldn’t know just how much luck she needed.

No, not luck. It didn’t matter how this turned out, if Mama approved or not. Rayna was right. A second chance at finding a good man to love, and who loved her in return, was a rare gift. One she wasn’t about to turn away. If she ended up marrying Duncan, then that was up to the two of them to find out. Not for her family to influence.

Or anyone else.

Night was falling, half the stores were closed, their windows dark on Main Street, and it was hard to see the expression on her mother’s face. So she had no clue as to how to start the conversation.

Mama took care of that for her. “You. Were. Late. I worried.”

“I was perfectly safe.”

“I didn’t know that! I sat there listening to Harriet Willington go on about how chocolate cakes and cookies were the highest and best-selling items at the last three bake sales, and was I listening? No, I was not! I was trying not to imagine the horrible things that could be happening to my only daughter.”

“Nothing happened, Mama.”

“I didn’t know that. You’re driving farther and farther out on your deliveries. Thank the heavens above you’re no longer traveling up into those mountains!”

“I have been traveling up into the mountains. To pay my respects to Mr. Hennessey.”

“Alone! The least you can do is have one of the boys go with you.”

“Mama, the boys are all grown men with lives of their own. Besides, I owe Mr. Hennessey my life. Remember? Since he died saving me from not one but two bears?”

Mama sagged a little, unusual for the always-confident woman. A hand fluttered to her throat. “I have no malice toward that man, that is for sure. I can think of plenty of men who would run from a bear instead of fight to protect a lady. And for that, I am grateful because you are alive and unharmed. It was no small sacrifice he made.”

“You sound as if you speak from your heart, Mama.”

“You know by now I always do.” Lucille Gable was no sentimental sop, but she couldn’t hide the emotion making her voice sound thick and her vision blurry. “This has only shown us you must take care. Perhaps you should keep the nearer customers and let some other person take the risks of driving from here to tarnation and back, for what would we all do without our dear Bets?”

“I’m not five years old, Mama. You have noticed, right?”

“You will always be my little baby girl. Now, come to supper tonight. I know you’ve got to be lonely, so I’ve invited nice Mr. Landers to join us—”

“I’m not interested in Mr. Landers.” Poor Mama, she meant well.

But there was no chance Mama could know that the bachelor she’d invited to supper was having an affair with a married woman in the next town. Betsy had found a love letter from the unscrupulous woman in his pocket, and she’d done her best not to read more than the first few lines. “I have someone I would love to bring to supper sometime.”

“A man?” Mama royally thanked the family’s driver for offering her a hand up into the back seat of the fringed surrey. “Oh, praise the heavens! At last! It’s Mr. Rutgers from the bank, isn’t it? Oh, I know he has immense respect for you.”

Mr. Rutgers from the bank had a gambling problem—she’d found the IOUs in the breast pocket of one of his best jackets. “No. He’s a customer of mine. That’s how I came to know him. He saved my life, as it turned out, the mountains are very perilous. I am in love with him and it seems he feels the same way.”

“More danger! You will be the death of me. That’s it. Marry this man, settle down in the carriage house on our property and then I shan’t have to spend my days worrying and worrying.”

“He is not a banker or a lawyer or a businessman, but I want you to like him.”

“I put up with Charlie.” Lucille opened her mouth, considering staging an argument, then seemed to think better of it. In the lantern light swinging from the surrey frame, there was only concern and no deception on her face as she seemed to soften for an uncharacteristic moment. “I would give anything to see my little girl smile again, not a little smile, but big and beaming, the way you used to. Charlie was not my choice, but he made you happy.”

“Happy is what matters, Mama. It’s a rare gift, to truly be happy in a marriage.”

“Yes, I had that gift once. I desperately want it for you. So if you must choose another working man, please, don’t even tell me if he’s another farmer! I will keep my mouth shut and tolerate him. But only for your happiness.”

“Better than you did for Charlie?”

“I didn’t say I would like him. I didn’t say I would speak with him. I said I would tolerate him.” Mama smiled. “Just be happy, my good girl. And next time you come from this man’s bed, make sure you stop smiling so wide. Because you’ve got half the Ladies’ Aid wondering what you were up to.”

“No good, as usual.”

Mama shook her head, ordered the driver to depart, and blew Betsy a kiss. “Tomorrow night for supper. Be there or I will hunt you down.”

“But—” There was no use arguing. Her mother had turned her attention elsewhere intentionally, so her royal edict would be obeyed instead of argued with.

Her mother! It was hard not to love a woman who cared so deeply about you, but Betsy could only rub at the tension gathering at the back of her neck. The first step had been made, and Mama didn’t seem too opposed to meeting Duncan. She didn’t know that he was still alive. So that meant—

A man on foot led his gelding by the reins from the shadowed alley that stretched behind the church. The hitching area was empty, except for her horse and buggy. Most of the members of the Ladies’ Aid had hurried off to their homes, where supper and children and husbands waited.

