Читать книгу Twilight - Kit Gardner - Страница 7

Silence hung like a palpable thing, broken only by the ticking of a clock somewhere in the small house. Avram Halsey let loose with a disbelieving snort and squinted toward the bedroom window, perhaps seeking logic in the billowing of the white curtains. Or was it Frank Wynne’s picture on the dressing table that he stared at? Rance grew certain as he watched Halsey’s face flush scarlet clear to his receding hairline that the man had never stepped one foot near Jessica Wynne’s “private private,” a room she had shared with the man framed upon that dressing table. Perhaps that was the source of Halsey’s sudden unease, and the distasteful curl of his lip. Perhaps that was why he swung his gaze from the window to fix with renewed vehemence upon Rance. Yes, something more than unease lurked there, a supreme agitation, as if the man itched to take himself from the room. Little wonder he wanted Jessica to sell the farm, with all its lingering memories...of another man, another lifetime. Halsey had ample reason to deny Jessica any farmhand’s help.

She turned toward Rance. A wavering smile parted her lips. Naked desperation flickered deep in her eyes and was gone in the next instant, swiftly veiled behind that mantle of strength she seemed to force onto her narrow shoulders. Yet he still sensed it. That desperation. She needed him. A virtual stranger. A man who didn’t deserve her trust.

“Jessica, dearest, be reasonable. We know nothing of this...this...” Halsey waved a hand toward Rance, then stared hard at Jessica. “A man you met and shot this very afternoon, and yet you would take him under your roof, and for what? I can hear the place rotting as we speak. It has been since before your husband died. Indeed, I believe even he was beginning to see the wisdom in selling it, given the price those Easterners were offering. Oh—” Halsey patted her arm consolingly and lowered his voice as Rance imagined a goodly reverend might upon entering his church. “Forgive me for speaking of the departed, but you’ve left me with little alternative. Jessica, a wounded man will be of scant use to you. Pray, with what do you intend to pay him? Strawberries?”

Halsey’s scoffing drew Jessica’s spine up tight. Rance felt his fingertips curl into his palms when her chin jutted forward. Her son stood below and beside her, the same chin poking at Halsey.

“Avram, you forget yourself,” Jessica said with deceptive softness. “My father hauled the stone to build this house and died out in that field, securing his rights to this land. I cannot easily forsake that.”

“Your father, my dear, were he still alive, would undoubtedly see the futility in your quest, regardless of all your noble intent. I doubt very much he would see the wisdom in taking a complete unknown into your fold. He wished you a fate far above his own, Jessica, and that fate certainly did not include dying in some barren field behind a runaway double-shovel plow. He arranged for you to marry Frank Wynne, did he not?”

“My father knew he was dying, Avram. He wanted me to be well taken care of. Unfortunately, he believed Frank capable of that, on this farm, with his cattle business. At the time, so did I.”

“Ah, but your father also dedicated himself to his church and parishioners,” Halsey replied stiffly. “I believe you forget that. Would you have me sacrifice the tiny congregation he established here in Twilight, one I have lovingly nurtured and can now proudly call my own, solely for the sake of a moldering old farm that is beyond redemption?”

“I would never ask you to sacrifice anything for me, Avram,” she said slowly.

“Oh, but you are. What of my reputation? And what of yours? Once word spreads that you’ve a...” Again, Halsey scowled at Rance.

Rance couldn’t help but scowl back.

“He’s an outlaw,” Christian offered.

“No, he’s not, Christian,” Jessica murmured. Her eyes flickered over Rance. “He’s—”

“I worked for a cattle rancher,” Rance offered, the words springing forth unchecked. Something swelled in his chest when Jessica’s pink lips parted into a soft, satisfied curve. Hell, he could imagine men selling their souls for a smile like that.

She gave Halsey a smug look.

Halsey blinked at her. “Don’t tell me you believe him worthy of sainthood, Jessica, simply because he claims he can manage a few stray head of cattle?”

“He has an honest face, Avram.”

Halsey’s jaw sagged then snapped shut. “An honest—? My dear, he looks every inch the sort who robs stagecoaches and trains and leaves innocent people for dead.”

Christian’s big blue eyes swung up to Rance. “Yep. And he has a knife. He’s gonna teach me to throw it.”

“Christian, shush.”

