“Dan will be coming home,” Ellen said in a suddenly quivery voice.

“Most likely.” Jess didn’t say anything else for a long while.

Ellen struggled to absorb the words. How quickly her life had turned upside down. An hour ago…

Her cheeks grew hot. An hour ago she hadn’t been thinking about Dan at all. She’d been thinking about Jess Flint.

“Ellen. There’s…” he closed his eyes momentarily “…there’s more.”

Incredulous, she stared at him. “More? What ‘more’?” She punched her balled-up fist into his chest.

He caught her hand, imprisoned it in his, and when she tried to jerk out of his grasp, he lifted his arms and pinned her against him. “Ellen. Ellen.”

She went perfectly still. “All right, tell me the rest, damn you. Get it over with.”

Praise for
Lynna Banning

“Do not read Lynna Banning expecting some trite, clichéd western romance. This author breathes fresh air into the West.”

—Romantic Reviews Today

The Scout

“Though a romance through and through, The Scout is also a story with powerful undertones of sacrifice and longing.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

The Angel of Devil’s Camp

“This sweet charmer of an Americana romance has just the right amount of humor, poignancy and a cast of quirky characters.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

The Ranger and the Redhead

“…fast-paced, adventure-filled story…”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

Loner’s Lady
Lynna Banning

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Chapter One

S he saw him coming up Creek Road and for a moment her heart stopped beating. Clutching the pitted garden trowel in one hand, she tucked a wayward strand of hair back under her blue sunbonnet and squinted into the late afternoon sun until her vision blurred.

But it wasn’t Dan. She released the breath she’d been holding and studied the man. A worn-looking leather saddle weighed down one shoulder, and a dark hat slanted over his eyes. He walked with a slight hesitation in his gait, as if one knee was stiff. Just another saddle tramp looking for a meal.

Ellen watched for a minute, then bent to the row of leafy vegetables and pulled up an extra half-dozen carrots for supper. She couldn’t bear the thought of someone, even a saddle tramp, going hungry.

Drawing in a slow lungful of the hot, earth-scented summer air, she resumed weeding. Probably lost his horse in a poker game. She sniffed at the thought and yanked a clump of chickweed out of the ground. What was it about gambling that men found so irresistible?

Getting something for nothing, Dan had told her once with a cocky grin. Ellen knew better. Most often he started with Something and ended up with Nothing.

Pulling the kitchen knife from her apron pocket, she sliced off a dozen yellow squash and two shiny green peppers. At least her simple meal would be colorful.

She straightened again as the man turned in at her gate. It took him a long time to push open the rickety contraption she had cobbled together out of used nails and crooked sugar pine limbs. It sagged badly, the rusted hinge held in place by a single screw. Another of the thousand and one things she hadn’t had time to fix.

“Miz O’Brian?”

Ellen stepped out of the vegetable patch toward him. “Yes? I am Mrs. O’Brian.”

Jess dropped the saddle where he stood. “My name’s Jason Flint, ma’am.” From beneath the brim of his hat he studied her face for a flicker of recognition. Nothing. Under her own floppy gingham bonnet, the woman’s blue eyes drilled into him like two steel bolts.

“Most folks call me Jess.” Again he waited for a reaction, but her sun-reddened features betrayed not a hint of feeling. Damn and then some. How lucky could he get?

She stuck out a dirt-stained hand. “Mr. Flint.” She had a strong handshake for a small woman, but quicker than he could wink she tucked her hand back into her apron pocket.

“Guess you’d like to know what I’m doing out here on your farm?”

Those blue eyes widened slightly, but she kept her face impassive. She’d make a good poker player, Jess thought. Or maybe she was just a careful farm wife who’d seen a good number of strays in her time.

“Truth is…” he began.

“You’re hungry,” she stated.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Her hands went to her hips. “And broke.”

Jess hesitated. “Well…” He’d sold his horse and most of his possessions three days ago so he could eat. Hell yes, he was broke.

“Out-of-work-down-on-your-luck-and-lost-your-horse,” she said. It wasn’t a question. She ran the words together as if she was reciting a poem.

“Yes, ma’am.” He expected her to frown or purse her lips and tsk-tsk at him, but she did neither. Instead, she gave him a long look and headed for the back porch of the farmhouse.

Jess let his gaze follow her, hoping she’d say something with the word supper in it. He noted the peeling white paint on the house and the lopsided angle of the screen door. A hole as big as his fist gaped in the mesh. He’d bet she had a kitchen full of fat black flies.

The back door wheezed open and slapped shut and her voice floated to him through the screen. “Supper’s in half an hour. Wash up at the pump.”

Jess swiped off his hat, bent over the pump and splashed cool water on his face, then smoothed a handful of water through his hair. Glancing at the back door to make sure she wasn’t watching, he stripped off his shirt and rubbed water over his chest and neck.

Using his shirt, he dried off and shrugged the damp linen back on. The wrinkled garment smelled sweaty as a lathered horse, but at the moment it was the only shirt he owned.

With time to spare before supper, Jess carted his saddle out to the barn, then made a slow circuit of the farmhouse. The weathered paint on the north side looked more gray than white, but crisp white curtains hung at the parlor windows. A single wicker rocking chair sat on the wide front porch.

When he reached the back of the house, the screen door scraped open and he heard her voice again. “Suppertime!” Jess clomped up the back steps, hoping she wouldn’t hear his stomach growling.

The first thing he smelled was fresh coffee. The second was hot biscuits, and beyond that he didn’t care. This was as close to heaven as he was going to get for a while.

She’d set two places at the battered kitchen table. Painted a fiery red, the finish looked speckled where the original green showed through. Years of hard use had dulled the finish on the white china plates; the only piece that wasn’t cracked was the cream pitcher.

She gestured for him to sit, then turned to the stove and scooped fluffy-looking biscuits into a basket. Jess used the opportunity to take a closer look at her.

Not bad. Maybe twenty-five or -six. Trim waist, nicely rounded backside. Suntanned arms, and long, long legs, judging from the length of her blue work skirt. A ribbon tied at the back of her neck kept a tumble of brown curls in check.

Her shirt—a man’s work shirt, he noticed—looked mighty incongruous under the ruffled apron.

She turned toward him. “Coffee?”

“Sure. Straight.”

Her gaze narrowed. “‘Straight’ applies to whiskey.”

“I meant no cream,” he said.

When she spun back to the stove, he glanced at her shoes. Work boots. He should have guessed. She farmed the place by herself. That would explain the dilapidated state of the barn and the henhouse, the peeling paint, the worn planks in the kitchen floor.

She sure didn’t talk much. He wondered how long she’d been without a man.

She dished up a platter of sweet corn and a bowl of carrots and squash with something green mixed in. No meat, but he wasn’t complaining. She untied her apron, hung it on a nail by the back door and set the basket of biscuits on the table.

Jess waited. After an awkward pause, she passed him the platter of corn. “What are you waiting for? I thought you’d be hungry.”

“I am hungry. Just wanted to see if you were the type that said grace.”

“Grace!” She snapped out the word like a pistol shot. “The good Lord had little enough to do with putting food on this table.”

Jess said nothing. Guess he’d hit a nerve.

Her shoulders relaxed. “I apologize, Mr. Flint. Sometimes it seems like the Lord doesn’t even notice how hard I’m working down here.”

“You run this place on your own?” He knew the answer, but he wanted to ask anyway.

“Yes.” With jerky movements she split open a biscuit and dunked half into the soggy vegetables on her plate.

“How long?”

“Two years and eight months.” The sharp edge in her tone said it all. He wondered how she felt about that two years. How much she knew.

“Husband dead?”

Ellen watched him down a gulp of water from the glass at his elbow, and laid her fork beside the plate. “I don’t know. He went off to town one day and never came back.”

“Gambling man?”

“Yes. No use varnishing the truth.”

Her guest looked up. “Mind telling me his name?”

“Daniel. Daniel Reardon O’Brian.”

An odd expression crossed the man’s sun-darkened face. “Irish, I’d guess,” he said in a quiet voice.

She nodded. “The worst part is…” She didn’t let herself finish the thought.

Mr. Flint slathered butter onto an ear of pale gold corn. “Got a hired man to help out?”

She leveled a long look at him. “I had one until four months ago. He came back from town smelling of spirits and tried to— No, I don’t have a hired man.” She leaned forward and skewered him with those eyes again. “And no, I do not want one.”

