Abigale saw so much red, she had a hard time seeing Seth leaning against the wagon until he moved.
“You get what you needed?”
Ignoring his question and hand, she hiked her skirt and climbed to the seat. “It’s inside.”
He made some predictably male sound in his throat, but she was spit-fire mad at men at the moment, and since he was the closest one within firing range, the less she said to him, the better.
The bell above Briggs’ door jangled as he entered, and again when he came out with a flour sack over each shoulder. The wagon shuddered as they landed in the bed. If he busted those bags open, he’d pay her every red cent of the outrageous five dollars it cost her.
And what will you pay him for bringing you in from the snow and fixing the barn roof?
The ramrod in her spine weakened, and she fingered the tender spot on the back of her head. Seth Holt was not the enemy. In fact, he’d probably saved her life. The least she could do was be cordial. Grateful wouldn’t hurt either.
She stared straight ahead when the bell jangled again. A jolt and the scrape of wood on wood announced the crate. Another hundred pounds of supplies.
Guilt wiggled in around her collar for buying confectioners’ sugar, paying twice as much for it as she would have in Denver. But what would Christmas be without iced cookies and cake?
What would Christmas be without Pop?
The wagon tipped as Seth climbed to the seat. Silent and simmering, he unwrapped the reins from the brake handle and snapped them against Tess’s rump.
Abigale focused on loosening her stranglehold on her reticule. “I need to stop at the land office as well.”
Without a word, nod, or glance, he reined in at the end of the street.
“I’ll only be a moment.” Most unladylike, she clambered down, completely unconcerned with the thoughts of anyone who was rude enough to be watching. But she was as good as her word on the time it took her to clear Millerton land from the sale ledger. Paid off long before she’d come to there, it had no liens and nothing to prevent her from keeping it. So long as she could pay the taxes the following year.
She’d think about that later.
Seth was still brooding, and she couldn’t very well blame him. However, pride clogged her throat and they drove five miles out of town before she’d calmed herself enough to open her mouth without yelling. Or crying.
“Thank you for your help.”
Silence.
“You have been nothing but kind and thoughtful.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw him turn and look at her, but she couldn’t meet his gaze. Not yet.
Listen quick and speak slow, Pop had always said. Get mad even slower.
She’d not done so well on that last account. But how else was she supposed to feel after learning that someone really was stealing her timber? Thomas Briggs had fairly said so outright.
Time to eat crow, and to her way of thinking, the feathers were the hardest part.
“I’m sorry I snapped at you in town, but you’re a man, and—”
Seth huffed. “You noticed.”
She might not survive the trip home. “Seth Leopold Holt, you’re making it awfully hard to be nice after what I learned at Briggs’s Mercantile.”
“And what was that, Abigale Rebecca Millerton?”
One of them had to stop the war of words. It might as well be her. “Someone really is cutting timber on Pop’s land. And they’re pressuring merchants to not extend credit to certain landowners in the area.”
Seth’s silence bothered her as much as his quick comebacks, and she studied him boldly, trying to read what was firing around behind his hazel eyes.
He shot a glance her way. “Why did you say pressuring like you did?”
“Because that was the word Thomas Briggs used and I interpreted it as threatening. Of course, I implied that I wouldn’t share anything he told me but telling you doesn’t count.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Seth’s tone carried an edge she didn’t like, but she was determined not to fight with him.
“It means I trust you. You’re all I’ve got.”
“In spite of my being of the male persuasion?”
She sagged at her choice of words.
“Why do you lump me in with all men? Especially when you say it like every man is a scoundrel that has hurt you in some way?”
He stopped Tess right in the middle of the trail and faced Abigale straight on.
She expected an all-out yelling match, but he lowered his voice and his eyes went dark as a pine forest. “Did someone in Denver hurt you, Abigale? If he did, he’ll regret it at my hand, I swear.”
Stunned by the intensity of his expression and voice, she touched his arm. “No, Seth. No one has hurt me, not like that.”
“Like what, then?”
She pressed both hands to her temples, willing her emotions to settle, to not boil over like an unwatched pot. “I keep meeting with opposition, and it’s getting the better of me.”
“Did you have trouble at the land office?”
“No.”
“Was Briggs difficult?”
“No.” She shook her head. “If anything, he was helpful. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”
Seth studied the countryside, rubbing one thumb back and forth on the leather reins before tapping Tess. The mare jerked ahead. “I’d say you’re missing Pop and trying to carry the burden of the ranch all by yourself.”
“What I mean is—”
“I know what you mean.” The look he gave her softened to match the change in his tone. “Neither one of us does very well at saying what we mean, but I understand.”
His eyes held her, longer than before. She couldn’t look away and noticed they’d changed to meadow-green with flecks of gold. As if they contained the whole high-country range within them, from summer to fall.
