The Untamed Heart. Kit Gardner

you?”

      “Not yet. At least not enough. I suppose that’s why I’m here.”

      “To stir up trouble.”

      “I prefer to walk away from trouble.”

      “Good. The road back there leads all the way to Denver. Just point your nose west and start walking.” She headed for her ax. For an instant, Sloan found himself staring at her backside. Women as lushly formed as Willie should have been legally banned from wearing men’s trousers.

      An odd compulsion to throw her over his shoulder swept over him. He took a step, tugged his dozing excuse for a horse behind him, then drew up as she swung the ax in an arc that stirred the air right in front of him. She’d set her jaw with grim determination. Sleek muscles strained in her bare forearms. A grunt came from her lips when the ax plunged into the log.

      Sloan felt the tension mounting inside him. “How many nights will you spend in the Silver Spur to earn anything close to what I’m offering you for a single night’s accommodations? A week? A month? All I’ll ask from you is a smile every morning.”

      The ax whistled through the air, again keeping him at a good distance. Wood chips sprayed into the air.

      “I don’t trust strange men with velvet cuffs and shiny-toed shoes, Devlin.”

      Ah, the broken heart finally betrayed itself. So the thief of her heart hadn’t been a cowboy. A gambler, perhaps?

      Sloan glanced at the old man. “Is she typically this difficult?”

      The old man spat into the ground. “Yep. I keep tellin’ her she’d best get more likable if she’s ever gonna find herself a husband.”

      “Reasonable would suffice for now,” Sloan said, watching the color creep up from her neck and up under the brim of her hat.

      Willie plunged the ax blade into the stump, whirled and advanced on Sloan with hands braced on her hips and green eyes blazing. “Eighty-five a night, one week in advance, nonrefundable. Meals, bed and outhouse privileges included.”

      “That’s reasonable.” Sloan pulled out the money and peeled off twelve crisp one-hundred dollar bills. “I’ll pay for two weeks of services—” Just as she reached out to snatch the bills, he lifted them beyond her fingertips. She arched up after it, her eyes darting to his, and in them he saw desperation and blind hope all twisted up with pride. “And the pleasure of your company, of course,” he murmured, startlingly aware of her in the most base physical sense. She stood just inches below him, emanating a womanly warmth, smelling of grass and mountains and freshly chopped wood.

      Her brows quivered. “Whatever that means. I live here.” Lightning quick she plucked the bills from his hand and, without counting them, tucked them inside the open neck of her shirt.

      Sloan’s mouth went instantly dry.

      Again she turned to retrieve her ax but Sloan was much quicker this time, reaching around her and taking up the ax.

      She angled her eyes at him and pursed her lips. “Give me that, Devlin, before you hurt yourself.”

      With one arm, Sloan lifted a log onto the stump. Bracing his legs, he glanced sideways at her and tossed her his horse’s reins. “Stand back.”

      She didn’t move. “I don’t need your help, Devlin. I don’t need any man.”

      “No,” he murmured, looking directly into her eyes. “I don’t believe you do. Now that we both understand that, stand back.”

      “I don’t—”

      Sloan swung the ax. Willie jumped back just as the ax plunged through the log, shattering it into five pieces. Sloan looked at Willie. She stared at the ax blade buried five inches deep in the stump then slowly looked up at Sloan. Her lips parted. Color bloomed into her cheeks. She looked like a rose bursting open beneath the sun.

      “I—I’ll take your horse to the barn,” she said.

      “Thank you.”

      She hesitated. “And I’ll get you some dinner.” She glanced at the old man, flushed a deeper crimson, then whirled around and strode toward the house.

      Sloan watched her until the shadows swallowed her.

       Chapter Three

      The skillet slammed onto the hot stove. A chair scraped. A cupboard slammed. Butter sizzled in the skillet. Eggs cracked against the side of the pan—plop, plop, plop. Willie stared at the eggs bubbling in the butter and considered reaching for another. Her neck had hurt when she’d looked up and met Devlin’s gaze square. He was taller than Brant by a good three inches, and seemed substantially thicker, despite the elegant drape of his fancy clothes. Brant had always taken three eggs each morning. She cracked another egg into the pan.

      Satisfied, she turned to the peeled potatoes, took up her knife and whacked with an efficiency honed by years of serving up fried eggs and potatoes to four hulking brothers. Walt, Wynn, William and Wes. The knife lay idle against the chopping block as she glanced at the table, imagining them sitting there, dust covered, exhausted and ravenous.

      Walt, the oldest, had always sat opposite Pa at the far end of the table, straddling his chair, his face stern. Somehow, even then, he must have sensed his tragic fate but he’d never let on, not even to Pa. Buried deep somewhere inside him he’d had other plans, dreams of his own that had nothing to do with the mine and silver and his father’s dreams for Prosperity Gulch. Walt had the simpler dreams of a twenty-four-year-old man, dreams of being a husband to pretty blond Melissa Cutter and following her family out to California for a better life. A new start.

      But Willie hadn’t found all that out until the funeral, when Melissa had told her of Walt’s dreams, and the tears had washed over her face without stopping.

      Willie gritted her teeth against the burn of tears in her eyes. She wondered if Gramps had told Walt that all dreams shouldn’t be chased. Walt always minded, even when he hadn’t wanted to.

      Willie reached for an onion. In a flurry of whacks she chopped the onion into superfine pieces. Wiping a forearm over her eyes, she swept the onion and potatoes into another skillet of bubbling butter then reached into the open neck of her shirt and retrieved the folded bills. Slowly she counted them, then counted them again, rubbing her fingertips over the crisp edges. She drew them to her nose. The bills smelled new, untainted.

      Moving to the window, she lifted aside the red checked gingham and peered into the darkness gathering over the fields. Two dense shadows moved through the grass. She watched the taller of the two. Apprehension wriggled in her belly.

      Sloan Devlin wanted something from her. No man handed over twelve hundred dollars without wanting something more than a bed and warm meals in return. They’d both known it. So why was she getting all jittery inside wondering what fancy-man Sloan Devlin wanted from her? Maybe because something about him reminded her of Brant Masters. Boot heels thumped on the porch steps. One set of boot heels. And no scrape of a cane. Willie whirled from the window, lunged to the stove and shoved a wooden spatula into the pan of fried eggs just as the door creaked open. She stared at the eggs, working the spatula beneath each one as the door gently closed. The fine hairs along the back of her neck stood up.

      Without looking over her shoulder, she jerked her head to the table. “Have a seat, Devlin. Coffee’s in the pot.”

      His rumble of thanks seemed to shake the floorboards under her boots. Reaching for a plate, she felt a peculiar chagrin at the crack meandering through the fired stoneware, considered searching for one that wasn’t cracked or chipped, then thought the better of it. Lifting the skillet, she swept the eggs onto the plate, followed that with the fried potatoes, then turned and set the plate on the table.

      She glanced up at him through a fringe of loosened