“Some Do Not Care About The Rules For Bride Courting,

“or the way a man and a woman choose each other,” Tanner said softly. “We skipped that part the first time. We let others tear us apart.”

Gwyneth shivered. “That time is gone now, Tanner.”

“Is it? You kissed me hard, Gwyneth, as if you’d waited and couldn’t wait a minute more. Did you think of how it would be, not only the loving, but the life we could have had, babies held close and loved between us?”

She’d dreamed of him…erotic dreams in which he’d moved over her, filled her, stroked and heated her body with his kisses. “It was only a kiss.” The lie crackled around her. “Why are you here?” she asked in a shaky whisper.

“Because I have to know if we could have made it work.”

Dear Reader,

This April of our 20th anniversary year, Silhouette will continue to shower you with powerful, passionate, provocative love stories!

Cait London offers an irresistible MAN OF THE MONTH, Last Dance, which also launches her brand-new miniseries FREEDOM VALLEY. Sparks fly when a strong woman tries to fight her feelings for the rugged man who’s returned from her past. Night Music is another winner from BJ James’s popular BLACK WATCH series. Read this touching story about two wounded souls who find redeeming love in each other’s arms.

Anne Marie Winston returns to Desire with her emotionally provocative Seduction, Cowboy Style, about an alpha male cowboy who seeks revenge by seducing his enemy’s sister. In The Barons of Texas: Jill by Fayrene Preston, THE BARONS OF TEXAS miniseries offers another feisty sister, and the sexy Texan who claims her.

Desire’s theme promotion THE BABY BANK, in which interesting events occur on the way to the sperm bank, continues with Katherine Garbera’s Her Baby’s Father. And Barbara McCauley’s scandalously sexy miniseries SECRETS! offers another tantalizing tale with Callan’s Proposition, featuring a boss who masquerades as his secretary’s fiancé.

Please join in the celebration of Silhouette’s 20th anniversary by indulging in all six Desire titles—which will fulfill your every desire!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

Last Dance
Cait London

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Kerry, a potter.

CAIT LONDON

lives in the Missouri Ozarks but loves to travel the Northwest’s gold rush/cattle drive trails every summer. She enjoys research trips, meeting people and going to Native American dances. Ms. London is an avid reader who loves to paint, play with computers and grow herbs (particularly scented geraniums right now). She’s a national bestselling and award-winning author, and she has also written historical romances under another pseudonym. Three is her lucky number; she has three daughters, and the events in her life have always been in threes. “I love writing for Silhouette,” Cait says. “One of the best perks about all this hard work is the thrilling reader response and the warm, snug sense that I have given readers an enjoyable, entertaining gift.”

AN INVITATION FROM CAIT LONDON

I invite you to step into my brand-new series, FREEDOM VALLEY. I hope you enjoy Last Dance, the first of this series. The town, Freedom, is just as picturesque as the valley, packed with everything a small town usually has—except its traditions.

Set in Montana, the series is based on women of the 1880s who came together for protection. Back then, men desiring wives had to present themselves according to the Rules of Courting and the traditions those independent women established. Contemporary males, including the Bachelor Club, chafe at the rules, but The Women’s Council intends to keep those traditions.

In Last Dance, a Freedom Valley tradition, you’ll get a good taste of what is to come as we visit each family established by those Founding Mothers.

See you in Freedom Valley—

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Prologue

Town of Freedom, 1882

From the journal of Magda Claas

We named our valley Freedom, and our town, too. There were ten of us at first, that hot, dry summer of 1881. We found ourselves by chance, gathered in a small beautiful valley, sharing what we had to survive. Beautiful, snowcapped mountains soared along one side of the valley and there was a lovely lake and lush wild grass for our stock. We came from all parts of the world, women with children, women who had lost families and who had seen the darker side of life. Fleur Arnaud, unmarried, had lost a child by a man who took her against her will. Anatasia Duscha’s husband and son died in the wars. Beatrice Avril was a bondwoman, preyed upon by men for her pretty looks and dainty ways. Jasmine Dupree, full with child, had come from the poor South. Cynthia Whitehall came from Boston for freedom her family would not give. China Belle Ruppurt had run from buffalo hunters who had used her poorly. Fancy Benjamin’s father sold her to a farmer for a sack of oats, and widowed Margaret Gertraud’s breads and rolls didn’t save her or her children from thieves who took everything and left them starving. We know little about the woman called LaRue, except that she had loved and lost.

