Deborah Camp by A Tough Man's Woman

becauseA.J. collected them in town and tore them into tiny pieces right in front of her.
    After he died, she’d written her two best women friends, Doris McDonald and Adele Gold, and explained why she hadn’t been writing. She’d recently received letters back from them, expressing relief and happiness for her present circumstances. Everything had seemed so rosy.
    But now she had another Andrew Dalton in her life. She settled Andy in his cradle, smoothing a hand over his soft hair and trailing a fingertip along his dewy cheek. Her baby. The time she’d spent with A.J. had been worth it because she now had her son, her beautiful son. Bending down, she kissed his sweet-smelling cheek, then tiptoed to the other side of the room to undress. Glancing occasionally at the closed door as she removed her clothes, she realized she was tense.
What foolishness!
she chided herself. Blue Eyes was sound asleep. Still… maybe she should sleep with a gun under her pillow. He’d been joshing her about that, but she thought the suggestion might be wise. After all, he’d been in prison. He might awaken during the night with women on his mind.
    After slipping into her cotton nightgown, she quietly left her bedroom and retrieved the handgun and tucked it under her pillow. She shoved a trunk against the closed door before getting into bed.
    Even with those precautions it was hours before she drifted off to a restless sleep. When the rooster crowed shortly before first light, she was already up and dressed, anxious to face the day and the man who had come to ruin it.
    Oleta was stoking the fire in the cookstove. Cassiesmelled freshly brewed coffee and spotted a mug on the table. She glanced at it, surprised to find that it had been used. Usually she was up half an hour or more before Oleta.
    “Looks like I’m not the only early riser,” she said, selecting a clean mug for herself from a collection by the stove.
    “I don’t know how long he’s been gone.”
    A few seconds passed before Cassie gleaned meaning from Oleta’s statement. She whipped her gaze to the loft. “You mean he’s not up there asleep?”
    “No. I looked. He is gone. I did not hear him even when he made coffee.”
    “He brewed the coffee?” Cassie stared at the dark liquid she’d poured, then crossed the room to stare out the window. “His horse is gone,” she noted. The bunk-house windows were dark. “T-Bone and Gabe haven’t stirred yet. Wonder where Blue Eyes is off to so early? I suppose it’s too much to hope that he decided to hit the trail and leave us be.”
    “This is his home.”
    Cassie spun to glare at Oleta. “No more than it’s my home.” She set down the chipped mug, sloshing coffee onto the table, and went to wrench open the front door. “I’m going to milk Daisy.”
    Crossing the yard and making for the barn, she examined the hoofprints leading from the corral. He had headed east, not toward Abilene or Monroe’s spread, so where the devil was he so early?
    As she pulled the milking stool to beside the mooing Jersey cow, Cassie tried to put Drew Dalton out of her mind, but he kept barging in. All day long he barged in.
    *      *      *
    He came barreling toward the house like a rider shot from hell. Cassie lifted a hand to shade her face from the barrage of the setting sun and thought Drew Dalton looked like he rode in the center of that bright orange orb, surrounded by it, empowered by it. Shaking off the fantasy, she braced herself for another confrontation with him. He’d been gone but not forgotten throughout the day, too often the subject of her snatches of conversation with Gabe and T-Bone, both of whom were itching to know how she was going to handle this new burr under her saddle.
    She would have told them if she’d known herself. For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what to do with the man, what to say to him, or how to treat him. All she could tell T-Bone and Gabe was that she wasn’t