The Untamed Heart. Kit Gardner

been wearing the same sort of finely made coat and trousers, the same high linen collar. He’d even stuck one of those jewel-headed pins into his tie and his shoes were shiny and new. Now that she thought about it, Brant had smelled clean and spicy, a scent that had made her knees go wobbly and her belly flutter every time he passed within six inches of her. That scent had seemed to fill her nostrils for weeks after he went back East.

      The fancy English gent had smelled like that. Refined. Educated. Thinking himself too good for the likes of Prosperity Gulch. But the English railroad gent’s eyes weren’t dark and sparkling like Brant’s. They were icy blue, shot through with silver, and seemed as deep as she imagined an ocean could be. Against the midnight blue-black of his hair they were startling.

      Willie threw the wood aside. “Railroad weasel.”

      “The man sure could fight.”

      Willie glanced up, pushed her hat back on her head and met Gramps’s cockeyed grin with a puff that blew the stray wisps of hair off her forehead. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, Gramps.” She bent to retrieve another log.

      “Same fella you’ve been grumblin’ about, Willie-girl. That English gent.”

      Willie swatted at a mosquito and grimaced in reply.

      “You’re cuttin’ enough wood for the whole damned town.”

      “I’m mad.” She swung the ax high.

      “Thought so.”

      The log cracked into three pieces. “What’s he want?”

      “Hard to tell.”

      Willie flung the wood aside with a snort. “I’ll tell you what he wants. He wants to stir up trouble. Divide and conquer, like Pa used to say. He’s no better than the vigilantes. Just a fancy, dandified version. Instead of torches and threats, he uses that accent and his fine suit coat with the velvet cuffs and fancy fighting methods. He might not even be from England. He could be some out-of-work actor from New York sent by those men at the Union Pacific. If you ask me, I say he’s a fraud. At the very least he’s up to no good.”

      “Could be.” Gramps tipped his broad-brimmed hat back on his head and leaned heavily on his cane. “Course, I never seen fightin’ like that. Reuben had to be carried out of the Silver Spur. I heard him mumblin’ somethin’ about forgettin’ about revenge for the time bein’.”

      “See there?” Willie planted her hands on her hips, lips pursing with her mounting indignation. “His scheme is working already. Even Reuben’s ready to give up the fight. It didn’t take burning his house down. Just one kick to the side of his head.” She set her jaw and stared out into the woods that fringed her farm on three sides. The sun had just disappeared behind the mountains, throwing her land into sudden shadow. The air grew instantly cooler. “Maybe he’ll just move on.”

      “Maybe he won’t.”

      Willie glanced sharply at Gramps, recognizing the admonition in his weathered stare. At times he looked so much like her pa her heart squeezed in her chest. Like her pa, Gramps was fashioned of the long, rangy limbs, broad shoulders and proud carriage common to generations of Thornes. Her brothers had all inherited the same tall, wiry build, the dark, stern features, and all the blind determination and pride that went along with being a Thorne. And though Willie had been graced with an abundance of the Thorne arrogance and pride, only she bore the marks of a true McKenna: the heavy mass of copper gold hair and a body of such startling womanly proportions she could barely fit into the Levi’s and shirt she’d worn just a year before.

      “Your mama ever say anythin’ to you about gettin’ more bees with honey than with vinegar?”

      Willie gaped at Gramps. “You’re asking me to be friendly with that…that…”

      “You sound like your pa, chock-full of damned fool’s pride.”

      “Pa was no fool,” Willie retorted. “He stood up for what he believed in—his land, his family and his dream to make Prosperity Gulch a thriving town without the help of any double-crossing railroad that wanted him to pay for the privilege of the track coming through town. So they laid track through Deadwood Run and thought they’d kill off Prosperity Gulch by doing it. But they didn’t, not ten years ago, and not now.

      “Pa had vision, Gramps. It was enough to rally several hundred people around his cause and keep Prosperity Gulch thriving. He never lost sight of that, no matter who tried to stop him. And he would never have turned coat and pasted on a smile for a man he didn’t trust just because doing so would have put money in his pocket or a meal on his table for a few more days. And neither will I, even if I have to dance every night with cowboys to do it.”

      Gramps narrowed his eyes on the mountains to the west.

      “If your pa had to do it over, he’d have kept his dreams to himself and your mama in her house in Illinois where she belonged. He wouldn’t have dragged her out into a wasteland a hundred miles from nowhere, and left her alone night and day while he worked in that mine. When the sickness came she didn’t have the spirit to fight it off. Not every dream should be chased.”

      Willie’s gloved fingers tightened around the ax handle. Even now grief wrapped like invisible ropes around her and tightened, compressing her lungs in her chest. “I won’t give up on his dream, Gramps,” she said, her voice husky with emotion. “If I do, if Prosperity Gulch sells out to the railroad my pa fought for so long, he’ll have died for nothing, and my brothers with him.”

      Gramps looked hard at her with the unwavering, grizzled stare that probed right to her soul. “You never were half as selfish as your pa. Are you plannin’ to waste your youth tendin’ to an old man and choppin’ wood and chasin’ vigilantes out of town? Or are you waitin’ for Brant Masters and all his promises to come ridin’ down the lane in that black buggy of his?”

      Willie stiffened, knowing by the glint in Gramps’s eyes that her cheeks had turned a traitorous red. Still, admitting naiveté was not something even an unselfish Thorne would find easy to do. “I’ve completely forgotten about him,” she said, a little too breezily. “Too busy, I guess.”

      “Yep. We’re damned busy out here on the farm.” Gramps rested one bony elbow on a fence post and squinted at the farmhouse in the distance over an unsown field swaying with tall grass. “Not a boarder to be had since Brant last propped his shiny boots on your kitchen table and watched you scrub your floors. Yep. You’re too damned busy to remember all that”

      Willie felt her shoulders droop and the fight seep out of her. Gramps saw too blasted much. Just like her pa always had.

      “Well, I’ll be damned.”

      Willie glanced sharply at Gramps then turned, her gaze following Gramps’s. The weather-beaten house huddled among tall sycamores, all thrown into impenetrable shadow. Still, as her eyes strained into the darkness, Willie was almost certain a deeper shadow moved beside the house. Her fingers reached for her short-barreled Peacemaker stuffed into the back waistband of her Levi’s. “How many?”

      “Just one. You won’t need your gun.”

      Willie glanced at Gramps, even as she drew the Peacemaker into her hand and slipped her finger over the trigger. “You’d best go get the repeating rifle. We don’t know his business.”

      “Put the gun away,” Gramps softly said.

      “Put the gun away?”

      “Yes.”

      “Gramps—”

      “Willie-girl, I think you got yourself a boarder.”

      “A boarder—?” A sudden warmth spilled through her and brought a smile bursting from her lips. “How can you be sure?” She turned. The man had turned from the house and was leading his horse through the field of grass toward them. Her heart almost burst from her chest. “It’s Bran—” The name stuck in her throat and her heart plummeted. Chagrin flooded over her,