True Love at Silver Creek Ranch - By Emma Cane Page 0,2
cheek.
“I’m fine.” The stranger used his gloved hand to swipe at his cheek and made everything worse.
“Come on,” Brooke said wearily, refusing to glance one last time at her family’s barn although she could hear the crackle and roar of the fire. “The bunkhouse is close. We’ll wash up there and see to your face.”
And she could look into his eyes and see if he was the sort who set fires for fun. He didn’t seem it, for he didn’t look back at the fire either, only trudged behind her.
The bunkhouse was an old log cabin, another of the original buildings from the nineteenth-century silver-boom days, when cattle from the Silver Creek Ranch had fed thousands of miners coming down from their claims to spend their riches in Valentine Valley. Brooke’s father had updated the interior of the cabin to house the occasional temporary workers they needed during branding or haying season. There were a couple sets of bunk beds along the walls, an old couch before the stone hearth, a battered table and chairs, kitchen cabinets and basic appliances at the far end of the open room, and two doors that led into a single bedroom and bathroom.
The walls were filled with unframed photos of the various hands they’d employed to work the ranch over the years. Some of those photos, tacked up haphazardly and curling at the edges, were old black-and-whites going almost as far back as photography did.
Brooke shivered with a chill even as she removed her coat. The heat was only high enough to keep the pipes from freezing, and she went to raise the thermostat. When she turned around, the stranger had removed his hat and was shrugging out of his Carhartt jacket, revealing matted-down hair and a soot-stained face. He was wearing a long-sleeve red flannel shirt and jeans over cowboy boots.
To keep from staring at him, she pointed to the second door. “Go on and wash up in the bathroom. I’ll find a first-aid kit.”
He silently nodded and moved past her, limping slightly, shutting the door behind him. He might be hurt worse than he was saying, she thought with a wince. As she opened cabinet doors, she realized the kit was probably in the bathroom. Sighing even as she rolled up her sleeves, she let the water run in the kitchen sink until it was hot, then soaped up her black hands and started on her face. If her hair hadn’t been in a long braid down her back, she’d have dunked her whole head under. She’d have to wait for a shower. Grabbing paper towels, she patted her skin dry.
A few minutes later, the stranger came out of the bathroom, his hair sticking up in short, damp curls, the first-aid kit in his hand. His face was clean now, and she could see that the two-inch cut was still bleeding.
“You probably need stitches,” she said, even as the first inkling of recognition began to tease her. “You don’t want a scar.”
He met her gaze and held it, and she saw the faintest spark of amusement, as if he knew something she didn’t.
“Don’t worry about it, Brooke.”
She hadn’t told him her name. “So I do know you.”
“It’s been a long time,” he said, eyeing her as openly as she was doing to him.
He was taller than her, well muscled beneath the flannel shirt that he’d pushed up to his elbows.
And then his name suddenly echoed like a shot in her mind. “Adam Desantis,” she breathed. “It’s been over ten years since you went off to join the Marines.”
He gave a short nod.
No wonder he looked to be in such great physical shape. Feeling awkward, she forced her gaze back to his face. He’d been good-looking in high school—and knew it—but now his face was rugged and masculine, a man grown.
She got flashes of memory then—Adam as the cool wide receiver all the high-school girls wanted, with his posse of arrogant sidekicks. He’d been able to rule the school, doing whatever he wanted—because his parents hadn’t cared, she reminded herself. And then she had another memory of the sixth-grade science fair, where all the parents had helped their kids with experiments, except for his. His display had been crude and unfinished, and his mother had drunkenly told him so in front of every kid within hearing range. Whenever Brooke thought badly of his antics in high school, that was the memory that crept back up, making her feel ill with pity and sorrow.