Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

About The Author

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Copyright

“That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Come now,” he said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t given the subject of marriage a little thought recently?”

As recently as a minute ago! More than anything, Louise wished she could leave this man, crawl back home and hide. “I swear, if you aren’t the most infuriating, confusing man I’ve ever met!”

Ty laughed. “I do it on purpose, you know.”

She tilted her chin haughtily. “You would!”

“You can’t tell me I’m not having an effect on you.”

The man was outrageous! “Nonsense. I only wonder that you don’t see how futile your efforts are.”

His light chuckle was a feather tickling up the bowed tautness of her nerves. “Maybe because every time I’m around you, you seem like a person sitting on a powder keg, looking at me as if I’m about to throw a lit match at your feet…!”

Dear Reader,

Liz Ireland writes both historical and contemporary romances for Harlequin, and is fast becoming known for her special brand of humor. Her lively storytelling shines through in her new Western, Prim and Improper, an adorable book about a spinsterish young woman who falls in love with a brazen cattle rancher who she thinks is in love with her sister!

The ever popular Ruth Langan returns with Malachite, the final book of her THE JEWELS OF TEXAS series. In this emotional story, the wild heart of Malachite, long-lost Jewel brother, is captured by a gentle widow and mother. Be prepared to laugh and cry when you read Susan Spencer Paul’s Beguiled, an endearing Regency about a much-sought-after earl who learns the power of unspeakable love when he’s blackmailed into marrying a silent beauty.

Our final selection this month is My Lady’s Desire, a medieval tale by Claire Delacroix. This sequel to Enchanted has earned “5 Bells!!” from Bell, Book and Candle, and is the story of a handsome swordsman and an exiled noblewoman who marry to reclaim a lost estate, and together find an unexpected passion.

What a terrific lineup we have for you this month! Whatever your tastes in reading, you’ll be sure to find a romantic journey back to the past between the covers of a Harlequin Historical®.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian:P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

Prim and Improper
Liz Ireland

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LIZ IRELAND

lives in her native state of Texas, a place she feels gives her a never-ending supply of colorful characters. Aside from writing romance novels and tending to two very demanding cats and a guard dachshund, she enjoys spending time reading history or cozying up with an old movie.

Prologue

New Mexico Territory, 1852

A gunshot shattered through the noise in the small smoky barroom, effectively ending conversation and several card games.

The place suddenly quieted as about twenty rough, dusty men all turned in unison to gape at the tiny woman who had fired her rifle at Ed Peter’s ceiling.

“Say!” Ed cried. The woman was just a little mite of a thing, all decked out in a yellow dress, and that gun looked near as big as she was. At first, Ed was prepared to give the lady a piece of his mind for shooting off firearms in his drinking establishment, but at the sound of his voice she turned his way, preventing his rebuke. Her blue eyes were two narrow slits of ice boring right into him, Ed thought, startled.

“The name’s Purdy, Lida Purdy, and I’m lookin’ for a man by the name of Atticus Purdy,” she said. What with hat yellow dress, her straw-colored blond hair and her intense expression, the woman resembled a very mean canary. “Anybody seen him?”

Murmurs rippled through the room. All down the long bar, the men glanced up at Ed, as if questioning how he was going to handle this crazy little woman. But they really shouldn’t have wondered. He was a saloon keeper, not a sharpshooter. Ed hadn’t lived to the ripe old age of sixty-two by arguing at gunpoint, even if the gun was being held by a pint-size lady in a yellow dress.

“Atticus Purdy?” he asked. “Who’s he?”

In her same edgy voice, Lida Purdy announced, “Used to be a barber back in Alabama.”

A barber? Somehow Ed had expected her to say this man she was looking for was an outlaw. She seemed awfully intent on finding him. “Well, he ain’t here,” Ed told her.

“That so?” She kept her rifle raised. “Well, if’n you do see him, you tell him for me that I’m gonna find him if it’s the last thing I do.” Her eyes narrowed further. “And once I find him, I’m gonna kill him. Got that?”

The room was once more deadly silent until somebody called out, “What’s Purdy done to you to make you so het-up to kill him?”

“He married me, that’s what.” Lida Purdy spat.

Bart Wood laughed. Bart always did lack sense. “Most women hold more of a grudge to men who won’t marry ‘em!”

The cold stare she sent him froze Bart’s smile. “He married me, then he run off and stoled all my money. Then, come to find out, the rapscallion had been married before, back in Georgia. So ‘bout three months ago, I started trailin’ dear old Atticus. I’ll find that son of a gun if it’s the last thing I do.”

And by the looks on the men’s faces around the bar as they stared at her, Ed could tell everyone believed her.

“Maybe you oughtn’t not to be leaving this Atticus Purdy messages then,” said one of the men helpfully. “Thataway maybe you can find him easier.”

A slow smile spread across Lida Purdy’s face, matching the venomous look in her eye. “Oh, I’ll find him. Meantime, if he hears I’m after him, so much the better. I want him to be scared.”

Ed swallowed, quickly poured a whiskey and shoved it across the bar to her. He didn’t like selling drink to women particularly, but as mad as this woman seemed about Atticus Purdy, he figured it was just as well not to get on her bad side.

“On the house,” he said, trying to be friendly. “That’s a hard-luck story you got there, sister.”

She shot him another of those cold stares, then reached out with her free hand and slugged down the drink without so much as a wince. He was amazed that a woman so dainty could pack away liquor so neatly.

“It’ll be harder luck for Atticus if I ever find him,” she said. “Now you got that message straight, bartender?”

“Sure,” Ed repeatedly carefully. “Atticus Purdy. And you’re gonna find him.”

“And when I find him, I’m gonna kill him.” Her lips twitched into a sweet, determined smile Ed wouldn’t soon forget. “Don’t leave out the killin’. That’s the most important part.”

Chapter One

Noisy Swallow, California

“Champagne!” Niles Swaggart looked with mild surprise at the new load of liquor Louise Livingston had just driven up to the door of her saloon. “My, my,” he drawled with amusement. “Noisy Swallow’s gettin’ pretty high-toned.”

Gordy Jenkins stared in disgust at the case of neatly packed bottles in the back of the wagon, obviously trying to imagine the rough, raucous miners he served in Louise Livingston’s one-room saloon taking to bubbly. “There ain’t never been champagne in Noisy Swallow before.”

Niles grinned, twisting his long white mustache. In his mid-forties at most, he was young to have a head of stark-white hair, but he didn’t appear to mind. In fact, it sometimes seemed as if he considered it his most appealing feature. “Why, Gordy, practically nothing’s happened here before. Didn’t you know? That’s the best part about living in a place that’s only existed for three years.”

For the past month Niles had been living in Louise Livingston’s boardinghouse, drinking in her saloon and buying goods at her mercantile. He considered himself her best customer, and as such, he spoke his mind—and flirted with her—liberally. “I swear, I worry sometimes you’re gettin’ too sophisticated for me, Miss Livingston.”

Louise crossed her arms and smiled at the man’s silly banter. Goodness, she was happy to be home! After a few days scaring up goods in Sacramento, Noisy Swallow seemed like heaven. Though it was mostly mud and a dwindling population of miners, it was her town. She was even glad to see Niles again, eccentric though he was. “I’m already too rich for you, Niles.”

Niles chortled. “Oh, I have resources. And one of these days I’m gonna open me a business. Then you’ll have to marry me.”

She sent him a skeptical look. “Oh, really?”

“You’ve owned everything in this town since it was started up. If I opened some sort of establishment, I’m bettin’ you’d marry me just to keep your monopoly on commerce.”

Louise laughed crisply. “Niles, you know you’ll never open a store. That would mean having to work, and I suspect that’s the one thing you can’t abide.”

By contrast, Louise absolutely thrived on work. “He that labors spins gold,” her mother had always said, and Louise lived by that maxim, as well as by countless others. Those pearls of wisdom were her beloved mother’s legacy to her.

“What are we going to do with this stuff?” Gordy asked, a pained expression on his face as he reached into the back of the wagon and grabbed for the champagne. “That French brandy from last year is still on the shelf, Miss Livingston. Nobody’s found so much as a nugget around Noisy Swallow in over six months, and if they do, I’ll wager they’ll still want the cheap stuff. Just more of it.”

“Brandy, champagne and miners don’t mix,” Niles agreed. “That’s a fact. Not being a miner myself, however, I’m rather partial to the first two.”

Louise laughed. Niles prided himself on his refined Southern upbringing and, if given the chance, would regale any stranger with the story of his duel with an infamous man named Mr. Fitch. She didn’t have time to hear that tale now, however. “Oh, I know it’s probably frivolous. But you see, my mother told me several times that on her wedding day, the house had flowed with champagne.”

“Well,” Niles exclaimed with feigned amazement, “it appears the business lady has a sentimental side after all!”

Louise frowned and corrected him. “Don’t get me wrong. There won’t be wedding bells ringing in this town anytime soon.” Not if Louise could help it. The only men in these parts were miners and ruffians, and the only women were herself and her younger sister. Pretty, vivacious Sally could do better than the scruffy wastrels of Noisy Swallow. And as for herself…

Well, as Niles had said, she was a business lady. Since her parents had died, she felt she owed it to her family to be the breadwinner above all things. Of course, there were times when she was tempted to give in to the temptation to flirt back with some of the men who flirted outrageously with her simply because she was one of the few bodies in skirts for miles and miles. And it was also tempting to dream of chucking all her responsibilities and leaning on the shoulder of some man.

For instance, a great grizzly bear of a man with flinty gray eyes, a dark, full beard and a smile that looked as if he’d borrowed it from the very devil.

For instance, Tyrone Saunders.

Ten months had passed since Ty Saunders had kissed her behind the half-built church after one of Noisy Swallow’s rare social get-togethers. In a few, sensually charged seconds he had made her nearly forget every obligation that she had to her sister and brother and all the hard work she’d gone through settling them in Noisy Swallow. In fact, a few more moments in Ty Saunders’s arms and she would have been ready to throw away everything and run off with the rough-hewn miner who claimed to blow where ever the wind might take him.

Unfortunately for her, the wind hadn’t carried Ty far since that fateful night He had given up panning for gold to try his hand at ranching with his younger brother. Now it looked as if the man would be a permanent fixture on the Noisy Swallow landscape, an ever-present reminder of the weakness of her flesh. A constant, niggling temptation in the back of Louise’s mind. Those arms had fueled quite a few dreams during the winter months in the California hills.

But, according to rumor, Ty had suffered no such repercussions from their encounter. Two weeks after he kissed her, Louise overheard that he’d been seen in San Francisco in an establishment known for its fancy women. Indignation swelled in her. He probably thought all women in California were loose, including her. That was the kind of man he was. Thank goodness she had not let herself get carried away by him.

Not too far away, at least.

“Miss Livingston?” Gordy asked. “Are you all right?”

Gordy and Niles were staring at her oddly.

“I was just, just—” She blushed and stammered, hunting for a decent explanation, then decided to get back to the subject of liquor. “Well, as for the champagne, I simply thought we could use a dash of refinement.”

Gordy shook his head again. “At any rate, I guess we should get this stuff inside before it starts to pour.”

At that moment, thunder rumbled through the dark sky. Niles, sensing that he was about to be recruited for lifting duty, disappeared around the corner of the bar.

After getting the boxes inside, Gordy and Louise settled accounts and exchanged gossip. A half hour later, Louise left the saloon with a skip in her step and picked her way across the street. Rain meant the town was about to be graced with another layer of mud. Still, just looking at the place filled her with pride.

