Читать книгу Last Dance - Cait London, Cait London - Страница 10

They were sweet back then, an eight-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl. Tanner had placed his baseball bat aside to fix her wagon’s bent wheel. While Gwyneth clearly adored him, he acted all gruff with his friends riding their bicycles up the road. He made yucking noises when she kissed him on the cheek, but he’ll grow up to be a fine man, just as loving and good as his dad. One day, he’ll know his love and he’ll come courting according to the rules of Freedom Valley.

—From the journal of Anna Bennett, descendant of Magda Claas and the mother of Tanner Bennett.

Tanner Bennett expertly knelt on his mother’s roof and tore away the damaged shingles. Familiar to his hand, his father’s hammer was worn, a contrast to the new shingles he’d just patched into the old.

He inhaled Montana’s midmorning April air, and knew that his ex-wife would soon come calling to warn him off. He’d known Gwyneth all her life, and he sensed from the dark look she burned at him in the café that she wanted to set down her rules.

Too bad. He had rules of his own now, and he wasn’t feeling friendly.

From the top of the two-story home, he scanned the small rural town he’d left eighteen years ago. Nestled in Freedom Valley, a lush valley blanketed with fields and cattle and cradled by soaring, snowcapped mountains, Freedom—the town—was quiet. Down the country road that led to town, babies were napping, housewives were cleaning, store clerks were waiting on customers, and the café crowd was gossiping over morning coffee. Freedom Valley hadn’t changed. Birthed by single women united for their protection in the 1880s, their traditions remained in their descendants. Lives and families blended through the years, the descendants’ colorful names proudly stamped with immigrant heritage, biblical reference and popular contemporary ones. The town’s square was lined by two-story buildings, little changed since Montana’s cattle-drive days.

In the distance, just past pickup trucks lined around the feed store, and up the street from the florist, his mother rested in a tiny, well-tended cemetery. An auto accident had taken her life too soon—on a fog-draped country highway, Anna never saw the semitruck at the highway intersection. Beside her grave lay Paul Bennett’s, her husband, victim of a heart attack when Tanner was only twelve.

At thirty-six now, Tanner felt old memories rustle to life, the slight breeze stirring the leaves of an oak tree nearby, while sunlight danced upon Anna Bennett’s beloved home. Not far from town, the twenty-acre farm was neat from the chicken house to the pasture to the vegetable garden. In Anna’s sunporch, the impatiens and tomato plants she’d started from seed waited to be put into her gardens. Tiny feed-store sacks of lettuce, green beans and cucumber seed lay in a neat row as if she couldn’t wait to plant them.

Tanner scrubbed his hand across the aching tightness within his bare chest. In the six weeks since her death, he’d cleared away his business commitments on the Northwest Pacific coast—building handcrafted, custom-order, wooden fishing boats had suited him. In his absence, a good friend would handle his business there.

Tanner scanned the small farm and wondered how his widowed mother had managed her young brood, to see them safely into their lives. He’d come back to visit his mother through the years, but what held her here, in this tiny place? Anna Bennett never complained through her hardships. What was the source of her strength? What gave her such peace?

Peace. Would he ever find peace?

The church’s white spire shot into the clear blue Montana sky. Twelve years ago, he’d been married there, a young man with his blushing, sweet bride tucked against his side, heading off into a bright new future away from Freedom.

But that first night, Gwyneth Smith Bennett had been terrified, running from him, and despite his determination and patience, the marriage ended—without consummation.

A white panel van soared into Anna’s driveway. Scrawled along the side, a purple and pink Gwen’s Pots announced his ex-wife—information mischievously tossed at him by Willa, owner of Willa’s Wagon Wheel Café, and incumbent mayor of Freedom. According to Leonard at the gas station, Gwen’s van got good mileage, needed a tuneup and so did she.

One week in Freedom’s close-knit community provided more information than he’d wanted about his ex-wife—not that he’d asked. In a small town, lives weren’t that private.

