The Untamed Heart

Sloan’s gaze shot past her to the pile of split wood and the ax protruding out of a stump. It looked as if it had been solidly plunged there by a strong hand. The bearded old man looked incapable of lifting the ax, much less his cane. The farmhouse had been deserted when Sloan had peeked through one lacedraped window. Only two cups sat on a table freshly cleared of dinner plates. She obviously lived alone with the old man. Alone, she tended to the farm, split the wood, mended the fences.

Admiration stirred in Sloan, despite the beleaguered look of the place. And in that instant she embodied struggle and triumph, desire and adversity, every paradox he’d hoped to find on his journey. He wished she’d take off her hat so he could see her eyes and her hair. “I’m looking for accommodations, Miss—”

The gun jerked. “Don’t—move,” she said slowly, taking another step. “And don’t try any of those fancy fighting maneuvers. I’m a quicker shot than Reuben Grimes. And a hell of a lot more accurate. I could shoot that stickpin right out of your collar.” She thrust her chin at him, a slightly clefted, determined chin. Her lips pursed with disdain, and then he knew. He should have known the moment he spotted her across the field of grass simply by the peculiar reaction she stirred in him.

Gertie. Willie. Something didn’t fit. Without question, she was at home here on this run-down farm, in her trousers and boots, ax in hand and dirt up to her elbows. At the saloon, he’d sensed a helplessness in her, a distinct undercurrent of discomfort despite her best efforts to show otherwise.

Sloan had seen enough adversity in his life to know that desperation led many down a path that they wouldn’t typically choose. All desperate people had a price, one Sloan was not above finding, particularly if it would keep her out of the saloon and away from cowboys with itchy hands.

“What do you want for a room?” he asked, reaching into his trouser pocket and withdrawing the fat wad of bills he’d won on the train. He thumbed off several bills and glanced up at her. She was staring at his hand with such intensity he could almost hear her tallying all that his money would buy: the paint for the house, a new fence, even a plow to turn this field of grass into wheat or corn. Perhaps something as simple as food. Or a dress that fit her properly.

The old man narrowed his eyes. Sloan didn’t blame them for not trusting him. But only a fool would refuse help when in such need.

“Put your money away, fancy man. I’ve no rooms to let you.”

Sloan heard his teeth click. Bloody impertinent female. Quickly he recalled the price of meals and lodging in New York, at the grand and luxurious American Hotel. And then he doubled it. “Fifty dollars a day for a room and the pleasure of your company at meals.”

The gun wavered. Her skin grew unearthly pale. She tipped back her hat and blinked at him with eyes as wide and fathomless as the sea beyond Cornwall’s far western headlands. “You’re bribing me,” she said, her voice chilled. “You can’t do that.”

“Seventy-five,” he said softly. “Do you cook, Willie?”

“Better than her mama could,” the old man muttered under his breath.

Willie shot him a look that would have stopped an army.

The old man merely shrugged. “Your mama was a fine cook, Willie-girl. Like I always say, a skillet and a pail of grease are the essentials to any recipe.”

Willie let out a wheezing breath. “State your business, fancy man.”

“Sloan,” he said, tipping up one corner of his mouth. Pocketing his money, he extended a black-gloved hand over the top of the gun. “Sloan Devlin, late of Cornwall, England.”

She barely extended her fingers when Sloan leaned forward and enveloped her small hand in his. Her eyes briefly widened, deepening in color.

He expected to feel nothing through the fine leather of his gloves. After all, he’d spent his youth pounding his fists into tree trunks day after day to thickly callus his hands against pain or feeling. And yet he could feel the warmth of her, the pulse of her, the vital, womanly essence of her seeping through calluses and leather and skin. He relinquished it at the first tug of her fingers.

“I’ve come to see the elephant,” Sloan said.

She seemed unimpressed, and her voice rang with contempt. “That’s what all the English folk said when they came and shot the buffalo. Now there’s nothing for them to shoot. Who sent you? Union Pacific? Kansas Pacific? A couple years back some fancy English gent was following the Kansas Pacific’s survey parties, drawing pictures. Maybe you’re one of them. Or are you Denver Pacific?”