Noisy Swallow didn’t have much to boast of, but most of what it did have belonged to Louise Livingston. Three years before, her father had brought his family—to Louise and her mother’s utter dismay—from Chicago. Louise’s mother had succumbed to cholera on the overland journey, and her father had died soon after they’d reached California. At twenty years old, Louise was left in charge of her two younger siblings, Sally and her brother, Toby.

Before he’d died, their father had secured a two-room shack for his family. Louise moved herself and her siblings into one room and opened the other room to boarding. She also started cooking hot meals for the miners, and doing wash, which brought in even more money. After a few months, an old prospector struck gold not a half mile away, which brought a new wave of men into the area. And more profits for Louise.

Now, after two years, Louise owned not only a fine two-story wood house—one half of which she opened to paying boarders—but also the Noisy Swallow Saloon and the bigger, newer Livingston Mercantile across the road. The old prospector’s find had tapped out a year ago, and now most people in Noisy Swallow were just passing through on their way to newer finds to the north, but for better or worse Louise had put down roots.

She would be content staying in California and accumulating money for the rest of her life, she often assured herself. Her only worries now were for Sally, and what decent man her sister would ever find to marry, and especially for young Toby, who she feared would become like one of the shiftless dreamers who passed through her establishments. An impractical man like their father, who had thought nothing of picking up and moving his family all the way across the continent at the first whisper of gold. Louise wanted her sister to marry a fine, upstanding man, and her brother to return to the East for a university education.

As a blustery wind rose, Louise dashed the final yards to the mercantile. The wood slats she had put out in front of her store sank beneath her feet into the growing bog. To her dismay, she found Wilbur Abernathy, the local preacher and blacksmith, waiting for her outside the front door. The part-time parson, who was forever trying to raise money to finish his half-finished church, was a genuine nuisance. She stood near the door scraping mud off her feet and nodded. “Afternoon, Mr. Abernathy.”

He bowed and smiled. “Good afternoon, Miss Livingston. I hope your trip was uneventful.”

“I’m glad to be home, as always,” Louise said, making her way toward the door. It was only then that she noticed the message hanging on the door. Please come back later. Closed till afternoon.

The sign, written in Sally’s flowery handwriting, nearly stopped Louise’s heart Closed till afternoon! What had happened? “Where is Sally?” For that matter, where was Toby?

“Such a high-spirited girl, your Sally,” Abernathy said with a fixed smile.

When a man of the cloth called her younger sister “high-spirited,” Louise knew enough to be worried. She put her hands on her hips. “How often has the store been closed since I’ve been gone, Parson?”

“Oh, I’m sure not often.”

Louise frowned as she opened the door and stepped inside, the preacher-blacksmith close on her heels. For a moment, she tried to gauge what kind of business they’d done by simply eyeing the shelves. But the big dark room, with its huge barrels, sacks of flour and sugar, and the high shelves crammed with various sundry items, gave her very little idea of how often her recalcitrant brother and sister had played hooky from their duties.

“I believe your siblings went for one of their…walks.”

“In this rain?” Even before she had left, Sally and Toby had been disappearing often for these “walks” of theirs, strolls Louise chalked up to youth and spring. But the inclement weather made their amble today seem suspicious.

Wilbur looked anxiously out the store’s little window. “I’m sure there’s nothing in the least to worry about…” he said, but the slight tremolo in his voice was reason enough to worry.

Louise planted her hands on her hips. “I wouldn’t worry, if I knew where they had sneaked off to.”

“‘Sneaked’ is a rather harsh word, Louise.”

She narrowed her eyes on him. He knew. Wilbur Abernathy usually did know everything before everybody else. Souls were hard to save in a rough town like Noisy Swallow, so he seemed to try to content himself with collecting gossip instead. Gossip, along with money for that unfinished church of his.

Just then she saw his eye straying to a keg of nails she had near the long counter. Immediately she understood. The parson’s knowledge didn’t come free. For a moment, she balked at paying the blackmail, but curiosity and concern for her siblings won the day. “You know,” she said, sashaying casually over to the nail keg, “I just can’t seem to move these darn things. I don’t suppose you and that church of yours have any need for some good strong nails, do you, Parson?”

He practically licked his lips as she scooped up a couple of handfuls and placed them in a box for him.

“Oh, certainly,” he said. “I’m much obliged, Miss Livingston.”

“Don’t mention it.” Her arm physically ached as she handed over the unpaid-for merchandise. Nevertheless she forced a smile. “Now, what were you saying about these walks?”

Just then, the door flew open and Toby and Sally burst inside, soaking wet, their faces flushed from exercise. Breathing heavily and dripping water on the waxed floor, they looked from Louise’s stern face to Wilbur Abernathy’s surprised one, then glanced back at each other in dread.

Louise backed her two wayward siblings against the closed door, her posture rigid and especially big-sisterly. “You two needn’t bother lying to me about where you’ve been.”

“Why would we need to lie?” The effect of Sally’s spirited response was marred by her wet hair; the usually perky ringlets that now drooped across her forehead in great sopping brown hanks, and the blush of guilt in her cheeks.

“Yeah, why would we?” Toby mimicked. At sixteen, he was two years younger than Sally but fully a head taller. He had the same curly brown hair as Sally, and sharp brown eyes that they all shared, traits they had inherited from their father.

“Because you were supposed to be at home studying and doing chores. And Sally, you were supposed to be minding the store. Imagine my surprise when I came in and found your note! Luckily Mr. Abernathy was here to set me straight.”

Sally, seeing the box of nails in Wilbur’s hands and guessing that he had already snitched on her, stepped forward defiantly. “All right, I admit it. I sneaked out to visit a friend.”

Toby took a smaller step forward. “And I—”

“I made Toby come with me,” Sally interrupted.

Louise’s heart started pounding with dread. “‘Friend’?” Her suspicious query was punctuated by Wilbur Abernathy’s shuffling toward the door with his ill-gotten gains.

“Thank you for your kind donation to the church, Louise,” the preacher said.

After he was gone, Sally straightened to her full height and stood nose to nose with Louise. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been going to see a man.”

Louise gasped in horror. “Who? Who is it?”

“I don’t see what it matters,” Sally said. “You hate all men just the same.”

“I do not. It’s just that men around here fall into two categories—dreamers and chiselers. And I don’t want a sister of mine getting mixed up with either type.”

“Well, this man is a perfect angel—I even met him at Wilbur’s church.”

Louise immediately dismissed this recommendation. Everybody in Noisy Swallow went to church—Wilbur held services at two in the afternoon so his flock would be able to sleep off their Saturday night hangovers. “Who?” she asked again. “Who is it?”

Sally hesitated and bit her red, full lower lip. “It’s—” She shot a stern look at Toby before bringing her gaze back to meet Louise’s. Suddenly her voice became a shade meeker as she admitted, “It’s Tyrone Saunders.”

The room fell completely silent, except for the sound of rain battering the roof. Toby’s mouth was hanging open in shock, and Louise was sure her own was, too. Surely she’d heard wrong.

Ty Saunders! The man who had kissed her? Who had dominated her dreams all winter?

Oh, no, it couldn’t be. Heat flooded through her as her mind called up those memories she just hadn’t been able to shake, no matter how hard she tried—of rough lips pressing against hers, a firm hand around her waist, and the unsteadiness of her legs as he held her so tightly against him.

Had Ty kissed Sally that way? Her gape turned to a scowl of indignation. Of course. He would probably kiss anything that moved!

Finally she collected her wits enough to ask in utter amazement, “You think Ty Saunders is an angel?”

“I do,” Sally said. “In fact, I love him.”

Louise winced at the mention of the word love. “Oh, Sally, how could you! After all I’ve tried to teach you, after all the work I’ve done to insure you wouldn’t have to marry an uncouth, no-good—”

“Ty is a rancher now, not a prospector.” Sally smiled. “And I recall you seemed to have a nice time dancing with him last year at the church social.”

Louise was sure her face turned beet red; she immediately pivoted away. “What do a few cows add up to—”

“He has two bunches of them,” Sally corrected pertly.

“Herds,” Toby corrected in a tone of disgust.

“I doubt if you totted it up the man went to school five years altogether,” Louise interrupted, not caring whether Ty Saunders had bunches or herds, or kittens, for that matter. “And he has a little brother to support.”

“So do you!” Sally argued, “and you’ve done a fine job right here in Noisy Swallow.”

“That’s true, sis.” Toby smiled winningly, trying his best to soothe her ruffled feathers with flattery. “You’ve raised us just the way Ma and Pa would have.”

Louise bridled uncomfortably, feeling control of the argument slipping away from her. Maybe she had prospered in the wilderness. But would they understand if she explained that it was only her dream for their future that had driven her?

“I want better for you than some rough heathen like Ty Saunders,” she insisted. “Why, he’s a grown man, he should know better than to lure young unmarried women out to his ranch, his lair! And I’m going to tell him so right now!”

She turned, strode to the coatrack against the wall and pulled her cloak off it.

Toby’s eyes widened in dismay. “Lou, you can’t go out in this weather. The Saunders farm is ten miles away!”

“I can and I will. I’m going to tell that man exactly what I think of his seducing innocent young girls!”

Sally grabbed her arm. “You wouldn’t!” she pleaded. “I would be so humiliated, Louise.”

“Better humiliated for a little while than ruined for life.” Louise plucked Sally’s hand off her arm and instructed, “While I’m away, I want you two to stay put. Mind the store, Toby, and Sally, you go back to the boardinghouse and see to dinner for the boarders.”

The two nodded in unison. “Yes, Louise.”

Their quick compliance made her hesitate. It usually took a good five minutes of haggling to get Toby and Sally to do anything. Perhaps her discovery of their clandestine activities had humbled them.

“Love!” she grumbled in disgust as she swept out the door into the lingering drizzle. With Ty Saunders? How could that be?

Of course, she knew exactly how. One warm look from those gray eyes, a stolen kiss…Louise shuddered as she saddled up their mare, Blackie. She had been able to withstand those things, but Sally was only eighteen, and it was springtime—and that was a dangerous combination.

As the sound of hooves clopping down the muddy street retreated in the distance, Sally and Toby exchanged relieved glances, glad to have survived their oldest sister’s wrath relatively unscathed.

“Thanks for not telling Louise I’ve been working for Ty,” Toby said. “Though I don’t see what’s wrong with making a little money so I could pay for some prospecting gear.”

“Everything’s wrong with it, in Louise’s book. Anyway, I didn’t want to see her explode.”

“But why did you tell her all that stuff about being in love with Ty? It’s Caleb you’re sweet on.”

Sally rolled her eyes at his lack of insight and sashayed casually over to the counter to swipe a peppermint stick from a jar. “Of course it’s Cal I love!” she said, letting out a giggle. “Ty is too old for me—the man has to be thirty if he’s a day!”

“Then why did you say you were in love with his brother?”

She licked at her candy, savoring her brilliant strategy. “Because I knew Louise would storm out to the Saunders ranch the minute she found out we’d been going out there. Cal is so mild mannered and shy, Louise probably would have scared him to death. The poor boy might have even agreed not to see me anymore!”

“What will Ty do?” Toby queried anxiously.

A wicked smile touched Sally’s lips. “That great ox of a man? Why, the moment Louise starts to give him a piece of her mind, he’ll give her a piece of his own right back!”

Chapter Two

Not far from his house, Ty Saunders sat atop his gray stallion, Zeus, and watched the approaching rider with interest. Aside from Sally and Toby, he and Cal didn’t get visitors often. But those two had already come and gone today.

Strange thing was, this horse looked like the Livingstons’ black mare. He frowned and waited until the rider in the billowing black cape started mounting the final hill to the house. When he could see who it was, his breath hitched in his throat.

