all these long months later and despite her best intentions, the images crowded back, refusing to be ignored. She’d still been wearing her wedding dress, her beautiful silk-and-lace gown, but by then it had been torn and spattered with blood. Her husband’s blood. When her cousins had wanted to get rid of it, she’d refused to let them. It was packed away in the attic as a grim reminder of what might have been. Someday she would have to let it—and the memories—go.
“Oh, God,” she murmured as tears streaked down her cheeks. When were the memories going to blur? When would this unbearable, soul-sick pain stop?
Blinded to everything except her own internal misery, it took a blast of icy air from the unexpected opening of the door to snap her out of it. She hadn’t even seen the man approaching, hadn’t expected anyone to be out on such a cold and furious night. She glanced up to meet worried brown eyes flecked with gold.
“What’s a pretty lady like you doing all alone on a Friday night?” he asked in the easy way of a man to whom flirting was second nature. The words were barely out of his mouth when the crooked smile faded from his lips and worry creased his brow. He stepped closer and skimmed a knuckle down her cheek. “Tears? Darlin’, are you okay?”
There was a gentleness to his voice that soothed, even as alarm flared at the startling way that touch awakened her senses. She looked him over—from the curling black hair damp with rain to the soaked sheepskin jacket, rain-streaked jeans and well-worn boots. Despite the kindness in his voice, there was a hardness to him, not just to his lean body, but in his eyes. It was an intriguing combination, a dangerous one. That must be why her pulse was ricocheting all over the place.
Was he a would-be robber, checking to make sure she was all alone before seizing every penny in the cash register? Her imagination roared off down a frightening path.
Let him try, she thought fiercely, thinking of the gun that Justin had insisted she keep in the store if she was determined to hang around here alone until all hours of the night. She was a better shot than most of the family and not a one of them missed what they aimed for. Of course, there wasn’t much cash worth killing over. She’d taken most of it to the night-drop at the bank just before the new pharmacist had left for the evening.
She scowled up at the man, saw then the exhaustion in his eyes, the stubble on his cheeks, the sensuality of a mouth beginning another slow curve into a disarming smile that softened the harsh angles of his face. What she missed was any hint of a real threat. Whatever this man’s story, it seemed evident to her that he meant her no harm. His concern struck her as genuine, as impulsive and automatic as his smile.
Satisfied, she met his grin with one of her own and briskly wiped away the last traces of her tears with an impatient swipe.
“I was just debating whether to close up,” she said, turning back inside and heading for the lunch counter, which was her domain even though she owned the whole place now. A few months back she’d hired a pharmacist and a teenager to work the rest of the store once Doc Dolan had retired and headed off to the Gulf Coast of Texas. “I didn’t expect anyone to be out on a night like this. You startled me.”
“Sorry. I’ve been on the road all day. When I saw the sign and the lights on, I was thinking more about my empty stomach than I was about whether I might scare you to death. If you need to close up, I can go somewhere else.”
Sharon Lynn heard the underlying thread of disappointment in his voice and watched his gaze settling on the stale doughnuts left over from morning. She could toss those in a bag, give them to him with a takeout cup of coffee and he’d be on his way. The idea held no appeal, not when it would mean empty, lonely hours ahead. These days she was eager to snatch a few moments of companionship wherever she could find it.
“I’m in no rush,” she said quickly. “I still have some soup that’s hot and I can rustle up a hamburger or a grilled cheese and fries. I doubt you’d find anyplace else in town open on a night like this. Los Piños tends to shut down early when the weather’s bad. Nobody likes driving on the icy roads.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t drive,” she said and left it at that. She hadn’t been behind the wheel of a car since the night of the accident. In fact, she’d moved into her cousin Dani’s old house in town, just so she could walk to work. When she wanted to go out to visit the family at White Pines, there was always one relative or another around who could take her. There was no place else she needed to go.
She ladled up a bowl of homemade vegetable soup and set it on the counter in front of him. “Now, what else can I get for you?”
“A couple of cheeseburgers and fries, if you’re sure you don’t mind.”
Mind? Not if it would keep her here a few minutes longer, provide a welcome distraction from her grim memories. Her inability to shake them earlier indicated tonight they were going to be worse than usual.
“Coming right up,” she told him. Her innate curiosity and friendliness kicked in. “What brings you to Los Pin˜os?”
“A job,” he said. “My name’s Cord Branson. I’ve heard there’s an opening on a ranch around here. It’s a place called White Pines. Maybe you know the owners.”
Sharon Lynn grinned and relaxed, the last of her fears vanishing. “I ought to. White Pines belongs to my grandfather, Harlan Adams. My father—his name’s Cody Adams—and my brother, Harlan Patrick, run it.” She held out her hand. “I’m Sharon Lynn.”
“Well, I’ll be a son of a gun,” he said, grasping her hand in his and holding it just a shade longer than necessary, long enough to remind her of that earlier tingle of awareness.
“First I meet a beautiful lady and then I find out she’s related to the folks I hope to work for,” he said. “Looks like this is my lucky night, after all. Do you mind telling me about the place?”
“Of course not.” She described the ranch with the affection of someone who’d grown up roaming its vast acreage. “You’ll never see any place more beautiful, if you don’t mind land that’s a little rugged. Grandpa Harlan inherited it when the house was crumbling and the herd of cattle had dwindled down to almost nothing. His daddy wasn’t meant to be a rancher, I suppose. At any rate, now it’s one of the biggest operations in the state.”
“But you don’t live out there?”
“No, I stay right here in town now to be close to the store.”
“Don’t you miss it?”
Sharon Lynn grinned. “There’s hardly time for that. There’s always something going on out at White Pines. I’m back there practically every weekend for one celebration or another or just for an old-fashioned barbecue if granddaddy starts getting lonely for a little commotion.”
She caught the faintly wistful expression on his face. “What about you? Did you grow up on a ranch?”
“If you could call it that. It was probably every bit as bad as you say White Pines was way back when, but every time my daddy had a chance to make a real go of it, he squandered the money on booze. After he was gone, I sold the place to get a stake so I could move on to someplace where I could learn how a real ranch was run. I drifted a bit through Montana and Wyoming before heading south. Once I crossed into Texas, I kept hearing about your granddaddy and White Pines.”
“Well, you picked the right place. Nobody knows
