Table of Contents

Cover

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

Kit Gardner

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

Epilogue

Copyright

Sloan rose from the bed and started toward her

Willie thought she’d never seen a more dangerouslooking man. He stopped just inches from her.

She stared at the ridges of his belly and the line of dark hair tapering into the top of his pants.

“Go,” he rumbled, “or I’ll do something we’ll both regret. And there won’t be any taking it back. Only guilt and confusion and heartache. That’s the only promise you’ll get from me.”

He reached around her for the door handle and tugged it wide. She felt the heat of his arm as it stirred the air over her skin.

“Run,” he bit out. “Run before I make you disreputable as hell.”

And she did. For the first time in her life, Willie fled from a man…!

Dear Reader,

Kit Gardner has written seven terrific historicals for Harlequin, but many of our readers also know her for her equally exciting historicals from Dell written as Kit Garland. This month’s story, The Untamed Heart, a Western with a twist, has a refined English hero who happens to be an earl, and a feisty, ranch hand heroine who can do anything a man can do, only better. Don’t miss the sparks as these two opposites fight their very strong mutual attraction.

This month also brings us a new concept for Harlequin Historicals, our first in-line short-story collection, The Knights of Christmas. Three of our award-winning authors, Suzanne Barclay, Margaret Moore and Deborah Simmons, have joined forces to create a Medieval Christmas anthology that is sure to spread cheer all year long. Author Susan Amarillas’s new book, Wild Card, is the story of a lady gambler who is hiding in a remote Wyoming town, terrified that the local sheriff will discover she’s wanted for murder in Texas. And talented newcomer Lyn Stone is back with The Arrangement, a unique and touching story about a young female gossip columnist who sets out to expose a notorious composer and winds up first agreeing to marry him, then falling in love with him.

Whatever your tastes in reading, we hope you enjoy all four books, available wherever Harlequin Historicals are sold.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Harlequin Reader Service

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

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

The Untamed Heart
Kit Gardner

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KIT GARDNER

at one time in her life masqueraded as an accountant. These days she considers herself a writer and a mother. When she’s not pounding furiously on her computer keyboard, she now can be found on her knees in her perennial gardens, bellowing on the sidelines of a soccer field or blubbering over anything Jane Austen. She’s an eternal enthusiast for all things English but has been known to spend entire Sunday mornings watching reruns of “The Wild, Wild West.” She lives with her husband, three sons and a golden retriever near Chicago. She loves to hear from readers. Write to P.O. Box 510, Plainfield, IL 60544.

Prologue

Nebraska

April 1880

Sloan Devlin, fifth Earl of Worthingham, held four kings and an ace. The smooth-handed gentleman seated to his right slid his entire pile of bills and coin into the center of the table, raising the stakes well above four thousand.

“I call, tenderfoot,” the man drawled. Beneath the brim of his low-crowned black hat, his mouth twisted into a grin that would have sent any well-seeing female to the floor in a faint. “Lay them on the table, gents.”

Across the table two railroad businessmen with bulging bellies and whiskey-ruddied cheeks tossed their cards onto the table. The one who called himself Hyde rolled his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other and glanced from the black-hatted man to Sloan. The other, Strobridge, gulped from his glass and glanced nervously around the otherwise deserted railcar. Over the tops of their brown bowlers a barren wash of gold whizzed past beyond the windows. The car’s wooden floor vibrated beneath Sloan’s shoes, each clickety-clack of the rails registering the locomotive’s westward trek across the prairie.

The gentleman cheat, who’d neglected to mention his name, stared at Sloan. The man had resorted to deceit as though he’d done it countless times before. But a gambler down on his luck was never too hard to recognize. Sloan had known several in his thirty-five years, men who utilized their quick hands to stack the deck or deal crookedly, fluttering the cards up like a flock of quail and neatly assembling them as they wished. A man had no chance against those fellows, unless luck played her hand, and Sloan had always found luck at the gaming table. Elsewhere—well, that was another thing altogether.

At first glance Sloan had registered the gambler’s babysmooth hands, and the finely made, high-heeled French leather boot he crossed over one knee. Maybe only a few years younger than Sloan, he’d been graced with the good looks and bold manner that marked him as part of the dashing American West Sloan had traveled from England to discover. His skin and hair were of the same sun-burnished hue as the landscape beyond the windows. He wore his fresh-from-the-tailor’s-iron linen and broadcloth with an elegance common to the men who occupied London’s most fashionable gaming houses, and yet his eyes remained wary as if he’d seen enough to expect the worst of people.

He obviously hadn’t expected to be outwitted by the bespectacled Englishman he’d marked as an easy dupe.

Sloan spread his cards faceup on the table. “Four kings and an ace.” It was an unbeatable hand. All eyes swung to the gambler.

He was staring at Sloan’s cards with the kind of passive, cheek-twitching calm that in Sloan’s experience typically indicated tremendous distress. He lifted lifeless eyes and Sloan felt every muscle tense.

The gambler spilled his cards onto the pile of chips in the center of the table.

Hyde coughed. “By damn.” His eyes angled at Sloan. “Where’d you say you were from?”

Sloan drew off his spectacles, folded them and slid them into the breast pocket of his topcoat. “Cornwall, England.” He indicated the booty. “I take it this is mine.”

Hyde pushed the pile of bills toward Sloan and began filling a sack with the coins. “They play poker over there in England?”

“Not exactly.”

“That where you learned to cheat, gent?” The gambler surged to his feet, toppling his chair.

Calmly Sloan folded a stack of bills. He could feel the man’s angered heat radiating from his chest. Sloan glanced at the hand lingering near the open flap of his waistcoat, fingertips perhaps inches from cold steel. Sloan kept folding bills.

“Now hold on there,” Strobridge crowed, bouncing out of his chair. “We’re all civilized gentlemen here. My friend Hyde here and I have come all the way from Boston without encountering any fuss, or any Indians and we don’t need any trouble now. Peaceful business in Denver is what we’re about. Just peaceful Union Pacific business in a lawless land. There’s no need to draw your gun, Devlin.”

“I wasn’t intending to,” Sloan said, stuffing the wad of bills into his pocket. “I don’t own one.”

All three men stared at Sloan.

Sloan shoved his chair from the table and rose to his full height, which, as chance would have it, was a good two inches taller than the gambler, high-heeled French boots notwithstanding. Their gazes locked.

“In Cornwall,” Sloan said, “there’s a saying that any man who calls another a cheat in a game of chance is doing so because of his own guilt in the matter. It’s not the winner who must defend his well-earned victory but the loser who can’t stomach his failure at deception.”

The gambler’s eyes were as bleak as a dead man’s. Sloan’s stare was just as uncompromising.

“Dammit, now, shake hands,” Strobridge sputtered with a forced laugh. “Go on. Then we’ll open ourselves a fine bottle of brandy. We can drink to the success of the Union Pacific railroad and to all the silver ore flowing out of the Rocky Mountains. That’s where the fortunes are made, gents. Not on one game of cards. Go on, now. We’re civilized men, remember.”

Sloan extended his hand to the gambler. But swallowing pride was too damned difficult for some civilized men. To others, indeed, what was a bit of lost pride next to needless loss of life? Sloan had learned that lesson firsthand and it had been a costly one.

So costly, he’d left Cornwall and the tinners he’d championed against the mine owners. So costly, he’d left Devlin Manor, his tenants, his estates, and all the responsibility that came with a sudden inheriting of a title.

Sloan’s belief in a peaceful settling of differences had ended with his father taking a stray lead ball in the chest and dying just steps from Devlin Manor’s door. After witnessing that, only an idealist who was a fool would still cling to the idea of men resorting to diplomacy over violence, a handshake over pistols at dawn.

So he was an idealistic fool, but Sloan wasn’t ready to abandon his faith in the human spirit. It was because of it that he’d set out from Bristol on the Cunard steamer to embrace the American frontier in all its unbridled splendor, to see its vast and varied landscape with its climatic excesses, its giant herds of buffalo, its Indians, its bold pioneers who were in the process of writing a stirring chapter in history, a saga of heroic proportions. Until now, he’d viewed the West through the eyes and canvases of the European painters who imagined it. Now he would experience it, and somewhere on this vast land he would rid himself of the burden of putting his father into the line of fire, and restore his worthiness of the title. Maybe then he could return to assume the responsibilities.

“Get the brandy,” the gambler ordered, clasping Sloan’s hand in his woman’s smooth fingers. “And get the gent a glass.” He settled himself in his chair as the two railroad men scrambled below the table, producing a bottle and several glasses, which they filled and set before Sloan and the gambler.

“To silver,” Hyde said, lifting his glass. “May no one-horse, shantytown dare to stand in the way of progress.”

“And to all the lily-white, land-owning virgins that ever called those one-horse towns home.” The gambler displayed a flash of teeth and drained his glass. “May they forever turn to a man in times of great need. And may that man be me.” His chuckle spilled slowly from his lips as though he savored a thought. “That, gentlemen, is all the fortune I’ll ever need.”

Hyde and Strobridge echoed his laughter. “If you’re on your way to Denver, Devlin,” Strobridge began, as he filled his third glass with a less than steady hand, “I know of a saloon in a town called Deadwood Run, couple stops before Denver. The Devil’s Gold. I have a special lady there. I always pay her a call once I finish up my business in Denver. This trip will be no different Dakota Darby’s her name. She’ll show you how to spend that money you got there, and it won’t be on cards.”

Sloan set his empty glass on the baize. “I’ll remember that”

“Looking for great enterprise, eh?”

“Rather the opposite. Preferably off the railroad line.”

Hyde puffed up his chest “There isn’t a place worth seeing that isn’t on the Union Pacific line. Nothing except stretches of prairie waiting for the track to come through and make them into something. And no one worth knowing, either, especially the fools that think they can hold out on the march of the iron horse. It’s the coming of industry. You’re a smart fellow. You can understand that. But some folks are too stubborn to see it no matter how much money you wave under their noses.”

Sloan narrowed his eyes on Hyde. “Money for their land.”

“It isn’t for their mules.”

“Or their tarantula juice,” the gambler muttered into his glass. “One gulp of that homemade brew is enough to make a hummingbird spit in a rattlesnake’s eye. I prefer my drink like my women—smooth, unspoiled and mighty pure.”

Again the railroad men sniggered their agreement After a moment Strobridge glanced at Sloan. “All the land for the asking and they sit tight, refusing to budge.”

“Maybe they think they’ve good reason,” Sloan said.

“Sure they do. It’s their pride, the same damned pride that saw them westward seeking their fortunes in the first place.”

“Fortunes you promised them.”

Strobridge’s glass poised at his lips. “I’m no swiveltongued promoter, spouting empty promises.”

Sloan puckered his brow and fished one hand then the other into the inner pockets of his topcoat. “I believe I read something that sounded like a promise in a Union Pacific prospectus I was given in New York. Or was it Chicago? Something about the paradise awaiting development west of the hundredth meridian. It must be in my valise.

“According to your verbiage, gentlemen, if I remember correctly, the frontiersman is an idealized figure, his plow a sacred symbol, your railroad a harbinger of progress. Gold and silver were the thematic notes sounded endlessly in this brochure with land, open space and freedom tinkling in counterpoint. That sounds like a vision of the new Eden and promise enough for a man to abandon his share of a family farm in the East and pack up his family and head west.”

Hyde jerked his head at the window. “Look out there, Devlin. All you’ll see is an endless bonanza. The Union Pacific firmly believes in the natural process of individual enterprise. Any determined man can share in the good things if he works hard enough. And the railroad’s going to be there to provide it for him. If he’s smart.”

“Damned right,” Strobridge said. “I’m not saying you’ll find fools everywhere, Devlin. Most enterprising folks wouldn’t dare come up against the power of a company like the Union Pacific.” He punctuated this by shoving one finger skyward.

“You’ll find all the crazies you want in Prosperity Gulch,” Hyde added, chomping on his cigar. “Most damned impertinent bunch of poor cusses you’ll ever meet. Eking out a living from the South Platte on less than twenty cents a day. After the big mine exploded last year and killed a handful of them, you’d think they’d all just pack up, head back east, and give it up. And yet nothing short of the cavalry will get them out of our path.”

“They’ll move,” Strobridge snorted. “Our line needs to go through that land if we’re going to get track around the mountains to the rich mining towns in the deeper valleys. This time, they’ll move. They’ll have no choice.”

