Easy on the Heart (Novella) Read Online Free Page A

one thing I do know it’s the men in these parts.” Miles blocked her view of Cooper Adams. “They’re a wild bunch, probably only half tame when the war called them and completely loco when they came home. The fellows out here are too wild to live in respectable towns. Murderers. Thieves. Rebels. And worse even than the JohnnyRebs are the deserters who hid out in these parts refusing to fight.” He mumbled the same things he had said for years. “I might hate the Rebs, but at least I can respect them. For all you know that Adams was one of the worst.”
    Mary didn’t want to hear any more of her brother’s never-ending lecture. “But Adams took good care of his sister just now. He was kind to her even though I could tell he was in a hurry.”
    Miles nodded. “That he did. I’ll give him that much. A nice lady like that must be pained having such a mean brother.”
    “You don’t know he’s worthless or mean. Winnie says he’s killing himself trying to run his ranch all alone without a wife to help him.”
    Miles frowned at her as if he felt truly sorry for her. “Mary, don’t go making up some story in your head. There are no ‘happy-ever-afters’ out here. You know firsthand how mean these men can be.”
    Mary felt her face redden. She quickly backed into the corner so her brother wouldn’t see how his words had hurt her.
    “I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat.
    “I don’t need reminding,” she whispered.
    “I know. I just don’t want to see you hurt again.”
    She watched Miles limp toward the back of the store. He didn’t mean to be cruel, he’d just hardened a long time ago.
    Mary shoved a tear from her cheek. She was slowly mirroring him. Before long they’d be made of rock. The first two petrified humans to still be breathing.
    Maybe Cooper Adams wasn’t mean or even worthless, but she knew he was not for her. She didn’t want to marry a rancher and look like she was fifty by the time she turned thirty. She had seen the settlers’ women come in the mercantile with children hanging all over them while they traded their last family heirloom for a month’s worth of groceries.
    She’d been told there were only two kinds of women out here, wives and whores, but as long as she had her brother to live with she would be neither. She’d stay here hiding. Invisible.

Chapter Four
     “ SHE’S SURE NOT the girl for me,” Cooper mumbled as he rode along the north border of his ranch toward the breaks. He had tried not to think of Mary Woodburn when he drove back from town with Winnie chatting at his side or while he’d unloaded the lumber. He tried, but he hadn’t succeeded. He must have relived their short time together a hundred times during the night.
    The memory of her touch was a way to help him through the night, nothing more. Anything was better than remembering the battles.
    Now, this morning, no matter how many times he told himself he had more important things to think about, thoughts of her wormed their way into his mind. Blue-gray eyes lingered.
    “She’s as plain as this land. A mouse of a woman who probably fears every man who walks into that shamble of a store,” he continued to argue, muttering to his horse. “The odd tingling I got when she brushed against me was probablymore like that feeling folks get when they say someone just walked over their grave. More eerie than intimate. So what if she smells all clean and fresh? For all I know she just finished taking her monthly bath.”
    Cooper kicked his horse into a gallop. If he didn’t stop talking to himself he would be as crazy as Winnie, buying furniture for a house she would never have. How did she figure to get that old rocker home on the stage?
    All afternoon he pushed himself harder than usual as he helped his men move cattle away from the arroyo where flash flooding might happen this time of year. Most of the day he didn’t think of anything but work. By midafternoon, the rain rolled in at full gale as the heavy