He bit into the corn and chewed in silence.

“It’s only a small farm,” she explained. “I can keep up the housework and the garden. Planting corn and potatoes and alfalfa keeps me pretty busy. And of course there’s the stock.”

“Stock?”

“My milk cow, Florence. And the chickens. And one horse.”

His eyes flicked to hers and immediately dropped to the biscuit on his plate. “What kind of horse?”

Ellen sniffed. “He’s not worth stealing, Mr. Flint. He’s a plow horse.”

“Wasn’t thinking of stealing it, ma’am. I was thinking of riding it.”

“Where on earth to?”

“Town. And back.”

Ellen regarded him with as much calm as she could muster. He had longish black hair and skin so sun-darkened he could be Indian. After a good minute she trusted herself to speak in a civil tone. “For a poker game? For loose women and liquor? For—?”

“For supplies.” He growled the words without looking at her.

“Whose supplies?” she snapped. Why were her nerves on edge around this man? She’d fed plenty of wandering cowboys; not one of them had ever riled her like this.

“Yours. How do you tote things from town?”

“I walk. And once a week Mr. Svensen drives a wagon out from the mercantile to collect my butter and eggs. He brings the flour and molasses and other heavy items.”

“You don’t have a wagon?”

“No, I don’t have a wagon. Dan took it.” Ellen pressed her mouth into an unsmiling line. He’d taken a few other things as well. Her faith in the silky-voiced Irishman with the dancing eyes. Her trust. Her hope for a child.

Again that puzzling expression came over Mr. Flint’s face. Part disbelief, part…anger? She guessed he didn’t believe her.

“Surely you don’t think I would lie about such a thing?”

“No, ma’am.”

Jess wished she had, though. He didn’t want to think about the fix husband Dan had left her in. He needed to think about how he was going to do what he’d come here for.

They ate their supper in silence except for the faint burble of coffee on the stove. All at once she seemed to hear it, and flew across the room to shove the blue speckleware pot to one side. “I’ve overboiled it again! It must taste pretty awful.”

“I’ve had worse. I’ve made worse myself.”

Ellen sighed. “I guess overboiled coffee isn’t that important. Farm life has a way of paring things down to essentials. Survival is what’s important.”

“Yes, ma’am. It surely is. Makes a person wonder just how far they’ll go with survival in mind.”

He gave her a long look. His eyes were a dark, dark blue, almost black, and the way he scrutinized her started uneasy flutters in her stomach. This man didn’t miss much. Did he see how weary she was? How her back ached and her heart was shriveling up? She knew being a good wife meant sticking it out, for better or worse, but oh, how she smarted under the load.

Still, smart she must. No respectable woman on the western frontier caved in to exhaustion or loneliness.

He gave her a lopsided smile and dropped his gaze to his coffee cup, still two-thirds full.

“Miz O’Brian, would you mind if I slept in your barn tonight?” He sent her another crooked smile. A bigger one. The corners of his dark eyes crinkled and a dimple appeared on one sun-bronzed cheek.

Ellen studied him. She’d let the odd cowboy throw down a bedroll in the hay, but not often. Being alone out here three miles from town made her cautious. Mr. Flint made her more than cautious. He asked too many questions, and more than once she’d caught him looking at her as if trying to guess how much she weighed. She felt off balance. Vulnerable.

“Miz O’Brian?”

“I am considering it.” His eyes were hungry. Calculating. They made her unsure of things she’d never questioned before. Like why she kept on struggling to keep up the farm, waiting, always waiting, for Dan to return.

Still, she had no cause to be afraid. She kept Dan’s loaded shotgun under the sink. “Very well, Mr. Flint. You may sleep in the barn.”

“Much obliged, ma’am. I’ll feed your stock before I turn in.”

“There is no need. Florence needs to be milked, and I—”

“I’ll see to it.” He took a final swallow of coffee and pushed away from the table. “Thanks for the supper.”

He ambled toward the back door, the hitch in his gait even more obvious. Even with the limp, though, she liked the way he moved, unhurried and oddly graceful for a tall man with a stiff knee.

The screen whapped shut behind him. She listened to the uneven rhythm of his boots on the porch steps, then gathered up the two dirty plates and the empty corn platter. She’d cooked a dozen ears; only two cobs rested on her plate. The other ten, chewed clean, were piled high on his plate. The man was more than just hungry; he was starving.

Before she finished drying the dishes, a full metal pail of foamy milk sat inside the back door. Beside it lay a dozen eggs wrapped in a red bandanna. He must have searched under every hen she owned to come up with that many at an evening gather.

Ellen smiled wryly. No doubt Mr. Flint was hinting at breakfast. She scrubbed the last kettle and hung the sodden towel on the rack near the stove. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to let him sleep in the barn for one night.

She poured the fresh milk into four shallow milk pans, unloaded the eggs into a bowl and set it all in the cooler off the back porch. By morning there would be more cream, enough to churn and some for scrambled eggs.

That is, if she let him to stay for breakfast. Something about Mr. Flint made her nervous. Maybe it was his eyes. They were the darkest blue she had ever seen, darker even than the morning glories she’d planted along the front fence.

She tried not to think about him as she washed out the milk pail and lifted the lantern from the counter. Halfway up the stairs to her bed, she jolted to a stop. She hadn’t even offered him a candle to light his way around the barn.

Maybe he didn’t need it. With those predatory eyes he could probably see in the dark.

A shiver crawled up her backbone as she opened the door to her bedroom. Lamplight made the blue patchwork quilt, and the puffy matching pillow covers she’d sewn, glow with inviting warmth. She moved to pull the curtains shut and caught her breath.

Was he watching her window from the barn? Quickly she blew out the lantern flame.

The sooner he was gone, the better. She didn’t want to look into eyes that hungry any longer than she had to.

Chapter Two

T he rooster woke her. With a groan Ellen planted her bare feet on the floor and forced herself upright. Peach-gold sunlight spread through the cozy room, glinting in the framed mirror on the chiffonier and washing over her needlework basket and the ticking clock on the night table. This morning the light looked soft and creamy as buttermilk.

She washed, then hastily caught her unruly curls with a strip of calico at the back of her neck. On impulse, she leaned forward to inspect her face in the mirror.

Merciful heavens, what a sight! She looked every bit as tired as she felt, even more than the last time she’d looked, which was…let’s see…Easter Sunday? Her skin was sun-browned and freckles were sprinkled across her nose. The area around her mouth looked pinched, and her eyes…

Her eyes looked weary, as if ten years of trouble had been added to her life. Worse, there was a hopeless expression in their depths she didn’t like one bit. She looked like Mama had before she died. Worn-out. Was this what he saw?

Didn’t much matter, she guessed. A woman alone as much as she was got used to the darker side of things.

While she dressed in her blue work skirt and a clean blue shirt of Dan’s, she thought about the stranger sleeping in her barn. For no reason she could name, she didn’t trust the man.

Come now, Ellen. You must not judge a person by his appearance alone. Even a man with eyes she couldn’t read and a way of moving that reminded her of a cat. A big cat, with slim hips and a quiet way of speaking. He set all her nerves on edge.

With a sniff and a quick shake of her head, she marched down the stairs to the kitchen. Nerves or no nerves, she had a farm to run.

Another half bucket of milk sat just inside the back door. Blast the man. All right, she’d fix his breakfast. But first she had to sprinkle some mash for the chickens and turn the cow into the pasture.

She took two steps into the chicken yard and halted. The hens were clucking contentedly over fresh mash already spread in the wooden feeder. Well, of all the…

Ellen headed for the barn.

Florence was not in her stall. And the horse was gone! “Tiny? Where are you, boy?”

She searched the barn, then the yard. If he’d gotten into her carrots again she would scream.

Not in the garden. Not nibbling on green apples in the orchard. Not anywhere she could see.

Damn! That man had stolen her horse!

Oh, how could he? After a summer so scorching she’d watered her vegetables with bathwater and sprinkled down the henhouse at night, losing her horse was the last straw. Why could she not have one single day without feeling as if all the sand inside her was dribbling out?

Unaccountably, she started to cry. Stinging tears slid down past her nose and dripped onto her shirt front. Let me have just one day, Lord, when nothing bad happens. When I think I can make it through this.

No wonder she had aged a decade since Easter.

An insidious question needled into her mind. Was it worth it to hold on?

