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Celebrate the holidays with a brand-new McKettrick tale by beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller

With his wild heart, Sawyer McKettrick isn’t ready to settle down on the Triple M family ranch in Arizona. So he heads to Blue River, Texas, to seek a job as marshal. But in a blinding snowstorm he’s injured—and collapses into the arms of a prim and proper lady in calico.

The shirtless, bandaged stranger recuperating in teacher Piper St. James’s room behind the schoolhouse says he’s a McKettrick, but he looks like an outlaw. As they wait out the storm, the handsome loner has Piper remembering long-ago dreams of marriage and motherhood. But for how long is Sawyer willing to call Blue River home?

As the gray skies clear, Piper’s one holiday wish just might bring two lonely hearts together forever.

An Outlaw’s Christmas

Linda Lael Miller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to Blue River, Texas, original home of the McKettricks of Texas and the setting for Clay and Dara Rose’s story, A Lawman’s Christmas.

The year is 1915, and most folks suspect that handsome Sawyer McKettrick, Clay’s rowdy cousin, is an outlaw on the run, so it’s ironic that he’s come to town to take over as marshal, now that Clay is busy running a ranch and starting a family.

Sawyer wasn’t sure of his welcome, but he wasn’t expecting to be greeted with a bullet, either. Wounded, he finds help—and the lovely Piper St. James—at the one-room schoolhouse.

Piper, the schoolmarm, isn’t eager to take in a stranger, especially a bleeding one, but honor and compassion win out, and she looks after Sawyer and his horse.

Love is certainly the furthest thing from Piper’s mind, and Sawyer’s, too, but Christmas has a magic all its own.

May you be blessed this season and always.

In loving memory of Dale Macomber.

Knowing you was a gift I’ll always be grateful for.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

CHAPTER 1

December, 1915

All but hidden behind a rapidly thickening veil of snow that cold afternoon, Blue River, Texas, looked more like a faint pencil sketch against a gray-and-white background than a real town, constructed of beams and mortar and weathered wood and occupied by flesh-and-blood folks. Squinting against the dense flurries, Sawyer McKettrick could just make out the pitch of a roof or two, the mounded lines of hitching rails and horse troughs, the crooked jut of the occasional chimney. Here and there, the light of a lamp or lantern glowed through the gloom, but as far as Sawyer could tell, nobody was stirring along the sidewalks or traveling the single wide street curving away from the tiny railroad depot.

Beside him, his buckskin gelding, Cherokee, nickered and tossed his big head, no doubt relieved to finally plant four sturdy hooves on solid ground after long hours spent rattling over the rails in a livestock car. Sawyer’s own journey, sitting bolt upright on a hard and sooty seat in the near-empty passenger section, had been so dull and so uncomfortable that he probably would have been happier riding with the horse.

Naturally, Cherokee didn’t hold up his end of a conversation, but he was a fine listener and a trustworthy companion.

Now, the engineer’s whistle sounded a long, plaintive hoot of fare-thee-well behind them, and the train clanked slowly out of the station, iron screeching against iron, steam hissing into the freezing air.

They waited, man and horse, until the sounds grew muffled and distant, though for what, Sawyer couldn’t have said. He hadn’t expected to be met at the depot—Clay McKettrick, his cousin and closest friend, lived on a ranch several miles outside of Blue River and, given the weather, the trail winding between there and town must be nigh on impassable—but just the same, a momentary sense of loneliness howled through him like a wind scouring the walls of a canyon.

With a glance back at the station, where he’d left his trunk of belongings behind, meaning to fetch it later, Sawyer swung up into the saddle and spoke a gruff, soothing word of encouragement to the horse.

There was a hotel in Blue River—he’d stayed there on his last visit—but he wanted to let Cherokee walk off some stiffness before settling him in over at the livery stable with plenty of hay and a ration of grain, and then making his way back to rent a room. Once he’d secured a bed for the night, he’d send somebody for his trunk, consume a steak dinner in the hotel dining room, and, later on, take a bath and shave.

In the meantime, though, he wanted to attend to his horse. Sawyer gave the animal his head, let him forge his own way, at his own pace, through the deep snow and the unnerving silence.

The buildings on either side of the street were visible as they passed, though only partially, dark at the windows, with their doors shut tight. Most folks were where they ought to be, Sawyer supposed, gathered around stoves and fireplaces in their various homes, with coffee brewed and supper smells all around them.

Again, that bleak feeling of aloneness rose up inside him, but he quelled it quickly. He did not subscribe to melancholy moods—it wasn’t the McKettrick way. In his family, a man—or a woman, for that matter—played the cards they were dealt, kept on going no matter what, and tended, to the best of their ability, to whatever task was presently at hand.

Still, there was a prickle at his nape, and Cherokee, rarely skittish, pranced sideways in agitation, tossing his head and neighing.

Sawyer had barely pushed back his long coat to uncover his Colt .45, just in case, when he heard the gunshot, swaddled in the snowy silence to a muted pop, saw the flash of orange fire and felt the bullet sear its way into his left shoulder. All of this transpired in the course of a second or so, but even as he slumped forward over Cherokee’s neck, dazed by the hot-poker thrust of the pain, spaces wedged themselves between moments, stretching time, distorting it. Sawyer was at once a wounded man, alone on a snow-blind street except for his panicked horse, and a dispassionate observer, nearby but oddly detached from the scene.

He didn’t see the shooter or his horse, but the calm, watching part of him sized up the situation, sensed there had been a rider. If anybody had seen anything, or heard the muffled gunshot, they weren’t fixing to rush to his rescue, and he didn’t have the strength to draw his .45, even if he could have seen beyond Cherokee’s laid-back ears.

Fortunately, the horse knew that—in cases like this anyway—discretion was the better part of valor. Cherokee bolted for safer territory, leapfrogging through the powdery snow, and Sawyer, hurting bad and only half-conscious, simply lay over the pommel, with the saddle horn jabbing into his middle like a fist, and held on to reins and mane for all he was worth.

Maybe the gunman lost sight of them in the storm, or maybe he just slipped back through the edges of Sawyer’s awareness, into the pulsing darkness that surrounded him, but the second shot, the one that would have finished him off for sure, never came.

His mind slowed, and then slowed some more. He was aware of the thud-thud-thud of his heart, the raspy scratch of his breath, clawing its way into his lungs and then out again, and the familiar smell of wet horsehide, but his vision dimmed to a gray haze.

Cherokee kept moving. Sawyer’s consciousness seemed to retreat into the far corners of his mind, but growing up on the Triple M Ranch, in Arizona, he’d practically been raised on the back of a horse, and the muscles in his arms and legs must have drawn on some capacity for recollection beyond the grasp of the waking mind, because he managed to stay in the saddle.

It was only when the horse came to a sudden stop in a spill of buttery light on glistening snow that Sawyer pitched sideways with a sickening lurch, jarred his wounded shoulder when he struck the snow-padded ground, and passed out from the pain.

* * *

PIPER ST. JAMES, seated at the desk in her empty schoolroom and glumly surveying the scrawny, undecorated pine tree leaning against the far wall, wished heartily, and not for the first time, that she’d never left Maine to strike out for a life of adventure in the still-wild West.

Her cousin Dara Rose, in love with her handsome rancher husband, had painted a fine picture of Blue River in her letters, telling Piper what a wonderful place it was, full of good people and wide open to newcomers.

Piper sighed. Of course Dara Rose would see things that way—she was so happy in her new marriage and, being a generous soul, she wanted Piper to be happy, too. Life had been hard for her cousin and her two little girls, but Clay McKettrick had changed all that.

Piper’s pupils—all thirteen of them—were safe at home, where they belonged, and that was a considerable comfort to her. She’d spent the entire day alone, though, shut up in the schoolhouse, feeding the potbellied stove from an ever-dwindling store of firewood, keeping herself occupied as best she could. Tomorrow was likely to bring more of the same, since the storm showed no signs of letting up—it might even get worse.

