died away, Meggy dunked her head under the surface and swam to shore. Her skin sprouted goose bumps as big as June bugs as she waded out of the river. Heaven help her, she had not one single scrap to clothe herself in except for her shoes! How was she to get back to her cabin?
In disbelief, she circled the chokecherry bush. How could he have left her in such a fix? He was a mean, no-count lowlife if ever she’d met one. Imagine, taking advantage of a helpless…
Something caught her eye, and she jerked to a halt. There, in the crotch of that young maple tree—what was that dark roll poking out?
Her clothes! Wadded up in a ball and wet as rainwater.
She snatched them up and with shaking hands pulled on the dripping garments, starting with her underdrawers. Her skin shrank at the feel of the damp, clingy muslin.
That dreadful man!
Every step of the way back to the cabin she rehearsed the stinging words she would level at the colonel when she confronted him.
Tom leaned back on the plank porch, supporting his weight on one elbow. He’d sent the crew on ahead with the promise of venison steaks for dinner, and now he waited for Mary Margaret Hampton. He worked his thumbnail into the wood, outlining a curved half-moon that looked like the letter C.
C for cantankerous. C for crazy. Chuckle-headed. Calico-hungry. All that and more. His crew was an obstreperous bunch of misfits, and it had taken half the season to turn them into a team. He’d almost lost another man today when that idiot bullwhacker Sam Turner got to showing off and one of the young Claymore boys slipped under the mule team.
On top of that, he was saddled with a cotton-headed female. By damn, he was in no mood for any nonsense, especially not from a little slip of a woman whose sense of independence outweighed her brain power.
When she appeared on the trail that led up to the cabin, Tom lifted his head. She marched along the path with jerky steps, holding her wet, drooping skirt up out of the dust. Her eyes glinted an icy green.
“Evening, Miss Hampton.”
She stopped short and pressed her lips together. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you. Thought you might be along pretty soon. I see you found your dress and…things.”
“Found and donned, no thanks to you. Whatever possessed you to take them in the first place?”
“Had to,” he said quietly. “Behind me were eleven men who haven’t seen a woman in six months, let alone one standing in the woods buck naked. What do you think they’d do if they stumbled across some damn fool’s frilly underwear hangin’ on a bush?”
“Avert their eyes and walk on, of course. As any gentleman would.”
Tom rose. “My men aren’t gentlemen, Miss Hampton. They’re rough and they’re rowdy and they’re all male. I wouldn’t go poking at this particular hornet’s nest if I were you.”
“I was most certainly not poking—”
“You were taking a bath in the river. Against my orders.”
She dropped the folds of her skirt clenched in her fingers and propped her fists on her hips. “You saw me!”
“Couldn’t miss you. Hair all sudsed up with white foam, you looked like a frosted cake floating out there in the middle of the river. I gathered up your clothes so the men wouldn’t get interested in finding the owner.”
“Frosted cake! Well, I never!”
“That water’s crystal clear,” he said with a grin. “The rest of you looked like a shriveled up corn doll.”
“The rest of me?”
“Miss Hampton, don’t take another bath without telling me. Like I said before, I’ll post a guard.”
Speechless, Meggy stared into the man’s face for a full minute. A muscle under his eye jerked. “A guard,” she echoed.
“A guard.”
All at once she became aware of how cold and wet she was. Her clammy underdrawers stuck to her thighs and calves; her damp shimmy clung to her back and chest like a coating of cold syrup. Her petticoats dripped water down her ankles and into her shoes. And her dress…well, it felt for all the world like a heavy, cold shroud.
“Go inside,” he ordered. “You’re shivering. Get out of those wet things.”
“I am n-not s-shivering.” She had to work hard to keep her voice steady.
He rolled his eyes toward the treetops. “Go!”
Without thinking, Meggy snapped her heels together and saluted. “Am I dismissed, then, Colonel?”
Without waiting for a reply, she hoisted her skirt up a few inches and planted one foot on the porch. With a little lift she attempted to heave herself upward, but the weight of her wet clothes was more than she’d bargained for. She stumbled against the edge.
Tom watched her struggle for a moment, then moved behind her, placed his hands about her waist and lifted her onto the porch. The feel of her body under his hands, the whiff of roses that came from her hair sent a red-hot arrow straight to his groin.
With an exaggerated sniff, she stomped across the planks to the front door, yanked it open and banged it shut behind her.
“Headstrong and excitable,” he muttered as he clomped down off the porch. “She sure gets an arch in her back over the damnedest things.”
On the other hand, she might have been raised on prunes and proverbs, but when she closed her mouth, she was all woman.
“That being the case…” He laughed out loud as he strode down the hill toward the safety of his tent.
“The next time she flames up over something, I guess I’ll have to set a backfire.”
Chapter Five
Meggy listened to the colonel’s boots clump across the porch and fade as he tramped down the path. As fast as her chilled fingers could move, she unbuttoned her wet dress, stepped out of her petticoats and peeled off the cold, clingy underdrawers and shimmy. The late-afternoon air was still warm, but her naked skin pebbled just the same. Hurriedly she laid the wet garments out on the counter beneath the windowsill to dry.
And stopped short.
Her pie! Her beautiful apple pie had disappeared. The black iron skillet sat on the sill right where she’d left it, but it was empty.
Clutching a damp petticoat to her body, she tiptoed forward for a closer look. Gone. Not a single crumb remained in the pan. Something, or someone, had stolen her pie.
She snatched up the skillet and gasped. A shiny round coin lay underneath it. “Merciful heaven, a five-dollar gold piece! But who—”
The colonel, of course. That scoundrel! Why, he’d just lounged there on her porch, waiting for