The answer came almost instantly. It was worth it. This farm was the only piece of ground that had ever belonged to her, and she’d be damned if she’d give it up. She held on to it partly for Dan, but mostly for herself. She’d scratched a vegetable garden out of a patch of bare earth, planted honeysuckle to spread over the privy, roses and black-eyed Susans and…

Yes, she worked hard to make ends meet, but she loved the place. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

Besides, she had nowhere else to go.

Sniffing back tears, she marched out the barn door and slammed it shut, wondered why she’d let that drifter stay.

Because you are lonely. Because she wanted to hear the sound of another person’s voice. She wrapped her arms over her belly and shut her eyes. She hurt so much she didn’t realize how furious she was until she began to tremble.

Oh, for Lord’s sake, pull yourself together.

She snapped open her eyes. Just as she took a step toward the house, something moved in the alfalfa field beyond the creek.

Florence! Thank God. At least he’d left her the cow. Brushing the tears off her face with her shirtsleeve, she gathered up her skirt in one hand and began to run toward the animal.

Her breath hitched, and when she reached the creek bank, she felt a bit dizzy. No time to remove her boots. Instead, she hiked her skirt higher and splashed into the burbling water.

The thin, sharp-faced man behind the counter sent Jess a look of disbelief. “You say Miz O’Brian sent you?”

Jess tightened his lips. “No, I didn’t. I said I’d come for her supplies. She didn’t send me.”

“Fine distinction, mister,” the mercantile owner said. “We kinda look out for the lady, see. Ever since her husband run off. No one’s ever bought supplies for her before.”

Jess shifted his weight to his good leg. “I didn’t say I was buying the goods, just delivering them.”

“With what?” Gabriel Svensen had sold sundries in Willow Flat for thirty-five years; no one had ever gulled him out of so much as a stick of peppermint candy.

“I’ve got a horse outside.”

“Yeah, I recognize Tiny all right. You ain’t never gettin’ a barrel of molasses on that snake-blooded old nag.”

Jess bit his tongue. Most times he didn’t have to ask for anything twice. But that was back when he was well known. Those days were long gone. “Don’t want molasses. What I—Miz O’Brian—needs is a sack of sugar.”

“White or brown?” the proprietor snapped.

“White.”

Svensen’s gray eyebrows shot up, but he said nothing, and Jess pivoted to survey the bushel baskets of produce arranged at the front of the store. “And a dozen lemons,” he added. “And six oranges. She’s got credit here, doesn’t she?”

Svensen opened his angular jaw with a crack. “She does. You don’t. And Miss Ellen’s not one to add the fancy things onto her bill. You sure she wants white sugar? And oranges?”

Jess grinned in spite of himself. “I’m sure. She…needs them.”

“Hell, maybe she’s makin’ a batch of marmalade, or a cake, like every other woman in town. What do I know? I’ll just wrap ’em up if you’d care to look around.”

“I’ll wait. It smells good in here.”

Svensen spread a length of brown wrapping paper on the counter and went to work. “Reckon that good smell’s coming from Iona Everett’s bunches of lavender hangin’ there on the beam.” The shopkeeper tipped his chin up to the timbered roof. “And the shipment of spices and brown sugar that came in yesterday. The ladies are havin’ a big cake-baking hoo-rah on Sunday, raisin’ money for the new church.”

As he talked, he rolled up each orange in a square of paper—“special for Miss Ellen”—laid them on top of the ten-pound bag of sugar and corralled the lemons into a paper sack. Then he bundled all the items up in one neat package and tied it with grocery twine.

“Remind Miz O’Brian about the cake do, will ya? She deserves an afternoon off.”

Jess nodded. “She does.” He scooped up his package and had turned to go when he heard Svensen’s raspy voice.

“You watch your step around Miss Ellen, mister. She’s a real lady, even if she does work a farm.”

Jess nodded again and strode outside to the hitching rail where he’d left the horse. Tiny, was it? He chuckled. The only “tiny” things were the other horses tied at the rail. The huge head of the plow horse towered over all of them.

He plopped the bulky package on Tiny’s sturdy back and heaved himself up. The horse was so broad his saddle wouldn’t fit; he’d left it in the hayloft with his saddlebag, and ridden bareback. Clicking his tongue, he walked the animal down the main street and onto Creek Road.

Ellen. So her name was Ellen. He wondered how long it would take before she let him call her that. She didn’t know it yet, but he planned to stay. For as long as it took.

He reined up at the sagging front gate and slipped off the horse to wrestle it open. It needed another screw and ten minutes of his time. He’d do it after breakfast.

His stomach gurgled as he led Tiny through the gate and maneuvered the rickety thing closed. Maybe another hinge, as well. And some real wood, not these curlicue pine branches she’d used.

At the back porch steps he halted and peered through the screen door. “Miz O’Brian?”

The kitchen was empty. He scanned the garden and the spindly looking apple trees at the back fence. Where the hell was she?

He tramped into the house, checked the neat parlor, where crocheted doilies lay on the arms of the faded green velvet settee, then climbed the stairs and checked each of the four bedrooms. All empty. Maybe the barn?

By the time he’d rubbed Tiny down with an old gunnysack and given him some oats, there was still no sign of Ellen. An odd prickle swept up the back of Jess’s neck. He headed for the henhouse, but found nothing but clucking brown chickens and one lordly rooster. Maybe she was visiting a neigh—

He heard something. He shushed the chickens and listened.

A voice. Thin-sounding and some distance away, but calling out at regular intervals.

“Miz O’Brian?” Jess shouted. He took a step toward the sound. “Ellen?”

Another faint cry, and Jess headed toward the creek. What was she doing down there? “Ellen? Miz O’Brian?”

A weak cry carried to him and his breath stopped. She was hurt. A cold sweat started at his hairline. Oh, God, no. What had they done to her?

Without thinking he began to run.

Chapter Three

S he lay in the creek bed, the lower part of her body half in the water, her skirt rucked up to her knees. Her head rested on a lichen-covered stone, and he could see one leg was folded under her at an odd angle. Jess stumbled down the bank and splashed across to her, a rock lodged in his gut.

She looked up at him with weary eyes. “What are you doing here?”

Jess knelt beside her, his heart hammering. “A better question might be what are you doing here?”

She tried to smile. “Chasing the c-cow into the pasture, and I s-slipped on a rock.” Her voice sounded close to breaking. Her body shivered violently, and Jess reached to touch her arm. Her skin was like new snow.

“How long have you been here?”

Her eyelids fluttered closed. “Since dawn. I got up to milk…” Her voice trailed into silence.

“I milked earlier,” Jess said.

“Tiny was gone, and… Anyway, the cow…”

Jess leaned over her. “Don’t talk, Ellen. Save your strength. I’ve got to get you out of the creek, and it isn’t going to be easy.”

“Hurts when I move,” she murmured.

“Got any laudanum up at the house?”

She shook her head.

“Whiskey?”

“Just some wine. Port. In a decanter on the top shelf. It was a…” she gave a soft laugh “…wedding gift.”

“I’ll get it.”

He started to stand up, but her fingers grabbed at his arm. “No. Don’t leave. Please don’t. I will manage without it.”

Jess studied the position of her body. Looked like a broken tibia. Should he straighten her leg first? Or lift her up and let the injured limb right itself? Either way it would hurt like hell. Maybe he could pull her backward up the creek bank, see if her leg would straighten naturally.

He straddled her, one knee in the cold creek water, the other on the bank, and dug his hands into the mud beneath her armpits. As gently as he could, he hoisted her farther up the slope. Her face went white as parchment. Her breathing hitched and she balled her hands into fists, but she didn’t make a sound.

Dragging her was no good, he realized. Too painful and too slow. He needed to get her to the house, and fast.

“I’m going to be sick,” she moaned. Clamping her palm over her mouth, she stared up into his face, a desperate, trapped look in her eyes.

“It’s okay, Ellen. Listen to me. I’m going to lift you up. It’s going to hurt, but it’s the only way.”

She nodded once.

“Put your arms around my neck and hold on,” he ordered.

When her cold, shaking hands met at his nape, Jess carefully scrabbled away the wet earth under her shivering form until he could slide one hand under her shoulders. Gritting his teeth, he bent and slipped his other hand under her knees.

When he lifted her from the muddy bank, she released a strangled cry, but he stood up slowly, cradling her body in his arms. Her injured leg unfolded and she cried out again.

