Wolf Creek Widow. Penny Richards

      She couldn’t. Nita Allen might be easy to talk to, and she might be as good as gold, but there was no way Meg could share her deepest fears with someone who was little more than a stranger.

      Fearful that Nita would comment on the rash statement, Meg took a final stitch in Danny Gentry’s shirt, bit off the thread and scooped up her sewing basket. “We’d better see to those fires.”

      By the time Ace returned with a wagonload of dirty linen, fires were burning hotly beneath both of Meg’s cast-iron kettles. She’d shaved a cake of lye soap into the boiling water while Nita carried more from the well to fill two galvanized rinse tubs.

      As if they’d worked together before, the two women set about sorting the clothes as Ace brought the baskets to them. Nita allowed Meg to help as they rubbed the cake of soap into the stains and scrubbed them on the washboard before punching them down into the boiling, sudsy water.

      Overriding Nita’s protests, Meg insisted on tending one of the kettles. It didn’t take but a few moments to realize that though her ribs had more or less healed, she was not up to the work. Weeks of inactivity had left her as weak as a kitten. She might not like relying on strangers, but there was no doubt that she couldn’t do things on her own just yet.

      * * *

      Catching the look of concern in his mother’s eyes, Ace made fast work of adding more wood to the fires. Then he went to take Meg’s place. Their gazes clashed, headstrong green to cool, determined blue. He held out his hand for the stick she was using to transfer the clean tablecloths from the hot water to the rinse tubs. To his surprise, she relinquished the cut-off broom handle with no argument.

      “Go sit on the porch,” he said. “Your clean hair will get all smoky if you stay out here. Mother and I have this.”

      Self-consciously, she raised a hand to her hair with a look of surprise. “Oh, I hadn’t thought about that.”

      The first thing he’d noticed when he pulled into the yard was that Meg was wearing a different skirt and blouse. She’d obviously bathed and washed her hair. The straight blond mass was still damp and hung more than halfway down her back, glistening like spun gold in the sunlight. Ace couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to bury his face in the silken strands and breathe in its clean scent. Would it smell like lavender? Jessamine? Some other sweet-smelling flower?

      “I suppose I could go and make the starch.”

      “That would be good,” he said, pleased that she hadn’t cringed away from him. “We’ll need a lot.”

      “I know.”

      Mesmerized by the slight sway of her hips, Ace watched her walk toward the back of the house. He blew out a frustrated breath and glanced over at his mother. Nita’s face wore an expression of contemplation.

      He suppressed a sigh. Like most mothers, his didn’t miss much. As always, she was in tune to every nuance of his emotions, and from what she’d said the evening before, she knew exactly how he felt about Elton Thomerson’s young widow.

      * * *

      Meg went inside and mixed up the flour and cool water that would be used for starch. When she was reasonably certain it was lump-free, she added boiling water to thin and smooth the mixture.

      She was about to go and tell Ace that she was ready for him to carry it outside when she felt a prickling of awareness on her neck. Placing a hand over her heart and whirling around, she saw him standing in the doorway, a hand braced on either side of the aperture.

      It was a pose often adopted by Elton, one where he regarded her coolly or mockingly...even appreciatively, depending on his mood. For a few painful heartbeats, it was Elton who stood there. Her eyes closed to shut out the sight. The room dipped and her knees gave way. Strangely, her only thought was that when she hit the floor she would reinjure her newly healed ribs.

      It never happened. One second she was falling like a one-egg pudding; the next she was being held against something hard and warm and realized that she hadn’t fallen after all. She was in a safe place. Then she seemed to be floating through space, perhaps through time. Something soft gave beneath her, and the warmth and safety started to move away. With a cry of protest, she reached out blindly, pulling it close once more. The scent of pine and wood smoke enveloped her.

      Something rough brushed her cheek. The harsh abrasiveness had no place in the velvety shadows and security of her shelter. With a murmur of denial, she forced her heavy eyelids upward. She didn’t expect to see a bronze face shadowed with a day’s growth of beard so near hers. She could see the slightly darker blue that fanned out in a starburst shape from the pupils of his eyes and smell the sweetness of mint-scented breath against her face.

      She realized that her arms were looped around his neck. A flash of unease flickered through her, triggering the instinct to shove him aside and flee his overwhelming maleness. The feeling vanished as quickly as it appeared. This man meant her no harm. Instead, she heard herself say, “You smell like peppermint.”

      Tiny lines appeared at the corners of his light blue eyes. Their customary coolness was warmed by the same smile that claimed his mouth for the space of a heartbeat. The brief upward curve did miraculous things to his austere features. He looked less threatening. More approachable. Handsome in a severe sort of way. Another flutter of alarm scampered through her, but this was different somehow and frightening for reasons that had nothing to do with the fact that he was a big, powerful man.

      “And you smell like sunshine,” he told her before she could make sense of her emotions.

      The oddly poetic words sounded strange coming from a man who looked as if he’d been hewn from a bold outcropping of Arkansas rock. It wasn’t the sort of thing she expected to hear from a man like Ace Allen.

       And why not? What do you really know about him?

      Nothing but what she’d heard around Wolf Creek, and that wasn’t much. She’d been too busy keeping body and soul together to pay much attention to talk—good or bad.

      She wasn’t aware that her hands still rested on his shoulders until he circled her wrists with his fingers as he had the day before. Lowering her hands, he stood. She realized then that he’d been sitting on the side of the bed.

      “You rest. You must have done too much this morning, or you wouldn’t have fainted.”

      Meg sat up quickly and regretted the hasty action. “It wasn’t the work.” She didn’t want Ace and his mother thinking she was overdoing things. “It was you.”

      Shock molded his features and he leaned toward her. “Me? What did I do?”

      Too late, she realized that once again, she’d done or said the wrong thing. Hadn’t Elton told her time after time that she was the one who made him crazy and caused him to do the things he did?

      “I’m sorry!” she cried, holding up her hands in a futile attempt to keep him away. To her surprise, Ace mimicked her action and took two steps backward, away from her. The simple, nonthreatening action slowed her racing heart.

      She swallowed and forced herself to look up at him. “I’m sorry. It’s just that when I...when I saw you standing there with your hands on the door frame just...looking at me, I just... I saw...”

      Ace didn’t say anything for several seconds. Then, to her surprise, he went to the doorway and stood in the same pose that had caused her such alarm.

      “Look at me, Meg,” he said in that deep voice. “Who do you see?”

      “What?” She frowned, unsure of what he was doing and wondering at the sorrow reflected in his eyes.

      “Who do you see standing here?”

      What did he want from her? she wondered in confusion. “I see you,” she said at last. “Ace Allen.”

      “Exactly. You see the mixed-breed ex-convict who killed two men. I’ll always be sorry for that, but if