Rocky Mountain Homecoming. Pamela Nissen

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ brushed at her skirt. With the delicate way she was going about it, she may as well have been trying to remove a smudge of innocent dust, not a thick layer of reddish-colored mud. He could hardly blame the spirited woman for being so on edge. After all, her entire backside was coated in a slimy layer of mud. She was probably mortified. Humiliated. Downright mad.

      With that silent acknowledgment, he drew his neatly folded handkerchief from his back pocket and held it out like an olive branch. “Here. Take this.”

      Clutching the front edge of her hat, she lifted it into place with more dignity than he’d expect, given her filthy condition.

      “This might help a litt—” His words died on his tongue as she tipped up her face and met his gaze.

      His breath whooshed from his lungs. He stared, wide-eyed, his vision pulsing black. White. Then splotching in an array of colors as he took in the woman standing before him.

       Ivy. Grace. Harris.

      He blinked hard in the hopes of producing some other image than her.

      The one and only love of his childhood heart.

      His boss’s daughter.

      And the sole reason he’d suffered years of humiliation.

      She stared at him for a long and lingering moment. Her lips parted and then fell open as wide as her sparkling eyes.

      Zach’s blood thickened in his veins as he met that beautiful, memorable spring-green gaze of hers. He’d never forget it—with just one glance his knees used to grow as flimsy as a blade of grass bent by the wind—just like they did now. Nor had he forgotten the adorable way her pert little nose turned up ever-so-slightly. Or the way her full lips formed the most perfect Cupid’s bow, begging to be kissed.

      He worked a swallow past the lump that had knotted his throat. Battled back that familiar, thick, tongue-tied feeling that strangled him even now. Struggled to keep all six feet of his work-hardened body from trembling.

      For over a year now he’d been foreman on John Harris’s

      ranch, and for the first time since childhood he’d felt secure. Confident.

      But now …

      Now with this girl—this woman’s—appearance, he was catapulted back to nearly twelve years ago all over again.

      He blinked back the apprehension she was sure to find in his gaze. Swerved his focus a block down the street where he spotted Beatrice Duncan beelining toward them, her short legs eating up the walkway with surprising swiftness as she aimed an overly eager, almost giddy look in his direction. He clenched his jaw at the woman’s clear intent. But it was the woman in front of him that gave him pause.

      “Zachariah Drake?” Ivy worked her gaze from his head all the way down to his toes and then back again in a slow, silent and wholly discomforting perusal. “Is it you?”

      He stared at her, struggling to find his voice.

      “Is it really you?” The buoyant sound of her voice disconcerted him all the more.

      “Yes,” he managed to force out. “It’s me.”

      “What a surprise,” she breathed, swiping a muddy hand across the front of her lavender-colored skirt. Her long eyelashes whispered down over those eyes of hers like tender branches bending to kiss the fresh green of a beautiful spring landscape. “I barely recognized you. It’s been—”

      “S-s-six years.” Clearing his throat, his stomach convulsed at the way he could’ve rattled off the months, the days … maybe the hours since he’d last seen her.

      But he was more disgusted with the way the one syllable had suddenly become three.

      The sound of his broken speech raked over his hearing like a hundred pricking barbs. Surely it was a mishap. A blunder. There was no way, after all the labor, sweat and fortitude he’d poured into overcoming his stutter that it’d descend on him again like some dark and stormy day.

       No way.

      “It has been, hasn’t it?” She lifted her chin in that stately way of hers. Fingered the wilting blue fringe dangling from the navy wrap that was now plastered by mud to her back.

      He nodded, shoving his hands into his pockets as he hauled in a deep, deep breath, something he’d learned to do when he’d faced his stutter head-on. Dragging his hands out of his pockets, he unfurled his tight fists one finger at a time. “What are you d-d-doing here?”

      What in the name of all that was true!

      There it was again.

      He’d defeated this thing. Hadn’t tripped up more than once over the past couple years. He could speak clearly. Wasn’t given to stumbling. Or even pausing overly long.

       He was fine. Just fine.

      She tipped her head slightly. Furrowed her graceful brow.

      Zach held his ground, even when part of him wanted to flee from her presence and from the haunting impediment. But he’d come too far over the past six years to let her shake his confidence, even if it was quite a shock to see her again.

      His boss hadn’t said a word about Ivy coming for a visit. In fact, Zach had only heard the man speak of his daughter once since he’d been working at the Harris ranch.

      She lifted her hat from her head, exposing those silken auburn curls he’d stared at for hours on end when he was in school. “As you can see, I was stopping by the mercantile. That is until that bird—”

      “What I mean is … why are you in B-B-B-Boulder?” His face muscles tensed.

      She set a quivering hand to her neck. “I was stopping by to see if I could find someone who might be able to drive me to the ranch,” she measured out as though he had a miniscule understanding of the English language.

      Her placating tone grated his nerves. In school, he’d been ridiculed. Teased without mercy. Treated as though he couldn’t read, write or add two plus two.

      He hadn’t been able to speak one sentence without stumbling over the words. And all because of this beautiful woman standing in front of him now.

      She glanced around as though there might be a fancy carriage waiting to do her bidding. “My visit … it’s unexpected.”

      He’d rather flinch beneath that stubborn stance of hers that he’d glimpsed just moments ago than to writhe in the obvious pity seen in her gaze at this moment. He sure as shootin’ wasn’t going to allow her to strip away all the confidence he’d worked for. No matter how beautiful she was—even more stunning than she’d been six years ago. No matter how often her perfect face had sneaked into his dreams.

      He thought he’d overcome the strange hold Ivy once had on him, but one look at her and his traitorous heart had begun beating a wild-stallion rhythm.

      And the sight of Beatrice Duncan invading his peripheral vision didn’t help matters one bit. The woman, as benevolent as СКАЧАТЬ