Rocky Mountain Man. Jillian Hart

second stretched out and then his chest rose faintly, dragging in a ragged breath.

      Thank goodness. Just continue breathing, all right? She couldn’t help stroking the iron curve of his face. The rough texture of several days’ growth abraded her fingertips. He was dreaming. His eyes were moving beneath his lids, and his mouth tightened. The hard thin lips that seemed to have been in a permanent frown twisted, not in anger but in agony.

      The flame in the glass chimney flared with one last effort before the brightness waned and plunged the cabin into darkness.

      Outside the thick walls, a wolf howled. Another answered. So close, she could hear the scrape of paws outside the window. Betsy did not consider it a good sign for the long night ahead. There was no way the predators could find their way inside, but still, it unsettled her to be in a wild land where only the strong and the cruel survived. What benefit did Mr. Hennessey—or any of the mountain men—see in living so far from civilization?

      Shivering, and not with cold, she hurried to the warm stove where her home remedies simmered and seasoned. She knew there was a second lantern on the shelf next to the stove. As she struck a match, she heard a thump on the roof overhead and the scrape of claws digging into the wood shingles. A cougar.

      The match flared, light glowed, and Betsy quickly lit the cold wick. Bright lemony rays pushed back the wall of darkness, but her fears remained. It was as if death were outside, looking for a way in.

      Betsy knew all too well that was one predator no one could lock out.

      Duncan saw the light as if from far away. A blurred image that hovered at the edge of consciousness. He felt weighted, as if the air had become heavier than he was and pressed down on him with a mighty force. He could not move. His mouth hurt with thirst. His tongue felt swollen and sandy. The acrid scent of blood filled the air and a noise rushed through the darkness. Something he couldn’t place.

      Was he dreaming? Or awake? He didn’t know. Either way, it was memory that swept him backward to the crash of a door breaking open, the frame cracking into pieces. The drum of an enraged mob pulsed and shouted into his workroom. The hum of the lathe and the sharp, pleasant scent of walnut wood faded with the angry shouts and sweating men, the odor of whiskey strong on them.

      “There he is!” Eldon Green’s baritone boomed deep with hatred. “Let’s string him up, boys.”

      “Hanging is too good for him!” his brother Lindon shouted.

      Duncan couldn’t move for a moment. He stared without believing what his eyes were seeing as men he called friends charged at him. Lindon held a rope coiled in one hand, a noose dangling at its end.

      Shock numbed him as the table leg he’d been working on whispered to a stop, his chisel tumbling from his hand.

      Pain sliced through his chest and he realized it was the noose closing around his neck. He grabbed it with both hands, desperate, panic roaring through him. He had to get it off. This was wrong. All wrong. Why were they doing this?

      “Shh.” A low gentle sound tried to chase away the bad dream, which was no illusion but his life. A memory the cool brush of a cloth soothed into nonexistence.

      He opened his eyes. He was in his cabin. In his bed. Staring at the circle of light on the open timbers of the ceiling, where lantern light gleamed. Pain began like a bullet, pointed and deep, then streaked outward. He took a shivery breath.

      He already knew it was her. The tug of skin, the drag of thread through raw, ruined flesh. His fists clenched and his teeth ground together. There she was at the edges of his blurred vision, her hair falling over her shoulders and the white lace at her chemise. Her creamy skin looked as soft as silk and her sweet summer scent pounded in his head.

      He heard the chink of a glass bottle and the glug-glug of liquid pouring. Whiskey. The sharp scent brought back the images of the memory as the noose burned into his throat, choking him as the end of the rope was tossed over the center beam and pulled. Some nightmares were real, and he was looking at another one.

      It was night—his cabin was pitch-black. He was alone with her. There were signs of no one else in the room. Who else would be here? And she was in her underclothes, wearing one of his flannel shirts that, unbuttoned, slipped off her shoulders.

      He tried to lift his head off the pillow. He couldn’t. His limbs felt as heavy and dull as lead. Weakness washed through his veins. He was too weak to move. Too weak to protect himself. Too weak to put Miss Laundry Lady on his horse and make her leave.

      “I was beginning to worry that you would never wake up.” She chatted in that friendly way she had.

      The way that he despised—because they weren’t friends. He didn’t want to be friends. He wanted to be left alone. Horror churned up inside him until he could taste the sourness of it filling his mouth. “Just go.”

      “And leave you like this? Not for anything.” She seemed to float over him, but then he realized it was the light dancing on the wick. The golden glow lapped at her luminous skin and bronzed her shimmering hair. “I owe you my life. And I’m the kind of woman who pays her debts.”

      “Git. Shoo.”

      “Go ahead and growl. You don’t scare me a bit.” Her kindness warmed her soft words and added extra beauty to her serene face. She held a tin cup to his lips. “This will help with the pain.”

      Whiskey fumes nearly had him coughing. His chest wheezed out and puffed in air, and agony drained him. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t push her away. He couldn’t move.

      Shame filled him to the brim with darkness. He managed to turn his head away to stare into the shadowed room. He didn’t have the strength to do more than breathe. He was alone with a woman he couldn’t trust.

      He’d rather bleed to death than let her touch him, and the truth was, he couldn’t stop her from it.

      “You’ve lost a lot of blood.” She paused as, with a clunk of tin, she set the cup aside. “I’ve sewed up the worst of the gashes, but the truth is, you’re still bleeding. I’m afraid this is going to hurt quite a bit, but I’ll be as quick as I can. And as careful.”

      He didn’t acknowledge her. He had his pride.

      The first stitch hurt no worse than he was already hurting. He took it—he had no choice. She leaned forward and as she worked, he could feel her nearness like a breeze against his skin. The satiny tips of her curls danced and skipped over his arm and abdomen. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see the fullness of her breasts.

      This was wrong. All of it. His vision blurred into darkness and back again. He tried again to tell her to leave him be, that dying alone was better than this disgrace, but he couldn’t form the words. His lips were too numb to speak.

      “That’s it. I’m almost done with this one. That bear sure got you good.” Her voice was like poetry, like the sweeping cadence of Shakespeare’s sonnets. “I’m so glad you’re still with me. I’ll have you patched up, and then I’ll make a good hot soup. My ma says there’s nothing a good bowl of soup can’t cure.”

      Great. Just his luck to be trapped with a talker. He liked his women silent—in fact, he liked his women to be absent. Was there any way to be rid of her?

      A horse’s whinny pierced the darkness and even though the thick walls muffled the sound, he knew it was not one of his. He withered at the faint clomp of steeled shoes on the hard packed earth outside his front door. A light flared in the window, bobbing up and then away.

      “What the—” The laundry lady set aside her needle and thread and the bed rope groaned as she stood. Her slender shadow fell over him.

      With an ear-splitting crack, the door broke open, wood splinters flying into the air as wraiths and ghosts emerged from the night. Eerie dark shapes that became men as the light touched them. Wide-shouldered angry men, with rifles in hand and a lantern shining suddenly into his eyes. Onto the bed. Where Betsy Hunter stood, her hair tangled, her undershirt and skirt covered with spots