“Threats never moved pride,” Sloan said, remembering all too clearly the beleaguered tinners in Cornwall standing firm with their demands in the face of threats from the mine owners. All threats had accomplished was bloodshed.

“Money should move pride, Devlin, and it hasn’t. I’ll be damned if I return to my boss in Boston when this month is out without clearing the way for our line.”

“By driving the people from Prosperity Gulch.”

“After our business in Denver I’m sure as hellfire going to try, even if it means calling in the cavalry to do it. We’ll just have to convince those folks that when their town collapses, as it surely will, their lots will have no more market value than town lots on the moon.”

“Where is this worthless town?”

“Ten miles straight north of Deadwood Run.” Hyde jerked his chin at the gambler who dozed in his chair. “Our gambling friend can’t abide smooth liquor, Devlin. I wonder if it’s the same with smooth women.”

Gathering up his winnings, Sloan bid Hyde and Strobridge good-afternoon and left their railcar for his own some three cars back. Curiosity had drawn him from the overcrowded heat of his car several hours before and had delivered him to the railroad men’s poker table. He was glad it had. He now had an idea where he might be getting off the line.

Dare to make a difference…. His father’s words seemed to echo from the rhythmic click of the rails as he moved briskly through the cars. He’d dared once to champion a cause for the beleaguered against the mighty and had failed. Opportunity was again here. Was it a cause worth championing? Perhaps. The mighty couldn’t get mightier than the Union Pacific Railroad, and the people any more beleaguered. Were they worth closer scrutiny? Absolutely. It was all waiting for him ten miles north of Deadwood Run. He could turn on his heel anytime and leave that town and those people. He had no ties to bind him there.

Just as he stepped between the last two cars, something jabbed him in the back.

“I’ll take what’s mine now, gent” The gambler’s snarl rose above the roar of the train.

Sloan went still. Heat billowed up from the train’s belly. “Is this how you show thanks in the American West, stealing from the man who covered your cheating hide?”

“You’re right about that, gent I’m going to steal from you what I should have won. But in the West we go one step farther with English gents we don’t like.”

Sloan felt the gun nudge deeper against his back. “I didn’t take you for a coward.”

“Turn around then,” the gambler growled. “I’d rather look into your eyes when the bullet finds your liver. Slow and easy. Just turn around.”

With hands hanging loosely at his sides, Sloan turned in the cramped space.

“You’re a queer bird, gent,” the gambler muttered as he rid Sloan of his sack of coins and the folded bills in his pocket. Tucking these into his topcoat, he squinted at Sloan’s embroidered plum waistcoat and starched cravat made of the finest French linen. His eyes hardened on the ruby stickpin nestled in the linen folds.

Sloan flicked his eyes over the gambler’s shoulder into the railcar, where several passengers loitered. “You’d best shoot me now before the passengers begin to suspect foul play. You’ll have the small matter of my body to dispose of, you know.”

Profuse color climbed from the gambler’s collar. “The prairie’s as good a place as any for you, gent. The crows and buzzards will pick your bones clean before anyone knows you’re there. A wagon might not come by for a week or longer.”

Sloan allowed a hint of a curve to soften his mouth. “Then what are you waiting for?”

The gambler’s eyes narrowed. Doubt, suspicion, chagrin swept over his handsome features, but not a fierce desire for blood. Sloan had suspected as much. This man was no killer. To Sloan’s way of thinking, the gambler needed a small push over the edge of his rage. And he was betting the man would resort to fists first over his gun.

Sloan’s voice rumbled low and distinctly ominous even to his own ear. “You’re as soft as you look, sir.”

The gambler took an instant too long to throw his punch. With lightning deftness, Sloan deflected his fist with an upward slice of his forearm, smacked the pistol from his hand with the other, then brought both sides of his hands cleaving into each side of the gambler’s thick neck before he could draw another breath. The gambler went rigid, groaned, then fell back against the side of the railcar and slid to the floor. Sloan bent and retrieved his winnings. Twisting one fist into the gambler’s shirtfront, Sloan hauled him to his feet and shoved him against the railcar.

“In the future,” he said silkily, “you would do well to leave us queer birds to our business. Perhaps, then I will leave you to yours.” Sloan turned and, with one flex of his arm, tossed the gambler from the train. With grim satisfaction he watched the gambler land and roll into a thatch of bleached grass that lined the track in deep gullies on both sides and swept in unbroken, breathtaking beauty from horizon to horizon.

Straightening his cravat with a jerk of his chin, he smoothed his double-breasted frock coat, tugged at the velvet cuffs, drew a deep breath, flexed his massive hands and turned to enter the last car. As he did so, the polished tip of his pointed shoe nudged the gambler’s pistol. Bending, he retrieved the gun and, for several moments, stared at it, feeling the weight of the cool steel in his palm. His finger brushed over the ivory grip, curled around the trigger, traced the length of the scrollengraved silver barrel. And then he threw the gun over the side of the train and pushed open the door to his railcar.

Chapter One

Prosperity Gulch, Colorado

April 1880

“Classin’ up the place again, Miss Wilhelmina?”

J. D. Harkness, owner of the Silver Spur saloon and dance hall, hoisted a crate of clean glasses onto the bar. Swiping a thick forearm over his brow, he dissolved like falling bread dough onto a bar stool and glanced around the deserted saloon. Midmorning sunlight slanted through the windows, capturing the dust that hung in the air. Deep in one corner, beside an upright piano, an old man dozed under his hat. Just outside the double doors two men perched on overturned barrels, taking turns spewing streams of brown goo at a cuspidor set in the middle of the street. A handful of folk drifted past the front windows. The day wasn’t looking promising for business, but today wasn’t any different than any other.

Harkness swung his weary gaze to the flame-haired young woman polishing glasses beside him. “What the hell are you doing here, Willie?”

Wilhelmina McKenna Thorne slanted eyes the color of summer leaves at Harkness. Several fingers slipped beneath her high lace collar, directly at the spot where the lace itched most.

With the other hand, she poked at the knot on top of her head and wished she hadn’t stuck the pins in so far. “Why, Uncle Jeremiah, I’ve come to help.”

“I was afraid of that No, don’t touch another glass. Just get on home, Willie, where you belong.” Harkness jerked his head to the corner. “And take Gramps with you.”

Willie grabbed an apron and swung it around her whippetnarrow waist. “There’s nothing to do at the house for me or Gramps. I haven’t had a boarder in over six months, not since—”

She bit off her words. A flush crept to her hairline and memory blossomed with relentless fury. She swung her face away from Harkness before she betrayed it right there—her secret, the one she intended to take to her grave.

She found herself staring at the portrait of a young woman, ripe and lush and naked, hanging above the bar in framed gilt Willie closed her eyes and tried her best not to think about the things men wanted to do when they looked at a woman’s naked breasts and round hips, the love words they whispered that made a girl forget that her mama had told her never to take off her clothes except for her husband, and then only in the haven of a shuttered bedroom. Certainly not on a grassy knoll at midday when the sun would heat bare skin with a fever.

Willie forced her eyes open. “Besides, Rosie had her baby last night”

“And a fine boy he is. Looks just like his pa did. A shame he didn’t live to see him born. Ah, hell, go home, Willie.”

Willie jerked the apron ties into a stiff bow. “Gertie left this morning to see her sick mother in Denver.”

Harkness grimaced. “Gertie’s got more sick relatives than any widow I know. And she always comes back to work wearing a sassy smile that doesn’t belong on a travel-weary woman. I ‘spect she’s got a gentleman friend in Denver.”

“She might not come back this time.”

Harkness snorted then levered himself over the bar and produced a bottle and two glasses. Splashing the brew into each glass, he slid one over to Willie, eyeing her as if he suspected she was up to mischief. “I can run the place without my girls and you damned well know it.”

Willie worked her glass between her fingers. “True. But without them, where’s your draw?” She jerked her chin at the portrait. “She’s not enough. Even for tired miners who can’t see and travel-weary folk who’ve lost their way. And if the cowboys come through town off the pass as I suspect they might today, all biting at the bit to spend their hard-earned pay, you wouldn’t want them to choose the Devil’s Gold Saloon in Deadwood Run over the Silver Spur just because they believe the whiskey tastes sweeter when it’s served by a woman.”

“They want more from the women at the Devil’s Gold than sweet whiskey. And they get it there.”

“Some, maybe. But not all want what the Devil’s Gold has to offer. Besides, Deadwood Run’s another ten miles further off the pass, a bit far to ride if a man only wants to look at a face that doesn’t grow whiskers.”

“I don’t know many cowboys that would be content with only that.”

Willie smiled, a soft easy curve of her lips that made Jeremiah Dagwood Harkness blush every time she swung it on him. “Sure you do, Uncle Jeremiah. You just can’t think of an argument.”

“The hell I can’t. And don’t call me ‘uncle’ again, dammit. Quit your smiling. You still have to tell me the whole of it. Start talking. All of it. The truth this time.”

Willie felt her smile fade a bit and wished Jeremiah Harkness hadn’t known her since the day she fell off her pa’s wagon over ten years ago and wandered into Harkness’s saloon. He’d taken her home that day and became her Pa’s best friend. Prosperity Gulch had been nothing more than a tent town then. “All of what? I’m here to help. We both know Prosperity Gulch needs the business. So does the Silver Spur.”

“What about you?” Harkness waved his glass at the room. “A few turns around the floor, a buck here for a dance, two bucks there, especially if you smile.” Harkness lifted a smug brow that inched higher in direct proportion to the deepening of Willie’s flush. “Admit it. You’re broke.”

“That has nothing to do with—”

“I can loan you anything. All you had to do was ask.”

“No.” Heat pulsed through Willie in angry surges and she laid a hand on Harkness’s arm as he dug into one pocket “No, J.D., no loans.”

Harkness set his jaw. “You call me ‘uncle’ easy enough because you feel so God almighty friendly with a man just about old enough to be your pa. But when you need me most you treat me like a damned stranger. You’re as blind proud as your pa was.”

Feeling every bit of her feisty nineteen years, she shoved her chin up at Harkness. “Fine. Then I’ll leave.”

“Dammit, Willie—” Harkness caught her arm as she attempted without success to maneuver her bustled, knife-pleated, obscenely narrow skirts around and brush past him. “You’re better off in britches and boots. Suits your temper better, too. But I have to say you look damned pretty just the same. Mighty grown-up all of a sudden.”

Willie squirmed. “I itch. I haven’t worn this dress in years. It took me three hours to iron it.” She fidgeted with the lace collar then drew a breath, feeling the fabric pull taut across her breasts. “It makes me look—young.”

Harkness seemed to release a breath. “If the cowboys come through you’re sure to make a small fortune.”

Willie glanced up at him, hope sputtering to life. She tried very hard not to look as desperate as she felt, even though Jeremiah Harkness was the closest thing to a father she had right now. Even he could guess she was desperate enough to do just about anything, short of leaving Prosperity Gulch. Dressing up in her best clothes and high-heeled shoes and dancing with a few miners and cowboys was nothing. Even

Gramps understood that. No, they’d have to tie her up and gag her to get her out of town, starving and all. No McKenna or Thorne had ever abandoned a dream without one hell of a fight, even if the dream wasn’t theirs but their pa’s, even if chasing that silver dream had seen him dead and buried in his pine box just a year past, alongside her four brothers and a handful of unlucky miners.

What little money Richard Thorne hadn’t invested in his quest for the big strike was now gone. Any sane person would pack up and move on to a town where enterprise flourished and money was being made hand over fist. A town like Deadwood Run. Her pa hadn’t, no matter the temptations or the trials. Then neither would she, no matter how desperate she became.

Six months ago she’d been desperate enough to pin all her hopes on a handsome East Coast businessman passing through. He’d promised to return to Prosperity Gulch and make her his wife. Six months later she’d realized his promise had been made after he’d taken her to that grassy knoll beside the river and laid her on the blanket he’d stowed in his shiny black buggy with the red-spoked wheels. The sun had been warm that October day, heating her skin when the tears of shame had spilled to her cheeks and splashed to her bosom. She’d been a fool to believe Brant Masters would keep his promise and come back for her, even the part about him staying on at the farm once he’d returned East to tidy up some business. She might not have believed him if Mama had still been with them.

