Winter swung into the saddle. ‘‘I’ll take a slip of a woman before I’ll be strapped to any one of those crows for life. And she’ll say yes if I have to promise her the moon.’’

‘‘But, Boss?’’ Logan spat a stream of tobacco as though just the thought of approaching a newly widowed woman left a bad taste in his mouth.

‘‘Get the preacher and meet me at the ranch in an hour.’’ Winter didn’t give Logan any more time to argue as he rode off toward Saddleback Ridge. He’d talk Mrs. Adams into marrying him, then he’d live with a shadow roaming around the captain’s huge house. If she was as mousy as Logan thought, he’d hardly notice her. And as far as Winter was concerned, that would make her the perfect wife.

TWO


KORA ADAMS FOLDED AWAY THE CLOTHES SHE’D FOUND in Andrew Adams’s trunk. ‘‘Six months,’’ she whispered. Six months since she’d read another woman’s letter at the mercantile and decided to meet a stage. Six months since she’d watched them lift Andrew Adams’s bloody body out of the coach. He’d thought he was coming to Bryan to meet a woman he’d married by proxy. Instead, a stage robber had put four bullets in him, and the woman was long gone with another.

Pushing away the tears, Kora whispered again, ‘‘We were meant to marry, Andrew Adams and I. We have the same bad luck.’’ She hadn’t even known the man, but she had the proxy letter and he had a farm. It was so simple to step forward as the bride of a dying man. No one questioned. No one checked the name on the paper. Her luck hadn’t changed, though. The farm wasn’t Andrew’s, but the bank’s. She’d brought her brother and sister across Texas to starve. Jamie once said they were nothing but weeds in life’s garden. Nothing but weeds.

Kora glanced at her brother, Dan, sleeping in the chair by the fire, and wished as she had a million times before that he had really come back to them from the war. He’d been only fourteen when their father was killed. He had enlisted all excited and ready to fight. Only two years later they brought him home in the back of a wagon. He hadn’t said a word since.

‘‘I promised Mother I’d take care of you and Jamie,’’ Kora whispered, knowing he didn’t hear her. ‘‘I promised and I’m doing a terrible job.’’

Her great idea of marrying and running the farm after Andrew died seemed insane now as she looked around the shabby little one-room cabin that no amount of scrubbing could ever make clean. She’d always been the planner, the organizer, the leader who sacrificed for the others. She had always done whatever was necessary to keep them together, but this time the witchin’ luck that her mother said followed her seemed to be smothering them.

The sound of an approaching rider pulled Kora from her worries. She shoved Andrew Adams’s clothes back in the trunk and quickly added her cigar box full of keys to the chest before closing it. The keys inside the box fit nothing. Just as she seemed to. Even her mother thought the world was over because of Dan. It never mattered that she had two other children. She’d given them nothing, not even her love after Dan returned.

That was when Kora began to collect keys. They were her only treasure for as long as she could remember. Once in a while she found another in the dirt and built the room it would fit in her mind. She cleaned the key up carefully to add to her collection, as though someday she might stumble across the lock her key would fit.

Quickly Kora moved to the door.

But before she could reach the latch, someone pounded loud enough to shake the walls of the small cabin that had been half built, half dug from a rise in the ground.

‘‘Yes?’’ Kora asked as she opened the door, expecting to see one of the neighbors.

‘‘Mrs. Adams?’’

A tall man removed his hat. He was dark-headed with sharp features and a mustache that hid his upper lip. The smell of leather and dust seemed layers thick between them. She could hear the heavy breathing of his mount only a few feet behind him and the soft jingle of his spurs as he shifted impatiently. He wore a jacket of wool, but his vest was leather. Leather was also strapped around his lean, powerful legs all the way past the top of his muddy boots. Kora stepped backward, trying to hide her fright. She’d seen the cattlemen in town. They always wore Stetson hats, leather, and spurs on their boots. But they’d never looked quite so frightening as this one, with his wide shoulders and gun strapped low across his hip. He seemed born to wear a holster.

‘‘Mrs. Adams?’’ he asked again in a voice that rumbled like echoing thunder.

‘‘Yes,’’ she whispered and tried to pull her terror under control. If he’d come to kill her, he’d have little trouble doing so. She barely reached his shoulder, and he looked strong enough to snap her bones in half with one twist. She didn’t dare scream for Jamie, or they might both die. Dan would be no help even if he awoke-which was unlikely.

‘‘May I come in?’’ The stranger slapped his dusty hat against his leg.

Kora let out a breath. If he were going to murder her, he’d hardly be asking permission to enter. A man whose Colt was worth more than everything in her dugout cabin wouldn’t need to rob her.

Moving to the table, Kora turned her back to the stranger as she lit the lantern, burning precious oil. ‘‘If you’ve come about the horse and wagon for sale, you’ll have to return in the morning. I have no way of showing them to you in the dark.’’

Winter stooped slightly and moved into the cabin. Her face had been in shadows when she’d answered the door, and now she had her back to him.

‘‘I didn’t come about the horse,’’ Winter said, wishing she’d turn around. ‘‘You’re small. Logan didn’t say anything about you being so tiny.’’

She turned to face him then, her pale blue eyes huge with fright as her hands knotted around her black shawl. ‘‘I’m not tiny.’’

Forcing her voice not to shake, she added, ‘‘You’re the one who doesn’t fit through the door.’’ He was so tall his hair almost brushed the ceiling.

