Summer Breeze Read Online Free PDF Page A

was done to a turn by the time the cobbler was ready for the oven. While the dessert baked, she sat at the dining table to resume reading
    The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a fascinating novel that was, in her opinion, every bit as good as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, heretofore her favorite— except, of course, for Jane Eyre and Little Women.
    Dimpling her cheek with a forefinger, Rachel searched for her place on the marked page, and within seconds she was transported to the damp banks of the Mississippi, the blackness of night closing around her with only the light from Jim's lantern to penetrate the darkness.
    Some minutes later, the smell of the cobbler jerked Rachel back to the present. "Consternation!"
    She leaped up and ran to the stove, praying with every breath that she hadn't burned the dessert.
    Grabbing a cloth to protect her hand, she hurriedly drew the pan from the oven and sighed with relief when she saw that it hadn't scorched.
    "Praise the Lord, " she said. "When will I learn not to read while I'm baking?"
    After adjusting the stove damper, she dusted her hands. En route back to the table, she glanced at the wall clock. Five after six. It wasn't like Darby to be late. She wondered if Poncho, his old buckskin gelding, had gone lame again. Rachel hoped not. Darby fussed over that horse as if it were a child.
    Resuming her seat, Rachel found her place in the book, wishing as she started to read that she were actually there on the island with Jim and Huck. The thought no sooner took hold than she scoffed at herself. If she couldn't step out onto her own porch without succumbing to mindless fright, how could she
    belfry. But this went beyond crazy. The woman lived in a hidey-hole, cut off from the world.
    Studying the modified rear exterior of the house, Joseph heard rather than saw David coming abreast of him. The back door looked to be four inches thick, constructed of oak planks that only a battering ram might penetrate. To the left of the door, next to a boarded~up window, a large iron wood box had been set into the wall. Joseph had a similar setup at his place, a wood safe that could be filled from the outside and opened from inside the kitchen. He guessed that Darby normally kept the box stocked so Miss Hollis-ter never had to venture outdoors for firewood.
    Hoping that they might be invited in out of the cold, Joseph stomped his boots clean on the porch as David mounted the steps behind him. When they stood shoulder to shoulder before the door, Joseph glanced at his brother before raising his fist to knock.
    When Rachel heard footsteps on the porch, she closed her book, thinking Darby had returned.
    She almost parted company with her skin when someone started pounding on the door. Not Darby. He only ever rapped on the iron wood safe to let her know he was home.
    "Miss Hollister?" a man called out.
    Rachel leaped up from the chair and fell back a step. No one ever came to call on her anymore.
    Her last visitor had been Doc Halloway, and that had been well over four years ago.
    "Wh-who is it?" she asked in a voice gone thin with anxiety.
    "Joseph Paxton, your neighbor, " the deep voice replied. "I own the spread just south of here. "
    Rachel vaguely recalled Darby's telling her that someone had bought the land due south of her ranch, but the name Paxton didn't ring a bell. She whirled and ran for the gun case that stood between her night table and the armoire. Her hand went straight for the Colt breechloader, a 10-gauge shotgun with shortened barrels that Darby claimed would stop an enraged grizzly dead in its tracks. At close range, all you had to do was point and pull both triggers. Rachel had no desire to shoot anyone, but it only seemed prudent to have the weapon ready, just in case.
    Muscles jerking with fear, she spilled a few shells from the ammunition drawer when she jerked it open. Hurry, hurry. She broke open the shotgun barrels, shoved a cartridge into each chamber, and snapped the weapon closed