Magda Claas is my name, and I know how to work. I want a man, the man I choose for a husband, not to see me as a cow in the field or a servant, but as a woman with a heart and pride. I wish to be treated gently, as I have seen men honor their wives. At the end of the day, I crochet lace with needle and thread, and dream of the man I will accept into my heart.

What a strange mix we were, some of us with children clinging to our skirts, or nursing at our breasts. All ten of us without men and not caring much for those that came calling with crude ways.

We wanted to choose our lives, and so it was that day with rawhide men and drovers and rapscallions circling us, that we decided to act. By the end of summer, we knew what we had to do to live as we wished, as we dreamed, and so we made our laws for men who came wife-hunting.

We were not helpless women to be preyed upon by these rough men. Each of us knew how to protect ourselves, and together we were strong as a family.

So it was that we decided to come together, farmers and mothers and women with pasts. We became a community of women who helped each other, governed by the Women’s Council. For we would be free women, to set the rules of how we should be treated as wives. For be it known, that to take a dear wife from our circle, the husband-candidate will have to follow our rules and customs, abide with those rules in the marriage, passing our inspection. Else there would be no marriages or wife-taking in Freedom. We stand together in this, women deciding to marry as we wish, protected by our sisterhood.

Magda Claas, Midwife and Healer and Butter Maker

Town of Freedom, Freedom Valley

Montana Territory, July 1882

One

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?

Two

Not all men have good hearts, and that is why the Founding Mothers of Freedom Valley decided to lay out their terms when men came courting. I do not like the rage that burns in my heart now, for someone I love has been hurt and I am powerless to avenge her.

—Anna Bennett

Gwyneth dragged herself from under the tractor and wiped her greasy hands on a rag. She swished the barn’s straw from the backside of her cutoff bib overalls, and stood snarling at the metal monster she’d coaxed to life. She hated the old tractor with all her soul; the unsteady feral growling noises provided frustration relief, curling around the airy old barn. She flopped on her baseball hat and damned Tanner Bennett for making her lose a precious night’s sleep. Yesterday, Tanner had invaded her life, her nightmares. She didn’t want to remember him at all, not the tender way he’d kissed her back then, nor the pain and frustration in his expression that night and all the other times he’d tried to call or talk to her.

She’d hurt him badly, and yesterday his scars were showing. Tanner wasn’t the sweetheart she’d known. The lines across his broad forehead and the crinkling at the corner of his eyes told of hours in the weather. She could almost smell the salt air upon him, the nuances of foreign lands and experience with women. Clean-cut Tanner of years ago was now a man with dark, sultry eyes and broad, powerful shoulders that she wanted to—

She shook her head. No man should have such a flat ridged stomach, narrow hips and long, powerful legs. His worn deck shoes marked his experiences away from Freedom Valley and from her. His body, though still lean, was that of a workman…corded, solid and sending out restless vibrations to hers. Tanner had always preferred action to paperwork and there was a hard, fierce look about him, his shields raised. His dislike of her had draped around her like a heavy, cold cloak.

“Swaggering, arrogant—” she muttered, then a flash of a younger, boyish Tanner, clad in his football armor and winking at her, set her heart tumbling. She didn’t want to remember how he had looked all those years ago, walking toward her, dark eyes gleaming, the night of the Sweetheart Dance. She was just eighteen and it was the first time Tanner had taken her to a dance. She’d been thrilled, freed from her father, filled with summer’s sweet expectations and wearing her first dressy dress, borrowed from Kylie. Tanner had taken her in his arms for the last dance, and she’d felt he was taking her in his arms for a lifetime—

Now, she shivered, mentally tearing herself away from that sweet moment years ago. She’d made a life she could live and without her father’s steady demands, she found peace in a hard day’s work and long, quiet hours at her wheel. She missed Leather, of course, because despite his stingy, hard ways, she was his daughter and loved him. But Anna had been the mother she’d never known—sweet, loving Anna, who understood her fears and always offered a comforting cup of herbal tea….

