Free Storm by Jayne Fresina Page B

profit." She tipped her chin even higher. "The dear lady was grateful to me for giving her another choice. As she said, we widows must stick together."
    Storm shook his head. "I should have left you in the damn river." His father was right; this tenderness for strays would be his undoing one day. He felt everybody staring at him, waiting to see this uppity, decorative stranger put firmly in her place. It wasn't like him to be bested by a woman. By anybody. She was putting a sizeable dent in his reputation. "What the hell are you doing here?" he growled softly. "This is no place for the likes of you." A hothouse flower would never survive on the harsh, weather-bitten moor. She thought she was tough and yes, she had a fighting spirit, but she was also reckless and headstrong— as he knew already— and apparently impulsive too. She'd need more than her own gumption to make a go of that farm alone.
    "I thought Mrs. Putnam might like to know her house was lived in again by someone who would make it a home," she replied icily, "not simply annex it to their own holdings. It seems she wasn't very keen on the idea of her beloved home being carved up between you two...what was it she called you both... scrapping mutts who would fight over a dead man's bones."
    "How can you manage this farm by yourself? With no man about? You'll go under, Mrs. Kelly. You've made a mistake."
    "If I did, then I've no one to blame but myself, have I?"
    Storm bowed his head in frustration, but he had to admit she had more courage than the agent, who was now hurriedly beating a path to his horse, taking the "Notice of Sale" board with him.
    "I'll not stand for this underhand business," Joss Restarick bellowed, stepping up and shaking a finger in her face. "You'll be sorry, woman. I never did care for cuckoos."
    "I'm not a cuckoo. I've turned nobody out of a nest. And if you shake something at me, sir, be prepared to have it bitten off."
    The nosy crowd was really enjoying her performance now.
    "'Tis a pity you men cannot bear the thought of an autonomous woman among you," she added grandly. "But I suggest you get accustomed to it."
    "You're a cheatin' schemer, wench! I knew there was something amiss the moment I saw you."
    "Joss, be careful what you say to a lady," Storm muttered.
    "A lady? A lady ? What do you care what I say to her? She tricked you, didn't she?"
    "Pardon me!" Kate Kelly tossed her head with a distinctly dramatic flair that almost dislodged her bonnet. "When Mr. Deverell and I met yesterday I assured him I didn't require rescue, but he insisted I did."
    "You batted your lashes at him and played him for a fool." Joss looked over her head at Storm. "She used you, Deverell, to find out where the widow Putnam might be found and then she got her foot in that door, before you or I got out o' bed this mornin'."
    It was true, he thought irritably. What other explanation could there be for this unusual woman turning up on his land, as if blown there like a dandelion seed? He'd known from the start that he wasn't that lucky.
    How innocently and casually she had pointed her whip and asked about the Putnam place. Like Joss, he knew there was something wrong about her, something that didn't fit right— from her colorful coat, to the strange, haughty way she spoke.
    She claimed that correspondence with Reverend Coles had encouraged her journey into Cornwall, and Coles just happened to be the same man responsible for planting ideas in his head about Steadfast Putnam's farm. Could it be mere coincidence, or something more sinister? What exactly had the Reverend told her in the letters that lured her there?
    If there was one thing Storm couldn't tolerate it was being lied to, deliberately deceived.
    But he held onto his temper and shrugged. He'd deal with her in his own way, in time.
    "'Tis done now," he muttered gruffly. "No point crying over spilt milk."
    "Oh, no it is not done!" Restarick raised his voice for the benefit of the crowd. "I don't know