Framed by the lush, gently sloping valley behind her, Louise Livingston looked beautiful. Dazzling, Ty would almost say. Which was either a confirmation of his belief that the eldest Miss Livingston was the most lovely and sensuous of the two sisters beneath that prickly exterior of hers, or a clear indication that he was just coming out of a long, lonely winter and desperate for female companionship.

He was more inclined to believe the latter was the case. He still remembered the distinct pleasure of dancing with her last summer at the church dance, and of holding her close in his arms afterward. For a few moments, she’d kissed him as though he were the answer to her prayers and then, for no apparent reason, she’d frozen up and backed away from him as if he’d had yellow fever. Since that time, she’d never failed to snub him. Could hardly look him in the eye, even. And every time he received the cold shoulder from her, his pride never ceased to sting.

Especially when he remembered the curt words she’d said to him after coldly extracting herself from his embrace. “You shouldn’t have taken such liberties, Mr. Saunders. I’m too involved in my work to have time for developing a liaison with a, a…miner.” She had pronounced the last word with distinct disdain, as if a miner were the lowliest creature on the earth.

As if he’d wanted to develop a liaison with her in the first place! All he’d done was kiss her, and she’d treated him like a criminal for it.

It wasn’t as if she were any prize herself. Louise didn’t smile flirtatiously unless someone made a big purchase at the mercantile. She didn’t dress in stylishly low-cut dresses that might give a man something to dream about, and rarely engaged in even the simple forms of feminine flattery that her sister threw about so easily, the type of banter that could put a little swagger in a fellow’s walk. Louise Livingston was brisk, businesslike and downright prim.

But she sure was pretty. And for those few moments he’d held her, it seemed that she was the answer to his prayers, too.

Louise eased the mare into a jogging trot as they finished the climb and her face came into view. Her cheekbones were flushed to a cherry red from the brisk ride, and her wide-set sharp brown eyes looked steadily into Ty’s as she neared. The closer she came, the more pursed her lips became.

He got down from his horse and walked forward to meet her. “Nothing happened to Toby and Sally, I hope,” he said. “Is Sally all right?”

At the repeated mention of her sister’s name, Louise’s jaw worked forward. “You’d know the answer to that better than I would, Mr. Saunders!” she said, swinging down from the saddle.

Close up, he saw that her cape was soaked through. And the tip of her pert nose was red. He smiled, understanding. Louise had risked rain and pneumonia because she’d gotten wind that his brother was sweet on Sally. He couldn’t blame her for being concerned. He’d had doubts about the two of them as a couple himself. Sally was young and reckless, and apt to stampede right over his soft-spoken brother. But Cal was twenty-four years old, and knew his own mind. Ty tried to keep his nose out of his brother’s romance.

“I take it you didn’t come out all this way to dance with me again,” he said.

Two red blotches scorched her cheeks. “You know very well what I’ve come here about, Mr. Saunders. It’s about Sally.”

“I wouldn’t worry my head about that, Miss Livingston,” he said, smiling as he took her elbow to escort her around a maze of mud puddles. “Nothing’s happened around here that’s against anybody’s raising.”

She jerked her arm from him and skated uneasily a short distance away across a sheet of wet clay. “Maybe not against your upbringing, you furry reprobate!” she said sternly. “We Livingstons hold ourselves to higher standards.”

Furry? Ty rubbed his thick black beard self-consciously, trying to keep his temper. “Higher than whose?”

“Yours, obviously!” she said. “I can’t believe you would manipulate my baby sister’s affections this way, when you know she’s just a young, innocent, impressionable girl.”

The oddly skewed characterization of Sally aside, Ty was confused. “That I would what?” What the hell was she talking about?

She drew up and wagged a finger at him. “Don’t try denying it. Sally told me all about how she feels about you.”

“About me?” Ty asked.

“Yes, you! She said flat out that she loves you. Are you telling me that you haven’t encouraged her affections?”

“Of course I haven’t.”

“My sister is not a liar.”

Why would Sally have said such a thing? Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe Louise was just confused. “Listen, Miss Livingston—”

“Don’t you dare try to lecture me,” Louise said. “A grown man the likes of you should know better than to try to steal a young woman’s heart in such a conniving manner.”

The likes of him? Finally Ty gave up trying to understand all this nonsense about Sally and puffed up in offense. “Are you saying that the Saunders name isn’t good enough for a Livingston?”

As if he had to ask! She’d made her feelings on that matter perfectly clear ten months earlier. He felt the old familiar sting again and gritted his teeth, awaiting her answer.

“You’ve been leading my sister down the garden path,” Louise said, looking at him with something like disgust. “Certainly that doesn’t lend any nobility to your precious name.”

The lady was getting him steamed. “Look, I don’t know what false impression Sally gave you—”

Her strangled cry cut him off. “Stop calling my sister a liar! You’re only besmudging your own questionable character. Sally had no reason to lie. In fact, it was clear that she suspected rightly that I would be very upset by any commingling between the two of you. Especially given…”

Her cheeks blotched with red and her mouth snapped closed. Apparently she hadn’t forgotten about their long-ago kiss, either.

Ty grinned at her discomfort. “Given what?”

“You know what!” she brayed unhappily. “I’m sure you pounced on her the moment you got her alone, exactly the same way you did with me.”

He paused, considering whether he wanted to make her even madder. Temptation won out. “Not exactly,” he assured her. “You’re definitely more of a challenge, as far as pouncing on women goes.”

Her jaw fell open in shock, and, perversely, her pretty red lips looked more gorgeous and kissable than ever.

“I’d be ready to take up the challenge again, though,” he said, winking at her. “Anytime you say.”

“What a despicable man you are! I should think it self-evident why I wouldn’t want my only sister to lose her heart to a Saunders!”

“Oh?” Ty asked with casual interest, attempting to tamp down his growing anger. “Is it the Saunders family specifically that you object to, or are you Livingstons saving yourselves for visiting royalty?”

Her lush lips pulled into a prissy frown. “Just because some of us have standards—”

“Oh, very high standards,” Ty agreed with a fluttering trill of sarcasm to his tone. “Anyone cagey enough to make a bundle plying men full of alcohol is bound to be far, far above the rest of us.”

That sharp jaw of hers jutted out proudly. “Running a saloon is an honest trade.”

Ty laughed. “I never understood how you could dignify that ramshackle booze shed of yours with a name like ‘saloon.’”

By the way Louise reacted—jerking back as if she’d been slapped—Ty sensed his insult had exploded right on target. “Booze shed!” She fairly shook with rage. “A grown man who spends years panning for gold and then decides to fritter away his life chasing cows shouldn’t criticize those of us who actually put in a hard day’s work!”

His eyes narrowed dangerously and he took a step forward over a mud hole. “I don’t take to women telling men their business.”

She didn’t back away, he noticed with irritation. “I wouldn’t have bothered, except you butted into mine.”

They faced off stiffly, separated by mere inches. Both of them were breathing heavily, and the flush of red in Louise’s high cheekbones had only been heightened by their heated exchange. Strands of her sable brown hair blew in the breeze as it began to dry, making her appear far from the civilized creature she claimed to be. For a moment, Ty had the absurd, insane urge to kiss the pout right off her ruby lips.

But that would only prove that he was the beast she said he was. He took a step backward.

“I want you to promise not to have anything to do with Sally ever again,” Louise said, looking relieved that he had retreated.

Ty still didn’t understand how the woman had come up with the crazy notion that he was sweet on her sister, but he wasn’t in the mood to be accommodating to Louise Livingston today. No matter how silly and unnecessary her demands were. The uppity woman could leave with whatever impression irritated her most, as far as he cared.

“No.”

She stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending. “Are you saying you refuse to abide by my wishes?” The shock in her voice indicated that few people dared to do so.

He grinned. “I sure am.”

“But you don’t even love her! You said so yourself!”

“Still, a man likes to keep his options open.”

Her face twisted in revulsion. “I can’t believe you would even say such a thing.”

“Why not? You seem to have a pretty low opinion of the Saunders family.”

“And it’s still sinking,” she said wryly.

He laughed. He’d always admired a woman with spirit. It was a pity this one’s energies were all focused on insulting him.

“Well, if you won’t keep away from Sally, I’ll just make sure to keep Sally away from you,” Louise said.

“Better keep her under lock and key then,” he warned. “You know what a ruffian I am. I just might steal into your house one night, clunk her on the head and drag her off by her hair.”

Louise lifted her chin. “After I tell my sister about your behavior toward me today, she wouldn’t have you on a bet. I can’t imagine that any woman would!”

“Oh no?”

“Any decent woman, that is,” Louise corrected primly.

He inched closer. “Funny…I’ve never had any trouble finding women—decent, as you say, or otherwise.”

“Keep away from me,” she warned as he lurched closer to her, his eyebrows wriggling seductively.

“You said I was only supposed to stay away from your sister,” he said, darting up an eyebrow suggestively. “But, as you know, I have a weakness for all the Livingston women.”

Louise took a tripping step backward, catching herself from falling with a down-stretched arm. Ty watched with amusement as she scooped up a handful of gloppy clay and palmed it menacingly.

“Don’t you dare come a step farther,” she warned.

“Or what?” he taunted. “Are you going to toss that little mud ball my way?”

She quaked with anger, and with surprising speed the wet ball of clay came whizzing toward his face. He ducked in time, but the projectile sped past him and smacked Zeus right on the nose. The spirited animal let out a sharp whinny of protest and reared threateningly.

Louise’s eyes widened at the sight of the impressive animal rising to its full height, and she watched silently as Ty grabbed for the bridle and tried to soothe the animal.

“Nice shot,” he said accusingly.

“You drove me to it,” Louise argued.

Ty felt his blood heating up for another fight just as a door slammed and Caleb came running out of the house, probably beckoned by Zeus’s whinnies.

Louise began to pick her way toward her horse. “Just don’t be surprised when you don’t see Sally anymore, Mr. Saunders.”

“I won’t. I have no doubt you’ll succeed in scaring her away from men.”

“M-Miss Livingston!” Cal sputtered anxiously. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

“Or maybe you’ll teach Sally to follow your example,” Ty continued bitterly, “and she’ll learn how to simply scare men away.”

Louise’s hands balled into fists at her side. “If I could just scare you away I would count it as a victory!”

Cal looked from her to his brother in confusion and alarm. “Wait!” he said, darting after Louise. “Please, Miss Livingston, let me—” His string bean body hopped awkwardly over a puddle and he jutted out his hand, offering assistance to Louise.

“No, don’t,” she pleaded, obviously having had enough of being rushed at by Saunders men.

But Cal was determined to help the lady, and he grabbed her arm just as he lost his footing.

First Cal slipped, then, tugged by his movement, Louise lost her balance, too. Her free arm twisted in a loopy circle as she tried to regain her equilibrium, but Cal’s unsteadying hand was still gripping her arm, and when he collided with the brown-red mud, she followed.

Louise Livingston hit the ground with a definitely unladylike splat, Ty noted with unabashed pleasure.

Wearing an expression of pure astonishment on her mud-splattered face, Louise wallowed on the wet ground for a moment before she gathered her wits and started to pull herself up.

Cal. with his knobby knees poking up out of the mud, glanced over at her in panic. “Wait, Miss Livingston, let me help you!”

Alarmed by the idea of more of Caleb’s help, Louise flailed away from the young man. “No, please!” she cried, trying to push herself up before Cal could do any more harm.

A wide, generous smile tugging at his lips, Ty strode over, quickly looped an arm about her dirty waist and hoisted her to her feet.

“Oh!” she exclaimed as he lifted her effortlessly. She turned to look at him and he graced her with a broad, taunting smile. “Let me go, both of you!” She scurried away, slipping and sliding to her horse, and quickly mounted, “Thank heavens I learned about Sally’s unwise affections before it was too late!”

