Let Me Love You (2 page)

“No need. I’ll attend to the matter when the docks are open again.”

Brianna dropped him a tiny curtsy before turning and walking away. Surprise broke his expressionless mask for a brief second, but that moment was etched in her mind. Satisfaction filled her as she moved back towards her horse. No, she didn’t need a man to run her father’s mill.

And that would make Gregory Spencer right proud of his only child. She might be a daughter, but she was pure Spencer blood. Yeah, her daddy would be proud, wherever he was. She hugged that knowledge tight to her heart as she refused to consider any of the nasty fates that might have claimed her father. He wasn’t dead. She’d feel it in her soul if he was. So, she was going to make certain her father’s mill was waiting for him when he made it home. No Spencer gave up so easily. Since she was her father’s only child, it doubled her duty to hold the family name up. He’d only been missing since spring. There were any number of reasons why his hunting trip had prevented him from coming home. His horse might have gone lame and everybody knew you had to tend to an injured mount, because a horse was essential in the West. She’d bet he’d written her a letter and it just hadn’t reached her. Well, the mail was as uncertain as the supply wagons. Maybe he was tending to his horse up in the woods where there wasn’t any way to get a letter into circulation.

No, her father wasn’t dead and she refused to even entertain that it was a possibility. She’d think of three more reasons that might be delaying him instead. Positive attitude was the key. Yes, it was.

Sloan McAlister watched Brianna leave. He shouldn’t have. His attention lingered on the sway of her hips in a blunt form of appreciation that was guaranteed to land him in trouble. Considering the worn calico of her dress, he was a bastard for eyeing her. There was a twitch from his cock that capitalized the word “bastard”, but it wasn’t enough to make him turn away. Lady or not, he enjoyed the view. It was far from polite, but it was honest.

He always had been a sucker for a woman with spunk. The problem was that of the two sorts of women a man had to choose from, spunk tended to live in the wild ones. In the West, that meant the saloon girls who took life by the throat with one hand firmly clasped around its testicles. They were merciless females who earned fortunes by dangling their flesh in front of hungry miners as they milked those men of their newly discovered gold. Truly savvy women could spend a couple of years on their backs and earn enough to return east and live well. Sin often paid better than respectable employment—it always had.

Brianna Spencer wasn’t that sort. No, she was a lady. No doubt about it. He’d bet his right arm that she was wearing a pair of knickers beneath her calico and petticoat. Under that intimate garment would be a sweet channel that she’d never let a man touch. She wouldn’t sell it for anything less than a man’s vow in front of a parson.

It had been a long time since he’d been so close to a female he managed to respect. Sure, the town was full of virginal daughters and church-going mothers, but they were just as petty as the gold prospectors. They hunted husbands in the same cold-blooded manner. He’d had a taste of their respectable dealings before and knew better than to walk anywhere near their church hall socials. He wasn’t considered husband material, but his badge was used as a shield to allow their daughters to practice their charms on him. Holding the position of an agent only meant the good mothers of the town expected him to take their teasing until a proper suitor stepped up. Being used never sat well with him, so he avoided the “good” folk in town.

Brianna wasn’t that kind. She was a rare sort of woman who enjoyed knowing she made her way in the world without compromise. That was something else he liked too much in a female.

Independence.

A lot of men got that confused with a blow to their pride, but Sloan didn’t see it the same. A woman who faced life with a healthy dose of self-confidence in her own ability was usually fire between the sheets.

His cock hardened and he cussed softly under his breath. He was sure a dumb ass tonight. Letting his mind wander over the thighs of a woman like Brianna would only gain him a cock that wasn’t going to be satisfied with a whore.

Well, at least he had a fine target for his foul temper. Turning, he moved across the dock towards Clayton’s office. It wasn’t his duty to deal with the man, but he couldn’t resist the idea of seeing her once more. Besides, he didn’t like sharing his dock with a crook or knowing that his supply cupboard had unpaid flour in it. The dock master stocked the agents’ bunkhouse and was paid by the company for the goods. Clayton was double dealing. As long as Sloan was on duty, the matter was going to be settled to his personal satisfaction.

