“I didn’t intentionally come here. I just rode until I was sure no one was following. When the dust storm came up and I saw the cabin, I took shelter.” She briefly closed her eyes, her chin quivering. “My head hurts.”
She was pale, her skin waxy in the smoky lamplight. Dust sifted in around the edges of the window frame. “How far did you ride?”
She stared blankly at him.
Reining in his impatience, Bram rubbed the nape of his neck. “How long did you ride before you reached this place?”
“Over an hour. Maybe an hour and a half.”
“Was the horse running full-out the whole time?”
“No, about ten minutes.” She swayed. “It hurts.”
Frowning, Bram steadied her with a hand on her elbow. He wasn’t going to get more out of her right now and she really did look spent.
Hooking a foot around a chair leg, he steered her over to the table and sat her down.
She held her head in her hands. “Thank you.”
The threadiness of her voice raised Bram’s concern. He might be mad as hell at her, but he didn’t like seeing her hurt this way. “Is there something I can do?”
“I think I just need to sit for a minute.”
He glanced around, his gaze skimming over the silt-layered room. “I don’t think there are any headache powders here.”
“The pain isn’t quite so bad now.” She gave him a small forced smile, then closed her eyes.
In the flickering light she looked helpless and fragile. Her pretty mouth was drawn tight with pain. He stiffened as his gaze fell to the bruise on her jaw then moved to the cut on her temple.
He had to fight the urge to hold her and he didn’t understand why. She’d left him, run off with a murdering cattle thief. He shouldn’t want to be within a hundred yards of her. What was wrong with him?
Cosgrove was the one Bram wanted, the one he’d expected when he had come through the door earlier.
Instead, he’d found the one woman he never wanted to see again, and until this storm blew over, he was stuck with her.
Didn’t that just cock his pistol?
Bram Ross didn’t much care for her. Right now, Deborah didn’t much care for him either.
An hour later, as they sat at the small dining table eating supper, she was as befuddled and uncertain as she had been when she had woken up behind that two-story building. Adding further to her confusion was her strong reaction to the rugged cowboy who had found her.
He was a big man. Beneath his grimy white shirt she could see the play of lean carved muscle in his shoulders and arms. Though his black hair was cut short, the ragged ends suggested it hadn’t been trimmed in a while. Whisker stubble shadowed a square unyielding jaw. A raw-looking scar ran up the right side of his face from the middle of his cheek to his temple.
Tall and broad with powerful thighs, the man was daunting, especially when his dark blue eyes turned hard, which they’d done more than once when he looked at her.
His attention sent a shiver through her. She was drawn to him and intimidated at the same time.
Keeping his gun trained on her, he had searched the bedroom for a weapon. He hadn’t found one, of course. Then he had gone out and returned with their saddlebags, using the rope to guide him through the storm to the barn and back. Now the whirling dust and nightfall made it completely dark outside.
After dropping the bags in the corner near the back door, he had found a tin of beans and one of peaches, carefully opening them with a knife. He had managed to keep out most of the dust; she had wiped off the tin plate he’d given her. They ate in silence, with her at one end of the table and him at the other. The insistent hum of the wind scraped at her nerves, as did the hovering veil of dust.
She ate slowly, sneaking looks at him. She couldn’t seem to stop her attention from wandering to his firm, sometimes-harsh mouth, searching her mind for any memory of him. Touching, kissing, laughing. She’d tried the same for her family and any part of her life.
The harder she tried to remember, the more her head hurt, but she needed answers. Something to grab on to, to slake the sense of … incompleteness inside her.
Although she believed what Bram Ross had told her, she didn’t feel any of it.
A million questions, especially about him—them—spun through her head. She wasn’t sure she was ready to talk about that. From the way his face had turned to stone earlier, she doubted he was either.
He looked up suddenly and she tore her gaze from his mouth.
“You’ve been staring at me since we sat down,” he said baldly.
She flushed at being so obvious. Reaching up, she touched her cheek. “What happened to your face?”
His eyes narrowed and his voice turned hard. “Your beau shot me and his bullet skinned a trail up my face.”
She winced. Even though the wound was healing, it had a fresh look to it. “Is that why you hate him?”
“No, that’s after the fact. He led a band of rustlers for months, stealing not just my cattle, but my neighbors', too. People who were also his neighbors. Due to the drought last year, we had already lost plenty of cattle. His thieving almost cost my family our ranch. Add to that, he murdered someone two days ago during a bank robbery.”
This Cosgrove sounded like a horrible person. Deborah didn’t want to believe she could be involved with him, but Bram certainly believed it.
The dust tickled her nose and she stifled a sneeze. After a minute, she said, “May I ask you something else?”
“More about Cosgrove?” he sneered.
“No. About me, you, everything.”
In the hazy light, his eyes were like dark steel. His gaze trailed from her face to her breasts and back up, making her stomach dip. Hunger flared in his eyes, then was gone. She shivered.
He studied her for a minute, then shrugged.
This man had proposed to her. Shouldn’t she recognize something about him deep inside? She had no sense of him other than the fact that he was strong, no-nonsense and gruff. “You said I lived with my mother and sisters?”
“Yes. They’re younger than you. Jordan, Michal and Marah.”
She searched her mind for an impression or part of a memory. Nothing.
“You have cousins here, too. Riley and Davis Lee Holt.”
None of these people sounded familiar. She tried to calm the panic rising inside her. With a shaking hand, she tucked her hair behind her ear. “You said I lived near Whirlwind. Where is that?”
“North central Texas.”
“Do you have kin nearby, too?”
Bram eyed her skeptically. “Yeah. I live at the Circle R ranch with my cousin, Georgia, and Uncle Ike. My brother, Jake, and his wife also live there.”
All the names spun in her head. “You’re a rancher?”
He arched a brow. “Yes. That’s why I live on a ranch.”
She flushed. The man irritated the fire out of her, but right now he was the only person who might be able to help her remember.
“What happened to your parents?”
“My pa died years ago and my ma lit out right after,” he said with exaggerated patience—as though he were humoring her, not because he believed she needed answers. “Ike raised me and