Piper shuddered at the thought. She had plenty of food, thanks to the good people of Blue River, but her supply of well water was running out fast, like the wood. Soon, she’d have no choice but to pull on a pair of oversize boots, bundle up in both her everyday shawls and her heavy woolen cloak, raise the hood to protect her ears from the stinging chill, and slog her way across the schoolyard, once to the woodshed, and once to the well. To make matters worse, she was getting low on kerosene for the one lamp she’d allowed herself to light.

She told herself that Clay, Dara Rose’s husband, would come by to check on her soon, but there was no telling when or if he’d be able to get there, given the distance and the state of the roads. For now, Piper had to do for herself.

The wind howled around the clapboard walls of that small, unpainted schoolhouse, sorrowful as a whole band of banshees searching for a way in, making her want to burrow under the quilts on her bed, which took up most of the tiny room in back set aside for teacher’s quarters, and hide there until the weather turned.

She might freeze if she did that, of course, and that was if she didn’t die of thirst beforehand.

So she put on the ungainly boots, left behind by Miss Krenshaw, the last teacher, wrapped herself in wool, drew a deep breath and opened the schoolhouse door to step out onto the little porch.

The cold buffeted her, hard as a slap, trapping the breath in her lungs and nearly knocking her backward, over the threshold.

Resolute, she drew the shawls and the cloak more tightly around her and tried again. The sooner she went out, the sooner she could come back in, she reasoned.

She stopped on the schoolhouse porch, peering through the goose-feather flakes coming down solid as a wall in front of her. Was that a horse, there in the thin light her one lamp cast through the front window?

Piper caught her breath, her heart thudding with sudden hope. There was a horse, and a horse meant a rider, and a rider meant company, if not practical help. Perhaps Clay had braved the tempest to pay her a visit—

She trudged down the steps and across the yard, every step an effort, and got a clearer look at the horse. A sturdy buckskin, the animal was real, all right. The creature was saddled, reins dangling, and she saw its eyes roll upward, glaring white.

But there was no rider on its back.

Although Piper had little experience with horses, she felt an instant affinity for the poor thing, evidently lost in the storm. It must have wandered off from somewhere nearby.

She moved toward it slowly, carefully, partly because of the bitter wind and partly because of her own rising trepidation. She didn’t recognize the horse, which meant that Clay hadn’t come to look in on her, nor had any of the other men—fathers, brothers or uncles of her students—who might have been concerned about the schoolmarm’s welfare.

The buckskin whinnied wildly as she approached, backing up awkwardly, nearly falling onto its great, heaving haunches, lathered despite the chill.

“There, now,” Piper said, reaching for the critter’s bridle strap. There was a shed behind the schoolhouse—some of the students rode in from the country when class was in session and tethered their mounts there for the day, so there was some hay, and the plank walls offered a modicum of shelter—but just then, that shack seemed as far away as darkest Africa.

Before she could take hold of the horse’s bridle, Piper tripped over something solid, half buried in the snow, fell to her hands and knees, and felt the sticky warmth of blood seeping through her mittens.

She saw him then, the rider, sprawled on his back, hat lying a few feet away, staining the snow to crimson.

Sitting on her haunches, Piper stared down at the unfortunate wayfarer for a few long moments, snowflakes slicing at her face like razors, confounded and afraid.

Bile surged into the back of her throat, scalding there, and she willed herself not to turn aside and retch. Something had to be done—and quickly.

“Mister?” she called, gripping the lapels of his long gunslinger’s coat and bending close to his face. “Mister, are you alive?”

He groaned, and she saw one of his eyelids twitch.

The horse, close enough to step on one or both of them, whinnied again, a desperate sound.

“You’ll be all right,” Piper told both the horse and the man, on her knees in the snow, her mittens and cloak damp with blood, but she wasn’t at all sure that was the truth.

The man was around six feet tall—there was no way she could lift him, and it was clear that he couldn’t stand, let alone walk.

Piper deliberated briefly, then stumbled and struggled back into the schoolhouse, through to her room, and wrenched the patchwork quilt—she’d done the piecework herself and the task had been arduous—off the bed.

Warmer now, from the exertions of the past few minutes, Piper rushed outside again and somehow managed to get the quilt underneath the bleeding stranger. He opened his eyes once—even in the dim light she could see that they were a startling shade of greenish azure—and a little smile crooked the corner of his mouth before he passed into unconsciousness again.

In a frenzy of strength, she dragged man and quilt as far as the steps, but there was no getting him up them. She had no way of knowing how long he’d been lying in the schoolyard, injured, and frostbite was a serious possibility, as was hypothermia.

She gripped him by his shoulders—they were broad under her hands, and hard with muscle—and shook him firmly. “Mister!” she yelled, through the raging wind. “You’ve got to rally yourself enough to get up these steps—I can’t do this without some assistance, and there’s no one else around!”

Miraculously, the stranger came to and gathered enough strength to half crawl up the steps, with a lot of help from Piper. From there, she was able to pull him over the threshold onto the rough-plank floor, where he lay facedown, bleeding copiously and only semiconscious.

“My horse,” he rasped.

“Bother your horse,” Piper replied, but she didn’t mean it. The stranger, being a human being, was her first concern, but she was almost as worried about that frightened animal standing outside in the weather, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to ignore it.

“Horse,” the man repeated.

“I’ll see to him,” Piper promised, having no real choice in the matter. She collected another blanket from her quarters, covered the man, and steeled herself to hurry back outside.

Ever after, she’d wonder how she’d managed such an impossible feat, but at the time, Piper worked from a sense of expediency. She got hold the horse’s reins and somehow led him around back, through what seemed like miles of snow, and into the dark shed. There, she removed his saddle, the blanket beneath it, and the bridle. She spread out some hay for him and found a bucket, which she filled with snow—that being the best she could do for now. When the snow melted, the creature would have drinking water.

The horse was jumpy at first, and Piper took a few precious moments to speak softly to him, rubbing him down as best she could with an old burlap sack and making the same promise as before—he would be all right, and so would his master, because she wouldn’t have it any other way.

On the way back to the schoolhouse, she fought her way into the woodshed and filled her arms with sticks of pitch-scented pine.

The stranger was still on the floor, upon her return, lying just over the threshold, either dead or sleeping.

Hastily, murmuring a prayer under her breath, Piper dumped the firewood into the box beside the stove, went back to the man, pulled off one ruined mitten and felt for a pulse at the base of his throat. His skin was cold, a shade of grayish-blue, but there was a heartbeat, thank heaven, faint but steady.

There was still water to fetch—why hadn’t she done this chore earlier, in the daylight, as she’d intended, instead of starting a pot of pinto beans and reading one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels?—and Piper didn’t allow herself to think beyond getting to the well, filling a couple of buckets, and bringing them inside.

She marched outside again, moving like a woman floundering in a bad dream, taking the water buckets with her. Just getting to the well took most of her strength and, once there, she had to lower the vessels, one by one, by a length of rope.

She’d discarded her mittens by then, and the rough hemp burned like fire against her palms and the undersides of her fingers, but she lowered and filled one bucket, and then the other. Her hands ached ferociously as she carried those heavy pails toward the schoolhouse, up the steps, and once inside, she set them both down an instant before she would surely have spilled them all over the man lying in a swoon on her floor.

There was no time to spare—if there had been, Piper might have had the luxury of succumbing to helplessness and giving herself up to a fit of useless weeping—so she filled a kettle and put it on the stove to heat, right next to the simmering beans.

With one eye on the inert visitor the whole time, she peeled off her bloody cloak and shawls and stepped out of the boots. Her hands were numb, and she shook them hard, hoping to restore the circulation, which only made them hurt again. When the water was warm enough, she poured some into a basin and scrubbed sticky streaks of crimson from her skin.

The stranger didn’t stir, even once, and he might very well be dead, but Piper talked to him anyway, in the same brisk, take-charge tone she used when her students balked at staying behind their desks, where they belonged. “You can stop fretting over your horse,” she said. “He’s safe in the shed, with hay and water aplenty.”

