Twilight

“But, Mama—”

“Sit.”

“Can I eat with Mr. Stark in the barn?”

“Mama wants you to eat with her. Here. Now sit.”

He thrust out his lower lip and slid half on, half off the chair. One bare foot kicked belligerently at the table leg. He scowled into his bowl and pushed his spoon around with his thumb. “It’s too hot. I can’t eat it.”

“Blow on it.” Jessica eased into the chair next to his and felt the blood drain from her legs. She hadn’t been off her feet since sunup. Her dress hung heavy with dust and a day’s perspiration. Even muscles she’d had no idea she possessed cried out for a long soak in a warm tub of water. If only she wouldn’t have to haul it from the well, and heat it, and haul it again to her wooden tub.

“Aren’t you going to take Mr. Stark his dinner?”

“Oh.”

Christian sprang from his chair before she could move. “I’ll do it!”

“Sit.” Jessica curled her son’s fingers around his spoon and glared at him over her pointed index finger. “Eat. I’ll tend to Mr. Stark.”

“I wanted to,” Christian grumbled into his soup.

“I don’t believe Mr. Stark is the sort a young boy like you should be tending to, Christian.” Carefully she arranged the soup and utensils on a wooden platter. “We know very little about him, after all.”

“He’s a stranger, isn’t he, Mama?”

Her gaze slid to the window and beyond, where the barn crouched in dusky shadows. Somewhere within, Stark lurked in the shadows, as well, with his horse, his knife, perhaps a gun.

“Strangers are mean.”

“Not all strangers,” Jessica replied.

“Mr. Stark’s not.”

“No, I don’t suppose he is.”

“He’s gonna stay because you shot him, right, Mama? And you shouldn’t have shot him, right?”

A frown quivered along her brows as she sought the best possible explanation.

“I think you just wanted to make Reverend Halsey mad. Because he won’t help us fix our barn and our wagon, right, Mama? That’s why, right?”

Jessica glared at her son, then snatched up the bowl of blackberries and several cloth napkins, wondering at the unease stirring within her. “Mr. Stark is seeking work, Christian. I’ve hired him on. He’s going to fix our barn and the house, and then he’s going to leave.”

Twin blue saucers blinked at her. “So he’s not a stranger.”

“I still don’t want you bothering the man, Christian.”

“You like him, don’t you, Mama?”

A disturbing heat spread through Jessica’s cheeks. “I don’t know him well enough to like or dislike him, Christian, or to trust him. And neither do you. Now eat.”

Christian gave a shrug, plunged his spoon into his soup and gobbled it down. “Good dinner, Mama.”

She gave her son a last glower that couldn’t help but dissolve into a weary smile. And then she turned and headed for the barn.

* * *

Rance watched her from the moment she stepped foot from the house. Concealed by the lengthening shadows, he sat propped against a bale of hay in one corner of the barn. The air hung thick and heavy with a day’s worth of dust and the smell of his horse and his own sun-baked flesh. Through a four-inch gap in the barn’s wall planks, he’d watched the sun set over a bleak and barren horizon and listened to the sounds of dusk as would one who’d grown accustomed to the peculiar comfort the trill of a cricket provided. Comforts were few, after all, for a man on the run, a man alone. It had been that way for him for so long now, eighteen years long. His past had become one long, dusty tableau. Crickets had come to be enough on most nights, when light proved insufficient for reading.

But now, watching Jessica Wynne moving toward him, a reed-slender, womanly shadow, he knew a stirring so deep his fists balled, sending a stab of pain through his left shoulder and a reminder that he was crushing Frank Wynne’s gold locket in his other fist. Some sound must have escaped him, for she paused just as she entered the barn. It was an indecisive pause, as if she feared something here.

No, he didn’t want that. Never that.

He stuffed the locket into his watch pocket. “Ma’am—” He lurched to his feet, out of the shadows and into the arc of soft light emitted by the kerosene lantern she held.

She didn’t retreat a step, though she looked like she wanted to when her gaze widened and drifted over his bare chest. He imagined her back drew up as rigid and brittle as a dried-up twig. Thin fingers clutched at the platter she carried, and her breath seemed trapped in her chest. Her breasts pushed full and high against worn gray muslin.

He swallowed, his throat thick and bone-dry. Damn him for coming here, for every twisted fool’s reason he’d given himself to stay. Beneath it all, and not too far beneath it, he was a man, and as any man’s would, his body responded to hers, to the heat and the darkness and intimacy of this desolate farm, before conscience could tell him otherwise.

“I brought you supper,” she said, her fingers still gripping the platter as though she dared not let it go.

“Soup,” he said. He watched the steam rise from the bowl. Hot soup on a hot, dry Kansas evening. He knew he’d eat it all and sweat the night away on his thick bedroll. All that was left in his saddlebags was stale bacon wrapped in cheesecloth, and coffee. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Her eyes flickered to his bandaged shoulder. “I should see to that.”

“Can I eat first?”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course.” She glanced about, apparently unsure which bale of hay was best to serve as a table, until he reached for the platter. His fingers brushed over hers and curled securely around the wood. Their gazes locked.

He arched a brow. “Care to join me?”

She released the platter into his hands as if it were suddenly aflame. Color bloomed in her cheeks, and he wondered how many men she’d known in her lifetime. Not many, judging by her discomfort. Her fists suddenly took a death grip on her skirts.

“I...” She waved a hand in a vague direction and seemed incapable of looking him in the eye.

“Ah. You don’t regularly dine in the barn with men you shoot.”

That prompted a glare. “I’ve never shot anyone.”

“I’m flattered.”

“Have you?”

He set the platter upon two stacked bales and straddled another. He glanced at her, aware that her heavy-soled shoes shuffled nervously upon the hay-strewn floor. “An odd question, ma’am, given that you’ve hired me on and fixed me a fine dinner. What is it you’re curious about? My ability to defend you and your son, or my evil intentions here? I thought we were beyond that.”

She jutted her chin at him. “A woman can’t be too careful when she lives alone. Indeed, one can’t help but cringe at the tales of horror and pillaging common to the taming of the frontier. I’m still not quite used to it, even after twenty-two years.”

“You should have asked if I owned a gun, then.”