All But The Queen Of Hearts by Rae Muir

Author:Rae Muir [Rae Muir]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781459268043
Publisher: Harlequin

Lindy jostled the tall grass with her booted foot to scare off any rattlesnake that still hung about the drying meadow. She examined the burgeoning flowers of the grass and weeds. The hay must be made before the grass went to seed. She’d put off searching for a man to do the job, just in case Lon came calling, but now she had no alternative.

A week had passed since she’d seen him on the road below the Divide, and he hadn’t so much as sent a message—and she’d supposed he liked her, a little. Perhaps he’d gone back to California. Left without so much as a goodbye. The intense blue of the sky dimmed.

So few men would consider a woman six feet tall. Consider marriage, that is. Plenty would dance, and flirt, even buy her dinner. Plenty would look eagerly at her bed. But say “marriage” and they shied like month-old colts. A rattle, the soft sweep of the snake through the grass jerked her back to the meadow.

“Stop mooning about, Melinda,” she said. “A woman can ruin her life hankering after a man, not to speak of stepping on a rattlesnake.”

She spent the afternoon harvesting vegetables from the garden, turned the water of the spring into the patch while she loaded the wagon in the evening twilight. She gathered the last of the eggs, put the evening’s milk in flat pans in the springhouse to let the cream rise. Darkness enveloped the valley before she’d finished feeding the pigs and calves, before she’d shut the chicken coop tight against a fox or coyote.

Only three weeks past midsummer, and already the daylight hours had shortened. July and August brought more work, and less daylight to do it in. She had to find a man to cut the hay. She could not wait for Lon Anderson. After the hay, the irrigation ditch, then the wood.

She washed her face and hands in the tank, and the chilly springwater brought thoughts of winter. Could she make it through the cold months by herself? The woodpile Mr. Parker had left behind was nearly gone. Wood could be hauled free from the mills near Washoe Lake, where great saws cut the timbers for the mines. But time? Time was the problem!

She sighed, and found herself wishing for the hundredth time she had let Lon stay on that first night. If she had not been so stubborn, if she hadn’t let herself get mad at Harvey for wagering her at poker, she’d have a big, strong, pleasant man about the house right now. A big, strong, pleasant man, who got excited when he held her in his arms.

“I didn’t know him then,” she said, explaining away the mistake without much conviction. “I don’t know him now. He’s so big, he might be awful rough in bed.”

She tossed under the coverlet, scolding herself because running after a man wasn’t proper. But, then again, she should find out if he’d located Harvey.

The next morning, all the way up

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