Chapter One

      Marianne Collingwood propped her wet mop on the back porch of the boardinghouse and staggered down the steps with the heavy bucket of dirty water. She’d been up since before dawn, cooking breakfast for the seven boarders, and she hadn’t yet eaten herself; there had been no time. She could hear her stomach growling. She was headachy, hot and sticky in the humid summer air and thoroughly miserable.

      She stepped into the spotless kitchen and watched Lance Burnside drop his last armload of oak logs into the now overflowing wood box. He topped up the kindling supply, then halted and closed his eyes. “Man, something sure smells good!” he murmured.

      “Close the door,” she ordered. “You’re letting in all the hot air!”

      “Uh...isn’t it about time for breakfast?”

      “No,” she said shortly.

      He sent her a long look, closed the back door and tramped back down the steps into the yard where he took refuge in the shade of a leafy maple tree, drew in a deep breath and shut his eyes. Hell’s bells. In the four years Lance had worked at the boardinghouse, Marianne Collingwood had never once thanked him for anything. His momma had taught him to always say please and thank-you; he guessed Marianne’s momma hadn’t. Or maybe Marianne just didn’t like him.

      Most days he had to admit the feeling was mutual. Sure, there were other days when he had to admire the boardinghouse cook and housekeeper, but when he was hot and tired they didn’t come to mind. He knew Mrs. Schneiderman kept Marianne plenty busy; the stern German woman kept her housekeeper peeling pounds of potatoes and shelling dishpans full of green pea pods and baking endless pans of gingerbread and layer cakes and oatmeal cookies all day long and most of the night, too. He figured Marianne was as overworked and as tired as he was.

      But she could squeeze out a few seconds for at least one please or thank-you, couldn’t she?

      Nah, not Marianne. She ordered him to fix the henhouse, muck out the barn, curry the horses, lug baskets of wet laundry into the backyard, wash acres of rain-splattered windows, weed the vegetable garden, tie up the sprangly red roses that covered the porch trellis...the list went on and on. But send a thank-you his way? Nothing doing. Most days, Marianne Collingwood was the wicked witch in the fairy tales his momma used to read to him at night.

      He gazed around the well-kept backyard with its plum trees and neat vegetable patch and sent up a silent prayer of thanks. Even if it did come with an endless list of chores, Mrs. Schneiderman’s boardinghouse here on a peaceful street in the middle of St. Louis was a safe place to hide out. Every day he gobbled down three of Marianne’s delicious meals, and each night he slept in a nice quiet barn and nobody cared where he came from or what he’d done before. And he wasn’t about to tell them, either. Secrets were best kept to oneself.

      The back door slapped open, and Marianne leaned out to shake a crumb-covered tablecloth over the steps. At least he thought it was crumb-covered; sometimes he figured she shook out perfectly clean tablecloths just to be shaking the life out of something.

      Watching her, he suppressed a groan. There were two problems with Marianne. Two big problems. First, she never stopped snapping out orders at him. And second, she was so darn pretty his heart stopped beating every time he looked at her. Whenever she stopped working long enough to stand still for sixty seconds, he feasted his eyes on a body that curved in and out in places that made his hands itch, hair so shiny it looked like molasses-colored satin, and eyes the color of spring grass.

      He’d hate her if she wasn’t so beautiful.

      He levered himself off the back step and angled across to the woodpile to decide how much more wood Marianne would want in the next hour, then stood with one foot propped on the chopping block. He had just started to sharpen his axe when her voice cut into his consciousness.

      “Lance!”

      He jerked at the sound. Jumping Jupiter, she did nothing all day long but order him around. But, when she wasn’t yelling at him, he had to admit he liked her voice, low and throaty and kinda murmury. Made him think of a breeze rustling through a dry cornfield. He heard that voice whispering in his dreams at night, and he woke up every single morning highly aroused.

      “Lance! Where are you?”

      “Hiding,” he said under his breath. This wasn’t the nighttime voice he heard in his dreams. This was the voice that sent a chill up his backbone.

      “Lance, I need you! Right now!”

      “Coming, ma’am.” He stepped around the corner of the house to see her flapping her ruffly blue apron at the red hen pecking at insects in the garden. The feisty bird fluffed up its feathers, and Marianne edged away until her back was against the fence.

      “Shoo! Shoo! Lance, come and get Lucinda back in the henhouse.”

      Please, he muttered inside his head. He advanced on the offending chicken. “How’d