“I came by rail,” he replied, “and shared several games of poker with some fellows from the Union Pacific. But that’s the extent of my association with the railroad.”

Her eyes narrowed, as if she gave the idea of believing him some consideration. “You’re a gambler.”

His laugh rumbled from his chest. “Not on my luckiest day.”

“You still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

“I’m a writer.”

“They pay writers good where you come from.”

“No true writer writes for money.” “Then why do it?”

“I want to make a difference.”

“Have you?”

“Not yet. At least not enough. I suppose that’s why I’m here.”

“To stir up trouble.”

“I prefer to walk away from trouble.”

“Good. The road back there leads all the way to Denver. Just point your nose west and start walking.” She headed for her ax. For an instant, Sloan found himself staring at her backside. Women as lushly formed as Willie should have been legally banned from wearing men’s trousers.

An odd compulsion to throw her over his shoulder swept over him. He took a step, tugged his dozing excuse for a horse behind him, then drew up as she swung the ax in an arc that stirred the air right in front of him. She’d set her jaw with grim determination. Sleek muscles strained in her bare forearms. A grunt came from her lips when the ax plunged into the log.

Sloan felt the tension mounting inside him. “How many nights will you spend in the Silver Spur to earn anything close to what I’m offering you for a single night’s accommodations? A week? A month? All I’ll ask from you is a smile every morning.”

The ax whistled through the air, again keeping him at a good distance. Wood chips sprayed into the air.

“I don’t trust strange men with velvet cuffs and shiny-toed shoes, Devlin.”

Ah, the broken heart finally betrayed itself. So the thief of her heart hadn’t been a cowboy. A gambler, perhaps?

Sloan glanced at the old man. “Is she typically this difficult?”

The old man spat into the ground. “Yep. I keep tellin’ her she’d best get more likable if she’s ever gonna find herself a husband.”

“Reasonable would suffice for now,” Sloan said, watching the color creep up from her neck and up under the brim of her hat.

Willie plunged the ax blade into the stump, whirled and advanced on Sloan with hands braced on her hips and green eyes blazing. “Eighty-five a night, one week in advance, nonrefundable. Meals, bed and outhouse privileges included.”

“That’s reasonable.” Sloan pulled out the money and peeled off twelve crisp one-hundred dollar bills. “I’ll pay for two weeks of services—” Just as she reached out to snatch the bills, he lifted them beyond her fingertips. She arched up after it, her eyes darting to his, and in them he saw desperation and blind hope all twisted up with pride. “And the pleasure of your company, of course,” he murmured, startlingly aware of her in the most base physical sense. She stood just inches below him, emanating a womanly warmth, smelling of grass and mountains and freshly chopped wood.

Her brows quivered. “Whatever that means. I live here.” Lightning quick she plucked the bills from his hand and, without counting them, tucked them inside the open neck of her shirt.

Sloan’s mouth went instantly dry.

Again she turned to retrieve her ax but Sloan was much quicker this time, reaching around her and taking up the ax.

She angled her eyes at him and pursed her lips. “Give me that, Devlin, before you hurt yourself.”

With one arm, Sloan lifted a log onto the stump. Bracing his legs, he glanced sideways at her and tossed her his horse’s reins. “Stand back.”

She didn’t move. “I don’t need your help, Devlin. I don’t need any man.”

“No,” he murmured, looking directly into her eyes. “I don’t believe you do. Now that we both understand that, stand back.”

“I don’t—”

Sloan swung the ax. Willie jumped back just as the ax plunged through the log, shattering it into five pieces. Sloan looked at Willie. She stared at the ax blade buried five inches deep in the stump then slowly looked up at Sloan. Her lips parted. Color bloomed into her cheeks. She looked like a rose bursting open beneath the sun.

“I—I’ll take your horse to the barn,” she said.

“Thank you.”

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

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.”

“It seems de rigueur.” He caught her quick glance over the rim of his cup. A disarming smile deepened the creases around his eyes. “Local custom. I haven’t seen tea since I left the steamer in New York, and the only words spoken in this country after the word coffee are ‘strong’ and ‘black.’ I’m pleased to say there’s remarkable variation in the taste. You outdo the Pullman Palace car, Wilhelmina.”

