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Chapter One
Shauna was beat. She had watered and fed all the critters, mucked the barn. The stack of hay looked so clean and inviting, she thought about just plunking down on the pile of it and sleeping there for the night.
She must have done that. She was so exhausted that what she thought were just notions blending with reality. She must not have just thought about sleeping in the hay loft but did so. When she felt the toe of a boot on the tip of her own, she stirred. Cautiously.
She peeled opened her eyes, scanning upward a pair of very long legs to take in the full view of a cowboy standing before her. He wasn’t staring her down exactly. But he was studying her all the same.
“You there,” he said. “Thunderstorms coming in. I need shelter till they pass,” he said.
Few people crossed Shauna’s day, even if it was one that was slipping into the evening. Not after what happened. She saw to it.
“Fine,” she said, coming to her feet by backing away from him up the pile of hay.
Shauna took a mental inventory of where her pitch fork and scythe were, in case she had to grab them quickly. She side stepped him, not letting his eyes off of him for a moment.
A slight smile broke his otherwise grave face. “You’re fine ma’am. Just looking for shelter. Nothing else. Of course, if you have a pot of coffee somewhere, I wouldn’t mind.”
Shauna plied the barn door which the cowboy had taken it upon himself to close. The sky was black and green off in the distance with a shock of white above the horizon. The storm was a good ways off, at least far enough that she was clear to get to the house. The thought crossed her mind that she could invite him into the house. He was a stranger. He wouldn’t have any questions. But Shauna thought again.
“I’ve got some on the stove. Got some slumgullion too. You’re welcome to it,” she said.
“Obliged,” he said.
As she headed for the house, she realized she was being quick about it. Not because of the storm or because she wanted to be done with the chore of feeding her stranger but because, somewhere deep within her, she was glad for the company.
He was a hauntingly handsome man, beneath the Montana dirt. He smiled as little as she did. But his lips bent with amusement once or twice as they conversed, and it was more than nice. It had been that once when a man was above her in the sweet shadows of the night. That once before he went off and never came back.
At least in person. Shauna had him with her in the form of her little son, probably down for the night. She would look in on him before bringing the cowboy some supper. She would not have Haya do it. She wanted to do it for herself.
Shauna had been a mail order bride from Annapolis, Maryland. She was the aging single daughter of a domineering, fairly wealthy father who had little time for her since she had the audacity to be a daughter and not a son.
Her father was an academic and a business man who was something of a circuit lecturer. He kept such a tight rein on her, not because he was doting and overprotective but because he was mean.
He allocated an allowance to Shauna which she squirreled away until she knew what she was going to do about her lot in life. Once she happened on an ad for mail order brides, it was clear. She put herself on the block as a mail order bride.
Shauna followed the counsel of the agency who advised travelers to split up their valuables into small satchels so that if they were to be robbed – an ugly reality – that all would not be lost. She took everything she had from her bank account after a major argument with the vice president who thought she needed her father’s permission. She split up her fortune in several hiding places and traveled a hellish sojourn to make her way to Fort Shaw, Montana to meet with her future husband.
Shauna did not know what was worse. Facing spinsterhood under her father’s thumb or her journey out west. It was not one bit the romantic adventure the agency promised her. It was so horrible, she would not risk going back though she was lonesome homesick.
So when her husband left and didn’t come back she figured it was something she said. Or did. Or didn’t do. Though on her wedding night, she was pretty sure she did it all.
Or it maybe it was that her appearance was not pleasing to him. She thought she had a pleasing face but she was plumper than most. Her father let her know in no uncertain terms just what he thought about what she looked like. He punished her for being full-figured. The result was Shauna was somewhat skittish to look a man in the eye.
After their first week as man and wife where, her husband had showed her her duties as a farmer’s wife -- nearly a year to that very day. He went out on the morning of the seventh day to shoot their dinner and did not return. She thought he had saddled up with a bit too much gear and did not take a wagon for his kill, but she had been relatively new to the Frontier at the time. She did not dare question him. Out loud.
Except that when she finally took a hard look at the facts that her new husband was not returning, Shauna noticed that her life savings were gone too. At least one satchel of it. Her new now missing husband packed more than his camping gear when he departed. When Shauna confirmed her money was missing, she no longer had to wonder if he was coming back.
Fortunately, she had enough money to keep things going because she was there to stay. Both of them. When she learned she was pregnant loaded up the wagon and road till she found the next human being. She was not going to have a baby by herself. That’s when she found Haya, a Cheyenne woman who more than willing to come live with Shauna.
All this went through her head when she went into her house to fetch the stranger a bowl of stew. Her son was content, asleep under Haya’s attentive care.
Haya didn’t speak at all, ever. But she did nod at Shauna when she spoke to her in English. Shauna loaded up a bowl and walked back over the same line she had just traveled into the house, back out to the barn. The wind had picked up quite a bit in that short period of time.
“Here you go. I imagine you can figure out where the pump is if you’re thirsty,” she said quietly.
“Thank you for your kindness,” he said. “So your husband won’t mind my being out here, will he?”
Fear twisted within her. She was struck with the notion that he might be fishing to see if any men were on the property. As it was it was just Haya, the baby and her. Shauna thought it was best to lie.
