Tallchief: The Hunter Read Online Free Page A

her, or sold it. I will send them to him after I leave. Or to Elspeth, if he’s gone by then.” Jillian turned to the computer screen again, critically studying her layout for Silver’s advertisement. She had just gotten started as a freelance graphic artist, her experience as a sales executive useful. The Silver account was the largest she’d had; she hoped it would lead into even bigger ones as she created a niche in advertising. She had a knack for photography and for editing the images she produced; they were unique, not “canned”—shots produced by a photography mill. The cabbage roses had been photographed last summer in a perfect sunset to bring out the lush color and contrast of the shadows.
    The different layers of the images could be arranged and the photography altered to her creative notions. Life was like that—arranged in different layers, some bright and good, and others shadowed like the petals of the roses. Though the photographs could be changed to her liking,her past with Adam remained painful. Still, their future was uncertain, open to manipulation, like the layouts. Jillian turned away from her computer screen. In another time, another place, she just might have revenge.

Two

    A

dam knocked at Elspeth’s door and nodded as she opened it to him, her son balanced on her hip. The farmhouse was quiet around her, a contrast to his churning emotions. Locked in his thoughts, he dismissed her lifted eyebrows, that mocking curve to her lips.
    “Thanks for the use of the pickup truck. I’m sorry I left the fitting. I forgot something in town.” He served her the lame excuse while his mind coursed through the slash-slash meeting with Jillian. He had no right to bring his anger into Elspeth’s home, filled with life and happiness.
    “Come in. Whatever you’ve lost will come back to you. It’s only waiting for the right time to be born as it should be.” Her quiet gray eyes searched his face as the shy toddler on her hip toyed with the heavy black braid crossing her shoulder.
    Caught by her tone, and the furious moment that had just passed with Jillian, Adam entered Elspeth’s home. She couldn’t know of his past with Jillian. Yet the certainty wasthere, as though she sensed the future. He took in the scents of baking bread, of children and the farmhouse warmed by Elspeth’s work. His gaze slid to the large room where Elspeth wove in the quiet hours. The enormous, ancient, wooden loom threaded with the Tallchief plaid had belonged to Una, a Scots bondwoman captured by the chieftain. A quilting rack, much like the one his brother’s wife used, hugged the ceiling, waiting until it was needed. In the air hung the same serenity that Adam had noticed at Jillian’s, the feminine peace he had shredded with his anger.
    Jillian’s eyes were still as gold as he remembered, still brilliant and burning with her fury….
    “You’ve been hunting a long time, Adam,” Elspeth said as he hovered between clashing with Jillian and the serenity of the Petrovna home. “Perhaps it’s time for you.”
    “The kilt is a bit breezy up the backside in cold weather,” he said in an effort to waylay the uneasiness prowling through him. He sensed that soon he would be coming to Elspeth for answers that had eluded him for years. She couldn’t know his past and yet somehow—
    “So my brothers say. Would you like to stay and have lunch with us?” She nuzzled the black hair of her son, a close replica of Adam’s nephew, J.T., but with the curling hair of his father, Alek Petrovna. The boy hugged the shiny new Sam the Truck that Adam had given him, a plastic, rounded model designed for a toddler. “Your jeans are mended, but it will soon be nap time and we can talk without curious little ears. But then, you’re not ready yet, and you’re set on another course, aren’t you?”
    Surprised that she could read him so easily, Adam shot her a wary look. There it was, that nagging suspicion that Elspeth’s gray eyes