There was no response, and Piper made herself walk over to the man, stoop, and, once again, feel for a pulse.

It was there, and it seemed the bleeding had slowed, if not stopped altogether.

She was thankful for small favors.

Noticing the ominous-looking gun jutting from a holster on his right hip, she shivered, extracted the thing gingerly, by two fingers. It was heavy, and the handle was intricately carved, as well as blood-speckled. She made out the initials S.M. as she held the dreadful weapon in shaking hands, carried it into the cloakroom and set it carefully on a high shelf.

Heat surged audibly into the water kettle, causing it to rattle cheerfully on the stovetop. Piper moved, with quiet diligence, from one effort to another, emptying the basin in which she’d washed her hands through a wide crack in the floorboards, wiping it out with a rag, settling it aside. She had cloth strips to use as bandages, since one or the other of her pupils were always getting hurt during recess, and there was a bottle of iodine, too, so she fetched these from their customary places in the cabinet behind her desk.

Her mind kept going back to that dreadful pistol. No one carried guns these days—it was the twentieth century, after all—except for lawmen, like Clay, who was the marshal of Blue River, and, well, outlaws.

Had the stranger used that long-barreled weapon to hold up banks, rob trains, accost law-abiding citizens on the road? She’d seen no sign of a badge, so he probably wasn’t a constable of any sort, but he might have identification of some kind, in his pockets, perhaps, or the saddlebags, left behind in the shed with the horse and its attendant gear.

Put it out of your mind, she ordered herself. There was no sense in pandering to her imagination.

Since she couldn’t quite face searching the fellow’s pockets—it seemed too intimate an undertaking—she turned her thoughts to other things. After collecting a pair of scissors from the drawer of her battered oak desk, Piper undertook the task she would rather have avoided, kneeling beside the man’s prone form and gently rolling him onto his back.

The singular odors of gunpowder and blood rose like smoke, one acrid, one metallic, to fill her nostrils, then her lungs, then her fretful stomach. She gagged again, swallowed hard, and forced her trembling hands to pick up the scissors and begin snipping away at the front of the man’s once-fine coat.

The bullet had torn its way through the dark, costly fabric, through the shirt—probably white once—and the flesh beneath.

When Piper finally uncovered the wound, she was horrified all over again. She slapped one hand over her mouth, though whether to hold back a scream or a spate of sickness she couldn’t have said.

The deep, jagged hole in the flesh of the stranger’s shoulder began to seep again.

Piper shifted her gaze to the supplies she’d gathered, now resting beside her on the floor—a basin full of steaming water, strands of clean cloth, iodine—and was struck by their inadequacy, and her own.

This man needed a surgeon, not the bumbling first aid of a schoolmarm.

She raised her eyes to the night-darkened window and the huge flakes of falling snow beyond, and mentally calculated the distance to Dr. Howard’s house, on the far side of Blue River.

At most a ten-minute walk away, in daylight and decent weather, Doc’s place might as well have been on another continent, for all the chance she had of reaching it safely. Furthermore, the man wasn’t a physician, but a dentist, albeit a very competent one who would definitely know what do to in such an emergency.

Since she had no means of summoning him, she would have to do what she could, and hope the Good Lord would lend a hand.

Piper spent the next half hour or so cleaning that wound, treating it with iodine, binding it closed with the strips of cloth. Stitches were needed, she knew, but threading a needle and sewing flesh together, the way she might stitch up a patchwork quilt, was entirely beyond her. If she made the attempt, she’d get sick, faint dead away, or both, thereby making bad matters considerably worse.

Mercifully, the stranger did not wake during the long, careful process of applying the bandages. When she’d finished, Piper covered him again, brought a pillow and eased it under his head, and, rising to her feet, looked down at the front of her dress.

Like the cloak and the mittens, it was badly stained.

Piper rinsed the basin, filled it with clean water, and retreated into the little room at the back of the schoolhouse. She stripped to her petticoat and camisole, shivering all the while, and gave herself a quick sponge bath. After that, she donned a calico dress—a little scant for the season, but she’d need her gray woolen one for some time yet and wanted to keep it clean. Once properly clad again, she took her dark hair down from its pins and combs, brushed it vigorously, and secured it into a loose chignon at her nape.

Needing to keep herself occupied, Piper burned her knitted mittens in the stove—there was no use trying to get them clean—and then assessed the damage to her cloak. It was dire.

Resigned, and keeping one eye on the unmoving victim, Piper took up her scissors again and cut away the stained parts of her only cloak, consigned the pieces to the stove, and folded what remained to be used for other purposes.

Waste not, want not. She and Dara Rose, growing up together in a household of genteel poverty, had learned that lesson early and well.

She ate supper at her desk—a bowl of the beans she’d been simmering on the stove all afternoon—and wondered what to do next.

She was exhausted, and every muscle ached from the strain of dragging a full-grown man halfway across the schoolyard and inside, tending to the horse as well as its master, fetching the wood and the water. She didn’t dare close her eyes to sleep, though—the stranger might be incapacitated, but he was still a stranger, and he was accustomed to carrying a gun. Suppose he came to and did—well—something?

From a safe distance, Piper assessed him again, cataloging his features in her mind. Caramel-colored hair, a lean, muscular frame, expensive clothes and boots. And then there was the horse, obviously a sturdy creature, well-bred. This man was probably a person of means, she concluded, but that certainly didn’t mean he wasn’t a rascal and a rounder, too.

He might actually be dangerous, a drifter or an unscrupulous opportunist.

Again, she considered braving the weather once more, making her way to the nearest house to ask for help, since Doc’s place was too distant, but she knew she’d never make it even that far. She had no cloak, and in that blizzard, she didn’t dare trust her sense of direction. She might head the wrong way, wander off into the countryside somewhere and perish from exposure.

She shuddered again, rose from her chair, and carried her empty bowl and soup spoon back to the washstand in her quarters, where she left them to be dealt with later.

Still giving the stranger a fairly wide berth, she perched on one of the students’ benches and watched him, thinking hard. She supposed she could peel that overcoat off him, put it on, and tramp to the neighbors’ house, nearly a quarter of a mile away, but the effort might do him further injury and, besides, the mere thought of wearing that bloody garment made her ill.

Even if she’d been able to bear that, the problem of the weather remained.

She was stuck.

She retrieved her knitting—a scarf she’d intended to give to Dara Rose as a Christmas gift—and sat working stitches and waiting for the man to move, or speak.

Or die.

“Water,” he said, after a long time. “I need—water.”

New energy rushed through Piper’s small body; she filled a ladle from one of the buckets she’d hauled in earlier, carried it carefully to his side, and knelt to slip one hand under his head and raise him up high enough to drink.

He took a few sips and his eyes searched her face as she lowered him back to the floor.

“Where—? Who—?” he muttered, the words as rough as sandpaper.

“You’re in the Blue River schoolhouse,” she answered. “I’m Miss St. James, the teacher. Who are you?”

“Is…my horse—?”

Piper managed a thin smile. She didn’t know whether to be glad because he’d regained consciousness or worried by the problems that might present. “Your horse is fine. In out of the storm, fed and watered.”

A corner of his mouth quirked upward, ever so slightly, and his eyes seemed clearer than when he’d opened them before, as though he were more present somehow, and centered squarely within the confines of his own skin and bones. “That’s…good,” he said, with effort.

“Who are you?” Piper asked. She still hadn’t searched his pockets, since just binding up his wound had taken all the courage and fortitude she could muster.

He didn’t answer, but gestured for more water, lifting his head without her help this time, and when he’d swallowed most of the ladle’s contents, he lapsed into another faint. His skin was ghastly pale, and his lips had a bluish tinge.

He belonged in a bed, not on the floor, but moving him any farther was out of the question, given their difference in size. All she could do was cover him, keep the fire going—and pray for a miraculous recovery.