A choking sensation closed his throat. Trying not to jostle her any more than necessary, Jess picked his way up the slippery incline, concentrating on her jerky breathing rather than the ache in his own leg. When he reached level ground, he started toward the house. It seemed a hundred miles away.

He stepped every inch of the way with her moans of agony in his ear, his nerves twisting at every inarticulate sound she made. Jess unclamped his jaw. “You all right?”

“Of course I’m not all right,” she muttered through clenched teeth.

He kept moving. Halfway across the yard, she tugged on his shirt, and he heard her whisper, “Talk to me.”

“I can’t think of a damn thing to say,” he admitted.

“Talk to me anyway.”

His mind went blank. What could he talk about? He hadn’t had a woman in his arms since… He didn’t want to think about it.

After a long minute, he began to sing in a low, scratchy voice. “‘Whippoorwill singin’, and the owl’s asleep. I’m beggin’ you, Lord, my soul to keep.’”

Ellen pressed her ear closer to his chest. Underneath the smell of damp mud, he caught the faint scent of roses from her hair. “More,” she murmured.

“That’s all there is. Kind of a one-verse song.”

“Either you sing,” she said in a tight voice, “or I’ll start screaming.”

Jess sucked in a long breath. “That might be better than my singing.”

“Not for me,” she snapped.

It sounded as if her jaw was clenched. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Don’t think, Mr. Flint. Sing.”

“Yes, ma’am. All right, here goes. ‘Tater has no eyes to see, sweet corn cannot hear. Beans don’t snap, date palms don’t clap, that’s why I like my beer!’”

What a choice. He was drunk when he’d made it up, and drunk when he sang it. He sure as hell wasn’t drunk now.

He reached the back porch steps, angled sideways and yanked the screen door open. It fell to one side with a clatter. He’d repair it after breakfast, he thought. With Ellen down, there would be more to do than fix screens and gates.

In spite of himself, he smiled. Now she’d be forced to have him stay on as a hired man. Things couldn’t have worked out better if he’d planned it.

Upstairs in the blue-papered bedroom, Jess stooped to lay her on the bed, but she stopped him with a sharp “No!”

“What do you mean, no? I’ve got to take a look at your leg. Might have to splint it. You’d best be lying flat.”

“My skirt is muddy.” She gestured with her hand. “My grandmother’s quilt…”

Without a word Jess dipped toward the bed and pulled the pretty blue quilt onto the floor. It smelled faintly spicy. The whole room did, he noted. Maybe a bunch of Iona Everett’s lavender…

He laid Ellen down on top of the sheet. After breakfast, there’d be a washing to do, as well.

Ellen gritted her teeth. God, oh God, it hurt! She couldn’t feel her toes, but somewhere between her thigh and her ankle, a saw was slicing into the bone. “Get the port,” she managed to gasp.

She heard his boots clump down the stairs, then back up. In his hands he held the decanter of purple-brown liquid and a water glass. She shut her eyes against the nausea sweeping over her, listened to the clink of the decanter neck on the edge of the tumbler, and the gurgle of the wine as it sloshed out. She could tell by the sound that he filled the glass to the top. She could hardly wait to swallow a big mouthful.

He steadied her hand around the glass and lifted her head off the pillow so she could drink. “Wonderful,” she breathed as the warmth of the first gulp spread down into her belly. “Tastes like melted raisins.”

“Drink some more. Then I’m going to look at your leg.”

“I don’t want to move, so can you leave my skirt on? Just pull it up?”

Jess hid a smile. It wasn’t the first time he’d tossed up a woman’s skirts. But this time sure felt less arousing.

“Ready?”

She downed another mouthful and nodded.

He unlaced her wet boots and drew them off, trying not to listen to her gasps of pain. Raising the sodden hem of her skirt and the petticoat underneath, he gently lifted the fabric up to her waist. At the first sight of her drawer-covered limb he knew what had happened. The front leg bone had snapped just below the crest.

From her undergarments rose the smell of soap and something spicy. Too bad he’d have to cut that lacy material away. He pulled the ruffled cotton petticoat to discreetly cover her bare knees. He might have traveled on the shady side of the law, but he was still a gentleman.

“Your right leg is broken,” he said carefully. “You’ve got two choices, Miz O’Brian. I can take Tiny and ride for a doctor, or I can set the bone myself.”

She groaned. “Dr. Callahan—he’s my uncle—lives in town. Too far.”

Jess bit his lower lip. “How close is your nearest neighbor?”

“Gundersen place,” she whispered. “Seven miles.”

Oh, God. He would have to do it.

In the kitchen he boiled a kettle of water, tore a clean dish towel into strips and searched for a knife. The worst part for him would be cutting her drawers off. The worst part for her would be when he explored the break.

He stuffed a sharp paring knife under his belt and turned to the back door. Outside, he strode to the front gate and snapped off two relatively straight branches to use as a splint. On his way back through the kitchen, he lifted the kettle off the stove and grabbed a china bowl from the dish shelf.

Upstairs the sun threw dappled light across the upper part of her body. She rested the wineglass on her chest, holding it with both hands. Almost empty, he noted. Good girl.

Grasping the knife, he bent and started slicing at the lacy hem of her drawers. He slit them halfway to her waist, and she didn’t make a sound until he straightened.

“How does it look?”

“Your left leg is fine.” It was the right leg that made his breath catch. Under the pale skin he could see the bulge of the bone where it had separated. “To set the break in your right leg properly, I’ll have to manipulate it.”

Jess wiped his fingers across his forehead; they came away wet with sweat, which didn’t surprise him. He’d rather rob the Ohio Central than put his hand on her leg.

“Don’t drag it out,” she muttered from the bed. “Just get it over with.”

“Don’t rush me,” he countered. “I like to take my time with some things.”

He was damn glad she didn’t ask what things. He settled one hand on her knee, then cupped the joint with his other. Watching her face, he moved both hands toward the break. The closer he got, the tighter she scrunched her eyes shut.

His belly knotted. “I’m sorry, Ellen.” Gently he eased his fingers onto the bulge of skin, then felt below her knee with his other hand. There it was, plain as pudding. He could feel how the edges of the bone fit together.

Mentally he reviewed exactly what he had to do. Before he made a move, he glanced up at her face. Hell, she was sweating worse than he was. He’d try to make it quick.

He braced himself. Holding one hand steady under the break, he pressed his palm down hard from the top. Her anguished scream sent a sharp, cold blade into his chest, but an instant later he heard the soft snap as the bone shifted back into place.

She screamed again.

“Yell if you want, just don’t move,” he ordered.

While she panted on the bed, he laid out the makeshift splints. One of the gate sticks curved just the right way along her leg; the other was straighter, but it would do. He bound them in place with strips of toweling.

“Better,” Ellen murmured. Her leg ached like a plow had hooked into it, but it wasn’t the searing pain she’d endured earlier. “How did you learn to do that?”

“Spent some time as an army surgeon during the war.”

Thank the Lord. She wouldn’t ask which army. Reb or Federal, she was grateful for the man’s skill.

He straightened suddenly, reached for the decanter of port and tipped it into his mouth.

“I’d offer you my glass,” she said, “but…oh, here.” She thrust the tumbler at him anyway. “You’ve earned it.”

He smiled for the first time in what seemed like hours. He’d shaved since supper last night, she noticed. The dimple in his cheek reappeared.

She watched him pour hot water from the kettle into her best vegetable bowl and drop in a piece of toweling. Clean, she hoped.

He bent to smooth the wet cloth over her good leg, washing off the streaks of dried mud with a surprisingly light touch. “I don’t fancy cutting you out of your skirt and petticoat. Seems like a waste of serviceable garments. Got any ideas?”

What an incredible topic of conversation! Still, it had been an unusual day, and it was still only ten o’clock, she judged, glancing at the sun outside the window.

“If you could undo the fastenings at my waist, you could just pull my skirt and petticoat off over my head.”

“Yeah, I thought of that.” Taking it slow and easy, he washed her broken limb from the ankle to the break, then started at her upper thigh and worked down as far as her knee. When he finished, he set the bowl of grimy water on the floor and leaned over her.

“The skirt button’s at the back,” she said. “Petticoat has a ribbon tie.”

“Usually does,” he answered.

