Never Love a Lawman Read Online Free PDF Page B

realized he was just filling her appalled silence. He knew very well where she got her water. She simply averted her eyes and stepped slightly ahead of him to lead the way.
    Apologizing should not be so difficult, she thought. She went over what she’d done and couldn’t find a single moment where she conceived the plan to injure him. There was no premeditation, only reaction. Should she apologize for that? Didn’t he bear some responsibility for provoking her?
    “I didn’t mean to scare you,” Wyatt said.
    “You didn’t scare me.”
    “Oh,” he said. “I thought I might have.”
    Rachel stopped in her tracks so sharply that Wyatt bumped her from behind with the bucket. She turned just enough to catch his eye and set her gaze stubbornly on him. “We both know I lied. And you lied by pretending to believe me. I don’t think you meant to frighten me, but you saw what happens when you do. That should serve as warning enough, and if it doesn’t, you’ll have to be quicker on your feet because the next time I will replace your head with my bucket.”
    Wyatt considered that. After a moment, he said, “It’s my bucket now, but it still seems fair enough.”
    “Good.” She gave him her back and continued along the flagstone path. It bothered her to have him a step behind her where his view would be the rigid brace of her shoulders and the steely set of her spine. There was no chance that she could relax with him so close. He wasn’t always physically imposing, but he held himself in a way that others took notice of him, even when he was slouched in a chair outside his office with his long legs stretched lazily against the porch post. People actually walked around him, sometimes stepping into ankle-deep mud on the street rather than disturb his contemplative posing, or—and this was far more likely in Rachel’s opinion—his nap.
    She couldn’t believe that he was unaware of people cautiously trooping around him. She thought it was possible that he was secretly amused by it, and in truth, so was she—a little. It was her practice to take the opposite side of the street as soon as she saw him tilted back in his chair. There was no point in surreptitious skulking when she could give him a wide berth.
    She couldn’t do that now without giving herself away. It was one thing for him to know his unexpected leap had alarmed her, another thing entirely to let him see how his continued presence disturbed her. She slowed her step and gave him the opportunity to fall in beside her. They were almost upon the spring, and she still didn’t know the precise reason for his visit. In fifteen months, he’d never called on her. It seemed extraordinary that he would ever choose to do so.
    Rachel held out her hand, expecting to receive the bucket. Instead, Wyatt Cooper placed the folded paper in her hand.
    “I’ll get the water,” he said.
    Rachel watched him step onto the wooden platform that had been built to make the spring more accessible. He walked to the edge, bent, and placed the bucket under the wooden tap that had been carefully fitted into the hillside to direct the spring. It only took moments for the bucket to fill. Rachel had not yet begun to open the letter.
    She was aware that he was waiting patiently, and somehow that made it more difficult, not easier. She kept her head down, made a delaying gesture of tucking a wind-whipped strand of hair behind her ear, then took a steadying breath and unfolded the paper.
    Rachel recognized Mr. Showalter’s handwriting. She’d only ever received a few messages via the telegraph, but it was enough to be familiar with his careful block lettering. It was his job to translate the electric pulses that he heard as dots and dashes into words that could be understood by everyone.
    CLINTON MADDOX DEAD STOP C & C CONTROL TO FOSTER STOP
    Not many words. Only the first three mattered to Rachel. She carefully refolded the paper but didn’t surrender it. She couldn’t think what she