Kit Gardner Read online

  “I see,” Jessica murmured distractedly. Stark was too blasted big. Bigger, wider, longer, and no doubt heavier, than any man she’d ever seen. How the devil would she and a five-year-old child move him?

  She eyed the distance to the house, judging it to be no more than ten feet. Yet the space yawned like an unbreachable chasm. She should run for Doc Eagan, or at least to Willard Fry’s for help. A woman couldn’t possibly do this sort of thing alone. A woman couldn’t tend a farm alone, or raise a child alone, for heaven’s sake, or so the townsfolk, and Avram in particular, were wont to remind her on a daily basis. So how the devil could she move what had to be a two-hundred-pound beast of man, alone?

  She set her teeth. She’d shot him, she’d take care of him, blast it. After all, she’d tended wounds before. How difficult could a superficial gunshot wound be to clean and bandage? Stark looked more than capable of surviving it. Besides, she didn’t quite feel inclined to present a full account of her shooting abilities for the local gossips to banter about for months to come, a sure penance to pay if she summoned Doc Eagan or Willard Fry to help.

  Furthermore, Avram would no doubt see this as a prime opportunity to resume his lecture on keeping herself to gentle, womanly pursuits and insist all the more vehemently that she marry him this very day, sell this bothersome farm, and come live with him in his small house within the safe limits of Twilight. Yes, best that she tend to this matter herself. She’d devise some explanation for Avram if it became necessary, of course. But how did one hide a two-hundred-pound strange man from one’s fiancé?

  “No, you get his feet, Christian.”

  Without hesitation, Christian let Stark’s head fall with a dull thud into the dust and scrambled to those black boots. “He’s heavy, Mama,” he said, his tongue curling out of his mouth as he managed to hoist those boots a fraction of an inch from the ground.

  Jessica bent and stuffed the sagging hem of her gown into her waistband, then hooked her elbows beneath Stark’s armpits. A breath wheezed through her bared teeth when her arm muscles bunched and rebelled against the weight of him. She planted her feet and attempted to pay little attention to the dark head lolling against her breasts. The pounding in the back of her head intensified. “I’m going to drag him, Christian. Don’t stop until we get to the back door.”

  Christian nodded vigorously. “I’m helpin’, aren’t I, Mama? Aren’t I?”

  “You’re helping.” Jessica braced her legs wide and felt her thighs strain. “Now—now.”

  Jessica didn’t release her breath until they’d reached the back door, and then she all but collapsed against the sagging door frame. She stared at the trail of blood in the dust, at those motionless black boots, then shoved the back door open. “Hold this, Christian.”

  “But I want to hold his feet.”

  Her teeth ground in her ears as she again hooked her arms beneath Stark’s shoulders. A sharp pain sliced through her lower back. Breathing was a labor in itself. “Christian, do as I say.”

  He blinked at her, thrust out his lower lip, and didn’t move. “But I’m not helping, then.”

  “Hold the door,” she snapped into billowing dust, feeling the burn of hot tears at the backs of her eyes. No, she would not lose control. Not now, not ever. She couldn’t. A woman alone, raising a headstrong child, trying her best...

  “You don’t have to yell at me,” Christian grumbled, flattening himself against the door.

  “Listen to Mama and I won’t yell at you.” She hauled Stark through the open doorway and into her immaculate kitchen, with its spotless, lye-scrubbed pine floor that she was immensely proud of. She didn’t pause, even when she crashed into a high-backed wooden chair, even when Christian let the door slam on Stark’s leg.

  “You didn’t take off your shoes, Mama. Look, you’re getting the floor all dirty. You’re mad, aren’t you, Mama? See, he’s bleeding all over.”

  She ignored all this, the burning in her arms, the pounding in her head, the lurking sense of doubt in the wisdom of her actions. Through a short hall and into her room she dragged him, finally dropping him beside the mahogany four-poster on the cherished hooked rug she’d beaten for hours not three days past. She didn’t even glance at the bed. No sense in attempting that. She wondered if four burly men could heave Stark from the floor.

  “Take the bucket and get Mama water from the well,” she called toward the door, where she knew Christian lingered.

  “He’s bleeding on your rug, Mama.”

  “I know.” She bit her lip, stared at Stark, then stuffed a feather pillow beneath his head.