“Jessica, you did shoot the man. For very good reason, I presume, you deemed it prudent to disregard my orders to keep your hands from that firearm. Were you possessed of some sort of aim, I’d warrant you’d have killed him. Am I mistaken?”

Again her chin inched upward. “I would kill anyone who would think to harm my son.”

Halsey all but smacked his lips with satisfaction. “Aha! And there you have it. Take a moment, if you would, and listen to yourself. You’re finally making some sense.”

“Of course I am, Avram. I have been all along. I make it a point to always make sense. Mr. Stark means us no harm.” Her eyes flickered over Rance, lingered on his bandaged shoulder, then scooted away. “Indeed, I believe I owe him some sort of recompense.”

“Recompense?” Halsey sputtered. “Simply for being the unfortunate recipient of your bad shot?”

Rance barely heard Halsey when again her gaze lifted to his. A peculiar warmth having nothing to do with his wound seeped through Rance’s chest. An honest face. No one had ever said that about him. Hell, when a man was paid for his shot, his integrity mattered very little.

“Avram, the fact remains, I shot the man.”

“Then feed him, if you feel you must, and send him on his way. As for this ridiculous notion of hiring him on, the townsfolk shan’t see the logic in that, Jessica. You know as well as I that your reputation cannot withstand—”

“Avram, I care far more about righting my injustices and salvaging this farm than I do about vicious gossip.”

“So you say. But I ask you, what of me?”

“You? Why, Avram, busy as you are with the church, you need not bother yourself with the farm any longer. Odd, but I would think you most of all would understand my need for a hand and encourage it, knowing me as you say you do. After all, did you not advise Mabel Brown to hire on a farmhand when her husband passed on? I don’t recall overhearing even one dire bit of warning when Melvin Hodges filled that post.”

“Melvin Hodges is a toothless, bandy-legged old man, Jessica. He’s lived in Twilight longer than anyone. He’s harmless. Better still, we know him. He’s not some misbegotten devil of the prairie. And old Widow Brown is all but confined to her bed with rheumatism.”

“She’s a lovely woman, Avram. What are you saying, precisely?”

Halsey pressed the heels of his hands to his forehead, as if to assuage some deep ache. “All I know at this moment is that you are making no sense whatsoever. And I shan’t stand here in your private...room and discuss the matter another moment.” Halsey glowered at Rance. “What the devil are you looking at, Stark?”

Rance gave the good reverend a bland look.

Jessica faced Rance, with that one slight shift of her shoulders entirely dismissing Halsey. And then Rance saw it all emblazoned in her eyes, too clearly, far too guilelessly, and that warmth in his chest burgeoned into a deep, gut-wrenching ache of realization. Rance had taken much more from her in Wichita than a husband, a father, a protector and provider. His had been the hand that thrust this house and farm into disrepair. He had brought her all this heartache and turmoil. He had put that uncloaked desperation in her eyes. And he knew, beyond a doubt, that without help, she would lose it all. Halsey would see to that, no matter how stubbornly she fought him, or the inevitable crumbling of the farm around her and the wilting of all her pitiful strawberry plants. A woman this self-righteous would stand stalwart for something that just might not be worth the fight.

Hell, he’d never met a woman who would choose back-breaking toil, even the humiliation of failure, over the relatively comfortable life Halsey was offering her. More than a few of the saloon girls he’d known in his lifetime had been widowed at young ages, with children and farms left to their care. They’d abandoned the harsh realities of farm life, the drudgery, the inevitability of failure, and opted for the life of a whore. The lesser of two evils, they’d told him, their faces ravaged by far more than the effects of unrelenting sun and wind as they bemoaned their lack of alternatives. Not Jessica Wynne. He couldn’t imagine a desperate Jessica bemoaning anything. She had scoffed at the doubters and was eager to pin her every hope upon a man she’d just met, out of some spurious sense of noble justice. The man who just happened to be responsible for it all.

Simply because she thought he had an honest face. Yet some part of him suddenly wanted to prove to her that he was deserving of all that misplaced faith. He wanted to give her back all he was responsible for taking from her and Christian. Perhaps then he could vanquish some small part of this damned guilt squirming in his gut. Then he would ride away from Frank Wynne’s widow and child, knowing he’d done all he could to right the wrong he’d done.

There was the risk of being caught by any number of bounty hunters certain to be after him. And then there was the matter of deceiving this woman.