His hand stilled over his heart, the one she’d torn to shreds years ago. He’d rebuilt his life without her, and he regretted the momentary sharp clench of pain that just looking at her could bring.

When a man’s pride was badly stomped by a woman, he wasn’t likely to forget.

Tanner inhaled sharply as she stepped briskly out of the van, her short blond hair gleaming in the sun. She looked like a boy, not a thirty-two-year-old woman, until he took in that compact, curved body. Gwyneth Smith Bennett, dressed in a T-shirt and cutoff bib overalls that showed off the tanned length of her legs above her practical work boots, wasn’t happy. Her scowl shot around Anna’s untended herbal and vegetable gardens, the sheds and the chicken house to the small field bordering the Smith ranch. She swung open the gate of the white picket fence and glanced at a large branch, broken free by the storm, on the freshly cut lawn. Then she marched up the stone walkway, usually bordered by summer flowers, past the new green starts of the yellow and red Dutch tulip bed, past the concrete birdbath filled with leaves and up onto the front porch, out of Tanner’s sight. The old brass door knocker sounded briskly and then Gwyneth appeared, marching around the side of the two-story house.

“Oh, Gwynnie…” he called lightly from the rooftop, unable to resist the tease of long ago.

She stopped in midstep and her face jerked upward. Stark in the bright sunlight, Gwyneth’s expression tightened into a scowl. The woman’s face had been honed from the girl’s that he had loved and married—had he really loved her? Or had he wanted to protect her from her overbearing and possessive father?

No, it was more than that, and he’d paid a heavy price.

Gwyneth’s mouth tightened—he remembered instantly how sweet that little cupid bow tasted all those years ago—perfect and virginal. Now, her hazel eyes weren’t happily filled with him, and beneath those dark arching eyebrows, brilliant anger lashed at him. The peach-gold skin across her cheekbones gleamed, her expression darkening. In her dark mood, her jaw had the locked set of old Leather’s, her father. Without missing a beat, she moved to the wooden ladder he’d braced against the house, walked it backward and let it drop to the grass.

“When are you leaving? It isn’t soon enough,” she shot up to him, her hands braced on her waist.

Tanner settled back on his haunches; the furious woman on the ground below. While visiting Anna, he’d met her accidentally several times; they hadn’t spoken, an icy mountain of pain and anger standing between them. He didn’t like the ugly fury within him at first, and later a cold distance seemed safer. This lean and shapely woman little resembled the frightened twenty-year-old girl who had run from their first night as husband and wife. He’d never forget the sight of her as he walked to their bed in that hotel—wide-eyed fear that had eventually ended a marriage never begun. They were both older now, and he wasn’t letting her push him. At one time, he’d been very careful of her; but that time was gone. “I’ll leave when I’m ready.”

“I hear down at Livingston’s Hardware that you’re fixing up Anna’s place to sell. I suppose you’ll be leaving, going back to your big Northwest Pacific coast custom-made fishing boat business, right?”

Apparently, the gossips had been working Gwyneth, too. Her eyes flashed with an impatience and anger that was new to Tanner. “I’m flattered that you’re interested in my life, Gwynnie.”

“Do not call me ‘Gwynnie.’ I’m not six anymore and I don’t have a crush on you any longer. I’m not interested in anything about you. I just want you out of town. You came back a week ago, and the gossip is already flying. I can’t walk down the street without someone mentioning that you’re back in town and looking at me as if they expect—well, never mind. This is my town. I’ve stayed. I haven’t been heading off for college, or teaching in Kansas City, or traveling around the world in the merchant marine. I’ve stayed right here and took care of Pop and now that he’s gone, I’m running the ranch. It won’t work with the both of us here, not with what everybody knows about—”

“Our marriage? The one that never actually took place?” Tanner fought the stirring of old frustration and anger—a young bridegroom set on his wedding night and a frightened runaway bride made for lasting and ugly memories. He’d never hurt her, never gave her reason to fear—He’d tried for three years while he was teaching in Kansas City to disarm Gwyneth’s fear of him, to make her see how much he loved her. But distance, time and her coldness eventually made him agree to a divorce. At the time, Gwyneth wanted a divorce, rather than an annulment—she couldn’t bear for the town gossips to know that they’d never consummated their marriage, that she was too terrified at the sight of him to—

His stomach clenched as he remembered young Gwyneth’s horrified expression, the way she’d run out of the hotel and home to her father.