  “You’re mad, aren’t you, Mama?”

  She dropped to her knees and set her fingers to fumbling over the buttons of Stark’s shirt. “Get the bucket, Christian.”

  She listened to the sound of shuffling little feet, then to the rush of her own releasing breath. Her throat seemed to close up as her fingers ventured farther down the row of buttons. A rather intimate task, it suddenly seemed, this unbuttoning of a man’s shirt while he lay in a deep sleep on the floor beside her bed. She hesitated. His hand lay upon his stomach, blocking her path, and she found herself staring at those long, thick brown fingers, at the breadth of his palm and the length of his forearm. So disturbingly masculine a forearm, corded with muscle and rope like veins beneath its furred and bronzed veneer. Fleetingly she wondered at the profound disquiet all this aroused in her, a disquiet having nothing to do with the rifle shot she’d seen fit to deliver him. Gingerly she wrapped her fingers about his and lifted his hand aside. With a peculiar hesitancy, she slipped her palms inside the cotton, against warm flesh, and spread the shirt wide.

  For some reason Jessica couldn’t have explained, her breath compressed in her lungs at the sight of him. Not that she’d never seen a man’s chest before, though that had been in the dusky privacy of her bedroom, with all shades drawn. Yet she remembered her husband Frank’s chest as smooth and flat and hairless, not jutting, bulging even, and densely covered with smooth black hair that reached clear to his beard-stubbled throat. He was a beast, this man, and this had to be fear, unparalleled fear that quivered deep in her belly and weakened her limbs. And concern, yes, that was it, nothing but concern for the man who had saved her life, now bade her to press a quavery palm against his chest to seek the rapid beating of his heart.

  Her lips parted. His skin radiated heat that leapt into her hand and seeped up her arm, through her torso, pooling in her belly and in the tightening peaks of her breasts.

  Her fingers curled of their own accord, then splayed slowly through that dense hair. She watched her hand moving over the expanse of his chest. His flesh curved into her palm, as if seeking her touch. The smell of him was like that of leather and warm baked flesh, oddly pleasant.

  “I got it!” Christian announced, suddenly materializing at her side.

  Jessica snatched her fingers to her mouth as if they were suddenly ablaze. She glanced up at Christian, then felt her cheeks flame and quickly averted her gaze. “A cloth...I need a cloth,” she muttered quickly, too quickly, her eyes finding the tapering line of black hair that disappeared into Stark’s waistband. His belly was as ridged as a washboard. “A—a cloth t-to clean his belly. I—I mean...his wound. In the kitchen cupboard. Get me one of those.”

  “But those are the cloths you use on the dishes, Mama. Remember?”

  Her teeth met, and she glared at her son. Again he hesitated. Then the bucket thumped against the floorboards, sending water sloshing all over Jessica’s skirt and her precious hooked rug as Christian finally obeyed. Jessica plunged her hand into the cool water. Sunlight filtered through the lace curtains, heating her, heating the room, so that she could barely catch her breath. She pressed cool, wet fingers to her brow, to the heated length of her neck, and attempted not to look at Stark, save for his wound and the dried blood caked around it.

  Again she dipped her fingers in the bucket, then drew them to her lips. The water, so cool, soothed her parched throat.


  Her fingers found the water again, then quivered over Stark’s brow. Tiny droplets spilled onto his forehead and wove erratic paths into his loosely curling black hair. Those heavy black brows seemed to tighten, then ease from that permanent scowl—a softening, if there were such a thing on such a man. She dipped her fingers and smoothed the skin above his brows, her fingertips playing gently over his temples, then venturing warily where burnished skin met with thickly curling hair.

  Yes, there was no denying that she soothed him. His dry lips parted and emitted a soft breath, and before she could think, she brushed her wet fingers over his lips. Still, he slept, even when she jerked her hand to her breast and listened to the hammering of her pulse.

  Moments later Christian returned. “Is this the rag?”

  “Yes,” she replied briskly, without the favor of a glance. She applied herself to the task of cleaning the wound as would one grateful for distraction.

  The wound. Tend the wound. You owe him your life.

  No matter that simply leaning over him was proving far more unsettling than the sight of flesh ripped open, that his warm breath seemed to play through her hair, teasing her cheek, that his chest seemed to push up against her breasts far too deliberately for a man flat upon his back with a rifle wound. For some blasted reason, she couldn’t shake the feeling that at any moment those massive arms would envelop her and pinion her flat against him.