Gwyneth slashed her forearm across her face, the flannel wiping away the tears. She swallowed and straightened with the resolve that had served her through the years of keeping the Smith ranch, of paying her father’s medical bills. Dew hung on the pasture, and mist layered the morning. Somehow she’d work and manage as she always had…and then Tanner would be gone. He’d only come to set his mother’s house aright, a sad obligation; then he’d be off to a life far from Freedom Valley. She had only to wait. She’d coolly smile at the town’s friendly nudges toward her ex-husband, keep quiet, and mind her own business.

“Oh my, he’s a handsome man. He’s got those wide shoulders and that seaman’s walk and he’s sweet just like Anna. I see her in him,” Willa at the café had said, taking the fresh eggs from Gwyneth. “I’m glad you’re keeping Anna’s chickens. She would have liked that, because she clearly loved you like a daughter.”

Yesterday, Tanner’s dislike of her, a woman who had run from her marriage bed and shivered in fear, was as clear as the wide blue Montana sky. His scowl had turned into a wicked, taunting grin because he knew the truth of their wedding night and the consummation that never took place. It was their secret that he could hold and twist and torment—“Oh, Gwynnie…”

She hated him for that—for holding a part of her life that she’d shared with no one, except his mother. But Tanner didn’t know the reason she fled that night and she wouldn’t give that to him, too. She’d told her deepest fears and the reasons for them to Anna, who had held her as she’d cried.

She had work to do, a ranch to tend, and pots to make and none of that required any thought of an ex-husband. There in the shadows of the barn, the cats daintily licking at the fresh creamy milk she’d given them, Gwyneth kicked the tractor’s tire again. She was in an evil, dark mood and Tanner was the cause of her missing sleep. As she had done for years, she threw out her hands and released the biggest yell possible, stirring the swallows in the rafters. With a quick, tight, satisfied smile that her frustration release technique had worked, she jerked the leather gloves from her back pocket, jamming them onto her hands.

A sharp, happy bark whipped her head around to the doorway, where the intruder stood. She couldn’t see his face, but the tall, powerful lines of his body said Tanner had come to call, Penny and Rolf nuzzling against his hands. “Get off my land, Tanner,” she snapped, walking toward him.

There was no Leather to stand between them now, no sweet Anna to help soothe the rough edges of her fears. Time had changed Gwyneth, for now she wanted to deal with that nasty mood prowling between them. She’d been in control of her life before he’d come back and she’d liked her freedom; she wouldn’t have another man pulling her strings by anger or by love. “Penny. Rolf. Down,” Gwyneth ordered and immediately the dogs sat by Tanner.

“You yelled?” he asked in an overpolite tone. “You seem to like doing that.” In the misty morning, his hair was damp and waving, his jaw dark with stubble. His mouth was set in the same unforgiving grim line as yesterday, but today fury burned his deep-set eyes. The black sweatshirt he wore emphasized his dangerous look, his worn jeans and work boots damp with dew from his walk to her house. “You should answer your telephone, Gwyneth. I didn’t like your little visit yesterday. It wasn’t polite. I thought I’d repay the favor and even the score.”

She cut her hand across a layer of cool mist, tearing away the cobweb tenderness of the past. “There is no score between us. I stay on my land and you’re trespassing, Bennett.”

“You’re in a nasty mood, Mrs. Bennett. Had a good night’s sleep, did you?” he asked in a dark, pleasant tone that lifted the hairs on her nape. The name Bennett slapped her, accused her.

“Did you?” she tossed back; she had no guilt to spare for him. Gwyneth resented looking up those inches to his face, resented the tremor that went through her, the memories that had been safely tucked away slashing at her.

