Mountain Heiress: Mountain Midwife Read Online Free PDF

experience was nothing compared to Charlotte’s abject loneliness.
    Gently, Gabby stroked her back. The girl was so thin that her ribs stuck out. She felt as delicate as a baby bird. Looking past Charlotte’s shoulder, Gabby saw Zach watching them from the porch. His expression was oddly gentle, and he almost seemed to be smiling.
    “It’s okay,” Gabby murmured. “We’re going to take care of each other. Do you think you can stay here with me?”
    “Yes,” Charlotte said quickly. She broke away from the hug, sniffled and looked Gabby in the eye. “I’m really glad I didn’t shoot you.”
    It went without saying that Gabby was also happy about that outcome. “We need to talk about that gun.”
    With her sleeve, Charlotte wiped the moisture from her cheeks in a gesture that couldn’t have been less feminine. “I need the rifle. There are these guys who are trying to break into the house. Treasure hunters.”
    “But I’m here now,” Gabby said. “Nobody will try to break in with both of us here.”
    “What if they do?”
    “We call the police.”
    “It’ll take them at least a half hour to get here.”
    She hadn’t thought of the timing. Living at the end of a rutted road without street signs was different than being in Brooklyn. “I don’t like guns.”
    “Because you don’t know how to use them,” Zach said. “If you’re going to live here, you need to learn how to defend yourself and your property.”
    “Zach can show you,” Charlotte said. “He’s a really good teacher. Maybe tomorrow you can have a lesson.”
    “Great,” she muttered. “Until then, can we at least put the gun away somewhere? Leaving it on the stair landing seems dangerous.”
    “Yes, it does.” Zach gave Charlotte a puzzled look. “Have you got an explanation?”
    “I couldn’t sleep, and I was going upstairs and then back downstairs. If I was all the way down in the kitchen, my rifle wasn’t going to do me much good if it was up in my bedroom closet. So I left it in the middle.”
    “You know better,” he said. “You don’t leave a loaded weapon out where anybody could pick it up and use it.”
    She scowled. “I know.”
    “Gabby could have stumbled over the rifle and caused an accident.”
    “I get it.” Charlotte rolled her eyes. “It’s lucky that both Gabby and me are going to be staying here. If you put the two of us together, you have one smart person.”
    Before Gabby could object to being labeled as Tweedle-Dee to Charlotte’s Tweedle-Dum, she heard a confirming woof. On the porch, sitting beside her pile of belongings, was a black-and-white dog with pointed ears. One eye was blue and the other brown. The dog seemed to be grinning at them. “Daphne?”
    “What’s she doing here?” Zach asked.
    Charlotte went to the dog and scratched behind her ears. “Right after Gabby took off, Daphne showed up and started following me. She hasn’t let me out of her sight. It feels like she’s herding me.”
    “Keeping you safe.” Zach looked over his shoulder, scanning the darkness that surrounded the house. “Daphne senses things we don’t see.”
    A psychic collie? Gabby would have laughed if she hadn’t felt a prickling on the back of her neck. She didn’t want to think about the coyotes and other possible dangers that Daphne might be seeing with her two-colored eyes.
    * * *
    A BOUT A MILE from the front porch of the Roost, a man in black crouched beside a fence post and peered through the night vision scope mounted on his rifle. He wanted a better look at the new girl. In spite of the three times magnification, he couldn’t make out details at this distance. She was taller than average and kind of clumsy in the way she walked. And she was a hugger. When she’d wrapped her arms around Charlotte, a flicker of envy had gone through him. He’d been keeping an eye on sweet little Charlotte for the past month and had developed an interest in her, even though the girl was as plain as a female