either,” she amended.
Then pushing her hands through her hair and her memories of Tanner away, Gwyneth took a deep breath. “No one is going to fix that rotten fence post but me, or repair that hose on the tractor, or tag the ears of those new calves, so I’d better get after it.”
She ignored the ringing telephone; she wasn’t in the mood for anyone reminding her that Tanner had returned to town, living not far away. She pointed her finger down the hallway, directing the dogs to hunt through the house for unwelcome intruders. The dogs were not only her friends, but her protectors. One sound from them would tell her of danger.
She paused and jerked open a drawer on the hallway table. Her unframed wedding picture and the simple gold ring rolling across it mocked her. She flipped the picture over and shoved the drawer closed, just as she would any thoughts of Tanner. “I am a woman now, not a twenty-year-old, lovesick girl, high on the town hero,” she said to the pale woman in the mirror. “I’ve got responsibilities and work to do, and Tanner will move on. He’ll get bored with small town life, and he’ll leave.”
Then her thoughts ran across the worn linoleum at her feet, like worrying mice that would not go away.
Why hadn’t he married? Why hadn’t he filled another woman’s body with his babies? What would have happened had they courted in the way most women of Freedom cherished, and she’d trusted him with her secret?
Two
Not all men have good hearts, and that is why the Founding Mothers of Freedom Valley decided to lay out their terms when men came courting. I do not like the rage that burns in my heart now, for someone I love has been hurt and I am powerless to avenge her.
—Anna Bennett
Gwyneth dragged herself from under the tractor and wiped her greasy hands on a rag. She swished the barn’s straw from the backside of her cutoff bib overalls, and stood snarling at the metal monster she’d coaxed to life. She hated the old tractor with all her soul; the unsteady feral growling noises provided frustration relief, curling around the airy old barn. She flopped on her baseball hat and damned Tanner Bennett for making her lose a precious night’s sleep. Yesterday, Tanner had invaded her life, her nightmares. She didn’t want to remember him at all, not the tender way he’d kissed her back then, nor the pain and frustration in his expression that night and all the other times he’d tried to call or talk to her.
She’d hurt him badly, and yesterday his scars were showing. Tanner wasn’t the sweetheart she’d known. The lines across his broad forehead and the crinkling at the corner of his eyes told of hours in the weather. She could almost smell the salt air upon him, the nuances of foreign lands and experience with women. Clean-cut Tanner of years ago was now a man with dark, sultry eyes and broad, powerful shoulders that she wanted to—
She shook her head. No man should have such a flat ridged stomach, narrow hips and long, powerful legs. His worn deck shoes marked his experiences away from Freedom Valley and from her. His body, though still lean, was that of a workman…corded, solid and sending out restless vibrations to hers. Tanner had always preferred action to paperwork and there was a hard, fierce look about him, his shields raised. His dislike of her had draped around her like a heavy, cold cloak.
“Swaggering, arrogant—” she muttered, then a flash of a younger, boyish Tanner, clad in his football armor and winking at her, set her heart tumbling. She didn’t want to remember how he had looked all those years ago, walking toward her, dark eyes gleaming, the night of the Sweetheart Dance. She was just eighteen and it was the first time Tanner had taken her to a dance. She’d been thrilled, freed from her father, filled with summer’s sweet expectations and wearing her first dressy dress, borrowed from Kylie. Tanner had taken her in his arms for the last dance, and she’d felt he was taking her in his arms for a lifetime—
Now, she shivered, mentally tearing herself away from that sweet moment years ago. She’d made a life she could live and without her father’s steady demands, she found peace in a hard day’s work and long, quiet hours at her wheel. She missed Leather, of course, because despite his stingy, hard ways, she was his daughter and loved him. But Anna had been the mother she’d never known—sweet, loving Anna, who understood her fears and always offered a comforting cup of herbal tea….
Gwyneth slashed her forearm across her face, the flannel wiping away the tears. She swallowed and straightened with the resolve that had served her through the years of keeping the Smith ranch, of paying her father’s medical bills. Dew hung on the pasture, and mist layered the morning. Somehow she’d work and manage as she always had…and then Tanner would be gone. He’d only come to set his mother’s house aright, a sad obligation; then he’d be off to a life far from Freedom Valley. She had only to wait. She’d coolly smile at the town’s friendly nudges toward her ex-husband, keep quiet, and mind her own business.
“Oh my, he’s a handsome man. He’s got those wide shoulders and that seaman’s walk and he’s sweet just like Anna. I see her in him,” Willa at the café had said, taking the fresh eggs from Gwyneth. “I’m glad you’re keeping Anna’s chickens. She would have liked that, because she clearly loved you like a daughter.”
Yesterday, Tanner’s dislike of her, a woman who had run from her marriage bed and shivered in fear, was as clear as the wide blue Montana sky. His scowl had turned into a wicked, taunting grin because he knew the truth of their wedding night and the consummation that never took place. It was their secret that he could hold and twist and torment—“Oh, Gwynnie…”
She hated him for that—for holding a part of her life that she’d shared with no one, except his mother. But Tanner didn’t know the reason she fled that night and she wouldn’t give that to him, too. She’d told her deepest fears and the reasons for them to Anna, who had held her as she’d cried.
She had work to do, a ranch to tend, and pots to make and none of that required any thought of an ex-husband. There in the shadows of the barn, the cats daintily licking at the fresh creamy milk she’d given them, Gwyneth kicked the tractor’s tire again. She was in an evil, dark mood and Tanner was the cause of her missing sleep. As she had done for years, she threw out her hands and released the biggest yell possible, stirring the swallows in the rafters. With a quick, tight, satisfied smile that her frustration release technique had worked, she jerked the leather gloves from her back pocket, jamming them onto her hands.
A sharp, happy bark whipped her head around to the doorway, where the intruder stood. She couldn’t see his face, but the tall, powerful lines of his body said Tanner had come to call, Penny and Rolf nuzzling against his hands. “Get off my land, Tanner,” she snapped, walking toward him.
There was no Leather to stand between them now, no sweet Anna to help soothe the rough edges of her fears. Time had changed Gwyneth, for now she wanted to deal with that nasty mood prowling between them. She’d been in control of her life before he’d come back and she’d liked her freedom; she wouldn’t have another man pulling her strings by anger or by love. “Penny. Rolf. Down,” Gwyneth ordered and immediately the dogs sat by Tanner.
“You yelled?” he asked in an overpolite tone. “You seem to like doing that.” In the misty morning, his hair was damp and waving, his jaw dark with stubble. His mouth was set in the same unforgiving grim line as yesterday, but today fury burned his deep-set eyes. The black sweatshirt he wore emphasized his dangerous look, his worn jeans and work boots damp with dew from his walk to her house. “You should answer your telephone, Gwyneth. I didn’t like your little visit yesterday. It wasn’t polite. I thought I’d repay the favor and even the score.”
She cut her hand across
