The Untamed Heart. Kit Gardner

otherwise, she didn’t recognize the stranger’s fluid gait, the breadth of his shoulders or the tall black hat he wore. His coat was long and tailored, with tails that flapped when he walked. He was so tall the grass that caught Willie thigh high reached only to his knees. His legs cleaved through the grass with an animalistic grace, so different from the rough-and-tumble pack of hard-fighting, hard-drinking brothers she’d shared her first eighteen years with.

      Something began to stir in her the closer the stranger came, but it wasn’t fear. Though shadow hid his features, there was a disturbing familiarity about him. Something in the set of his shoulders, the way he moved.

      “Oh, no,” she whispered, and lifted her gun.

      

      The young man Sloan assumed was Willie looked up at him from under the shadow of his oversized hat and shoved his gun at him.

      “Stop right there, fancy man.” A boy, not a man. The voice was pitched far too high and carried a huskiness common to pubescent youths. Sloan drew up short, realizing a youth’s inexperience and exuberance often got the better of good sense, particularly when that youth gripped a gun in his hand, a remarkably steady hand that bespoke of familiarity. Beside the boy, a rangy old man watched Sloan with an odd glint in his eye.

      “Willie Thorne?” Sloan said.

      “You got that right, fancy man.” A youth, certainly not a man, with hips and thighs still so rounded with baby fat his waist looked unusually narrow. Sloan deepened his gaze. Something wasn’t right. Youths were narrow chested, full stomached. This boy’s white shirt stretched taut where Sloan least expected it to, directly at midchest. Sloan stared at the fullness there and felt heavy heat fill his loins.

      Beneath the shadow of the hat, full pink lips parted in a grim version of a smile. Sloan went instantly, uncomfortably rigid. No woman in his experience had ever looked so blatantly, arousingly female.

      For an instant Sloan thought of his father’s Oriental manservant Azato, who had spent years developing mind-overbody principles in Sloan since the day he’d first come to Devlin Manor as part of the cargo his father had acquired on a voyage to the Orient when Sloan was only a boy. These principles demanded that Sloan resist all physical pain and all adversity in his effort to achieve the art of mystical self-defense. Without question, a master of these techniques should be able to resist a woman’s best efforts.

      Still, looking at the amply proportioned Willie Thorne, Sloan couldn’t help but wonder if even Azato would have given as much thought to being mighty if women the world over began to pour themselves into men’s trousers and skimpy shirts.

      The girl took several steps toward him, braced her boots wide and leveled the gun at his chest “Get the hell off my land, mister.”

      Sloan’s gaze shot past her to the pile of split wood and the ax protruding out of a stump. It looked as if it had been solidly plunged there by a strong hand. The bearded old man looked incapable of lifting the ax, much less his cane. The farmhouse had been deserted when Sloan had peeked through one lacedraped window. Only two cups sat on a table freshly cleared of dinner plates. She obviously lived alone with the old man. Alone, she tended to the farm, split the wood, mended the fences.

      Admiration stirred in Sloan, despite the beleaguered look of the place. And in that instant she embodied struggle and triumph, desire and adversity, every paradox he’d hoped to find on his journey. He wished she’d take off her hat so he could see her eyes and her hair. “I’m looking for accommodations, Miss—”

      The gun jerked. “Don’t—move,” she said slowly, taking another step. “And don’t try any of those fancy fighting maneuvers. I’m a quicker shot than Reuben Grimes. And a hell of a lot more accurate. I could shoot that stickpin right out of your collar.” She thrust her chin at him, a slightly clefted, determined chin. Her lips pursed with disdain, and then he knew. He should have known the moment he spotted her across the field of grass simply by the peculiar reaction she stirred in him.

      Gertie. Willie. Something didn’t fit. Without question, she was at home here on this run-down farm, in her trousers and boots, ax in hand and dirt up to her elbows. At the saloon, he’d sensed a helplessness in her, a distinct undercurrent of discomfort despite her best efforts to show otherwise.

      Sloan had seen enough adversity in his life to know that desperation led many down a path that they wouldn’t typically choose. All desperate people had a price, one Sloan was not above finding, particularly if it would keep her out of the saloon and away from cowboys with itchy hands.

      “What do you want for a room?” he asked, reaching into his trouser pocket and withdrawing the fat wad of bills he’d won on the train. He thumbed off several bills and glanced up at her. She was staring at his hand with such intensity he could almost hear her tallying all that his money would buy: the paint for the house, a new fence, even a plow to turn this field of grass into wheat or corn. Perhaps something as simple as food. Or a dress that fit her properly.

      The old man narrowed his eyes. Sloan didn’t blame them for not trusting him. But only a fool would refuse help when in such need.

      “Put your money away, fancy man. I’ve no rooms to let you.”

      Sloan heard his teeth click. Bloody impertinent female. Quickly he recalled the price of meals and lodging in New York, at the grand and luxurious American Hotel. And then he doubled it. “Fifty dollars a day for a room and the pleasure of your company at meals.”

      The gun wavered. Her skin grew unearthly pale. She tipped back her hat and blinked at him with eyes as wide and fathomless as the sea beyond Cornwall’s far western headlands. “You’re bribing me,” she said, her voice chilled. “You can’t do that.”

      “Seventy-five,” he said softly. “Do you cook, Willie?”

      “Better than her mama could,” the old man muttered under his breath.

      Willie shot him a look that would have stopped an army.

      The old man merely shrugged. “Your mama was a fine cook, Willie-girl. Like I always say, a skillet and a pail of grease are the essentials to any recipe.”

      Willie let out a wheezing breath. “State your business, fancy man.”

      “Sloan,” he said, tipping up one corner of his mouth. Pocketing his money, he extended a black-gloved hand over the top of the gun. “Sloan Devlin, late of Cornwall, England.”

      She barely extended her fingers when Sloan leaned forward and enveloped her small hand in his. Her eyes briefly widened, deepening in color.

      He expected to feel nothing through the fine leather of his gloves. After all, he’d spent his youth pounding his fists into tree trunks day after day to thickly callus his hands against pain or feeling. And yet he could feel the warmth of her, the pulse of her, the vital, womanly essence of her seeping through calluses and leather and skin. He relinquished it at the first tug of her fingers.

      “I’ve come to see the elephant,” Sloan said.

      She seemed unimpressed, and her voice rang with contempt. “That’s what all the English folk said when they came and shot the buffalo. Now there’s nothing for them to shoot. Who sent you? Union Pacific? Kansas Pacific? A couple years back some fancy English gent was following the Kansas Pacific’s survey parties, drawing pictures. Maybe you’re one of them. Or are you Denver Pacific?”

      “I came by rail,” he replied, “and shared several games of poker with some fellows from the Union Pacific. But that’s the extent of my association with the railroad.”

      Her eyes narrowed, as if she gave the idea of believing him some consideration. “You’re a gambler.”

      His laugh rumbled from his chest. “Not on my luckiest day.”

      “You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

      “I’m a writer.”

      “They pay writers good where you come from.”

      “No