Tried and True (Wild at Heart Book #1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

almost smacked Aaron in the face, which would have suited her just fine. “I will be gone. Long! Gone! Completely and forever gone from this stupid homestead. I’ll be living back East in a civilized city, wearing pretty dresses and not having to fight for every bite of food I eat. I hate it here!”
    “It isn’t that long,” Aaron yelled right back. “You can put in two additional years. That’s what an honest, decent person would do.”
    Oh, she really was going to punch him. “Stop saying I’m not honest and decent.”
    He leaned toward her. “Well, I don’t know about decency.Walking around in those britches isn’t what I’d call decent. But you can’t even pretend like you’re honest. Now settle down and be reasonable about how we can solve this. I’m offering to bend the rules mighty hard to help you keep this land.”
    “You aren’t allowing me to use my years of service. How is that helping?”
    “It ignores the fact that your claim is fraudulent, which keeps you from getting tossed off your land and forbidden from homesteading anywhere else in the whole United States of America. Not to mention it’ll give you the excuse you need to cast aside those shameful britches. I think that’s a mighty big help.”
    “I told you—”

    A rumble sounded from the dusky woods, the sound of hooves . . . a lot of them.
    Aaron jumped up, and Kylie did the same. He heard tree limbs snapping, a shout. He whirled to face the trail he’d ridden in on, shoved Kylie behind him, and drew his Colt in a single motion.
    Kylie pressed close to his back. She must’ve been standing on her tiptoes and peeking over his shoulder, because she said in his ear, “What is it?”
    Aaron almost forgot those rumbling hooves, as Kylie Wilde’s warm breath on his ear was a powerful distraction.
    Only almost.
    He’d learned to be a mighty cautious man in the war, and his skills had only sharpened since he’d set out across thecontinent. He’d never carried a gun back home in Virginia. Now he never went out of his boardinghouse unarmed.
    Another shout.
    “A lot of western men, even evil ones, will treat a woman decent. But if they see you wearing trousers, they might think you’re no better than you ought to be.”
    “I’ll put my hair up under my hat again and just be Kyle,” she whispered, and Aaron almost turned around to drag her into his arms.
    “That’s a half-witted idea if ever I heard one. It would take an idiot, and a blind one at that, to believe for more than a few minutes that you’re a man.” A whip cracked from the forest, followed by a man shouting words Aaron couldn’t make out.
    “I tricked the entire Union Army for two years.”
    Another shout was closer still.
    “Get inside. Get a dress on. And wash your face!” He could see now that she’d deliberately smeared dirt on her face as part of her disguise.
    Yet another shout sounded so close, Aaron knew whoever was coming would be here in a matter of seconds. “A dress just might save your life.”
    Aaron had commanded men in the war, and apparently Kylie had been commanded, because she snapped to it.
    The door clicked shut behind him. He spotted Kylie’s Sharps rifle leaning against the porch railing and grabbed it. The cold, heavy iron felt good in his hand.
    A desert-brown longhorn steer burst from the edge of the woods into the clearing. It bawled as it charged for the pond beside the house, trampling over Kylie’s rocks and flowers. A second longhorn was right behind it, then fivemore, then too many to count, all crashing and kicking up their heels as they raced toward the water. Dust kicked up until Aaron was breathing in grit. The mooing and thudding of hooves were deafening in the choking dust.
    Through the haze he saw the rock garden and flowers destroyed under the pounding hooves. A bull veered straight for Aaron, deflected from getting a drink by the charging mass of cattle. The bull looked to be coming up the steps, through Aaron and