Cal shot to his feet. “Sally’s what?”

“Unwise affections,” Louise repeated as the mare pranced in a restless circle beneath her. The horse looked almost as anxious to get away from the Saunders ranch as Louise herself did.

“Wait! S-surely you’re not leaving! Not yet!” Cal cried, scrambling across a puddle toward her. “Don’t you want to come inside and change clothes? You look terrible!”

Louise scowled.

“Terribly wet, I mean,” Cal corrected nervously.

“I’d be glad to lend you a pair of those pants that you seem so keen on wearing, Miss Livingston,” Ty said.

“No, thank you!” she snapped, kicking her horse into a canter that soon turned to a gallop in her hurry to be gone.

Ty watched her speed across the valley, laughing unconsciously at the wild sight she created with her scraggly hair and mud-coated cape flapping behind her.

Still gawking in surprise and confusion, Caleb pushed himself off the muddy ground and observed unnecessarily, “That was Miss Livingston!” His tall, gangly frame made him look like a mud-soaked scarecrow. “What did she want?”

Ty frowned. He feared that he’d just unwittingly fouled up his brother’s romance.

“Why did she say that about Sally?” Cal asked. “What did it all mean?”

Ty sighed. His brother set quite a store by Sally Livingston. Cal wasn’t going to be too happy when he discovered the course of true love had just hit a snag. Ty punched his brother’s arm in a playful, calming gesture. “We’d better go inside, Cal, and think this whole thing through. It might take me a while to sort out Louise Livingston.”

As soon as Louise put Blackie away, she scurried toward the house—but not fast enough to avoid Will Bundy, an old miner who was huddled outside the boardinghouse with several of his cronies.

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!” he cried, spitting a stream of tobacco juice into the mud. “What happened to you?”

Nothing she cared to repeat. “Just some mud, Will,” she muttered, circling quickly to the kitchen entrance, a ragged soul seeking sanctuary. It was late; dinner for the boarders would be soon. Her nostrils flared happily at the smell of baking bread, and she hovered near the oven, warming herself. She felt chilled to the bone, though indignation still coursed hot and fresh through her veins.

The gall of that man!

She shook in fury at the memory of Ty Saunders’s broad smile as he hoisted her out of the mud. Worse, she couldn’t forget the feel of his arm around her waist, the strength with which he’d picked her up, as though she weighed no more than a rag doll. She had experienced a tightness down in the pit of her stomach as she’d looked into his mocking gray eyes then, but God help her, her response had had nothing to do with revulsion at being manhandled by that creature. Rather, it was a tug of attraction, a feminine appreciation of Ty Saunders’s looks and strength and raw unshaven masculinity, coming at the worst possible time.

It was lust, pure and simple. And somehow, that only made her all the more angry at the despicable man.

Sally dashed in and stared in wide-eyed shock at her sister. “Oh, Louise—your dress! What happened?”

Mud covered her practical, dark blue frock, and now it was drying in front of the heat of the oven like a wet clay pot in a kiln. Louise shifted to give her backside time to warm.

“I had words with Mr. Saunders.”

“Ty Saunders?”

Toby burst through the door. “What happened!”

Her mind instinctively turning to business, Louise sent a reprimanding glance Toby’s way. “Who’s minding the store?”

“I put up a sign that said I’d be back. Please tell us what happened, Louise. It looks like you’ve been wrestling!”

His guess was closer to the truth than Louise cared to admit. “It’s just as well you’re both here, because I’m only going to say this once.” She lifted her chin and took a deep, fortifying breath. “Never, never, are we to have anything to do with the Saunders family.”

“Did Ty throw you down into the mud?” Toby asked, his voice sounding suspiciously enthusiastic.

Louise pursed her lips. “He did not. That was his brother’s doing.”

Sally paled visibly. “Caleb did that to you?”

“He did, indeed. After his brother thoroughly insulted me—and you, too, Sally. Then Tyrone Saunders had the unmitigated nerve to call our saloon a ramshackle booze shed!”

“Oh, no.” Sally’s voice was a fearful murmur. The two younger Livingstons exchanged dire glances.

Louise stepped forward, took Sally’s hands in hers and looked earnestly into her sister’s eyes. “Sally, I understand you fell prey to that…man. In deference to your tender feelings, however misguided, I won’t tell you the extent of my low estimation of his character. But I do want you to know how strongly I feel that you should never see him again. And that I blame myself entirely for not watching over you more closely.”

There, she thought proudly. She’d sounded very reasonable, very judicious.

But Sally fidgeted restlessly, her light brown eyebrows meeting in worry. “Did Caleb really wrestle you in the mud?”

Louise felt humiliated anew just from the memory. “He’s even worse than his brother! At least Tyrone can spit out a complete sentence, however vulgar and insulting.”

Sally pulled her hands back. “I’ll have you know that Cal went to college back East—Pennsylvania or somewhere. Only he didn’t like it so he quit after a year.”

“That figures,” Louise grumbled, then turned her mind back to the problem at hand. “Oh, Sally, don’t you see? Ty just isn’t good enough for you.”

“Louise, you’re a snob!”

“I am not,” Louise denied heatedly. “I just don’t want a sister of mine mixing with ruffians. Just look what those men did to me!”

Sally sighed, unable to deny that her sister looked as if she’d just returned from a trip to a hog wallow. “But it’s so unfair!” she cried petulantly. “If we don’t mix with uncouth people, who’s left in Noisy Swallow for us?”

This wasn’t the first time Louise had been forced to explain the importance of keeping the flame of civilization burning, even in Noisy Swallow. “We’re not like everyone else here. Don’t you remember our home in Chicago?”

“But we’re here now,” Sally argued. “What good are social respectability and appearances when there’s no one around to appear respectable to?”

Louise considered carefully. “Well, we always have each other. And if you’ll just consider our mother’s memory—”

“I meant, who are we going to marry?” Sally rolled her eyes in frustration. “Oh, Louise! Don’t you see, I don’t want to become a hopeless old maid like you!”

The room fell deadly silent. Louise, her own face flaming, looked from one beet-red face to the other.

Old maid?

Hopeless?

Louise had never given it much thought before, but perhaps her being twenty-three with no romantic prospects in sight did make her seem a bit of an old maid. Though it was difficult to think of herself as old. Mature, perhaps. Hardworking and financially successful, absolutely. She had developed those traits out of necessity since coming to California. Why, back in Chicago she had had plenty of beaux. But did everyone now look at her and simply think, there goes Louise Livingston, pathetic old spinster?

It seemed unbelievable to her, and, as Sally was so fond of saying, so unfair! For the first time in her life, Louise felt as if she had failed somehow, but not in the area of husband catching. Worse. She had failed to make her family see that she had their best interests at heart. That she was willing to make small sacrifices, such as not getting married, so she could devote her life to them.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sally mumbled in an apologetic attempt to break the icy silence hovering over the kitchen. “I didn’t mean it like it sounded.”

“I know you didn’t,” Louise said. “But the point is this—I’m trying to maintain some standards for you all, and what I saw of the Saunders family just didn’t rise to that standard.” Which was a laughable understatement. Those two barbarians hadn’t even come within spitting distance of her standard.

Sally frowned unhappily. “That’s so unfair!”

“Soon you’ll forget all about Ty Saunders,” she assured Sally optimistically. “You know what mother always said—‘Time tames the strongest grief.’”

Unfortunately, her words did not have the desired effect. Sally burst into tears and ran from the room, leaving Toby and Louise blinking in confusion.

Toby shrugged. “I guess she’s pretty upset.”

“I wish there was something I could say to make her happy,” Louise said.

Her brother hesitated before speaking again. “Speaking of happy…you know what, Lou?”

Louise, still thinking about Sally, answered absently, “What?”

“I was talkin’ to Louden and Jim outside the saloon the other day, and they said somebody’s discovered a whole lake of gold down south!”

Louise took a breath for patience. Even after spending his formative years in California, watching men go bust on a regular basis, Toby still had the gold bug in his system. “A lake of gold? Don’t tell me you believe that!”

“But what if it’s true?” he asked, his eyes glinting with speculation. When she glimpsed that expression in his eyes, she sometimes felt as if she were looking at her father. Jonah Livingston had been a dreamer and a gambler, despite their mother’s efforts to rein him in.

“You’re not going to look for a golden lake,” she said.

“Aw, Lou, please don’t start telling me about labor being the only way to spin gold.”

She laughed, pushing him toward the door. “I’ll spare you that if you promise to forget about lakes of gold and get back to the store and your studies.”

“Oh, all right,” he muttered under his breath.

She watched him go, wishing desperately for a way to work gold out of Toby’s system and Ty out of Sally’s. Then she turned around once more and sighed.

Ty Saunders. A vision of his bearded face and those alarming gray eyes danced tauntingly in front of her eyes. She hoped she would work him out of her system. Then again, ten months of trying hadn’t succeeded in making her forget him.

She feared the man was unforgettable.

Chapter Three

Cal was miserable. That’s all there was to it.

For two days, Ty had been trying to explain to his little brother that there were other women in the world besides his precious Sally. Prettier women. Women with better temperaments. And most important of all, women with nicer relatives.

And what did Caleb have to say to all these assurances?

“You’re right, Ty.”

Nevertheless, for two days Cal had moped around the ranch like a lovesick puppy, his head drooping sadly as he went about his work. Nothing Ty said could tug him back to his normal spirits. He had no more energy in him than a damp rag.

Until now. When they were supposed to be having a quiet, relaxing evening by the fire. Cal was now restive, uneasy. The tromping of his heavy boots echoed through the room as he paced, punctuated by sad, ragged sighs that bordered on moans.

Finally Ty had to put aside the paper he was reading. “Darn it, Cal, why don’t you just forget her?”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.” Cal combed a hand restlessly through his blond hair.

“Here, do you want to read the paper?” Ty always lost himself in newspapers from faraway places, when he could get his hands on them. He liked imagining what it would be like to move on to a new spot. “This one’s from Oregon.”

“Nah.” Cal flopped into a chair and looked at him with eyes that were bleary from moping and lack of sleep. “Ty, have you ever been in love?”

“I sure haven’t,” Ty replied with something like a mixture of relief and pride.

“I certainly envy you.” Cal sighed. “You don’t know what it’s like to stay up all night, dreaming of a woman.”

Ty frowned. That wasn’t true, entirely. Just the night before, he had tossed and turned, thinking of that infuriating sister of the gal Cal was so stuck on. Louise Livingston. He’d had his eye on her from the moment he first landed in Noisy Swallow. Not only was she damned pretty, but there was something about that brittle pride of hers that endeared her to him, made him want to take her in his arms. The way the woman acted, a body would swear she’d been carved out of an iceberg. Yet when he’d danced with her that night so long ago, then kissed her, she’d melted for a few glorious moments. Moments that made him suspect that underneath her layers of coolness and efficiency, there was buried a real woman with a real woman’s desires.

He’d felt it again, fleetingly, two days ago when he’d grabbed her around the waist. She’d been pliant and warm…for the few seconds until she got away from him.

He let out a ragged sigh.

“Ty? Ty?”

“What?” Ty replied, startled from his enticing thoughts.

His brother looked at him suspiciously. “Are you sure you’ve never been in love?”

“Listen,” Ty said, purposefully turning the focus away from himself. “If you’re so determined that Sally is the girl for you, why don’t you go tell her so?”

“But Louise said she didn’t want us seeing her family anymore.”

“Oh, hang Louise Livingston! That woman’s head is all mixed up. She didn’t even know which of us her sister was in love with.”