He handed her a note written by Anna. “This was by her telephone.”

The note read: “Call Gwyneth. Ask her to plow my garden.”

Gwyneth fought the hot burn of her tears, carefully folding the note and tucking it into her bib overalls pocket; she’d read it again later, treasuring a woman she loved. “I usually do that for her. That was six weeks ago….”

“You never plowed it.” Tanner’s voice was angry, biting her, condemning her. His gaze slashed the corral gate, hanging from one hinge, the unpainted house and the assortment of old farm equipment rusting in the field. “You’re killing yourself on this place. You’ve got guard dogs—trained guard dogs—four locks on the front and back doors, and you’re…”

His lips clamped on the rest and he scowled at her. “I want this cleaned up. I’m not going anywhere soon and I don’t want you tearing into my mother’s driveway again for a kamikaze attack. You’re working too hard,” he added more softly, watching her too intently, as though he could see where the darkness tore at her.

“Ranch work is hard. It’s my land now and I’m keeping it. Fences don’t mend themselves, you know, and cattle still have to be fed in the winter, when a blizzard comes through.”

Tanner slammed his open hand against the weathered barn boards. “Don’t hand me that. You’re still terrified of men—or is it just me? Everything was fine until that night—you were a bit pale and jittery looking, but innocent brides-to-be are known to be—What happened to you, Gwyneth?”

“Lay off,” she said, brushing by him and slapping her bare thigh for her dogs to follow. Penny and Rolf remained at Tanner’s boots, tongues hanging out as they grinned, their tails happily thumping the ground.

She slapped her bare thigh again, impatiently this time, and Tanner’s easy smile wasn’t nice. “We’ve become friends. As soon as your van leaves, they both run to mother’s house. They each have a bowl at her back steps and I just continued to feed them as she had done. They are trained guard dogs and I want to know why. Invite me in and we’ll chat. Just to set the rules. Unless you’re afraid.”

Afraid? When had she not been afraid? Gwyneth tried to ignore the pounding of her heart and fought back to when she hadn’t been afraid—she hadn’t been afraid of Tanner and Leather was a man others feared, keeping her safe. Then just before the wedding, her life had changed. “I’m not afraid of anything,” she lied.

“Well, then, you won’t be afraid to invite me in for a neighborly chat, will you?”

“You’re nosing around here, just for the sheer nastiness of it. Anna wouldn’t have liked that.”

He looked down at her, and for a heartbeat, the hard line of his mouth softened. “Are you getting all steamed up to yell again, Gwynnie?”

“Anna wouldn’t have wanted you bothering me,” she restated firmly.

Don’t hide behind my mother. Don’t ever hide from me behind anyone again,” he said, reminding her of how she’d hovered behind Leather, afraid to talk with the husband she abandoned on their wedding night.

“I can handle you on my own,” she answered, lifting her chin to angle a hard stare up at him.

“Can you?” The question was too soft as Tanner reached out, grabbed the flannel shirt covering her T-shirt and hauled her up close to him. Fear ruling her, Gwyneth brought her boot down on his and there in the quiet layers of morning mist, with the meadowlark trilling on the old fence post and the roosters crowing, Tanner studied her face. “I’m wearing steel toe work boots, honey. I never felt a thing. Now that was an interesting move. You’ve had some self-defense training, too, haven’t you? Why?”

Her hands had sought an anchor as he’d lifted her to her tiptoes, and the warm muscles surging on his upper arms told her that Tanner had only gotten stronger. She met his dark look, forced her fingers to uncurl from his arms and pushed the trembling fear back in its hole.

“The Founding Mothers knew how to shoot well enough to protect themselves and others. Times haven’t changed that much, just a new twist on the methods,” she shot back and tore herself free of him. She breathed unsteadily, trying to recover her reality before Tanner began prying into her life, yet every breath took his scent into her.

“Not around here. That’s what the video training course was at my mother’s, wasn’t it? She was helping you. Why?”

