Dorothy Clark Read Online Free PDF Page A

at her skirts. A door banged. Banged again. Her grandfather tensed. She looked up.
    “Stable...door.” A frown knit his gray brows together. “Wind break...it.”
    “I’ll go close it, Poppa.” She rose and shook out her long skirts.
    “Lightning...”
    She pushed out a small laugh and shook her head. “I’m not afraid of thunderstorms anymore.” It isn’t nature that hurts you, it’s men. “I’ll be right back.” She lifted her hems and ran down the steps, veered left onto the path that led to the stable. The wind blew her skirts against her legs. Raindrops spattered on her hair and shoulders, chilled her bowed neck.
    She grabbed hold of the stable door with both hands and tugged with all of her strength to pull it closed against the rising force of the wind. It moved after a momentary lull, and she planted her feet and backed toward the gaping stable doorway, hauling the big, heavy door with her.
    Lightning snapped, sizzling to the earth in a yellow streak. Sulfur stung her nose. Thunder clapped and the rain came—a wild, stinging deluge driven by the wind that snatched the door from her grasp. “Oh!” She ducked her head and jumped inside.
    Raindrops drummed on the shakes overhead. The wind whistled across the open doorway and banged the door back against the building again. She stared in dismay at the heavy fall of water pouring off the roof to splash against the ground and tried to work up enough courage to go out and try again to drag that heavy door closed. And then it didn’t matter.
    A large figure loomed in the opening, then pulled the door closed, shutting out the splashing curtain of water. Lightning flashed through the windows in a watery shimmer, shone on the rain-slick rubber jacket and glittered on the wet, black beard and dark gray eyes of Cole Aylward.

Chapter Four
    I ce spilled down her spine, flowed into her arms and legs and froze her in place. Sadie stared at Cole Aylward, saw the image that haunted her nights. His black beard bobbed and his lips moved, but no words penetrated the glacial wall of fear.
    “Did you hear me, Miss Spencer? Your poppa sent me to bring you to the house.”
    His raised voice crumbled the ice, broke through her numbed senses. Poppa? How dare he use her pet name for her grandfather! A quaking took her, so strong, so furious in intensity her long skirts shook. “Don’t you call him that!”
    “Look, Miss Spencer—” He took a step toward her. A towering shadow in the dim light.
    She gasped and jerked back, her spurt of defiance dead.
    He jolted to a halt and a heavy breath escaped him.
    Light flashed on something in his hand. She caught a glimpse of a knob on the object he held before he turned and leaned it against the wall, shrugged out of his rubber jacket and tossed it on top of a nearby feed chest.
    No, Almighty God, no! Not again. Her heart thudded. She stared at his hands, raised hers to cover her arms where his brother’s hard fingers had dug into her flesh as he threw her to the ground. Memory froze her lungs. A prickly warmth flooded her body, and the room swam in a slow, sickening circle, the edges turning dark, closing in.
    Lightning snapped, startled her from the encroaching darkness. Thunder shook the building and rattled the windowpanes. She shook her head to clear away the fuzziness, forced strength into her quivering legs and edged backward, not daring to take her gaze off Cole.
    “I came back because the storm worsened and I wanted to get Manning inside before he got soaked by the driving rain. He sent me after you—told me to tell you your poppa had sent me so you wouldn’t be frightened. That was his word, not mine.”
    Did he think her a fool? If that were true, why would he remove his rain jacket? She needed a weapon. Something. Anything! She stretched her right hand backward, groped through the space behind her.
    “Obviously, that didn’t work.” He turned toward her, lifted his hands.
    She whirled to run, spotted a hay fork