Harkness slowly shook his head. “If any of those miners or cowboys even breathe wrong around you, by God, I’ll—”

What was left of his promise was driven from him when Willie threw her arms around his neck and nearly toppled him from his bar stool with her vehemence. Harkness’s huge hands caught her around the waist to keep his balance.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” she promised, pressing a smacking kiss on Harkness’s cheek. “I know you don’t like trouble in your place. Not one glass will be broken.”

“That’s what your pa used to say when he’d bring your brothers in on Saturday nights and break damn near every glass. Hell, Willie, he’d have skinned me alive years ago if he knew one day I’d let his only daughter serve whiskey in my saloon.”

Willie reached for her glass. “I took care of four wild brothers for over nine years by myself. I know how to handle whiskey and men.” Not all men, a voice in her head whispered as she drained the whiskey. “Besides, I always have this.” Bending, she slid the pleated hem of her dress up past her silkstockinged knee and a frilly white lace garter. Tucked into the garter was a short-barreled Colt Peacemaker.

She grinned up at Harkness, expecting his nod of approval. After all, the man had taught her how to drink whiskey and shoot like a man to defend herself while her father and brothers were away at the mines all day and night But his look was far from approving. His usual soft brown eyes were hard, fixed on the gun strapped to her thigh, and his squared jaw flexed with a rhythmic tick that typically boded trouble.

Willie’s brows quivered. “You don’t think I can get to it fast enough, is that it? Well, I can. These stockings are made of silk and they’re very slippery. See, they come up clear to here—” She turned sideways, lifting her hem past the point where the stockings rode high around her thigh. “Damned uncomfortable things—”

She glanced up when Harkness’s chair scraped against the wooden floor. With long, lumbering strides he moved down the length of the bar toward the back room.

“Where are you going?” she shouted at him, planting her hands on her waist. In reply she received a grunt Shrugging, she turned to finish polishing glasses. Some men just couldn’t abide an enterprising woman. Funny, but she’d never thought J. D. Harkness to be one of them.

* * *

The frontiersmen are freeing America from stifling European models and laying the groundwork for a flourishing democracy destined to climax in national greatness.

Sloan had penned those words in his leather-bound journal somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic aboard the steamer he’d boarded in Bristol. The words had flowed effortlessly from his pen, his theory fired by the tales told of the triumph and majesty of the great American West, and his thirst to discover and record it all on paper.

It seemed his theory had soared a bit high in the cushy and comfortable trappings of first-class stateroom accommodations, thousands of miles away. High, maybe, but he refused to believe it unrealistic. No matter that his pocket had been picked in New York and again in Omaha, both times by young boys who looked as if they hadn’t seen a bath or a meal in weeks. No matter that he’d had to throw a man from a train to save himself from the same fate.

Triumph and majesty, innocence and spectacle. Not tragedy, wretchedness, guile. Pocketing his journal and drawing off his spectacles, Sloan stepped down from the wagon and squinted against the late-afternoon sun blasting from out of the snowcapped mountains, straight down Prosperity Gulch’s single dirt street. On either side of the street, weather-beaten storefronts huddled together, looking as if their builders had slapped them up haphazardly in anticipation of disassembling them just as quickly. Only a handful of pedestrians lingered on the street A livery stable marked the edge of town not fifty yards to the east. Beyond that the street seemed to run off into an endless sea of yellow grass.

At the farthest point west, a small building crouched. Three men on tipped-back chairs with boots braced on the hitching post loitered beneath a sign that read Jail. One dozed with his chin on his chest. The other two watched Sloan. Gun belts rode at their hips. Sunlight glinted off the star pinned to the burly man’s vest.

“This is it, mister.” The toothless wagon driver extended a thumbless palm at Sloan and squinted up at him from beneath the dusty brim of his hat. The man looked and smelled as if his body played host to an appalling number of lice and fleas. At regular thirty-second intervals he let fly from his lips a stream of brown spittle that Sloan assumed was the remnants of whatever he jawed with lazy circular chews. Grimy fingers snapped closed over the coin Sloan pressed into his hand.

“Cain’t yet figure why you English folk come all the way out here ‘cept to hawk the railroad or shoot buffalo. Course, there’s no more sport or danger or skill in shootin’ a buffalo than in shootin’ an ox. Ain’t no tellin’ the English folk that. They come fer the sport. But there ain’t no buffalo no more in Prosperity Gulch, mister. Or men, neither. They’s all been kilt.”

“Where can I find accommodations?” Sloan asked.

The driver deepened his squint “Nobody comes and stays in Prosperity Gulch ‘cept the folks who’s fool enough to live here. You sure you ain’t lost, mister?”

“A hotel would suffice.”

The driver scratched his head, glanced off down the street then gave a toothless smile. “Anythin’ a man be wantin’ he can git in a saloon. Try the Silver Spur. Couple paces up the street. Maybe you’ll find a bed that don’t squeak an’ a saloon gal who don’t mind bein’ rode hard. Most don’t mind atall, ‘specially by a fine-lookin’ mister like yerself.”

Both men turned at the sudden rumble of horses’ hooves, preceded by a wall of dust billowing down the street. Hoots and howls accompanied the revelry as a dozen or more men reined their mounts in just twenty paces up the street Dismounting, several fired their guns skyward, startling the horses. Others lifted bottles to their lips, tipping their heads back to drain what remained of their brew. In a dust-choked, animalistic surge, they entered the double doors of one building.

“Cowboys is here,” the driver said, wiry brows arching when yelps and yowls suddenly erupted from the establishment. He spat into the dust. “Gertie must be workin’ tonight. That’s one helluva fine lookin’ woman. More than enough there ta keep a man warm at night. I first saw her at the Silver Spur after she lost her husband when the mine blew. She’s right particular, though.” The driver shook his head, as though amply impressed. “It ain’t every night she takes a man up to her room.” Slitted eyes flickered up and down over Sloan’s travel-weary attire, settling on the stickpin at his throat “You just might be the lucky one tonight, mister, in a room fulla hard-ridin’ cowboys.”

Something about the odd glitter in the man’s eye stirred a faint wariness in Sloan. Tenderfoots provided great sport for frontiersmen. Sloan had to wonder how often strangers wandered down the sun-bitten streets of Prosperity Gulch.

Retrieving his valise from the wagon bed, he bid the driver good-day and headed for the Silver Spur. The sounds of revelry grew more pronounced the closer he came, bursting over him in a cloud of smoke and heat as he shoved open the saloon’s double doors and stepped inside.

He paused to draw his top hat from his head, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. The place was small. Every table bulged with cowboys and hard-bitten men, most engaged in card playing. The air hung thick and oppressively hot with the stench of smoke, drink and bodies gone stale. Candles dripped wax from two cheap gilt chandeliers hanging overhead. In one corner an old man hunched over a piano, struggling out a tinny tune. A cowboy jostled heavily against Sloan, belched, then stumbled out the door. Behind the bar a shinypated, massive barkeep in white shirt and suspenders splashed whiskey into an endless row of glasses, then turned and disappeared through a back door.

On the wall above the bar hung a garish portrait of a copperhaired woman reclining naked amidst lush grapevines. One leaf rode conveniently high between her plump thighs. Demure fingertips brushed at the base of her neck. A secretive curve graced her small lips, promising the world. Her belly was full, pink and smooth, her breasts like firm, ripe, overgrown white melons. Sloan’s eyes narrowed on the large, rosy peaks and his belly tightened. A feast for any man’s fantasy.

His blood seemed to heat.

He saw her then at the bar, carefully arranging full whiskey glasses on a tray. Gertie, copper haired as the lady in the portrait, peach skinned and luminous in a sheath of white. For some reason an unexpected jolt jarred through Sloan. Perhaps because she looked too young to have experienced widowhood already. The way she moved reminded him of a girl not yet fully a woman: the willowy, long-limbed, rangy sort of unselfconscious movement common to prepubescent girls. Not to widows, or to women who took men up to their room for a hard ride on a squeaky bed because they had no other way to feed themselves.

Cornwall’s brew houses were full of women whose husbands never returned from the mines or the sea. Scrubcheeked, freckle-nosed women of all shapes, ages and sizes, yet all had the same dead look in their eyes, a look that made a parody of the seductive words they whispered in a man’s ear and the breast they offered for him to fondle, all to lure him to their bed for a few shillings.

Sloan had become a champion for those forgotten miners’ widows. The stipend Cambridge sent him for his contributions to their publications had retired many a widows’ debt on her brew house and freed them of their servitude to the mine owners. Sloan had come to know those women well enough to recognize that Gertie was not one of their lot. At least not yet.

She turned from the bar, tray -balanced in her hands, hair sliding from the knot on top of her head. She focused on the whiskey sloshing out of the glasses with eyes uncommonly large and uniquely slanted. Her tongue peeked out of one corner of her mouth as she attempted to maneuver among the tables. The bustle seemed to be causing her some navigational problems. The dress was all wrong—high-collared, rose-sprigged, virginal white, at least one size too small. Sloan had seen dresses like that several fashion-years before on girls going to church in London.

Sloan watched her hips swing around one cowboy’s chair. Uncomfortable though she might be in her clothes, she possessed a fluidity of movement uncommon to most young women. In that dress she looked like a beautifully tapered white lily.

A subtle fullness settled deep in his loins.

She lifted the tray over her head and turned sideways to shimmy through a narrow path between tables. The movement, unconscious as Sloan was certain it was, offered up her more visible assets like a feast to a roomful of starving men. Every eye in the place seemed to rivet on her. A sudden hush descended over the room, save for the piano’s off-key tune.

A seated cowboy turned, licked the spittle from his lips and ogled her bosom with a lascivious intent that fired a longdormant but staggering fury in Sloan. He took a step, watching the cowboy’s dirty hands.

Another cowboy slid his chair into Gertie’s path, trapping her with the tray balanced above her head. Her smile cut like a knife through Sloan. It was the smile of a child, a guileless, slightly mischievous smile that had no place in the Silver Spur around these men. She belonged in a sun-dappled, tightly sealed parlor with all the other virgins of the world, working a needle through cloth and dreaming of the noble man who would love her.

The first cowboy rose from his chair, his lean, muscular body not a hairbreadth from Gertie’s. Narrow hips jutting, broad chest straining at his shirt, he braced his muscled thighs wide and poised his sinewy, sun-hardened arms to crush around her. Sloan could smell the man’s thoughts. Those slitted eyes had already stripped Gertie of her sheath and laid her on that squeaky bed.

Sloan moved through space without volition or thought to consequences. All he could see was Gertie turning in profile to face the cowboy. Her eyes widened as he spoke to her and realization swept over her. Her lips parted in silent protest. She wasn’t strong enough to defend herself against a man gone rabid with need. His cohorts would cheer him on. She had only one champion in this room.

Shoving a cowboy from his path, Sloan shouldered between two others and then he burst upon them.

Gertie’s head snapped around. Her gaze froze him midstride. He saw the helplessness in the quiver of her brows, the desperation in the heightened color in her cheeks. He knew only that the upward curve of her breasts brushed against the cowboy’s chest with her breaths.

“Madam Gertie,” he rumbled as he surged past her, “I will handle this matter for you. Step aside.”

“But—”

The cowboy’s eyes met Sloan’s long enough to register the challenge issued. But his fingertips got no further than his gun belt. With a lightning-quick slice of his hand Sloan slapped the cowboy’s trigger hand away, blocked a wild punch with his forearm and easily ducked another. In two strides he drove the cowboy back against the table and the table up against the wall. The cowboy raised his hands beside his ears in wide-eyed, dumbfounded surrender.

“I jest asked her ta dance, mister,” the cowboy sputtered. “Ain’t no laws against dancin’ in a public place.”

Sloan shoved his nose an inch from the cowboy’s. “Is that what you call it here? Where I come from, we call it something else, and we conduct it privately. I doubt very much the lady would have consented to what you suggested.”

“The hell she didn’t. I was gonna give her two dollars!”

Sloan stared at the man as the grumbles of agreement rippled through the crowd. He turned and found Gertie standing directly at his back. Hands on her hips, one brow arched with disdain, she didn’t look the least bit grateful for his intervention and saving of the day. She looked…as if he’d muddled her plans.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Sloan said, suddenly very much aware that he towered over her and that the air seemed to grow instantly thicker between them. And hotter. Her skin was of the most astonishing shade of warm apricot.

Her emerald eyes dropped to his tailored topcoat, then narrowed on the stickpin at his neck. Suspicion lurked in her voice. “Who are you?”

