Carolyn Davidson Read Online Free Page B

quilt?”
    She looked over her shoulder at him. “You’re the refugee. As soon as the storm is over, you’ll be gone.”
    He sipped his coffee, watching her over the rim of his cup. “I’ve been thinking about that. You know, I’d feel a lot better if you agreed to let me stay on at least long enough to help you with the supplies, like I mentioned before.”
    She turned back to the potatoes, considering his offer. To all appearances, he seemed to be a gentleman, though what such a creature was doing roaming the mountains of Colorado was another puzzle. Perhaps he was a miner. Perhaps.
    “Did you work the mines for a long time?” she asked, depositing three potatoes on the table. Knife in hand, she began peeling them, awaiting his reply.
    “Long enough to know it wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.” His tone was dry, his mouth twisted in a grin. Leaning back in his chair, he allowed the quilt to slide from his shoulders, freeing both arms. “How about you? Were you born in Denver?”
    She shook her head. “No, back east.”
    “St. Louis?” he prodded.
    The man was downright irritating, she decided. Him with all his talk about good manners. “No.” Her reply was a single syllable, firm and to the point.
    He ducked his head, hiding a grin, almost.
    “I’m a widow. I’m going to have a child, and I like living alone. Does that answer all your questions?”
    “No, ma’am, it sure doesn’t. But I suspect that’s all I’m going to get, isn’t it?”
    “If I wanted to be neighborly I’d have found a place with houses on either side of me,” she said quietly. “I came here to be alone, Quinn.”
    “Just one more question, Erin? Please?”
    She looked up at him. He was about as persistent a man as she’d ever met up with. “Just one,” she said finally.
    “Who’s going to help you when the baby comes?” His playful look was gone. Even the admiring light was dimmed as his eyes darkened with concern.
    Her heart thudded heavily within her breast. The bottom line, the end of the road she traveled, and he’d nailed her right where she was most vulnerable. “I don’t know yet. I haven’t decided what I’ll do when the time comes.”
    His brow rose. “Seems like that would have been the first thing you thought of.”
    No, the first thing had been escape. Finding a place to hide, where no one could seek her out. A sanctuary for herself and her child. And of all the godforsaken spots she could have come up with, she’d ended up on the side of a mountain west of Denver. How ironic.
    She laughed, a strained sound that made him wince.
    “Erin?” Quinn tasted her name, relishing the breathless sound of it. His gaze appreciated the look of her, his mind wondered at the unexpected appeal to his senses. He hadn’t looked for this attraction, and yet it could not be denied. She was the quarry, he the hunter; her capture the goal.
    Yet for the life of him, for whatever reason, he’d lostany incentive he had to cart her back to New York. For the first time in years he found himself willing to put his own needs and concerns on the back burner. All in the interests of a pregnant woman who had a past—but not much of a future, from what he could see.
    Erin moved quickly, rinsing the potatoes at the pump, then slicing them into a pan, ignoring the sound of his voice speaking her name. The last of the bacon was cut into small pieces, then dropped into the skillet to fry up. An onion, chopped with rapid slashes of her knife, joined the bacon and sizzled in the grease.
    “Erin? I have an idea. Why don’t you hear me out?” So quickly his thoughts had spun out of control. Watching her, listening to her, he’d already juggled his plans twice. Now Quinn was about to commit himself in a new measure, perhaps allow a time of grace in which to consider the woman.
    She stirred the bacon in the skillet, her back straight, only the proud tilt of her head making him aware that she listened to his