Yet as his gaze clashed with Halsey’s over her blond head, he knew he couldn’t simply mount his horse and leave. Not yet, at least. If he did, she would lose it all. And he would sacrifice his chance at redemption, his opportunity to ease some of that confusion and pain he knew lay buried deep inside Christian’s narrow chest.

Rance had long ago numbed himself to that kind of pain. When a man—but he’d been just a child himself then, all of fifteen—when a child was left orphaned, he learned to live within himself, to create a secret place in his soul into which he could burrow if need be. The numbness... Hell, killing as many Johnny Rebs as he could in the war had tempered some of the anger, had even earned him honors, decorations only the most heroic deserved. But he knew better. When a man lived that long inside himself, he cared very little about death and dying, and even less about heroics.

Numb. Yes, he’d long ago grown entirely numb to anything but the most basic of human needs. Hunger. Thirst. The need for sleep. The need for sex. But Christian didn’t deserve such a fate. Christian deserved the second chance Rance had never been given. Perhaps this was, after all, the reason he’d come.

At the moment, he’d like to think the reason was founded on some noble aspiration and not just a fool’s blundering instinct.

“How is your shoulder, Mr. Stark?”

He found himself wishing she would say his name...Rance...in the same haunting tone. But he’d taken enough of a risk in telling her his name was Logan. “It should be well enough in a day or two, ma’am.” He flexed his right arm and balled his fist. “I can still manage a hammer.”

“No.” Halsey ground out the word. “I shan’t allow it. This will not happen, I tell you.”

“Be quiet, Avram. Mr. Stark, I can offer you food, and lodging in the barn. Your horse can bed down there at night and graze in the small field during the day...though the fence needs some work. I hope that will suffice until winter.”

“It will not,” Halsey said with a huff. “Winter is six months from now. Do you realize what you’re saying, Jessica?”

“Of course I do, Avram. Now calm down before you give yourself indigestion.”

“Indigestion? I shall thank the good Lord if I don’t succumb to apoplexy this very night.”

“Then you must remind me to give you two doses of your elixir before you leave, Avram. Is the arrangement suitable, Mr. Stark?”

Rance didn’t spare Halsey the merest glance. Nor did Jessica. “Fine, ma’am.”

“Good heavens, Jessica. Do you realize you’re all but conducting business with a perfect stranger in your private—?”

“I’ll start supper, then,” she said crisply, brushing past Avram, with Christian clinging at her heels.

“Jessica!” Halsey bellowed down the hall, his face mottled with rage. His color only deepened when Rance ducked through the doorway. Halsey shifted his shoulders, purposely blocking Rance’s path. “And where the devil are you going, Stark?”

Rance slanted the shorter man a hooded look. “To the barn, Halsey. Or would you rather I remain here in Jessica’s bedroom? The floor is remarkably comfortable.”

Halsey shook so with his rage, a well-oiled lock of hair spilled over his forehead. “Jessica!” he yelled in Rance’s wake. “I shan’t stand for it! You shall be my wife in a scant few months. And goodly wives must obey their husbands. It’s the Lord’s word. Do you hear me, Jessica? This outlaw shall not sleep one night in my barn. Jessica? Do you hear me?”

She was staring from the kitchen window, a large potato clenched in one fist, her other hand gently stroking her son’s head. Rance could almost feel the tender loving emanating from her fingertips, the silent emotion flowing between mother and son. Rance grew acutely aware that he wished he could remember the same gentle mother’s touch upon his brow, making the world right for him.

Only when Rance bumped into the table on his way out the door did Jessica glance at him. He had to pause then, his hand clasped about the loose doorknob, when the hint of a curve softened her mouth just as the afternoon sunlight spilled over mother and child like warm honey.

He shoved the door wide. Hot sun slapped his forehead. Heat and dust wrapped around him, and he strode to the barn with a foreign sense of determination blossoming in his gut.

* * *

The back door slammed. “He’s gone,” Christian said, and poked one finger into a bowl of blackberries.

Jessica froze between table and stove and clutched a damp rag to her belly. She stared at her son’s chubby finger sifting through the freshly washed fruit and listened to the heightened thumping of her pulse. “Who’s gone?” she asked slowly.

