Montana Legend (Harlequin Historical, No. 624) by Jillian Hart

figure out what Mrs. McCullough was about to say. “Our girls are friends, that’s all. Why, the man insulted me terribly today.”
    â€œSure enough sounds like a courting man to me.”
    â€œCourting? I hardly know him.” She knew enough about him already—and she didn’t like him. Not one bit.
    He was forward and brash. He was a scoundrel of the very worst sort, charming her, furrowing the garden, returning her chicken and smiling at her as if she were a young and beautiful woman. When she was a widow with more debts than a future, more dreams than money in the bank.
    â€œWe don’t like each other.” That much was true. He’d been pretty mad at her.
    So, why had he tried to kiss her?
    Troubled, she sudsed her mop, churning it up and down in the bucket. Water splashed and soap bubbles drifted and popped.
    She was still so furious at him.
    Every time she thought of him, there he was in her mind, more handsome than any man had the right to be, and he was asking her—her, Sarah Redding—to dine with him. In the fanciest dining room in the county. The dining room she’d just finished mopping from corner to corner tonight.
    She fetched her bucket and carried it the rest of the way up the stairs, feeling more angry than she had a few moments ago. What was it about Gage Gatlin that affected her? That cut straight to her heart like a double-sided blade?
    Because Gage had held out his hand and asked her to dine with him. For one brief moment Sarah had believed he’d meant it.
    When he’d been feeling pity—not friendship—for her.
    And then he’d hauled her out of the post office, which would be the stuff of which gossip was made for months to come.
    He’d probably thought he would kiss her out of pity, too.
    Well, she would have no more of it. Gage Gatlin would never do her another good deed. She would never again be beholden to him for a dollar or a plowed garden.
    She’d pay him back. They’d be even. And she’d never have another reason to see Mr. Gatlin again.
    Unless it was across the fields, as she’d noticed him this afternoon when she’d returned home and gone to the barn to milk the cow.
    Was it her fault that if the door was open, she could see Gage’s land while she milked? Surely it wasn’t her fault that the sight of him at work, shirtless, with the sun burnishing his dark skin, made her forget what she was doing until the cow kicked her?
    That was the best way to see Gage Gatlin—from a distance. And that’s how it would stay.
    Sarah reached into her apron pocket and withdrew two coins. There was no light coming from beneath Gage’s door. He was probably asleep, for it was late. The thought of him lying on the other side of the wood wall, sprawled across the big comfortable bed…
    A slow shiver zinged down her spine. All in a flash, she imagined him shirtless, his bronzed skin exposedto the night’s touch, his strong chest rising and falling slowly in sleep—
    Enough of that. How was she ever going to get him out of her head if she kept imagining him like that? She had no idea.
    Sarah studied the coins in her hand. She worked hard for that money, and it meant a lot to her. But her pride meant more, so it was easy to slip the coins beneath Gage’s door. Easy to find satisfaction in the rasp of silver against polished wood and know that she need never be humiliated by Gage Gatlin again.
    As she straightened, smoothing her fraying apron and the patched calico dress, she told herself her heart wasn’t hurting.
    Really. It wasn’t.
    Â 
    Gage bolted awake. Sweat beaded his brow and cooled on his bare flesh as he realized he was already out of bed, standing in the dark silence of his hotel room. Not in the Badlands, but in the prairie town of Buffalo. In the present. Not the past.
    Hell, he was shaking as if he had a fever. Hands quaking so hard he couldn’t wipe the sweat from