Praise for Jillian Hart

ROCKY MOUNTAIN MAN ‘This book’s intense emotions reach out to touch readers. Betsy’s unwavering belief in Duncan and willingness to fight to save him from himself is so moving you’ll want to cry with happiness as Hart plays on your heartstrings.’ —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

HIGH PLAINS WIFE ‘Finely drawn characters and sweet tenderness tinged with poignancy draw readers into a familiar story that beautifully captures the feel of an Americana romance. Readers can enjoy sharp dialogue and adorable child characterisations while shedding a tear or two.’ —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

MONTANA MAN ‘Ms Hart creates a world of tantalising warmth and tenderness, a toasty haven in which the reader will find pure enjoyment.’ —Romantic Times BOOKreviews

COOPER’S WIFE ‘…a wonderfully written romance full of love and laughter.’ —Rendezvous

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

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

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

Jillian Hart grew up on her family’s homestead, where she raised cattle, rode horses and scribbled stories in her spare time. After earning an English degree from Whitman College, she worked in advertising before becoming a writer. When she’s not hard at work on her next story, Jillian can be found chatting with a friend, stopping for a café mocha with a book in hand, and spending quiet evenings at home with her family.

Novels by the same author:

LAST CHANCE BRIDE

COOPER’S WIFE

MALCOLM’S HONOUR

MONTANA MAN

BLUEBONNET BRIDE

MONTANA LEGEND

HIGH PLAINS WIFE

THE HORSEMAN

ROCKY MOUNTAIN CHRISTMAS

(short story in A Season of the Heart) MONTANA WIFE

ROCKY MOUNTAIN MAN

Jillian Hart

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Prologue

Montana Territorial Prison, 1879

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Only then would he dare to dream of home.

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

Locking him out. Not in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Far worse.

Chapter One

Bluebonnet County, 1884

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She needed his business.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just the way he liked it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With her mouth watering, she took a rich, creamy bite. Sweet berries burst on her tongue and she moaned in delight. She savored the lovely flavors, for she believed hat the enjoyment of a good dessert should ever be rushed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Two

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

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

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

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

It had been too much.

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

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

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

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

Waiting to see if they would hang him come morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He couldn’t leave her alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Too fast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She was crying for him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was as if the entire mountainside waited.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yeah, now get off me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Three

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“In the meantime, just rest.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Git. Shoo.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That’s the idea.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But his breath rattled and his fingers went slack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m thinking of my honor.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I can’t leave you here.”

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

“Mother would box my ears if I did.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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