The night passed slowly, with the man groaning hoarsely in his sleep now and then, and muttering a woman’s name—Josie—often. At times, he seemed almost desperate for a response.

Oddly stricken by these murmured cries, Piper left her chair several times to kneel beside him, holding his hand.

“I’m here,” she’d say, hoping he’d think she was this Josie person.

Whoever she was.

He’d smile in his sleep then, and rest peacefully for a while, and Piper would go back to her chair and her knitting. At some point, she unraveled the scarf and cast on new stitches; she’d make mittens instead, she decided, to replace the ones she’d had to burn. With so much of the winter still to come, she’d need them, and heaven only knew what she’d do for a cloak; since her salary was barely enough to keep body and soul together. Such a purchase was close to impossible.

She wasn’t normally the fretful sort—like Dara Rose, she was hardworking and practical and used to squeezing pennies—but, then, this was hardly a normal situation.

Was this man an outlaw? Perhaps even a murderer?

He was well dressed and he owned a horse of obvious quality, even to her untrained eyes, but, then, maybe he was highly skilled at thievery, and his belongings were ill-gotten gains.

Piper nodded off in her chair, awakened with a start, saw that it was morning and the snow had relented a little, still heavy but no longer an impenetrable curtain of white.

The stranger was either asleep or unconscious, and the thin sunlight struck his toast-colored hair with glints of gold.

He was handsome, Piper decided. All the more reason to keep her distance.

She set aside her knitting and proceeded to build up the fire and then put a pot of coffee on to brew, hoping the stuff would restore her waning strength, and finally wrapped herself in her two remaining shawls, drew a deep breath, and left the schoolhouse to trudge around back, to the shed.

The trees were starkly beautiful, every branch defined, as if etched in glimmering frost.

To her relief, the buckskin was fine, though the water bucket she’d filled with snow was empty.

Piper patted the horse, picked up the bucket, and made her way back to the well to fill it. When she got back, the big gelding greeted her with a friendly nicker and drank thirstily from the pail.

As she was returning to the shelter of the schoolhouse, holding her skirts up so she wouldn’t trip over the hem, she spotted a rider just approaching the gate at the top of the road and recognized him immediately, even through the falling snow.

Clay McKettrick.

Piper’s whole being swelled with relief.

She waited, saw Clay’s grin flash from beneath the round brim of his hat. His horse high-stepped toward her, across the field of snow, steam puffing from its flared nostrils, its mane and tail spangled with tiny icicles.

“I told Dara Rose you’d be fine here on your own,” Clay remarked cordially, dismounting a few feet from where Piper stood, all but overwhelmed with gratitude, “but she insisted on finding out for sure.” A pause, a troubled frown as he took in her rumpled calico dress. “Where’s your coat? You’ll catch your death traipsing around without it.”

She ignored the question, wide-eyed and winded from the hard march through the snow.

Clay was a tall, lean man, muscular in all the right places, and it wasn’t hard to see why her cousin loved him so much. He was pleasing to look at, certainly, but his best feature, in Piper’s opinion, was his rock-solid character. He exuded quiet strength and confidence in all situations.

He would know what to do in this crisis, and he would do it.

“There’s a man inside,” Piper blurted, finding her voice at last and gesturing toward the schoolhouse. By then, the cold was indeed penetrating her thin dress. “He’s been shot. His horse is in the shed and—”

Clay’s expression turned serious, and he brushed past her, leaving his own mount to stand patiently in the yard.

Piper hurried into the schoolhouse behind Clay.

He crouched, laying one hand to the man’s unhurt shoulder. “Sawyer?” he rasped. “Damn it, Sawyer—what happened to you?”

CHAPTER 2

Sawyer, Piper thought distractedly—Sawyer McKettrick, Clay’s cousin, the man he’d been expecting for weeks now. That explained the initials on the man’s holster, if not much else.

Down on one knee beside the other man now, Clay took off his snowy hat and tossed it aside. Piper caught the glint of his nickel-plated badge, a star pinned to the front of his heavy coat. Clay was still Blue River’s town marshal, but it was a job he was ready to hand over to someone else, so he could concentrate on ranching and his growing family.

“Sawyer!” Clay repeated, his tone brusque with concern.

Sawyer’s eyes rolled open, and a grin played briefly on his mouth. “I must have died and gone to hell,” he said in a slow, raspy drawl, “because I’d swear I’ve come face-to-face with the devil himself.”

Clay gave a raucous chuckle at that. “You must be better off than you look,” he commented. “Can you get to your feet?”

Solemnly amused, Sawyer considered the question for a few moments, moistened his lips, which were dry and cracked despite Piper’s repeated efforts to give him water during the night, and struggled to reply, “I don’t think so.”

“That’s all right,” Clay said, gruffly gentle, while Piper’s weary mind raced. She’d heard a few things about Sawyer, and some of it was worrisome—for instance, no one, including Clay, seemed to know which side of the law he was on—though Dara Rose had liked him. “I’ll help you.” With that, Clay raised Sawyer to a sitting position, causing him to moan again and his bandages to seep with patches of bright red, draped his cousin’s good arm over his shoulders, and stood, bringing the other man up with him.

“I’ll put Sawyer on your bed, if that’s all right,” Clay said to Piper, already headed toward her quarters in the back. The schoolhouse was small, and everybody knew how it was laid out, since the building of it had been a community effort.

When word got around that she’d harbored a man under this roof, bleeding and insensible with pain or not, her reputation would be tarnished, at best.

At worst? Completely ruined.

The injustice of that was galling to Piper, but nonetheless binding. Lady teachers in particular were scrutinized for the slightest inclination toward wanton behavior, though their male counterparts sometimes courted and then married one of their students, with impunity. A practice Piper considered reprehensible.

“Certainly,” she said now, well aware that Clay hadn’t been asking her permission but feeling compelled to offer some kind of response.

She hovered in the doorway of her room—little more than a lean-to, really—with one tiny window, high up, while Clay wrestled Sawyer out of his coat then eased him down carefully onto the bed, pulled off his boots.

The effort of going even that far must have been too much for Sawyer, strong as he looked, because he shut his eyes again, and didn’t respond when Clay spoke to him.

“I’ll get the doc,” Clay said to Piper, as she stepped out of the doorway to let him pass. “Do you have any more blankets? It’s important to keep him warm.”

Piper thought with a heavy heart of the fine, colorful quilts lying neatly folded in her hope chest. She’d always envisioned them gracing the beds of some lovely house, once she was married, like Dara Rose, with a proper home.

“Yes,” she said bravely, and though she didn’t begrudge Sawyer McKettrick those quilts, she couldn’t help lamenting their fate. She’d worked hard to assemble them from tiny scraps of fabric, carefully saved, and many of the pieces were all she had to remember friends she’d left behind in Maine.

She swept over to her bulky cedar chest, raised the lid, and rummaged through the treasured contents—doilies and potholders, tablecloths and dish towels and the like—until she’d found what she was looking for.

As she spread the first of those exquisitely stitched coverlets over Mr. McKettrick, he stirred again, opened his eyes briefly, and smiled. “Thanks, Josie,” he said, and there was a caress in the way he said the name.

Briskly, because she was a little hurt, though she couldn’t have pinpointed the reason why such an emotion should afflict her, Piper put another quilt on top of her patient, and then another.

Then, because it was nearly eight o’clock, she went to the other end of the building, where the bell rope dangled, and gave it a tug. Surely none of her pupils would make it to school on such a day, but Piper believed in maintaining routine, especially during trying times. There was something reassuring about it.

The silvery bell, high overhead in its little belfry, chimed once, twice, three times, summoning students who would not come.

Piper’s hands, rope-burned from hauling up well water the night before, stung fiercely, and she was almost glad, because the pain gave her something to think about besides the man sprawled on her spinster’s bed, probably bleeding all over her quilts.