Cal shook his head. “Even so, I reckon I made a rather poor impression.”

Ty laughed, recalling the look of horror on Louise’s face after she’d been rolling around in the mud.

In despair, Cal buried his head in his hands. “It’s not funny! She probably told Sally that I’m an imbecile.”

Ty’s smile immediately disappeared. He could stand that annoying woman thinking the worst of him, but his brother was a different matter entirely. She had no right to turn her nose up at Caleb, the kid brother he had raised from the time their mother had died, when Cal was no more than a sprout. Ty had worked hard to provide for his brother, was trying to make this farm profitable for his sake, and he wasn’t going to let some crazy woman go around saying that Caleb wasn’t good enough to be seen with her sister.

Just the thought made his blood boil.

“I tell you what you should do. Just go into Noisy Swallow tomorrow and give that woman a piece of your mind. Tell her you’re in love with her sister and you don’t give two hoots whether she approves or not.”

“But I do care.”

Ty grumbled. “Then why don’t you sneak into town tonight, snatch Sally right out of her bed and have a good old-fashioned elopement?”

His brother looked askance at that idea, too. “I wouldn’t want to do anything that would cause a permanent rupture between her and her family.”

“Well, hell, then, what do you want?”

With a heavy sigh, Cal propped his chin on his knee and looked dreamily into the fire. “Sally,” he said simply.

Ty harrumphed loudly and tried to turn his attention back to his paper. But again it proved impossible to concentrate on the rosy reports of verdant hills and farmland ripe for the picking. Since he had entered into a fight with Louise Livingston knowing that she was mistaken about which Saunders man her sister was in love with, he felt some responsibility for Cal’s hopeless situation. On his own, Cal would never have created such a bad impression. Normally Cal was well mannered, conscientious and unfailingly polite. But when Cal got nervous…

Louise was never going to allow Cal to court Sally as long as she thought he was the oaf she had met two days ago. Somehow, Ty decided, he was going to have to set things right again between his brother and Sally’s sister, a feat that was never going to be achieved with Cal out here and Louise ten miles away in Noisy Swallow.

Standing idly behind the counter, looking out the mercantile’s window through glazed eyes, Sally took in a huge breath and then slowly exhaled with a long, mournful hum. Louise frowned in irritation.

As soon as the one customer in the store paid and left, Louise turned to her sister. “Sally, why don’t you go to the boardinghouse and get the washing started?” Sally let out another of those hums. “Oh, all right.” Ever so slowly, she floated toward the door, as if there were no purpose to anything in the world. By contrast, she was almost flattened by her brother coming in the same door.

“Louise, can I go out with Louden and Jim today?” Louise waited until Sally was safely out the door and on her way toward the house before addressing Toby’s question. Between the two of them she hadn’t experienced a moment’s peace in two days.

“Certainly not,” she said.

“Aw, shoot! Why not?”

“Because you’ve got Latin and mathematics to study.”

“I’ve studied them,” he whined. “For three whole days I’ve done nothing but study.”

“‘Work is what makes the man,’” Louise answered patly.

“That’s what Ty Saunders says, too,” Toby said enthusiastically, circling her. “Only he also says that a body can’t study all the time. He says men have to get out and move around outdoors.”

Louise frowned. That man! Bad enough that she had to watch Sally mope about him, and that she herself couldn’t forget about him. Now she had to listen to her brother quoting Ty Saunders!

“Animals have to get out and move around outdoors,” she corrected. “It’s not entirely surprising that a man like Mr. Saunders would be confused about the differences between men and beasts.”

Toby stubbed the toe of his boot petulantly against the wide pine plank floors. “You’re too hard on Ty, Louise. He’s really a nice fellow. Cal, too.”

Louise harrumphed loudly.

“Their spread made a lot of money last year. Bet you didn’t know that!”

Despite her intention to betray not the slightest curiosity about the Saunders men, Louise felt her eyebrows rise in interest. “It did?”

“Sure,” Toby confirmed. “And Ty said they could make more if they had more people working for them.” He paused. “He even hinted that I could work out there regularly.”

“What!”

Toby shrugged. “But of course, I said I couldn’t, on account of you forcing me to go to an old stupid university someday.”

She shook her head. “If you need something to do, you can watch the store while I go help with the wash.”

“Aw, heck,” Toby moaned. “I guess you’ll never see my side, Lou. Just like you’ll never understand about Sally.”

She tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“She’s just not like you, that’s all,” Toby said, shrugging. “You don’t seem to want the things normal women do anymore.”

“Toby!”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Before we came to California, you used to flirt and have beaux just like she wants to. I don’t see what’s so wrong with that.”

Louise sighed. She hardly ever thought about old times anymore, or the life she had left behind. There was always too much in the present that demanded her attention. “Life is different here, Toby. When I was a girl, the men we knew were gentleman, or at least tradesmen. I wasn’t flirting with miners.”

“What’s the matter with miners?” Toby asked. “I wish I could go out all day and hunt for gold!”

“Wishes don’t earn their keep,” she chirped sagely.

“They would if I struck it rich,” he challenged. “Besides, Ty and Cal aren’t miners anymore.”

“They used to be.”

“But they aren’t now. They aren’t like Will Bundy and all that gang, just hanging around the saloon all day waitin’ to hear where the next big strike is. And anyway, Sally’s acting so funny, I worry about her. Last night she stayed up all night, humming.”

Louise shook her head. Sally’s sad hum was becoming a familiar sound in Noisy Swallow. She hated seeing her sister going through such a trying time, but in the end, she knew it was for the best. “Give her time,” she said sadly, “she’ll get over it”

“I know you think that,” Toby said boldly, “but I’m not so sure. I think she’s in love with…Mr. Saunders.”

“Then she just needs to learn not to love him,” Louise said.

“Not everybody can rein in all the things they feel like you can, Lou. Like me. Sometimes I feel like I could just burst out running and not stop till I reach the Pacific Ocean!”

Louise had to laugh at that. “That’s the way it feels to be sixteen. But if you do burst out running, I wish you’d head in the direction of Harvard.”

He shrugged sheepishly, and she gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Toby. I’ll go talk to Sally and see if I can’t cheer her up.” An idea struck her, and her voice brightened. “Maybe I’ll make her a new dress, or a hat.”

He smiled limply. “Maybe.”

Just then, a movement on the street outside the window caught her eye. “Oh, no!” she exclaimed.

Toby looked out the window, and two spots of color appeared in his cheeks. “Uh-oh.”

Dark as a thundercloud, Ty Saunders strode across the dirt road that was Noisy Swallow’s only thoroughfare. He had a grim determination about him—set off by his beard, his mouth appeared to be a straight slash—that made both Toby and Louise draw back a little.

In a second, he was knocking the dirt off his boots outside the door of the mercantile.

“Gosh, I’d better get back to my chores,” Toby said quickly, dashing for the door.

“Wait, Toby, don’t lea—”

Then Ty was there, inside the store, which seemed a whole lot smaller just for his being in it. Louise hadn’t quite appreciated how large a man he was when they were outside together. Now she noticed that he’d had to duck as he’d come through the door, and that his broad shoulders filled up the entrance to the store. The shelves next to him seemed dwarfed by his presence.

So did Toby. “Hi there, Ty,” he said quickly, not quite looking the man in the eye. “I was sure hoping to talk to you, but gosh, I’ve got lots to do now.” As fast as a mouse dashing for a knothole, Toby darted through the door.

Louise looked into Ty Saunders’s watchful gray eyes and found herself backing toward the counter. He followed her, until they stood on opposite sides of the long length of wood.

“I thought I told you not to come here,” Louise said.

His lips twisted into a curt smile at her no-nonsense greeting. “No, you told me I couldn’t see Sally.”

“Well, then…” Her mouth felt bone dry, so speaking took an effort. “Have you come to shop?”

“No, I’ve come to get something I’ve already paid for.”

Louise frowned. “I don’t recall your buying anything.”

“I didn’t. I paid for a service I haven’t received.”

All sorts of questions popped into Louise’s head as she looked into Ty’s devilish eyes. What had Sally been doing out there at the Saunders ranch?

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“That doesn’t surprise me. You don’t seem to know much of what goes on in your family.”

“If this has something to do with Sally—”

“It has to do with Toby,” he interrupted shortly. “He hasn’t shown up for work in three days.”

“Work!” Louise cried.

“You know,” he reminded her playfully, “that activity people engage in when they need niceties such as…money?”

“I should know what work is. I do enough of it.”

“Too much,” Ty replied, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “You ought to try relaxing sometime.”

Louise planted her hands on her hips and looked into the man’s disarming eyes. “And what would that get me?”

“Unwound.”

A sputter of indignation built up in her throat. “I’m as unwound as I care to be,” she said, practically choking on the words.

He shrugged. “Suit yourself. But maybe if you weren’t running around like a jackrabbit all the time, you’d know that little brother of yours has more ambition than can be held in all those books you’re always pushing on him.”

Louise’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Toby’s studies don’t concern you.”

Ty chuckled, a deep sound that seemed to rumble right from his chest to hers. “That’s right. If you turn a blind eye to a problem, it’s bound to go away…about one time in a hundred.”

She bristled, both at his words and her reaction to the man’s physical presence. Every move, every sound he made sent waves of awareness through her.

“Last week I paid five dollars in advance for work Toby has yet to show up to perform,” Ty said.

Louise felt her jaw go slack with shock. “You’ve been paying my brother to do work at your ranch?” To his nod, she asked, astounded, “When?”

“For about a month,” Ty said.

“A month!” Louise cried, flabbergasted.

“Maybe if you weren’t so busy running the town, you’d have more success running your family, Miss Livingston.”

Fuming, she planted her hands on her hips. “I’ve been quite successful running both, until you started wooing my brother and sister away to your ranch. Next thing you know you’ll be telling me Sally’s been herding cattle!”

“You’ll be happy to know she hasn’t. And, as I was saying, for the past three days even Toby hasn’t.”

“After my visit to your neck of the woods I decided it would be best all around if Livingstons and Saunderses didn’t mix.”

His jaw set stubbornly. “Fine. But that still leaves me with work paid for but undone.”

“I can remedy that right now,” Louise said briskly, taking two steps over to the cash drawer, turning the key and pulling it open with a firm tug. This would get rid of the man once and for all. “How much did you say you forwarded my brother?”

“Five dollars,” Ty said.

Louise counted out five silver dollars, slammed them on the counter and said challengingly, “There’s your five dollars.”

He sent her a blank stare. “I don’t want your money.”

“But you said—”

“I don’t care about the money,” he said patiently. “It’s the loss of a good hand that concerns me.”

Louise lifted her head proudly. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do about that. You’ll just have to find someone else to chase cows around with you. My brother is studying Livy.” She pushed the five dollars across the counter.

He reached out with his big paw and shoved the coins right back at her. “Good hands are hard to come by in these parts. Miners would rather spend their free hours panning for gold or drinking at your establishment than doing honest work.”

Louise smirked. As if she should have any sympathy for his predicament! “I don’t believe my brother was indentured to you.”

“No, but I feel I have every right to demand payment in labor, not dollars. That was the deal your brother and I made, after all. Any honest family would see that its commitments were kept.”

“Are you calling the Livingstons dishonest?”

One of his dark eyebrows slashed up to meet her challenge. “Are you saying you won’t honor your commitments?”

Louise blinked, feeling increasingly penned in. She wasn’t sure whether it was the man’s size or his arguing prowess that had such a powerful effect on her—or the memory of what those lips could do when they weren’t busy arguing.

“I’ve offered you money,” she insisted.

“And I’ve told you, silver won’t chop wood.”

