The Untamed Heart

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

Sloan watched her until the shadows swallowed her.

Chapter Three (#ulink_82eb4ddd-e175-53ce-8f59-38080779de8a)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You will tonight.”

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

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

“Yes, and elsewhere, of course.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Willie.”

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

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

“Your name. Wilhelmina, isn’t it?”

“I don’t like it.”

“It suits you.”

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

“The children?”

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m in your way.”

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