Steel Heart (Historical Western Romance) (Longren Family series #2, Chloe and Matthew's story) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Hastings, whose parents rivaled the Mackays in wealth and who didn't lose their fortune when the mines started to play out.  I'd left him again just before Maggie came to town, when Jason Seth was on the rampage because Matthew had been seeing his sister, Elizabeth Seth.  Elizabeth Seth was a rival.  Tall and strong, with auburn hair, she was utterly beautiful.  But every time Matthew strayed from me, he came back.  Every time, he apologized.  Every time, he left the other girl.  Every time.  Except with Elizabeth Seth.  Because that time, when he came back to me, she came along too.
                  Not invited, of course.  She came crying and clinging, threatening and sobbing, and it didn't end, not completely, because Matthew was flattered by her hysterics.  It didn't completely end between them until Jason Seth shot Matthew.
                  Men rarely feel the same about a girl after her brother shoots them.
                  And then there was Violet. 
                  Pacing.  Violet was the problem tonight, but Elizabeth kept coming to mind.  Elizabeth, and her brother, Jason Seth.  He'd shot Matthew once because of Elizabeth.  Now that Matthew was with me again, could he have tried to burn The Faro Queen and kill me?
                  Only, it wasn't his face I'd seen.  I was sure of it.  Jason Seth had red hair and a heavier build than the man who'd hit me.  But he'd already shot Matthew and bought out the Longren brothers' interest in the Silver Sky Mine.  He'd tried to foreclose on Hutch's house but investments their parents had made had saved the house and Matthew had bought Hutch's house when Hutch and Maggie moved to Virginia City.
                  Bought it for us.
                  If there was going to be an us.
                  I paced away from the window.  Moonlight and fallen snow meant it was still nearly bright as day out there.  The snowfall had stopped and now tracks remained in the street where horses, people and wagons had passed.  There were still men on the streets, a few with women on their arms.  It was early yet, not quite gone on nine, and truly, I was too restless to sleep despite, or because of, the events of the day.  My head still ached miserably, though, and my heart was beginning to as well.
                  In the hallway outside the room I'd taken, a grandfather clock struck the hour.  Not gone on nine yet?  It was seven.  Maggie and Hutch probably hadn't eaten yet.  She'd only left a little while ago. 
                  Abruptly, I threw off the quilt and turned down the lamp, found the key to my room and checked my appearance in the glass. I didn't want to be alone anymore.  I'd go join them.  If they'd eaten, maybe they'd loan me use of the kitchen.  I'd make eggs, one of the few things I could safely create in a kitchen.  Or chicken.  Or maybe something I could chop viciously with a sharp knife.  I just didn't want to be alone with my thoughts anymore.  Wherever Matthew was, he'd have a shock when he came back.  I'd get answers or end it again.  Again.  Maybe this time for good.  I saw Hutch and Maggie together.  They were happy, they worked together, they stayed together, even after Maggie's work as a midwife dragged back all Hutch's memories of his first wife dying in child bed, they'd found each other.
                  Matthew.  Matthew was firecrackers and lightning and wildfires—and too many nights like this one.
                  Maybe he was out asking questions of the Sheriff.  Maybe he was looking for tracks that likely had been snowed under.  I absolutely wouldn't worry that something had happened to him, there'd been too many days and nights worrying about that, only to have him turn up again, bad penny safe and sound.
                  I yanked the door to the room