The man was impossible! “Toby has more important things to tend to than doing your bidding.”

His eyes glinted in challenge. “I’d accept a substitute.”

So this was his game, Louise thought, understanding dawning. “If you think for one minute that I’m going to send Sally out to your ranch, think again. I’d as soon throw a bunny rabbit into a viper pit!”

“Then I guess you’ll just have to come yourself.”

Louise flinched. Surely he was joking!

But for once, the jesting gleam was absent from his gray eyes.

“That’s preposterous!” she bellowed heatedly. She scooped another silver dollar out of the drawer and pushed it toward him. “Here, I’ll give you anything you want. Just go away!”

“Not until you promise to come with me.”

Go with him? To his house? Alone?

She shook her head furiously. “I will do no such thing! I am a busy woman with three separate business establishments requiring my attention. I couldn’t possibly spare the time for such a foolish errand!”

“Miss Livingston, how would you like it if I convinced the good men of Noisy Swallow to start patronizing York’s Trading Post instead of your esteemed place of business?”

Louise tilted her head back haughtily. “I’d like to see you try. Not only is mine the better store, the Post is miles away!”

“Not so far that most men wouldn’t gladly walk if they discovered the prissy proprietress of Livingston Mercantile didn’t think men of Noisy Swallow were good enough to mix with her family.”

Her jaw had dropped open in unconcealable shock at his threat. “Oh! You are a terrible creature! I don’t see how Sally could say she loves a man like you.”

He smiled ruefully. “That question has puzzled me, too.”

Louise tapped her long fingers against the shiny wood counter, her mouth twisting into a desperate frown. She didn’t like feeling cornered, but she feared this time she was truly trapped. Ty Saunders had stature in the community. One look at him was enough to know why. His commanding presence demanded respect, which others might give him even if she wouldn’t.

The only thing she would grudgingly admit was that Ty Saunders was a wily son of a gun. But even though she might be outfoxed, that didn’t mean she couldn’t try to garner some advantage from the situation. “All right,” she replied. “I’ll do it.”

A broad smile broke out across his face, an expression she would gladly have slapped off. “Fine,” he said. “Two weeks.”

Louise blinked. “You’ll be expecting me in two weeks?”

“Hell, no. You can start the day after tomorrow, but I expect you to stay on for two weeks.”

“That’s absurd!”

“I gave your brother pay for two weeks of labor.”

“But that was only for a few mornings!”

“Yes, but your brother would have been doing outdoor labor. You can’t expect me to pay a woman as much.”

For a moment, Louise thought she might pass out. Never in her life had she met anyone who could enrage her like this man could. “One week,” she replied. “And I will not stay at your house. I have business to see to in town.”

“Then you’ll be wasting good time going back and forth.”

“That’s my affair.”

“Except that you’ll be so tuckered out, what kind of work will you be able to do?” he asked, shaking his head. “No, I’m afraid I have to insist that you stay at the house. For two weeks.”

She took a deep breath that failed to soothe her frayed nerves. “One week,” she insisted through gritted teeth. “One week, staying at your house, in exchange for Toby’s debt. And—” she paused for effect “—in exchange for your word that you will never court my sister.”

He said nothing for a long time, his white teeth nibbling at his lower lip as he considered. He rubbed a large hand across his bushy beard and slowly looked her up and down, weighing her offer. Louise felt herself begin to blush as he slowly assessed her appearance—as if that had anything to do with this silly bargain!—and was about to yell at him to simply say yes or no when he suddenly thrust his hand across the counter.

“Deal,” he said curtly.

Now she was supposed to shake on it, but she found herself wanting to avoid contact with the man. For three days, visions of his face had haunted her waking and sleeping hours, as had the memory of his touch. Instinctively she sensed it would be best to simply keep some distance from Tyrone Saunders.

Especially if she was going to spend a week living under the same roof with him!

“You have my word,” she assured him, keeping her hands tucked stiffly at her sides.

His lips turned up in a grin and he leaned over the counter toward her. “Shall we seal our bargain with a kiss?”

Her heart thumped in panic against her ribs, and she suddenly jabbed a hand out toward him, both to seal their bargain without any commingling of lips and to get his big barrel chest back on the safe side of the counter.

Ty clasped her thin hand between his two larger, laborroughened ones and laughed heartily. Louise cursed the flood of warmth that seeped through her at his energetic grasp and avoided looking him in the eye for as long as she could stand.

When she finally did look, he sent her a broad wink. “I thought you might see things my way eventually, Miss Livingston.”

He smashed his wide-brimmed black hat on his head and strode out the store, leaving Louise awash in a sea of anger, desire and dread.

An entire week!

Chapter Four

While Caleb attacked the kitchen with a broom, Ty reclined in a woven-back chair, stretching his legs out across the already sparkling clean kitchen floors. He’d scrubbed them himself the night before, but Caleb insisted on sweeping them this morning, just to make sure the house looked especially pristine for Louise’s impending arrival. All Caleb had done for the past day and a half was clean, clean, clean.

Ty took a leisurely sip of coffee, watching his brother skitter nervously across the room in a pinafore-style apron, his knobby elbows sticking out from the broomstick. Cal was tall, but a bit on the gangly side, with a boyish charm and genuine kindness that attracted women. Certainly Sally had fallen for those qualities, but Ty worried that Louise wouldn’t appreciate Cal. Beneath that armor of modesty and refinement, Louise seemed like a woman who might be more attracted to someone more controlled, more masterful, someone…

Well, someone like himself.

Cautiously he cleared his throat. He didn’t want to get his brother more nervous than he already was. “It’s not exactly housekeeping skills that impress a woman, you know, Cal.”

His brother looked up, an expression of sheer panic on his face. “But I thought you agreed that we should have the house as nice as we could, so Louise would think we were civilized.”

Ty nodded. “But if you really want to impress a woman, you have to be manly, as well as conscientious.”

“Manly?” Cal asked, leaning on his broom. “How?”

Ty stood. “First, get rid of the apron.”

“But I just washed this shirt!”

“Men get dirty,” Ty instructed, freeing his brother. “Now, when you walk, try not to bob up and down so much. Keep your head high, your shoulders back, your chest out—like the old rooster out in the yard.”

“He bobs up and down,” Cal countered as he tried to assume the same position and took a few stiff steps forward.

Ty sighed. The results of his efforts were far from impressive. Holding his head high seemed to make his brother’s neck look even longer than it was, emphasizing the huge Adam’s apple in residence there. Keeping his shoulders back did look better, but Cal’s bony chest was best left on its own.

“Forget the rooster,” Ty said. “Think of it as more of an attitude. You have to assume an air of detached superiority for women, let them know that you’re in charge.”

Cal deflated from his rigid stance. “That wouldn’t work with Louise Livingston. She likes to be in charge of things herself.”

How true, Ty thought. He sank back down in his chair. “Oh, just be yourself. You certainly seem to have impressed Sally. When I spoke to her the other day in town, she couldn’t stop asking about you.”

A dreamy smile broke out across his brother’s face. “I can’t believe she lied to her own sister, just to protect me.” Just as suddenly, his smile vanished. “We can’t go on lying to Louise, Ty. I’ve got to tell her the truth about Sally and me.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Ty said. “I’ve got Louise here for a week, and for that week we’re going to show her a study in contrasts. By the time she leaves, you’ll look like a saint compared to me. She’ll probably go home and beg Sally to marry you.”

“Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

“It certainly would,” Ty agreed. At this point anything sounded better than having a moonstruck brother. “So don’t muck up our plans by worrying about the truth.”

Caleb frowned. “I hope Louise doesn’t leave disliking you too much, Ty.”

“What difference does that make?”

“Well, if Sally and I married, we’d all be in-laws.”

Ty grunted.

“And besides, I kind of get the impression that you like her.”

“Like her!” Ty shot up out of his chair. “That persnickety old maid? Where did you get that crazy idea?”

“You haven’t stopped talking about her for days, Ty. Every meal, you’ve rehashed each word she said to you.”

“That’s because I can’t believe a woman like her can be so prejudiced, so snippy—”

Cal interrupted his tirade. “By ‘a woman like her,’ do you mean you think she’s pretty?”

Ty scowled, then admitted, “Well, of course she’s pretty. But I prefer women to behave more like females than shrews.”

“Then why didn’t you marry Vera Calloway all those years back when we lived in Kansas? She was pretty and sweet, just exactly what you say you want.”

“Maybe I should have,” he replied defensively.

“You said then that if you married her you would be bored to death.”

“I was young and foolish.”

Cal shook his head pityingly.

“Now don’t go getting any more crazy notions,” Ty warned him. “Just because you’re in love doesn’t mean the whole world is. And certainly not me.”

As he spoke, the sounds of a horse trotting up their hill reached them, and they both stood for a moment in the middle of the kitchen, listening. Ty felt a tightening in his chest at the thought of seeing Louise again. Dread, he assured himself. But dread couldn’t be the cause of the smile he felt pulling at his lips. Or the way his pulse picked up. He tamped down the uncomfortable sensations with a low growl.

Suddenly, unable to contain himself any longer, Cal bolted out the door, only to run back in a second later and drop the apron in his hand onto the table.

Taking a deep, fortifying gulp of air, Ty snatched his hat off a peg near the door and jammed it on his head. “This had better work,” he muttered to himself as he went out to greet their guest.

Louise slowed her horse to a walk as she neared the Saunders’s little house. A million worries battled in her mind. She wasn’t sure what the next week would bring, isolated as she would be with two ruffians. But she was equally worried about the people she was leaving behind. She hadn’t liked the gleeful, secretive smiles she thought she’d spied on the faces of her siblings as they’d pushed her out the door.

“Hello, Miss Livingston!”

Caleb Saunders was loping toward her, which made Louise—and Blackie—nervous. The horse pranced uneasily beneath her, and Louise gripped tightly to the saddle, prepared for the worst. At least the ground was drier than it had been the previous week.

“Let me help you down, ma’am,” the young man offered, grabbing the reins near Blackie’s bridle with one hand and holding out the other toward her.

“I can manage just fine myself,” Louise replied. She swung down as quickly as she could and dusted herself off.

“I’ll get your bag for you, Miss Livingston.”

Caleb took her traveling bag off the back of her saddle right away. His overtly polite manner gave her the feeling that she was checking into a fine hotel, not the week of servitude she would have done anything to avoid.

“It’s about time you showed up.” The words were barked out in a loud, obnoxious voice. Louise pivoted and found herself staring into Ty Saunders’s dark, glowering face. “It’s midmorning already.”

“You didn’t stipulate the hour I was supposed to arrive,” Louise retorted primly. She was not going to start off on the wrong foot by letting this man believe he could ruffle her feathers.

“I said morning.”

“Ty…” Cal said, his voice anxious.

“Which, as you said, it is,” she replied coolly. “Now if you’ll just show me where to go, I’ll be happy to begin my week of enslavement.”

“I’ll show you the kitchen, Miss Livingston,” Caleb said. He would have taken her arm, except that between her baggage and the horse, his hands were already full. “No, first I’ll show you your room. I hope you like—”

“Mornings here begin at the crack of dawn,” Ty insisted rudely.

Louise turned back to him in a huff. If this was the way he was going to be, it would be a long week, indeed! “I’ll be certain to remember that—tomorrow.”

“See that you do.”

“I will!” she cried in exasperation, almost forgetting her vow concerning feather ruffling.

Caleb thrust Blackie’s reins toward his older brother, then put a steadying hand on Louise’s arm. “I’ll show you the house,” he said, leading her away before they could continue their spat.

Louise hated to think what shape the inside of the modest wood-frame house would be in, but she steeled herself for the worst.