Old “Leather” Smith had reveled in proof that he was right, that Tanner wasn’t suitable for his only daughter. Leather hadn’t wanted to give up his daughter, who was also his ranch hand, cook and cleaning woman; the bully had wanted to own Gwyneth, not to free her to a life of her own, and had blocked Tanner’s attempts to win back his wife.

She tensed, then swept her hand aside, dismissing his taunt. “You are going to stay up on that roof until I make you see sense.”

“Oh, really?” Tanner asked before he reached over to an upstairs window and jerked it open. After baring his teeth in a cold smile, Tanner entered the window. With every step down the stairs and out on the porch and around the house, he thought about the woman demanding that he leave Freedom.

When he stood facing Gwyneth—so close he noted that she barely reached his shoulder—he asked the question that had been burning him. “Why did you keep my name, Gwyneth?”

Color rose in her cheeks and her hazel eyes darkened into green as she looked up those inches to meet his gaze. Tanner tensed as her eyes ripped down his six-foot-three body, heated a path across his shoulders and blinked several times at his bare chest. For a heartbeat, her eyes widened in fear, quickly shielded. The shiver that ran down her body was enough to make Tanner clench his fists, slapped by the nightmare of their wedding night. Then she stepped back from him, lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. “You know why I kept the Bennett name. I loved Anna, and it kept her close, as though she was the mother I never had. I liked having her name. And an annulment would have…would have created even more gossip.”

“It’s my name, and you took it.” A dark ridge of anger leaped upon Tanner, and he shoved it down, just as he had all those years ago. “Old Leather created plenty of gossip all by himself. My mother didn’t like hearing that I’d mistreated you that night and that you ran back to him to be safe.”

Gwyneth had remained his wife, in his heart, for years, and now that same tearing away of his heart began, just looking at her.

“Your mother called him out one night and stuck a berry pie in his hand. Whatever she said to him made him angry and made him stop those rumors. He ate the pie, but he wasn’t happy. He respected her…everyone did. She came to see him as he was dying and helped me with the funeral six years ago.” Her gaze shifted to the lily of the valley bed that would soon bloom. “I’m sorry about Pop’s stories. I tried to stop him. Anna knew the truth and she was a good woman. She had a peace that gentled everyone around her.”

“She did at that. She raised Kylie and Miranda and myself without help and was never bitter or afraid. She loved this valley and she brought a good deal of the babies here into the world.” Why had his mother loved the town so deeply? Why had she clung to the traditions begun by those frontier women? What was Anna Bennett’s secret of life, always seeing the good in people where none could be found? Where was the peace she had found? Where was his own?

He had to kill whatever ran through him for his ex-wife. He had to start a new life; he wanted a home and children and peace. Tanner frowned down at Gwyneth, his memories running like scars across his heart because of this woman. She’d colored relationships with other women, ruining them, for he could never find the right taste, or the same fascination.

Gwyneth ran her hand through her cropped hair, spiking it and sunlight danced across the tips. “I saw Kylie and Miranda at the funeral. I was hoping one of them—”

Tanner propped the ladder against the house again. He traced the path of white-rumped antelope leaping from the cattle fields off into the woods. His sisters couldn’t bear to dismantle the house, to take one doily from Anna’s home, and the job was left to him. Tanner had repaired the house since he was twelve, taking the place of his carpenter father in more ways than one. His steadfast, loving mother had been a miracle and a source of strength to those she touched, but not for Anna or anyone else was he moving to Gwyneth’s wishes. “Take your hopes somewhere else,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere until I’m ready.”

