Montana Man. Jillian Hart
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first-class cabin, played across Miranda’s face, highlighting the soft slope of her nose and the rosebud softness of her lips. She turned from the window to answer something Josie had asked.
Miranda’s voice was like music, like melody and harmony, and flowed as sweet and quiet as a Brahms lullaby. Low and spellbinding, the sound moved through him. The clack of the wheels on the track and the scouring blast of the blizzard faded into the background until all he could hear was Miranda’s alto sweetness as she agreed to braid her doll Baby Beth’s hair.
The door swung open in front of them and, propelled by the severe wind, crashed against the wall with force enough to shake the car. Miranda jumped with a look of panic, and her pupils became big black disks. Her slim body tensed, ready to run or fight, he didn’t know which. When the conductor stepped into the car and pulled the door back into place, Trey watched the relief soften Miranda’s face, but the tension squeezed tight in her shoulders and spine did not ease.
“Don’t worry.” Trey laid his hand over hers, felt the cold, silken texture of her skin and the bone-hard tension of muscles bunched, ready to fight. “He isn’t armed.”
“Oh, really?” She lifted one brow, the sardonic twist of her mouth somehow endearing. She was afraid, but she wasn’t cowering. Or, he guessed, willing to admit it.
“This is one threat I can handle.” He winked at her, pulling out the ticket cards from his breast pocket.
“I’m not here because I need protection.”
“Of course not. A woman traveling alone is an even match against six armed ruffians.”
“I’m not helpless.” Her chin shot up. “And those brutes may be armed, but so far I’ve been able to outwit them.”
“Until you stopped to help us.”
“It was torture, but someone had to do it.” She flashed him a quick smile, wavery but true.
He was dying to ask what she was running from, who the men were on her trail—bounty hunters, by his practiced eye—and why they wanted a woman with eyes as gentle as dawn. She was from money—he’d learned to read a person at a single glance in his line of work—her hands were as smooth as watered silk and her face appeared as soft as morning. The cut of her gray cloak was simple, but the worsted wool was of a high quality. Every stitch, every garnish, every button, no matter how sedate, spoke of her station in life, one high above his.
Women well born and gently raised were never found alone on a Montana mountainside. Curiosity burned, but he’d learned patience in his profession, too.
He explained Miranda’s absence of a first-class ticket to the conductor and offered quietly to pay the difference. But the kind-eyed man only waved his hand, his gaze falling on Josie’s brand-new leg brace and moved on, the understanding quiet but unmistakable.
The train inched along through the towering peaks of the Rockies, invisible from the window where the gray and white of the unrelenting blizzard blocked everything from their view.
“We’re going so slow, will we be able to climb through the mountains?” Miranda pocketed her ticket stub, directing her attention away from the doors to Josie, who held out her doll’s miniature hairbrush. Despite the interruption and the storm, Baby Beth still needed to look her best.
“Hard to tell. They may take us only as far as Pine Bluff.” Josie shifted on Trey’s knee, and he felt the stiffness easing from her little spine. He watched Miranda take the brush and begin grooming the doll’s flyaway hair. “The telegraph wires could go down in a storm like this.”
Miranda dropped the brush. It clattered to the floor with a thud, but the sound was lost in the friendly noises inside the car as passengers talked. She shrugged one slim shoulder. “I can only hope those wires are down.”
“I doubt the telegraph people would share your hopes, but then, sometimes modern inventions can work against a person.” With one hand on Josie’s shoulder to balance her, he reached with his free hand just as Miranda bent forward at the same time.
Their foreheads brushed. He could feel the wisps of a few rebellious tendrils, breezing across the skin of his brow as brazenly as a lover’s touch. His body reacted hot and hard, but he didn’t move away even as the blood thundered through his veins and his breath grew short and choppy.
“I can’t reach it.” She didn’t blink, and a small frown tugged down the soft corners of her mouth, drawing his gaze and making him wonder just what her soft, bow-shaped lips would taste like if he kissed them. Her grin grew. “Your big head is in the way.”
“My head is big?”
“Bigger than mine.” A wicked smile teased at one dimple, and his stomach felt as if it were falling straight down to his tailored boots. “In my experience, the amount of charm a doctor exudes is in direct proportion to the arrogance he’s trying to cover up.”
“You have a lot of experience with doctors?” Now he had to know. He had to get a little more personal with this woman who made even an affirmed bachelor like him feel more hot and bothered than he’d been in a decade. “You look healthy to me.”
“My father is one.” The words popped out of her mouth before she thought, and she sat up, forgetting Josie’s hairbrush. “I’m engaged to one.”
“Engaged?” He quirked one dark brow, as if to say, now, that’s interesting, before he knelt a little farther, stretching those magnificent shoulders and arching his broad, well-constructed back to rescue the brush beneath the seat.
Miranda watched as he straightened, nodding easily at Josie’s “Thank you, Uncle Trey.” Curiosity twitched at his mouth. “Does your fiancé know you’re unchaperoned and in trouble?”
“No, and I’d like to keep it that way.” She couldn’t believe it. Six long months she’d kept her secrets safe, and in less than an hour, she’d opened up her heart and her life to a man she didn’t know—to a doctor, no less, to the kind of man she was running from. She couldn’t believe it, couldn’t stomach her weakness.
She’d been alone too long. She felt starved for someone to talk to, someone with kind eyes, or a child who needed a little help. She’d just opened up like this, without control, without consideration to what would happen to her if those bounty hunters found her.
They would drag her back to Philadelphia, to a wedding she did not want, and to a father she could never stand to look at again.
“I know how to keep a confidence.” Trey—she didn’t even know his last name—flashed her a wink. The devil shone in his eyes and in the cut of his one-sided grin. “I’m a doctor.”
“I know what you are.”
“Handsome, charming, debonair. Kind to children and damsels in distress.” Twin dimples danced and beguiled, and he was far too sure of himself. Yet with those wicked eyes and the mesmerizing cut of his muscled body, he was that and more.
“See?” She tugged at her bonnet strings. “I knew the arrogance was in there somewhere.”
“No man is perfect.” He winked a second time. He was humoring her. Or maybe he could feel it, too—the way the train slowed.
They must be approaching the next station. A whistle blared faintly above the blast of ice, muted by the ever-present howl of the wind.
Was she in luck? Had the vicious storm knocked down the telegraph wires? Or would someone looking for her board this train? Her palms turned clammy and her fingers felt wooden and stiff as she began French-braiding Baby Beth’s hair in accordance with Josie’s careful instructions.
Beside her, Trey turned in his seat to watch as the station eased into sight, the storm broken by the shelter of tall buildings.
Snow still swirled, but Miranda could see the faces of the waiting passengers blur on the other side of the frosted glass. Men, women, children. Trepidation curled around her heart, cold and