September Rain Read Online Free Page A

mare forward over the difficult terrain, unwilling to think about how long the trail was. Unwilling to consider how foolish it was to head up the mountain by herself this time of year when the days were growing shorter and the shadows held a foretaste of the coming winter’s chill. Unwilling to think of how alone she was, with nothing but her father’s ancient shotgun for a weapon. Unwilling to admit to herself that she had no idea where she was going or what she might find once she got there.
    At one point beside the path, a large area of grass and twigs was crushed, as if someone had sat or lain on the trail. Hallie dismounted and bent down to look closely at the ground. She picked up a dried leaf and found a bloody fingerprint on its surface. Fear and dread weakening her limbs, she climbed back onto her horse.
    He had fallen off his horse. A mixture of fear for his life and admiration for the strength of will it must have taken him to remount the horse coursed through her.
    At last, well past noon, as the sky began to darken with rain clouds, Hallie’s mare stepped out of the woods into a small clearing in front of a tiny, rough cabin.
    A big gelding stood there, saddled and restless. She tied the mule and her horse beside it. Was this Jacob’s place?
    Muttering a quiet apology to the three animals and promising to take care of them as soon as she could, she knocked on the door of the cabin.
    “Mr. Chandler?” she called. Her voice was still hoarse, and it was hard to speak past the racing of her heart. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Mr. Chandler? Jacob?”
    She pushed on the door. When it opened, she stood stock still for a moment, listening, expecting something to happen, not knowing what.
    Her heart pounded like thunder in her temples. What if he’d made it home only to die? A fierce apprehension tempered with regret suffused her. She stepped into the cool darkness of the cabin and closed the door behind her. Slowly, the darkness around her coalesced into recognizable silhouettes.
    The cabin was a single room, containing nothing but the essentials. A wooden table sat in its center with one rough-hewn chair, a fireplace lined one wall, and on the other wall, below a blanket-draped window, was a bed. The loneliness of the single chair reached out to her.
    She noticed something on the bed. Someone.
    She froze. “Mr. Chandler? Jacob?”
    He was curled up on his side, still as death. Hallie blinked and stepped closer, trying to see in the semi-darkness.
    Suddenly a picture of what she was doing flashed before her vision. She was standing in a cabin, alone and defenseless, looking for a man she did not even know. She drew in courage with a deep breath.
    The ladies of Goshen Springs would be horrified, but then they were horrified at her often enough for not marrying, for running a store alone, for speaking her mind. They would be quick to say she had invited her attack by walking alone at dusk. And they would not understand her need to ride up here alone to check on the man who had saved her life.
    Hallie shrugged. She was too old to worry about what people said. And at twenty-nine, she was in very little danger of hurting her reputation.
    She watched the shadowy figure on the bed, but it didn’t move.
    “Jacob?” If he was dead, she would kill Brent Myers with her bare hands.
    Creeping carefully and quietly across the rough floor, she finally stood no more than two feet from the simple frame bed. A blanket covered the bed and the man lay on top of the blanket, clad only in buckskin breeches.
    He was whipcord slender, and with his bare shoulders and bare feet he could have been a boy taking a nap. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she had to revise her first impression. This was no boy. It was Jacob Chandler. His leanness was deceptive. Long muscles defined his shoulders and arms. His legs looked powerful and sleek beneath the buckskin.
    Then she saw the gun clutched in his hand. Her sore heart