“You’re not small town makings. You’ve been all over the world. You don’t belong here. I do—” she began firmly.

He noted the tiny gold studs in her ears. She must have defied old Leather; he wouldn’t have liked the “silly beautifications.” A bitter taste of memory tightened Tanner’s mouth. She hadn’t stepped out from Leather’s care years ago, when Tanner had been desperate to reason with her. “You wanted a divorce and not an annulment. I agreed to that farce and that’s the last agreeing I do with you.”

“It is hard, Tanner Bennett, to believe that you are sweet Anna’s son. I’ll be glad when you sell this place and—”

“Don’t count on it,” Tanner said slowly, feeling the burn of old wounds and the need to cut at the woman who had stolen his life, his dreams. He could have tried to fill himself with other dreams, another woman, but life hadn’t turned that way for Tanner Bennett. Within himself, in the deep dark certain truth of his life, he knew that he’d have to find peace as his mother had.

Her eyes widened, sunlight glistening on her lashes. “But at the hardware store, they said that you and your sisters would probably sell. It’s a wonderful house with a few acres. I’d buy it myself, if I could afford it—just because I want to hold Anna close—”

“You think I don’t want to hold my mother close?” he demanded curtly. Tanner didn’t like thinking about another family in Anna’s home, or on her land. He wasn’t ready to let her go yet, the house still filled with her scent and memories squeezing him too hard to move on. He’d come to the funeral and with his sisters sat in Anna’s house later, a part of their lives torn away by death, each feeling guilty for not visiting more. Agreeing to temporarily leave Anna’s home as it was, they each went back to their lives far away.

Now Tanner had come back, needing to find peace with his mother’s passing, and with his life. He remembered all they didn’t have, all that they did have because of Anna’s hard work and her endless patience and love. “She should have had more. Life was too hard for her.”

Gwyneth’s hazel eyes softened, drifting over Anna’s house snuggled into shady trees, herbs and flower beds. “You were there for her, and Kylie and Miranda. Her children were her life.”

“She worked too hard.” Tanner noted the bitterness in his tone, the sharp echo of pain in his heart. A widow, bearing the hardships of raising her family, Anna never wavered in helping others and always with a tender smile.

Because the tilt of Gwyneth’s head as she studied him brought back a sweet memory, he brushed his thumb across the corner of her mouth. He noted the fine pink surface, void of lipstick. How long had he wanted her? Since he was eighteen and she was fourteen? Or years before that, when she’d come crying from Leather’s jibes into his mother’s arms?

“So how’s it going, Gwynnie?” he asked to taunt the woman who had just paled at his touch and to derail the sweet memories before that fateful wedding night.

She shivered with anger, her eyes biting at him. “If you bring a hussy into Anna’s house, I’ll be all over you.”

“My, my, my,” he drawled, and grinned at her, pleased that he could rev her so easily, this woman who had torn apart his young dreams. Young Gwyneth had been sweet and retiring and this one wasn’t. “You certainly have a high opinion of me.”

She impatiently ran her hand through her short hair, and he remembered his fingers wrapped deep in the silky sunlight of her long hair. Clearly trying to maintain control, Gwyneth slashed a dark look up at him. “I mean it, Tanner. You bring a woman into Anna’s house and she wouldn’t like that.”

“A woman? Like a woman in my bed? All hot and bothered and—” He couldn’t resist teasing Gwyneth, or was he? That night, long ago, had ripped away part of him. At first he’d tried to make love with other women, and he’d tried to make relationships work—but somehow he couldn’t forget that night.

“You know what I mean about women,” she shot back at him, narrowing her sight on the earring in his ear as though it marked him as “sinner” and “lech.” “You’ve probably… I’ve heard about sailors in port…how they—”

“Yes?” he drawled, really enjoying Gwyneth’s obvious impression of his years away from Freedom Valley.