Alone with a stranger in the gathering dark. Her palms turned cold as the stranger stopped between her and her horse and buggy, a tall, square powerhouse of a man that looked strangely familiar. “Duncan? What are you doing here? I thought you hated to come to town.”

“I do. I came to talk to you.” He didn’t look happy. No, he seemed as grim as the night, as cold as the bitter flakes drifting down from a frozen sky.

That didn’t bode well, she realized, as he kept his distance, this man she had intimately loved only a few hours before.

Inside she felt as desolate as the night as she worked the reins loose from the iron bar at the hitching post. “My house isn’t far away.”

He didn’t answer. In fact, he’d become one with the dark shadows, and it was as if he were already gone. As if he’d finally turned into shadow and night and there was nothing she could do to draw him back to her.

Chapter Eighteen

“What do you want to talk about, that you’d come all this way? And while it’s snowing?” She was like the snow, fragile and delicate and white, so achingly white. In the colorless world of nightfall, her light-gray coat glowed like platinum and her matching hood framed her angel’s face like a halo.

It made him ache to look at her, this woman he loved, the woman he’d possessed and claimed with his body and his soul. The one female he’d trusted above all else.

Her words came back to him, a comfort he clung to like a child’s favorite blanket, his only reassurance on this cold night where decent people had scurried from his path. He doubted they knew anything about him, only that he was different. An outsider. An outcast.

He feared it wasn’t his bitterness as much as the tarnish of prison that he could never wear off. If it’s real love, it can’t break. That’s what she’d said. That’s what she’d told him. That she would love him no matter what.

Now was the test. The time to know if her love was real. Or if any love, no matter how true and rare, could stand this test without shattering.

He feared he already knew how this would go, but when there was a war and his country needed him, he fought for the Union. When his mother found herself homeless and abandoned by her first white husband, he’d settled down, started a business and taken care of her.

When a spoiled little rich girl had lied, he hadn’t run. He’d faced the vigilante’s justice and then a trial with a jury who’d already made up their minds. He’d served time and he’d been released.

He was no coward, no quitter, no fop that would rather run than fight.

Even if that fight would cost him Betsy’s love.

She twinkled like the stars in the heavens. How could it be that no other man had snatched her up and made her his wife? How could it be possible that this amazing creature brightened in his presence? That she looked to him with love and trust and came to him with her hands out, ready to take his. Expectation lighting her up.

It was all going to end. He knew it.

He should say the words. Just spit it out. It didn’t have to be pretty. It didn’t have to be nice. It just had to be honest. The truth, plain and simple.

No embellishment, no explanations, just the stark facts. And then he’d better prepare for her to hate him. To shudder at the thought of letting a man like him touch her intimately, love her tenderly, and dream of cherishing her forever.

“That was your mother?” he found himself saying instead. Coward, he wanted to call himself, but how could any man, regardless of how strong, knowingly say anything that would cause her pain?

“How long were you watching? It was odd that I didn’t know you were there. You are…so distant. I can feel you, isn’t that strange?”

“No, because I can feel you, too.”

“I can’t now.”

“No.” How could he tell her he’d made himself as frozen as the night. As empty. As dark. “I would not be a man, or what a man ought to be, if I don’t tell you the truth.”

“What truth?” Her hands found his and her touch was as startling as lightning from a clear blue sky. As snow in June. As a twister pointing from the clouds to the sky and touching down without warning.

He was not so well shielded, after all. “I’m not a little in love with you.”

“You’re not?” Her brow wrinkled.

He leaned his forehead to hers, an intimate connection, tender as she gazed into his eyes and the worry lines fell away. He searched for the right words, words for feelings he could not describe or name. Only wish he didn’t feel.

“And I’m not just a lot in love with you.”

“Me, either.” As if she understood, her lush mouth curved into an inviting grin. “You are a gift. You know that, don’t you? When I never thought I would ever feel this way again, I found you. A man I love more than anything. I didn’t know it was possible to love someone so much.”

Hell, she was killing him. As if shot in the gut and mortally bleeding, his knees turned to water and it was all he could do to stay standing. To force the confession from his soul. “Yes.”

It was only one word, but her breath caught like a sob and her fingertips brushed his chin, pulling him to her kiss.

He hungered for her. Not out of lust, it went far deeper than that. It was love overwhelming him, flooding him with a fierce need to make her his again and again. To hold her tight while he could. Before she knew the real Duncan Hennessey, past and scars and all, and could not accept him.

He’d seen her mother. One of those proper society matrons who judged no one ever to be good enough. She was the kind of woman who’d been the most hateful to him those long years ago. In another town, in another time, but he would never forget the outraged mothers who’d wanted him hung and only after a good beating for daring to harm a judge’s daughter.

And not only because of the rape; those women had made it seem doubly worse that he was a half-breed, a man without social or financial clout. A working man with nothing but a storefront and a savings account at the town bank.