Christian grabbed a fistful of berries and shoved them all into his mouth. “Rrvrrnnn Allseee.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Jessica said, an odd relief spilling through her limbs. Relief...that Avram had finally given up the fight for the evening, of course, and that he had managed to remove himself from the farm without pausing to engage in fisticuffs with a wounded Logan Stark.

Avram had declined her offer to stay for dinner. She’d felt it then, too, this relief, particularly when he’d given her his typical swift passing of his dry lips over her cheek. Always the same, that farewell kiss, no matter the time of day or their mood. Reliable, that was her Avram. Dependable, if a bit steeped in moral self-consciousness. A fine quality in a husband, one Jessica could appreciate only now, after experiencing the true depths of Frank’s deception.

“Wash up, Christian.” Her fingers wrapped about Christian’s tiny wrist, just as it was poised again over the fruit. “Not before supper. Where are your shoes?”

He blinked at her through his bangs. Never guilt or remorse there, just a simple stating of the facts, the irrefutable conviction that she, the female, would be left to see to the righting of things. She knew precisely what he was going to say. “I don’t know where my shoes are.”

“Find them before you step on something.”

“I can’t. I’m too hungry.”

Jessica released a weary breath and turned to retrieve a large iron pot simmering on the stove. “Then set the table for me...after you wash up.”

Christian scooted a chair to the wash pump, clambered onto it, and pumped vigorously until water splashed everywhere. “Is Mr. Stark going to eat with us? I think he’s hungry.”

“Of course he is....” She placed the pot of soup upon the table and thrust a rag at Christian the precise moment he wiped his hands dry on his dirt-smudged shirt. “Hungry, that is,” she said. Her gaze found the ladder-back chair opposite, the chair left vacant for over a year now. Her husband Frank’s chair. Avram refused to sit in it. Even Christian, who on any given day preferred to venture from chair to chair for his meals, never once gave that particular chair his consideration.

Stark’s shoulders would surely fill this small kitchen. She wondered how much a man of his size would eat, how those long legs would fit beneath this table. They’d reach clear beneath her own chair. No, it wouldn’t do to have the man dine here, with them.

The now seemingly insignificant pot of vegetable soup jarred against the table when Christian plunked three bowls next to the pot. Again she stilled his hand as it inched toward the blackberries.

“No,” she said. “I’ll take his dinner out to him. Set the table for two, Christian.”

“But, Mama—”

“Napkins on the left.”

“I know.” With his tongue curling out of his mouth, Christian folded the cloth napkins and placed them to the right of the stoneware plates. “He has a big horse, Mama. It’s black.”

“Imagine that,” she replied, repositioning the napkins on the left.

“It’s in the barn with him. I’m gonna ride it.”

“I don’t believe you will.”

“We can hitch it to our broken wagon.”

“We’ll get our own horse soon and hitch it to the buckboard, after Reverend Halsey fixes it.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“You always say that. Soon. Is that when Reverend Halsey is gonna be my pa?”

The ladle poised over the pot. “Yes, I suppose it is. Quite soon.”

Christian thrust out his chin. “Then we’ll never get a horse, because Reverend Halsey doesn’t like them. He says they smell.”

“And he’s right. They do smell. That’s why they live in the barn with the other animals.”

“Mr. Stark doesn’t smell.”

Yes, he did...like baked leather and warm male skin. Her arms went suddenly weak. The ladle banged against the bottom of the pot. “No...I mean, he...” All words left her.

Christian frowned up at her through his bangs. “So why does he have to sleep in the barn?”

The ladle stirred and stirred. Jessica sought her words from the swirling soup and found nothing but a heightened thumping of her pulse.

“He could sleep on the floor in your room, Mama. He’s too big for the bed.”

“Stop it, Christian,” she snapped suddenly. Too suddenly, her voice brimming with an odd agitation. Regret flooded through her even before she could reach out a hand to caress that blond head. But Christian seemed to shrug off her mood in his typical fashion. In another instant, his finger inched toward the blackberries. This time, perhaps because of her regret, she didn’t stop him, and directed all her thoughts to ladling the steaming soup. She watched the characteristic scrunching of Christian’s nose as he glowered at the soup and then his gaze darted to the stove, seeking. Would this ritual never cease?

“Mama—”

“You’re eating the soup, Christian.”

“But, Mama—”

“Sit.”

“Can I eat with Mr. Stark in the barn?”

“Mama wants you to eat with her. Here. Now sit.”

