Child Bride by Suzanne Forster

the hell did you run?”
    “Who wouldn’t run with a maniac like you chasing him?” the man said, rubbing a grimy shirtsleeve over his dripping brow. “If you don’t believe I work here, ask the foreman. He hired me yesterday.”
    Chase didn’t like anything about the situation. He could smell a liar, and this bastard stank like hell on housecleaning day. He shook some slack into the whip and motioned the man to his feet. “Let’s go have a talk with your foreman.”
    “Come here, Shadow,” said Annie, trying to coax the Border collie away from his post by the cabin door, where he’d been waiting ever since his master left. The dog regarded her with wary disapproval, as though he were holding her responsible for his master’s disappearance at the very least, and perhaps for any number of other things.
    Glancing around the cabin, Annie shivered a little at its austerity. A large stone fireplace dominated the main room, and the few pieces of furniture Chase had were of sturdy white pine. Other than a couple of rifles hanging above the fireplace, there was nothing on the walls—no pictures, no curtains on the windows, no touches of color anywhere to alleviate the grayish expanse of unfinished wood. The place had all the severity of a monastery and none of the charm, she decided.
    For some reason Shadow chose that moment to break his vigil. As Annie crossed the room to take a closer look at the kitchen area, the dog fell in behind her, sniffing at her legs and bare feet. Annie let him inspect her until he seemed satisfied, then reached down to stroke the silky black hair on his muzzle.
    The cabin’s kitchen was a little homier than the rest of the place, she noticed. A blue metal coffeepot with white speckles sat on a two-burner wood stove, and a red checkered oilcloth covered the small dinette table. The kerosene lanterns hanging from wall spikes made her think of scenes she’d read in her father’s western novels, of winter storms when the snow heaped up to the eaves of a cabin’s roof.
    Shadow brushed her leg, seeking her attention, and his cool, wet nose startled a chuckle out of her. “Aren’t you a friendly fella all of a sudden,” she said, scratching the white patch on his head. The dog whimpered softly, and she crouched impulsively to give him a hug, surprised at the welling of emotion she felt. It was bittersweet and yet soft at the edges, an odd kind of yearning that seemed to concentrate in her arms, moving her to hug him tighter. She nuzzled into his ruff a moment and then released him, laughing as he began to lick her face. He was quivering with affection, and it was the first warmth Annie had experienced since she’d started her desperate journey. Lord, it felt good to have someone want her around. It felt almost like coming home. Or what she imagined that would be like. She’d never had anything resembling a normal home life.
    Her eyes were misty as she sat on the floor next to the dog and surveyed the cabin again. If only the place weren’t so cold and forbidding. It wasn’t at all the house she’d been seeing in her mind all these years. She’d envisioned it as a picturesque log cabin with a tiny kitchen all fixed up with yellow curtains and ruffled seat cushions, a shaft of morning sunlight drifting through the window, warming a knotty-pine breakfast nook.
    And of course she’d imagined herself in that kitchen, cooking up a mess of ham and eggs for breakfast. And the man of the house? Her cowboy lover? She closed her eyes, remembering the sweetest part of the dream for her. He would be out back splitting logs for firewood, probably shirtless and sweat-sheened, working up an appetite. After he’d washed up, he would want to steal a kiss, of course, and probably something more, but she would remind him that his sunny-side-up eggs were getting cold.
    “I sure got it wrong, didn’t I, Shadow?” She leaned into the dog’s furry warmth for comfort as another lonely kind of aching flared