Easy on the Heart (Novella) Read Online Free

fragrance almost made him believe there was still a kindness in the world he once saw as a child. He’d take thataroma over any he’d ever smelled from a bottle, but he couldn’t name exactly what it was.
    Twisting suddenly from his grip, Mary backed away. Even in the shadows, he saw the fear in her eyes.
    “I’m sorry, miss. I didn’t mean to slam into you.” Cooper felt as clumsy as a drunk staggering on the street. “I was looking up trying not to bump my head when you stopped.”
    She watched him for a moment as if considering screaming for help. Then, slowly, she took a deep breath and seemed to force herself to relax. “It’s understandable. This room can be traitorous at times.”
    No smile softened her words.
    He found himself studying her closely, wishing he understood her. There were secrets behind her cautious eyes. Secrets he wasn’t sure he was brave enough to investigate. She’d been hurt by a man, sometime, someplace, and as the brother of three sisters, Cooper hated to think of any woman being harmed.
    “Your sister’s purchase.” Mary pointed to a huge wooden rocker hanging from nails on the back wall. “I wasn’t strong enough to lift it down.”
    Cooper evaluated the ugly chair. Too large, too old, too scarred to be of much use. “Are you sure Winnie bought this?” He felt like a fool for asking even before the words were out of his mouth.
    Mary nodded. “She asked if we had a rocker and insisted on this one the minute she saw it. She said something about every woman should have a rocker sitting next to her hope chest.”
    Groaning, he reached for the chair. When he’d been a kid, he remembered his sisters having hope chests filled with what they called “someday items.” Surely Winnie had given up on the idea of someday having her own home and family.
    As he lifted the heavy oak from the wall, his hat tumbled. Cooper twisted trying to find a place on the floor to set the chair while he retrieved his hat. There was no room.
    “I’ll get it,” Mary finally offered, squeezing past him and the chair.
    When she leaned up and placed the hat back on his head, her body brushed against his arm. Cooper flinched like he’d been hit by a cannonball in the gut. Her nearness in the shadows was the most intimate feeling he had ever known. He wasn’t some schoolboy who had never been close to a woman, but every part of his being reacted to her.
    For one moment, totally by accident, they had connected. He felt as if, with her slight movement, she’d somehow brushed against his beating heart.
    He forced himself to move, to follow her back to the front of the store and out the door. He was being foolish. Nothing had happened between them. They had touched by accident, nothing more. He wasn’t even attracted to her. But for all his bravery, he couldn’t force himself to look at Mary Woodburn.
    Maybe she hadn’t noticed a thing.
    Maybe she was still as afraid of him as she had been earlier.
    If he met her expressive eyes, he would know. She couldn’t hide the truth any more than she could hide her fear.
    One thought kept his gaze on the ground. What if, when they touched, she’d felt the slight shift in the earth he had? By magic, or witchcraft, or pure fantasy, what if they both had felt it? What if the shy little woman truly had touched his heart?

Chapter Three
      MARY WOODBURN STOOD at the window of her brother’s store and watched the tall cattleman maneuver his wagon down the muddy street. He seemed hard as leather, yet he’d worried about her when they bumped together. A kindness lay just beneath his weathered toughness; a kindness she’d guess might be there when she observed him moving about town.
    “Best stop your dreaming, girl,” her brother said when he noticed her staring. “He wouldn’t give you the time of day, that one. Only reason he spoke to you now was because you were so nice to his sister.”
    “You don’t know, Miles. Maybe he’s different.”
    “If there’s