She retrieved a tin of Wildflower Salve from her bureau, careful not to make too much noise and disturb Mr. McKettrick. Carrying the salve back to her schoolroom, she sat down at her desk and smiled a little as she twisted off the pretty little lid to treat her sore palms.

There was an abundance of the stuff, since Dara Rose, impoverished after the scandalous death of her first husband, upstairs at the Bitter Gulch Saloon, had once planned to sell the product door-to-door in hopes of making enough money to support herself and her two small daughters, Edrina and Harriet. Instead, Dara Rose had fallen in love with Clay McKettrick, married him, and thus retained what amounted to a lifetime supply of medicinal salve, which she generously shared.

A half hour passed before Clay returned, with Dr. Jim Howard, the local dentist, riding stalwartly along beside him on the mule that usually pulled his buggy.

Everybody in Blue River liked Dr. Howard, whose young daughter, Madeline, was one of Piper’s best students. At eight, the little girl could read and cipher with the acuity of an adult. Mrs. Howard, however, was not so easy to like as her husband and daughter. Eloise wore nothing but velvet or silk, dismissed the town as a “bump in the road” and told anyone who would listen that she’d “married down.”

“Miss St. James,” Dr. Howard greeted her, with a friendly smile and a tug at the brim of his Eastern-style hat, as he stomped the snow off his boots on the schoolhouse porch, the way Clay had done a moment before. Doc was a large man, good-natured, older than his wife by some twenty years, and his eyes were a kindly shade of blue. He carried a battered leather bag in one gloved hand.

Piper barely stopped herself from rushing over and embracing the man, she was so glad to see him. The responsibility of keeping Mr. McKettrick alive had, she realized, weighed more heavily upon her than she’d thought it did.

She merely nodded in acknowledgment, though, as he closed the door against the cold daylight wind, and she hung back when Clay led the way through the schoolroom and into the chamber behind it.

Of course she couldn’t help overhearing most of the conversation between Clay and Dr. Howard, given that the whole place was hardly larger than Dara Rose’s chicken coop out on the ranch, classroom, teacher’s quarters and all.

Clay was asking how bad the injury was, and Dr. Howard replied that it was serious enough, but with luck and a lot of rest, the patient would probably recover.

Probably recover? Piper thought, sipping from the mug of coffee she’d poured for herself. When Clay and the doctor—more commonly referred to as “Doc”—came out of the back room, she’d offer them some, too. She owned three cups, not including the bone china tea service for six nestled in her hope chest, which would remain precisely where it was, unlike her once pristine quilts.

“I’d like to take Sawyer out to my place,” she heard Clay say.

“Better wait a few days,” came Doc’s response. “He’s lost a lot of blood. The bullet went clear through him, though, which saves me having to dig it out, and Miss St. James did a creditable job of binding him up. He’ll have scars, but the wound looks clean, thanks to her.” A pause followed. “There’s a bottle of carbolic acid in my bag there—hand it to me, will you?”

There was another short silence, during which Clay must have done as Doc asked, soon followed by a hoarse shout of angry protest from the patient. He swore colorfully, and Piper winced. She believed that cursing revealed a poor vocabulary, among other personal shortcomings.

“Can’t take a chance on infection setting in,” the dentist said peaceably, evidently unruffled by the outburst. “The burning will stop after a while.”

Sawyer muttered something unintelligible.

Piper’s hands trembled as she set her coffee mug down on her desk. Doc’s reply to Clay’s statement about taking his cousin out to the ranch echoed in her mind. Better wait a few days.

All well and good, she thought fretfully, but what was she supposed to do in the meantime? There was only one bed, after all, and she couldn’t sleep in a chair until the man was well enough to be moved, could she?

Mr. McKettrick was indeed badly injured, but this was a schoolhouse, frequented by children five days a week—children who would go home after dismissal and tell their parents there was a strange man recuperating in Miss St. James’s room. She wouldn’t be able to hide him from them any more than she could hide that enormous gelding of his, quartered in the shed out back. Even unconscious, Sawyer filled the place with his presence, breathed up all the air.

Clay emerged from her room just then, took a second mug from the shelf near the stove and poured himself some coffee. He was probably cold, Piper realized with some chagrin, having ridden in from the ranch, proceeded to Doc Howard’s, and then made his way back to the schoolhouse again.

“I guess we’ve got a problem,” he said now. Was there a twinkle in those very blue eyes of his as he studied her expression?

“Yes,” Piper agreed, somewhat stiffly. Maybe Clay found the situation amusing, but she certainly didn’t.

Clay took another sip, thoughtful and slow, from his mug. He’d shed his long coat soon after he and Doc arrived, and his collarless shirt was open at the throat, showing the ridged fabric of his undergarment. Like Sawyer, he wore a gun belt, but he’d set the pistol aside earlier, an indication of his good manners. “You probably heard what Doc Howard said,” he told her, after a few moments of pensive consideration. “I could stay here with Sawyer and send you on out to the ranch to stay with Dara Rose and the girls, but it’s hard going, with the snow still so deep.”

Jim Howard came out of Piper’s room, wiping his hands clean on a cloth that smelled of carbolic acid. “I gave him some laudanum,” he told Clay. “He’ll sleep for a while.”

Piper propped her own hands on her hips. She’d spent a mostly sleepless night hoping and praying that someone would come to help, and she’d gotten her wish, but for all that, the problem was only partially solved.

Perhaps she should have been more specific, she reflected, rueful.

“Must I point out to you gentlemen,” she began, with dignity, “that this arrangement is highly improper?”

Clay’s grin was slight, but it was, nonetheless, a grin, and it infuriated her. She was an unmarried woman, a schoolmarm, and there was a man in her bed, likely to remain there for the foreseeable future. All her dreams for the future—a good husband, a home, and children of her own—could be compromised, and through no fault of her own.

“I understand your dilemma, Piper,” he said, sounding like an indulgent older brother, “but you heard the doc. Sawyer can’t be moved until that wound of his mends a little.”

“Surely you could take him as far as the hotel without doing harm,” Piper reasoned, quietly frantic. She kept her hands at her sides, but the urge to wring them was strong.

Dr. Howard shook his head. Helped himself to the last mug and some coffee. “That could kill him,” he said bluntly, but his expression was sympathetic. “I’m sure Eloise wouldn’t mind coming over and helping with his care, though. She’s had some nursing experience, and it would temper any gossip that might arise.”

As far as Piper was concerned, being shut up with Eloise Howard for any length of time would be worse than attending to the needs of a helpless stranger by herself. Much worse.

“I couldn’t ask her to do that,” Piper said quickly. “Mrs. Howard has you and little Madeline to look after.” She turned a mild glare on Clay. “Your cousin needs male assistance,” she added. She’d dragged Sawyer McKettrick in out of the cold, cleaned his wound, even taken care of his horse, but she wasn’t about to help him use the chamber pot, and that was final.

“I’ll do what I can,” Clay said, “but Dara Rose is due to have our baby any day now. I can’t leave her out there alone, with just the girls and a few ranch hands. Once the weather lets up, though…”

His words fell away as Piper’s cheeks flared with the heat of frustration. She could demand to be put up in the hotel herself, of course, until Sawyer McKettrick was well enough to leave the schoolhouse, but that would mean he’d be alone here. And he was in serious condition, despite Doc’s cheerful prognosis.

What if something went wrong?

Besides, staying in hotels cost money, and even there in the untamed West, many of them had policies against admitting single women—unless, of course, they were ladies of the evening, and thus permitted to slip in through an alley door, under cover of darkness, and climb the back stairs to ply their wretched trade.

“You do realize,” Piper persisted, “that I have nowhere to sleep?” And no good man will ever marry me because my morals will forever be in question, even though I’ve done nothing wrong.

Dr. Howard walked over and laid a fatherly hand on her shoulder. “I’ll bring over anything you need,” he assured her. “And stop in as often as I can. I’m sure Clay will do the same.”

Clay nodded, but he was looking out the window, at the ceaseless snow, and his expression was troubled. “I’ve got to get back to Dara Rose,” he said.

