until she was inside. She leaned against the door, gasping for breath.

The dining table was clean. Jane came from the kitchen and paused when

she saw Tess.

"They've all gone to bed, Tess. Hank just went to the bunkhouse. Mr. Red

Feather suggested that the hands take a few hours apiece on a kind of a

guard duty. Roddy called in that big guard dog of his and he's going to

have the dog on the porch, once he sees the lieutenant and tells the dog

that the lieutenant is a friend. I was going to go to bed. It's been a

big day for me, Miss. Stuart. A real big day."

Her eyes rolled and Tess laughed. Impulsively she gave Jane a big hug.

It was a mistake. Jane looked as if she was going to start crying all

over again.

"I'm just so happy that you're alive!" she said.

"Thanks. And I'm happy to be home. Come on, let's go They walked up the

stairs together. Jane hugged Tess quickly and fiercely again and headed

toward her own room. Wearily Tess pushed open the door to her bedroom

and walked in.

Lighting the lamp at her bedside, she shed her clothing and dressed in a

soft blue flannel nightgown. She sat in front of her dressing table and

picked up the silver-embossed brush that had belonged to her mother. It

was good to be home.

She pulled all the pins out of her hair--and then all the little pieces

of hay that had stuck into it--and began to brush it. It fell down her

shoulders, long and free. She brushed it mechanically for several

minutes, staring at her reflection and not seeing a thing.

Jane had been fight. It had been a big day.

But yon Heusen had been beaten back. Between Jamie and Jon, he had been

beaten back. She never had told Jamie that she was grateful. Truly

grateful.

He never seemed to give her a chance to say thank you. He was on her

side, but it seemed that she was always fighting him. At first, she had

been fighting him to make him believe her. Now she was certain he

believed her.

He had met yon Heusen. He couldn't have any doubt that yon Heusen had

been responsible for the attack on the wagon train.

And now. Maybe she wasn't fighting him. Maybe she was fighting herself.

First it had been that darned Eliza. Tess had managed to walk away from

Eliza with her dignity intact, but she had heard Jamie speaking to the

woman.

No one can make me marry anyone.

No one can make me marry anyone. So he wasn't the marrying kind.

She was. She wanted a man, a good man. She hadn't had much time to think

about it, what with the war and then everything that had happened since.

But when she thought for a moment, she knew. She didn't want to be a

spinster.

The paper was important to her, and she wasn't just copublisher and a

reporter anymore, she was the only publisher.

She had to keep it alive. But she wanted more, too. She wanted a

husband, one she really loved, and one who loved her. And she wanted

children, and she wanted to give them a world that wasn't forever

tainted with the memories of conflict and death.

And she wanted Jamie Slater. She wasn't at all sure how the two things

intertwined-- they didn't intertwine at all, she admitted. She sighed.

She had to get by the present for the moment. She had to survive yon

Heusen.

She shivered suddenly, violently, remembering the way von Heusen had

threatened her. She would be getting out of town, he had told her. If

not by stagecoach, then by some other means.

What could he do to her? She wasn't alone. She had help now.

But to pay for it she was about to turn over half her property--half of

Uncle Joe's legacy to her--to Jamie Slater. If he chose, he could be her

neighbor all her life. She could watch him, and torture herself day

after day, wondefing who he rode away to see, wondering what it was like

when he took a woman into his arms.

She groaned and pushed away from the table. She couldn't solve a thing

tonight. She needed some sleep. She needed some sleep very badly.

She doused the light and crawled beneath the covers. It felt so good to

be in her own bed again. The sheets were cool and clean and

fresh-smelling, and her mattress was soft and firm, and it seemed to

caress her deliciously. A faint glow from the stars and the moon entered

the room gently. It kept everything in dark shadows, and yet she could

see the familiar shapes of her dressing table and her drawers and her

little mahogany secretary desk.