She missed Anna terribly. “We were friends. I loved her. She helped me…we learned self-defense together. That’s all you need to know.”

“My mother? Sparring in the backyard?” he asked in disbelief.

His expression was dazed, almost comical and Gwyneth waded in to deepen the shock and shake his almighty arrogance. Apparently Tanner had the same view of women as Leather—that they needed big, strong men to protect them. “We used my barn hay and I was very, very careful not to hurt her, but she tossed me good once or twice. I was quick, but Anna was sure.”

Tanner ran his hand through his waves, tilting his head in that old way, his eyes shadowed by those gleaming lashes, as though he was trying to understand. He lifted his head to scan the Smith ranch yard and fields, the house with its missing shingles and boards nailed over her bedroom window. His gaze lingered there, reminding her of how he’d tossed a pebble at her window years ago; he’d given her a wildflower bouquet at midnight and told her he loved her. Now the sound of his hand sliding slowly across his unshaven jaw caused her to shiver. “Invite me in, Gwyneth. Let’s talk. I need answers.”

“Is that why you came? To push and pry and ruin my life again?”

“You’re hot-tempered too early in the morning—I wonder why? Is it because you know that I tried and you didn’t? How many times did I try to talk with you? How many times did I call? And how many times did Leather lie for you, enjoying taunting me?” His finger strolled down her taut jaw. “I came to get my mother’s two milk cows. You’ve got enough to do here without milking chores. But the yell sounded real interesting—I want answers, Gwyneth. Something is very wrong and it has been for years. You flinched when I touched you yesterday and again today. Haven’t you gotten over that yet? Do I repulse you that much?”

For just a beat of her heart, Tanner’s expression revealed that same quick shaft of confusion and pain. Then his look down at her was too mild, his half smile too practiced.

She swallowed, forcing moisture down her dry throat, for this man wasn’t young Tanner; dark rivers of emotions ran through him now, and the mist seemed to pulse with his storms.

“Everything is just peachy. Go away.” She wished she hadn’t seen the doily escaping his jeans pocket. He missed Anna, and the painful task of separating her household possessions still awaited him and his sisters.

“Sure,” he returned easily. “I knew you’d be too afraid to actually talk to me. Is that your studio, that addition onto the old house?”

He was a carpenter, learning from his father, a hand-craftsman and perfectionist. The addition she’d built was poor looking, but sturdy. She’d used old boards from a shack, read how to build a block foundation and set studs, but none of it could compare with the work Tanner could do. It was all hers, her safe place, where the potter’s wheel hummed and fear and worry spun away in the clay. She couldn’t let him into her life; she couldn’t. “I’ve got work to do—”

“Sure you do, Gwyneth.” His singsong taunt said he didn’t believe her, that he knew she was trying to escape him. “You can yell now. I hear it’s good therapy,” he said before turning and strolling toward Anna’s two milk cows.

Penny and Rolf followed at Tanner’s heels. “Deserters,” Gwyneth muttered darkly and tried not to notice how Tanner had become broader than the boy, his walk easy in the manner of a man who was proud, who knew who he was, and where he was going. As if he decided his fate. She resented that confidence, resented the hungry lingering of her gaze upon him. When Tanner reached to pet Sissy, she heard herself call, “You’re no farm boy, Tanner Bennett, and those cows need milking twice a day. Make sure you let me know when you turn them back into my pasture, and make yourself scarce in the meantime. And don’t you sell them to anyone but me. And don’t you sell Anna’s house until you let me—”

She hated swallowing the rest of the words. But the new well had cost too much and her mortgage to the bank wouldn’t allow the purchase of Anna’s home. Somehow she’d find a way, she always had, and she always paid her bills.

Tanner turned slowly, like a man who chose everything in his own time, not another’s; he studied her across the small distance of the field. Then he blew her a kiss that sailed across the morning air and knocked her back into the old barn and pushed her breath from her body. “Don’t you dare start up with me, Tanner Bennett,” she heard herself whisper shakily. “Just go somewhere I’m not.”

