Black Hills Bride Read Free

matter how desperate she was on the inside.
    She was offering him a decent job, for goodness’ sake. With room and board.
    She cringed. He’d be much worse than a neighbor. If he took the position, she’d be rubbing elbows with him on a daily basis. She didn’t know the first thing about running stables or leading trail rides, which meant she’d have to defer to his wisdom.
    Mighty difficult if she couldn’t get a word out of him, she thought crossly.
    Loosen up, Dixie, she coaxed herself. Comfortable as she was to the hustle and bustle of the city, the relaxed pace of country living would take a little getting used to. Maybe everyone here contemplated their words before speaking, as Erik appeared to do.
    Well, not everyone. The woman in the post office nearly prattled her ear off giving her all the latest town gossip a new resident was required to know.
    Reaching her truck, she opened up the passenger door to the cab and dug through the papers stacked on the floor. Somewhere in this mess was a blank yellow legal pad and the three-ring binder with the notes she’d prepared to interview potential staff with.
    It took her a full five minutes to locate the needed items. She half expected Erik to have vanished the way he’d appeared, but she found him waiting for her next to the main house, his arms crossed, lazily leaning his hip on what she assumed was an old hitching post.
    All he needed was a long stem of hay between his teeth and Dixie really would believe she’d been transported to another time and place.
    She tried to quell the laughter bubbling in the back of her throat, but mirth squeaked out past her pressed lips despite her best efforts.
    Erik pressed his own lips together to keep from joining in her laughter. It was an unusual reaction for him, to want to laugh, and it made him edgy. What was it about this tiny sprite of a woman that made him want to smile?
    He tugged his hat lower on his forehead.
    Crazy woman. Where did she get off thinking she could waltz onto a spread of land and magically transform it into a business? Or a ministry, or a retreat or whatever term she wanted to use.
    For one thing, she was a woman on her own. And a beautiful woman at that, even if she did look like she’d been hog wrestling in the muck and lost. Dust couldn’t hide the shine of her shoulder-length, satiny black hair, nor could smudges mar her peaches-and-cream complexion.
    She didn’t belong here. Her cowboy boots had heels on them, for crying out loud, and her clothes weren’t something a person could pick up in a department store, he didn’t think. And her fingernails—they’d last all of a day in these conditions.
    He almost laughed, except that there was something distinctly not funny about the situation.
    When he’d heard who bought the land, he’d done a little digging to get the lowdown on Miss Dixie Sullivan, since her land rode with his meager spread. He’d found out all he needed to know, and her appearance here did nothing if not confirm his worst fears.
    She was as green as a newborn filly where mountain living was concerned, and heading for disaster with every step she took. She ought to just take her pretty little freckles—all five of them scattered across her nose—not that he was counting—and skitter on back where she came from.
    Cute as she looked in her new Western getup, she was a city girl from top to toe. She didn’t belong here.
    That’s what he’d come to tell her, though she was obviously under the impression he was here for the foreman position.
    He should have set her straight right away, he supposed, but talkin’ to folks he didn’t know, especially women, was equal to him with riding a bronc with a burr in its saddle.
    She opened a squeaky screen door to the main house and gestured for him to come inside. Having subversively witnessed the barn door catastrophe, he chuckled when she eyed the doorframe as if it were going to reach out and grab her.
    Her gaze was on him in a