The Untamed Heart

“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.