Patricia Hagan Read Online Free PDF

toward her campsite.
    “Where are you going?” he called. “Where do you live?”
    She didn’t turn around. “Never mind. You just go now. Get off my land. I don’t like strangers nosing around.”
    He fell into step beside her in a few long strides. “I never knew a woman who lived in the swamps before. Mind if I come along? I’d like to get to know you better.”
    “Yes, I do mind,” she snapped. “Go away.”
    “I think I like Yankee women better.”
    Holly stopped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    There was a mischievous gleam in his dark eyes. “Well, this is your land, but you aren’t offering me any hospitality. I haven’t eaten since yesterday. I lost my haversack when I tried to cross a lagoon on a log and lost my footing. I don’t know these parts as well as Texas, so I haven’t been able to find any food.”
    Holly smiled. “Some folks eat foxes if they’re hungry enough.”
    “Yeah, but he was such a cute little fellow.”
    They both laughed, and the tension began to drain away. “All right,” she conceded. “Come along and we’ll starve together. I wasted the rest of the daylight on you, and now I don’t have anything to eat, either. But I’ve got firewood and coffee.”
    He followed her through the brush, and she motioned for him to sit down while she got a fire going. When she turned toward him a few moments later, he was gone. Fine, she decided, despite a surge of disappointment. Let him go. She didn’t need him.
    She set the coffeepot to one side of the fire and settled down beneath a tree. This was, she mused, the best time of the evening, when fireflies were beginning to sparkle among the shadows and crickets began their nighttime serenade. The air was cool, and the sky faded from misty purple to charcoal.
    The sound of footsteps crashing through the brush brought her out of her reverie. Quickly she reached for her rifle.
    “Don’t point that thing again,” Scott Colter yelled before he appeared. He stepped into the clearing a moment later, grinning down at her in the fire’s glow.
    She gasped as she saw the two dead rabbits. “Where did you—”
    “I’d already made camp up the river a ways. I had to decide whether you were worthy to share my supper before I offered it.”
    Holly laughed. It was a good, warm feeling. “So you’ve decided I’m worthy?”
    “As long as you watch your language.”
    She knew he was serious despite his manner, and although she was the first to admit that she overdid the swearing sometimes, she’d picked it up from Grandpa and it didn’t really bother her. But it did bother him. “Okay. I promise to be nice.”
    He set about skinning and cleaning the rabbits, and she asked, “How long will you be around here?”
    “Two or three days. Isn’t it my turn to ask a few questions?”
    Warily, she nodded. “I suppose.”
    “To start with,” he gave her a brief glance. “Why are you still fighting the war?”
    She picked up a stick and began to draw random patterns in the dirt. It was none of his business. Why should she pour out her feelings to a stranger? On the other hand, who else did she have to talk to? Maybe a stranger was just what she needed.
    She began to talk, telling him, little by little, everything. When she talked about the devastation of Magnolia Hall, tears began. By the time she told of Grandpa’s death, she was crying freely.
    Pausing to take a deep breath, she then gave him a long, searching look. “It’s over now,” she said. “I can’t forgive and I can’t forget. It’s best I stay out here and make a life for myself away from all the reminders.”
    He was silent. He placed the rabbits on a spit and then came and sat down beside her. “I think,” he said finally, “you’re doing yourself a grave injustice, hiding like this. You’re denying yourself any chance for a normal life. What about getting married, having a family?”
    Coldly, she said, “My mother tells me Vicksburg is now filled with