Ellen’s eyebrows lifted. She felt his hands reach under her waist, fumble the skirt button through the buttonhole and then untie the ribbon of her petticoat.

He moved to the head of her bed. “Arms up,” he ordered.

Ellen obliged, grateful that she didn’t need to move her throbbing leg to rid herself of her clothes. She felt both garments slide upward, and with her arms raised she managed to shimmy free of them. He tossed them on the floor with the washcloth and caught her gaze. “You want to remove your—”

“Just my shirt,” she said quickly. “I’ll keep on my camisole and my drawers, what’s left of them.”

She unbuttoned the blue cotton shirt and he helped her shrug out of it, his hands warm and sure. He was much more than a doctor, she guessed. He seemed to know a great deal about women’s clothes fastenings.

At the moment, it was his experience as a doctor that she valued. His experience with women didn’t matter a whit.

Chapter Four

D r. James Callahan gallantly tipped his black felt top hat at the pretty young woman he met on the board sidewalk. “Mrs. Kirkland.”

“Dr. Callahan! I was just thinking about stopping in to see you. It’s about the baby.”

A faraway look came into the elderly man’s gray eyes. The first baby he had ever delivered scared the bejeesus out of him. Not because of the blood and the bruised and swollen flesh—he’d seen plenty of that in medical school—but because then, in his twenty-third year, he saw clearly what loving someone meant. A woman bravely—and sometimes not so bravely, he learned as he grew older—endured the agony of labor, risked her life to present her husband with a gift more costly, more treasured than anything on God’s earth. His own sister, his niece Ellen’s mother, had died bearing a child. James had never forgotten it.

“Nothing wrong with the baby, I hope?”

Mrs. Kirkland dimpled. “Far from it. Thad is thriving. Actually, it’s my husband I am concerned about. He seems…different since the birth.”

James understood instantly. A man hearing his wife’s screams of agony for a day and half the night, a man who didn’t stumble out to the barn and shoot himself, was changed forever by the experience. Sometimes James thought that’s what had started his sister’s husband with the drink. Ellen’s father had let spirits destroy his life. It had almost destroyed her, as well.

“I wouldn’t worry, Mrs. Kirkland. Husbands often feel pretty shaken by birth, just as much as the new mother. Maybe he’s just realizing how precious you are to him.”

Mrs. Kirkland seized his free hand. “Oh, thank you, Dr. Callahan. I think you are such a very wise man!” She squeezed his hand and pivoted away into Svensen’s Mercantile.

Wise my ass. The love between a husband and wife had astounded him back then. He knew that no woman would ever feel that way about him. He’d always been painfully shy, and awkward around women. Different. Most men would rather play poker than spend their evenings reading Byron.

Twenty-five years ago he’d been a callow tenderfoot fresh out from the East, practicing his first year of medicine and dumb as an ox when it came to talking to a female without a stethoscope in his hand.

He had known this about himself for more than two decades. No sane woman would love him, would suffer and sacrifice for him the way he saw the wives of Willow Flat do for their men. All his life he’d been too awed by women to ever speak to one in anything other than a professional situation. Now he was forty-eight years old.

But Lord knew if a man never said good-morning to a lady, that man never got invited to afternoon tea. He got plenty of invites to down a slug or two of red-eye at the Wagon Wheel Saloon, but lately he felt a nagging hunger for something more. Something soft that smelled good. That smelled like lavender.

He’d waited all these years for Iona Everett, and time was growing short. If he didn’t do something about it damn quick, he’d die a bachelor.

Near noon, Ellen heard Mr. Flint tramp up the stairs to her room, a tray with two plates of scrambled eggs and two mugs of coffee in his hands. The sun’s rays beat at the bedroom window. Already the room was stifling; today would be a real scorcher.

She watched the man squeeze himself into her rocking chair and roll back and forth, nursing his coffee while she ate her breakfast. When she had eaten nearly all the eggs, she reached for her own mug on the bedside table and gulped down a large swallow.

Well! The man made excellent coffee, the best she’d ever tasted.

They sipped their coffee in silence until Mr. Flint set his mug on the plank floor, unfolded his long legs and ambled to the window. Without speaking, he drew the blue muslin curtains shut.

“What are you doing?” Her voice came out sharper than she intended.

“Hot in here. Be cooler if you block the sun.”

“Oh.” Of course. She was always up and out in the barn shortly after sunup, and she didn’t come back upstairs until after dark. She couldn’t remember when the last noontime had found her still in bed.

She turned her coffee mug around and around in her hands. “How long will I be laid up like this?”

His dark eyes met hers, an unnerving glint of amusement in their depths. “Long enough. Longer than you’re going to like. Your bone has to knit before you put any weight on it.”

Her fork clunked onto the plate. “How long?” she repeated.

He settled his rangy form back into the rocker, stretched out his legs and crossed his boots at the ankle. “I’d say you need a hired hand for the next few weeks.”

Ellen choked on her coffee. “Weeks! I can’t stay bedridden that long. My vegetables will shrivel up in this heat. The cow will go dry. The hens…” She had to keep the farm going, but he’d never understand her desperate need to do so.

He gave her a speculative look. “You want your leg to heal crooked? Have a limp the rest of your life?”

“Well, no.” A sudden curiosity seized her. “Is that what happened to your leg?”

He said nothing.

“Mr. Flint? I asked you a question.”

“I heard you. Could be I’m not going to answer it.”

Irritation tightened her jaw. “And why is that?”

“Because it’s none of your business,” he said quietly.

Ellen bit her lip. “You’re right, of course. I shouldn’t have asked.” But lordy-Lord, she couldn’t lie here being an invalid, even for a few days. How would she water the vegetables and bake bread and churn butter and…all the other things that demanded her attention?

She set the mug aside and knotted her fingers together. “I can’t pay you wages.”

Mr. Flint’s gaze met hers, his eyes hard as sapphires. “Didn’t ask for any. I was thinking about meals and a place to sleep in your barn.”

“Oh, no, I don’t think—” The memory of the last wayfaring man she’d hired still made her stomach churn. But how would she manage without help?

“For how long?” She made her tone as crisp as she could.

The oddest look flitted across his face, instantly replaced by a carefully impassive expression. “Let’s say for as long as it takes.”

As long as it takes? Something about the way he said that made her uneasy. “I can ask the Gundersen boy to help out. He’s chopped wood for me in the winter and last summer he helped bring in the hay.”

“I’ll be better than the Gundersen boy.” Mr. Flint said it without apparent pride, just stated it as if he were saying, “Today is Tuesday.”

“Besides,” he added, “I want to stay.”

Ellen opened her mouth without thinking. “Why?”

The rocking motion stopped abruptly. “You’re one nosy woman, Miz O’Brian.” He looked at her for a long minute, his eyes so stony she caught her breath.

“I know,” she said with a sigh. “I guess it comes from being alone. I question everything. It is nosy, but I need to be, well, careful. I don’t much trust men, ever since Dan…”

“Yeah.” He nodded once, downed the last of his coffee and set the mug on the floor beside him.

Ellen studied his face. He hid his feelings cleverly. Dollars to doughnuts there was something he wasn’t telling her.

“Mr. Flint, you have not answered either of my questions.”

“You’re right.” He rose, scooped his coffee mug off the floor, stacked her empty plate on his. “Maybe I’m tired of traveling. Maybe I want to stop somewhere and rest awhile.”

He didn’t look at her when he spoke.

Maybe. And maybe I’m the Queen of Sheba. Ellen smoothed out the sheet covering her lower torso.

“Anyway, Miz O’Brian, might be smart to say thanks, and wait till you’re on your feet again. Right now you’re in no position to run me off.”

Ellen blinked. Was that a threat? She listened to the irregular rhythm of his footsteps going down the stairs. He was right about one thing: she did not want her leg to heal crooked.

It would make it even harder to hold on to the farm for when Dan returned. And if she had the child her heart yearned for, how would she tend it if she was crippled? It would be impossible to chase after a toddler if she couldn’t walk right.

Ellen closed her eyes against the pain of her longing. It was foolish to hope for a child when her husband might be dead.

Downstairs, dishes clattered. The hand pump squeaked and water trickled into the sink. The back door opened, shut, then opened again. Later a rhythmic thonk-thonk carried on the still air, like an ax biting into a tree. She let the noises wash over her.

