what she would do, because she loved him. She’d put aside the sadness and find enough strength to finish up the last of the baking. The loaves were ready, plump and golden. She breathed in the delicious yeasty smell.
The hot pad tumbled from her fingers as she realized what she’d done.
She had baked an even dozen loaves, as if Kol would be here to eat them.
“Whoa, boys.” Daniel hauled back on the thick double reins, drawing the lathered teams of Clydesdales to a stumbling stop.
He ignored the thick grit in his mouth and his sandy thirst as he swiped streams of sweat from his face. He bent to unbuckle the horse collars from the traces.
The crash of some wild animal plowing through the field rattled nearby heads of wheat. The forward team shied, turning in the leather bindings.
“Hold on, boys, nothing to be afraid of.” He tightened the lead set of reins to bring down the big black’s head before he could get the notion to take off in a dead run and lead the other horses into revolting right along with him.
His workhorses were a steady bunch. They ought to be tired enough that nothing short of cannon fire ought to spook them, so what was riling ’em up?
A flash of color emerged from the golden stalks. He spotted a whitish-blond-haired boy, rangy and tall, and out of breath. Fear widened his eyes as he gazed up at the giant black trying to bolt.
“I’m sorry, mister. I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t worry about it, kid.” He laid a hand on the black’s shoulder, leaning between the traces to do it, a dangerous place to be.
The mighty Clydesdale calmed, now that the big animal realized it was only a boy.
“He’s not used to much company. It’s pretty quiet over at my place. Come on over. He won’t hurt you.”
The older of Kol’s boys took a wide berth around the snorting gelding. “I brought water and something to eat.”
Daniel took one look at the offered tin pail, battered from years of use, and shook his head. He was too hot to have any appetite. “Maybe when the sun goes down, but I’ll take the water jug. Is your name Kirk?”
“Yessir.” He offered the heavy crock.
Was it the one Rayna Ludgrin had been using? Daniel wondered as he pulled the cork. It had to be. There was a faint hairline crack at the mouth where it struck the earth when she’d dropped it.
How beautiful she’d looked. How alluring. The sudden image, unbidden and unwanted, shot into his mind. The memory of the water trickling through her honey-blond hair remained. A forbidden thought, but there all the same.
He closed his eyes as he drank. The cool rush of ginger water chased the grit from his tongue but did nothing to dispel her memory. Of her soft woman’s curves and her clean, lilac scent.
His gut punched. Enough of that. It was wrong to think of her that way. He was a man. He had a man’s needs. What he didn’t need was a woman of his own. No. He was a man who lived alone by choice. There were times when he regretted the choice and the loneliness.
That’s all this was. The lonesomeness of his life affecting him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been touched by anyone.
Unless it was old Mrs. Johansson down the lane, when he’d stopped to help her corral her runaway milk cow. Was that seven months ago? He’d offered to fix the broken fence line for her. The elderly widow, hampered by rheumatism, had been so grateful, she’d baked him a chocolate cake and delivered it along with a grandmotherly hug the very next day.
Seven months ago. Hell, nothing terrified him more than ties to another human being. Any ties.
“Thanks for the water, kid.” He corked the jug and got back to work.
“Uh, ’scuse me, mister.” The boy trailed after him, tall for his age, bucking up his shoulders like a man ready to face his duty. “It’s downright neighborly of you to lend a hand.”
“It’s the right thing to do. Your father was a good man. He helped me more than once. I owe him.”
“If I help you, then the work will go twice as fast.”
“That it will.” Daniel tossed over the second set of reins. “You know how to handle draft horses?”
“I feed and brush and exercise ours every day. You still got wheat to cut on your land?”
“That I do.” Daniel kept a short lead on the black, turning into the bright, stabbing sunshine. The field fell away to a creek that was more puddle than running water.
“Then I’d best help you with your harvesting, too,” young Kirk declared, chest up, chin level, shoulders braced. “That’s the way things are done. When someone helped my pa, he helped them right back. That’s what I intend to do.”
“You’re a good man, Kirk Ludgrin.” Daniel let the horses drink as he sized up the boy beside him.
You’re going to grow up too soon, boy, and there’s nothing I can do to help you. Circumstances happened, there was no stopping the bad that changed a life.
It was in the rising up to meet the circumstance that defined the man.
Daniel was glad he’d come. It felt right to repay Kol for an old debt.
“Walk with me to your barn,” he told the kid. “We’ll use your team for the rest of the afternoon, if you’re willing. My horses here have been working since sunup and they’re dragging their feet.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy answered, too young to feel responsible for the land he walked on. Too young to provide for the woman and children who lived in the pretty gray house on the rise, a home surrounded by roses and sunlight and endless sky.
If Daniel squinted, he could see Rayna Ludgrin kneeling in her garden. Such an attractive, slim ribbon of a woman, there was hardly nothing to her. He imagined the wind was ruffling the cotton fabric of her simple calico work dress and batting at the ties of the sunbonnet knotted beneath her chin.
A strange yearning filled him like nothing he’d ever felt before. It was different from need, different from lust, and it hurt like an old wound in the center of his being.
He had no time to give thought to it. There was work to be done. Wheat to cut. He had no leisure to waste on thoughts of a woman.
Or to wonder if her hands were bandaged and if they still bled.
Chapter Three
T he low rays of the sun speared through the endless and mighty Rocky Mountains, glared across the miles upon miles of high rolling plains and bore directly beneath her sunbonnet brim. Rayna’s eyes watered with the brightness as she trudged down the dirt path paralleling the fence line.
She was running late, darn it! Daniel and Kirk had to be starving.
She hurried, but the world around her took its own time. Larks trilled their merry songs, as they did every
