Free A Promise Worth Remembering (Promises Collection) by Cyndi Faria Page B

since her husband, Jesse, had passed. She shouldn’t be thinking about Tucker, but in the deep recesses of her mind she’d never quite forgotten him.
    “Leave the past. Live for today,” Jesse had often said, but now that he was gone, all she had were her memories.
    Jesse had taught her to laugh again. He helped her to forget Tucker. He taught her how to mend fences and drive a tractor and stand tall along with her uncle when Old Man Pierce had falsely accused her uncle with zoning litigation. And just when the weight in her heart was eased by talks of adding a child to their marriage?
    Jesse had died along with the laughter.
    Her breath hitched at the dream, the image of family that had dangled right in front of her only to be snatched away. Four months ago, near the first anniversary of Jesse’s death, Uncle Mark had also passed, making her sole owner of the preserve.
    Complete control over the safety of the preserve would ensure the future of the Bengal breeding program. Not wasting energy wondering about a summer crush she hadn’t seen in a decade. Not dwelling on some silly folklore scribble that couldn’t possibly be true. Not pausing when her walls had to remain secure. Not letting her gaze drift to the opposing property in hopes of glimpsing the man she’d once loved, but who’d changed his mind about loving her.
    No matter, she’d forge her own path.
    Bailey…
    She swiveled, attempting to locate the voice, until she came full circle. Banking the river on both sides, alders linked limbs with cottonwood trees and formed a dense green fortress that left her encircled by memories she couldn’t escape any easier than she could outrun the wild scent of Dogwood blossoms riding the breeze.
    But regardless of how busy she kept her hands, the memory of Tucker still shook her to the bones, to the marrow, to the vessels that led to her mind and heart.
    Perspiration, or at least that’s what she told herself the moisture was, cascaded down her cheek. She used the bottom of her shirt to blot away the beads. She’d already allowed the daily dose of memories to hog enough of her day. Tucker was gone for good, just like Jesse and Uncle Mark.
    She glanced up and down the river to the taut fence. Her morning walk confirmed the sanctuary was nothing less than secure. Chain link and razor wire wrapped around the entire preserve, weaving through the brush and limbs and the high water line of the riverside. No one could break through her walls. A quick dip in the cool stream would soothe her exterior, her tight back, her tender fingertips, her sun-pinked shoulders.
    With a sigh, she dropped her backpack and tools to the ground beside Kissing Rock. Two minutes later, she was bootless, nothing on her bare skin but a cotton tee shirt and panties—
    A hunter emerged from the cottonwood veil on the Pierce’s side of the river, sending white motes to fall like summer snow into the water.
    She jolted to a halt.
    Blue jeans hugged his tight waist. An unbuttoned long sleeved shirt hung from broad shoulders and exposed a white undershirt below. His jaw line and high cheekbones boasted European masculine features.
    Features that had her shirt perking up like she’d slipped a pebble in each side of her sports bra. With the sun peeping over Copper Mountain in the east, the hunter’s ball cap couldn’t quite shadow the cobalt eyes that had stabbed through her dreams too many times to count. “Tucker?” she murmured.
    No. Can’t be. He’s an illusion. Like the wind whispering your name.
    Several times, she blinked but pinching her eyes didn’t erase the image of a mature Tucker, one who’d transformed from a whip to a mighty Oak, and a man who greatly resembled a younger version of Old Man Pierce.
    Tucker held his head high and his wide stance boasted an assuredness, a grounding presence, that hadn’t graced the adolescent who’d seated his roots in her soul.
    Suddenly, her tomboy legs morphed to tree-limbs. She swayed with the