From Runaway To Pregnant Bride. Tatiana March

as a peacock, the kid pointed at the pulverized ore inside the timber circle. “See? I told you I’d earn my keep.”

      Clay peered down. He’d crushed that quantity of ore in ten minutes.

      “Good,” he said. “That’s enough for today. Go help in the kitchen.”

      As he reached to take the hammer from the kid, his eyes refused to lift from the kid’s radiant features. Sweat beaded on the smooth skin and the innocent face shone red from the effort, but the sense of achievement emanating from the kid was almost thick enough to put into a bottle.

      The hammer, slick with sweat, slipped from Clay’s clasp. He waved the kid on his way, then wiped his hands on the front of his shirt and bent to pick up the hammer from the ground. His attention fell on the dark smears his hands had left on his shirt. He lifted the hammer, studied the handle, spotted a trace of blood.

      “Kid,” he roared. “Come back here.”

      The kid edged back, hands hidden behind his back.

      “What did you do?” Clay asked, gently now. “Did you cut your skin on a sharp stone?”

      “No.”

      He made a beckoning motion. “Kid... Scrappy... let’s take a look.” When the kid refused to obey, Clay inserted a touch of steel into his tone. “Put out your hands.”

      The soft mouth pursed in mutiny, but the kid put out his hands, palms up. On each hand, a line of blisters marred the delicate skin.

      “You fool,” Clay said, but not without kindness. “You’ll be no good to anyone if you injure yourself. Haven’t you heard of gloves?”

      “I tried them. They were too big.” The narrow shoulders rose and fell in a careless shrug. “It’s nothing. Because I’m small and young, I’m used to having to work extra hard to prove myself.”

      “Let’s patch you up.” Clay led the kid into the kitchen. Mr. Hicks had gone to inspect the ore in the mine tunnel, leaving dinner bubbling on the stove.

      Clay poured hot water into a bowl and located a jar of ointment and bandages on the shelf. Every time a cotton shirt wore out, it was torn into strips, in preparedness for the accidents and mishaps that were inevitable in mining.

      He settled the kid on a log stump. Finding it awkward to bend to the task, Clay sat down himself and perched the kid on his knee. One at a time, he washed the kid’s hands in warm water.

      The kid had small, fine bones. Clay rubbed ointment on the damaged skin, his fingers sliding gently over the blisters, and then he wrapped a bandage around each hand and secured it with a knot.

      He tried to ignore the sudden pounding of his heart. The kid smelled unlike any other scrawny kid he’d ever known, fresh and clean, like a spring meadow. Clay felt his body quicken. Appalled, he realized that holding the kid was stirring up the masculine needs he’d learned to ignore. Roughly, he pushed the kid off his knee.

      “That should do.” His voice came out strained. “Leave the dressings on for a couple of hours, until the blisters stop weeping. Then take them off. It’s better to let the air to the skin.” He jolted up to his feet. “I’ll go and check on the horse and mule.”

      Not pausing to wait for a reply, Clay hurried down the path that led to a small meadow where the animals stood grazing. Out of sight, he leaned his back against the rough trunk of a pine and inhaled deep breaths, the unwanted waves of lust and protectiveness surging through him.

      In the orphanage he’d seen it—boys desperate for the comfort of love formed a bond with another boy, treating each other like a sweetheart. He didn’t condemn the practice, each man to his own, but he’d always dreamed of girls, had even paid for the company of a few, but perhaps in the face of loneliness a man could change his preferences? Could he? Could he?

       Chapter Five

      Annabel watched Clay walk away and felt a pang of regret. Why had he suddenly turned so morose? Why was he so unfriendly? While she’d been sitting on his knee, his attention on her hands, she’d taken the opportunity to study his face. She’d seen concern in his eyes, concern and protectiveness, but he’d covered them up with a brusque, efficient manner, as if resenting his kindness.

      How could anyone keep such a tight rein on his emotions? Her own feelings ran close to the surface, impossible to hide. A moment ago, sitting on Clay’s lap, cocooned in the heat of his body and his fingers gently sliding over her palms, the physical proximity had made her tremble with strange new yearnings.

      She longed for his company, his companionship. She’d never been to a dance, had never had a chance to learn about flirting, test her powers of attraction on a man, and now those feminine instincts were surging inside her with a force she found difficult to control.

      Annabel sighed in frustration. Of course, Clay thought she was a boy. A scrawny kid. She’d be a fool to endanger her disguise by acting on those new and untested feminine impulses that were suddenly buffeting her, as if she were a boat adrift in the ocean.

      A few minutes later, Mr. Hicks banged a wooden spoon against a saucepan lid to announce the midday meal, and Clay strode back up the slope. He must be angry at her for some reason, Annabel decided, for he avoided looking at her while the three of them sat down to steaming plates and ate in silence.

      Clay finished first. He dropped the spoon with a clatter on his empty plate and got up without a word and marched off to his task of hacking ore at the mine. A few minutes later, Annabel could hear the dull reverberations in the mountainside.

      She remained seated at the table, idly spooning the thick stew of stringy meat and tough, tasteless vegetables. Mr. Hicks was leaning back on his log stump, tamping tobacco into his pipe. Annabel speeded up her eating. A gentleman would wait for her to finish her meal, but it was clear to her that the big, burly, bearded Mr. Hicks was no gentleman.

      “Where are you from, Mr. Hicks?”

      He took the unlit pipe from his mouth. “In the West, you don’t ask a man such questions, kid.”

      Annabel lowered her gaze, chewed and swallowed another unpalatable mouthful. She heard the rasp of a match, heard puffing sounds and smelled the smoke. It was not the usual smell of tobacco, but the pleasant scent of fragrant herbs.

      “I’m from Kansas,” Mr. Hicks said, contradicting his command not to pry. “My ma was from a good family, but my pa was a good-for-nothing wastrel. She ran off with him and lived to regret it.”

      Annabel had no idea how to reply to such a blunt revelation, so she kept eating. Sometimes silence worked better as a prompt than bombarding someone with questions.

      “Kid, sometimes you might think I’m two different people,” Mr. Hicks went on. “When the mood strikes, I can talk like my ma, all educated, with fancy turns of phrase. At other times, I hit the bottle and curse like a trooper.

      “You’ll find men like that all around the West. They might be a college professor, or a duke’s son, but they all try to sound like a cowboy, for a man feels more comfortable if he blends in with his surroundings. It’s no good being a tiger in the desert, or a camel in the jungle.”

      “How long have you known Clay?”

      “Clay?” Mr. Hicks puffed on his pipe. “Five years ago he rode up on a flea-bit pony to my claim in northern Californy. I was just about to pack up and leave that worthless ditch in the mud. There was something stark about Clay, but he was a good, strong lad, so I let him tag along.

      “For a while, we worked for a big outfit in Nevada. Clay seemed to have some kind of a death wish. When there was blasting to be done, he volunteered for the job. When a mine tunnel was unsound, he chose to work there. Then he settled down, became more sensible. I never figured out what had been eating him up. He never talks much about his past. All I knew is that he grew up in an orphanage.”