Betsy’s mother was the kind of woman who condemned without mercy and if she knew of his past, there was no way Betsy would be standing before him alone and unguarded by all of her brothers and half the town.

“You’ve ridden all that way and you’ve got to be freezing. Your hands are ice.” She kissed his knuckles, her lips caressing and nibbling and sucking.

All proper woman, but warmhearted and passionate, too. He swallowed, trying not to remember exactly how passionate, how tenderly she’d shown him how much she loved him, for remembering would only make it harder.

“Do you want to come home with me? You can warm up by the fire in the parlor and I’ll warm up some stew and cornbread.”

“What I have to say won’t take long.”

“Something is wrong, and I have a suspicion I know what.” She could feel the hurt rolling off him like vapor from an icy pond and she wasn’t about to leave him alone. Mama might be innocent of the cruelty her family had shown him, but that didn’t mean Joshua hadn’t decided to intervene.

Well, she knew exactly how to handle him. As for Duncan, he was like a warrior of old: powerful and silent and invincible.

A real man, who’d stolen every last bit of her heart.

“Come home with me.”

“Home with you? Alone?” There were houses lined up in orderly rows, their windows golden rectangles, and they seemed so close. He felt so closed in.

But it wasn’t the structures or the town. It was him, twisted up until his skin felt so tight he was ready to pop right out of it. He’d felt like this while he waited for the jury’s verdict. It had taken them exactly forty-five minutes to declare him guilty. Despite his alibi, despite the discrepancies in the young lady’s story. Truth didn’t matter, he’d learned that the hard way.

What had Betsy said to him? You’re such a good man. What possible bad thing could you have done? Words that had given him faith to hold her hand in his and to know there was nothing he would ever do to hurt her.

She had to know the truth about him. He didn’t want it coming from her overbearing brother or that fierce granny of hers. She deserved to hear the story from him, and the freedom and time to decide for herself what she believed. If the words she’d said were ones she meant.

And if not…

Then at least they both knew. They could end it here, before they became more involved and before it was even harder to walk away. To minimize the pain and the heartbreak.

“No, I don’t want to be alone with you. This is fine. There’s no one around and this won’t take long.”

“You are starting to scare me. What’s happened?” Her hand stroked his chest, as if he were a cat to calm. In the shadows, silhouetted by the streets of houses, he could see the round worry of her eyes. “Did you hear what my mother said?”

“No, this isn’t about your mother, but it is about your family. There’s no other way to do this, and I know it’s going to hurt you. And I’m sorry.”

“Are you ending this? Please, don’t tell me that. I meant what I said this afternoon and I thought you did, too.”

He could feel how he’d hurt her, and it was killing him. There was no way he could let her think he didn’t love her. “Being with you is the very best thing that has happened in my life. I can’t tell you—”

There were no words, only actions, and so he kissed her one last sweet time. The brush of their lips, the mix of their very breaths, the sweep of their souls was like touching heaven. He savored her as long as he could. Love beat in his heart as he broke away.

“Remember how I told you that I have a past I’m not proud of?” He stroked her chin with the pad of his thumb, doing anything to touch her, to remain connected to her.

She leaned into his caress, feeling the connection, too. “And I said what possible bad thing could you have done?”

The way she said it was as if she saw the real Duncan Hennessey, the man he’d always been. It was a heartening experience to have someone so good, someone who cared truly for him and saw the truth in him.

But would her opinion hold when she knew more?

Please, don’t fail me, he pleaded as he took a breath. “You hardly know anything about me. About what I’ve done. A while back I spent ten years in the territorial prison.”

There. He’d said it. He wasn’t waiting around to see the look of horror on her face. He already knew how she would recoil. It was predictable. What woman on earth would want a man like him? He was hard. He was obstinate. He was cold. A convicted felon, a rapist, had no chance of a normal life. None at all.

He didn’t blame her one bit for the shock dragging down her jaw. For the way she stammered, unable to speak, too confused by what he’d said.

“I don’t understand.” She shook her head, but it didn’t clear it of the thunder crashing through her ears so loud, she couldn’t think. Only it wasn’t thunder, it was her pulse and she couldn’t seem to take in enough breath. “Y-you were in prison?”

“Yep. I was sentenced and sent to the hard labor camp up near Deer Lodge. The quarry, where I worked from sunup to sundown every day for ten hellish years. I paid my debt, and I don’t intend to go back.”

Jail. Ten years of hard labor. It didn’t make sense. She couldn’t get her mind to think. She’d expected him to have overheard what her mother said, about the banker and tolerating whomever it was Mama had chosen.

But not this. She hadn’t expected him to say this. “Prison?”

“Yes. I’m a convict.”

She said nothing more, and that said everything. He couldn’t wait for the shock to wear off and her disgust to sink in, so before she could say anything that would break him, he walked away.

She didn’t call out for him.