The quick color moving up her cheeks pleased him. He lifted an eyebrow, fascinated with the woman scowling up at him. Years ago, Gwyneth was little more than a sweet shadow, a girl on the cusp of being a woman—fragile, quiet, uncertain and yet just as fascinating with her green-brown eyes, her cupid’s-bow mouth, those dimples in her cheeks. He ran his hand across her hair, riffling the short strands. “You look good with short hair.”

He took in the length of her fit, athletic body. Gwyneth worked hard and the muscles were smoothly defined on her arms and legs. She had the look of a strong earthy, sensual woman who could take as well as give…not the kind to lie quiet beneath a man. Tanner pushed down that bit of nudging lust for his ex-wife. “Goes with the rest of you.”

She flushed and looked away, and came back with a haughty “It’s practical. A gentleman would put on a shirt while holding a discussion with a lady.”

“Don’t count on manners from me, Gwyneth Bennett,” he said slowly, meaning it. Once again, he remembered her expression as he walked toward her on their wedding night—her eyes had skimmed his chest in that same fearful way…and she’d run away.

Gwyneth had taken his pride and his dreams that night, and now she deserved nothing.

Her indrawn breath hissed in the sweetly scented morning and she paled. “And don’t you dare turn this into a boy’s clubhouse with all your old buddies. They’re all here or come back periodically, all your old high school football and sports buddies—Gabriel Deerhorn, though he keeps to his mountains most of the time—Michael Cusack, York, Frazier, and the rest of your swaggering Bachelor Club! Any beer and babe parties in Anna’s house and I’ll call any wives attached to them. If they’re not married, I’ll call their mothers, and Kylie and Miranda, and I’ll bring you up before the Women’s Council as an undesirable influence on married and unmarried men. They still remember when you pierced your ear and the Bachelor Club, your swaggering boys’ club, followed suit—every last one… Just get out of town and make it easy on everyone.”

“I don’t like threats and I’ll decide when I’m leaving.” Tanner didn’t like the too-soft snarl to his tone, because that proved she was getting to him. He’d honored his mother his entire life, respected her home; Gwyneth’s low-dog opinion of him nettled.

“Good…decide to leave quick, and I don’t make threats. I make promises, and try not to embarrass your family when you go sniffing after women.” With that, Gwyneth lifted her chin and tromped back around Anna’s house. Gwyneth slammed the door of her van and it roared away. Tanner realized darkly that her threat was the first he’d ever heard from her. His shy, sweet bride of years ago was nothing like the fast-mouthed, hot-tempered woman this morning.

Did it really matter? Tanner wondered bleakly. Why should he care if Gwyneth had threatened him with the worst fate of an unmarried male in Freedom Valley?

He followed the van hurling down Anna’s dirt driveway and out onto the unpaved road leading to the Smith ranch. Across the green patchwork of fields, he turned to view Freedom, a quaint town with a tall white church steeple—where he’d married Gwyneth. Then his view swept the town with its neat, well-tended houses and stores, its town square, cherished by the community and where the spit-and-whittle “boys” of eighty or so, held their meetings.

He inhaled slowly; after eighteen years of intermittent visits, he’d come back to the valley’s traditions and an ex-wife’s threat—“I’ll bring you up before the Women’s Council as an undesirable influence on married and unmarried men…”

Freedom’s Women’s Council was powerful, a tradition established from the single women settlers looking for husbands. Women who would choose their own paths, they’d had to protect themselves from brutish men and had formed a family of women, sisters bonded together. Traditional approval of the council usually meant a smooth courtship, according to the women’s terms. The man seeking a bride had to conform to the various stages set forth by the Women’s Council, and a century and more later, this approval was held dear by families and prospective brides.

A man marked as a “Cull” or reject by the Women’s Council could court, but he’d have a difficult time, because his beloved would want the same courtly traditions as her friends. An unhappy prospective bride could make her lover quite uncomfortable.