When she woke the sky was a milky lavender. Almost twilight. The curtains had been pushed back and the sash raised to catch the breeze. The soft squawks of her chickens drifted up from the yard. Bullfrogs croaked down by the creek, and the still, warm air smelled of dust.

She loved this place with its earthy smells, the warm, peaceful evenings and the mornings alive with inquisitive finches chattering in her apple trees. Her life moved forward in an ordered sequence of events, guided by the rising and setting of the sun. It was predictable. Safe.

It didn’t matter that chores filled every hour between dawn and dark. The cow needed to be milked, the horse fed and the stall mucked out. The vegetables weeded, apples picked and cooked into applesauce… Oh, Lord, the drudgery never ended. Sometimes she felt as if she were suffocating.

But it would be worth it in the end. Dan would be so pleased when he returned, so proud of her. Something unforeseen must have happened to him that day he left for town. An accident, perhaps. Whatever it was, when he came home he’d find the farm prospering and his wife waiting with welcoming arms.

With a wrench she turned her mind away from Dan. She wouldn’t allow herself to brood. She’d think about how peaceful it was just lying here in her bed, listening to the quiet noises she never had time to stop and enjoy—twittering finches in the pepper tree, Florence lowing across the meadow.

No sound came from downstairs. Maybe Mr. Flint had absconded with her horse and her cow, after all?

Don’t be an idiot. If that rambling man had wanted either, he would have taken them this morning and not returned. True, he did take the horse, but he’d brought him back. Even so, it was hard to trust him. Even if he could set a broken leg.

By late afternoon Jess still tramped the perimeter of Ellen’s farm. His shadow lengthened, but he had to learn the lay of the land. Stopping under the same spreading oak he’d climbed earlier, he knelt, unfolded a rumpled sheet of brown grocer’s paper and wrestled a pencil stub out of his jeans pocket.

“Here, and here,” he muttered. He marked the points with an X on the makeshift map, then sketched in the barn, the house, the creek and the pasture beyond it, the apple trees at the back of the property, even the tree under which he sat. Chewing the tip of the pencil, he studied the layout, then bent to draw a grid over the landmarks. Each square represented maybe five long strides. He’d start at the upper left boundary and methodically work his way across and then down. He’d cover every goddam inch of this ground before husband Dan came home.

By suppertime, Jess had milked Florence and locked the hens in their shelter. For the evening meal he boiled up an armload of sweet corn he’d picked, and heated a can of beans from her pantry. He dished up two plates, piling his own high with ears of corn, and clumped upstairs to Ellen’s bedside.

He also carried with him the oak limb he’d cut and shaped this afternoon. By God, he was more nervous about what she’d think of that bit of wood than about his cooking.

Ellen heard him coming up the stairs, a clump and a pause, clump and pause. Balancing two steaming plates in his hands, he walked to the chiffonier and set them down next to the water basin.

“Got something for you,” he said in a gravelly voice.

“Supper, so I see. That is good of you, Mr. Flint.”

“Something besides supper.” He unhooked an odd-shaped length of tree limb from his forearm and presented it for her inspection. “It’s a crutch. I made it this afternoon.”

Ellen stared at it. The wood had been cleverly shaped using the natural curve of the limb to fashion an underarm prop, padded with one of her clean dish towels. Her throat tightened.

She appreciated his gesture more than she could say.

She tried to smile, but her lips were trembly. “How very kind of you, Mr. Flint.”

“It’s a necessity, the way I see it. You need a way to get around, even if it’s only as far as your wardrobe and the commode. Which, I assume, is under the bed?”

Her face flushed with heat. “It is.” Surely they should not speak of such an intimate matter as her commode? It made her feel uneasy, as if he knew things about her she wished he didn’t.

He laid the crutch at the foot of the bed and turned to the plates on the chiffonier. “You can try it out after supper.”

He settled two pillows under her shoulders and laid another across her lap, pulled two forks out of his shirt pocket and handed her one. Her plate he settled on the lap pillow. Two ears of corn swam in a puddle of melted butter, and suddenly she was ravenous.

“I cannot imagine why I should be so hungry! All I’ve done is lie in bed all day.” She lifted the corn and sank her teeth into the tender, sweet kernels, watching Mr. Flint settle into the rocker and begin to eat as well.

“Healing uses energy, just as much as baling hay. That’s why you’re hungry.”

Ellen tipped her head to look at him. “You really are a doctor, aren’t you?”

“Was one once, yes, as I told you. Sounds like you didn’t believe me. I served four years, until—” He stopped abruptly.

“Until?”

“Until I stopped believing I could save anyone.”

“Sometimes I don’t know what I believe,” Ellen heard herself say. She gnawed another two rows of kernels to hide her embarrassment. Butter dribbled down her chin but she didn’t care. Corn on the cob had never tasted so good.

He sent her a penetrating look. “Why is that, Miz O’Brian?”

“It was clear once. Before Dan left. I believed in him. I believed in the farm, the land. In myself. I knew what my duty was as a wife.”

She shouldn’t be telling him this! But she’d kept the fight between her duty and her feelings inside for so long she would burst if she didn’t let out just a little bit of it. “Now, I…well, of course I still believe in the land.”

Jess stopped rocking. “But not in yourself?”

She shook her head, then started on the second ear of corn on her plate. “Not so much anymore. Sometimes I have to ask myself…” She stopped, surprised at her need to talk about it. Surprised by the feelings she had kept locked up inside her.

He tipped the rocking chair forward. “You ever ask yourself what you will do if Dan doesn’t come back? Why a woman like you is wasting her life waiting for a man who’s been gone all these years?”

Her eyes widened. “Well, yes. I keep thinking one of these days he’ll just walk in the gate, but it’s been almost three years. I don’t know how to stop waiting for him.”

Jess nodded. “I wondered the same thing about my own life once. Nobody walked through my gate, so one day I got the bit in my teeth and walked through it myself. Left the army and came north.”

With Callie. That’s where everything started to go sour.

“I expect I am talking too much,” Ellen said. Her cheeks grew pink as she forked up her beans. “I always talk to myself when I’m frightened or worried about something.”

“Long conversations?” He didn’t have the vaguest idea why he asked that, other than he was taken with the idea of her talking to herself. What did an almost-dried-up farm wife say to herself?

“Oh, not always. Sometimes I talk to Florence while I’m milking her. And the chickens, although they are terrible listeners.”

Jess choked back a snort of laughter. Chickens. And Florence.

“Sometimes I even talk to my carrots and tomatoes. I tell them how proud I am that they grow so nicely.”

Jess fastened his gaze on the plate of food in his lap. Her guileless confession was like a sharp stick poking at his heart.

“I’d say you’re lonely, Miz O’Brian.”

She said nothing for a long while. Finally she pushed her empty plate to one side of the lap pillow and laid her fork down alongside the two well-cleaned corncobs. “Mr. Flint, could I trouble you for a glass of water?”

Jess grinned. She sure could. He’d thought about his surprise most of the day. That is, when he wasn’t busy mapping the property. Tipping the two corncobs from her plate onto his, he went downstairs, returning in a few moments with two glasses of cold liquid.

“Lemonade!” she exclaimed at the first taste. “Where did you—?”

“At the mercantile in town.” The look of wonder and delight on her face pricked his chest in a way he hadn’t expected.

She took two big swallows, sighed with pleasure and then skewered him with those eyes of hers. “You didn’t steal the lemons, did you?”

“On the contrary. You paid for them.” He waited for her to object, but she said not one word, just wrapped her hands around the cool glass and smiled.

“You don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve tasted lemonade.”

He could guess. About as long as it had been since she’d cranked up a batch of ice cream or had a new dress or danced at a social.

Or made love with a man.

Where had that come from? Ah, hell, it was obvious. She didn’t have the look of a woman who ran loose; she tied up her hair at her neck and made do with chickens and a broken-down horse for company.

And then there was his own hunger, Jess admitted. The human male was simpleminded in some very basic ways. But he couldn’t let that get in his way.

“You ready to try out the crutch?”

She drank the last of the lemonade and set the glass on the night table. “I guess I’m ready.”

Jess studied her splinted right leg. “You’ll have to sit up and swing your legs to the edge of the bed. Let your right one stick straight out, and don’t try to bend it.”

He settled his hands on her shoulders and pulled her up off the pile of pillows, then gently pivoted her body and eased her legs into position. He tried to shut out his awareness of her as a woman, how warm her skin felt, how good she smelled. Might be easier if she had more covering her than just her camisole and her drawers, especially with one leg split up to her thigh.