Late the next day, Tanner slapped his hand against the stack of new boards. Gwyneth drove herself too hard to keep the Smith ranch, doing enough work for two men. As a boy, Tanner had seen his mother too tired, pitting herself against work that was never done. He remembered the late nights when she made jams to sell, doing other people’s laundry, and then sitting down with a pad and pencil and her checkbook to see what was left. She’d cleaned houses and baby-sat, and never once complained. As soon as he could, he helped, sending money home—there was college tuition for Kylie and Miranda, but Anna wanted nothing for herself; she was happy with what she had, with the balance in her life. Anna had achieved what most sought and couldn’t find—peace.

But the frustration of seeing his mother work too hard, draining her body and mind to keep them together, to feed her growing family, had remained deep within Tanner. He’d been too young to help much, but he had, hiring out to ranchers for bailing, farm and cattle work. He’d hated the way his mother’s shoulders drooped back then, weary from work, the way her hands were too broad and callused for a woman’s, the way she’d made do with old clothes.

Now Gwyneth was doing the same thing, working too hard, trying to hold her land. Without looking at her hands, Tanner knew that Gwyneth’s were callused and competent. The defined yet feminine muscles of her shoulders, arms and legs said she’d tested her strength to the limit. He’d planned to collect Anna’s chickens, too, but Willa at the café had said that Gwyneth needed the egg-money, just like his mother had. He glanced at Koby Austin, who had come to help him build a new chicken house. Koby had lost a wife in childbirth and a son who never drew breath. Now his power saw tore across boards as fate had torn him apart. He glanced at Tanner and switched off the saw, lifting his safety glasses to his head. “This is like old times, isn’t it? You and me working together, like when you came to help my folks build that barn. You were just twelve, when your dad died, and you hitched a ride to the ranch, toting your father’s toolbox. My mother said you’d be a catch someday and that she was in love with you right then.”

Tanner tossed Koby a cola from the small cooler. “My dad taught me a skill that will always serve me. Teaching wasn’t for me and in the merchant marine, I made enough money to help Mom and my sisters. But I like the smell of new lumber, the feel of wood in my hands, waiting to come to life. I want this place in good shape—for Mom. I built the old chicken house when I was twelve and taking up where Dad had left off. It was my first project without him.”

“Some say you’ll sell, others say you Bennetts are like your mother, that Freedom Valley is where you’ll settle. That means you’ll be meeting Gwyneth upon occasion. Can you handle that? Or have you moved on since the last time you were moaning about how much you loved her?”

“Love can be evil and cold,” Tanner said, tilting his cola high. “It’s better to leave it behind.”

They sat on the stack of new lumber, facing the Smith ranch and sipped their colas in the shade of Anna’s biggest oak tree.

Tanner took a long, assessing look at his friend and Koby smirked knowingly. “Nope. Never thought about asking Gwyneth out. Rejection isn’t good for my psyche and besides that, it would seem incestuous, starting up with a good friend’s woman. But if we’re going to debate on the logic of women, we should do it in comfort—food, music and beer to ease the pain? In a righteous place where men come to understand the meaning of life and the intricacies of the female mind?”

Tanner lifted his eyebrow. “The Silver Dollar Tavern?”

Koby chugged the remainder of his cola and grinned. “I’ll make a few calls. The Women’s Council needs a little competition and we’ll have our own meeting. Now that you’re back, the rest of the pack will want in on this.”

Is the Women’s Council still shoving men around?” Tanner remembered all that his mother had said about the ten women who had come from all parts of the world to settle in Freedom Valley. They’d banded together for protection, setting the rules for potential suitors who had to pass standards before marriage.

“You betcha. My sister, Rita, wouldn’t have it any other way. She’s a widow now, with kids and a small farm, and she’s active in the Women’s Council. My brothers, Adam and Laird, scoff at the tradition and Rita jumps them. Those ten women in the 1880s may have needed protection by sticking together, but Freedom Valley’s women still have a fist hold on how a man treats a woman he wants. Our families are descended from those stubborn women who came to Montana and banded together, and times haven’t changed much.”

