Widow Woman Read Online Free

in such matters had ended abruptly with her mother's death. From then on her education had come from Pa, and had covered a much different sphere—cattle, horsemanship and the land.
    "And don't you be rolling up your sleeves every minute or you'll be brown as a berry."
    Surreptitiously, Rachel eased a horn button through a hole in the front panel Ruth insisted on adding to the split skirts. With front and back panels buttoned, the skirt looked as respectable as any other. Unbuttoned, Rachel had the freedom to ride astride.
    "Don't bother yourself with buttoning up for my sake,” Ruth said crossly. “I suppose next you'll go galloping into town looking like this."
    That struck Rachel as highly unfair. She made a real effort to keep a neat appearance when she went into town or otherwise out among society. “You know I won't do that"
    "I suppose I should be grateful,” said Ruth, sounding anything but. “Though with the way hands talk and with you going like this to roundups and all, I don't suppose it matters, since every soul in the territory likely has heard about wild Mrs. Terhune up Jasper Creek. How on earth you think you'll ever find a man—"
    "I don't want a man.” Her stock response to Ruth's laments came out without thinking and with the conviction of habit. Then an image of a bronzed, wet body rising out of a pond flashed across her mind.
    "That's as may be, but you won't have any choice if you don't take heed, young lady. If only you'd use a proper saddle. I could stitch you a new costume from that melton cloak of your mama's."
    "I couldn't rope sidesaddle, and I couldn't cut cattle worth anything. Not to mention I couldn't even get in the thing by myself. A lot of good I'd be on the range using one of those."
    "Riding and roping, my sweet saints!” What Ruth knew about Rachel's activities on the range and what she could successfully ignore as long as she wasn't reminded, were two different matters. “I shudder to think what your mother would say about her daughter behaving so."
    "Mama would be proud of me.” Fearing the ground under that statement might sink like an alkali bog, Rachel hurried on. “Pa would be proud of me for roping and riding and—” Ruth interrupted with a sniff eloquent in its low opinion of Oren Phillips's suitability for determining proper behavior for a young woman.
    "I will act and dress as I must in order to run this ranch best I can. It was Pa's dream to have a ranch here, and Mama understood that. Now it's up to me to make it happen, any way I can."
    * * * *
    Nick squinted into the brightness beyond the kitchen porch and surveyed his temporary base.
    Widow woman.
    He hadn't worked up any particular imaginings when the bartender used the phrase. He'd been thinking mostly that working through the season at the Circle T would suit his purposes. And if serving his needs happened to help a widow woman ... Well, that padre at the mission used to say a grain of sand could outweigh a mountain come Judgment Day, and this had seemed an easy way to pick up a grain of good.
    His mouth twisted in derision that such a naive notion remained anywhere in him.
    And look where it got him.
    Widows could be gentle, gray-haired ladies or steely-eyed harridans or anything in between. Anything except a slim young woman who looked hardly old enough to be married, with wheat-colored hair and direct, hazel eyes so soft they cut to a man's gut. Especially when they studied him with equal amounts of shock and heat in a look that had made him harder than any whore's practiced touch.
    Anything except that.
    Maybe if her outfit hadn't so sorely needed help, he'd have taken his misguided expectations about widow ladies and ridden off toward whatever turn of the compass appealed.
    But riding in, he'd seen gaps between the barn's cottonwood logs big enough to put a fist through. The lodgepole pine of the main house and bunkhouse looked in better shape. The house, with rooms attached like a crazy quilt, was