“Does it hurt?”

“Some. Not sharp and awful like it was before you set it. Just a steady ache.”

“You cannot put any weight on that leg, Ellen. When you stand up, the crutch and your left leg will have to support you. You understand?”

She nodded. He positioned the crutch pad under her right armpit. Keeping his hands at her waist, he tugged her toward him until she stood upright. She swayed forward, but he tightened his grip to steady her.

“Take a step.”

“I will if I can,” she said. Her voice shook slightly, and he realized she was frightened. “Don’t let go of me.”

She plunked the crutch tip onto the floor and lurched toward him. Again he steadied her, but this time she was closer. So close he could smell her hair, a fragrance like roses and something spicy and clean. He loosened his grip at her waist, but kept his hands in place so she wouldn’t fall.

She stumbled into him, then righted herself, breathing heavily. His own breathing was none too steady, he noted. The brief touch of her forehead against his chin, the smoky-sweet scent rising from her skin slammed into his gut like a 50-caliber bullet.

Instantly he lifted his hands from her body, but too late. He wanted to smell her, all of her. Taste her.

And more. His groin tightened.

Jess let out an uneven breath. What the hell was he thinking? There was something he had to do here, and the woman didn’t matter. She damn well couldn’t matter.

Chapter Five

I t took Ellen a quarter of an hour to maneuver herself down the stairs using the crutch Mr. Flint had contrived for her. Settling one leg on the lower step and swinging the curved oak staff down to meet it, stair by stair, she managed a noisy descent, terrified that at any second she would land off balance and tumble to the bottom. But not even the ache in her injured leg dampened her determination. She had chickens to feed. She had herself to feed as well.

Moving around on only one good leg made her heart pound with exertion. By the time she reached the landing, her breath was heaving in and out in hoarse gasps. Now she knew why old Jeremiah Dowd, who had lost a leg during the War of the Rebellion, spent so many afternoons sitting under the leafy oak tree in the town square.

The first thing she saw when she stumped into the kitchen was her blue speckleware coffeepot on the still-warm stove. She lifted the lid and peeked in to find an almost full pot of rich-smelling brew. Four fresh eggs nestled in a china bowl, and the frying pan waited beside it. Thoughtful of the man. Either he was more civilized than she’d thought or he was after something.

But what? What would make a man like Mr. Flint take interest in the tiny farm she was working so hard to hold on to?

She broke the eggs into the bowl, whipped them into a froth with a fork and had just poured them into the butter-coated pan when she glanced out the window. Her hand froze on the spatula.

Mr. Flint stood in her yard, stirring something in her washtub, which sat over a fire pit he’d dug. With his shirt off he looked younger than she had supposed, his chest well developed, his back lean and tanned. She gazed at his smooth, bronzy skin and the V of fine dark hair that disappeared beneath his belt buckle until she felt her cheeks flush. With every movement of the peeled branch he used to stir the tub contents, sinewy muscles rippled in his shoulders.

Ellen slid the frying pan off the heat and clumped out onto the back porch. The hole in the screen door had been patched with a scrap of wire mesh. She didn’t need reminding that there were zillions of such chores waiting to be addressed. Annoyed, she pushed the screen open with a slap. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He poled the sudsy mass of pale-colored garments around the tub without looking up. “Washing clothes.”

Steam rose into the hot morning air, making Ellen more acutely aware of the heat in the pit of her stomach. Heat she hadn’t felt since Dan left.

“I usually do that in the shade. Yonder, by the pepper tree.” She flinched at the accusatory tone in her voice. What was the matter with her? The man was doing her a favor, taking on work she couldn’t manage at present.

He looked at her, shading his eyes with one hand. “Wasn’t any sun when I started. Real pretty sunrise, though.”

He’d started washing clothes at dawn? Ellen moved closer and peered down into the tub. She recognized the blue shirt he’d worn the day before, then the petticoat she’d muddied in the creek and the underdrawers he’d cut off her when he’d set her leg. Then another pair of what looked like men’s drawers. No, two pairs.

His mouth quirked in a lazy, off-center smile. “Been awhile since my duds have seen hot water. I’m washing everything I own except the pants I’m wearing.”

Heavens, did that mean under his tight-fitting jeans he wore no…no underwear? She stared at his crotch for an instant, then flicked her gaze to his mouth. Unlike his eyes, which revealed nothing, his mouth was extraordinarily expressive. She could practically read his mind from the position of his lips. At this moment, he was not thinking of his tub of washing; he was thinking of her!

Ellen swallowed hard. “Save the water. The creek’s getting low, and my tomatoes are drying up.”

“Got lye soap in it. You still want—”

“The tomatoes are over there, trained up on the chicken wire.” Again, the words came out harsher than she intended.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The rinse water,” she snapped. “Not the soapy. Pour the soapy water on my honeysuckle vine next to the chicken house.”

He studied her a moment longer than necessary, then shrugged his shoulders and resumed stirring the tub contents. The flush of heat in Ellen’s face traveled down her neck and into her chest, as if a rush of hot, wet wind had curled about her.

She pivoted so fast the crutch under her armpit wobbled. “Excuse me, Mr. Flint. I have quite forgotten something.”

Jess chuckled as she stumped away across the yard. “Call me Jess, why don’t you?” he said to her back.

She kept moving. “Why should I?”

“Because it looks like I’ll be here for a while.” He chuckled again as the screen door snapped shut. He could tell she didn’t like the idea much.

That was fine with him. In a funny way he didn’t much like the idea, either, even though it was what he’d planned. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy her company, because he did. She had a crispness about her, a strength he found intriguing. She worked hard. The vegetable garden flourished, the cow was healthy, the horse well cared for. She even had a well-scrubbed kitchen floor. It could not have been easy for her alone all this time, but it sure was plain she wasn’t a quitter. She had courage and she had grit. He wondered if husband Dan knew what he’d thrown away when he rode off.

Ellen O’Brian had two other things Jess would give his right arm for—the respect of the townspeople and the ability to laugh at herself. Rare qualities for a woman in these circumstances. Downright admirable. He wished he didn’t have to hurt her to get what he wanted.

For a moment he considered stripping and tossing his jeans into the tub, then discarded the idea. It might spook her so bad she’d run him off, and no matter how dirt-encrusted or sweat-sticky his trousers, he couldn’t take the risk.

He watched the soapy water bubble around his underdrawers and her petticoat. Entwined together in a sudsy knot, the garments writhed in a sinuously suggestive dance, and suddenly he remembered the satiny skin of her thigh when he’d cut her lace-trimmed drawers away. His fingers tightened on the stirring pole. Better keep his mind on her tomatoes.

And on his most important task of the day—searching another small area of O’Brian land.

When the clothes looked reasonably clean, he dragged the tub of water off the fire and over to the chicken house, tipping it out where the honeysuckle vine wound up the wall and spilled over the roof. A honeysuckle vine on a chicken house, of all things. On the privy, too, he noted. He’d save a gallon or so of water for that one as well.

Rinsing was easier. And cooler. He pumped fresh water into the tub, and after he’d kicked dirt over his coals and wrung out all the rinsed garments, he scouted for a clothesline hook. On his circuit around the yard he glimpsed a blur of blue through the kitchen window.

She wore another one of her husband’s shirts, a plain blue chambray. Most women would look dowdy in such a getup, but even though the shoulder seams drooped off her slim form and she’d rolled the sleeves up to her elbows, the oversize garment made her look female as hell. He’d bet she didn’t know that. Or maybe she didn’t care what she looked like.

Jess halted. He’d never met a woman who didn’t care about her appearance. Was saving this farm for her scoundrel of a husband more important to her than how she felt as a woman?

The thought nagged at the back of his brain until he found the clothesline loop at the side of the house and ran a rope to the pepper tree some yards away. He lugged over the tub of clean, wet clothes and began to drape the garments over the line.

First her lace-trimmed underdrawers. Carefully he shook the wrinkles from the garment and then, unable to suppress the urge, he stood looking at it. The warm breeze caught the underside and belled the drawers out. The leg he’d had to slit flapped in the current of air; maybe she could mend it on the treadle sewing machine he’d seen in her parlor.

