Chapter 1 - The Woman Nobody Wanted
Charlene Stewart had learned there were worse things than silence.
There was the silence that followed you into a store.
The silence that settled over a church pew when you sat down.
The silence women used when they had been gossiping about you a moment earlier and suddenly discovered the hymnbook fascinating.
And then there was the particular silence of Bitter Creek Mercantile on an October morning when Charlene pushed through the door with twelve cents in her purse and found her former husband standing beside the flour barrels.
For one foolish heartbeat, she considered turning around.
Then Nathaniel Reed saw her.
His smile made retreat impossible.
Three years had passed since the magistrate dissolved their marriage, but Nathaniel still had the peculiar talent of making Charlene feel as if she were standing before that crowded courthouse again.
She remembered every detail.
The cold bench beneath her hands.
The magistrate refusing to look directly at her.
Nathaniel explaining calmly that six years of marriage without a child had destroyed any reasonable hope for continuation of his family line.
As though Charlene had been a field he had purchased and discovered barren.
As though she had deliberately failed him.
As though she had not spent years drinking bitter herbal teas, praying through sleepless nights, and measuring her worth against every cradle she passed.
The marriage had ended before noon.
The humiliation had lasted three years.
Now Nathaniel stood near the mercantile counter dressed in a dark wool coat that had probably cost more than Charlene earned in two months repairing shirts.
Beside him was Bethany.
Young.
Golden-haired.
Pretty in the soft, uncomplicated way that Bitter Creek admired.
And pregnant.
Very pregnant.
Bethany's gloved hand rested across her rounded belly as proudly as if she carried a crown beneath her dress.
Charlene lowered her eyes.
She had come for flour.
Nothing more.
Flour, brown thread, two needles, and perhaps a little coffee if Mr. Higgins had lowered his price.
She walked toward the counter.
Whispers stopped.
Mrs. Higgins busied herself folding fabric.
Old Martha Vale suddenly became absorbed in examining dried beans.
Two ranch hands stared into a cracker barrel.
Charlene kept walking.
“Miss Stewart.”
Nathaniel's voice carried easily.
Charlene stopped.
She hated that he still called her Miss Stewart with that tiny emphasis.
As if returning her maiden name had erased six years of marriage and proved that he had corrected a mistake.
She turned.
“Nathaniel.”
His eyes dropped to the small bundle of mending tucked beneath her arm.
“Keeping busy with the needle, I see.”
“Yes.”
“A fitting solitary pursuit.”
Bethany pressed her lips together, but she failed to hide her smile.
Charlene felt every person in the mercantile pretending not to listen.
She moved toward the flour.
Bethany spoke.
“I don't know how you manage.”
Charlene paused.
“Manage what?”
“All that quiet.”
Bethany rubbed her stomach.
“I'm already wondering how I'll ever sleep after this little one arrives. Nathaniel says babies cry through half the night.”
Nathaniel chuckled.
“They certainly do.”
Bethany smiled sweetly.
“It must be so lonely in that little boarding room of yours. No little feet. No bedtime stories. Nobody calling for you.”
There it was.
The knife disguised as conversation.
Charlene's fingers tightened around her coins.
Once, comments like that had made her cry before she reached home.
Not anymore.
Pain could become scar tissue if a person survived it long enough.
“I sleep quite well,” Charlene said.
Bethany blinked.
Nathaniel's smile thinned.
Charlene measured flour into a paper sack.
She was almost finished when Nathaniel stepped closer.
“I hope there are no hard feelings.”
Charlene looked at him.
For the first time that morning, she almost laughed.
“No?”
“I did what was necessary. A man needs a family.”
Charlene carefully folded the top of the flour sack.
“And a woman does not?”
Nathaniel's expression changed.
Only slightly.
But she saw it.
He disliked questions he could not answer without revealing himself.
Bethany shifted beside him.
Nathaniel lowered his voice.
“You knew what was expected.”
“So did you.”
His jaw tightened.
“Charlene—”
The floorboards groaned.
Not beneath one footstep.
Several.
Heavy ones.
Every head turned toward the doorway.
The October sunlight disappeared behind a massive silhouette.
Jeb Russell had come down from Wolverine Ridge.
Charlene knew who he was, though she had never spoken to him.
Everyone did.
Stories about Jeb traveled down the mountain more frequently than the man himself.
Some said he had once carried an injured elk hunter twelve miles through a blizzard.
Others claimed he could split a fence rail with a single swing.
According to Martha Higgins, he had lived alone among wolves before marrying some mysterious woman from Montana.
According to the men at the saloon, half of those stories were nonsense.
The one thing everyone agreed upon was that after his wife died, Jeb Russell became even more reclusive.
Now he stood in the mercantile doorway wearing a heavy coat lined with bear fur.
He was enormous.
Not merely tall.
Broad.
Weathered.
Built like the pine trunks covering Wolverine Ridge.
Dark hair brushed his collar. A thick beard shadowed a face carved by wind and winter. His gray-blue eyes scanned the room once.
Then Charlene noticed the children.
Five of them.
A boy around twelve stood behind Jeb, chin lifted in defiance.
Beside him was a thin girl perhaps ten years old wearing a coat several sizes too large.
Two younger boys followed, one clutching the other's sleeve.
And in Jeb's arms was a small child with soot across one cheek and tangled brown hair.
The mercantile stared.
Martha Higgins whispered too loudly.
“Lord preserve us.”
Nobody replied.
She continued.