“So much for man’s country. Did you court your wife according to the Rules for Bride Courting?”

“I did, and so did any man around here who wanted to stay on the good side of the Women’s Council. You, my friend, did not. You rushed Gwyneth into marriage, and you’ve got a big red “Cull” marked on your backside. You may get a notice from the Women’s Council to appear before them, just to set you straight. They really enjoy defining the rules of a Cull to someone who’s been away. And you’re prime for their picking. I’m not coming to the funeral.”

Tanner took a long, deep breath filled with the scent of the newly mowed lawn. “Sometimes I wonder if things would have worked out—if I had followed the Rules for Bride Courting with Gwyneth… If I hadn’t pushed her into marrying me so quickly.”

Koby shrugged again, a man who had lost a wife and a baby. “You’ll figure it out. Every man has to come to terms with the past and the here and now.”

“You don’t intend to marry again, do you?” Tanner asked his friend.

“Nope. I had a good marriage. I was happy. That’s enough for me. It’s more than some people have in a lifetime. Your mother was like that—happy with what she had. You still have a football we could toss around later, old man?”

Tanner sat brooding, dawn filtering through the lace curtains of his mother’s quiet house. After the Bachelor Club’s impromptu reunion at the Silver Dollar, he’d picked up a few bruises in the late-night football game. He couldn’t sleep, his mind restless. He ran a finger over his mother’s journals, neatly stacked on the polished dining room table that had been passed down from Magda Claas, an ancestor on his mother’s side. Beside Anna’s journals was the prized English style teapot of a great-great grandmother on his father’s side. Lined across the antique buffet were small framed pictures of the Bennetts and their ancestors.

Memories circled the rooms, his sisters’ filled hope chests waiting upstairs in their rooms. Miranda and Kylie cared little for the tradition inherited from the Founding Mothers. His sisters had sprung into the outside world as he had done, only coming back to Freedom Valley to visit Anna. But his mother wanted them to have hope chests as she had had, and so for her, they embroidered hastily without really intending the use.

Young Gwyneth had fretted about her lack of a hope chest—old Leather hadn’t allowed her to spend “silly time embroidering and such.” Gwyneth had wanted to wait, to fill her hope chest as Tanner’s sisters were doing—but there wasn’t time and he’d pushed her….

Tanner ran his fingertip across the pineapple design of the table’s doily, his mother’s hook always flashing, a certain peace wrapped around her as she crocheted in the evenings, after the work was done. She’d learned from her mother and so on, the patterns handed down from Magda Claas. Kylie and Miranda never took time to learn, both of them too impatient.

He traced the frayed corners of the journals, letting his mother keep her secrets, her life, the thoughts that a woman would have at the end of the day. He’d seen her writing late at night, sometimes in bed. What gave her such strength to face raising her children, providing for them without a complaint?

Restless and unanswered questions prodding him, Tanner stood abruptly and scrubbed his hands across his unshaven jaw. Kylie and Miranda had promised to come back, to help sort their mother’s things, but right now, Tanner needed answers to the past. He stretched out his fingers, missing the boats that he loved to build, the smooth wood sliding beneath his touch. He placed his open hand on one journal, wishing his mother were here, alive and smiling, baking bread…

Was it his right to read his mother’s journals? Her private thoughts should remain her own and yet, he ached for his mother and wanted to hold her close.

He inhaled sharply and gently with one finger and the sense that he was prying, Tanner eased open one journal. He gently stroked the dried lavender stalk she’d pressed within the journal, the delicate fragrance wafting around him like memories. My Life his mother had written on the title page, the date just one year ago. “That night three years ago is stormy, just as my thoughts remain about the evil those men did to a sweet girl. I have never felt such anger in my life as when Gwyneth ran to me that night. The sight of her, torn and bleeding by those men’s rough hands, just three days before she was to marry my son haunts me,” she’d written in her precise, feminine hand. “I begged her to tell him before the wedding, and she couldn’t bear to hurt Tanner. She talked to me of it, how she tried to push herself, and knew she should tell Tanner. Yet she couldn’t. I kept my promise not to tell my son, but knew it was so wrong.”

