Twilight

She squinted beneath the glare of the sun and the dust billowing into her face.

The wind parting the tree branches or perhaps some slight movement, a rippling of shadow there beneath that tree, caught her eye and prompted her fingers to curl with a sudden white-knuckled intensity about the handle of her basket. And then she saw him, a man, crouched low, yet deeply shadowed and immense. A man she’d never seen before, reaching a hand toward her son...as though moments from snatching him up. Her tiny five-year-old child, helpless. And she too far away. A stranger.

The basket fell at her feet. She nearly tripped over it and the tangle of wind-whipped muslin skirts between her thighs. A cry managed to escape her constricting throat, only to be seized by the wind and tossed out over the prairie.

Run.

She stumbled over a strawberry plant and crushed it beneath her thick-soled shoes, clawing at air, then at crumbling dirt to regain her balance. Her vision blurred, and all air compressed in her chest, trapping her voice. Her limbs refused her commands. She couldn’t run fast enough.

The bonnet fell from her head, and hair whipped about her face, blinding her. Again she stumbled. Her chin snapped against dry earth, and one foot caught in her petticoat. She barely heard the cotton tear for the terror thundering in her ears when the man moved closer...closer. This stranger. So big, even crouched, and her Christian so tiny, too tiny even to flee on his thin legs.

Willard Fry, tending his farm a mile to the east, would never hear a rifle shot, much less a scream for help. Twilight was another mile farther. To the west swept nothing but endless arid prairie.

The rifle...get the rifle...

She surged from the field and ran blindly through a tangle of sheets that seemed to deliberately ensnare her in their flapping folds. Into the barn she ran, arms and fingers outstretched in the sudden pitch. The rifle sat in a back corner of the barn, though she should have kept the thing nearer at hand, she, a woman alone on a farm for over a year now, with a young son to protect. But she’d fired it only once, accidentally, and she’d put a hole in the roof of the kitchen. She dimly remembered Avram removing the rifle to the barn for her protection. Her fingers wrapped around cold steel. She hoisted the rifle and spun about.

Please, God, let it be loaded.

The sun still shone with a peculiar mocking brilliance when she dashed from the barn. Another strangled cry spilled from her throat when she spotted Christian...and the stranger. He still crouched low, his back toward her, as broad as her strawberry patch. A godsend, that massive expanse, a target even she would be hard-pressed to miss. Her feet skidded in the dirt, and she heaved the gun onto her shoulder and took aim at a spot just below the fall of his blue-black hair over his collar.

“Stand slowly and turn about, or I’ll put a hole in your back, mister.”

The bulk that was this man seemed to turn to stone. His black hat angled but a fraction toward her and she glimpsed a shadowed, beard-stubbled jaw. With a surge of uncommon female prowess, she glanced at Christian and battled a sudden desperation to fling her arms about his narrow body. His eyes, wide, filled with unmistakable fear, had never looked so blue, his cheeks so downy soft and tender, sun-kissed like a ripe peach. Her arms ached to hold his slight body close enough for her to hear his shallow breaths, to smell his skin, his hair. No, she could have none of that maternal gushing if she was to dispatch this stranger. A strong, self-assured front was required. No weaknesses. No emotion. “Christian, come stand behind Mama here.”

Christian’s enormous blue eyes darted to the stranger, then to the ground, before he frowned at the rifle. “Why do you have the rifle, Mama?”

She peered down the long barrel, her aim wavering upon the back of that black head. “Get behind Mama, Christian.”

Her son hesitated several teeth-grinding moments, then dragged his bare toes in the dust and moved slowly toward her. “But you don’t know how to shoot it, Mama. Reverend Halsey told you to keep it in the barn so you don’t put no more holes in the roof. Remember, Mama?”

“Shush, Christian.”

“But, Mama—”

“Shush. Go sit on the back stoop.”

“But, Mama, you scared him away and—”

“On the back stoop, Christian. Now.” Something in the shifting of the stranger’s shoulders flooded her with a profound chagrin, as if even he had taken ample notice of the battle of wills she constantly endured with her son. And then the stranger unfolded his crouched body, slowly, warily, though she sensed he wasn’t the least bit intimidated by her or her gun.

Jessica didn’t realize she’d taken a step back until her foot struck an exposed tree root. She blinked a trickle of perspiration from her eyes. Dust and fear—yes, fear—clogged her throat. This man loomed like the devil himself, his head skimming the tree branches a good eight inches above her own. His legs were long and heavily muscled, snugly encased in those faded denims common to thieves and all manner of coarse menfolk. His shoulders looked capable of filling any doorway, and his arms hung potently at his sides, fists unclenched, long fingers curling, as if moments from snatching some concealed weapon from his waistband.

“Turn around,” she said, her voice cracking strangely even as he complied. The eyes struck her first, like an invisible blow, and again her foot faltered over the tree root. The rifle wavered, then fixed squarely on his chest, though her limbs seemed to suddenly quiver beneath the weight of the firearm.