Piper’s heart went out to him. As untenable as her situation was, Dara Rose needed Clay right now, and so did the children. Edrina and Harriet, though uncommonly precocious, were still quite small, and they couldn’t be expected to know what to do if their mother went into labor.

“Go home, Clay,” she said gently. “Give Dara Rose my best regards. Edrina and Harriet, too.”

Clay’s expression was even more serious now, and he looked at her for a long time before giving a reluctant nod and promising, “I’ll come back for Sawyer as soon as Doc decides he can travel. I appreciate this, Piper. I wouldn’t ask it of you, but—”

“I understand,” she said, when words failed him again. And she did understand. Clay and Sawyer, like Piper and Dara Rose, were first cousins, the next best thing to siblings, and the bond was strong between them.

The snow came down harder and then harder still, and Doc Howard finished his coffee, collected his bag and took one more look at Sawyer, then headed out, after assuring Piper that he’d return before day’s end and asking what he ought to bring back.

Blankets, she’d said, flustered, and kerosene, and whatever medicine the patient might need.

Clay attended to Sawyer’s horse, said goodbye, and left for the ranch.

Watching him disappear into a spinning vortex of white, Piper felt a lump rise in her throat.

Once again, she was alone, except for Sawyer McKettrick and he, of course, was a hindrance, not a help.

True to his word, Doc was back within the hour, despite the increasingly bad weather, bringing a fresh supply of laudanum, a jug of kerosene, more carbolic acid and several warm blankets, wrapped in oilcloth so they’d stay dry.

He examined Sawyer again—reporting that he was still sleeping but that his heartbeat was stronger than before and he seemed to be breathing more easily—gave Piper a few instructions, and quickly left again, because nightfall would be coming on soon, making the ordinarily short journey home even more difficult than it already was.

Piper thanked him, asked him to give Eloise and Madeline her best, and watched through the front window until he and his mule were gone from sight.

Then, feeling more alone than she ever had, she got busy.

She washed down the already clean blackboard.

She dusted every surface in the schoolroom and refilled the kerosene lamp.

She drank more coffee and fed more wood into the stove.

Before he’d gone, Clay had assured her that Sawyer’s horse would be fine until morning, which meant she could stay inside, where it was comparatively warm, so that was one less worry, anyhow. Gaps between the floorboards let in some of the cold, but that couldn’t be helped. Using the spare blankets Doc had brought, she made a bed on the floor, close to the stove and hoped all the mice were hibernating.

She lit the kerosene lamp as the room darkened, and tried to cheer herself up by imagining the Christmas tree, still in its pail of water and leaning against the far wall, glowing with bright decorations. She took comfort in its green branches and faintly piney scent and thought, with a smile, of the recitations her students were memorizing for the school program.

Christmas Eve, just ten days away, fell on a Friday that year, so school would be in session until noon—weather permitting—and the recital would be presented soon after. After the poems and skits, everyone would sing carols. The owner of the mercantile had promised to donate oranges and peppermint sticks for the children, and the parents would bring pies and cookies and cakes.

This gathering represented all the Christmas some of the children would have, and all thirteen of them were looking forward to the celebration.

She moved, quiet as a wraith, to the window, and glumness settled over her spirit as she looked out.

And still the snow fell in abundance, unrelenting.

* * *

IT WAS THE pain that finally roused him.

Sawyer came to the surface of consciousness with a fierce jolt, feeling as though he’d been speared through his left shoulder.

His stomach lurched, and for a moment he was out there on that snowy street again, unable to see his assailant, reaching in vain for his .45.

He went deliberately still—not only was there no Colt at his hip, but he’d been stripped to his birthday suit—and tried to orient himself to reality.

The room was dark and a little chilly, and it smelled faintly of some flowery cologne, which probably meant there was a woman around somewhere.

The thought made him smile, despite the lingering pain, which had transmuted itself from a stabbing sensation to a burning ache in the few minutes since he’d opened his eyes. There weren’t many situations that couldn’t be improved by the presence of a lady.

He squinted, managed to raise himself a little, with the pillows behind him providing support. Snow-speckled moonlight entered through the one window, set high in the wall, and spilled onto the intricate patterns of the several quilts that covered him to the waist.

“Hullo?” he called into the darkness.

She appeared in the doorway then, carrying a flickering kerosene lamp, a small but well-made woman with dark hair and a wary way of carrying herself.

She looked familiar, but Sawyer couldn’t quite place her.

“You’re awake, then,” she said rhetorically, staying well away from the bed, as if she thought he might grab hold of her. The impression left him vaguely indignant. “Are you hungry?”

“No,” he said, because his stomach, though empty, was still reacting to the rush of pain that had awakened him. “How’s my horse?”

In the light of the lantern, he saw her smile slightly. Decided she was pretty, if a mite on the scrawny side. Her waist looked no bigger around than a fence post, and she wasn’t very tall, either.

“Your horse is quite comfortable,” she said. “Are you in pain? The doctor left laudanum in case you needed it.”

Sawyer guessed, from the bitter taste in his mouth, that he’d already had at least one dose, and he was reluctant to take another. Basically distilled opium, the stuff caused horrendous nightmares and fogged up his brain.

“I’m all right,” he said.

She didn’t move.

He had fuzzy memories of being shot and falling off his horse, but he wasn’t sure if he’d actually seen his cousin Clay or just dreamed he was there. He did recollect the doctor, though—that sawbones had poured liquid fire into the gaping hole in his shoulder, made him yell because it hurt so bad.

“Do you have a name?” he asked.

She bristled, and he guessed at the color of her eyes—dark blue, maybe, or brown. It was hard to tell, in the glare of that lantern she was holding. “Of course I do,” she replied primly. “Do you?”

Sawyer gave a raw chuckle at that. She was an impertinent little dickens, he thought, probably able to hold her own in an argument. “Sawyer McKettrick,” he conceded, with a slight nod of his head. “I’m Clay’s cousin, here to take over as town marshal.”

“Well,” she said, remaining in the doorway, “you’re off to a wonderful start, aren’t you?”

He chuckled again, though it took more energy than he felt he could spare. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I reckon I am.”

“Piper St. James,” she said then, without laying any groundwork beforehand.

“What?”

“You asked for my name.” A pause, during which she raised the lantern a little higher, saw that he was bare-chested, and quickly lowered it again. “You can call me ‘Miss James.’”

“Thanks for that, anyhow,” he said, enjoying the exchange, however feeble it was on his end. “Thanks for looking after my horse, too, and, unless I miss my guess, saving my life.”

Miss St. James’s spine lengthened; she must have been all of five foot two, and probably weighed less than his saddlebags. “I couldn’t just leave you lying out there in the snow,” she said, with a sort of puckish modesty.

From her tone, Sawyer concluded that she’d considered doing just that, though, fortunately for him, her conscience must have overruled the idea.

“You’d have had to step over me every time you went out,” he teased, “and that would have been awkward.”

He thought she smiled then, though he couldn’t be sure because the light fell forward from the lantern and left her mostly in shadow.

“What is this place?” he asked presently, when she didn’t speak.

“You’re in the Blue River schoolhouse,” Miss St. James informed him. “I teach here.”

“I see,” Sawyer said, wearying, though he was almost as much in the dark, literally and figuratively, as before he’d asked the question. “Was Clay here?” he threw out. “Or did I imagine that part?”

“He was here,” Miss St. James confirmed. “He’s gone home now—his wife is expecting a baby soon, and he didn’t like leaving her alone—but he’ll be back as soon as the weather allows.”

Sawyer was quiet for a while, gathering scraps of strength, trying to breathe his way past a sudden swell of pain. “You don’t have to be scared of me,” he told her, after a long time.

“I’m not,” she lied, still cautious. Still keeping her distance.

“I reckon I can’t blame you,” Sawyer said, closing his eyes to regain his equilibrium. The pain rose to a new crescendo, and the room had begun to pitch and sway.

