Widow Woman Read Online Free PDF

sideways, no longer caught between the horse and the man.
    "You had him since a foal?"
    She suspected he already knew the answer. Bunkhouse conversation would have filled him in quickly enough on the outlines of her life and her notions about breeding cow ponies. She pushed aside thoughts of what else he might have heard. Or what he might have said.
    "Yes. But that's not what—"
    "Can't breed one stallion. Bloodlines'll get too narrow."
    She tried to make out his face in the filtering darkness. She couldn't from the distance she'd put between them, and finally took a step forward.
    "You know about breeding?"
    "Some."
    That was how he'd answered Shag's question about cattle. She suspected this was an equal understatement.
    "I'm using other studs besides Warrior.” Hearing his name, the horse stretched his neck for another rub. She stepped in to give the required caress, also cutting her distance from Nick Dusaq. Beyond the familiar smells of horse and hay and barn, she caught a faint scent that must have been the man. Leather and clean sweat on cotton and sunshine-soaked skin. Pa smelled like that. “I trade with other folks around who're interested in raising cow ponies."
    "Been interested long?"
    She smiled, lulled by his neutral tone and her memories.
    "All my life. Mama used to chase me out of the barn or in from the range long enough to teach me lessons and give me lectures on behaving like a lady. She'd wrinkle her nose and say no matter what she did, I smelled too much like a horse to ever be mistaken for a lady. Then she'd laugh and hug me. Then after...” She heard her own quick sigh as the memories turned painful. “She died when I was thirteen. Pa didn't have the heart to spend much time in the house with Mama gone. I helped him run the Circle T. Until—"
    What am I doing? With something near horror, Rachel stared at the dark, still man before her. She couldn't believe how much she'd told this stranger. And how much more she'd been on the verge of telling him. Far more than bunkhouse talk ever would divulge, because the only people alive who knew the rights of it were her, Shag and Ruth. “I'm sorry,” she said stiffly. “I had no call to run on like that."
    He hitched one shoulder in a brief shrug. “Folks need to talk sometimes."
    "You don't.” She instantly regretted that.
    To her amazement, the lines around his mouth slowly lifted, his lips turned up and a slash of white appeared as Nick Dusaq grinned. It wrought a devastating change to his face, charming and inviting. She stared at him, with just enough presence of mind to keep from gaping.
    "I'm not most folks,” he said, amusement in his voice. Then, as slowly as it had come, the grin vanished until his face settled into its incommunicative mold. “And some things don't need saying."
    No telling what he had in mind, but she had something that did need saying. Or she'd jump right out of her skin before another sundown with Nick Dusaq around.
    "Well,” she started, briskly if unoriginally, “what I wanted to talk to you about, Mr. Dusaq—"
    "Nick."
    "Uh, Nick ... What I want to make clear is that whatever contact—no, I mean ... uh, encounter. Whatever encounter might have taken place between us before our hiring you, well, that was before.” She darted a glance at him. “And..."
    Her words faded as a longer look confirmed what the glance had gathered. He wore not a hint of expression.
    That irked her. Without stopping to consider why it irked her or if she wanted a reaction, she demanded, “You do remember encountering me at Jasper Pond, don't you?"
    "Yes."
    Pa had once shown her a hot spring in the dead of winter, edged with a skin of ice. If you pushed your hand below the layer of ice, the water steamed your fingers red in no time. That was what his single word reminded her of. Heat—dangerous heat—under ice.
    She swallowed, and sought the protection of words. “Well, that was before you came here and hired on. Not that it was