He found himself watching the slow descent of one thick copper curl onto her shoulder. “Sloan Devlin, madam, late of—”

“You’re from the railroad.” An icy shadow fell over her features.

“Indeed, I came from—”

“Get the hell out”

He bit off his reply as Gertie turned abruptly and made her way through the swarm of men. Sloan’s attempt to follow was instantly thwarted by the bulging chest of one particularly foul smelling man with only a handful of teeth to register his sneer. Sloan set his jaw wearily. “Don’t make me move you.”

“D’ya hear that, fellas?” The man spread his sausage legs wide and punched one fist into his palm. “This gussied-up railroad gent says he’s gonna move ol’ Reuben. Better take off yer fancy coat, railroad gent. Don’t wanna mess up yer Sunday best with yer blood.”

“No chance of that” Sloan’s eyes slid over the man’s shoulder. Gertie stood at the bar, arranging whiskey glasses on a tray. Another young cowboy stood at her side, feasting on her every movement.

Oddly enough, none of the brew-house maids he’d championed had ever rejected his help so recklessly, so defiantly, so damned foolishly. Virgins couldn’t afford to.

“Leave him be, Reuben,” a leathered old man wheezed from one table nearby. “He ain’t even got a gun.”

A chorus of jeers went up. Two men began shoving at each other. Several others exchanged heated words. Someone stuck the old man’s nose into a glass of whiskey.

“My wife run away last year with one of them fancy railroad gents came through after the mine blew,” Reuben snarled. “Left me with four kids an’ her own ma who cain’t even cook. I been lookin’ fer revenge ever since.”

“A bath might have served you better,” Sloan replied, attempting to shoulder past. Reuben shoved him in the chest. Sloan stood his ground and met the man’s bleary but antagonistic gaze. Sloth, filth and a marked penchant for fighting. Nothing encouraging to be found so far in. Prosperity Gulch, save for Gertie. A peculiar, almost overwhelming desire to talk to her took hold of him.

“I don’t want any trouble,” Sloan said. “Let me pass.”

Reuben stepped from his path with a travesty of a bow. “Whatever you say, fancy gent.”

Sloan took two steps and realized his mistake an instant too late. He’d allowed distraction to get the better of him only once before, and a bullet meant for him had found his father. He thought he’d learned that lesson well. Apparently not. Reuben put all his weight behind a punch that caught Sloan in his ribs and drove the breath from him. Sloan doubled over, spun to the left and swung his left leg in a blinding arc into the side of Reuben’s thick skull. Like a mighty oak felled by the single stroke of an ax, Reuben toppled to the floor.

“I didn’t want to do that,” Sloan muttered, stepping past the man’s motionless body, one arm pressed to his ribs. It was then that Sloan realized every man in the place was engaged in a fistfight. He stepped over one fallen cowboy, ducked as a chair flew past, and narrowly missed being crashed over the head with a whiskey bottle. Fists met flesh everywhere he looked. Blood spurted. Curses spewed. And above it all the piano belched out its gay tune as if playing to a room full of civilized people.

He made his way to the bar. Gertie had disappeared. His eyes flickered to the stairs. She wouldn’t have gone up there with that young cowboy…or had she?

The shiny-headed barkeep met him in front of the bar, hamlike hands braced on his hips. He was a formidable-looking man, powerfully built, but the glint in his eyes revealed far more than a lust for a bloody fight. There was something distinctly possessive in the man’s stance, a protectiveness that extended beyond the tables and chairs in the place. Sloan was fairly certain the man didn’t easily lose his temper.

“Where is she?” Sloan asked.

“You’re goin’ nowhere but out that door, mister. And you can take your fancy fightin’ with you. It won’t do you any good against a Smith and Wesson.”

“We’ve no quarrel between us. Where is she?”

“You leavin’ or do I get my rifle?”

“I want to talk to her.”

“I’m going to start counting, mister.”

“Sloan Devlin’s the name, late of—”

The man moved one step closer. “If you don’t leave my place, I’ll kill you.”

“Yes,” Sloan said, looking deep into the man’s eyes. “I believe you would.” Again his eyes shot to the stairs. “I’m leaving. Just tell me, is she up there alone?”

A growl came up from the man’s broad chest, bursting from his lips in a bellow of rage. And then Sloan knew beyond a doubt that this giant was deeply in love with the reckless Miss Gertie. A part of him must have understood that, must have forgiven him his vulnerability, because he didn’t strike out when the man clamped his fists onto Sloan’s shirtfront and shoved his face close.

“She’s never been up those stairs with a man, mister,” he snarled. “And she never will, least of all with another finelooking, smooth-talking gent who’ll give her nothing but empty promises and another broken heart.” The man released Sloan and rubbed an unsteady hand over his brow. The creases around his eyes seemed to deepen and the glitter of rage faded as he glanced around his saloon. “Now get the hell out of my place.”

With a curt incline of his head, Sloan tugged his topcoat smooth, turned on his heel and maneuvered his way to the saloon’s double-doored entrance, retrieving his valise along the way. As he stepped into the late-afternoon sunlight he passed the bandy-legged wagon driver who’d pressed his face up against the saloon’s front window and worked his jaw in a circular motion.

Sloan had just stepped onto the wooden boardwalk opposite the saloon when gunfire exploded through the Silver Spur. A moment later two cowboys crashed through the beveled glass front door, spraying the street with tiny shards.

An odd hush fell over the saloon and the street. Even the piano fell silent. One by one the cowboys crept out into the street, some rubbing bruised jaws, others limping, most with blood streaming from flesh newly laid open. Sloan leaned a shoulder against the corner of one building, drew his journal from his valise and flipped it open. He squinted out into the street as the saloon owner emerged from the Silver Spur with a long-barreled rifle.

Sloan’s gaze ventured up, drawn to the rooms above the saloon. At the windows, white lace curtains stirred in the soft breeze. The curtains hung motionless now, like the dust hanging heavy and still over the street. There was no breeze to be found. Lace at a window would stir if someone moved past them.

He glanced down at the journal and wrote, Women allow themselves the privilege of a broken heart only once. After that, they never fully part with it again.

Chapter Two

You from the Independent?”

Sloan snapped his journal closed and glanced over his spectacles at the man standing at his elbow. The fellow jerked his eyes from Sloan’s journal but there was no apology in his gaze, no chagrin in the set of his jaw beneath his sweeping black mustache. There was also no gun belt around his waist, just a black walking stick in one hand. He wore a starched white shirt and black trousers common to men of decidedly civilized occupations. Sloan found himself taking an immediate liking to him despite his palpable animosity.

“No news in Deadwood Run today, eh?” The fellow eyed Sloan with increasing suspicion, particularly the stickpin at his throat. “Or you fellas run out of all those epithets and insults you’ve been hurling at us? I’ve been called a loathsome creature one time too many by that louse you call an editor over there.” The man jerked his chin at Sloan’s journal. “I’ll tell you right now, mister, there’s room in this town for only one newspaper and that’s the Lucky Miner.”

“They’ve been lucky then,” Sloan said, folding his spectacles into his pocket and tucking his journal under his arm.

The man snorted and waved an arm at the motley collection of men lingering on the street. “Where’d you hear that? The miners of this town do nothing night and day except drink fiery liquids and indulge in profane language. Sure, the miner you see today loves whiskey, cards and women, just like the cowboys. But compared to the forty-niner of California, or the fifty-niner of Colorado, he’s a hollow mockery.” The man frowned at Sloan. “And you can quote me on that. It’d be the first time fancy didn’t get the upper hand of fact in the Independent.”

“A common malady when there’s a dearth of news.” Sloan watched the color creep from the man’s wing collar. “Truthfulness is not the hallmark of frontier journalism, no matter the paper.”

The newspaperman puffed up his chest. “You give folks what they want to read if you don’t intend to close up shop. Let’s just say most editors in these parts have become masters of the exaggerated news story. Based on the facts, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Hell, about a year ago some poor fella from back East came through town, muttering something about the Indians he’d seen east of here. By the time he’d driven to the other edge of town I’d put his wagon through an Indian fight that to this day has no parallel in history. Folks liked it well enough.”

“It’s a wonder they didn’t all flee town,” Sloan said.

The newspaperman looked squarely at Sloan. “Folks here aren’t afraid of Indians. They’re scared of one thing, and that’s being driven off their land by the railroad. They didn’t knuckle under ten years ago when the railroad said there’d be no town without a rail line through here, and they won’t now. Course, you know all about that, don’t you? The Union Pacific’s used the Independent for spreading its propaganda for years.”

“I’m not from any newspaper,” Sloan said, extending his hand to the newspaperman. “Sloan Devlin, late of Cornwall, England.”

“Lansky,” the man said after a moment’s hesitation, pumping Sloan’s hand. “Tom Lansky. Editor and proprietor of the Lucky Miner. That’s a damned fine set of Sunday bests you’ve got on there. You must be one of those orators who travels around spreading the word about politics and the finer things of life. Funny, but I took you for a writer. Only writers carry a pencil and a journal in their finest coat pocket.”

Sloan’s lips curved in a rare smile. “I’m no orator. And as far as I know carrying a pencil and journal never qualified a man to think he had something worth writing about. Or that anyone might care to read it. I’ve found it’s not the desire to put words on paper that makes a man a writer, but the difference he can make by doing it, the pleasure he brings to his readers.”

Lansky grunted. “Whenever people can learn to walk on their eyebrows, balance ladders on their chins and climb to the top of them will an editor be found who can give pleasure alike to rich and poor, honest and false, respectable and low. I’m just a poor fella who empties his brain to fill his stomach.”

“Don’t underestimate the power of the printed word,” Sloan said, flipping open his journal where he’d tucked a folded handbill. He snapped it open. “This is only one brochure that I encountered in New York. And all of it enticing people westward to make their fortune. They tell a man to come, rush, hurry, don’t wait for anything to buy lots, sight unseen. I visited one of these prophetic cities just outside of Omaha, fortunate as it was to have a depot. I found that this city of grand houses and shady trees contained not a single human habitation, and the only shade to be had was that thrown by the stakes pounded into the dry dirt. It was a paradise, lacking only water and a larger measure of good society. A fortune is being made, but not by the frontiersmen.”

“It’s a story, all right, but if you’re looking to make a big difference somewhere, you’d best go on back to England while there’s still no Union Pacific buying up all the land there.”

“There’s nothing for me in England at the moment.”

Lansky squinted up at him. “You looking to stay on?”

“If I find good enough reason.”

“Fine. You’ve got one. I’m offering you a job. Editorial column every couple of days. Anything you want to write about. Stir things up a bit. If there’s a town bleeding for a champion, it’s Prosperity Gulch.”

Sloan squinted out into the sun-bitten street where only a handful of people meandered past. Set against the majesty of the snowcapped mountains, the town huddled like a shriveled old man. Leave it alone…stay a few days…move on…. “How many people live here?”

“A hundred, give or take, though folks keep to their homes when the cowboys come through. Twice that number called the place home a year ago before the Lucky Cuss mine blew. The dirt was still fresh on the graves when the railroad men rode into town waving ready cash. Guess they thought fifty cents on the dollar for land would sound good to widows with children. Now we got the damned vigilantes trying to burn everybody out”

Sloan glanced sharply at Lansky. “The widows?”

“Everybody. They’ve come a good handful of times in the dead of night. Torched Widow Gray’s house and barn and shot all her cows and pigs. The only reason she was spared was because she had the good sense to hide in her hope chest. It helps that the Widow Gray’s a small woman. She sold out two days later. A good twenty more followed her the next day.”

“Do these vigilantes work for the railroad?”

Lansky shrugged. “You tell me.”

“It’s become a matter of pride,” Sloan muttered, half to himself, remembering the tinner’s immovable pride in the face of the powerful mine owners. “Pride more than the land.”

“Damned straight. Of course there’s some miners who still think they’re going to strike that big vein in the South Platte River. There’s a group of them determined to find it, no matter what the railroad does to try to run them out. Some folks think the railroad men know all about that big vein and are hoping to get the land cheap before the strike and lay their track right through town. Those folks are sitting tight, thinking their land values will triple then. Others still believe they can make their livelihood in Prosperity Gulch, strike or no strike. Some are afraid to sell now, thinking they’ll get ambushed by the miners before they can get out of town, if the vigilantes don’t get them first.”

“What about the mine that blew?”