So it was with no small degree of astonishment that, led by Caleb, she traipsed through room after tidy, dusted room. She could hardly believe it. This house was neater than her own!

“And this is the kitchen,” Caleb announced, ushering her through a doorway at the back corner of the house.

Louise took one peep at the spacious, perfectly organized kitchen and was stunned. A counter that lined one wall, with open shelves beneath it and a closed cupboard above, was scrubbed until the blond pine practically glistened, Over a sink was a large window that looked out onto the yard behind the house. Next to the door was a woodstove, with a gleaming copper kettle sitting atop it, and across the room was a small oak table surrounded by four woven-back chairs.

“The pump’s right outside,” Caleb said, apparently anxious that she see everything at once. “And just this morning, I killed and dressed a chicken for us. All you’ll have to do is—but of course I’ll help however I can—oh, and let me show you the wood I brought in for you.”

Louise was all astonishment as she was tugged outside to inspect the tidy grounds. Either these were the two neatest, fussiest men she’d ever had the good fortune to come across, or one of them had made certain that she received a good impression of them when she came.

Even after her brief observation of both men, it was clear that only one could wear the neat title. And it wasn’t hard to guess which brother might have done the careful preparations in anticipation of her arrival. But why? She had hoped to make the week go by faster by keeping herself busy. Now she wondered what on earth she could possibly do here for an entire week.

Caleb finally left her alone in the kitchen, but all day he checked in on her, making certain that she wanted for nothing. Usually while he was there, he would perform some task for her, hauling water or bringing in more wood for the fire. She couldn’t have been more surprised at the difference in the man.

Probably, she guessed, he wanted to raise the Saunders name in her esteem for his brother’s sake. He asked her often about Sally, and always spoke of her youngest sister in the most glowing, respectful terms.

Ty, on the other hand, never so much as mentioned Sally’s name. Not that she had seen much of the man—thank heavens. Only occasionally had he clomped through the kitchen, black hat on his head, boots spewing dirt across the clean floors. He spoke in grunts and murmurs, and his lips were turned down in a permanent surly frown.

Every time she saw him, she knew she had been right to give in to his demand that she come here. Ty would be a terrible influence on impressionable Toby, and the thought of him touching her sister repelled her.

Even more important, seeing the beast in his lair made her more certain about her own feelings. She realized that the amount of time she had spent thinking of him lately had nothing to do with male-female attraction. The man simply irritated her. It was no wonder she couldn’t get him out of her thoughts: he was the most brutish being she’d ever met. And his table manners! Louise had never heard such slurping and smacking and belching as she did that night, all coming from Ty’s side of the table, not Caleb’s. It was a puzzle that two such different brothers could have been raised in the same household.

Throughout dinner, she tried to figure it out. The two brothers even looked nothing alike. While Caleb was tall and scrappy, Ty was simply a mountain of a man, all brawn and muscle. Caleb was clean shaven, and had light brown hair that was cropped short but still grew in unruly waves. His brother, of course, was a dark, brawny creature. She would have doubted they truly were brothers were it not for the gray eyes they shared.

Only Caleb’s didn’t disarm her as Ty’s did. The younger man’s eyes shone with friendliness and a desire to please, while Ty’s…well, sometimes it was as if the man could see right through her clothes. How could a single pair of gray eyes make her so terribly uncomfortable?

A loud, heartfelt belch echoed through the kitchen, and Ty threw his napkin down on the plate he had just scoured clean with the last piece of a biscuit. Louise cringed, but she gritted her teeth and held her tongue on the breach of etiquette. She did pointedly remark on Cal’s surprising ability to make polite dinner conversation, an observation that his brother met with a cavemanlike grunt.

After that, she remained silent.

“That wasn’t half bad,” Ty said finally, stretching his arms above his head and letting out a big yawn.

“I’m glad you liked the meal,” she answered with definite reserve.

“I didn’t say it was anything to crow about,” Ty retorted.

The sheer audacity—

“I thought it was wonderful,” Caleb said, looking anxiously at his brother.

She sent her adversary a satisfied smile.

“Cal would think that, since he did most of the cooking.”

Louise’s cheeks heated in fury, but she couldn’t deny that Caleb had been a big help. It was clear that she had misjudged the young man on her previous visit to the ranch. He was twice the man his muscled-up brother was.

Besides, she thought, remembering their roll in the mud mere days before, anyone was bound to slip on a rainy day.

Ty got up and tromped out the back door without a word.

“He usually smokes a cigar after dinner,” Cal explained. “I’ll help you clean up.”

“That’s not necessary,” Louise told him. She also felt like assuring him that he didn’t have to explain his brother’s rude behavior. It wasn’t his fault, after all.

“I insist,” he said, helping her clear the table.

Caleb brought in water and kept her company as water heated over the stove. Later, as they stood over the filled sink washing dishes, he said, “Ty just hasn’t been himself lately.”

Poor Cal. Louise’s heart went out to him. He probably led such an isolated life out here in the middle of nowhere with his brother that having someone actually observing them in their home was painful. And yet, their house showed signs of having had a civilizing influence sometime. There was a cabinet with china inside it in the sitting room, and a nice, finely carved sofa with velvet cushions, and several bookcases.

“He’s just acting so strange because…because you remind him of Sally.” Caleb sighed. “He misses her so.”

Louise pursed her lips disapprovingly. “He wouldn’t be missing her now if he hadn’t started seeing her on the sly to begin with!”

The young man’s face turned crimson, and again her heart went out to him. It wasn’t his fault his brother was such a clod. “Don’t blame yourself, Caleb. It’s not as if you lured Sally out here, or poor impressionable Toby.”

He wiped a plate dry and swallowed, his Adam’s apple making a long, tortured journey up and down his throat. “No,” he agreed hoarsely, “I had nothing to do with Toby.”

“And I suppose I shouldn’t put all the blame on Ty, much as I’d like to. Sally was at fault, too.”

A smile brightened Cal’s face. “Oh, I think Sally’s a marvelous girl.”

Louise clucked her tongue unhappily. “She has a mischievous streak a mile wide. One your brother was perfectly willing to take advantage of, I might add.”

The frown returned to Caleb’s face. “Please don’t blame her too much, Miss Livingston, or me—I mean, my brother—either. People can’t always control their reason when they’re in love.”

It was practically the same little speech Toby had given her! “Are you telling me that Ty is in love with my sister?”

“Oh, desperately!”

She shook her head. “I’ve been here an entire day and he hasn’t even bothered to ask after her health.”

“That’s because…” Caleb bit his lip, appearing to search for a plausible reason for yet another of his brother’s shortcomings. “Because he’s so much in love with her that he can’t bear to say her name.”

“I can’t believe it,” Louise said. Somehow, it was much easier to think of the man as a heartless seducer than a lovelorn swain.

“He’s been out of spirits ever since you came calling last week,” Cal said. His words had a ring of authenticity. “At night I can hear him pacing the floor.”

She thought of Sally’s incessant hums, then shook her head.

“It’s no wonder you can hear him, with the way he clumps around in those boots!” Yet the picture Cal was painting in her mind disturbed her. It would make sense that a man in love would lose sleep. Even her own thoughts had been keeping her awake lately, and she certainly couldn’t claim to be in love.

She frowned. Could Ty actually be pining for her sister?

Since her first encounter with the man, she had simply assumed that Ty had been using Sally, dallying with her young, vulnerable heart. And he’d led her to believe this was the case. But perhaps this had just been more of his bravado. Maybe she was keeping apart two people who were desperately in love.

Spoiler wasn’t a role she relished. Though she had never been in love herself, and never expected to be, she had always known that someday Sally would find a husband. She looked forward to that day—and to being an aunt, too. Never, never had she meant to prevent her sister from finding happiness. She’d only hoped that Sally would be selective in her choice of mates.

But judging from what she had seen of the house, its contents and the grounds, Ty Saunders did not live in barbaric circumstances, and would have little trouble supporting a wife. And according to Cal, his disposition was only disagreeable because of his pining away for Sally. And perhaps she was letting her own prejudices stand in Sally’s way. Some women preferred the, well, rustic type. If Ty truly loved Sally, the match wouldn’t be the terrible disaster that Louise had concluded at first that it would be.

It would only be a small disaster.

If Ty actually loved Sally.

Ty frowned as he paced outside the house, the ash of his cigar glowing red in the darkness. Usually he enjoyed evenings—the peacefulness of night sounds, the satisfaction of having completed another day’s work, the prospect of a long night’s slumber. But tonight he savored none of those things. Instead, all he could think of was that woman. Louise.

It hadn’t been difficult to pretend to be in a bad mood all day. Just looking at her did something to him. Irritated him, he guessed. He couldn’t get his work done. He couldn’t concentrate. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to get any sleep.

He let out a groaning sigh, then chomped down on his cigar. They were one of the few items he bought at the Livingston Mercantile. Did Louise realize that? Did she know how much this customer of hers had secretly enjoyed going into town all these months?

He’d never really given it much thought before now. But in the week since she’d galloped up his hill, he’d done little besides dwell on every moment they’d spent together over the years. Always, he had admired her, both for her looks and her sharp mind. And on occasions like that church social, he’d longed to tell her how much he wanted to see her more often, for something more than cigars.

But a few quick rebuffs had cleared all thought of doing any such thing out of his mind. How could you approach a woman who clearly had her own ideas about how she was going to run her life? The answer was, you couldn’t. Not unless you were prepared to be rejected, just as she had rejected the idea of her sister falling in love with a Saunders. The idea still got him steamed.

He couldn’t wait for this week of torture to be over. Hopefully, Cal and Sally would get married soon, take the house and land, and Ty could move somewhere far away and begin anew. Someplace that didn’t have a gorgeous headstrong female running the show.

As if in answer to his thoughts, the front door opened and Louise appeared, alone. She lingered for a moment on the porch, probably expecting that he would come keep her company.

She could just forget about that. He wasn’t making any friendly overtures.

After silently watching him for several minutes, she came down the steps and approached him, a tentative smile on her lips. “It’s a lovely evening, isn’t it?”

Her innocuous question—along with that smile—immediately put him on guard. “I was just about to go in,” he said tightly.

“Oh.”

He felt rooted to the spot where they stood, only a few feet separating them. She was wearing a dark-colored dress, which only made her lovely face stand out in higher relief, framed by her thick brown hair piled high atop her head. As the moonlight touched her creamy skin, the vision of her nearly took his breath away.

He looked toward the pasture rolling unseen down below in the darkness, feeling an uncomfortable tightness in his gut. “I’d think you’d be tired,” he said tersely.

“Not at all.”

He frowned. “We’ll have to find more for you to do tomorrow,” he said.

“Absolutely,” she agreed with gusto. “Otherwise, I’ll feel useless.”

Ty rolled his eyes. He should have known that Little Miss Busy-Busy would want more of a challenge than simple house chores. By the end of her week she would probably be ready for a cattle drive! “If I could convince Caleb to stop coddling you, that might make your days a little less useless.”

He looked over and noted with satisfaction that her chin jutted out in that stubborn way of hers. Nevertheless, she kept her tone even as she replied, “Don’t blame Cal.”

“Oh, so it’s ‘Cal’ already?”

Her fists balled at her sides, and he felt a surge of excitement upon seeing the spark in her eye. “I believe your brother was attempting to create a good impression for me, since you seemed determined not even to try.”

“Don’t see why he bothered.”

She let out a huff of frustration. “For you, you stupid lug!”

“Obviously he did wonders reversing your low opinion of me,” Ty said wryly, enjoying the passion in her eyes when she became wrapped up in an argument.

“You can’t even understand your brother’s noble intentions.”

