“Why not?” Danny asked with a frown.
“I have better things to do than gaze about at cavalrymen,” she told him.
“Do you think I’m handsome?” he asked.
Kate smiled. “Very handsome. And someday you’ll make a fine husband.” She leaned over and kissed his forehead.
“Like Pa,” he said. “He was a good husband, wasn’t he?”
Kate kept her smile in place. “I never complained. Now, get some sleep.”
“Yes, Ma.” He dutifully closed his eyes. Kate rose and left.
How she hated not telling Danny everything, but he was so young. He couldn’t understand what went on between a husband and a wife. He didn’t understand his father’s death either. He’d heard a bear had mauled his father. She hadn’t been able to keep the guests or her staff from sharing that news. But she’d prevented him from seeing the mangled body. She still saw it in nightmares.
He remembered Toby’s engaging side, the laughter, the games. He didn’t understand the many ways Toby had failed her.
“It was just a card game,” Toby had told her back in Boston when she’d realized they couldn’t pay the grocer. “I’ll win the money back next time.”
She’d managed to convince him there would be no next time, but she never knew what else would catch his fancy. He had spent rent money on a blind horse because he couldn’t bear to see the animal put down. She had located a farmer willing to accept the poor beast. They’d gone without coal for a month one winter because he had wanted a sled large enough to take the neighbor children for a ride. He gave to every charity, helped anyone who asked, invested in every wild scheme proposed to him, with no thought of how it might affect her or Danny. He’d been throwing scraps to a grizzly he feared might be hungry when it had turned on him.
No, Toby had not been the best husband, but she missed his smile, his ability to see the silver lining in every cloud.
Will didn’t seem to be a silver lining sort of fellow. At times, she thought something troubled him. That handsome—well, she could admit it to herself!—face could look remarkably still when he wanted it to, giving away none of his secrets. But somehow she was sure he wouldn’t have gone out in the middle of the night to feed a bear either.
The way he looked at her, the way he had held her, told her it would be all too easy for him to develop feelings for her. She was halfway to developing feelings for him.
A shame she could not feel comfortable taking a chance on love again.
Kate Tremaine didn’t trust him.
Will shook his head as he rode his circuit with Smith late Saturday morning. He wasn’t sure why he felt so certain of the fact. True, she seemed to be avoiding him. She had to wonder why he’d behaved as he had. He’d kept her at a respectable arm’s length until he’d pulled her close the other day. And what had he offered in the face of her fears?
All anyone can do is their utmost. No one can ask for more.
Platitudes he surely hadn’t lived. Platitudes he wasn’t sure he believed.
But he wanted to.
So, what was he to do about Kate except honor the distance she seemed determined to put between them? She had helped him and his men so much, it felt wrong to ignore her, though she seemed intent on ignoring him. Danny, on the other hand, was always on the veranda, under the hitching post, or out on the geyser field every time Will rode by, as if he’d been listening for the sound of hoofbeats. And he always had a wave or a word for Will.
“The hotel people are here again,” he confided to Will that morning from the porch bench as Bess paused before the inn to eye the two strange horses tied there.
Will reined in and tried in vain to see through the open door. “Hotel people?”
“They own a lot of the hotels in Yellowstone,” Danny supplied. “The fancy one at Mammoth Hot Springs, the big one going up at Old Faithful. They bought Mr. Marshall’s hotel. I heard them tell Ma.” He glanced toward the door. “I hope they don’t buy ours.”
The same hope surged up inside him. The Geyser Gateway without Kate? Impossible to imagine. But who could blame her if she’d had enough of the wilderness, especially after their recent encounter with a bear?
Just then, two men, one in a tailored black coat and trousers, the other in buckskins, came out of the hotel and started down the steps. The fancy fellow’s face was red, his mouth set in a hard line. The guide’s smile could only be called a smirk. He nodded respectfully to Will, but his client breezed past to untie his horse.
Kate followed them out onto the porch and watched them leave, hands on the hips of her plaid skirt.
“Did you say no?” Danny asked.
Her look dropped to her son. “I’m not selling the Geyser Gateway. This is our home.”
Danny flattened himself onto the bench, as if his spine had turned to pudding. “Oh, good.” He straightened. “Can I ride patrol with Lieutenant Prescott?”
“Wood?” she asked.
“Can’t I stack it later?” he wheedled.
She jerked a thumb toward the back of the property. “You know the rules.”
His sigh was heavy enough to down a few trees all on its own. “No fun before chores. Good thing your mother didn’t come out to Yellowstone with you, Lieutenant Prescott. She probably wouldn’t let you patrol until you washed the dishes.”
“Daniel Tobias Tremaine,” Kate said, “git!”
He got.
“Maybe it is a good thing my mother never followed me to a post,” Will said, watching him trudge around the inn.
“Why?” Kate challenged him. “Was she a tyrant too?”
He returned his gaze to hers. Her eyes were a smoky gray in the shadow of the porch. “No, ma’am. I
