Free Rocky Mountain Widow (Historical) by Jillian Hart Page B

early in her marriage. The reverend said, what God joined together let no man put asunder. You lay in this bed of marriage you made, jus’ like the rest a us.
    And Joshua had not stood aside. He’d not looked the other way. Back when she’d been young and dreamy and believed in the fairy tales and the novels of romance she used to read, before she’d ever heard Ham’s name, she would have thought him her champion. A hero. A man to admire. But she’d learned that no man was that. No man was that great, that strong, that good. Men didn’t need to be kind to get what they want. Men didn’t love. Men made the laws and the rules, and as far as she could tell, men cared only about themselves.
    And if she saw something admirable in Joshua Gable, then it was only illusion. Or her own wishful thinking, nothing more.
    So, why did her entire being prickle with awareness of him? She was foolish, that’s why, because deep down, beyond the pain and the weakness and the miscarriage, when it would have been easier to give in to the darkness, she’d chosen life. Because beyond all of her experience, she could not let go of the tiny thread of hope she clung to with both hands.
    That even when the logical, undeniable fact was that she’d lost everything and there was no reason to hope, she did hope.
    Tears burned in the corners of her eyes and tapped onto the pillow. The roar and crackle of the fire filled her ears. The spikes of pain lancing her entire body came to full awareness and she could smell the wood smoke, the soft down of the buffalo blanket covering her, the scorching heat from the warming irons tucked alongside her and the gnawing agony of her unfreezing feet as if a bear were feasting on her bare toes.
    â€œClaire?”
    His baritone rumbled low and resonant and whiskey-rough, and the vibration of it seemed to sink inside her like a sensual stroke.
    No. It was instinct to protect herself, to stop the flood of sensation into her drained heart. She was vulnerable and weak, and that was the reason she was responding to him so stridently.
    Don’t turn to him. She knew it would only make her more defenseless to the caress of his voice, the fiction of his presence, and only stroke the sparks of hope fighting for life within her. Fighting to keep that undefeatable hope from rising up.
    She heard the rustle of his denim trousers and the creak of boot leather as Joshua Gable knelt. The cool shadow his big body had tossed over her was gone—the heat radiated across her entire being. She did not know where he knelt, only that he was close, that he was watching her in a way that felt as tangible as a physical touch. She knew he could hardly miss the tears gleaming on her cheek and trickling sideways down her face.
    Why did this man, this stranger, know the most intimate piece of her life? Her family did not know it, Ham’s family did not know she’d miscarried, let alone that she’d been pregnant. Ham was not a proud father-to-be. He had no love for mewling brats, he’d told her. He hadn’t wanted to hear more about the pregnancy, and she’d watched the exciting early changes her body went through alone.
    Eleven weeks later, it was as if there had never been a new life started within her, at least to those looking in from the outside on her life.
    And Joshua Gable’s knowledge and pity lapped over her like a shallow lake’s warm waters in mid-August. Lulling and comforting and sweet enough to sink into, and it was tempting to give in when his baritone rolled through her again.
    â€œI have to ask you a few questions.” Joshua Gable cleared his throat, and that rough sound moved through her, too.
    She squeezed her eyes more tightly shut. Don’t give in to the impulse, Claire. Don’t believe in him.
    â€œI need you to answer honestly, no matter what.” He paused, as if to let his words sink in. “Did the Hamilton brothers have anything