“How?”
Allison just shook her head and stared out the window. She was too hurt and upset to even talk.
When they got back to the ranch she went to her room and locked the door. She couldn’t face anyone just yet.
“What’s wrong with her?” Marie asked quietly when she and Winnie were drinking coffee while Dwight slept. “Something’s upset her terribly. I wonder what Dale said to her? Could it just be the reporter who’s got her upset?”
“I don’t know.” Winnie sipped coffee, aware of the front door opening and closing. “Surely, Gene won’t let him come here, will he?”
“I won’t let who come here?” Gene asked abruptly, taking off his work gloves as he paused in the doorway.
“That reporter,” Marie said. “The one who’s looking for Allison.”
He scowled. “What reporter? And why is he looking for our houseguest?”
Winnie hesitated. She exchanged glances with Marie and grimaced. “I guess you’d better hear it all. Allison isn’t going to tell you, but someone needs to. You’d better sit down.”
He sprawled in the armchair next to the sofa and crossed his arms over his chest. “All right,” he said, his green eyes solemn. It would be almost a relief to know it all. He’d had a feeling from the very first that Allison wasn’t what she seemed, although he had one strong premonition that he wasn’t going to like what he found out.
“Allison and her parents were sent to Central America to set up a small clinic in one of the rural provinces,” Winnie began. “It was a war zone, and inevitably, two opposing factions threatened the village.”
“What were they doing in Central America?” Gene interrupted.
Winnie blinked. “Why, they were missionaries.”
Gene’s face went several shades paler and his jaw clenched. “All of them?” he asked in a choked tone. “Allison, too?”
“Yes,” Winnie replied, confirming his worst fears.
He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes blank. Now it all made sense. No wonder she’d been so naïve, so trusting. He closed his eyes. If the guilt had been there before, it was almost unbearable now. A missionary. He’d seduced a missionary! “Finish it,” he said stiffly, opening his eyes to glare at her.
“They were taken prisoner,” Winnie said slowly. “Allison’s parents were shot to death right beside her, and the firing squad had taken aim at her when the opposing force marched in and spared her. She was smuggled out of the country by international peacekeepers. She has information that nobody else has, and that’s why the media’s been after her. She came here to heal, Gene.”
He’d gone rigid during that revelation. When Winnie finished, he got up out of his chair without a word and went out the front door. He didn’t want anyone to see what he felt at the thought of bullets tearing into that gentle, loving woman. He felt something wet in his eyes and kept walking while stark terror ran over his body like fire. Incredible, Dwight had said. No. Not incredible. A miracle. Allison believed in miracles, she’d told him once, and now he knew why. She was alive because of one.
The sound of approaching voices disturbed his thoughts. He wasn’t really listening, it was just some of the hands heading into the bunkhouse for lunch. But then one loud, slurred voice caught his attention.
Rance, he thought angrily, drinking again. He’d warned the man once. Now he was going to have to do something about it. The hands knew he wouldn’t tolerate alcohol during working hours.
Just as he started around the barn toward the bunkhouse, he heard what Rance was saying.
“She wouldn’t give me the time of day,” the man snarled. “Can you imagine that? She didn’t mind rolling around in that line cabin with the boss, but she was too good to let me touch her. Dale hates her guts, and I can see why. Well, it’s all over town about the high and mighty Miss Hathoway and Nelson, and before I’m through...”
His voice trailed off as the object of his venom walked into the bunkhouse with an expression on his face that made the rest of the men scatter.
“Now, boss,” Rance began hesitantly, because he knew the set of the older man’s lean body and the glitter of those green eyes from long experience.
“You son of a...!” The last word was muffled by a huge fist as Gene knocked the cowboy to the floor and dived after him. They demolished chairs in the struggle, but it was no contest. Gene was quicker and more muscular than the young cowboy, and he had the advantage of murderous anger.
He pulled Rance up from the floor and knocked him through the open bunkhouse door and out into the dirt, and was going after him again when one of the older hands stepped in front of him.
“He’s had enough, boss,” the man said gently, keeping his voice low and calm. “You got the point across. No need to tear his arms off. None of us listened to his venom. A blind man would know that Miss Hathoway’s a lady.”
Gene was breathing heavily. He looked from the half-conscious man on the ground to the one who was speaking, his green eyes hot and wild. He took a deep breath to steady himself. “If anyone else asks, Miss Hathoway is my fiancée,” he emphasized the word, looking at each cowboy’s face individually with an expression that was calm and dangerous all at once. “I may deserve that kind of malicious gossip, but she doesn’t. She’s a missionary. A man who is a man doesn’t belittle a woman of her sort!”
The men looked shamefaced. They stood uncomfortably congregated with downcast eyes.
“Rance told some reporter she was here,” one of them said. “We did try to reason with him, Mr. Nelson, but he was half lit and out for blood. Dale Branigan fed him a lot of bull about you and he’s sweet on her; not to mention him