He thrust out his lower lip and slid half on, half off the chair. One bare foot kicked belligerently at the table leg. He scowled into his bowl and pushed his spoon around with his thumb. “It’s too hot. I can’t eat it.”

“Blow on it.” Jessica eased into the chair next to his and felt the blood drain from her legs. She hadn’t been off her feet since sunup. Her dress hung heavy with dust and a day’s perspiration. Even muscles she’d had no idea she possessed cried out for a long soak in a warm tub of water. If only she wouldn’t have to haul it from the well, and heat it, and haul it again to her wooden tub.

“Aren’t you going to take Mr. Stark his dinner?”

“Oh.”

Christian sprang from his chair before she could move. “I’ll do it!”

“Sit.” Jessica curled her son’s fingers around his spoon and glared at him over her pointed index finger. “Eat. I’ll tend to Mr. Stark.”

“I wanted to,” Christian grumbled into his soup.

“I don’t believe Mr. Stark is the sort a young boy like you should be tending to, Christian.” Carefully she arranged the soup and utensils on a wooden platter. “We know very little about him, after all.”

“He’s a stranger, isn’t he, Mama?”

Her gaze slid to the window and beyond, where the barn crouched in dusky shadows. Somewhere within, Stark lurked in the shadows, as well, with his horse, his knife, perhaps a gun.

“Strangers are mean.”

“Not all strangers,” Jessica replied.

“Mr. Stark’s not.”

“No, I don’t suppose he is.”

“He’s gonna stay because you shot him, right, Mama? And you shouldn’t have shot him, right?”

A frown quivered along her brows as she sought the best possible explanation.

“I think you just wanted to make Reverend Halsey mad. Because he won’t help us fix our barn and our wagon, right, Mama? That’s why, right?”

Jessica glared at her son, then snatched up the bowl of blackberries and several cloth napkins, wondering at the unease stirring within her. “Mr. Stark is seeking work, Christian. I’ve hired him on. He’s going to fix our barn and the house, and then he’s going to leave.”

Twin blue saucers blinked at her. “So he’s not a stranger.”

“I still don’t want you bothering the man, Christian.”

“You like him, don’t you, Mama?”

A disturbing heat spread through Jessica’s cheeks. “I don’t know him well enough to like or dislike him, Christian, or to trust him. And neither do you. Now eat.”

Christian gave a shrug, plunged his spoon into his soup and gobbled it down. “Good dinner, Mama.”

She gave her son a last glower that couldn’t help but dissolve into a weary smile. And then she turned and headed for the barn.

* * *

Rance watched her from the moment she stepped foot from the house. Concealed by the lengthening shadows, he sat propped against a bale of hay in one corner of the barn. The air hung thick and heavy with a day’s worth of dust and the smell of his horse and his own sun-baked flesh. Through a four-inch gap in the barn’s wall planks, he’d watched the sun set over a bleak and barren horizon and listened to the sounds of dusk as would one who’d grown accustomed to the peculiar comfort the trill of a cricket provided. Comforts were few, after all, for a man on the run, a man alone. It had been that way for him for so long now, eighteen years long. His past had become one long, dusty tableau. Crickets had come to be enough on most nights, when light proved insufficient for reading.

But now, watching Jessica Wynne moving toward him, a reed-slender, womanly shadow, he knew a stirring so deep his fists balled, sending a stab of pain through his left shoulder and a reminder that he was crushing Frank Wynne’s gold locket in his other fist. Some sound must have escaped him, for she paused just as she entered the barn. It was an indecisive pause, as if she feared something here.

No, he didn’t want that. Never that.

He stuffed the locket into his watch pocket. “Ma’am—” He lurched to his feet, out of the shadows and into the arc of soft light emitted by the kerosene lantern she held.

She didn’t retreat a step, though she looked like she wanted to when her gaze widened and drifted over his bare chest. He imagined her back drew up as rigid and brittle as a dried-up twig. Thin fingers clutched at the platter she carried, and her breath seemed trapped in her chest. Her breasts pushed full and high against worn gray muslin.

He swallowed, his throat thick and bone-dry. Damn him for coming here, for every twisted fool’s reason he’d given himself to stay. Beneath it all, and not too far beneath it, he was a man, and as any man’s would, his body responded to hers, to the heat and the darkness and intimacy of this desolate farm, before conscience could tell him otherwise.