He didn’t expect her to. He kept going, leading his gelding down the shadowed road, his boots crunching in the accumulating snow, until he reached the main street. Looking back, she was still standing in the lot next to her buggy. Snow crowned her. Made her shimmer like an angel in the background light from all the windows up and down the street.

You disappointed me, Betsy. His soul throbbed with a pain that felt worse than defeat. More encompassing than sorrow. He’d lost his future; he’d lost more.

He’d never hold her again. Never bask in the cheer of her smile. He’d never know what it would be to call her his wife. To hold her in his arms at night while they drifted off to sleep. Never know what it was like to be loved, truly loved.

It was a pretty high price to pay, and to keep paying. But she’d behaved about the way he’d expected. She was a proper town lady. Her mother had appeared to be a matron of society in her finely tailored clothes and expensive surrey and with her personal driver. Betsy Hunter was a rich woman’s daughter, and women like that didn’t marry men like him. Loners. Outcasts. Convicts.

It was a good thing he was made of steel. Nothing could hurt him. Not anymore.

He mounted up, nosed the gelding into the frigid wind and rode through the snow and the night where no moon lit his path. Where no stars shone on the polished nightscape.

It was a dark night, cold and mean. He rode until he was like the night, desolate, and without a speck of hope to save him.

Chapter Nineteen

The dense shadows of nightfall were made longer by the snow falling around her, cold pieces of ice she could not feel. She could not move. She could not think. She watched as Duncan walked away, back straight, without looking back. His confession reverberated in her mind over and over again. I spent ten years in the territorial prison.

Prison? He was in prison? She simply could not believe it, and yet he’d been very clear. Prison. How could that be? He radiated strength and integrity. While she’d never known a convict before, she knew Duncan. She’d felt his heart, touched his soul. If she closed her eyes and became very still she could feel his emotions, as if they were her own. All she felt was one big black glacier of pain and misery.

He was trying to drive her away, just as he’d done all along. And this was why. He didn’t believe she could ever look beyond his past. And who could?

A criminal. No, she couldn’t see it. Maybe she didn’t want to see it. But no matter how hard she tried, she could not imagine him doing something so wrong or illegal. Not the same man who made such beautiful furniture. Nor the man who kept volumes of English poetry in his log cabin. Certainly not the man who had opened up to her and loved her with devoted tenderness.

It wasn’t only that she couldn’t imagine Duncan a criminal; it was that he had the heart of a poet and the soul of an artist, despite the growling and snarling and the solitary life in the wilderness.

He’d lost his family. He’d lost ten years of his life. The question was, why?

She could not love a bad man. Could she?

He’d gone. There was no one to ask but the snow tumbling down everywhere, making the world feel more cold and heartless as she climbed into her buggy.

All the way home, his confession troubled her. All the while unhitching the buggy and stabling Morris, she felt as frozen as the winter landscape. Her heart ached from disbelief, shock or disappointment, she couldn’t say. Only that the house looked so dark as she latched the stable door behind her and trudged through the yard.

The hinges on the garden gate gave a mournful squeal and she had to give it a hard shove to knock aside the wet snow that had accumulated so she could squeeze past. If a storm wasn’t blowing in to stay and there had still been even a drop of daylight to see by, she’d have headed out of town as fast as Morris could go. She would have hunted down Duncan and demanded the answers to her questions. What had he done? How could the man she loved be a convicted criminal?

She’d felt his heart. She’d touched his spirit and she knew. Whatever it was didn’t matter. Whatever he’d done had happened a long time ago, obviously. It suddenly all made sense, how he kept away from people, how he’d found contentment living on the mountainside. How he kept everyone at a far distance.

Whatever he’d been as a much younger man, he had changed. Whatever had happened, maybe it was what Mariah had said, how he’d lost his family and that had changed him for the better. The Duncan Hennessey she knew was a hardworking and honest man who made beautiful furniture, wasn’t afraid of hungry and wounded bears and who read Shakespeare during the long cold evenings in his home.

That was the Duncan she loved and trusted. This Duncan had spoken with shame of his past. He feared it would drive her away—and it probably should. Heaven knew that if Mama ever got wind of this information, she’d have a conniption that would be the talk of the town for the next twenty years.

Well, she doesn’t have to know. No one does. Duncan had paid for his crime. He obviously had become a good, strong man and maybe that spoke even better of him. Perhaps that showed that he’d overcome great mistakes and circumstances, and while he might be bitter, he was a man who could love and protect and, when he touched her, there was only tenderness in his hands, in his voice, in his warrior’s soul.

Duncan had expected her to reject him, she could see that now. And he was wrong.

Love still burned for him, more brightly than ever. She needed to tell that to Duncan. She’d have to wait until morning to see him, and she didn’t know how she was going to even pretend to sleep. Not when she could feel his pain. Not when she knew he was hurting, believing he was alone in the world.

He wasn’t. He wouldn’t be, not ever again.