Rattling Brianna Spencer sounded like a better reason to confront Clayton though.

That was another fault of his, pulling tails just to watch the fire dance. His mood darkened dangerously. He wanted to see flames dance in Brianna’s eyes. The kind no man had the right to associate with any lady of her caliber. But that didn’t change the heat that raced through his erect cock or the hunger rising inside him to be the man to taste her.

Or maybe the word was tempt. He certainly was tempted and he’d always figured that payback was fair play.

Except this kind of game left burns that scarred. Her face was already etched into his mind and he got the feeling she was going to dance through his dreams, too. Even that made his lips twitch. A man couldn’t really complain about a dream that featured Brianna. He might cuss but he wouldn’t complain. There were a lot worse things his memory could choose to taunt him with during the night. Brianna’s sweet swaying hips were a far cry better than a few deeds that decorated his past. Maybe that was the reason he savored the swollen erection with a half grin sitting on his lips. His life was hard, but today it had offered up a sweet little ray of delight.

It was worth whipping Clayton into line.

As the sun set, the temperature dropped quickly. Brianna rushed through her final chores and hurried back to warm herself in front of her stove. It was time to pull out her flannel petticoat. The season for lightweight cotton was gone. Ice was appearing on the edges of the river each morning as winter loomed over Silver Peak.

The two-room cabin her father had built when he brought her west was attached to the grinding house. Two small rooms, constructed to minimize the amount of coal they needed to heat the dwelling in winter. She’d never minded the humbleness of the dwelling. Even if it was a stark contrast to the house she’d lived in back in Virginia. Home wasn’t a place, but more of a feeling. It was the people who lived there with you that made it a sanctuary from the rest of the world. Her daddy had always been all the security she needed.

A little mutter of sorrow passed her lips as she poked at the coals in the stove. Heat hit her face and she smiled as it warmed her chilled nose. White snow would blanket the ground in the morning, but her bed would be cozy due to her father’s wisdom in making the mill house small. His double bed was in the same room as the stove. The back one had been hers, added on one spring before the ice broke over the river and grinding could begin again. There was a tiny stove in it as well, but she’d shut the door firmly against the cold and taken to sleeping in the main cabin since her father had been gone. It would be foolish to waste money on heating her room when she kept the main stove fired for cooking. With the bank note looming over her, every penny was precious.

Closing the side door of the stove, she turned her attention to the cast-iron pot sitting on the back of it. Wrapping a folded cloth over the handle, she pulled the lid up with a curved iron hook. Her dinner smelled delightful as she gave it a turn with a large copper spoon. Working the mill meant she had to be clever enough to set her nightly meal to simmering in the morning or she ate cold supper at night. Halting work to check on her meal wasn’t a very effective business strategy. More than one man in town had resorted to a mail-order bride just to share the workload. In the West, it took a devoted couple to keep a house running with any degree of comfort. Romance took a second-row seat to the harsher reality of having the cupboard stocked for winter. A man might bring in the harvest, but needed another set of hands to stew it down and set it into jars so it might soothe the belly during the bitter months. The town parson was fond of reminding his flock just how comfortable life was when a man married up and shared the workload. The reverend was another person who would like to see her wed. At least he had heavenly reasoning.

A little giggle escaped her lips as she considered just what a church wedding would lead to—a consummation. Joseph wanted her in his bed, too, and it was rather funny when you recognized that everyone’s ideas would see her warming a man’s bed. It was wicked of her to place both parson and Joseph in the same group but it was still amusing when she considered that sex was going to be the end result of both ideas.

“You’re a shame, Brianna.” Muttering to herself, she turned back towards the chore of cooking supper.

The remains of a ham shank coupled with kidney beans and dried peas had stewed up over the dying coals quite nicely. After dropping freshly mixed biscuit dough into it, she placed the cover on top and waited for the dumplings to cook. The thick, black cast iron of the pot was hot and it wouldn’t take long.

