his chest as Noah watched the horse’s hooves kicking up dust in the distance.
Don’t let it be Levi. Please don’t let it be Levi.
Chapter One
The rap on the wood was sharp and insistent. Kate Allen Cutter pushed herself up from her narrow cot and slowly crossed the small dimly lit room while smoothing wrinkles from her faded skirt. She’d left her job at the laundry an hour ago to come home and put up her feet. Her mother wasn’t due back from her shift for another half an hour.
She opened the door hesitantly.
A hulking mass of a man stood on the step, his shoulders blocking the late-afternoon sun and casting his face into mysterious shadow. Though the day was fair, he wore a Hudson’s Bay coat with the collar turned up and carried a rifle as though it was another appendage. He made no move to displace the weathered black hat pulled low over his eyes.
She didn’t know him, and she didn’t get a good feeling from his presence. A shiver of apprehension snaked up her spine. She was alone here, and he was as intimidating a man as she’d set eyes on. Any number of seedy characters passed through Boulder on a regular basis.
The length of his shaggy dark hair, his full beard and the concealing brim combined with the sun at his back gave her the impression he’d deliberately planned this time and his arrival to catch her off guard. But that was absurd.
Uneasily she found her voice. “Y-yes?”
“Katherine Cutter?” No preliminaries, no polite introduction; he meant business and his imposing manner flustered her.
“Yes,” she said again. “Who are you?”
“Noah,” he said simply, as though the name should mean something to her.
“Noah?” she repeated dumbly.
“Noah Cutter.”
She blinked in confusion.
“Your brother-in-law,” he clarified.
Kate’s heart did a backward tumble in her chest while her thoughts whirred chaotically. Brother-inlaw? It had been five months since she’d seen her husband, and while she remembered Levi mentioning his family, she’d never met any of them. Why would this man seek her out now? Unconsciously she touched her hand to her breast.
“You…you’re Levi’s brother?”
He nodded.
She stood in his massive shadow, squinting upward, but he didn’t elaborate. Finally she glanced at the shabby room behind her and asked hesitantly, “Would you like to come in?”
“We need to talk.”
She took a step backward. “Come in then.”
He lumbered past her and stood beside the wobbly table.
Gathering her shawl around her, Kate stepped toward the window and reached for the shade. She’d been resting with the shade drawn and the room was semidark. She raised it and sunlight spilled across the wooden floor. She hurried toward the stove. “Can I fetch you a cup of coffee?”
“No. I’m not stayin’. I came to talk.” She caught the odd sound his “s” made when he spoke the word “staying.” Boots striking the bare wood floor, he moved to stand with his back to the window and turned to face her, once again silhouetting himself against the light.
“What do you have to say?” she asked.
“How long since you’ve seen Levi?”
Humiliating warmth infused her neck and cheeks, and this time she had little attention for his odd-sounding speech. She didn’t want to admit that her husband had taken off without a word and left her to fend on her own.
“He’s been looking for work.”
“For how long?”
It made her nervous that she couldn’t see his face. More nervous that he was asking this question. “A few months.”
“I have bad news for you.”
Blood chugging sporadically through her heart, she nervously smoothed her palms over her skirt. “All right.”
“He was killed last week.”
Kate worked the abruptly delivered information around in her mind for a moment, not quite grasping the meaning. Levi had been killed? He was dead? Her heart hammered painfully. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“It couldn’t have been someone else?” She’d prayed every day that Levi would return and take her from this intolerable situation she’d been forced to endure since he disappeared. Now that would never happen! “Someone who looked like him or someone using his name?”
“I went to Masonville for his body, ma’am.” This time his deep voice was thick with emotion. “It’s Levi.”
Kate’s blood rushed to her ears and pounded. She pictured Levi the way she remembered him, with sun-bleached hair and laughing eyes the color of a summer sky. The hazy image of him cold and lifeless didn’t mesh with her vivid memories. Levi dead?
Stars burst behind her eyelids. The bright nimbus of light around the man flickered and dimmed.
The woman’s face was alarmingly pale and her eyelids fluttered. Her distraught hazel eyes grew unfocused and Noah caught her as she slid toward the scarred wooden floor, scooping her up in his arms and laying her on the cot.
He turned and poured water from a pitcher into a chipped enamel basin. Finding a cloth, he wet it and carried it back to where she lay. He dabbed the cool cloth against the curve of her delicate white cheek, the arch of her fine pale brow and over her smooth forehead. Noah hadn’t been this close to a woman since his childhood, and the disturbing feelings the nearness created combined with her sweet feminine scent to make his hand tremble.
Levi’s Katherine had honey-blond hair and skin as smooth and fair as cream. It was obvious why Levi had wanted her. His brother’d had an eye for the ladies—and they for him. But to take one as a wife was so out of character that Noah hadn’t believed it until he’d gone to the local justice, questioned the man and demanded to see the record himself.
This place where she lived was little more than a shack, one room with the barest of necessities, and her faded dress appeared to have been made for a larger woman. Levi certainly hadn’t taken his responsibilities as a husband seriously or he would have provided a more fitting home and proper clothing. But then, his brother never had taken responsibility for anything.
Another narrow cot pressed against the opposite wall, raising the question of who else slept here.
A woodstove kept the meager quarters warm, and Noah considered removing his coat, but chose to keep it and his hat on. No reason for sending her into another swoon if she awoke.
He rewet the
