Charlene Sands Read Free Page A

admired her untamed spirit. Many a night he’d wandered through his memories of her, oftentimes smiling at the silly games they’d played, the different competitions they’d entered into, and later on, the beckoning new sensations Kate had stirred in him.
    He’d never told her how just the sight of her pretty smile could warm his heart, or how much he liked watching her cinnamon curls bounce against her shoulders. He’d never told her how much he’d wanted her to stay on, how much he would miss her once she’d left. And now that she was here, he wondered what other of her qualities he’d find admirable.
    Too many to think about right now.
    He knew why she’d come back. He knew how much that saloon meant to her. But the townsfolk, for the most part, didn’t want the Silver Saddle to reopen. They enjoyed a quiet peace knowing the rowdies and cowpunchers with pay overflowing their pockets, moved on to the next town to get their liquor and cause a ruckus.
    But Kate Malone wouldn’t like what he’d have to tell her. She wouldn’t cotton to being backed into a corner. Kate, he knew, would come out fighting. And it was up to Cole to see that she didn’t.
    Cole turned away from the window. With his handsfirmly planted in his back pockets, he called himself every kind of fool for caring so darn much.
    Cole blinked away that thought when the door to his office opened suddenly.
    “Look what we have here,” his deputy, Johnny Martinez announced, “the prettiest chica this side of Rio Grande.”
    Cole watched a giggle escape, and the cherub-faced blond child ran straight into his arms. “Hi, Daddy.”
    Kate took a warm bath, happy to have washed all the grime and travel dust off her body and hair. The trip from Los Angeles wasn’t overly long, but the Southern Pacific Railroad wasn’t known for luxury, and with the cramped spaces and breeze of the day blowing in, a body hardly stood a chance at turning up at their destination unscathed.
    After donning a white shirtwaist and a cream-colored skirt then brushing her wayward curls, she locked the hotel room door and ambled down the stairs. She wanted to see the saloon close up and make preliminary assessments, but as she headed in that direction, she noted two children rushing down the school steps, laughing their way down the street. She followed them with her eyes as they ran behind the livery stables, down a winding slope, and then she lost sight of them in the towering pines. Smiling, Kate picked up her skirts and headed in the same direction.
    She’d raced down this path hundreds of times. She knew the way. When she finally reached the bank ofthe creek, a sweeping sigh escaped her throat. How she’d missed Crystal Creek. Nothing in her mind was more beautiful. Nothing compared to the cloudless blue sky, the gleam of golden sun on the water, the scent of fresh pine and earth. She loved this place.
    Within minutes, Kate found the gray granite rock. The one she and Cole had named their finishing line. A small smile emerged. She brushed away some pebbles on the flattest part of the rock’s surface and sat down, glancing out to the rushing creek waters.
    She closed her eyes to enjoy the peace, but her mind flashed an image Kate had tried many a time to lock away.
    Right before the fire at the saloon, when she was fifteen, Cole had asked to meet her here. She’d been thrilled and so sure he was finally going to ask her to Crystal Creek’s Founder’s Day celebration. It had been all she’d dreamed about, all she’d wanted. For Cole to see her as more than his best friend, to see her as the young woman she had become. To want her the powerful way she’d wanted him.
    Her heart had leaped from her chest when he appeared behind this very rock. She’d stammered a quick hello. Cole had been quiet then, staring off in the distance. Kate waited for him to speak.
    And when he had, Kate’s heart broke in two. Cole had invited Patricia Wesley to the Founder’s Day