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

to her, but Sarah was too far away, waving goodbye. Her skirt snapped around her shoe tops, and he remembered her small pale feet, bare and smudged with soft dirt.
    Louisa cleared her throat to grab his attention, but nothing was likely to do that.
    â€œExcuse me, ladies. My daughter will enjoy your gifts.” He tipped his hat, taking the basket only because handing it back would be rude. He didn’t want to offend the banker’s daughter—at least, not too damn much. Yet.
    He left them standing there, turning his back on their huffs of disapproval as they left. That had been a waste of his time, but at least he knew the banker couldn’t be trusted.
    He’d bet the only reason those girls were here with their fancy basket and simpering smiles was because Mr. Lockwood had revealed the size of Gage’s bank account.
    â€œI see the welcomes have started.” Sarah didn’t hesitate on her way down the road as he caught up with her. “Remember what I said about my uncle.”
    There was something about her. As he let her go on her way, Gage felt a thud in his chest, a foolish thud, because he knew darn well where listening to his heart led.
    â€œElla’s ma is really nice.” Lucy’s hand slipped into his, her fingers warm and small. Trust glittered in her dark eyes and something else.
    Longing.
    â€œMrs. Redding told me she isn’t looking for marriage. In case you have any ideas.”
    â€œAw, Pa. I already got ideas.” She leaned her cheek against his arm, all innocence and dreams.
    She’d been too young to remember how it had been, so he didn’t blame her for wishing, but he had to be honest with her. Maybe in time she’d understand.
    He wouldn’t be walking down the aisle a second time.
    Lucy took the basket from him and lugged it into the shanty. Her footsteps faded away, and he was alone on the windblown prairie, staring after a woman in a simple checked dress.
    She grew smaller with distance and still he watched. Her blue skirt became nothing more than a dot on the brown plains, and he could not turn away.
    One thing was sure. When it came to Mrs. Sarah Redding, he’d be wise to keep his distance.

Chapter Four
    L ate-night weariness tugged at Sarah like a cold north wind as she wrung water from the mop. Droplets tinkled in the bucket and the soap sudsed, sending up tiny bubbles to pop in the candlelight.
    Over the past year she’d washed this floor so many times, she didn’t make a sound or need more than the single flickering light as she bent to her work. A board squeaked beneath her foot, the only sound in the silent hotel.
    Earning her keep at her aunt and uncle’s homestead left her little time to earn the money she needed. There was always an expensive new medicine to pay for or new shoes to buy, for Ella was always growing. What was left of her salary went to pay the doctor.
    It was times like these when she was exhausted from a long week of working days and half the nights and when living with her aunt and uncle seemed unbearable, she didn’t know how she could keep going.
    Her small weekly payments seemed to make no difference; the debt she was in seemed insurmountable. When she was falling asleep on her feet and her handsbled from lye soap, it seemed her life was never going to improve.
    She was simply tired, and she knew it. Tomorrow, when the sun was rising and the breeze brought with it the sweetness of the morning prairie, she would feel differently. She always did. She took heart in that. Today had been an especially difficult one.
    Uncle Milt’s mood had not improved by suppertime, and he grew into a rage when told of the latest gossip concerning their new neighbor, Gage Gatlin. Sarah shivered, remembering the look in her uncle’s eyes when he spoke of the man he believed to be a drifter, the man who’d taken cattle that Milt had decided were his.
    A shivery sense of foreboding that sat deep in the