“The laudanum is there on the nightstand,” she informed him helpfully, evidently seeing more than he’d wanted her to. “And the chamber pot is under the bed.”

He felt his lips twitch. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

“You’re certain you don’t want something to eat?”

“Maybe later,” he managed to reply.

He thought she’d go away then, but she hesitated. “You were asking for someone named Josie,” she said. “Perhaps when the weather is better, we could send word to her, that you’ve been hurt, I mean.”

Sawyer opened his eyes again, swiftly enough to set the little room to spinning again. “That won’t be necessary,” he bit out, but he felt a certain bitter amusement imagining what would happen if word of his misfortune were to reach her. Josie was his last employer’s very fetching wife, and she’d made it clear that she wanted more from Sawyer than protection and cordial conversation. He’d had the same problem before, with other wives of men he worked for, along with their sisters and daughters in some instances, and he’d always managed to sidestep any romantic entanglements, be they physical or emotional—until Josie.

He’d wanted Josie, and that was why he’d agreed to come to Blue River and fill in for Clay, as temporary marshal—to put some distance between himself and the sweet temptation to bed his boss’s wife, to burn in her fire, let lust consume him.

He’d left in the nick of time.

Or had he?

Had the shooter been one of Henry Vandenburg’s hirelings, one of his own former colleagues, sent to make sure Sawyer stayed away from the old man’s wife—forever?

It was possible, of course. Vandenburg was rich, and he was powerful, and he probably wasn’t above having a rival dispensed with, but even for him, ordering the murder of one of Angus McKettrick’s grandsons would have been pretty risky. His and Clay’s granddad, even at his advanced age, was a force of nature in his own right, owning half of Arizona as he did, and so were his four sons. Holt, Rafe, Kade—Sawyer’s father—and Jeb, who’d sired Clay, were all law-abiding citizens, happily married men with children and even a few grandchildren, money in the bank and a prosperous ranch to run. Still, the untimely death of any member of the clan would rouse them to Earp-like fury, and Vandenburg surely knew that. In fact, it was that dogged quality that had caused the old reprobate to hire Sawyer as a bodyguard in the first place.

“Mr. McKettrick?” Miss Piper St. James was standing right beside the bed now, holding the lantern high. There was concern in her voice—enough to draw her to his bedside, thereby risking some nefarious assault on her virtue. “Are you all right? For a moment, you looked—I thought…”

She lapsed awkwardly into silence.

He might have reminded her, if he’d had the strength, that, no, actually, he wasn’t “all right,” because he’d been shot. Instead, he asked slowly, measuring out each word like a storekeeper dispensing sugar or flour, “Do you happen to have any whiskey on hand?”

CHAPTER 3

“Of course I don’t have any whiskey,” Piper replied, with a little more sharpness in her tone than she’d intended to exercise. “This is a school, not a roadhouse.”

“Well, damn,” Sawyer said, affably gruff and clearly still in pain. “I could sure use a shot of good old-fashioned rotgut right about now. Might take the edge off.”

Having set the kerosene lantern on the nightstand so she wouldn’t drop it and set the whole place on fire, Piper took a step back. Rotgut, indeed. “Then I guess it’s too bad you fell off your horse here instead of in front of the Bitter Gulch Saloon.”

He favored her with a squinty frown at this, and she wondered distractedly what he’d look like in the daylight, cleaned up and wearing something besides bandages, her quilts and the dish-towel sling Dr. Howard had put on his left arm. “Are you one of those hatchet-swinging types?” he asked, with a note of benign disapproval. “The kind who go around hacking perfectly good bars to splinters, shattering mirrors and breaking every bottle on the shelves?”

Piper stiffened slightly, offended, though she couldn’t think why she ought to give a pin about this man’s—this stranger’s—opinion of her. “No,” she said tersely. “If some people choose to pollute their systems with poison, to the detriment of their wives and children and society in general, it’s none of my concern.”

He laughed then, a hoarse bark of a sound, brittle with pain. “If you say so,” he said, leaving his meaning ambiguous.

Annoyed, Piper was anxious to be gone from that too-small room. She wished she hadn’t approached the bed, if only because she could see so much of his bare chest. It was disturbing—though it did remind her of the gods and heroes she’d read about in Greek mythology.

She gathered her dignity, an effort of unsettling significance, reached out to reclaim the lantern. “If you don’t need anything, I’ll leave you to get some rest,” she said, speaking as charitably as she could.

“I do need something,” he told her quietly.

Piper took another step back. The lantern light wavered slightly, and she renewed her grip on the handle. “What?” she asked cautiously.

“Company,” Sawyer replied. “Somebody to talk to while I wait for this bullet hole in my shoulder to settle down a little—it feels like somebody dropped a hot coal into it. Why don’t you take a chair—if there is one—and tell me what brings a proper lady like you to a rough town like Blue River.”

Was he making fun of her, using the term “a proper lady” ironically?

Or was she being not only harsh, but priggish, too?

She set the lantern back on the night table and drew her rocking chair into the faint circle of light, sat down and folded her hands in her lap. For the moment, that was all the concession she could bring herself to make. And it seemed like plenty.

“Well?” Sawyer McKettrick prompted. “I can tell by the way you talk and carry yourself that you’re an Easterner. What are you doing way out here in the wilds of Texas?”

“I told you,” Piper said distantly, primly. “I teach school.”

“They don’t have schools back where you came from, in Massachusetts or New Hampshire or wherever you belong?”

“I’m from Maine, if you must know,” she allowed, suppressing an urge to argue that she “belonged” wherever she wanted to be. “Dara Rose—Clay’s wife—is my cousin. She persuaded me to come out here and take over for the last teacher, Miss Krenshaw.”

“Dara Rose,” he said, with a fond little smile. “Clay’s a lucky man, finding a woman like her.”

“I quite agree,” Piper said, softening toward him, albeit unwillingly and only to a minimal degree.

He studied her thoughtfully in the flickering light of the lantern. “Does it suit you—life in the Wild West, I mean?” he inquired politely. She saw that a muscle had bunched in his jaw after he spoke, knew he was hurting, and determined to ride it out without complaint. Like Clay, he was tough, though Clay wore the quality with greater grace, being a more reticent sort.

Piper paused, considering her reply. “It’s lonely sometimes,” she admitted, at last.

“Everyplace is lonely sometimes,” he answered.

This was a statement Piper couldn’t refute, so she made one of her own. “It sounds as if you speak from experience,” she said carefully.

He grinned a wan shadow of a grin, lifted his right hand in a gesture of acquiescence. “Sure,” he replied. “Happens to everybody.”

Even in his weakened state, Sawyer McKettrick did not strike Piper as the kind of person who ever lacked for anything. There was something about him, some quality of quiet sufficiency, of untroubled wholeness, that shone even through his obvious physical discomfort.

“I do enjoy spending my days with the children,” she said, strangely flustered, sensing that there was far more to this man than what showed on the surface.

“I reckon that’s a good thing, since you’re a teacher,” he observed dryly.

A silence fell, and Piper found herself wanting to prattle, just to fill it. And she was most definitely not a prattler, so this was a matter for concern.

“I might be able to handle some food, after all,” Sawyer ventured presently, unhurriedly. “If the offer is still good, that is.”

Relieved to have an errand to perform, however mundane, Piper fairly leaped to her feet, took the lamp by its handle. “There’s bean soup,” she said. “I’ll get you some.”

When she returned with a bowl and spoon in one hand and the lantern in the other, she saw that her visitor had bunched up the pillows behind him so he could sit up straighter.

She placed the lantern on the night table again and extended the bowl and spoon.

He looked at the food with an expression of amused wistfulness. “I’ve only got one good arm,” he reminded her. “I can feed myself, but you’ll have to hold the bowl.”

Piper should have anticipated this development, but she hadn’t. Gingerly, knowing she wouldn’t be able to reach far enough from the rocking chair, she sat down on the edge of the mattress, the bowl cupped in both hands.