  “How come ya shot him, Mama?” Christian asked, perching himself close at her side.

  Jessica blew an annoying curl from her eyes and leaned closer to examine the clean wound. “Mama thought he was a bad man, Christian. He was a stranger. Mama has told you about strangers, hasn’t she?”

  “Is he going to stay?”

  “I don’t think so. No, no, he’s not.”

  “But he has to get better, Mama. So he has to stay. He killed that snake. He told me it would bite me. It was a rattler, Mama.”

  Jessica’s teeth slid together. “Mama knows what it was, Christian. Hasn’t Mama told you about snakes? That they bite, and that you must stay away from them?”

  She could almost hear the indignant dipping of his chin. “Yes...but I just wanted to touch it, and Mr. Stark said I shouldn’t.”

  Jessica glanced sideways at her son. “Why don’t you believe what Mama tells you, Christian?”

  He stared at her, eyes enormous pools full of guilt and suspicion. Because you have to prove everything you tell me. “I don’t know,” he said slowly.

  “Listen to Mama, Christian.”

  “Is he going to stay and fix our barn?”

  Jessica glanced sharply at Christian, then shook her head. “Reverend Halsey is going to fix our barn...and the house...as soon as he finds the time. He’s very busy at the church.”

  “No, he’s not. He doesn’t like the barn or our house. He told me, Mama. He told me I was gonna live in his house soon. He told me that, Mama.”

  “That must have been before he talked to Mama.”

  Christian’s blond brows quivered as he stared down at Stark. “He’s big, Mama. He could fix our barn good.”

  A shiver took up residence in Jessica’s belly when her eyes skittered over the muscled plains of chest. “We’ll see.” She sat back on her heels and surveyed the clean wound. “I have to get bandages.” She pointed her index finger at her son. “Stay here. And don’t touch him.”

  Christian gave her a look that bordered on patronizing. How like his father he looked at times like that. “I can touch him. He doesn’t bite, Mama. And I want him to stay.” His tiny voice crept after her as she ventured into the kitchen in search of bandages. “Did you see how he killed that snake, Mama? Did you see? I want him to stay. Can he, Mama? Can he? He could sleep in the barn and teach me how to throw a knife.”

  Jessica shuddered and slammed the cupboard doors.

  “Couldn’t he, Mama? Say yes, Mama.”

  “We’ll see.” She entered the bedroom with bandages in hand. Yet, try as she might, there was no denying the peculiar thrill that shot through her at the thought...of a repaired barn, of course. Avram wouldn’t get to it by September, if then—if he ever would, stubborn man. And the house, yes, the house required so much. After all, the further it sank into disrepair, the more fervently Avram would insist she rid herself of it. Perhaps if these bedroom walls were sporting a fresh coat of white paint to rival that of Sadie McGlue’s, if the barn weren’t threatening to collapse at any moment, if she could prove her strawberry patch a worthwhile endeavor...perhaps then Avram would cease this nonsense about selling the farm.

  Her eyes drifted over the undeniable bulge of Stark’s biceps, the sinewed length of forearm, those large, capable hands and long, long legs. Even with a shoulder wound, he looked quite able, even more so than a sulking Avram on a good day. And he was awfully tall, tall enough, it seemed, to accomplish just about anything.

  “We’ll see” was all she said.

  Chapter Two

  Inch by inch, Rance pulled himself from the sucking depths of a fathomless pit. The light drew him, and something more, a touch upon his brow, soft as thistledown, upon his lips, something cool, and then another touch...something tapping upon his closed eyelids, first one, tap-tap-tap, then the other.

  “Wake up.”

  A voice, bereft of all softness, all compassion, all the warmth his jaded ear sought, loomed out of the pervasive gloom. The voice brimmed with impatience, and the tapping upon his eyelids hovered near an agitated poke.

  “Wake up, wake up.”

  A growl blossomed in Rance’s chest, struggled up his parched throat and spilled from his lips. The tapping on his eyelids stopped. Only then did the heat in Rance’s left shoulder swell, then focus into one searing throb of pain.

  He’d been shot. He knew this from both instinct and experience, even while all else hovered just beyond his grasp. If only the fog would part. If only he could move. Who the hell had shot him?