“I brought you supper,” she said, her fingers still gripping the platter as though she dared not let it go.

“Soup,” he said. He watched the steam rise from the bowl. Hot soup on a hot, dry Kansas evening. He knew he’d eat it all and sweat the night away on his thick bedroll. All that was left in his saddlebags was stale bacon wrapped in cheesecloth, and coffee. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Her eyes flickered to his bandaged shoulder. “I should see to that.”

“Can I eat first?”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course.” She glanced about, apparently unsure which bale of hay was best to serve as a table, until he reached for the platter. His fingers brushed over hers and curled securely around the wood. Their gazes locked.

He arched a brow. “Care to join me?”

She released the platter into his hands as if it were suddenly aflame. Color bloomed in her cheeks, and he wondered how many men she’d known in her lifetime. Not many, judging by her discomfort. Her fists suddenly took a death grip on her skirts.

“I...” She waved a hand in a vague direction and seemed incapable of looking him in the eye.

“Ah. You don’t regularly dine in the barn with men you shoot.”

That prompted a glare. “I’ve never shot anyone.”

“I’m flattered.”

“Have you?”

He set the platter upon two stacked bales and straddled another. He glanced at her, aware that her heavy-soled shoes shuffled nervously upon the hay-strewn floor. “An odd question, ma’am, given that you’ve hired me on and fixed me a fine dinner. What is it you’re curious about? My ability to defend you and your son, or my evil intentions here? I thought we were beyond that.”

She jutted her chin at him. “A woman can’t be too careful when she lives alone. Indeed, one can’t help but cringe at the tales of horror and pillaging common to the taming of the frontier. I’m still not quite used to it, even after twenty-two years.”

“You should have asked if I owned a gun, then.”

“Do you?”

“Why, yes, ma’am, I do.” He watched those sapphire eyes skitter about the shadowed barn before they settled upon his saddle and gear, heaped upon the floor at his booted feet. He could see it all, the blossoming realization that he could, at any moment, snatch his pistol from his saddlebags, level it between those beautiful blue eyes...

Ignoring all those unspoken accusations, he plunged his spoon into his soup and took a heaping swallow. He couldn’t remember the last time anything had ever tasted so good, even without his characteristic whiskey to accompany it. Two, three more spoonfuls and the bowl was nearly empty. He glanced again at her, suddenly aware that she was staring at him now, not at his gear. He shoved the napkin across his mouth, tossed it aside, then half rose from his seat, one hand reaching for his gear. “I keep my gun in my saddlebag. I don’t suppose you’d care to see it?”

She shook her head and took a step back. Wariness again invaded her eyes. “N-no. Thank you, I’d rather not. I trust you know how to use it.” At the moment, she didn’t look like she trusted him one damn bit. So much for honest faces.

“I wouldn’t carry one if I didn’t.” He settled his bare back against the barn wall and felt the sagging boards give a good three inches. “Wouldn’t make much sense.”

“No.” She clasped and unclasped her hands and seemed to take a peculiar interest in the unfathomable darkness overhead. Looking at him was obviously beyond her capabilities at the moment. No, Jessica Wynne wasn’t the sort to linger in shadowy barns with half-naked men, at least not comfortably. She must want something, then. Perhaps reassurance that she had indeed chosen her farmhand well.

He scooped up a handful of blackberries and tossed one into his mouth, taking full advantage of her distraction to regard her through hooded eyes. She looked like something sent from heaven, or in his case, hell—all golden and soft and too damned innocent, with her unbound hair and that oversize dress that suddenly seemed to beg to be ripped off her. He forced the blackberries down a throat gone dry and reined in all these carnal thoughts. When the hell had he ever allowed them to get the better of him? His tone was purposely gruff. “Perhaps I could teach you to shoot.”

“Good heavens, no. Why would I want you to do that?”

“Because the next time a stranger walks onto your property, you might have good reason to kill him.”

“You’re the first such fellow to do so in twenty-one years. Perhaps in the next twenty or so, until the next outlaw wanders through Twilight, I shall teach myself to shoot properly.”

“In the meantime, you could aim and miss.”

“I’ll have you know I’ve never aimed and missed—” She caught herself, her eyes flickering over his bandaged shoulder. “I mean, when it would have mattered.”