“It’s common knowledge the owner was a fool. Had too much charge with him one day and she blew. Killed him, his four boys, handful of other men. There’s been nothing there for years. I’ll tell you, though, no matter who you talk to, tempers are running high. There’s a lawlessness in the air, Devlin. I can smell it. And the victims are the common folk, the folks who’ve sunk their lifeblood and their savings into land, homes and businesses.”

Proud, angry and desperately in need of rallying around a common cause if they were to stand a chance against a foe like the powerful Union Pacific and its rogue vigilantes. The town needed a heralding cry, and what better than the newspaper to corral tempers and focus energies?

“Where can I find a hotel?”

Lansky’s lips jerked into a smile. “You’ll find the softest bed and the best cooking at Willie Thorne’s boardinghouse. Second farm on the right about a mile west of town. I’ll tell you what. I’ll pay you fifty cents for every column—”

“I don’t want your money, Lansky.”

“Whatever you say, Devlin. You think about my offer.”

“I plan to.” Sloan picked up his valise and turned east along the boardwalk.

“Hey, Devlin, Willie’s place is due west. Where are you going?”

“To buy a horse.”

“Get yourself a breastplate while you’re at it. I ask only that my editors be responsible for defending themselves against folks who don’t like what you have to say in the paper. And there’s bound to be some. Last editor I had was horsewhipped and run out of town by a fella for something he wrote about the fella’s wife. Something about her dimensions giving her the appearance of an ambulatory cotton bale. Wouldn’t hurt to oil up your gun. You just might need it.”

“I’ll remember that,” Sloan said, turning on his heel and heading for the livery.

The ax blade whizzed through the air then cleaved into the log, cleanly splitting the wood into pieces that would fit neatly into the stove. Willie tossed the pieces onto a pile that reached to her knees then hoisted another log. Taking up her ax, she aimed, drew a breath, swung the ax and drove it into the log.

“Fancy man,” she hissed through her teeth, swiping a forearm over her brow then tossing the split wood onto the pile. “Gussied up and dandified. Damned shiny-toed shoes and pleated trousers. Too damned tall for decency—”

Again she bent, lifted a heavy log and braced it against her belly as she slid it atop the wide tree stump she used for wood chopping. Smacking her hands clean against her blue-denimed hips, she braced her boots wide, took up her ax and swung it in a powerful arc.

The last time she’d looked so far up into a man’s cleanshaven face had been seven months ago when she’d all but run over Brant Masters with her wagon. He’d been wearing the same sort of finely made coat and trousers, the same high linen collar. He’d even stuck one of those jewel-headed pins into his tie and his shoes were shiny and new. Now that she thought about it, Brant had smelled clean and spicy, a scent that had made her knees go wobbly and her belly flutter every time he passed within six inches of her. That scent had seemed to fill her nostrils for weeks after he went back East.

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

Willie threw the wood aside. “Railroad weasel.”

“The man sure could fight.”

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

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

Willie swatted at a mosquito and grimaced in reply.

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

“I’m mad.” She swung the ax high.

“Thought so.”

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

“Hard to tell.”

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

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

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

“Maybe he won’t.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gramps narrowed his eyes on the mountains to the west.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

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

“Just one. You won’t need your gun.”

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

“Put the gun away,” Gramps softly said.

“Put the gun away?”

“Yes.”

“Gramps—”

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

“A boarder—?” A sudden warmth spilled through her and brought a smile bursting from her lips. “How can you be sure?” She turned. The man had turned from the house and was leading his horse through the field of grass toward them. Her heart almost burst from her chest. “It’s Bran—” The name stuck in her throat and her heart plummeted. Chagrin flooded over her, followed by a deeply felt contempt for the part of her that still clung to feeble dreams spun by untrustworthy men.

As much as that part of her might wish otherwise, she didn’t recognize the stranger’s fluid gait, the breadth of his shoulders or the tall black hat he wore. His coat was long and tailored, with tails that flapped when he walked. He was so tall the grass that caught Willie thigh high reached only to his knees. His legs cleaved through the grass with an animalistic grace, so different from the rough-and-tumble pack of hard-fighting, hard-drinking brothers she’d shared her first eighteen years with.

Something began to stir in her the closer the stranger came, but it wasn’t fear. Though shadow hid his features, there was a disturbing familiarity about him. Something in the set of his shoulders, the way he moved.

“Oh, no,” she whispered, and lifted her gun.

The young man Sloan assumed was Willie looked up at him from under the shadow of his oversized hat and shoved his gun at him.

“Stop right there, fancy man.” A boy, not a man. The voice was pitched far too high and carried a huskiness common to pubescent youths. Sloan drew up short, realizing a youth’s inexperience and exuberance often got the better of good sense, particularly when that youth gripped a gun in his hand, a remarkably steady hand that bespoke of familiarity. Beside the boy, a rangy old man watched Sloan with an odd glint in his eye.

“Willie Thorne?” Sloan said.

“You got that right, fancy man.” A youth, certainly not a man, with hips and thighs still so rounded with baby fat his waist looked unusually narrow. Sloan deepened his gaze. Something wasn’t right. Youths were narrow chested, full stomached. This boy’s white shirt stretched taut where Sloan least expected it to, directly at midchest. Sloan stared at the fullness there and felt heavy heat fill his loins.

Beneath the shadow of the hat, full pink lips parted in a grim version of a smile. Sloan went instantly, uncomfortably rigid. No woman in his experience had ever looked so blatantly, arousingly female.

For an instant Sloan thought of his father’s Oriental manservant Azato, who had spent years developing mind-overbody principles in Sloan since the day he’d first come to Devlin Manor as part of the cargo his father had acquired on a voyage to the Orient when Sloan was only a boy. These principles demanded that Sloan resist all physical pain and all adversity in his effort to achieve the art of mystical self-defense. Without question, a master of these techniques should be able to resist a woman’s best efforts.

Still, looking at the amply proportioned Willie Thorne, Sloan couldn’t help but wonder if even Azato would have given as much thought to being mighty if women the world over began to pour themselves into men’s trousers and skimpy shirts.

The girl took several steps toward him, braced her boots wide and leveled the gun at his chest “Get the hell off my land, mister.”

Sloan’s gaze shot past her to the pile of split wood and the ax protruding out of a stump. It looked as if it had been solidly plunged there by a strong hand. The bearded old man looked incapable of lifting the ax, much less his cane. The farmhouse had been deserted when Sloan had peeked through one lacedraped window. Only two cups sat on a table freshly cleared of dinner plates. She obviously lived alone with the old man. Alone, she tended to the farm, split the wood, mended the fences.

Admiration stirred in Sloan, despite the beleaguered look of the place. And in that instant she embodied struggle and triumph, desire and adversity, every paradox he’d hoped to find on his journey. He wished she’d take off her hat so he could see her eyes and her hair. “I’m looking for accommodations, Miss—”

The gun jerked. “Don’t—move,” she said slowly, taking another step. “And don’t try any of those fancy fighting maneuvers. I’m a quicker shot than Reuben Grimes. And a hell of a lot more accurate. I could shoot that stickpin right out of your collar.” She thrust her chin at him, a slightly clefted, determined chin. Her lips pursed with disdain, and then he knew. He should have known the moment he spotted her across the field of grass simply by the peculiar reaction she stirred in him.

Gertie. Willie. Something didn’t fit. Without question, she was at home here on this run-down farm, in her trousers and boots, ax in hand and dirt up to her elbows. At the saloon, he’d sensed a helplessness in her, a distinct undercurrent of discomfort despite her best efforts to show otherwise.

Sloan had seen enough adversity in his life to know that desperation led many down a path that they wouldn’t typically choose. All desperate people had a price, one Sloan was not above finding, particularly if it would keep her out of the saloon and away from cowboys with itchy hands.

“What do you want for a room?” he asked, reaching into his trouser pocket and withdrawing the fat wad of bills he’d won on the train. He thumbed off several bills and glanced up at her. She was staring at his hand with such intensity he could almost hear her tallying all that his money would buy: the paint for the house, a new fence, even a plow to turn this field of grass into wheat or corn. Perhaps something as simple as food. Or a dress that fit her properly.

The old man narrowed his eyes. Sloan didn’t blame them for not trusting him. But only a fool would refuse help when in such need.

“Put your money away, fancy man. I’ve no rooms to let you.”

Sloan heard his teeth click. Bloody impertinent female. Quickly he recalled the price of meals and lodging in New York, at the grand and luxurious American Hotel. And then he doubled it. “Fifty dollars a day for a room and the pleasure of your company at meals.”

The gun wavered. Her skin grew unearthly pale. She tipped back her hat and blinked at him with eyes as wide and fathomless as the sea beyond Cornwall’s far western headlands. “You’re bribing me,” she said, her voice chilled. “You can’t do that.”

“Seventy-five,” he said softly. “Do you cook, Willie?”

“Better than her mama could,” the old man muttered under his breath.

Willie shot him a look that would have stopped an army.

The old man merely shrugged. “Your mama was a fine cook, Willie-girl. Like I always say, a skillet and a pail of grease are the essentials to any recipe.”

Willie let out a wheezing breath. “State your business, fancy man.”

“Sloan,” he said, tipping up one corner of his mouth. Pocketing his money, he extended a black-gloved hand over the top of the gun. “Sloan Devlin, late of Cornwall, England.”

She barely extended her fingers when Sloan leaned forward and enveloped her small hand in his. Her eyes briefly widened, deepening in color.

He expected to feel nothing through the fine leather of his gloves. After all, he’d spent his youth pounding his fists into tree trunks day after day to thickly callus his hands against pain or feeling. And yet he could feel the warmth of her, the pulse of her, the vital, womanly essence of her seeping through calluses and leather and skin. He relinquished it at the first tug of her fingers.

“I’ve come to see the elephant,” Sloan said.

She seemed unimpressed, and her voice rang with contempt. “That’s what all the English folk said when they came and shot the buffalo. Now there’s nothing for them to shoot. Who sent you? Union Pacific? Kansas Pacific? A couple years back some fancy English gent was following the Kansas Pacific’s survey parties, drawing pictures. Maybe you’re one of them. Or are you Denver Pacific?”

“I came by rail,” he replied, “and shared several games of poker with some fellows from the Union Pacific. But that’s the extent of my association with the railroad.”

Her eyes narrowed, as if she gave the idea of believing him some consideration. “You’re a gambler.”

His laugh rumbled from his chest. “Not on my luckiest day.”

“You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

“I’m a writer.”

“They pay writers good where you come from.”

“No true writer writes for money.” “Then why do it?”

“I want to make a difference.”

“Have you?”

“Not yet. At least not enough. I suppose that’s why I’m here.”

“To stir up trouble.”

“I prefer to walk away from trouble.”

“Good. The road back there leads all the way to Denver. Just point your nose west and start walking.” She headed for her ax. For an instant, Sloan found himself staring at her backside. Women as lushly formed as Willie should have been legally banned from wearing men’s trousers.

An odd compulsion to throw her over his shoulder swept over him. He took a step, tugged his dozing excuse for a horse behind him, then drew up as she swung the ax in an arc that stirred the air right in front of him. She’d set her jaw with grim determination. Sleek muscles strained in her bare forearms. A grunt came from her lips when the ax plunged into the log.

Sloan felt the tension mounting inside him. “How many nights will you spend in the Silver Spur to earn anything close to what I’m offering you for a single night’s accommodations? A week? A month? All I’ll ask from you is a smile every morning.”

The ax whistled through the air, again keeping him at a good distance. Wood chips sprayed into the air.

“I don’t trust strange men with velvet cuffs and shiny-toed shoes, Devlin.”

Ah, the broken heart finally betrayed itself. So the thief of her heart hadn’t been a cowboy. A gambler, perhaps?

Sloan glanced at the old man. “Is she typically this difficult?”

The old man spat into the ground. “Yep. I keep tellin’ her she’d best get more likable if she’s ever gonna find herself a husband.”

“Reasonable would suffice for now,” Sloan said, watching the color creep up from her neck and up under the brim of her hat.

Willie plunged the ax blade into the stump, whirled and advanced on Sloan with hands braced on her hips and green eyes blazing. “Eighty-five a night, one week in advance, nonrefundable. Meals, bed and outhouse privileges included.”