‘‘I guess I am,’’ Winter answered as his eyes adjusted to the cavelike shadows. Her hair reflected in the firelight as it hung to her waist. ‘‘Your hair,’’ he mumbled. Most of the women he knew looked as if they’d spent hours burning curl into their mass of ringlets piled atop their heads. But hers reminded him of his mother’s, straight and thick. Only his mother’s had been as black as midnight while this woman’s was the color of sunshine.

Kora pulled her shawl over her head as though ashamed. ‘‘I wasn’t expecting anyone, so I’d already unbound it for the night.’’ She felt like a fool explaining her actions to a stranger. What did she care if he thought she ran completely wild in her own house?

‘‘I’m sorry to call so late, but time is vital at this point.’’ He tried to stand still as she seemed to shrink before his eyes, folding into her huge shawl and moving away from the light.

Winter had never backed away in his life. He’d always silently enjoyed the fear he’d seen in most folks’ eyes since he’d reached his full height. But he backed down now, not wanting to frighten her. He put as much distance between them as the tiny cabin allowed.

‘‘I’m Winter McQuillen, Mrs. Adams. Most folks call me Win for short.’’

She was so far into the shadows, he couldn’t even tell if she was looking at him as he spoke.

‘‘I’m sorry I frightened you. I just have to talk to you, and it can’t wait till morning.’’

Kora took a step toward the rifle Andrew Adams had left beside the fireplace. She knew it wasn’t loaded, but it was her only weapon.

Winter widened his stance, wishing they were outside. This half-dugout seemed little more than coffin-size. It wasn’t easy to propose twice in as many weeks, but at least now no one was watching. ‘‘I’d like you to hear me out before you answer, Mrs. Adams.’’

‘‘Agreed,’’ she whispered.

‘‘I’ve got a ranch not far from here. Good land with enough grass and water to run all the cattle I can handle. Square in the middle of my land is a house. I’m hardworking, twenty-seven years old, and healthy. Couldn’t swear I never take a drink, but I’ve never downed so much I couldn’t get up at dawn and do a full day’s work.’’

Kora watched him closely. He showed no signs of a man who’d been tilting the bottle, but he was certainly making no sense.

‘‘I’d see that no harm came to you by my hand or by any other.’’ Winter recited the words he’d practiced all the way from town. ‘‘I’ve never gone to church, but if you’ve a need, I’ll do my best to take you every Sunday, weather permitting.’’

Kora began to shake her head. Somehow this cowboy must be mad and think he was talking to another. ‘‘I’m sorry,’’ she whispered, not knowing how else to respond.

‘‘I’d give you whatever you needed. When I’m on a drive, my credit’s good at every store in town.’’ Winter took a step toward her. She couldn’t be turning him down! He wouldn’t lose, not this time. Not when all that had ever mattered to him in years was the ranch, and part of that ranch was the house, his house. He’d sworn years ago after losing his mother to Custer’s butchering never to turn loose of anything that was his ever again.

‘‘Name your price, Mrs. Adams!’’

The hollow click of a gun cocking was his answer. For a second Winter wasn’t sure where it was coming from, then Kora stepped out of the shadows with an ancient weapon in her hand.

‘‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, mister.’’ She tried to keep both her voice and her hands from shaking. ‘‘But I don’t want anything you’re selling. I think you’d better leave.’’

Winter slowly moved his hands to the front of his holster and unbuckled his gunbelt. He propped his foot on a chair by the table and pulled the string holding the weapon against his leg, then lifted the Colt, holster and all, toward her.

‘‘If you’re going to shoot me for asking you to marry me, would you mind using a weapon that will do the job and not some antique that looks like it might blow off your hand if you pulled the trigger?’’

Kora lowered the rifle slightly and took another step forward. ‘‘You’re asking me to marry you?’’

‘‘I am.’’ Winter didn’t take his eyes off the barrel.

‘‘But why? You don’t even know me.’’ Curiosity outweighed fear for the first time.

‘‘I have to have a wife by sunup or lose part of what is mine.’’ He could tell she was intrigued, if not interested in the proposal. ‘‘If you marry me, the house in the middle of my land is yours forever.’’

‘‘I don’t believe in forever,’’ Kora whispered.

‘‘Then stay for six months and I’ll buy it from you. Then you can leave. I won’t try to stop you.’’ A touch of hope made him smile and he slowly began restrapping his gunbelt. ‘‘The place will be yours the minute you’re my wife.’’

Kora tilted her head slightly. ‘‘Is this place large enough so that my brother and sister can live with us?’’

‘‘It is,’’ he answered soberly. If she had a little brother and sister she wanted to bring along, that would be no problem for him. They’d probably be company for her when he was on a long drive. He hadn’t expected a widow to come without baggage.

‘‘And the price at the end of six months? Is the house worth enough to buy three tickets to California?’’

‘‘That and more,’’ Win answered with a raised eyebrow.

Kora laid the gun down on the table between them and pressed her palms against her closed eyes. ‘‘This is insane. I can’t marry you.’’

‘‘Why not?’’ Winter leaned closer.

‘‘I don’t know you. I hadn’t planned to ever marry and even if I did, I’ve another half year of mourning.’’ She couldn’t explain to this stranger how all her life she’d been invisible. No man had ever given her a glance. He’d be sorry within hours.

‘‘Did you know Mr. Adams well when you wed him?’’

‘‘No,’’ Kora admitted. She wasn’t about to go into detail about how she didn’t know Andrew Adams at all. This stranger, or anyone else for that matter, would never understand.