Determined, she trudged through the snow toward her dark house. In the thick blackness the snow cast a ghostly glow to the roof and eaves and the rails of the porch where the precipitation clung. A man’s shadow huddled on one of the chairs she’d bought in the furniture store. A prickling crawled down her nape and beneath her collar and a cold uneasiness sharpened her senses. It wasn’t Duncan. Whoever it was he remained as still as stone, and in the dark she couldn’t see his face, but she recognize the tang of pipe smoke lingering in the air and the hunch of wide shoulders.

“Joshua?”

He didn’t move. He sat as still as ever. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. Panic shot through her. And launched her up the steps. “Is Mama all right? Granny? She’s not sick, is she—”

“No.” His answer came like a single echo of thunder. “Ma said something interesting when I ran into her at the mercantile.”

Oh, here it comes. Betsy braced herself for her brother’s fury because in truth, he was going to get a little bit of hers in return. “All of my life, I’ve looked up to you, Joshua Monroe Gable. You’ve been my big brother. My confidant. My comfort when I lost Charlie. And my very first laundry customer.”

He slowly rose, unfolding his over-six-foot frame from the shadows. “Don’t you find fault with me, I know that’s where you’re going—”

“Damn right I am!” She didn’t care if she interrupted him or that he was twice her size, she kept coming, ready to knock him off the porch if that’s what it took. “You left him there to fend for himself. When he was too wounded to do more than breathe! You left him!”

“Do you see why I did? I knew this would happen! That you’d develop this heroic view of him and he’s nothing but a common—”

“Don’t you dare say it! He’s served time, I know, he told me. But he saved me, and not just from the bear. You and Granny had no right to abandon him—” She wanted to grab her porch broom, the old one she used for sweeping the snow off the steps and whack him with it, not to hurt him, but to knock some sense into him. “It was wrong what you did, and you had no right. He could have died. He certainly suffered—”

“That would be too good for the likes of him. Suffering! Ha!” Dark rage poured off Joshua and, as if he’d guessed her desire, he grabbed the broom by the battered handle and marched past her, his boots slamming into the boards, punctuating his fury. “He’s a rapist! Did he tell you that?”

“What?”

“A rapist. According to Granny, who’d been visiting her sister at the time, it was all over the local papers down south. He’d helped himself to a pretty young lady, a judge’s daughter, and the law showed him no mercy, just as he deserved. They ought to have hung him, a monster like that, but they sent him to prison over at Deer Lodge.”

“The hard-labor prison?”

“Not hard enough. He served his time, they let him out when he ought to be caged like the animal he is. And to think you’d been driving out to deliver his laundry. Think what could have happened! What he could have done to you! Do you see now why we did it?”

Her knees gave out and she sank weakly onto the nearby chair. The chair Duncan had made with his big, gentle hands. Gentle hands she’d experienced on nearly every inch of her body. The tender caresses, the knowing strokes and the loving touches.

No, it can’t be true.

“All the times you could have been assaulted, and we didn’t even know the danger. To think he could have hurt you and worse, and we might never have known what had become of you. You can never see him again. You see now why you must stay away from him?” Joshua savagely swiped the top step with the broom and the wooden part that held the bristles flew off the handle.

“It’s broken. You have to be careful with it.”

“Then buy a new one that works!” Joshua’s temper was burgeoning as he stormed down the steps, grabbed the broken part from the snow and bent to twist it back onto the wooden handle. “Damn it, I’ll buy you one myself.”

He tossed both the bristles and the handle into the dark reaches of the yard. “I need to hear the words, Betsy. Tell me you won’t go anywhere near that man. I couldn’t live with myself if I let something happen to you.”

“Oh, Joshua. The very worst thing has happened—No, he didn’t touch me.” She stood, trembling with shock, but she was not weak. No, she was not afraid or heartbroken or confused. It was all very clear. “Did you tell this to Mama?”

“Tell her? Hell, no, it would have sent her into the vapors. We all love you. We want what’s best for you.”

“I know you do.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek, her poor, misdirected brother. “But I’m not a little girl. I’m thirty years old. I can take care of myself. Go home, and don’t tell anyone about this.”

“You’re one of those soft hearted types, Betsy. You’re not going to go see him, right? You understand how serious this is? He’s a monster, and there’s no way I’m ever going to let him hurt you.”

“Don’t worry, Josh.” She stepped away, lost in the night, overcome by the truth.

She saw it all so clearly, what had happened. That Duncan had come to her tonight with his confession, and it shone in an entirely new light. All that he hadn’t said weighed on her now as she leaned against the railing, snow wetting through her coat, but she didn’t care.

“There is no more danger,” she told him. “There is no need to worry. Just leave me alone.”

“You cared about him?” Joshua sounded incredulous.

“No, I was in love with him.” There was no possible way her brother could understand. He’d never been in true love, the kind that came not from the physical, but from the soul. So he could not understand what she’d lost.

She put her face in her hands and wept. Wept for the man who’d walked away from her. Grieved for what could never be.