He ran one finger down the seam. It was all that lacy edging that fascinated him. She sure as hell cared what she wore underneath her sturdy work skirt and Dan’s old shirt. On impulse, he brought the soft white fabric to his nose and inhaled. Beneath the clean smell of laundry soap floated a faint flowery scent. He breathed in again, deeper, and almost choked at the sound of her voice.

“Clothespins,” she said. She thrust a striped denim drawstring sack at him and shook it once so it rattled. The sound reminded him of the collection of chicken wishbones he’d treasured as a boy. Funny thing to treasure, maybe, but knowing he had a chance for even one of his wishes to come true had kept him going. Jess wished he had one of those wishbones now, just for luck.

With an effort he jerked his thoughts back to the laundry. “Thanks.”

She stood looking at him, dropped her gaze to the underdrawers in his hand and then perused the line he’d rigged.

“I should be thanking you, Mr. Flint. I don’t believe I could manage hanging out clothes balancing on my crutch.”

“Don’t even try,” he ordered. “If you fall, I’ll have another load of washing to do.”

A glimmer of a smile touched her mouth. “I try never to take on more than I can manage.”

“Seems to me running this farm might be more than you can manage. And don’t ‘Mr. Flint’ me. Name’s Jess. Short for Jason.”

Her eyes widened and he could have bit his tongue off. Hell, she must have heard of Jason Flint. Half the sheriffs west of the Mississippi had his picture plastered all over their walls.

“Very well, then. Jess.” She looked at him curiously and Jess’s gut tightened. If she did recognize him, she could go for the sheriff.

But she couldn’t ride. She couldn’t even walk very far. Besides, maybe she hadn’t flinched because of his name; might be something else that made those unnerving, clear blue eyes look so big. Maybe his photograph wasn’t on the sheriff’s wall in Willow Flat.

“You going to wave my smalls around until they’re dry?” she inquired, a bite in her tone.

“Uh…guess not, ma’am.”

“Then stop staring at them and hang ’em up. There are other chores to do.”

Jess obeyed, pinning the lace-edged garment to the line, then shaking out her wet petticoat.

“Hang that upside down,” she instructed. “Stretch the hem out so it’ll dry faster.”

Without a word, he did as she asked. While he secured seven clothespins along the bottom of edge of her petticoat, she leaned on her crutch and fidgeted. When he turned back to the tub of wet clothes, he caught her looking at him. Goddam if her eyes seemed to get more penetrating every time they met his.

Jess swallowed. “What other work do you need done today?”

“Tiny needs fresh hay in his stall, and that means shoveling out the manure.”

“Easy enough. Then what?”

“You won’t like it.” She said it with a half smile on her lips.

“Okay, I won’t like it.” He watched her eyes turn sparkly as she studied him.

“You hired me, Miz O’Brian. I do what you say, even if I don’t like it.” When she opened her mouth, he braced himself.

“There’s a town social on Sunday. I want you to help me bake a cake.”

He’d forgotten he’d promised Svensen he’d remind her of the social. Ah, hell, what difference did it make if it had slipped his mind? It hadn’t slipped hers.

“A cake,” he said, his voice flat.

“A spice cake, flavored with anise. I’ve made it for the social every year since I was tall enough to reach the oven door.” Every year since Mama had died.

“What’s so difficult about it that you need help?”

She sent him such a withering look he felt his throat go dry. “I can’t beat cake batter five hundred strokes and hold on to this crutch at the same time.”

She inspected the last garment remaining in the washtub—his blue shirt—and raised her eyes as far as the clothesline. “Let’s muck out the barn first while your shirt dries. I am not sure I want a half-naked man in my kitchen.”

Her cheeks, he noted, were tinged a soft rosy pink. “Who’s going to know?” he retorted. “Seems to me what you do in the privacy of your own house is…private.”

Ellen pursed her lips and tipped her head to one side. “I will know.”

Jess grinned. “Some folks are proper only when other folks are looking. Then there are some, maybe like you, with a moral code they carry on the inside.”

“I should hope so, Mr. Flint. Otherwise people can get confused sorting out what is right from what is wrong. Don’t you agree?”

Her words sounded mighty sensible. In a way he envied her clarity. He’d never found it that easy. Even now he was deliberating on how far he would go before his conscience stopped him.

“Mr. Flint?” She gestured with her head. “The barn?”

He didn’t expect her to plod laboriously after him all the way to Tiny’s stall, but she did. The blast of heavy heat inside the barn made him feel as if he were walking into an oven. Jess left the door propped open for fresh air, then grabbed a pitchfork and started in.

While he worked, Ellen unlatched the gate and walked the big plow horse out of his stall. Between scrapes of the shovel and the sound of manure thunking into the wheelbarrow, Jess could hear her talking to the animal.

“Come on, you sweet old thing.” Out of the corner of his eye he watched her teeter on the crutch as she stroked the animal’s nose. “It’s only for a little while, and then you’ll have nice, clean straw to roll in.”

“Roll in!” Jess bit off a snort of disbelief. “Stall’s not big enough for him to turn around in, let alone roll.”

“But he doesn’t know that,” Ellen cooed at the animal. “He has no idea what I’m saying, he just likes the sound of my voice.” She leaned her cheek against the horse’s huge shoulder. “Some things don’t need any words, do they, Tiny?”

“Some animals are smarter than others, all right,” Jess stated.

Ellen smiled up at the animal. “Tiny’s not smart. He just knows I love him.”

Jess leaned on his shovel and watched her make eyes at the plow horse. He liked hearing the soft murmur of her voice as she talked to the animal. Kinda touching, in a way. She talked to her chickens, too. Even her tomato plants. She must get damn lonely out here all by herself.

He resumed shoveling up the dirty straw until an unbidden thought drilled him between the eyes. You can’t afford to feel sympathy for her. That would be just plain stupid. He couldn’t afford to feel anything for her.

He straightened abruptly and looked the plow horse in the eye. She’s got you eating out of her hand, hasn’t she, old fella?

Immediately the animal’s ears flattened. No need to be jealous, now. Only one male on this spread is going to let that happen, and it’s not me.

Ellen rested on the bale of clean hay until Mr. Flint motioned that he was ready to cut the baling wire and fork the straw into Tiny’s stall. With an awkward lurch she stood up and managed to hobble to the barn door. She felt light-headed and out of breath in the heat. She prayed she would make it back to the kitchen before she collapsed.

The clank of metal told her Mr. Flint had finished and was returning the shovel and the pitchfork to the rack against the wall. She started across the yard, heard him shut the barn door and tramp after her.

“Tired?” His voice jarred her concentration.

“Yes. More than I thought I’d be.”

He caught up to her and slowed his steps to stay by her side. “It’s hard work, learning a new way to walk.”

Ellen shot him a glance. “Is that what you had to do?”

“Up to a point. My leg didn’t heal right.” A tightening of his lips alerted her to an unease he kept well hidden.

“Where were you when you hurt your leg?”

“In a Confederate prison. Richmond. I escaped, but I had to rip the plaster off my leg to do it.”

“Was it worth it? Your freedom in exchange for a crippled leg?”

His face changed. “Wasn’t a choice, really. Grew me up damn fast.”

“It must have been painful.”

“Yeah. But if I’d stayed, they’d have broken the other one, too.”

Ellen’s insides recoiled, but she said nothing. Instead she focused on keeping her balance as she lurched toward the back porch. Mr. Flint stayed at her elbow, but he let her negotiate the steps on her own. By the time they reached the kitchen, she was out of breath again.

She sank onto a ladder-back chair, closed her eyes and fanned herself with her apron. Mr. Flint leaned over her.

“You all right?”

“Oh, right enough. Just winded.” When she opened her eyelids a glass of water sat on the table before her, and he had settled his long frame onto the chair across from her.

At first she tried very hard not to look at his bare chest. After an awkward silence, she gave up. She liked looking at his tanned, well-muscled torso, even slicked with perspiration and smudged with dirt. It would be an experience to bake her cake with a half-dressed helper.

“I’ll go wash up and get my shirt off the clothesline. Should be dry by now.”

“I would offer to iron it for you, but…”

“Doesn’t need ironing, Ellen. Don’t need to get fancied up to make a cake.”

A flicker of regret teased at her.

At the back door, he turned and held her gaze with an expression she couldn’t read. Not concern, exactly. Just a kind of awareness. Recognition.

Ellen swallowed over a lump the size of an egg and stood to fetch her blue mixing bowl.

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