“That’s reasonable.” Sloan pulled out the money and peeled off twelve crisp one-hundred dollar bills. “I’ll pay for two weeks of services—” Just as she reached out to snatch the bills, he lifted them beyond her fingertips. She arched up after it, her eyes darting to his, and in them he saw desperation and blind hope all twisted up with pride. “And the pleasure of your company, of course,” he murmured, startlingly aware of her in the most base physical sense. She stood just inches below him, emanating a womanly warmth, smelling of grass and mountains and freshly chopped wood.

Her brows quivered. “Whatever that means. I live here.” Lightning quick she plucked the bills from his hand and, without counting them, tucked them inside the open neck of her shirt.

Sloan’s mouth went instantly dry.

Again she turned to retrieve her ax but Sloan was much quicker this time, reaching around her and taking up the ax.

She angled her eyes at him and pursed her lips. “Give me that, Devlin, before you hurt yourself.”

With one arm, Sloan lifted a log onto the stump. Bracing his legs, he glanced sideways at her and tossed her his horse’s reins. “Stand back.”

She didn’t move. “I don’t need your help, Devlin. I don’t need any man.”

“No,” he murmured, looking directly into her eyes. “I don’t believe you do. Now that we both understand that, stand back.”

“I don’t—”

Sloan swung the ax. Willie jumped back just as the ax plunged through the log, shattering it into five pieces. Sloan looked at Willie. She stared at the ax blade buried five inches deep in the stump then slowly looked up at Sloan. Her lips parted. Color bloomed into her cheeks. She looked like a rose bursting open beneath the sun.

“I—I’ll take your horse to the barn,” she said.

“Thank you.”

She hesitated. “And I’ll get you some dinner.” She glanced at the old man, flushed a deeper crimson, then whirled around and strode toward the house.

Sloan watched her until the shadows swallowed her.

Chapter Three

The skillet slammed onto the hot stove. A chair scraped. A cupboard slammed. Butter sizzled in the skillet. Eggs cracked against the side of the pan—plop, plop, plop. Willie stared at the eggs bubbling in the butter and considered reaching for another. Her neck had hurt when she’d looked up and met Devlin’s gaze square. He was taller than Brant by a good three inches, and seemed substantially thicker, despite the elegant drape of his fancy clothes. Brant had always taken three eggs each morning. She cracked another egg into the pan.

Satisfied, she turned to the peeled potatoes, took up her knife and whacked with an efficiency honed by years of serving up fried eggs and potatoes to four hulking brothers. Walt, Wynn, William and Wes. The knife lay idle against the chopping block as she glanced at the table, imagining them sitting there, dust covered, exhausted and ravenous.

Walt, the oldest, had always sat opposite Pa at the far end of the table, straddling his chair, his face stern. Somehow, even then, he must have sensed his tragic fate but he’d never let on, not even to Pa. Buried deep somewhere inside him he’d had other plans, dreams of his own that had nothing to do with the mine and silver and his father’s dreams for Prosperity Gulch. Walt had the simpler dreams of a twenty-four-year-old man, dreams of being a husband to pretty blond Melissa Cutter and following her family out to California for a better life. A new start.

But Willie hadn’t found all that out until the funeral, when Melissa had told her of Walt’s dreams, and the tears had washed over her face without stopping.

Willie gritted her teeth against the burn of tears in her eyes. She wondered if Gramps had told Walt that all dreams shouldn’t be chased. Walt always minded, even when he hadn’t wanted to.

Willie reached for an onion. In a flurry of whacks she chopped the onion into superfine pieces. Wiping a forearm over her eyes, she swept the onion and potatoes into another skillet of bubbling butter then reached into the open neck of her shirt and retrieved the folded bills. Slowly she counted them, then counted them again, rubbing her fingertips over the crisp edges. She drew them to her nose. The bills smelled new, untainted.

Moving to the window, she lifted aside the red checked gingham and peered into the darkness gathering over the fields. Two dense shadows moved through the grass. She watched the taller of the two. Apprehension wriggled in her belly.

Sloan Devlin wanted something from her. No man handed over twelve hundred dollars without wanting something more than a bed and warm meals in return. They’d both known it. So why was she getting all jittery inside wondering what fancy-man Sloan Devlin wanted from her? Maybe because something about him reminded her of Brant Masters. Boot heels thumped on the porch steps. One set of boot heels. And no scrape of a cane. Willie whirled from the window, lunged to the stove and shoved a wooden spatula into the pan of fried eggs just as the door creaked open. She stared at the eggs, working the spatula beneath each one as the door gently closed. The fine hairs along the back of her neck stood up.

Without looking over her shoulder, she jerked her head to the table. “Have a seat, Devlin. Coffee’s in the pot.”

His rumble of thanks seemed to shake the floorboards under her boots. Reaching for a plate, she felt a peculiar chagrin at the crack meandering through the fired stoneware, considered searching for one that wasn’t cracked or chipped, then thought the better of it. Lifting the skillet, she swept the eggs onto the plate, followed that with the fried potatoes, then turned and set the plate on the table.

She glanced up at him through a fringe of loosened curls and felt a jar clear to her soul.

He stood behind a chair and watched her, his eyes mirroring the yellow glow of the single candle sitting on the table. His hair was sleek and short, combed close to his head from an arrow-straight part. For some reason, Willie felt as if he sucked all the air out of the room with his presence. He was oddly compelling and just a bit frightening. Willie was not a woman easily frightened.

He quirked one black brow. “I don’t eat alone.”

“You will tonight.”

“The terms of our arrangement are specific regarding the pleasure of your company.”

Willie felt her belly sink. “You mean at the table.”

“Yes, and elsewhere, of course.”

She swallowed. “Elsewhere.” The word gurgled past her throat. There was only one elsewhere that she could think of when she looked up into his eyes. Without his coat, he seemed massive and possessed of an energy that seemed tightly reined. His voice was laced with the same seductive promise that Brant had used just before he’d pushed her back onto the soft grass. And his eyes bored into hers as if he had the power to read her mind and bend her thoughts to his will.

Or was she imagining it all? She swallowed, remembering how easily Devlin had driven the ax blade deep into the stump. Somehow she’d never expected that of a dandified gent wearing a tall silk hat and soft leather gloves.

She glanced at the open door at one end of the kitchen, the door leading to the bedroom that Sloan Devlin would occupy for at least two weeks. Fury and pride and every ounce of Thorne self-righteousness erupted within her. She’d made a mistake because of blind naivet6 once. She wasn’t about to again, no matter how desperate she was.

Holding out her hand, she loosened her grip on the crumpled bills and they fell to the table like dry leaves. “Take it. I don’t want any of it. We have no agreement, Devlin. After you eat, get the hell out of my house.”

Turning, she shoved a chair from her path, and would have fled her own house if he hadn’t blocked her path. She stared at his embroidered burgundy silk vest.

“Wait,” he said softly. “It’s becoming increasingly obvious that you don’t understand.”

“I understand.” She jerked her chin up at him so vehemently her tightly coiled hair sprang from its knot and fell down her back. “I might not have realized it at first because I was so—so—” Desperate. She set her teeth. “That doesn’t matter, because I understand now, mister. I know damned well what you want and you’re not going to get it here. Try the Devil’s Gold Saloon in Deadwood Run. You can get a room and a half-dozen girls’ company for a fraction of your twelve hundred dollars. And a damned better tasting meal to boot.”

Devlin arched a brow. “What the devil would I do with a half-dozen women?”

Willie’s face went instantly hot. “I—how the hell should I know? But the cowboys always talk about—” Her breath left her in a sharp spurt. “Never mind. Quit changing the subject.”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever spoken of pleasure and a half-dozen women in the same breath. You did. My dear girl, you’ve run far afield with this.” He bent to look directly into her eyes. A hint of a smile curved his mouth and for some blasted reason Willie was tempted to believe every word he said. Up close, he looked less like a gentleman and more like a man who’d seen much in his life. He had a weathered, almost beaten look to his face. Much like her own father had.

“Odd as it might seem,” he said, “I’m not after the pleasure of your company in my bed.”

Suspicion narrowed her eyes and thrust her jaw out another fraction. “No man would ever admit that outright.”

“No, I don’t suppose they would. Underhanded methods suit some men far better. I’m pleased to say I know little of that. But, rest assured, if the notion ever struck me, I wouldn’t use either money or underhanded methods.”

“Or a grassy knoll,” she murmured, flushing again when she realized she’d spoken her thoughts. Devlin was watching her with such sudden intensity she wanted to squirm. Instead she turned abruptly for the sink. “You’d best eat before it gets cold.”

After a moment, the chair brushed against the floorboards. Had it not, she might have thought he still stood at her back. He moved as silently as a soft wind in leafless trees. Most men she’d known made constant noise, especially in a house, banging their way around furniture and through rooms and meals, devouring food and tidiness like a pack of wolves. Forks in constant clatter, glasses thudding, knives scraping on plates, all amidst a grunted sort of chewing. When they left, as suddenly as they’d come, the room seemed to expand again to allow fresh breezes.

“Willie.”

She blinked and wondered how long she’d been staring out the window into the darkness. Her reflection in the windowpane suddenly jumped back at her. She looked…haunted.

She uncurled her fingers from the edge of the sink and plunged her arms into the water. “Did you need something?”

“Your name. Wilhelmina, isn’t it?”

“I don’t like it.”

“It suits you.”

Her mother had always said that. Loneliness suddenly crept into her heart. “My mother named me after her grandmother, the notorious Wilhelmina McKenna. According to family legend, she was an Irish hellion who birthed twelve children to three husbands, all of whom died of mysterious causes.”

“The children?”

“No, the husbands. My mother used to say I had Grandmother Wilhelmina’s hair.”

“A blessing, indeed.” Something in his voice made Willie’s hands go still in the water. She listened to the thumping of her pulse as he added, “You could have inherited her tragic legacy with men.”

Swiftly Willie worked a rag against the bottom of the skillet. “It’s too soon to say. I’ve never married.”

Willie glanced at Devlin. He pushed back his chair and, with empty plate in hand, moved toward her. Her throat seemed to close up.

“Coffee?” she asked, turning away from him and snatching a rag from a wall peg. She moved around the table and reached for the coffeepot on the stove beside him.

“I’m in your way.”

“No—you’re not.” She just hadn’t wanted to move between him and the table to reach the stove. There was something oddly disturbing about being in close proximity with this man. Aware that he watched her and that he had guessed at her reason for avoiding him, she poured two cups and slid one toward him on the wooden counter. “I hope you like it strong and black.”

“It seems de rigueur.” He caught her quick glance over the rim of his cup. A disarming smile deepened the creases around his eyes. “Local custom. I haven’t seen tea since I left the steamer in New York, and the only words spoken in this country after the word coffee are ‘strong’ and ‘black.’ I’m pleased to say there’s remarkable variation in the taste. You outdo the Pullman Palace car, Wilhelmina.”

She hesitated, pondered her pinkening cheeks, then lifted her chin. “That’s no compliment.”

“It should be. The berth in first-class cabin accommodations aboard a Cunard steamer are less comfortable than the berth in a Pullman Palace car. It seems Mr. Pullman has taken as much care in the decorating and furnishing of his railcars as French decorators do in decorating the dwellings of the very rich. Were he up to dealing with the shoddily laid track in England, Mr. Pullman could revolutionize railway travel there and at the same time enrich himself beyond the dreams of avarice.”

“Then he will. All Eastern capitalists want richness beyond the dreams of avarice. All men do.”

“Not all men. To some, the ultimate rewards lie elsewhere.”

“Ultimate rewards begin to mean very little when food is scarce. Noble dreams die swift deaths when there’s no money and no work. Just ask any miner.” She stared up at him, realizing he was waiting for her to continue. Something about him made her want to keep talking, as if what she said and felt and thought was valid, worthwhile. And she wanted to spew it all out for him, all the misery, the loneliness, the guilt and the inevitable despair.

For one startling moment she knew a vulnerability that she hadn’t felt since the day her mother had died.

“I’ll show you where you’ll sleep,” she said, her voice taking on a chill. With head lifted, she led him to the front bedroom as if she were Mr. Pullman himself, stopping just outside the open doorway. Her first thought as she glanced into the room was that Sloan Devlin’s feet would hang off the end of the bed.

“Breakfast is at six,” she said as he leaned past her to peer into the room. Pressing herself against the doorjamb, she drew in her breath just as his sleeve brushed against her bare forearm. “Supper at one. Dinner at six. There’s a water pump out back for washing up.” She stared at the back of his head where a dark leather cord bound the thick length of his blue-black hair. Unbound, she imagined it would fall past his shoulders.