Chapter Twenty

It was a sloppy and nasty mess. Duncan wiped his rain-drenched hair off his forehead and positioned the wood chunk with the awl. Last night’s snow had turned to rain and until winter set in for good, the yard would be mud. The snow melting on the roof was going to keep sliding down in dangerous chunks he would have to watch out for, and everywhere sang the musical drip of water. Off the trees, off the stable, plopping into the mud puddles and the stream made by so much runoff gurgling everywhere.

He’d had a bad night. He hadn’t been able to sleep at all. He’d woken to a dismal day and worked in the downpour since sunup, not that he could have seen the sun then or for a single moment since.

He hefted the sledgehammer to his shoulder and, summoning up all the strength he possessed, swung. The iron head rammed the awl into the wood grain, tearing the heavy wood chunk into two smaller parts. Smaller, in that it would take several dozen swings of the ax to split the hunk into manageable sizes for the stove.

Puffing in the cool damp air, he bent to kick the pieces out of the way for splitting later and dragged another log into position. That’s when he heard it. The faint squeak, squeak, squeak of a buggy wheel. Of Betsy’s buggy wheel.

She ought to get that thing fixed and oiled.

He turned his back to her. He had better things to do than to listen to her tirade. Yeah, he already knew why she was here. She’d come to give him a piece of her mind for deceiving her. For being a criminal. For a man like him daring to touch a good woman like her.

Hell, he agreed with her. Her silence had said everything last night. Her shock had cut him to the quick.

So much for unconditional love.

Bitterness filled him up like fouled, black water, and he turned away. Tried hard to find some reason to hate her, because hate was a good shield. Anger was one, too. Except, how could he be mad at her? How could he hate the sunshine of a woman who’d healed him?

She’d come to say her piece, he knew women had a knack for doing that, but the truth was, something within him had changed. The bleak suffocating pain that had haunted him for half his adult life was gone.

He’d found the man he used to be before prison and discovering his mother’s grave. A man who was more than bitterness, more than what circumstances had made him. He stood taller now. No matter how others looked at him or what they called him, he knew the truth down deep in his soul. It was time he let go of that great wound. He knew he was no criminal. He was no rapist. He could not be broken.

The squeaking sound approached and he kept his back to her. He didn’t need to look at her. It was over. There was no sense in stirring up longing he could never satisfy and love he could never express. He sent the sledgehammer into the awl and the steeled wedge cracked open the enormous log. Rain sluiced down the back of his neck and wet his shirt from the inside as well as the outside.

He didn’t turn when the buggy stopped squealing and he could sense the radiant light of her presence. He just bit out while he kept on working. “What do you want? I hope to hell you didn’t come for my laundry.”

“Uh, no. It’s not my usual delivery day.”

He retrieved the awl and positioned it, tapping it into the center of the log round where sap seeped like blood. He kept his heart hard and his eye on the wedge of steel and he pulled back the hammer. “I have no time to listen to a woman’s idle chatter. I’m firing you as my laundry lady. Get outta here.”

With all the agony of his broken heart, he heaved the sledgehammer through the air and onto the target. Metal screamed and wood ripped apart. Huffing, he didn’t look at her. He erased her from his thoughts, from him senses and from his memory.

“Well, I refuse to be fired.”

“Too bad.” He remembered to count to ten, but all he could see was red. Anger built in his head like steam in an engine, roiling ever hotter. “How much do I owe you?”

“You always pay ahead. You know that.”

“So then what’s keeping you?” He didn’t bother to wait for her reply. “I’ve got work to do.”

He heard her sharp intake of breath. He’d hurt her. He wasn’t proud of it. In fact, agony ripped through his belly as he did what he had to do.

But he was no longer a dead man who was still walking. He was achingly alive and it was all Betsy’s fault. She’d done this to him, and like a bear out of hibernation, he could feel the cold, feel the pain and emptiness that his life had been. He tossed down the ax, sending the dangerous edge deep into the earth, and marched away. When everything within him screamed for him to go to her, he forced his feet to carry him in the opposite direction.

“Wait, Duncan! I brought a peace offering.” When she should have been furious with him, when her lovely voice ought to have been dripping with contempt, her words carried a hint of humor.

Humor? That didn’t make any sense. Puzzled, he turned and there she was, holding a strawberry pie. The golden crust oozed the sweet fruit through the flowers cut into the covering.

“Do you have to put flowers on everything?” he growled.

“I don’t know how to cut a bear into pastry, or I would have done that in honor of your charming personality.” Her chin thrust up and there was a challenge in her beautiful eyes, not hatred. Her mouth was lush and bow-shaped, as if anticipating his kiss, not pulled down into a grimace of loathing.

She was everything he loved, everything he desired and everything he’d hungered for through years too lonely to describe or to think about. “Why are you bringing a peace offering?”

“Because of how I treated you yesterday when you came to me. When you came to tell me about your past.” She set the pie back in the buggy and wiped her hands on her skirt and she came to him.