The breeze wafted her curtains. She closed her eyes. Perhaps she dozed

for a moment. Not much time could have passed, and yet she suddenly

became aware that nome thing was different. Her door had been thrust

open.

She wasn't alone.

Jamie was standing in the doorway, his hands on his hips, his body a

silhouette in the soft hazy moonbeams. There was nothing soft or gentle

about his stance, however. She could feel the anger that radiated from

him.

"All right, Tess, where's my room?"

His room?

"Oh!" she murmured.

"Your room ... well, I didn't think you were going to stay here."

Long strides brought him quickly across the room. She scrambled to a

sitting position as he towered over her.

"I

just spent two days riding with you to get here. I spent two nights

sleeping on the hard ground beneath the wagon."

"The hay in the barn is very soft."

"The hay in the barn is very soft," he repeated, staring at her. He

leaned closer.

"The hay in the barn is very soft? Is that what you said?" She felt his

closeness in the shadows even as she inhaled his clean, fascinating,

masculine scent.

His eyes seemed silver in the darkness, satanic. She was rid- died with

trembling, so keenly aware of him that it was astonishing.

"You don't have a room for me?" he demanded. "All right, I am sorry.

But you were gone, and we were all exhausted. And you did have a bath

somewhere. I just believed that you meant to sleep where you had

bathed."

He was still for a moment--dead still. Then he smiled. "Miss. Stuart,

move over."

"What?"

"Move over. If there's no room for me, then I'll sleep here."

"Of all the nerve!"

"Hush! We share this bed, or we sleep in the hay together," he warned

her.

He meant it! she thought, still incredulous. She started to rise, trying

to escape from the bed. He caught her arm and pulled her gently back.

"Where are you going?" he whispered.

"Where else! You're bigger than I am--I can't throw you out! I'm going

to the barn!"

"Wait."

"For what?" she demanded.

For what? Every pulse within her was alive and crying out. She felt him

with the length of her body, with her heart, with her soul, with her

womb.

He did not hold her against him. He caressed her. He was warm, and his

smile and the white flash of his teeth in the night were compelling and

hypnotic.

"I said that we'd go together," he told her. He swept her up, cocooned

in a tangle of sheet and quilt. He held her tightly against his body and

started for the door. Her arms wound around his neck. She stared at the

planes of his face and felt as if the soft magic of the moonbeams had

wrapped around her. She should have been screaming, protesting, bringing

down the house.

But she was not. Her fingers grazed his nape, and she felt absurdly

comfortable in his arms. He was dragging her out to the hay, she

thought, and she did not care.

Nor was there anything secretive or furtive about his action. He moved

with long strides and went down the stairway with little effort to be

quiet. He opened the front door, bracing her weight with one arm, then

let it close behind him. He stood on the porch and looked out into the

night. Then he stared at her, and she knew that she was smiling.

"Where am I heading?"

"I don't know."

"Where do the hands sleep?"

"In the bunkhouse, by the far barn."

"Then I want the first barn?" he demanded softly. She couldn't answer

him.

She wasn't sure what the question was. All she could think was that he

meant her to sleep in the hay.

She wasn't sure what else he meant for her to do there, but though she

was in his arms now, and though he carried her with a certain force, she

suddenly knew that what happened would be her choice. Still, he had

caught hold of something deep within her, and she wasn't angry.

She smiled again as she looked at him and told him primly, "You, sir,

are completely audacious." "Maybe," he said, and smiled in return. Then

it seemed they were locked there in the night, their eyes touching, and

something else touching maybe, with the tenderness of the laughter they

shared. Then the laughter faded.

He pulled her more tightly against him, higher within his arms. And as

she watched him, fascinated, in the glow of the moonbeams, his lips

parted upon hers, and the world seemed to explode as his kiss entered

into her.

Darkness swirled around her, and sensation took flight. She had to get

away from him. and quickly.

No. she had to stay. She was where she wanted to be. Exactly where she