Tess stumbled, and her misstep broke the moment as Seth looked back to the trail.
Abigale did the same, but something had shifted inside her. Something small and warm like a candle flame in the dark that she didn’t want to extinguish.
“Did Briggs mention any names of who was doing the so-called pressuring?”
She kept her eyes ahead, watching the light change on the summit as clouds gathered around it. A massive hen with her chicks scuttling in for another storm. “No, he didn’t.”
Only then did she remember that Seth had set out to gather information in town. “Did you learn anything from anyone?”
She looked in time to see his jaw tighten—an old sign from childhood that warned of an impending storm as clearly as clouds gathering around the snowy peak.
~
Seth ground his back teeth, biting down words sure to kindle a grass fire if he let them. Abigale had run him into the same corral as every other man, and he resented it in spite of telling her he understood. It’d be nice not to have to understand, to hear straight out that she respected him for who he was.
Though she had admitted that she trusted him. That was something.
“Hoot Spicer gave me an earful.”
She waited four hoofbeats before leaning over and looking straight at him like she used to when he ignored her. “Well?”
Dadgum it, she’d make him loco yet.
“He didn’t come right out and say Blackwell, but he came so close, I could hear him thinkin’ it. I was hoping Briggs had mentioned the name, so we’d have something solid to go on.”
Tess clomped on for another half-mile, and Abigale sat uncharacteristically silent.
“What are you thinking?”
She cut him a silent glance that could stampede an entire herd.
“Whatever it is, it sounds like a bad idea.”
She unpinned her hat and took it off, heedless of the sun that made her yellow hair nearly white. “How can you say that? You haven’t heard it yet.”
“No, but I see it on your face, and it looks like trouble. You need to let me handle this, man to man.”
She slapped his shoulder with her hat.
He nearly laughed but—thank the Lord—he didn’t. He wasn’t a complete idiot. “What was that for?”
“What makes you think I can’t handle things? Just because I’m a woman, you act like I can’t think or do anything for myself.”
“I do not.” But he was thinking it. Thinking how she’d get herself in a jackpot. Abigale Millerton was smart and capable enough to do whatever she set her mind to, and that was what scared him. Blackwell was no one to mess with, and every man in the county knew it.
“Tell me, then.” A sudden image of his ma pushed the next word through his lips. “Please.”
“Promise you won’t try to stop me?”
“No.”
She folded her arms with a hard humph. “Then I’ll just keep it to myself.”
“And I’ll hide your saddles and tack, and camp out in your barn until the snow’s so deep you can’t get anywhere on foot.”
A warning shot fired from her eyes. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
Another mile, and the Millerton barn came into view. He ought to cut across country to his folks’ place, let them know what was going on, and get his ma and sister to work on Abigale until she agreed to stay there. Then he could deal with Blackwell himself.
Best plan he’d heard all day.
He turned Tess off the trail and out over the grassy park that stretched uncluttered until it reached the buildings of the Lazy H, mere specs in the distance.
The wagon bucked over rough ground, and Abigale held to the edge of the bench seat with both hands. “Seth Holt, what are you doing?”
“I’m taking you home.”
“You’ll do no such thing. Turn around right this minute. I paid for a wagon load of stores that I intend to make last me through the winter. And this is my wagon and mare for as long as I need them.”
His ploy was successful. Worry curled the edge of her voice.
“I’ll turn around when you tell me what you’ve got cooking in that pretty little head of yours.”
That last part was probably a mistake. She’d consider it condescending and might stab him with that vicious-looking hat pin. But what was he supposed to do with a headstrong gal liable to get herself in a fix worse than the one he’d already pulled her out of?
She crossed her arms again but fell against him when they rolled over a badger hole. Quick as a whip, he looped an arm around her and held her close.
“Let me go.” She pushed against his ribs.
“Not until you tell me what you’re planning. Besides, if you bounce out, I’ll have to stop and fetch you, and we might not make the ranch before the storm hits.”
She looked over her shoulder toward the mountain, her face so close that all he had to do was turn his head and kiss her. The temptation was almost more than he could handle. She smelled even better close up, and he knew right then and there his bachelor days were running out on him. He had to marry Abigale Millerton.
But first he had to win her over.
She went soft against him. “All right.”
“All right what?”
“All right, I’ll tell you.”
Reluctantly, he let her go, and she sat up straighter. She didn’t have room to scoot away, but at least she hadn’t tried. A good sign.
“I’m going to hide out in the woods where Blackwell—or whomever—has been cutting and wait for him to show up with his crew.”
A bad sign.
A very bad sign.
But he needed to hear her whole plan, and if he jumped in the middle of it too early, she’d sull up and not tell him. “Go on.”
She raised her hope-filled face toward him. “You think it will work?”
“Is there more to it?”
“Well,”—she pushed at the knot of hair that was bouncing loose—“I’ve always been a good shot.”