And so it was that most men in and around Freedom Valley abided by the Women’s Council’s Rules for Bride Courting, an 1880s manual fiercely defended by all the women in the area—mothers, daughters, sisters and aunts. Life in Freedom Valley could become quite challenging for males not abiding by the Rules for Bride Courting.

Consequently the friends of a misbehaving “Cull” were likely to be in for trouble, too, outcasts in the dating game, and the wheels of romance could come to a frustrating, cold stop.

After his wedding night fiasco, Tanner knew about frustrating, cold stops. In his haste to claim Gwyneth, Tanner had shoved aside traditions—

He rubbed his callused hands over his face, pushing away memories and the unexpected, uncomfortable emotions circling him about Gwyneth. With a sigh, Tanner went into his mother’s house and sat in the neat, cheery kitchen. A cobweb she would have never allowed taunted him with memories.

Just finished with college and with a new teaching job far away, he’d wanted Gwyneth to marry him quickly—“A girl like Gwyneth has a lot to fight,” his mother had said all those years ago, standing up on a chair to dust away an encroaching cobweb. “Her mother died when she was two and Leather hasn’t made her life easy, treating her more like a possession than a daughter—a hardworking ranch hand was how he treated her. Now you’re pushing her. Give her more time…let her come to her own decisions, in her own time.”

But twelve years ago, time had run out, and so had his bride. Tanner slammed his palm down on the table, jarring the mug and coffee that had grown cold. He picked up the framed picture of a beaming, eager groom and a blushing bride on the church’s front steps, studied it for a heartbeat, then slammed it facedown on Anna’s practical tablecloth.

“Don’t worry, Mother,” he said grimly to the empty kitchen. “I’m not in the market for another bloodletting.”

Gwyneth leaped from her van and ran up to the old weathered house with its missing shingles and battered flooring and leaky plumbing. Fumbling with her keys, she quickly clicked open the series of locks on the door, and stepped inside the hallway. She slammed the door on the sunshine that had moments ago gleamed on Tanner’s black waving hair, on that expanse of deeply tanned skin across his chest and the light matting of hair Veeing down into his low-slung jeans.

That shaggy haircut, the black strands damp upon his face and neck, did little to proclaim him a gentleman. The scowl that drew his eyebrows together was too fierce for Anna’s son and the set of his mouth said he wasn’t handing out favors. “I don’t like threats and I’ll decide when I’m leaving.”

One look at Tanner, and buried emotions had hit her like a firestorm. She hadn’t intended to stop at Anna’s, to blast Tanner, but delivering her pottery to Freedom’s Decor Shop and buying feed for the ranch had drawn Tanner-is-back comments from everyone she’d met. It was how they looked at her, that curious hopeful romantic look that brought back that night and how she’d run from him. He’d never hurt her and yet, she couldn’t bear for him to touch her—She should have known…

Sucking in air, listening to the furious pounding of her heart, she flattened her body back against the hallway’s ancient faded wallpaper.

“Hello, Gwynnie,” he’d called from Anna’s rooftop. He’d looked so powerful then, scowling down at her, his body solid from hard work, his big hands broad and rough. His mouth turned into a fierce, grim line, black eyes burning her, tearing through her body. After all those years, his anger was still there, lashing at her.

She’d adored him all her life. He’d been a high school football hero, grabbing a scholarship and soaring away to college in another state. He came home that summer, just after her high school graduation. He’d tilted his head as he looked at her and smiled slowly, as she blushed. “Hello, Gwynnie,” he’d said softly, tugging on her braids, and had asked for a date.

She was frightened then—she’d never had a date, her father wouldn’t let her, and somehow Tanner had understood. The next morning, he’d crossed the fence separating Anna’s land from the Smith ranch and walked to her father’s stalled old tractor. By late afternoon, the tractor was purring, Tanner was plowing, and old Leather was swearing, nettled by Tanner’s “I’ll take good care of Gwyneth. If you have no objections, I’d like to take her to a movie, sir.”

Old Leather, a man who craved respect, had gone down easily.