A roar filled his ears and he felt as if he were shattering from the inside out. “I don’t understand. Why are you here?”

“I brought a strawberry pie. It’s probably not equal to the way I behaved yesterday, but I was simply so surprised. And then, after speaking with Joshua, I knew why.”

His head bowed forward and he stood back straight, arms at his sides, legs braced, looking like a man who knew he’d lost everything and still, if nothing else, had the pride to stand upright. “I don’t want your pie.”

“In a way, my strawberry pie started this. I thought it would be appropriate.”

“To end it?” He scoffed, and it was a bitter sound.

But it didn’t ring true. His pain fractured through her and she dared to lay her hand on the center of his back. She felt the snap and crackle of attraction and the stir of her soul. This man was the one she would love and take good care of for the rest of her life.

“No, I told you this is a peace offering. Because I need to ask you to forgive me. I should have said to you then, Duncan, ‘that doesn’t make sense.’ How could a man like you, so noble and true, have done anything to land you in a hard-labor prison?”

He remained like granite. As still as the mountains in winter and silent beneath sheets of glacial ice. He didn’t even appear to be breathing.

“But when Joshua said you’d been convicted of rape, I knew for absolute certain.”

He squeezed his eyes so tight they hurt. He didn’t have to listen; he simply had to appear to be listening. Let her say her piece, take her pie and leave forever.

But her hand on his back made it impossible to stay as cold as stone. His spirit turned to her like the earth to the sun and he waited for her hateful words because he deserved them.

He should have told her from the start. Then they never would have fallen in love and became lovers and he wouldn’t be standing here, with everything that ever mattered in his life crumbled to bits for the second time—no, the third time in his life.

“There is no way you could have done anything so terrible.”

Hope lurched in his chest even as he knew he had to have imagined what she’d said. Everyone save for his mother had taken one look at him and judged him to be guilty.

“I know the man you are.”

She swirled around him, her skirts brushing his ankles as she wrapped her arms around him and laid her cheek upon his chest. Her tangled curls bounced and shimmered and he went rigid, not believing. He simply couldn’t believe.

“You were innocent. You would never hurt a woman, and I know because you were willing to give your life for mine, the laundry lady you detested— I noticed you didn’t like me so much at first.”

“You’ve got that wrong,” he ground out, not believing this could be real, but wrapping his arms around her tight anyway. “I loved you from the very first moment I saw you in that frilly buggy of yours and you wearing a yellow bonnet and yellow dress. And I knew in a million lifetimes that I could never have you. Ever.”

“You have me now and forever.”

“You believe me.”

“I’ll always believe in you, my hero, my love.”

She rose up on tiptoes, offering her kiss, and he came to her, slanting his lips over hers. Tenderly opening her mouth with his tongue to slide in deep and slow.

She broke away, her gaze searching his face, and when she spoke, it was the truth he heard, truth he could put faith in. “You and I have been alone countless times, and you worked so hard to drive me away. When we were lovers, from the first moment you touched me, I was astounded by your tenderness. Your gentleness. You have a poet’s soul, my rugged rocky mountain man. I know. Because I can feel you inside my heart.”

“I love you.” Overcome, he held on tight to this woman who was his very life. “Marry me. Be my wife.”

“I was hoping you would ask. I would love to marry you.”

“But what about your family? They can’t approve of me.”

“I can take care of my family. You are the rarest of gifts and they’ll come to love you as I do, or I’ll hurt them.” She winked, but her words of faith and loyalty and love left him in disbelief.

But this was real, as rare and perfect as a dream come true. Overcome, he buried his face in her hair. Blinding joy burned within him. As the rain pounded down ever harder, the cool, cleansing drops seemed strong enough to wash away the past. To erode the years of bitterness and sadness.

Grandfather would think it fitting, Duncan thought, that one woman of pure goodness had given him a new life. One of hope and love and family. Duncan Hennessey, loner and mountain man, was no longer alone.

He thought he felt his grandfather’s approval in the cold hand of the wind that seemed to push them in the direction of the house. Betsy grabbed the pie, he opened the door, and they were inside the sheltered warmth with the view of forest and mountains surrounding them. Fire snapped in the hearth as they shivered together.

As he pulled her down onto the bear rug before the warm flames, he kissed her long and deep. He was no poet, he did not have the words to tell her how dear she was to him. That she shone like a light that blinded him to all else, and from her long hair to her enchanting sweetness to her ardent passion, he adored and loved her. No, love was too small of a word for what he felt for her.

If he could spend his life with her, waken beside her every morning and spend the golden moments of each day with her, then the wrongs of his past were worth it. Because every step of sadness had brought him to her. To the magic of true love that nothing could break. Nothing.

He had no words for his feelings, so he kissed her again with all his heart, so she could feel it. So she could feel his steadfast love for her, the woman who had changed his life.

