she stepped off the porch and wandered across the yard toward the corral. Waiting there, just beyond the fence, was her single true friend in this place—the one friend who had no need for lies.
“Xavier!” She held out her hand, wishing she’d thought to steal a biscuit from the table. No matter. At her call the old dun mule pricked up his ears and trotted toward her, his limp noticeably better.
“How’s it going, old boy? Are they treating you right?” Cassandra’s eyes misted as she stroked the velvet nose, then moved her hand upward to scratch between the long, rabbity ears. The irascible creature had been her confidant, her protector and her only companion on the northward trek from Laramie. “It’s a good thing you can’t talk,” she whispered, laying her cheek against the bony neck. “I’d have no secrets at all in this place, would I?”
The mule snorted, bobbing his massive head up and down as if sharing the joke.
“And what secrets would he be telling about you, Miss Cassandra Riley?”
The rough whisper, coming from just behind her ear, startled Cassandra into a fit of hiccups. She glared up at Morgan Tolliver, struggling to maintain her dignity while her diaphragm convulsed in painful spasms.
“Don’t you ever…hic…do that to me again!”
His mouth remained as grim as a hatchet blade, but his eyes, Cassandra noticed, glimmered with sparks of amusement.
“Do you make a habit of…hic…sneaking up on people and scaring them? What if I’d had a gun, or a knife? You could be…hic…bleeding right now!”
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