Candace McCarthy Read Online Free PDF Page B

here to trade once a month or so?” she asked.
    Jack shrugged his shoulders. “Few trappers, some Indians, and a couple of soldiers.”
    Amelia saw a gleam in his eyes. “You’re teasing me.”
    “Just a little.”
    “A lot,” she insisted.
    He grinned. “All right. A lot.” He pushed her gathered items in a pile on one side of the counter. “What else do you need?”
    She gave Jack her list, and he helped her select all the necessary items. After she settled up, he assisted her in carrying the goods out to the wagon.
    “Thank you, Mr. Keller,” she said.
    He smiled. “You are very welcome, Miss Dempsey.”
    Amelia became aware of Daniel Trahern watching from the open door to his shop across the road. Her heart beat a rapid tattoo as she looked at him, then glanced quickly away. She sensed his continued stare as Jack helped her climb up onto the wagon seat and as she drove the vehicle away.
    She glanced back once, saw that he was still watching her, and felt a warm fluttering in the pit of her stomach.
    What was it about the man that made her feel as awkward as a young girl?
    She scowled. It was a certainty that she and Daniel would cross paths again. There would be other encounters. How could there not be when the comforts of life depended on the tools and other metal objects of necessity that he alone in this wilderness created?
    She drove the vehicle into the forest and tried to appreciate the beauty of her surroundings, but her mind keptreturning to Daniel Trahern and how uncomfortable he’d made her feel. There was one item on her list she hadn’t gotten. A small medical instrument for her father, one that only a blacksmith could make.
    What excuse could she give her father if she returned to the mission without at least having ordered one made? That Daniel Trahern made her so nervous that she avoided him like the plague?
    Amelia pulled on the reins to stop the horse. Then she steered the wagon back to Trahern’s Blacksmithy. She wasn’t going to let the man intimidate her! He was only a man after all.
    A disturbing man, she thought. An attractive man.
    Thomas Kertell came out from behind a copse of trees and cut off the wagon, making Amelia draw back on the reins to stop it. His abrupt appearance frightened her horse, and it took a few minutes for Amelia to calm the animal.
    The filthy man was grinning at her when she’d finally gotten the horse under control.
    Amelia eyed Kertell warily. “You could have caused an injury! What do you want, Mr. Kertell?”
    The fur trapper beamed at her. “You know who I am. You must’ve been askin’ ‘bout me.”
    She shook her head. “I didn’t ask. Jack Keller told me.”
    The man’s tiny eyes narrowed. “What’d he have to say?”
    “Just that you’re a fur trapper.”
    He nodded. “A damn good one, too.”
    “That’s nice,” she said. “Now if you’ll move your horse, so I can get through, I’d appreciate it.”
    Kertell’s smile revealed missing and black teeth. “How much?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “I want to know how you’re gonna show your appreciation if I let you through?”
    She scowled at him. “Let us not play games. Please move, so I can continue.”
    His grin faltered. “In a bit. I thought maybe you and me can get better acquainted.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t have time. There are people waiting for me at the mission.”
    He refused to move. “Why you heading back to the post then? Forget something at Jack’s?”
    “At Daniel Trahern’s,” she answered calmly, although her heart had picked up its pace and her stomach was beginning to burn with apprehension. “Let me pass, Kertell.”
    He shook his head as he nudged his mount closer to the wagon.
    “If you don’t move, I’ll have to run you down.” Her hands shook on the reins, but Amelia knew she would do it if she had to. It was a matter of survival—hers.
    The fur trapper blinked with surprise, then his lips curved into a slow smile of delight. “So