“The savage brought his cubs.”
The oldest boy heard her.
His eyes hardened.
Jeb apparently heard her too.
He simply ignored her.
He approached the counter and placed a leather pouch beside Mr. Higgins.
The pouch struck the wood heavily.
Gold dust.
“Supplies.”
Mr. Higgins swallowed.
“Yes, Mr. Russell.”
“Flour. Salt. Oats. Dried beans. Lamp oil. Blankets.”
Jeb glanced toward the children.
“And boots. All five.”
The smallest child began squirming in Jeb's arms.
“Down,” he mumbled.
Jeb lowered him.
The toddler immediately wandered toward a display of lanterns.
The older girl whispered urgently.
“Toby.”
The boy ignored her.
Charlene watched him toddle across the uneven boards.
One boot was missing a lace.
He caught his toe.
His knee struck the floor.
For one second there was stunned silence.
Then Toby screamed.
The sound was sharp enough to make everyone flinch.
A lantern rattled.
Women stepped backward.
Someone muttered that the child was filthy.
Jeb moved.
But Charlene moved first.
Her flour sack hit the floor.
She crossed the distance in three steps and knelt.
“Easy.”
Toby's face crumpled.
Blood had not even appeared—only a red scrape—but he howled as though the mountain itself had fallen on him.
Charlene lifted him gently.
“Shh. Let me see.”
The child resisted for half a second.
Then something unexpected happened.
He wrapped both arms around her neck.
His face buried against her collar.
Charlene froze.
The tiny body shook against hers.
His hair smelled of wood smoke and cold air.
Instinctively, she held him closer.
“There now.”
She pulled a clean handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed it softly against his scraped knee.
“Nothing terrible. You frightened yourself more than anything.”
His sobs weakened.
“Hurt.”
“I know.”
“Bad?”
“No.”
Charlene brushed hair from his forehead.
“You're much too brave to let one silly floorboard defeat you.”
A hiccup.
Then another.
Toby peered at her.
“You think?”
“I know.”
The older children stared.
So did everyone else.
But Charlene became aware of only one gaze.
Jeb Russell's.
He had gone completely still.
Something in his expression unsettled her.
Not suspicion.
Not anger.
Recognition, perhaps.
As though he were seeing something he had forgotten existed.
Nathaniel broke the moment.
“Careful, Russell.”
Charlene's shoulders stiffened.
Nathaniel continued.
“That's Charlene Stewart.”
Jeb looked at him.
Nathaniel smiled.
“She couldn't bear a child of her own.”
The mercantile became so quiet that Charlene could hear Toby breathing.
Nathaniel gestured vaguely toward her.
“So I suppose she has to pretend with somebody else's.”
Bethany's smile disappeared.
Perhaps even she sensed Nathaniel had gone too far.
Charlene felt heat flood her face.
Not tears.
Not this time.
Anger.
Before she could speak, Jeb moved.
Two strides brought him directly in front of Nathaniel.
He did not touch him.
He did not need to.
Nathaniel was not a small man, but beside Jeb Russell he looked suddenly reduced.
Jeb's voice came low.
“You speak about this woman like she ain't worth dirt on your boots.”
Nathaniel swallowed.
“I merely explained—”
“But she's the only soul in this room who moved when my boy cried.”
Jeb glanced around the store.
Nobody met his eyes.
Then he looked at Charlene.
Toby still clung to her.
The thin girl had moved closer.
One of the younger boys now stood near Charlene's skirt.
Jeb's expression shifted.
He walked toward her.
Charlene expected him to take Toby.
Instead, Jeb stopped three feet away.
“I've got five children.”
Charlene blinked.
Jeb nodded toward them.
“I don't need a woman to give me babies.”
Nathaniel's face darkened.
Jeb extended one scarred hand.
“What I need is someone who can see these five and not look away.”
Charlene stared at his hand.
The entire mercantile seemed to stop breathing.
Jeb Russell said the impossible.
“Marry me, Miss Stewart.”
Somebody gasped.
Charlene's heart stopped.
Jeb continued.
“Come to Wolverine Ridge.”
His voice softened.
“Help me make a home for them.”
Charlene looked at the children.
The oldest boy glared at her.
The girl looked terrified to hope.
The two smaller boys watched in confusion.
Toby tightened his arms around Charlene's neck.
Then Charlene looked at Nathaniel.
The man who had told her that a woman without children had no purpose.
The man who had discarded her.
The man who was now staring at Jeb's extended hand as if it were a personal insult.
Charlene looked back at the mountain man.
“You don't know me.”
“No.”
“I don't know you.”
“No.”
“This is madness.”
“Probably.”
For the first time, something almost like humor touched Jeb's eyes.
Then it vanished.
“But winter's coming. My children need more than I know how to give.”
Charlene swallowed.
“And what do you need?”
Jeb looked at Toby in her arms.
His answer was quiet.
“Someone who stays.”
Charlene had spent three years believing nobody would ever choose her again.
Now five children were watching her as though her next breath mattered.
She placed her hand in Jeb Russell's.
Nathaniel made a strangled sound.
Charlene barely heard him.
Because the instant her fingers closed around Jeb's scarred palm, the oldest boy stepped forward.
His face was pale with fury.
“You can't replace our mother.”
And in his twelve-year-old eyes, Charlene saw the first warning of just how difficult Wolverine Ridge would be.
May you like
By sundown, she would understand that accepting Jeb Russell's hand had been the easy part.
The mountain was waiting.
