Saviours of Oestend Oestend 2 Read Online Free PDF

he thought of it. The Austin house. The Austin ranch. The big sign over the far gate still had the Austin brand on it, as well as the Austin name.
It wasn’t really Dante’s ranch, any more than the BarChi had been. It sure as hell didn’t feel like home.
Well , he thought with a sigh, maybe it does . He hadn’t ever been needed back home, and he was hardly needed here either. He’d never been needed anywhere, and the only person who’d ever really wanted him at all had been Daisy. Too bad he hadn’t been able to return the favour.
* * * *
    Cami wasn’t in the kitchen. The room itself smelt heavenly, in a way it hadn’t since he’d taken over the ranch. A thick vegetable stew simmered over the fire, and balls of dough sat rising on the counter, so fat and round and tempting Dante had to still his hand from reaching out to pinch them as he’d done when he was a boy. He wondered if Cami would smack his hand with a spoon the way Olsa had.
    “Shit,” he grumbled to the empty room. “I’ll have to thank Aren for sending her.” The idea irked him immensely. Yes, Aren had sent Cami. But Aren had Deacon. No matter how well she cooked, it hardly seemed like a fair trade. Dante would have swapped places with the boy in heartbeat, if only Deacon would have had him.
    He found Cami on the stairs, trying to manoeuvre an oversized chair he knew had come from her bedroom down the stairway by herself. The passage was narrow, with a ninety-degree turn at the midpoint landing, and she’d somehow managed to wedge the chair in sideways, right where the stairs turned. No matter how much she tugged, it didn’t seem inclined to move.
    “Why didn’t you get one of the men to do that for you?” he asked, as he moved up the stairs to take the chair.
She looked a bit frazzled, her hair flying loose all around her head. Her cheeks were flushed. She stood up and wiped her hand across her brow. “I’m not helpless.”
“I didn’t say you were. I asked why you didn’t ask for help.”
“Everybody else was busy. I didn’t want to be a bother.”
“I was raised on the BarChi,” he told her as he grabbed the chair and began to try to yank it free. “It may be true that women had their chores and men had others, and they rarely overlapped, but you better believe if one of those gals needed something, all she had to do was ask. The hands are hired to work. Whether that means working for the ranch owner or working for the wives, it makes no difference.”
“I’m not your wife.”
“You’re missing my point by about a mile.” The chair finally came free, and Dante dragged it to the bottom of the stairs. “Where the hell you want it now?”
“Outside, on the front porch.”
Why in the world did she think anybody would want to sit on the porch? It wasn’t as if they’d be having a nice glass of ice tea or a cool mint julep anytime soon. “You have any idea how cold it is out there?”
She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head back and to the side, the same way Tama always had when he’d challenged her. “You want me to fix the smell or not?”
He knew better than to argue with a woman when she gave him that look. He took the chair to the porch as instructed. The chair from his own room was already there.
“Are there more?” he asked.
She shook her head. “The others are just wood. It’s the upholstery on these that’s holding the smell. I’ll put some saleratus on them and let it sit for a while. That’ll help.”
“Saleratus? I thought that was for stomach aches. And baking.”
“It helps with odours, too.”
“How do you know that?”
Her gaze slid away from his, and she pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands and hugged her stomach. “Everybody knows that,” she said. He recognised evasiveness when he saw it. Interesting that such a simple question would make her feel threatened. “At any rate, I’ll take the curtains down and launder them in it too eventually, but”—she gestured out