The chill in the air made her shudder as she opened the door to her pantry. She considered the rows of neatly stored jars of fruit she’d spent endless hours preserving for the coming winter. Even the autumn pomegranates were gone now. She counted the jars and sighed at the number. Working alone, she’d only managed to put up a portion of what she had the year past. She’d burned a lot of oil in order to do it, too, because she couldn’t stand at the stove and grind grain at the same time. Large families were another thing westerners welcomed. It meant lots of hands to help with the workload.

Winter could be long and bitter. You learned to sleep less during the summer so that you didn’t starve when the snow drifted past your door. Two large sacks of apples caught her eye. Reaching inside one, she pulled out a slightly wizened piece of fruit. A few customers paid their fees in food. She’d forgotten about the apples as the last rush of the season kept her at the grinding stone until late. The daytime temperatures had been too warm to keep the apples sitting in her pantry firm. If they froze below ground in her root cellar, they’d become mushy. Apple pie was only a treat for the summer because, in Silver Peak, it was apple cider or preserves the rest of the year. Her cider press was out back of the mill house in the chill of the night. A little shiver shook her as she considered working the large corkscrew iron press. Hot cider might fill her kitchen with a sweet scent near Christmas when she was starving for some cheer, but it didn’t fill the belly very effectively.

Preserves would smell just as nice and make a fine tart for the Yuletide season. The snow might be too deep for her to attend church on Christmas or for that matter a good portion of the month. There would be no trip to the mercantile to fill her empty pantry. Besides, the bank note would be due again come spring. Better to keep her fist tight around every coin until the land note was paid in full. It was a dream that shimmered in her imagination, as well as in many of her neighbors’.

Picking up the burlap bag, she hummed as she returned to the stove and dropped it in easy reach. Her Dutch oven cast-iron pot was waiting on the sideboard. Her cooking ware was worth a great deal. The bigger iron kettle had been bought just last year. Her father had insisted on purchasing it when he’d caught her drooling over its two-gallon size. Larger pots were rare in the territories; every one had to be shipped in from the east. With its size she could stew down a large batch, saving time. She counted it a blessing this season because her smaller pot would never have gotten her the number of jars she had in the pantry.

“Thanks, Daddy.”

Reaching for a knife, she began to chop and slice the fruit as her supper simmered. The kitchen soon smelled like cinnamon and sugar as she splurged on her last preserving project of the season by opening up her spice jar. It was a perfect touch for a chilly night. A kerosene lamp cast a yellow glow over her labor as she mixed up a small tin of cobble crust to bake a little treat for herself while the rest of the apples stewed down so that she could store them away in jars.

A hard knock landed on the front door, shattering her bliss. She stared at the sturdy bar she had in place as a second pounding hit the wood. She peeked through the curtain and dropped the fabric as she saw a shadowy form in a black duster standing on her front step. Just enough light was spilling out from her window to illuminate the face of the railroad agent. Brianna frowned at the glass pane. Her pretty summer calico curtain let the light spill right out onto her front step, announcing the fact that she was home. With the entire town knowing she lived alone, it was a foolish lapse in forethought. Tomorrow, she was going to nail the storm shutters closed.

But that wasn’t going to solve her dilemma tonight.

“Oh, honestly!”

She put her stirring spoon down and went towards the door. Turning into a frightened mouse sure wasn’t going to do her any good. If the man intended to harm her, he’d smash the little kitchen window quite easily. Since he was knocking, she might as well answer the door.

Glass was really expensive and she had to live in the house once he’d finished his business. Whatever it might be. Besides, working herself into a fit of fear was only going to keep her from gaining a good night’s rest because her mind was chasing phantoms instead of slumbering.

He touched his hat again as she let the full light from her lamp illuminate him. Even when she stood a full step higher than him, he still rose above her. A tiny flicker of amusement filled his eyes as she pushed the door wide open, instead of hiding behind it as if it were some kind of shield. She might be a fool, but she wasn’t a coward.

“Good evening, Miss Spencer.”