His eyes were gold, as she imagined a lion’s would be, and deep-set beneath a vicious slash of black brows and the shadow of his hat. Yet his gaze was empty. A prairie savage, he was, his skin weathered and creased like worn, deeply tanned leather, his jaw all beard-stubbled hollows and angles. His mouth compressed, tight and unyielding. His eyes reflected nothing but sunlight and then emptiness, cold emptiness, even as they hooded and moved slowly over the length of the rifle.

An outlaw. In her backyard.

“Who are you?” she said, her voice uncharacteristically quavery.

“Stark.” His lip barely curled with the word. His voice was like the sound of distant thunder, ominous, chillingly deep and rasping. Yet his speech was not the typical slow and deliberate heavy twang, but measured, as if his words were carefully chosen, yet simmering with a distinct undercurrent of impatience. “Logan Stark. I meant your boy no harm, ma’am. Or you. Put down the gun.”

She ignored this, having expected it, of course. Any man who looked like this man had but one thing on his mind: no good. She jerked the rifle when one bronzed hand lingered near his pocket. “State your business, Mr. Stark. And be quick about it.”

The wind ruffled through his hair, yet there was nothing innocent even in this on such a man. Perhaps because Jessica felt oddly disconcerted when those transparent eyes seemed to probe right through her, as if he were memorizing her.

“You advertised for a farmhand,” he said.

“You’re mistaken.” In spite of herself, she flushed when his eyes swept the farm and the house, in dire need of repair. One side of the barn bowed and sagged. A crumbling excuse for a stone fence encased one mangy cow lazily chewing her cud. The ravages of one year spent without a man’s hand. Yet what more could a woman do, alone, her funds so depleted when those gambling debts had been called that she could barely afford to feed and clothe her son? She was lucky she still had the house and any semblance of a barn. Had she let them, they’d have taken nearly all her land, all that her father had built his dreams upon, all that he had died for.

Jessica’s nose jutted upward when that golden gaze lingered on the field of wilting strawberry plants.

His eyes shifted back to her.

She jerked her chin to the east. “Next farm up the road. But I’ll save you a walk. Willard Fry hired on his new hand several months back.” A nagging suspicion blossomed to life within her, and she squinted at him through a spray of dust. “That’s an old paper you were looking at, Mr. Stark. Where are you from?”

That jaw angled to the west but his eyes held her. “Just passing through, ma’am. Looking for work.”

“Mama—”

“Shush, Christian.”

“But Mama—”

That old, uncomfortable feeling of maternal ineptitude flooded through her, bringing a tightness to her tone. “Christian, mind me.”

And then Mr. Logan Stark appeared to bunch all his muscles and loom toward her, like a massive black thundercloud that would swallow her up. “Ma’am, don’t move,” he rasped.

One hand reached for her, long fingers outstretched toward her...no, toward the rifle, as if he meant to yank it from her arms. With his other hand, he slowly drew a long, black-handled blade from his waistband. This outlaw, Logan Stark, meant to kill her, take her son, her only cow, burn her house and all her strawberry plants. She could see it in his eyes...in the flash of sunlight upon that blade. The world tilted beneath her feet.

“Stay!” she shrieked, taking wavering aim upon the expanse of his chest. Her fingers stumbled over the trigger when he advanced toward her, as unstoppable as a locomotive. He murmured something she couldn’t decipher. Her focus blurred upon his fingers curled about that black handle, an instant away from plunging it into her throat. She should pull the trigger...now...now!

“But, Mama, the snake! The one you scared! He’s by your foot there! You’re gonna step on him, Mama!”

A mind-numbing terror engulfed her, prompted by Christian’s warning or by her inability to stop Logan Stark, she would never know. Snake or no snake, she could not tear her eyes from this man, certain that he was the more lethal of the two. She felt the heat radiating from him, the icy resolve in his eyes, and she retreated, God help her, one step. Only, her foot snagged on the exposed root, twisted, and her other foot tangled in her torn hem. Her knees buckled, and the rifle angled crazily skyward as her burning arm muscles turned traitor on her. And then Christian’s terrified howl rang out—or was that her own scream torn from her throat when sunlight flashed upon the blade, as Logan Stark flexed his wrist? The knife stood poised like a viper.

She closed her eyes and pulled the trigger. The world became a deafening roar of flame and smoke, and then she was falling through sunlight and dry, hot wind, until cool darkness pressed in around her, cradling her like the arms of the mother she’d never known.

* * *

Jessica blinked at the blue sky overhead. Waves of pain radiated from the back of her head. She closed her eyes, expecting at any moment to come to the full realization that she lay dying in the dust from a knife wound. But where? She uncurled her stiff fingers from the rifle and wiggled her toes. She shifted her shoulders and bent her knees. Nothing, save the relentless pounding in her skull.

“Mama.” Christian’s smudged face appeared a scant inch above her, framed by brilliant blue skies. He sucked in swift breaths. “Mama, you shot Mr. Stark.”

Jessica chose to overlook the marked disbelief in his voice and her resulting chagrin and pushed herself up on her elbows. She found herself staring at the soles of a pair of very long black boots. Motionless black boots.

“I shot him,” she whispered, struggling to her feet. She stared at a very still Mr. Logan Stark.