To aim and miss... Memory, dark and dusty, whispered through his mind and was gone. “You don’t want to aim and miss when it matters, ma’am,” he said softly.

“Perhaps. But in the meantime, I’ve Avram.”

He couldn’t squelch a snort before he popped three berries into his mouth. He half slouched against the bowed excuse for a barn wall, chewed innocently enough, and gave her his best vague look when she planted her hands on her hips and advanced toward him.

She stood there, bathed in lamplight and dancing shadows, entirely unaware of herself as a woman and looking far too young and ripe for a man such as he, a man used to taking what he wanted from a woman. Particularly when he’d been so long without one. There, the chin jutted and the nose poked skyward, her lips compressing as though she sought just the perfect combination of words to skewer him with. He could almost hear the toe of her shoe tapping on the floor, could feel her righteous indignation in the heat of her.

“Whatever are you snickering about, Mr. Stark? If you intend to make humor at my fiancé’s expense—”

“I’ve never snickered in my life, ma’am.”

“Oh, but you’ve snickered, all right.” She waved a hand over him, directly at his bare chest. “A man who can calmly eat a meal without his shirt in front of a woman is capable of snickering. I wouldn’t doubt that you can spit, as well.”

“A nasty habit. I avoid it if I can.”

“And ill-mannered sorts are notoriously short on book learning—”

“I read Keats and Byron every night before retiring.”

“Why, you probably haven’t bathed in over a month—”

“I make it a daily habit. Bathed just this morning, ma’am. The stream was cold and deep. Perfect for bathing...” He flashed a rare smile, one that seemed to crack his skin. “Naked, of course.”

This stopped her cold, as he’d known it would. All her puffed-up defending of her beloved Avram fled, swallowed in one noisy gulp. She flushed scarlet. She stared at his bare chest, and lower, at his stomach. The blush reached clear to her hairline. He could almost read her innocent mind, the images taking full, real shape...a man, bathing naked in a cold stream.

It was hard to imagine that this woman had ever known intimacy with a man.

For whatever unfathomable reason, he was suddenly overcome with the need to apologize to her for stoking all those defenses, no matter how deserving Halsey might be, no matter how eagerly she had leapt to his defense.

Rance stood, and she took three steps back, one slender arm outstretched, as though to keep him at a proper distance.

“In the future,” she said, “I would appreciate you wearing your clothes, sir, particularly your shirt, in my presence.” She looked as though she itched to grow another seven inches taller as she lifted her gaze finally to his. “And that of my boy.”

Odd, that. Protecting her son from the sight of a man. He wondered if she’d done the same with her own husband.

He indicated the blood-soaked cloth lying on a nearby pile of hay. “My shirt, ma’am, has a bloody hole in it.”

She pursed her lips, then snatched his shirt up and stalked from the barn. Silhouetted against a sky ablaze with twilight fire, her shoulders squared, and all those blond curls bounced with each step she took. His gaze immediately narrowed upon the outline of her hips, slim, swaying and womanly. Instinct, that was it. Simply male instinct and habit—both a man like him could tame and manage, both he would feel with any woman, dammit. See, he could take his eyes off her. Easy enough.

He slouched against the barn wall, feeling weariness like lead weights in his limbs. His lids drooped, and twilight faded with the blossoming sounds of night above the lonely, slowing creak of the windmill. Yet, try as he might, he could not banish that image of Jessica Wynne from his mind, and then darkness encroached, and the creaking of the windmill grew louder, rousing age-old memories.

Mists parted on a lifetime ago.... The sleeping town of Lawrence, Kansas, all quiet save for the comforting squeak of a windmill outside his open bedroom window and then the gunshots, ripping through the predawn peace...the horrified shouts, cries for help, more gunfire, carnage, and his parents crumpling lifeless beside him as he struggled to take aim, to get off one good shot before the outlaw gang disappeared into the darkness.

Something touched him. He roared awake, the demon stirring to life within him for the first time in years. A shadow loomed close, yet he didn’t strike out. No, he would grapple with his ghosts, dammit. He lunged upward in the darkness, his fingers meeting flesh, yet he gripped those delicate limbs and with one flex of his arms lifted this insignificant weight entirely against him, flush from chest to hips.

“M-Mr. Stark.”

The fog cleared. That warm, lemony woman-scent spilled over him. No ghost. He stared into Jessica Wynne’s wide blue eyes.