Willow: A Novel (No Series) by Linda Lael Miller

Author:Linda Lael Miller [Miller, Linda Lael]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2012-07-16T17:00:00+00:00

10

He was sleeping, or so it appeared to Daphne. Wanting a closer look at a man who could run afoul of the law and still be so thoroughly and completely loved by his family, she crept nearer the bed, holding her breath, and bent to look into the face of Steven Gallagher.

His frame, only half-covered by the tangled bedsheets, was long and lean, yet incredibly muscular. His hair appeared, in the shadows, to be roughly the color of raw honey.

Daphne found herself wishing that he would open his eyes so that she could see into them. That was, she had found in her eighteen years, the easiest way to get the true measure of another person.

Steven stirred on the narrow bed and something inside Daphne moved in response. The feeling so alarmed her that she took a step back from the bedside and let her breath out in a long, soft sigh.

This man was a desperado, she reminded herself, even though she was certain that he was not the same person who had robbed the train the day before. Steven Gallagher had a price on his head; Willow and the Mexican woman, Maria, had said so. And yet he did not have the look of an outlaw; indeed, to Daphne, he resembled the storybook princes of her childhood fancies.

Slowly, Daphne turned, her skirts whispering as she moved, to make her way out of the little room. Mercy, she thought, if one could bring a specimen like that into existence by kissing toads, she’d get nothing else done for raiding lily pads.

* * *

Willow was standing at the well when Gideon rode in, and the quiet despondency in the angle of her head and the set of her shoulders caused him a tender sort of despair.

As Willow looked up and saw him, he felt her brace herself against him, somewhere deep in her spirit, and was doubly wounded. Had he, between Daphne and the pursuit of Steven Gallagher, driven some eternal wedge between himself and this woman? Opened a breach that could never be closed?

Dismounting, Gideon held the reins of his horse in one hand and walked slowly toward his wife. In the three days spent apart from her, he’d learned the painful truth: a world without Willow was a world without air, sunshine, or music.

“Willow,” he said, because everything else was beyond him. His search for Steven had been fruitless, as she no doubt knew, and his face was scratchy with the stubble of a beard. Every muscle in his body ached from sleeping on the hard ground. He wanted to eat, to bathe in a tub filled to the brim with hot water, to die, and then come to life again in the arms of this woman.

The golden eyes were remote as they touched on him. “Did you find him?” she asked.

Gideon’s voice was like gravel in his throat. “You know I didn’t.”

“Yes,” she said, with a small nod.

He took the water bucket from her hands and carried it inside, into the quiet, spotless kitchen.

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