He turned and faced her and her knees gave a sudden wobble. “Where do you and your grandfather sleep?”

Her eyes skittered across the kitchen to a shadowed corner and the narrow steps there. “I sleep upstairs. There’s three bedrooms there. Gramps sleeps in his chair in the front room.”

“You’re alone here.”

Damn his gently coaxing voice, smooth as warm honey. Brant’s voice had been even smoother, when he’d wanted it to be.

She lifted her eyes to his and gripped the doorjamb at her back. “My mama died when I was ten. My pa and my brothers all went when the Lucky Cuss blew last year. Now it’s just me and Gramps and Huck, the dog. And the boarders.”

“Do you get many?”

“We get some.” It wasn’t a complete lie. They got a boarder every six months or so.

“People must not know what they’re missing.”

Something inside her went weak. Smooth as honey, just like Brant. So much like Brant and yet somehow so different Hadn’t she lingered just like this outside the room with Brant that first evening, mesmerized by his charm, captivated by his smile? Less than a week later she’d lain beneath him on the soft grass and watched him lean over her, blocking out all the sun.

Like a frightened rabbit she scooted past Devlin, tossing over her shoulder something about seeing to Gramps. Devlin’s softly spoken “Good night, Wilhelmina” followed her out onto the porch and halfway across the yard before it leapt up into the starry sky and vanished.

Noble dreams die swift deaths when there’s no money.

Sloan looked up from his journal and stared out into the moon-splashed darkness. The field of grass rippled like ocean waves in the milky moonlight, extending from the porch to a sweep of trees more than a mile out. Beyond that, rising from the earth like a majestic beast, loomed the blue-white peaks of the mountains. The moon seemed to hang just inches above the tallest peak. Sloan listened to the rustling of the grass, breathed in the scent of wildflowers and scanned the horizon from east to west before again lifting his pencil.

The senses are at once quickened and overpowered by thelimitless space. Those who people these vast tracts of land should enjoy a freedom far better than that of a wanton breeze, balmy with perfume. I feel a deep longing that the thousands who earn a precarious livelihood in England by tilling the soil of their taskmasters and lords could somehow come to a place where the strength of their arms would win them a comfortable subsistence and would enable them to possess the land which yields them their daily bread. But here, too, noble dreams die.

He lifted his head and stared at a tree standing alone in the field. Its branches glowed with silvery light What dreams remained unreachable for Wilhelmina Thorne? She was far too young to spend the rest of her life with a look of haunted longing in her eyes, far too compelling to live out her days here, a treasure hidden and undiscovered where the grass met the base of the mountains.

There was a loneliness about her that reminded him of the tinners’ widows. But where despair would have found a comfortable home long ago grim determination resided. Willie was searching for something, something to squelch her discontent. He wondered what her broken heart had to do with it.

A dim light from above cast a sudden splash of gold onto the porch. Sloan looked up at the window and watched a slender shadow move behind sheer curtains. Above the rush of the grass he heard her humming, husky and low. The curtain billowed, whispered apart, and he glimpsed pale womanly roundness and white skin as she leaned near the window, unaware.

The curtain stilled, but her shadow remained. Her humming seemed to swell and fill the air. Sloan felt his breath compress in his lungs as the breeze again stirred through the curtains.

He saw a splash of white lace, a cascade of copper curls and then the lamp was snuffed.

He didn’t realize he’d held his breath until it left him in a wheeze. Despite the cool breeze, perspiration suddenly dotted his forehead. He swept his palm through his hair then stood, pencil and journal gripped in one hand. He pondered the darkness. His room had smelled like citrus, the sheets like hot sun and starch. He wondered if Willie’s room smelled the same.

A young heart was broken on a grassy knoll in Prosperity Gulch.

Turning, he climbed the creaking porch steps to his room.

Willie awoke before the cock crowed, when dawn had barely lightened the night’s mantle a shade. Toes curling against the chill of the planks, she scooted from her bed, moved to the window and pushed the curtain aside. Something besides the creeping of dawn had awakened her. Her eyes probed the gloom. Her ears strained above the predawn silence. The moon had long disappeared over the mountains. Stars still hung low in the sky, winking at the morning. All was as it should be. Her eyes shifted and sought movement among the shadows.

She saw him the instant she heard him. Or was it him? Something moved in the far corner of the field where she’d chopped wood. A man, tall and shirtless, stood motionless at the edge of the woods, staring out into the trees. But the sound echoing out over the valley and up into the trees was inhuman, primal, savage. Like the haunting cry of a wolf.

Gooseflesh swept over Willie’s arms and prickled at her cheeks. Strange though it might be, a man howling into the woods was hardly reason to be frightened, especially since she’d chased wolves off her property many times over the years. But she understood the wolves and their reasons for venturing too far from the thicket She knew nothing of Devlin, or his howling. Surely he wasn’t howling at the wolves? Talking to them…

She gritted her teeth, appalled at the odd turn of her thoughts. Men didn’t talk to wolves, not even peculiar Englishmen out to see the elephant. No man would be so foolish as to attempt to lure a predator out of its den. Then again she’d seen no fear in Devlin’s eyes when Reuben Grimes had threatened him or when the cowboy had attempted to draw his gun. She suddenly wondered if anything would scare Sloan Devlin.

Or was he simply ignorant of the harm that could befall him at every turn?

Whirling from the window, she yanked her night rail over her head and reached for the Levi’s and shirt folded over the back of a chair. Before she left the room, she grabbed the repeating rifle in the back corner.

Gramps stood at the foot of the stairs, coffee cup in hand, staring out at the field. He didn’t look up when she bounded down the steps. “What the hell’s he doin’?”

“Howling at the wolves.”

“The hell he is. I heard a bear once sounded like that. He was dyin’, real slow. He cried just like Devlin’s cryin’.”

Willie checked the rifle, aware that her limbs felt jittery. Tossing her hair over her shoulder, she glanced at Gramps. “He’s not crying. He thinks he’s talking to the wolves.”

“You goin’ to kill him?” A strange twinkle lit Gramps’s eyes. “Or you gonna try to scare him?”

Willie set her jaw. “I haven’t made up my mind.”

“He’s like the wolves. He won’t scare easy.”

“I know.” Tucking the rifle under one arm, she pushed open the door. Huck awaited her at the foot of the porch steps, shaggy black tail pumping back and forth, tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth. She didn’t pause to ruffle his ears. “C’mon, boy.”

In long, loping strides, she set out across the field, Huck hunkering low into his trot right at her side. Dew clung to her boots and dampened her pants clear to her knees. The air hung still, chilled and eerily calm, the silence broken only by the swishing of her boots through the grass. And then he howled again and the fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up. The sound echoed up into the trees like the wail of a dying animal.

She quickened her pace, bursting into the clearing with the rifle gripped at the ready. She went instantly still. So did Huck beside her.

Devlin stood with his back to her, straight and still as a hundred-year-old sycamore, swathed in some mysterious cocoon of unawareness. He wore nothing except a pair of very tight black pants that looked as if they had been cut off to grip just below his knees. His legs were exceptionally lean and long muscled, nothing like the tree trunks that had powered her father and brothers through the mines for years. But though she’d seen her brothers in all stages of undress throughout their youth and into manhood, she’d never been so suddenly and completely fascinated with the shape of a man’s legs, the tapering breadth of his bare back or the meaty muscles of his buttocks.

Not even on the knoll.

The sun rising over the treetops colored his skin coppery gold and set his unbound black hair aflame with blue. Despite the air’s chill, his shoulders glistened with a smooth, dewlike sheen.. All along the curve of shoulder and bicep, his muscles rippled below the thinness of skin even as he stood motionless. Willie bit her lip, disturbingly aware of a desire to feel the heat of all that skin and sinew beneath her palms. Her blood hammered a pulse in her ear. Her mouth went dry.

Lightning quick he moved. One leg arced up at an inhumane angle toward the nearest thick tree, stirring the leaves that hung above his head. It was an explosion of energy and movement in the span of one heartbeat. Had she blinked she would have missed it. Had he misjudged his distance or his angle, he would have driven his bare foot into the thick, gnarled trunk.

She didn’t breathe. He paused, again motionless, soundless, and yet he stood as if every muscle poised at the ready to respond to some invisible enemy. His scream erupted, blood chilling and eerie. And then in an explosion of movement, he lunged at the tree, legs arcing, arms firing. With fists and feet he beat into the bark, spun, then jumped in a frenzied attack, punctuating each blow with a low, guttural shout that seemed to bring a surge of power to each strike.

Willie watched in horror, expecting blood to be streaming from his hands, legs and feet. But there was none. The man was crazy. Still, as Willie watched, her horror became fascination. There was a mystical beauty to his movements, something she couldn’t comprehend or define. He was more animal than human, more mysterious than the wolf, more dangerous.

Willie drew the rifle against her chest. She took one step back. A twig cracked beneath her boot. She froze.

Devlin spun toward her and went instantly still. Hell’s fire blazed in his eyes. His chest barely moved with his breaths. Fists clenched against his thighs. Arm muscles popped. His legs braced wide, gripped and taut, ready to strike again.

In that moment, he was everything wild and hungry and beautiful that Willie could have ever imagined. And he was all male, his masculinity so blatantly displayed by his skinmolding britches she felt her legs turn to water and the blood rush in her ears. The rifle slipped from her hands.

He moved toward her with great powerful strides and all she could see was the sun reflected in his eyes and the curl of his lip, like that of a ravenous wolf. She whirled, tripped and felt the ground tip under her feet.

Chapter Four

Sloan caught her arm and lifted her back against him. “There’s nothing to fear here, Wilhelmina. Except your gun, and it’s on the ground. Can you stand?”

She spun around in a whirl of coppery curls that fell to her hips. “Of course, I can stand,” she snapped, shoving up her chin just to make certain he could see the determination in her eyes. His touch had obviously driven the fear out of her. She took one step back, then another, blinking as if she didn’t know what to do with her eyes. Skittish, not naive. The broken heart had no choice but to cloak itself in a thick wall of defense. As he watched her draw the black dog close against the side of her leg, he wondered if she had good reason to hate all men, or fear them.

“I heard you howling. I thought you were calling to the wolves. But you weren’t.”

He felt an unexpected surge of satisfaction. She was more curious than afraid. “Wolves howl to confuse an enemy.”

She glanced at the tree. “Is that what you were doing?”

“It’s called a kiai.” He watched her lips move in silent repetition. Perhaps she could understand what others never could. Maybe she would see beyond labeling him a madman and a peculiarity. “The kiai brings power to a blow and can confuse an assailant.”

“What assailant?”

Sloan inclined his head at the tree and watched her. “My imaginary opponent.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You were fighting a tree.”

“I could spend an entire lifetime perfecting my movements and mental awareness fighting that tree. I’ve fought many before, straw pads before that, even wet sand.”

“That’s why your hands don’t bleed.” She watched him extend his fingers along his thighs. “Do all men fight trees in England?”

“None that I’ve known.”

“It’s like an art form.”

“As much as any other.”

“You could kill someone with your hands.”

He looked into her eyes and saw a spark of suspicion flare. “I never have.”

“But you would.”

“The way of the empty hand is not to kill, but to defend, even to the death.”

“The empty hand. You mean, no gun.”

“No weapon.”

“That’s unheard-of here. Everyone carries a gun.”

“That’s why everyone needs to. I’ve never felt a need to prove that I can fight. I still believe disputes can be solved peaceably. Many battles are won without firing a single bullet.”

“Not here.”

“Not even in England.” He watched a bird soar high overhead. “It’s always better to walk away from trouble, even if it’s the tougher course.”

“Trouble inevitably follows.”

“Then you deal with it, efficiently.” His gaze rested on her. “You’re not satisfied.”

“I’m never satisfied.”

“I believe it. Maybe you wish to learn.”

Her face lit with the wonder of a child untainted by grief or despair. In an instant, the defenses vanished. He felt something twist in his belly, a pain and longing so deep his breath caught.

“You can teach me to move like you do?” she asked.

“Not in one day, or a year. It’s part of the ancient ancestral heritage of an island race in the Orient, based on the teachings of the monks that live in the mountains in a place called Ryukyu.”

“You were born there?”

