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the bruise on her cheekbone that was beginning to turn
green and yellow.
    But even more disturbing to him was his
body's response to seeing her in his bed. Her long, pale hair
fanned out over the pillows, and the swell of her breasts strained
against her flimsy chemise. She was too thin, so unlike the
Eliz—
    Impatiently, he turned on his heel and saw
the baby. He took a step closer. She slept in her little crate,
like a soft flower bud. A hint of long-forgotten tenderness brushed
his soul as he looked at her. Oh, she was kind of cute, he
supposed. Her hands were clenched into fists on either side of her
downy head, and he stared at them, fascinated by their tiny
perfection. She looked like her mother, lucky girl, and not Coy
Logan.
    Pushing aside one of the canvas curtains, he
saw the sun resting on the horizon, as low as it would set at this
time of year. In three hours it would begin to rise again, and
three hours after that, his work day would begin.
    Sighing, he turned his back to Melissa and
sat on his side of the bed to pull off his boots. Then he stripped
to his drawers and lay down between the hard rice sack and the edge
of the mattress, feeling like a stranger in his own place. He
stretched out on his back, with his hands under his head. The faint
fragrance of soap drifted to him from the other side of the
bed.
    Dylan knew it would be a long night.

Chapter Three

    The next morning, Melissa woke with a start,
disoriented and groggy. Her bleary gaze shot from a timbered
ceiling overhead to a fur-covered throw at her feet. A pair of
jeans hung over the end of the bed, and she saw a belt looped over
a branchlike bedpost. Where was she? Then it all came back to her.
This was Dylan Harper's room.
    Peeking over the hump of the rice sack, she
saw that Dylan was already gone, but the scent of buckskin and man
lingered in the bedding.
    She must have finally drifted off during the
night, she realized, but she was exhausted just the same. Lying
there, vigilant and as taut as a fiddle string for hours, she'd
been aware of his every breath. Her muscles had drawn even tighter
whenever he moved. She couldn't forget about his
reputation—everyone knew about Dylan Harper, and they walked a wide
path around him.
    Once, she had chanced a quick look at him.
There he lay with no shirt, in his drawers, for heaven's sake, and
all that long, sun-streaked hair. Certainly none of the men she had
ever known, not her father or her brothers, not Coy, had ever
refrained from crude behavior in front of her—and Dylan's behavior
was not really crude. But it seemed to her that stripping to his
underwear in her presence when they had just met was shocking. That
she had also slept in her underwear wasn't the same—hers covered
more. And he had seemed to have no trouble sleeping at all, she
thought grumpily. He'd rolled toward the rice sack and had even
thrown a muscled arm around the thing, as if he were embracing it.
God, that could have been her, she thought, glad she'd erected the
barricade between them. Asleep he'd looked different, not quite as
forbidding, although a slight frown had crimped his brow even in
sleep, as if some worry that he bore never let him truly rest.
    At least he'd left her alone, and she was
glad for that. She climbed out of the bare-ticking bed and plucked
Jenny from her crate. Creaky pain shot through her arms and
shoulders, reminding her of last night's exertion with the heavy
sack. Melissa had given little thought to its weight at the time,
but now her arms and shoulders ached from dragging it up to the
bed.
    "How's my button?" she whispered with a
smile. The baby waved her fists sleepily. No matter how tired or
discouraged Melissa might be, Jenny never failed to lighten her
heart. In her mind the baby was her reward for enduring Coy, and
for that single reason she did not entirely regret marrying
him.
    Jenny gurgled at her and smiled back. Thank
God she slept through most nights and wasn't a fussy baby. Whenever
she