It might have been more merciful if she had.
He dragged his hat from his head and ran his fingers through tousled hair while he watched, mesmerized, that beautiful angel face.
"All right."
She smiled—a smile so dazzling Garret felt the earth shudder beneath him.
"I'll make it worth your while. Dried-apple pie, and the best prairie-chicken stew you've ever eaten."
"Don't use up your apples. You'll be hungry as hell—I mean heck—for something sweet before we cross the border. I might be able to come up with something instead."
"All right. If it's not too much trouble."
Garret couldn't suppress a smile. "Lady, you've been nothing but trouble from the first moment I met you."
Her eyes widened a little, and he was aware of her gaze flicking to his lips, her own smile wavering as if, even in her innocence, she could sense the currents sizzling between them.
"I—I was a lot of trouble at the convent, too," she stammered. "Always in the middle of... of some kind of mischief."
"I'd just bet you were. You can tell me all about it tonight. Consider it my price for enduring your chicken stew."
She nodded then started away down the hill. Suddenly Garret couldn't bear for her to go just yet. He stooped down, swooping up her handful of flowers. "Sister!"
She wheeled to face him, something shy, engaging, enticing in those cornflower-blue eyes.
Feeling suddenly unnerved himself, he extended the bouquet toward her. "You forgot these. They'd look mighty pretty in your hair."
He couldn't stop himself from reaching out, touching the delicate rosebud tucked behind her ear. Her breath caught in her throat, her golden curls clinging to his fingers in a silken, sweet-scented web, her skin softer than the blossom's petals.
He stood thus for long seconds, unwilling, unable to draw his hand away, drowning in her dark-lashed eyes.
The sensation was exquisite, agonizing, and he knew—damn well knew—that she felt its magic, too.
Then, suddenly, she was sweeping the blossoms from his numbed fingers and running lightly down the hill, taking all of the sunshine with her.
Chapter Nine
Alone coyote howled in the distance, its mournful cry at one with the gnawing emptiness in Garret's heart. He lingered far from the warm circle of the cook fire, listening to the laughter of the children, Ashleen's lilting voice as she bantered with them, cajoled them, guided them through the countless tasks that filled the end of day.
The crippled boy was tossing potato skins at Shevonne from the big crockery bowl on his lap. Renny was adjusting the picket line on which the horse—what had its ridiculous name been? Cooley?—was tethered. Meggie, a sad little waif with huge dark eyes, sat in the shadow of the wagon, tucking what looked to be a bundle of rags into a bed fashioned of the flowers Ashleen had picked earlier.
It could have been some idyllic easterner's notion of the grand adventure of taming the west. The courageous woman with her brood of pink-cheeked children. Except that this woman had no strapping husband to deal with stubborn oxen or cracked wagon wheels, or to bring in fresh game to bolster what meager supplies the wagon could hold.
And the little girl playing with a rainbow of flowers couldn't exclaim over the colors, wouldn't run up to the woman who had given them to her, flinging small arms about her in childish glee.
Garret's fingers clenched around the bulging leather pouch he held, struggling to wall away feelings he'd kept in check for so long. He wanted to view Ashleen O'Shea and her pack of orphans with the same practiced detachment he kept for Logan's sons in St. Joe, and Sweetest One's nephews in the Oglala Sioux village. Looking through them almost as skillfully as little Meggie did.
Because it hurt too much.
Scared the living hell out of him to face how helpless, how small they truly were, how vulnerable to the cruel blasts the capricious fates might deal them.
Damn, what had possessed him to agree to put himself through this? To be drawn, however unwillingly, into the cozy circle of Ashleen’s campsite? He glanced down at the leather pouch he held, his mouth twisting in wry confusion. What had spurred him to spend part of the afternoon gathering wild berries clinging to the bushes near a stream bank?
At first he had only meant to take a quick bath in the burbling rill, to scrub the grime of the trail from his hair, his clothes. It had had nothing at all to do with Ashleen O'Shea, Garret had assured himself, or with the supper to come. He'd only wanted to feel clean again, and he had reasoned that it would have been folly to deny himself the chance to become so only to prove to himself that he didn't care about a woman.
He'd been lying on his back, letting the sun dry his naked body, when he had seen the ripe berries weighing the branches of a nearby bush and had remembered his promise to Ashleen.
He winced at the memory of how carefully he had selected each bit of fruit, grimaced as he recalled the unbidden need he had felt to please this woman who so disarmed him.