Tanner frowned and with a sense that his mother had reached out to him, to help him understand, sat down to read.

Three

Men have dark sides, deep brooding creatures that they are, filled with arrogance and swaggering when they are proud of themselves. But if a woman can capture a good man, she can tame him with the softness of her heart. Men go in packs sometimes to protect themselves from being captured. They’re vulnerable creatures, needing petting and care, though they won’t admit it. The boy within the man wants to play, while the man has headier thoughts that can make a woman’s head spin.

—Anna Bennett

“Tanner Bennett, you are going to die,” Gwyneth muttered as she peered out her kitchen window into the stormy dawn. In the half-light, Tanner’s shaggy hair lifted in the wind and the powerful set of his broad shoulders stretched his T-shirt as he turned to set the plow’s tines into the earth. As if in rage, his metal tractor-monster tore by her ancient one, which had sputtered and died before finishing the new garden.

An experienced man from the country, Tanner knew how to tear away and open earth as though he were laying siege to her land…and this time there was no Leather to stand between Tanner and her. “I can deal with Tanner Bennett. And I will. I’ve dealt with everything else around here from mortgages to bad fences and dead tractors, and real-estate agents who wouldn’t take ‘no.’”

Gwyneth shook her head and ran her shaking fingers through her cropped hair, spiking it. One look in a mirror revealed her pale face and the circles beneath her eyes. All she needed after a draining night of bad dreams and hearing about last night’s reunion of the Bachelor Club was Tanner outside her window. Here he was, starting up with her and she had work to do and deliveries to make. She glanced at the mugs she’d been carefully wrapping in newspaper and easing into a cardboard box to take to a tourist store in another town. The various shaped mugs, each stamped on the bottom with her trademark, provided a steady income, easy for tourists to pack and transport. Larger bowls, speckled in earth tones, were for Willa’s Café, perfect for her soups. Gwyneth had built a steady clientele and by raising cattle and potting, she’d hauled herself out of all debt except the mortgage used to pay her father’s medical expenses. And all without the help of an interfering ex-husband. She slapped her ball cap on her head, jerked on her battered denim jacket against the chilly April morning and glared at Penny and Rolf, who were whining to be let out. “You run to Tanner, grinning and drooling all over him, and you’re going back to that cheap dog food for a week. And you’re not going with me to make the deliveries today.”

Undaunted by her threats, Penny and Rolf burst from the opened door, tails wagging on their way to Tanner.

She marched across the field, across a plowed strip and stood in front of his tractor, her hands on her hips. Wearing only a T-shirt against the morning chill, Tanner scowled at her, braked the tractor to a stop and clicked off the ignition. In one lithe jump, he was on the freshly plowed ground and tramping toward her. Gwyneth tried to ignore the angry shiver running through her and noted briefly that she’d never feared Tanner, except that night.

As he moved toward her, a tall powerful man she’d known all her life, his eyes flashing with anger, she shot at him, “You’re in a fine mood. So you played football on the high school field after the Silver Dollar closed. My phone has been ringing steadily—as if I’m responsible for you. Well, I’m not. I heard all your old chums were there, married and unmarried boys alike, waking up half the town with yells and turning on their headlights. Look at you…you’re bleary eyed, you’re wearing a beard and you look like you’d like to tangle with a bear. Nelda Waters wasn’t happy about Sam being invited to play at two o’clock in the morning, or about him having to drive their old tractor down to the high school ball field to sell to you. You could have waited until today. You’re not young anymore, Tanner, and you’ve given the town enough gossip fodder. Your mother would have—”

You’ve got a fast mouth on overdrive. You sound like someone’s wife—but you’re an ex-wife, aren’t you?” He stood over her now, his grim expression sliding into a dark, wary, penetrating search of her face as though seeing beneath the surface. “You should have told me.”

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