The sure impropriety of the act sent a little thrill through her.

Deep down, she was something of a rebel, though she managed to hide that truth from most people.

Sawyer smiled and took hold of the spoon, tasted the soup. Since the fire in the stove had burned low while they were talking earlier, the stuff was only lukewarm, but he didn’t seem to mind. He ate slowly, and not very much, and finally sank back against the pillows, looking exhausted by the effort of feeding himself.

“Would you like more?” Piper ventured, drawing back the bowl. “I could—”

Sawyer grimaced, shook his head no. His skin was a waxy shade of gray, even in the thin light, and he seemed to be bleeding from his wound again, though not so heavily as before. “That’ll do for now,” he said. “I might take some laudanum, after all, though.”

Piper nodded, put the spoon and the bowl down, and reached for the brown bottle Dr. Howard had left, pulled out the cork. “I’ll just wipe off the spoon and—”

Before she could finish her sentence, though, he grabbed the bottle from her hand and took a great draught from it. The muscles in his neck corded visibly as he swallowed.

Piper blinked and snatched the vessel from him. “Mr. McKettrick,” she scolded, in her most teacherly voice. “That is medicine, not water, and it’s very potent.”

“I hope so,” he said with a sigh, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth. Waiting for the opium to reach his bloodstream. “I’d have preferred whiskey,” he added, moments later.

Soon, he was fast asleep.

Piper made sure the bottle of laudanum was out of his reach and rose to carry the lantern and the bowl and spoon out of the room, walking softly so she wouldn’t wake him—not that there seemed to be much danger of that, from the steady rasp of his breathing.

Once she’d set the bowl and spoon aside, along with the lantern, she wrapped one of the extra blankets Dr. Howard had brought around her shoulders, in lieu of a cloak, and marched herself outside, into the snowy cold, carrying the lantern again now, lighting her way to the outhouse. Normally, she would have used the enamel chamber pot tucked beneath her bed, but not this time.

The going was hard, though not quite as arduous as when she’d gone out for wood and water before, and to take care of Mr. McKettrick’s horse. She heard a reassuring dripping sound—snow melting off the eaves of the schoolhouse roof, probably—and the sky was clear and moonlit and speckled with stars.

For the time being at least, the storm was over, and that heartened Piper so much that, after using the outhouse, she went on to the shed, where the big buckskin gelding stood, quietly munching hay.

She spoke to him companionably, stroked his sturdy neck a few times, and made sure he had enough water. Clay had filled the trough earlier, instead of just setting a pail on the dirt floor of the shed, so there was plenty.

Returning to the schoolhouse, Piper set the lantern down, put the covered kettle of boiled beans on the front step, so the cold would keep its contents from spoiling. Then she shut the door, lowered the latch, and went over to bank the fire for the night.

The lamp was starting to burn low by then, so she quickly made herself a bed on the floor, using the borrowed blankets, washed her face and hands in a basin of warm water, and brushed her teeth with baking soda. Donning one of her flannel nightgowns was out of the question, of course, with a man under the same roof.

Resigned to sleeping in her clothes, she put out the lamp and stretched out on the floor, as near to the stove as she could safely get, and bundled herself in the blankets. The planks were hard, and Piper thought with yearning of her thin, lumpy mattress, the one she’d so often complained about, though only to herself and Dara Rose.

She closed her eyes, depending on exhaustion to carry her into the unknowing solace of sleep, but instead she found herself listening, not just with her ears, but with all she was. A few times, she thought she heard small feet skittering and scurrying around her, which didn’t help her state of mind.

At some point, however, she finally succumbed to a leaden, dreamless slumber.

When she awakened on that frosty floor, sore and unrested and quite disgruntled, it took her a few moments to remember why she was there, and not in her bed.

The bed was occupied, she recalled, with a flare of heat rising to her cheeks. By one Sawyer McKettrick.

But the sun was shining, and that lifted her spirits considerably.

She shambled stiffly to her feet, hurried to build up the fire in the potbellied stove, glanced with mild alarm at the big Regulator clock ticking on the schoolhouse wall. It was past eight, she saw, and she hadn’t rung the schoolhouse bell.

A silly concern, admittedly, since her students weren’t likely to show up, even though the snow had stopped falling and cheery daylight filled the frigid little room, absorbing the blue shadows of a wintry yesterday and the night that had followed. At the front window, Piper used the palm of one hand, no longer sore, to wipe a circle in the curlicues of frost to clear the glass. She peered out, encouraged to see that the sky was indeed blue and virtually cloudless.

Moisture dripped steadily from the roof overhead, and the road was taking shape again, a slight but visible dip in the deep, blindingly white field of snow that seemed to stretch on and on.

The voice, coming from behind her, wry and somewhat testy, nearly caused Piper to jump out of her skin. For a few moments, glorying in the change in the weather, she’d forgotten all about her uninvited guest, her night on the floor, and most of her other concerns, as well.

“Is there any coffee in this place, or would that be sinful, like keeping a stock of whiskey?” Sawyer McKettrick asked grumpily.

Piper whirled, saw him standing—standing, under his own power—in the doorway to her private quarters. He was still bare-chested, his bandages bulky and his bad arm in the sling Doc had improvised for him the day before, but, thankfully, he’d somehow managed to get into his trousers and even put on his boots.

He looked pale, gaunt, but ready for whatever challenges the day—or the next few minutes—might bring.

She smiled, relieved. If Sawyer was up and around, he’d be leaving soon. Maybe very soon. “I’ll make some coffee,” she said. “Sit down.”

He was leaning against the framework of the doorway now, probably conserving his strength, and he looked around, taking in the small desks, the benches. “Where?” he asked, practically snarling the word.

Piper was determined to be pleasant, no matter how rude Mr. McKettrick chose to be. “There’s a chair behind my desk,” she pointed out. “Take that.”

He groped his way along the wall, proof that he wasn’t as recovered as she’d first thought, pulled back the wooden chair and sank into it. “Where’s my shirt?” he asked. “And my .45?”

Piper ladled water into the small enamel coffeepot that, like the three drinking mugs, her narrow bed and the rocking chair, came with the schoolhouse. “I burned your shirt,” she said cheerfully. “It was quite ruined, between the bullet hole and all the blood. And I put away the pistol, since you won’t have use for it here.”

Sawyer thrust his free hand through his hair in exasperation. Clearly, the laudanum had worn off, and he hadn’t rested well. “I need that shirt,” he said. “And the .45.”

“I’m sorry,” Piper answered. “Perhaps Clay will bring you fresh clothes, when he comes to take you out to the ranch.” She refused to discuss the gun any further.

Sawyer frowned. His chin was bristly with beard stubble, and he narrowed his blue-green eyes practically to slits. “When will that be?” he growled. “My trunk is over at the train depot. Plenty of clothes in there.”

Piper didn’t reply right away, since she didn’t know precisely when Clay would return, and fetching Sawyer’s baggage from the depot was not presently an option. Instead, she put some coffee beans into the grinder and turned the handle, enjoying the rich scent as it rose to entice her. Coffee was normally a treat for Piper, though she’d been drinking more of it lately, being snowed in and everything. Since the stuff wasn’t considered a staple, like canned goods and meat, potatoes and butter, the town didn’t provide it as a part of her wages. Since she saved practically every penny toward a train ticket home to Maine, Dara Rose bought it for her, along with writing paper, postage stamps and bathing soap.

God bless Dara Rose’s generous soul.

Sawyer cleared his throat, a reminder, apparently, that she’d neglected to answer his cranky question. “Clay will be coming back—when?”

“I don’t know,” Piper said honestly. “Soon, I hope.”

His frown deepened as he looked around again. “Where did you sleep last night?”

She measured coffee into the pot and set it on the stove to boil. “You needn’t concern yourself with that,” she said sunnily.

He gave a gruff chortle at her response, completely void of amusement. Then he pushed back the chair and stood, with an effort he clearly wanted very much to hide. “I suppose the privy is out back?” he asked.

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