She hesitated, pondered her pinkening cheeks, then lifted her chin. “That’s no compliment.”

“It should be. The berth in first-class cabin accommodations aboard a Cunard steamer are less comfortable than the berth in a Pullman Palace car. It seems Mr. Pullman has taken as much care in the decorating and furnishing of his railcars as French decorators do in decorating the dwellings of the very rich. Were he up to dealing with the shoddily laid track in England, Mr. Pullman could revolutionize railway travel there and at the same time enrich himself beyond the dreams of avarice.”

“Then he will. All Eastern capitalists want richness beyond the dreams of avarice. All men do.”

“Not all men. To some, the ultimate rewards lie elsewhere.”

“Ultimate rewards begin to mean very little when food is scarce. Noble dreams die swift deaths when there’s no money and no work. Just ask any miner.” She stared up at him, realizing he was waiting for her to continue. Something about him made her want to keep talking, as if what she said and felt and thought was valid, worthwhile. And she wanted to spew it all out for him, all the misery, the loneliness, the guilt and the inevitable despair.

For one startling moment she knew a vulnerability that she hadn’t felt since the day her mother had died.

“I’ll show you where you’ll sleep,” she said, her voice taking on a chill. With head lifted, she led him to the front bedroom as if she were Mr. Pullman himself, stopping just outside the open doorway. Her first thought as she glanced into the room was that Sloan Devlin’s feet would hang off the end of the bed.

“Breakfast is at six,” she said as he leaned past her to peer into the room. Pressing herself against the doorjamb, she drew in her breath just as his sleeve brushed against her bare forearm. “Supper at one. Dinner at six. There’s a water pump out back for washing up.” She stared at the back of his head where a dark leather cord bound the thick length of his blue-black hair. Unbound, she imagined it would fall past his shoulders.

He turned and faced her and her knees gave a sudden wobble. “Where do you and your grandfather sleep?”

Her eyes skittered across the kitchen to a shadowed corner and the narrow steps there. “I sleep upstairs. There’s three bedrooms there. Gramps sleeps in his chair in the front room.”

“You’re alone here.”

Damn his gently coaxing voice, smooth as warm honey. Brant’s voice had been even smoother, when he’d wanted it to be.

She lifted her eyes to his and gripped the doorjamb at her back. “My mama died when I was ten. My pa and my brothers all went when the Lucky Cuss blew last year. Now it’s just me and Gramps and Huck, the dog. And the boarders.”

“Do you get many?”

“We get some.” It wasn’t a complete lie. They got a boarder every six months or so.

“People must not know what they’re missing.”

Something inside her went weak. Smooth as honey, just like Brant. So much like Brant and yet somehow so different Hadn’t she lingered just like this outside the room with Brant that first evening, mesmerized by his charm, captivated by his smile? Less than a week later she’d lain beneath him on the soft grass and watched him lean over her, blocking out all the sun.

Like a frightened rabbit she scooted past Devlin, tossing over her shoulder something about seeing to Gramps. Devlin’s softly spoken “Good night, Wilhelmina” followed her out onto the porch and halfway across the yard before it leapt up into the starry sky and vanished.

Noble dreams die swift deaths when there’s no money.

Sloan looked up from his journal and stared out into the moon-splashed darkness. The field of grass rippled like ocean waves in the milky moonlight, extending from the porch to a sweep of trees more than a mile out. Beyond that, rising from the earth like a majestic beast, loomed the blue-white peaks of the mountains. The moon seemed to hang just inches above the tallest peak. Sloan listened to the rustling of the grass, breathed in the scent of wildflowers and scanned the horizon from east to west before again lifting his pencil.

The senses are at once quickened and overpowered by thelimitless space. Those who people these vast tracts of land should enjoy a freedom far better than that of a wanton breeze, balmy with perfume. I feel a deep longing that the thousands who earn a precarious livelihood in England by tilling the soil of their taskmasters and lords could somehow come to a place where the strength of their arms would win them a comfortable subsistence and would enable them to possess the land which yields them their daily bread. But here, too, noble dreams die.