Elizabeth Lane Read Online Free PDF

anything.”
    “Don’t refuse my offer right away. Take a few days to mull it over. Look at the town. Think about the life you could have here.”
    “Varina—”
    “Think about it. That’s all I’m asking….” Her voice floated wispily away from him as she closed her eyes. Within seconds, she was asleep, the baby snuggled alongside her ribs and Samuel curled at her feet.
    Donovan sighed as he rehung the quilt around the bed to shield them from drafts. When it came to muleheadedness, no one could match Varina. He’d learned that much years ago, when he’d tried to talk her out of marrying Charlie Sutton. Now, when he only wanted to help, he had run headlong into that very same stubborn streak.
    Varina, he realized, would never agree to leave Miner’s Gulch. She would cling to this land until her life slowly rotted away. Her girls would marry worthless dreamers like their father; and as for young Samuel and little Charles Donovan, there’d be no future for them here. They would break themselves in the search for gold or end up on the wrong side of the law.
    No! Donovan could not let such things happen to his only living kinfolk. Building his own life in a forsaken hole like Miner’s Gulch was out of the question. But he could stay here for a few weeks at least, long enough to make some badly needed improvements on the cabin, and maybe hire a good man to work Varina’s claim. Then, when he got back to Kansas, he could open a bank account for the education of his nieces and nephews. He owed that much to his parents’ memory. He owed it to Virgil’s.
    And—Donovan’s jaw clenched as he remembered—he owed something else to Virgil’s memory, as well. He stalked out onto the porch and glowered down the slope in the direction of the town, where, at this very moment, the most treacherous woman he’d ever known was schooling his nieces.
    Even if he could forgive Lydia Taggart, he could not condone her presence here. Not when she was exerting such a strong influence on Varina and on her innocent young daughters. He could just imagine the lessons Annie and Katy would learn as they grew up under her tutelage—how to flirt, how to deceive, how to betray…
    Whatever it took, he vowed, he would get Lydia, or Sarah, or whatever the devil her real name was, out of Miner’s Gulch.
    Striding out into the yard, he wrenched the ax from the chopping block and resumed his frenzied assault on the logs. Every blow called back another memory—Lydia, glancing up at him over the rim of her wineglass, her silver eyes meeting his, then darting swiftly back to Virgil; Lydia, laughing like a little girl as Virgil pushed her in the backyard swing; Lydia, waltzing around the ballroom floor, skirts swirling like a froth of peony petals below the tiny stem of her waist.
    If she had not been Virgil’s girl…
    Donovan slammed the ax into the sweet-smelling pine. Chips as white as a woman’s skin flew around him as he drove the blade home again and again.
    He would get rid of her, he swore. Whatever it took, he would see her gone.
    Whatever it took.
    Miner’s Gulch had sprouted amid the gold boom of the late 1850s. In its heyday, the population had soared to nearly a thousand, but most of the people were gone now. Less than two hundred souls remained, clinging to the played-out claims that dotted the slopes of the steep ravine.Of those who hung on, a few still dreamed of finding that elusive strike. Most, however, had long since given up. They stayed because they were too poor to pull up roots and start over, or because they had no other place to go.
    Donovan walked the two-mile trail that meandered down the slope between Varina’s place and the main part of town. By now it was midday. Warmed by the sun, the snow was melting fast. Water dripped from the bare aspen branches, turning the pathway to slush beneath his boots. Not that Donovan was paying much attention. His mind was black with thoughts of the coming confrontation with Sarah