Sweet Boundless Read Online Free PDF Page A

separate, was not the time. Carina stopped walking and looked around her.
    Directly behind the hot springs cave, the creek ran through a small copse of spindly pines. All the rest of the slopes around Crystal were denuded and scarred, studded with stumps and mine workings. Above and below her, along the creek on both sides, were tents and shacks and all the ragged trappings of greedy humanity.
    But she no longer judged. They were all doing the best they could. With a sigh, she left the creek and headed back toward the little house she now claimed as her own. It was true she had purchased it from a fraudulent advertisement that had made it all the way to Sonoma, California. But she had purchased it in full. She had a legal right.
    She pulled open the door to her house. She would have to get a key made, since Walter Carruther had stolen hers and she had no idea what had happened to it. The bed had been delivered and assembled, the feather mattress an extravagance she granted herself. It had been so long since she’d slept on anything soft. The blankets were folded at the foot. Whomever Mr. Fisher had sent was diligent.
    The table stood near the wall to her right, and the two chairs looked ready for use. Again she wondered if Quillan would come. Then she wondered if he’d come already and found her gone. What if she had missed him? The thought threw her into a flurry of concern.
    She dashed through the door and rushed across the yard to Mae’s back door. It, too, was new, replaced after the vigilantes axed it down in search of her. Carina yanked it open, then stopped and calmed herself. She was Carina Maria DiGratia Shepard. She could walk.
    She heard his voice. In Mae’s parlor. Mae responded and they laughed. If Quillan was laughing, maybe he had worked out his grief, his anger, his disdain. She stopped outside the door to Mae’s rooms. It was open a crack, and she could see him. Heat washed into her belly.
    He stood with a day’s worth of beard on his chin and his mane of hair tamed with a leather thong at the base of his skull. Did he know how like Wolf he seemed? Or at least her image of Wolf from the descriptions she heard and read. Was it a desire to imitate the father he never knew? Not likely, not with the hatred he felt for him.
    Quillan’s blue woolen shirt and canvas pants were clean, the leather brogans almost new. He didn’t look like a man just off the road. Had he changed and washed for her? Carina’s heart leaped, and she tried unsuccessfully to contain her excitement.
    “I told him to think twice before he knocked heads with me.” Mae poked her head with a plump finger.
    Quillan smiled, and Carina’s chest tightened. It amazed her how his smile transformed his face, the hard lines and planes softening, inviting.
    “He’d have to know you to fully appreciate the threat.”
    Mae released her belly laugh. “He caught enough to back off.”
    Carina touched the door with her fingertips and it swung quietly. Quillan turned, and his smile changed, not in magnitude but character. It became his pirate smile, the rogue smile he kept only for her. He dipped his head slightly, all the while holding her mute with his charcoal-rimmed stormy eyes.
    Her throat ached with unspoken words. What could she say? She should have thought before she pushed open the door, but her hand had reached out of its own volition. Betraying her.
    “Well, don’t just stand there.” Mae walked over and swept her in.
    She came to a stop before her husband, whose eyes hadn’t left her. She felt so small, her five feet four inches hardly significant before his almost six feet that seemed more somehow. Yet she was determined to speak first. “You’re back.” She was pleased her voice held steady. If he guessed the tumult inside, at least she didn’t show it.
    “Briefly.” He dispensed with the smile and became again the man with the silent purpose she’d met on the road. “I understand you’re moving out.”
    Well. Her