A movement outside the large door caught her attention and she watched as Simon boarded the car. She pulled her hat low and ducked her head to shield her face. Garrett was noticeably absent. Although her world tilted to odd angles whenever he was around, his behavior last night—and slighting her each time they’d met throughout the years—couldn’t be forgotten. But the thought of him gone from the lumber camp this year made her heart sink to her stomach. What she wouldn’t give to spend more time with Garrett Jones.
There were several cars attached to the train that would take the men and Beth to the main camp. Simon had warned her to expect the next few months to be filled with crowded bunkhouses and water closets only the bravest of men would use. Really, he was trying to scare her from going, and it had somewhat worked. She wasn’t happy about a community bed or roughage for a toilet, but with each breath she regained her excitement over the experience as a whole.
The boxcar rattled and propelled into motion, gradually picking up speed as more men jumped onto the car, including Garrett. Now nothing could squelch her mood, but she needed to act like a man. Behave like everyone else in the car. She glanced around to take stock of the filthy men. How they sat, their expressions. She would do this.
Beth clenched her teeth as she realized her brother stared straight at her. She tried not to flinch when he scowled and stood to pick his way through the crowded floor.
“I ought to toss you off right now. Let you roll down the tracks and back home.” He plopped down next to her. “Why aren’t you still passed out in bed after the booze you drank last night?”
“So that was your plan? I knew you were up to something. You won’t send me home because I’ll keep coming back, and I didn’t drink much. I tossed it. Honestly, Simon, I would think getting me drunk to get your way was beneath you.”
Simon’s upper lip twitched as Garrett made his way to the only space available in the car…directly in front of her. She against one side of the L-shaped wall, and he sitting sideways against the other. She stretched out her feet as far as she could and gave Garrett almost no room in which to set down his perfectly muscled backside. The train jarred, sending him tumbling down onto her spiked boot.
“Ouch!” she squealed, pulled her legs back to rub her shins, and then winced when Simon’s sharp elbow slammed into her ribs.
“Watch yourself, Brent,” her brother scolded loudly enough for only her to hear.
Garrett stared through hazel eyes. Eyes so vexed and clouded they reminded her of an angry fall day. No emotion showed on his face, save for the fierceness of his gaze. She liked reading people, but he read like a bad Gothic novel. Personally, she preferred dime novels.
They were separated by no more than her legs, but heat from his body toasted even her back as it pressed against the cold steel of the wall. How could one man emanate warmth so intense that it scorched the entire boxcar?
She leaned over to Simon. “Is it hot in here?”
He shot her a confused glare and shook his head.
Beth drew her knees up to her chest and squeezed them against her body to gain distance from Garrett—the source of the offending heat. He turned his eyes away from her. Thank the Lord above! One more second of his intense, disapproving gaze and she’d catch fire. He greeted Simon, and then leaned his head against the wall.
She tugged her large brimmed cowboy hat down low, settled deeper into the wall behind her, and pretended to sleep. The smoky musk of Garrett’s Eau de Cologne drifted past her nose and brought to mind the last ball she’d attended when a large, stuffed puffin of a man asked her to dance and spent the rest of the ensemble flaunting his superiority. Garrett was different. He was a logger. One bottle of the blend was at least three months’ pay for a man of his profession. He needed to make up his mind already. Was he a stuffy blowhard, or an easy-to-love logger?
Hours ticked by in the uncomfortable position, and she couldn’t help but fidget. With each movement, Garrett threw her a sour look. He’d done that a lot since meeting her outside the bar. Each time it sent sorrow to her soul, but that didn’t matter. You’re not here for romance, Beth. Finding love was for another time in her life. This moment, this season, was for her brother. As long as she kept that in mind, she would get through the summer just fine.
The hard, wooden train floor had to be a torture device from a dark castle the way it ground into her bottom. She squirmed again and stretched her leg to ease the pain. The spikes on her boots hit Garrett’s thigh and she winced.
Garrett flinched, but kept his gaze somewhere on the forward wall of the railcar. The muscles in his jaw flexed, but no other emotion showed. The man was as hard as the floor making her backside ache. She supposed he had to be in his profession.
“Sorry,” she said, but he scowled. Perhaps this spring was going to be harder than she expected.
* * * *
Garrett tensed when the spikes dug into his leg. Anger rose fast and furious, and he turned a hard stare to Simon’s cousin. He couldn’t take much more of the kid. Not with the mixture of emotions kicking him in the gut like a bad-tempered mule. There was something about the kid that wasn’t quite right. Something that made him feel empty inside—a reminder that he lacked an important ingredient in his life.
The boy shielded his face with that ridiculous hat he wore.
Leaning on one hand, he crouched to stand as the train lurched to slow while it crested a steep hill. Knocked off balance, he fell on top of Simon’s cousin. He reached out in reflex to stop his descent, but instead of a bony teenage chest firm beneath his fingers, he felt the softness of two perfectly rounded breasts. Breasts bound by some sort of cloth.
He moved his hands to the floor so he could balance his weight on them, as the boy stared wide-eyed with shock. Garrett fought to clear his head of the thoughts running rampant through his mind.
His mood changed fast. He was still mad, but for a completely different reason. He now knew why his gut dropped whenever this so-called boy was in sight, and why he looked so familiar. His breath hitched at how close he’d been to Elizabeth. The woman who on many occasions had smiled at him from across the platform after the end of a hard logging season, and brightened his sometimes dreary day. The woman who haunted his dreams and desires with her dark hair like silk, and a face like a china doll. The woman who made him lose all semblance of thought whenever she was near—a feeling he hated. He could throw himself between logs slamming together at a white-water logjam, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak to the enchanting woman who was now dressed as a man, sitting in a mud-caked railcar, bound for the deep belly of an Alpine forest. Now he had no choice but to speak to her. He could no longer duck his way out of the distress of conversation to a woman he could never have.
Beth took a deep breath, and shook her head. Her lips mere inches from his own, and the feel of her breasts in his hands still tingling down his palms. He scrambled to slide off Beth and back to his seat.
Garrett snapped his attention to Simon, who slid his finger over his mouth, indicating he should keep quiet. Garrett wanted to demand an explanation and then make the conductor stop and send her packing. That’s what he should do.
Beth hugged her arms around her torso. Something primal tugged deep within his belly. He’d crossed the line with her physically, made her uneasy, albeit accidentally. Still, he never wanted to make Beth uncomfortable around him. But what in Hades name was she doing on his train?
“Later.” Simon leaned over and whispered the warning, and then glanced around at the men in the car.
Now that Garrett looked closer, her soft beauty was unmistakable. How did she plan to pull off this scheme when even the dirt on her boots looked feminine and somehow charming?
If he hadn’t been distracted by the fact that he was emotionally affected by a boy, he may have realized who she