She regarded them now, one gripping the hammer, the other holding the board in place. They were large and strong, soothing, yet inflaming. She hadn't known caresses like that before. Heat flushed her now, just thinking about it. He'd been without his wife for a long time. He was a man with a normal, healthy sexual appetite. She experienced an equally healthy pang of regret. Too bad she wasn't the one to satisfy it.
He straightened and surveyed the pile she'd accumulated. "Ready."
"For what?"
"Now we pack the manure in between the tank and the frame. Keeps the water from freezing."
Inwardly Rain Shadow groaned, but bent to the task. When the space was filled with manure, Anton took boards from the pile and nailed them to the top. He drew a hinged cover from the wagon bed, and together they fixed it to the top.
"Keeps out rain and snow."
She nodded.
"Ready."
What now? She picked up the bucket and shovel and followed him to the wagon.
"Four more to go."
She knocked her boots against the wheel before leaping onto the seat. "Daylight's burning."
He'd thought she would balk at the unpleasant task. He and his brothers had always drawn straws to assign the chore. He'd expected her to tire easily and chafe under his words, but the woman had a fearful ability to stand her ground. And, he admitted, shooting her a sideways glance as the wagon pulled them toward the next pasture, she also had a fearful ability to arouse strong feelings in him.
Working on the third tank, Anton admitted to himself she wasn't a wilting violet, and as the hours passed they talked about winter on the farm. He warmed to her companionship and discussed his watch repair trade. "Watched my granddad as a boy. I was fascinated by all those tiny gears and springs, and I pestered him constantly while he worked. He never seemed to mind, though."
"He was a watchmaker?"
"In the old country. He and my grandmother were bond servants working off their passage from Germany. He took up his watchmaking till he staked the farm with a loan."
"That's a proud heritage. You and your son are fortunate to be part of it."
He looked at her. "I guess so. Sometimes it's hard to see it that way."
"You take your family for granted."
He shrugged. "Doesn't everyone?"
"No."
He slid his hat off, and the midday sun lit his gilded hair. His impossibly blue eyes held an unspoken question.
Though he hadn't asked aloud, she answered. "Two Feathers found me wandering near a massacred wagon train when I was about three. He raised me as his own child. I don't remember my family."
Discomfort flickered across his intense features. "I'm sorry."
Rain Shadow accepted his condolence with a tilt of her head. "Since Slade's birth I've tried to find my relatives, but I haven't been successful. In April I will compete with Annie Oakley for the sharpshooter championship. I figure when I become famous and my story is told, someone will recognize me."
"What makes you so sure?"
"Remember, after the battle of Gettysburg, when a burial detail found an ambrotype in the hand of a dead union soldier?"
Anton nodded. "He didn't have any other identification. That picture was on the front pages of all the newspapers. What did they call them?" He tilted his head before answering his own question. "'Children of the battlefield.'"
She nodded. "A woman recognized the picture as one she sent her husband before the battle."
"But how would anyone recognize you after all these years?"
"They wouldn't." She dropped, wiped her palms on her trousers and stepped in front of him. His eyes followed her fingers, dipping inside the front of her shirt. "But my parents' family would recognize these."
She opened the gold locket and displayed the tiny likenesses of her parents. He studied the man and woman. Slowly, he raised his gaze, hesitated a second too long at her mouth and met her eyes. "I wish you luck."
"Thank you."
He bent and hefted a bucket of manure. "We'll go eat when this is done."
She tucked the locket safely inside her shirt.
"Rain Shadow," he said later as they worked side by side.
She liked the sound of her name on his lips. "Yes?"
"Would you mind me asking where Slade's father is?"
She straightened and watched him shovel.
"You don't have to answer if it's none of my business."
Uncertain of his reaction, she took her time. "I met him on board the Nebraska when I was sixteen. He's a vaquero.
"I'm not sure what that is."
"A caballero, a South American cowboy. He was in the show that season."
Sixteen? "Oh."
"I thought I loved him." Rain Shadow placed her shovel in the back of the wagon. "I thought he loved me. I thought he was going to marry me."
Anton stacked a few remaining boards beside the shovels. "He didn't."
"He married a French heiress." She didn't bother to add the humiliation and hurt she must have suffered. "She had a heritage and money."
"And you have his son."
She snapped up her head and faced him. "My son."
An undefined emotion churned inside him. She hadn't been married. Slade's father had used her. She tilted her pert chin and stared him defiantly in the eye. Something compelled him to reassure her. He spoke the truth. "Your son is a fine lad. You've done a good job with him."
Surprise flickered across her eloquent face. Her stormy gaze filled with quick tears, and she glanced away. Things were easier when he wasn't tender. "Let's go eat."
* * *
Jakob and Lydia joined them for dinner, Lydia having prepared a hot meal of beans and bacon. She cut generous chunks of corn bread and poured thick honey over them. The meal was delicious, the conversation light.
Johann and Two Feathers had spent the morning repairing the chicken coops and outbuildings. After the meal, they lit their pipes. "Tomorrow we butcher." Johann directed his comment to Lydia. "Will you be up to cooking dinner again?"
Lydia smiled and seated herself across from him. "I'll be up to it. I'm fit as a horse and you know it."
The faint irregular cadence of her speech reminded Rain Shadow of Nathan. She was a lovely ivory-skinned woman with a fine-boned face and dark, amber-flecked eyes. She wore her sable-colored hair in a fashionable twist on the back of her head, with delicate ringlets at her temples and cheeks. Rain Shadow studied Lydia's soft hand, fingers resting on the edge of her teacup, then took stock of her own. Four blisters dotted the base of her fingers. Her knuckles were chafed red from the scrubbing she'd given them at the pump.
"How about you, Rain Shadow?" Anton's voice held a teasing challenge. "Will you be up to butchering?"
Little russet-haired Titus sat on Anton's lap, attempting to open his pocket watch with tiny fingers. Anton's enormous fingers absentmindedly smoothed the child's hair. The sight caught at Rain Shadow's heart. She could picture him sitting just that way with his own son when he was small.
She met his bold stare. "I'll be up to it."
Anton suppressed a grin. Yep, he bet she would. She'd carried bucket after bucket of reeking manure without so much as a wrinkle of her fine nose or a complaint. She'd proven herself a hard worker and a passable companion. The morning hadn't been so bad after all.
Jakob rose and helped his oldest son button his coat, and Anton's thoughts turned to the man who'd fathered her child. He remembered the fire in her kiss, the response of her supple body in his arms, and imagined her at the vulnerable age of sixteen. Beautiful. Ripe. Innocent.
He regretted how she'd been taken advantage of-and how she'd been hurt.
She rose and helped Lydia clear dishes. Rain Shadow's trousers smoothed over her hips and thighs like a glove. She wore her shirt tucked in at her narrow waist. Two long, black braids draped across her full breasts, inviting attention. She was still beautiful. She was still ripe.
Her stormy-sky-at-sunset eyes met his, and heat pooled in his loins. But she wasn't innocent.
* * *
Miguel de Ruiz stared out the carriage window. He patted the engraved invitation in the breast pocket of his fine Irish linen suit, drew his fingertip over the wing of his stingy black mustache and surveyed the Boston Common with shrewd contemplation. There were few carriages out this particular evening. He considered it a pure stroke of luck that he'd been introduced to Madelena Avarato and her father so close upon the heels of his arrival in the city. He'd been informed she was one of the brightest debutantes of the season. Young. Attractive. Wealthy beyond imagination. Heir to the Avarato fortune, although she'd never done a thing to deserve it.