Alaskan Sweethearts. Janet Tronstad

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СКАЧАТЬ their grocery money. He gritted his teeth and stepped on the gas pedal harder.

      “Of course, she’s not going to thank me for saving her,” he muttered, glancing down at his sole passenger, a calico barn cat who was sitting on the other side of the pickup floor licking one of her front paws. She’d gone with him to feed the cattle and he hadn’t taken time to shoo her away when he’d gotten back into the pickup moments ago. She ignored him now.

      Hunter eyed the country road more closely, squinting as dust billowed up. The sky ahead was gray and the wheat fields beside the road were nothing but a blur of early fall stubble as he sped by.

      He had seen the woman’s letter lying open on the table when he’d gone inside the house to get a drink of water before heading back to the fields. His grandfather’s pickup wasn’t parked in its usual spot and, since they were the only ones living on the ranch, he’d picked up the note thinking it was for him. Instead he’d read that Scarlett Murphy was to meet his grandfather this morning at the café to sign some papers he had for her. Her signature was ladylike, spiderweb thin and elegant. Nobody under seventy years of age wrote that way anymore.

      Not that age was proof against his grandfather’s schemes. Hunter was thirty-three years old, but he probably wouldn’t know what to do about the old man’s mischief if he lived to be a hundred.

      Hunter pulled up close to the café, then braked and turned his vehicle onto the strip of barren dirt that everyone used for parking. He pulled the keys from the ignition and opened the door all in the same smooth motion. The heat hit him as he reached back and grabbed the envelope that held the letter. He was surprised when the cat jumped out of the pickup. He’d thought her paw would still be bothering her since he’d pulled a prickly cocklebur out of it only hours ago.

      He bent to pick up the feline, but she dodged his hands. The family of cats who had ruled the ranch’s barns for generations was tough. They were survivors, all of them. He decided that if this one wanted to run loose for a few minutes among the dozen or so buildings that made up the small town of Dry Creek, she wouldn’t come to any harm.

      Hunter wasn’t so sure about his grandfather’s fate.

      Thus far, the old man’s victims had all taken pity on him and not pressed charges once they’d been paid back. But one of these days he would trip up. The schemes had started more than twenty years ago after the car accident that had killed Hunter’s parents. Only a boy then, Hunter hadn’t paid much attention to the problems his grandfather had caused. Their neighbors had held back their complaints at first, saying they could understand how a tragedy like that could unhinge a man who was already in his sixties at the time. But those days of tolerance were long over.

      His grandfather’s deals were legendary. Early on, the old man had convinced one farmer to buy a new breed of pigs, claiming they would reproduce like rabbits. They were all sterile. Then he sold a vacuum cleaner that was supposed to remove grease spots. Instead it shredded the carpet and left the stain untouched in the frayed pieces that were left. One after the other, their neighbors had been duped, and gradually the gossip had spread. Finally even the fresh eggs that Hunter’s two younger brothers had tried to sell one summer at a farmer’s market had all come home still in their crate. A rumor had started that the eggs were empty shells and no one had enough faith to even crack one open to find out.

      Hunter stood in the dirt beside his pickup, the cat twining around his feet, and lifted his eyes to the darkening sky in frustration. Every man, woman and child this side of the Dakota border had been warned not to have any dealings with the Jacobson family. Hunter had thought God would take care of the old man’s inclinations after they’d both returned to the church a year ago.

      Apparently—Hunter gave the sky a look of rueful reproach—it wasn’t going to be that easy.

      Shaking his head, he hurried up the porch steps, reaching for the handle on the café door just as he heard a quiet motor behind him. He turned and almost stepped on the cat.

      “Oops,” he apologized.

      The feline gave him a sharp meow.

      Then both Hunter and the cat turned to see what was coming. A sleek black car had pulled off the asphalt road that swept in from the highway. Slowly, it rolled to a stop. The windshield was tinted, but Hunter didn’t need to see inside to know a stranger was behind the wheel. Anyone who drove these roads with any regularity had dirt and mud splattered on both sides of their car, especially during this time of year when the rain came in a downpour or not at all. This car was spotless.

      Not many strangers found their way into Dry Creek. This had to be Scarlett Murphy.

      Hunter looked down at the envelope he held. He read the return address for the first time—Nome, Alaska. Now that was odd, he thought. His grandfather had gotten his start there as a young man in the 1950s. He’d worked a small gold mine on a trickle of running water called Dry Creek just outside the town of Nome. Located near the Bering Sea, the mine had made enough money that, when he’d left it, his grandfather had been able to buy eighty acres on the banks of a different Dry Creek in southeastern Montana. Hunter always believed his grandfather had been lonesome for Alaska when he’d bought his property down here. There was no other way to explain the coincidence of the names.

      Hunter waited on the porch, the cat beside him, as a woman stepped out of the car. She didn’t turn toward the café but stared into the window of the hardware store on the opposite side of the street. The store was filled with shadows, but a person could still make out the black potbellied stove in the middle of the room and the men sitting on chairs around it talking.

      Beside him, the cat started to make a noise low in its throat. Hunter couldn’t tell if it was a growl at the threat of the woman or a purr of appreciation at seeing someone so striking.

      Hunter voted for the threat. The blood slowly drained out of his face as he realized he had been mistaken about Scarlett. If this woman carried a clutch, it had a designer label. Even without seeing her face, he knew she was young, not old. And he was almost certain that her last name—Murphy—was the same as the business partner in Nome who had betrayed his grandfather years ago by stealing the woman he’d loved. The growing unease Hunter had about all of this deepened. The old man had been muttering about the meaning of life lately. Maybe it wasn’t past habits that had caused this latest bit of mischief. Maybe his grandfather wanted to settle a score and get some final revenge before he died.

      Lord, help us all, Hunter thought in an absentminded prayer. If his grandfather was intent on vengeance, he could cause big trouble.

      Hunter could only see the woman’s back, but the graceful set of her shoulders and the halo of fiery copper hair blowing lightly around her head made her look like a Botticelli angel out for an morning stroll. The charge in the air might not all be from the upcoming lightning, he thought as he swallowed. His grandfather had said the woman who broke his heart had been stunning. This one was certainly her equal. She wore a sleeveless white silk top. Her arms were well-defined and bronzed by the sun. She put a hand up to smooth down the wayward strands of her hair and he saw a silver bracelet on her wrist. She had muscles and was, at the same time, delicate and utterly feminine.

      Hunter was taking a step down from the porch when the woman turned around. He faltered. She was even more beautiful than he’d feared. Something sparkled as she lifted a silver chain that was loose around her neck and slipped it into the front of her blouse. Her face was pale and brushed with the same bronze as her arms. He couldn’t fully see the color of her eyes from where he stood, but he could sense their intensity. As best he could tell they were hazel, gold mixed with green.

      That’s when he realized he could feel the СКАЧАТЬ