His fists flexed. “I’ve never been to Ryukyu. To become a fighting master, I had to be put to a test of courage.” He paused, watching her. “I learned from Azato. He’s a great master. My father saw him demonstrate his skills for royalty in the Orient when he traveled there over twenty years ago. He brought Azato back with him to England.”

“Your father traveled so far.”

“My father was a vagabond, in search of a higher meaning to his life.” He paused and felt the silence press in around him. The sun inched up over the stand of trees to the east, promising heat to chase away the morning chill. Promising so much where the eye could see forever over a sea of grass to the east, enough to stir a man from his grief. A heavy weight compressed in his chest, still, no matter what he did to ease it. He glanced at her, and in her eyes he saw dwindling hope, forgotten dreams and promises broken.

“A higher meaning.” She snorted and glanced out over the horizon and the majesty of dawn. Her face remained impassive, unmoved save for the caustic twist of her lips. “You can’t find it in a mine, though you can’t tell folks that. I guess we’re all looking for it somewhere. Aren’t you?” She looked up at him as the breeze played through her hair and the sun turned her eyes the gold-green of a cat.

Heat washed over Sloan, a deep heat that fired his blood and plunged directly to his loins. Never in his life had he been so profoundly aware of a female in the basest, most physical sense. When he looked at Willie, when she looked at him, the barriers dissolved between mind and body, and his desires became his needs and his obsession.

“I’ve been looking for it all my life.” He stared at her, his arms suddenly aching to protect her, as much from broken dreams as from himself. He took a step, involuntarily reached for her, and she drew back, one hand going to the base of her throat in an instinctive gesture of defense.

“Don’t,” she said, low, husky.

He went completely still. “I won’t”

“That’s what Brant said.”

“Then he was a fool to jeopardize your trust.”

“He didn’t want my trust, Devlin.”

“Twice the fool.”

“No, he was a master. I was the fool.”

A knot tightened in Sloan’s chest He’d never known possessiveness, or a sudden need to crush a man he’d never met. “Wilhelmina—”

“I’ll get your breakfast,” she said, bending to pick up her rifle. She drew it close and looked at him as if she weren’t beyond using it. “Shirts are required at the table.” She seemed to swallow. “And—normal pants.”

He cocked his head. “As you wish.”

Her face hardened. “You’ll never know what I wish, Devlin.”

He watched her walk all the way back to the house, the black dog loping at her side. In the rosy sunlight her hair rippled like a shimmering length of watered silk and her hips moved with an age-old female sway. But beneath the soft, womanly exterior lay a soul touched by grief and hardened by far more than one man’s broken promises.

Within strength is found weakness, within hardness, softness. Azato had often spoken of alternating forces being indestructible, inexhaustible. In contradicting one another they complimented. And captivated.

Before he turned to head toward the house, he took a path that led deeper into the woods, toward the faint murmur of water washing over rock.

“Ya look like that teacher fella came around ‘bout a year ago,” Gramps said, glancing up when Devlin’s shiny-toed shoes scraped on the kitchen floorboards. Willie kept her eyes glued to the list she was writing of “things needed.” The list was long. Two of those crisp bills would buy enough to fill three wagons. A second ago she couldn’t write fast enough. Now, suddenly, her mind was blank.

His footfalls seemed to shake the house. She stared at her list and her mind fogged with the image of Devlin coming out of the woods a short time ago, his hair and skin glistening with water, his pants plastered to his thighs and hips. From the kitchen window she’d watched him walk through the field, even after the onions started to burn in the skillet.

The stream lay at least a mile back of the woods, in a deep ravine that fed down from the foothills over several treacherous waterfalls. Unless a man knew the terrain well, he’d never know where to find it. So how had Devlin?

Gramps’s chair scraped. “Remember that gussied-up teacher-fella, Willie-girl?”

Willie muttered something and stared at her list, trying her very best not to notice the tangy scent that had swept into the room along with Devlin. Beneath her elbow the table trembled as Devlin scooted his chair close.

“Yep,” Gramps continued. “He came into town drivin’ his oxen by shouting Greek and Latin phraseology. Least everyone said it was Greek and Latin. Course, any man what can quote a few phrases of an unknown language is qualified to be a schoolmaster in my book. Got a hatful collected on his first pass around, more than enough to build a schoolhouse.”

“An enterprising fellow,” Devlin rumbled. “I take it he was a fraud.”

“I reckon he might have been. Kept a quart of whiskey and a leather quirt in his desk. Course, the whiskey was strictly for him. The quirt was for the students. He disappeared the day after the mine blew. Some folks think he had something to do with it, even if he could speak Greek and Latin.”

“The mine was sabotaged?”

Willie blinked at her list and felt every muscle tense.

Gramps snorted. “Some folks ‘round here would believe anything, Devlin. Just depends on the day.”

“What do you believe?”

Willie slanted her eyes up at Gramps. He stared at the table, then shrugged. “She just blew. There was enough powder charges down there to blow a hole clean through the mountains. They were risking their lives for weeks to tunnel through rock and found no sign of color anywhere. They’d been warned, but they didn’t listen.” His voice dipped low and deep. “Damned fool never did listen, ‘specially to reason. Always sayin’ his big strike was behind the next rock.”

“Some become as much obsessed by the hunt as by the prize.”

Willie glanced at Devlin and instantly wished she hadn’t. He was watching her as if he knew she’d look up at that precise moment, and suddenly she knew the innuendo she imagined in his words was real. Damn, but she should never have told him anything about Brant. What was it about him that tempted her to forget that he was a stranger, and quite possibly, the enemy?

The enemy. It was hard to imagine him capable of anything dastardly dressed as he was in a high-collared white linen shirt and lemon-colored kid gloves. His Prince Albert coat and trousers were of a rich mahogany brown, and his lemon-colored waistcoat was embroidered with lilies of the valley, red rosebuds and violets.

She’d never seen anything like it. On any other man the ensemble would have looked ridiculous. But on Devlin, the clothes draped with a stylish elegance that in some odd way accentuated his dark masculinity.

Willie was completely baffled, especially when she felt his stare penetrate clear to her thoughts. She stuck her nose in her list and wished he’d finish up and be on his way.

“My boy was restless,” Gramps muttered into his coffee. “Some even say a bit flighty in his imaginings.”

“Pa wasn’t crazy, Gramps,” Willie said, distinctly uncomfortable with Gramps discussing her pa with Devlin. She angled Gramps a meaningful look and gently reminded him, “The horses need tended.”

Without even glancing at her, he leaned over his coffee and regarded Devlin from beneath shaggy brows. “Packed us all up one day and said we were goin’ on a merry outing on the frontier. Had a helluva farm in Illinois with a fancy parlor and a shiny buggy and nice dishes for Vera, his wife. Fine woman. He was a veteran cavalry commander in the war, a damned hero. He could have just sat on his porch and enjoyed his life. Vera even had a maid.”

Willie scooted back her chair. “I think we’d best get to the horses now, Gramps.”

“But one day, ‘bout ten years ago, he told me and Vera and the four boys to just pack it all up an’ head out. That first night we had supper served on a clothed table with champagne. That was for Vera. After that she never had any more champagne. Willie-girl was barely old enough to remember.”

“I remember,” Willie muttered, pocketing her unfinished list. “I was nine.”

“With two pigtails down to her butt.”

Devlin had stopped eating and was watching her. Resisting the urge to squirm, she regarded Gramps from beneath ominous brows. “Ready, Gramps? I’ve got to get to town early.”

“You go on.”

Willie set her teeth. “I need you to come with me.”

“You never needed an old man’s help before, Willie-girl. I’m sure J. D. Harkness will be more than happy to help you load up the wagon. Ain’t nobody in the Silver Spur this early.”

Devlin’s chair scraped against the floorboards and he surged to his full height so suddenly Willie’s breath caught. “I’ll accompany her,” he said. “I’m going to town myself.”

Willie thrust out her jaw. “That’s not—”

“If you say so,” Gramps said to Devlin.

“It’s no trouble.”

Damn them both for behaving as if she weren’t there.

“Watch yourself, Devlin,” Gramps said as Devlin settled a tall black silk hat on his head. “The fingers of low-life gunmen get itchy at the sight of a stovepipe.”

“I didn’t know Prosperity Gulch had any low-life gunmen.”

“Never can tell anymore. I seen decent fellas turn low-life awful fast when times are hard.”

“Yes, I suppose they can.” Devlin drew up and held a hand for Willie to precede him out the door.

Determined not to let her exasperation show, Willie strode out of the kitchen one pace ahead of Devlin, muttering over her shoulder, “I’m riding on the wagon alone.”

“As you wish,” he murmured. “I’ll saddle my horse.”

She thought she felt the heat of his breath on her neck and scooted quickly ahead and into the heat of the day before the shivers again whispered over her skin.

Sloan’s nag would have been laughed off the block at Tattersall’s in London. Even men like Sloan who didn’t live and die by their equipage would have known at first sight that the horse wasn’t worth a shilling, much less the ten dollars the livery owner had asked and gotten Sloan to pay for him. He’d been the only horse the man had for sale, as second rate as the shoeing the man was doing on another horse. Sloan could merely wonder if most of the tradesmen and practitioners who occupied the frontier towns were impelled there by a lack of success back East. After all, even he had been drawn here by all the promises, hoping to find some peace on the frontier, hoping to forget his own failures.

Dismounting, he looped his reins around the hitching rail.

Willie was tending to her own horse, her back turned toward him. The horse’s sleek lines suggested that he had come with them from that prosperous farm in Illinois, and had probably descended from her father’s cavalry. His eye lingered only briefly on the magnificent animal. Willie moved around the horse and wagon with brisk efficiency, nose jutting even when she was looking down. She’d left him in the dust of her wagon wheels and hadn’t spoken to him since she’d breezed past him in the kitchen.

Sloan touched his fingers to the brim of his hat and nodded as two women ventured past on the wooden boardwalk. They didn’t return his greeting. He glanced up and down the street. Townsfolk lingered on the walks, outside of the stores, some sitting on overturned barrels, others leaning against the buildings, still others ambling along as if they had no place to be in a hurry. Most were watching him with a kindred suspicion. In this they were not divided.

Trust would be difficult to earn here, especially since it had obviously been misused by someone. Most probably the railroad, the Eastern capitalists, invisible in their comfortable offices far removed from the hardships of their corporate endeavors. One act of betrayal was all it took to put that hard, fathomless look in people’s eyes and suspicion in their hearts.

He wasn’t used to being on the outside, wanting to get in.

He watched Willie climb the steps to the general store and followed after several moments, catching the door by his toe when she pushed it closed behind her. The place was small, crammed from floor to ceiling with wares. Willie was at the counter, reading to a short, mustached man from a list. Sloan lingered beside an aisle of shelves piled high with dry goods. At the end of the aisle, a hard-worked woman stood beside a table stacked with bolts of cloth and skeins of brightly colored ribbon. Sloan watched her knotted fingers fold a length of ruby satin into pleats then drape it over her plain skirt. Her face, worn and rough as the clothes she wore, illuminated with pleasure at the splendor of the material.

Sloan moved to the counter, well aware that Willie’s voice broke off suddenly when he paused behind her. He got a good look at her list an instant before she crushed it in her fist. Over the top of her head he gave the stony-faced merchant a cordial nod then lowered his head and said, “You’ve nothing for yourself on your list, Wilhelmina.”

“You can start with the sacks of flour and sugar, Mr. Lewis,” she said, sending the merchant off toward the back of the store. She turned and nearly ran smack into Sloan’s chest. “Devlin, you’re in my way.”

“So sorry. Hair ribbons are over here.”

She pursed her lips and looked as vexed as she might look with a bothersome fly. When he moved a step back, she slipped past him in a wave of warm lilac. One arm waved in a vague direction. “Why aren’t you off writing somewhere?”

“I’ve nothing to editorialize about just yet.” He followed her down the far aisle. He paused when she paused to scan the shelves. “I’m still observing.”

“Observing?” She reached high on tiptoes, fingers outstretched, backside curving one way, breasts thrusting the other. Sloan stared at her for several moments then quickly retrieved the cans she needed. “Thank you.” She blinked up at him then frowned. “What’s to observe?” Without awaiting his reply, she again brushed past him and disappeared around the corner of another aisle.

He followed, pausing beside the woman who lingered over the bolt of ruby satin. He offered a brief smile. At once a veil of suspicion shadowed the woman’s features and Sloan could see every trial she’d borne over the years mirrored in her eyes.

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