  The poking resumed upon his eyelids.

  “Wake up, wake up.”

  A child’s voice.

  Rance forced open one eye. Sunlight blinded him and stoked yet another ache, this one dull, at the back of his head. He squeezed his eyes closed and rolled the lump on the back of his head over whatever it was he lay on. Something soft, as if placed there for his comfort. Who the hell would do that?

  “Wake up, Mr. Stark.” Poke-poke.

  Stark...Stark. His mother’s family name, and not truly an alias, then, but unrecognizable. Why Stark? And who was this little person? Memories slammed about in the throbbing recesses of his brain. Oh, yes, the boy, the woman.

  Frank Wynne’s wife.

  Rance wrapped his fingers around a thin wrist, stilling that poking, then slowly opened his eyes. The fog lifted, and realization flooded over him the way sunlight flooded the room. The boy was perched over him—Christian, she’d called him—his jaw set and his blue eyes filled with an accusatory look.

  Rance released that tiny wrist and felt his lungs deflate of all air. The boy was the image of his mother, clear to the thrust of that tiny chin. And just like his mother, he was small, compactly made, dressed in something that looked like it had once been bleached white and starched crisp beneath a loving hand. That grimy chin jutted forward, and one pudgy finger looked as if it yearned to poke into his nose before some silent reprimand brought it instead to scratch idly at his cheek. And still those hollow blue eyes probed unflinchingly through a curtain of straight blond bangs, just as they had from that photograph pressed in Frank Wynne’s locket. The locket tucked inside his watch pocket.

  “My mama shot you.”

  Rance rubbed his eyes and resisted a sudden, irrational urge to laugh. Shot by a woman... He could still see her there, looking as if at any moment she might crumple beneath the weight of the rifle. All that blond hair, tossed about by the wind, blinding her, distracting him. The hair...so different from her photograph that he might never have recognized her had it not been for her eyes, th
at unmistakable sorrow lurking deep there.

  His fingers touched the bandage. Frank Wynne’s wife had shot him. The irony of it all. Had she known who he was, she might have left him to bleed to death in all that dust. Or she might have shot him again. But she didn’t know who he was, nor could she possibly guess. After all, what man in his right mind, a man still wanted for murder, would find himself within a fifty-mile radius of the home of the man he’d killed? And he still didn’t understand in the least any of his reasons for coming here—as if understanding it would have made it any less foolish. Hell, he deserved to be shot.

  He had to get the hell out of here.

  “My mama’s never shot anything. But she shot you. She thought you were a bad man. But you killed the bad snake, so she put a bandage on you.”

  Regret, uncomfortable and entirely unknown, sliced through Rance, and he shifted his shoulders, as if he could shrug off any hint of compassion, of weakness, of that damned squirming that filled his gut whenever he met the boy’s eyes. Pain cut through his shoulder, spiraling down his arm and through his chest. He released his breath in a long wheeze. “Where is your mama?”

  “Out back.” The boy gave Rance and his shoulder wound a deeply suspicious look. “You’re an outlaw.”

  “I’m not an outlaw.” Rance shoved himself up on one elbow. The room tilted, then righted itself. He’d ridden in worse shape. He could sure as hell manage it now. Why had he come here? Damned stupid of him.

  “Do you rob trains and stagecoaches?”

  The boy looked altogether too anxious about that. Rance glowered at him, and pain sliced through his head at the mere shifting of his brows. “No.”

  “This is my mama’s room,” Christian said with a slight narrowing of his eyes. Again the accusatory look. “You got blood on my mama’s hooked rug. She’s gonna have to clean it again. She’s gonna be mad.”

  “She’s already mad at me.” And none of it had to do with him sullying her damned carpet. Frank Wynne’s carpet, in Frank Wynne’s house. Frank Wynne’s wife. Rance allowed his bleary gaze to roam about the sun-dappled room. Odd, but he couldn’t imagine this soft, gentle woman’s room, with its lace curtains and embroidered white coverlet, its corner rocker and carved armoire, its freshly cut white roses and prominent Bible, belonging to Frank Wynne. Toothy, lecherous Frank Wynne. A boastful, cheating Frank Wynne, yammering tale after tale of the women he’d had in every cattle town from Denver to Abilene as he chewed on his cigars.