Epilogue

Later that evening

Betsy didn’t bother to knock on the back door of her childhood home, mostly because she recognized Joshua in the window, straining to see through the evening shadows the tall mountain of a man leading a trembling Morris to the stable. Duncan would be kept busy putting up the horse for a few minutes, and that was about the time she needed to make her point.

The moment she pushed open the door, the warmth and aroma of the kitchen wrapped around her like a warm blanket. Thousands of memories of her childhood rolled through her, of Mama in the kitchen and of Pa coming home from work at the bank. Of her brothers scraped or bleeding or sporting a broken arm or two, since growing boys would be boys.

This was the kind of home she and Duncan would have one day, one filled with memories of decades. A home she and Duncan could grow old in together, in their hideaway cabin in the forest. Where their children and grandchildren could visit, boldly walking in the door without knocking, for they were coming home.

Mama was whipping potatoes in a giant kettle and asking Anya to check on the buttermilk biscuits that ought to be done. The moment Mama spotted her only daughter, the happiness lit her up like sunshine in December. “It’s about time, young lady. And twenty-two minutes late! I was about to send the boys out for you. Come make your mother happy and give me a kiss.”

“As soon as I’m done talking with my lovely brother Joshua.” Betsy unhooked her hood, focusing her attention on Joshua.

He didn’t even have the grace to look repentant. He was working up a good mad by the looks of it. His mouth was twisted into a premature frown and the tendons stood out in his thick neck. His eyes spit fire as he took her by the wrist and pulled her into the dining room, where crystal and china glinted in the lamplight. “How dare you bring that man here to our mother’s house?”

“Easy. He’s proposed and I’ve accepted. Isn’t that wonderful news? We’re going to announce it at dinner, so don’t spoil the surprise for Mama.”

The muscles in Joshua’s jaw spasmed and a tick beat right along with his pulse. “Have. You. Lost. Your. Mind?”

“No. Duncan was falsely accused, and if you don’t believe me, I don’t care. That is how you will treat him. He is a wonderful man to me and I love him. I’m warning you, Joshua, don’t ruin this chance I have for happiness. Love comes around rare enough in life the first time. Mama has said she’ll accept him, and I expect you to do the same.” She pitched her voice a little louder, in the direction of the archway into the parlor. “And you, as well, Granny.”

“Ha! That will be the day.” The older woman creaked out of the chair, troubled by her rheumatism that strangely came on strong whenever it was convenient for her. “I’m just a poor, sick old lady, and—”

“Too bad. I cannot forgive what you did to Duncan, leaving him when he was so wounded, but I think I will be able to forgive you if you treat him with the respect that is due my husband for all the happy years of our marriage to come.”

“He’s already had a bad influence on you.” Joshua’s jaw was clenched so tight it was amazing he could squeeze out any words at all. “I intend to set this straight.”

“No, you will not. As far as I know, you two are the only ones who have realized Duncan’s history, or at least been mean enough to bring up a very painful event in his life. You will remain silent, both of you, and never tell another living soul. Because he is not the only one in this house with secrets.”

Joshua went pale. “What do you mean?”

“I have been washing your clothes for a long while now. And yours, too, Granny. It’s amazing what an innocent laundry lady comes across while checking the pockets of the garments before she washes them. All I’m going to say is this: if you want your secrets kept, then you’ll keep Duncan’s.”

“I have no secrets!” Joshua turned as red as a boiled beet.

“Oh, of course not. Let me just go tell Mama—”

“All right.” He stomped out, clearly not happy, pushing his way around the table to the refuge of the parlor’s hearth.

“I suppose you don’t have any secrets, either, right, Granny?”

Grandmother Gable took a long cool look at the big man who’d just came in from the cold. Duncan Hennessey was all man, handsome and strong and noble, and there was no mistaking it. Or the love that warmed his dark gaze when he looked upon his lady love.

“He’s at least good-looking,” Granny conceded. “A man is such trouble and a bane to a woman’s existence, he ought to at least be pleasing to the eye.”

“I’ll take that as a congratulations on my upcoming wedding. Thanks, Granny.” Betsy pressed a kiss to her tough old grandma’s cheek. “You’ll like him, once you get to know him. I promise.”

The old woman grumbled something beneath her breath and reached into her skirt pocket for her tobacco.

Duncan. His gaze collided with hers across the length of the kitchen, where kettles boiled and biscuits steamed and the gravy bubbled up, causing Mama to come rushing to the servant’s aid. James and his wife had arrived, and Jordan was ambling down the stairs, yawning and groggy from his nap, the lazy bum, and joy filled her up like water in a cup, spilling over and over without end.

She walked into Duncan’s arms, this man she would forever love, and wasn’t surprised at all to feel their hearts were beating in synchrony. They took in breath at the same moment.

“We’re going to live happily ever after now,” she told him. “All you have to do is believe.”

“I already do.” He took her hand and sealed his words with an everlasting kiss.

ISBN: 978-1-4268-8387-3

ROCKY MOUNTAIN MAN

Copyright © 2005 by Jill Strickler

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