Then suddenly, they were dating and laughing and playing, and she was floating on air. Tanner’s kisses were steamy, his body taut and hot, but cherishing her, he had wanted to wait. He wanted to start a beautiful life with a perfect marriage. Two more years passed and then Tanner had graduated, ready to take a teaching job far away and he wanted her with him.

Confident in their love and future, he had pushed her to marry him, arguing fiercely with Leather that she was twenty and ready to be Tanner’s wife. Fearing the loss of his daughter and ranch hand and cook, Leather had dug in, snarling and resenting the younger man. But she hadn’t cared about his grumbling; she’d wanted to be with Tanner. She’d never been anywhere, but she was in love and so ready. She hadn’t minded that they hadn’t courted according to Freedom Valley’s century-old customs, she’d wanted Tanner too much.

Had she loved him? She’d worshiped him, adored him, waited for the sight of him. But what did she know of love at twenty? Was she only looking for freedom from a father who demanded too much?

After the wedding, she was terrified; she held tightly against her new groom at the church, his body pressing against hers. That first night, with the new marriage certificate resting beside the bed and Tanner’s ring on her finger, she couldn’t stop the clenched-tight fear. She’d trembled as Tanner had walked toward the bed, a towel around his hips….

Penny’s whining and scratching at the front door cut through the terrifying memory and Gwyneth let the German shepherd into the house. Darker and more sturdily built than his mate, Rolf pushed through the door for an ear-scratching.

Gwyneth tried to stop the twelve-year-old echo—his voice had been unsteady, frustrated—“Gwyneth, I won’t hurt you. Don’t back away from me. Look, we won’t do anything tonight, okay? You’re tired—all that wedding stuff. We’ll just sleep and everything will be better in the morning….”

But it wasn’t, because she couldn’t bear to think of him holding her, his big powerful body invading her body—

Later, when he’d come to the Smith ranch house and tried to talk with her, she couldn’t bear to face him. Tanner came from a loving family and he deserved children; she couldn’t bear for him to touch her—not that intimate way. While they were dating, Tanner had been so gentle and proper, his kisses and light caresses so sweet that she’d hoped—

But the old fear remained firmly embedded and on her wedding night, she’d run crying to her father. He was happy, crowing about how right he’d been, that she and Tanner weren’t “a mix.” She hadn’t returned Tanner’s calls, except the one message two years later that had asked for an annulment—she couldn’t have that and he’d agreed to a divorce.

“He just lives five miles down the country road to Anna’s, and the Bennett property borders mine. The rumors will be flying in no time—” She pointed a stern finger at both well-trained guard dogs. “Do not become friends with Tanner Bennett. Don’t hurt him, but don’t go wagging your tails for a new friend, either,” she amended.

Then pushing her hands through her hair and her memories of Tanner away, Gwyneth took a deep breath. “No one is going to fix that rotten fence post but me, or repair that hose on the tractor, or tag the ears of those new calves, so I’d better get after it.”

She ignored the ringing telephone; she wasn’t in the mood for anyone reminding her that Tanner had returned to town, living not far away. She pointed her finger down the hallway, directing the dogs to hunt through the house for unwelcome intruders. The dogs were not only her friends, but her protectors. One sound from them would tell her of danger.

She paused and jerked open a drawer on the hallway table. Her unframed wedding picture and the simple gold ring rolling across it mocked her. She flipped the picture over and shoved the drawer closed, just as she would any thoughts of Tanner. “I am a woman now, not a twenty-year-old, lovesick girl, high on the town hero,” she said to the pale woman in the mirror. “I’ve got responsibilities and work to do, and Tanner will move on. He’ll get bored with small town life, and he’ll leave.”

Then her thoughts ran across the worn linoleum at her feet, like worrying mice that would not go away.

Why hadn’t he married? Why hadn’t he filled another woman’s body with his babies? What would have happened had they courted in the way most women of Freedom cherished, and she’d trusted him with her secret?