Will of Steel by Diana Palmer

slowly, so that she didn’t slip off the road. But there wasn’t much traffic, and she lived close to town. It was easier than she expected to get in on the country roads.
    When she left again, at noon, it was a different story. The snow had come fast and furiously, and she could barely crawl along the white highway. The road crews had been busy, spreading sand and gravel, but there were icy spots just the same.
    She hesitated to go all the way back to the ranch when she couldn’t see the road ahead for the blinding snow, so she pulled into the town’s only restaurant and cut off the engine.
    â€œWell,” she said to herself, “I guess if worse comes to worst, they might let me sleep in a booth in the restaurant.” She laughed at the imagery.
    She grabbed her purse and got out, grateful for her high-heeled cowboy boots that made it easier to get afoothold in the thick, wet snow. This was the kind that made good snowmen. She thought she might make one when she finally got home. A calf, perhaps, to look like Sammy. She laughed. Ted would howl at that, if she did it.
    She opened the door of the restaurant and walked right into a nightmare. Davy Harris, the man who had almost raped her, was standing by the counter, paying his bill. He was still thin and nervous-looking, with straggly brown hair and pale eyes. He looked at her with mingled distaste and hatred.
    â€œWell, well, I hoped I might run into you again,” he said in a voice dripping with venom. “I don’t guess you expected to see me, did you, Jillian? Not the man you put in prison for trying to kiss you!”
    The owner of the restaurant knew Jillian, and liked her, but he was suddenly giving her a very odd look. There was another customer behind him, one who’d known Jillian’s uncle. He gave her an odd look, too.
    â€œThere was more to it than that,” Jillian said unsteadily.
    â€œYes, I wanted to marry you, I can’t imagine why, you little prude,” he said with contempt. “Put a man in prison for trying to teach you about life.”
    She flushed. She had a good comeback for that, but it was too embarrassing to talk about it in public, especially around men she didn’t really know. She felt sick all over.
    He came up to her, right up to her, and looked down at her flushed face. “I’m going to be in town for a while, Jillian,” he said. “And don’t get any ideas about having your boyfriend try to boot me out, or I’ll tell him a few things he doesn’t know about you.”
    With that shocking statement, he smiled at the owner, praised the food again and walked out the door.
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    Jillian sat drinking coffee with cold, trembling hands. She felt the owner’s eyes on her, and it wasn’t in a way she liked. He seemed to be sizing her up with the new information his customer had given him about her.
    People who didn’t know you tended to accept even un savory details with openhandedness, she thought miserably. After all, how well did you really know somebody who worked for you a few days a week? Jillian lived outside town and kept to herself. She wasn’t a social person.
    There would be gossip, she was afraid, started by the man who’d just gotten out of prison. And how had he gotten out? she wondered. He’d been sentenced to ten years.
    When she finished her coffee, she paid for it and left a tip, and paused to speak to the owner. She didn’t really know what to say. Her enemy had made an accusation about her, but how did she refute it?
    â€œWhat he said,” she stammered, “there’s a lot more to it than it sounds like. I was…fifteen.”
    The owner wasn’t a stupid man. He’d known Jillian since she was a child. “Listen,” he said gently, “I don’t pay any mind to gossip. I know Jack Haynes, the assistant circuit D.A. He’d never prosecute a man unless he was sure he could get a