“Oh, I can’t?” Ty asked, puffing on his cigar.

She waved a cloud of smoke away from her face. “Do you know he nearly had me convinced that deep down you’re actually a sentimental man?”

Ty barked out a laugh.

“Cal said that beneath that gruff exterior you were just a sad soul, pining for love.”

Ty leaned close, his lips turning up into a suggestive grin. “Oh, I’ll admit to pining for love as much as the next man.”

“You don’t have an honorable intention inside you,” she asserted with disgust.

He waggled his brows together. “No, but I’m full to the brim with dishonorable ones.”

“That I can believe! Never once today have you mentioned poor Sally.”

“She’s a pretty little thing,” he told her with a negligent shrug. “She’ll find someone else, maybe even someone you can approve of. I hear there are a few unmarried princes left over in Europe.”

“My sister is not a thing,” she lectured angrily. “She’s a young woman with a vulnerable heart.”

“Unfortunately, my heart is invulnerable.”

“I’ve never met anyone so callous in my life!”

“I’m callous?” Ty asked. “What about you? You’re the one who told your lovesick sister she couldn’t be seen with the likes of me.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “And apparently I was right to do so!”

Ty looked into her lively eyes and couldn’t help smiling. In spite of himself, he liked her pluck. He was even beginning to admire the way her pointy chin stuck out so stubbornly.

Caleb had done a good job of softening her today, and now Ty had performed equally well in riling her. But he was too tempted by the opportunity the moonlight and melodic night sounds presented to let Miss Livingston storm inside just yet.

Maybe he was just too tempted by Louise, period.

Either way, he knew just what to do to make her livid, and confirm her good opinion of Caleb’s character.

“You know,” he said, calculating his words to have the most infuriating effect, “I think you might be jealous of your sister.”

Her face turned the color of a Mexican pepper. “Jealous!”

“Come now,” he said, taking another step toward her. “Don’t think I’ve missed those little looks you’ve given me when I come into the store.”

Louise’s full red lips parted in horror. She took a step backward, then swallowed in a gulp of air. “Looks?”

“It’s understandable, you know,” he assured her in a low, purring voice. “An older woman like yourself…alone…around all those men.”

She let out a muffled shriek. “How dare you even suggest—and I’m not old. I’m twenty-three!”

He slipped an arm around her shoulders and hauled her against his chest. Her body was as rigid as an old creaky board, and her breathing came in shallow gulps.

“Then maybe all you lack is a little experience,” he said, tossing aside his cigar and then dipping down to taste her lips.

She gasped in surprise and pressed her palms flat against his chest to push him away. Only the push never came. Ty pulled her more tightly against him and moved his mouth against her lips teasingly, testing her response. Her body remained still, both unyielding and unprotesting, as if in anticipation of what his next move would be.

Unable to resist, he deepened the kiss, tasting her sweet mouth with his tongue. At the same time, he drank in her delicate, clean, soapy scent, and ran a hand up to feel the luxurious thickness of her hair. She moaned, and he suddenly realized what a sweet, tantalizing trap he’d fallen into. It had been too long since he’d held a woman in his arms. In fact, the last time had been when he’d held this woman in his arms. His body was as tightly wound as a steel coil. He wanted her.

And yet he had succeeded in making himself the last man on earth she would want.

With a silent groan of regret, he lifted his head, putting an abrupt end to their kiss. His hands dropped to his sides, and he took a short step back.

Her round, unblinking eyes looked dazed at first, then sparked with indignation. “How dare you!” she cried, heat visibly flooding her cheeks even in the moonlight. “Let go of me!”

“I did.”

She looked down in dismay at her freed limbs. Her embarrassment at this discovery only added fuel to her ire. “That was the most despicable thing you’ve done yet!”

He couldn’t help but smile. “Letting go of you?”

“Kissing me!” she cried.

“You seemed to enjoy it,” he told her, assuming an air of arrogance while at the same time attempting to discern whether there was any truth to his words. “Leastwise, you didn’t kick up much of a fuss.”

“I was in shock!”

“A lot of women say that,” he said, posturing proudly. “It just takes a certain prowess.”

Her eyes narrowed and her fists rested on her hips. “Tyrone Saunders, you’re lower than low. I’m leaving here tomorrow and I never want to lay eyes on your hide again.”

“We had a bargain,” he warned her. “A week, remember?”

“You can’t expect me to stay here now!”

“I would expect that you would be a little less forward during the rest of your stay, as befits a woman of your superlative breeding.”

“Less forward? Me?”

He shot her an innocent glance. “I was out here minding my own business, enjoying my solitary stroll with only my cigar for company.”

“A smelly old cigar is about all the company you’re fit for!” she said angrily. “You can rest assured that I won’t throw myself at you again!”

She twirled and stormed to the house, coming just short of slamming the door behind her.

He should have been smiling, but he couldn’t. Though the encounter had been a triumph in terms of making Louise think he was a boorish lout, he’d hit upon a disturbing discovery while kissing her. His heart wasn’t so invulnerable after all.

At least, not to one particular woman.

Chapter Five

“What is all this for?” Louise asked.

In the short amount of time it had taken her to feed the chickens and gather the few eggs available, Caleb had transformed the kitchen from its post-breakfast mess to a sparkling clean place to take a bath. The table had been pushed back, and in its place was a large washtub, half-filled.

“I thought you might like a bath,” Caleb announced as she stood staring in wonder at the light fog created by the steam from the water he had been heating on the stove.

“A bath? At nine in the morning? The idea’s too decadent even to consider.”

There was no masking the disappointment on Cal’s face. “I thought after all the work you’d done for us…”

“Work!” she cried, nearly dropping her egg basket. “You’ve hardly allowed me to get myself dirty enough to need a bath!”

“Why, that’s crazy,” Caleb said as he tested the heating water on the stove with his finger. Deciding it was ready, he hauled it over to the tub and poured it in. “Didn’t you practically cook dinner single-handed last night?”

She had single-handedly warmed up the remains of the feast Caleb had prepared the night before. But he had prepared the fresh corn bread, and done most of the scrubbing up afterward, refusing to let her lift a finger. In fact, this bath seemed just another way for Caleb to show that he intended to wait on her hand and foot. Which made her wonder what the purpose in dragging her all the way out here was.

“Caleb, I couldn’t,” she insisted. “There’s so much else I could be doing.”

He shook his head. “Not in the house, ma’am,” he said flatly. “I’ve seen to most everything there is to tend to. Ty’s mending a rail on the pen out by the barn, so I thought I’d go help him for a while, if that’s all right with you.”

All right with her? Compared with his brother’s rude behavior, the young man’s kindness nearly brought tears to her eyes. He was so obviously trying to make up for his brother’s brutish manner.

“All right, Caleb,” she answered finally, giving in. “Since you’ve gone to all this trouble.”

He smiled joyfully. “It was no trouble, Miss Livingston.”

She couldn’t help grinning back. “Caleb, I certainly think you can call me Louise now. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had such a nice surprise as this.”

He beamed with satisfaction with her words, then dashed out to get some more water to add to the scalding hot water already in the tub. In a few minutes, he had her outfitted with soap, a towel for drying, even an extra bucket of warm water to rinse her hair with. All that was left for Louise to do was strip and jump in the water while it was still warm.

After cautiously making sure that there was absolutely no one in sight when Caleb had gone to join his brother, she sank into the tub and let out a long, languorous sigh. She couldn’t remember the last time she had had a bath in the middle of the day. Or had so little to occupy her. The day before, she’d practically done battle with Caleb to find some use for herself. The man was a whirlwind of activity, yet he worried that she was wearing herself out, though she had insisted many times that nothing could be further from the truth. The only thing wearing her out these days was worry.

After years of nonstop labor, being at loose ends for ever a day was rather like having a rug pulled out from under her feet. She felt fretful about what was going on at home Was Sally doing all right, or was she still moping? Toby she felt surer about, except that he was liable to spend his days dreaming of gold instead of history and mathematics Usually she could count on Sally to keep Toby somewha in check, but these days, with her youthful thoughts all centered around Ty Saunders…

Louise found Ty consuming all her thoughts, as well Since mauling her two nights ago, he had left her alone but unfortunately, the memory of his kiss still plagued he even if he didn’t. Merely thinking of the way his lips had felt against hers made her heart flutter and her insides turn to liquid, and remembering how she had reacted—how her arms had held him fast, the little contented sigh she had heard coming from her own throat—those recollections made her go scarlet with shame!

Picking up the soap, she began scrubbing her limbs with a fierce vigor. When it came to Ty Saunders, she was as bad as Sally! Worse, perhaps. Sally had youth as an excuse and inexperience. Though she herself had never been engaged, or even lost her heart to a man, Toby was right. She had had a few flirtations in her day. Not only that, she had definitely had the experience of Ty Saunders’s charms…and had resisted them. Thank heavens!

Though ten months ago she hadn’t been interested in having a romance, much less a romance with a man like Ty Saunders, it hadn’t escaped her notice that he had neve gone too far out of his way to pursue her after her one paltry little rebuff. A different man, a more serious minded man, might have persisted, might have at least tried to woo her a little bit. Why, even Niles Swaggart had more persistence than Ty Saunders, and she hadn’t given that man the least bit of encouragement, and had certainly never kissed him. The very idea made her shiver, as if the water around her had turned to ice.

Remembering Ty’s kiss made her shiver, too, but for a very different reason. It took all her might not to give in to the urge to simply ease down into the soothing water and daydream the morning away, reliving every brief second that he had held her in his arms. Or every word they had spoken, or each look they had ever exchanged.

Louise was startled by the sound of footsteps outside, which were rapidly becoming louder as the person approached. It had to be Caleb, which meant that she had probably been soaking longer than was necessary. Sure enough, she looked down and saw prunelike wrinkles on her fingers, and suddenly became aware of the water that had grown tepid around her. How embarrassing! Caleb was going to think that she was the worst sort of laze-about!

Fast as she could, she sluiced the bucket of rinse water over her head, then stood, reaching for the towel that Cal had given her. She was just done covering herself when she suddenly heard boots clumping up the back stairs. The kitchen door flew open.

“Oh!” she exclaimed in surprise.

But it wasn’t Caleb who stood in front of her, stock-still, his eyes round with shock at being confronted with a dripping wet, nearly naked woman. It was Ty.

Louise froze in mortification. Though the generous towel covered most parts of her that Wilbur Abernathy and every other civilized person in the Western world would have deemed indecent, Louise felt distinctly as if she were standing nude in the middle of the kitchen. At first the cool morning air that had come in when Ty opened the door sent a chill through her, but her limbs continued to tremble long after he had closed the door and stood staring at her in silence. In fact, the longer they continued their speechless standoff, the more she quaked.

If only he wouldn’t look at her so thoroughly! His steely gray eyes kept raking up and down her body, from her calves immersed in water up past her knees and thighs to her towel-clad torso, to her face, which was framed by her wet hair. What a sight she must be, though a gentleman would certainly have turned his back at the very least, and preferably left the room altogether!

That was just the problem. Ty Saunders had the manners of a pack mule. Slowly she noted a subtle change in his gaze, from shock to something even more disturbing. She looked down to where his eyes seemed to be glued, down to the towel that was, she discovered to her utter dismay clinging to her breasts and hips in a most revealing way In fact, a quick glance down was enough to show that her breasts, beaded erectly against the wet and chill, were almost fully visible through the damp covering.

Horrified, Louise darted her eyes around the room, frantically searching for a hiding place to dash off to. Caleb’s kitchen was so stark, so tidy, she felt as exposed as a dance-hall girl on a brightly lit San Francisco stage. Yet she couldn’t just stand there with Ty gawking at her forever!

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