LITMIR.BIZ

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want to admit that Mercy had found him sound asleep and tucked him in like a kid. Didn’t want to admit he found it oddly comforting.

      He didn’t want to admit how much he’d come to like having her around in such a short time.

      “She’s a tough little thing,” Walt said. “Stronger’n she looks, too.”

      Grant didn’t have to ask; even if Walt’s words hadn’t made it obvious, there was only one “she” on the ranch. Mercy was everything Walt had said, and more.

      “She wasn’t too happy with me when I tried to help her with that hay bale,” Chipper put in rather morosely.

      “Did she need help?” Walt asked. Grant had the feeling he already knew the answer.

      “Well…no,” Chipper admitted, looking sheepish. “She slung that thing on the wagon like she’d been doin’ it forever. She is awful strong.”

      “Learns fast, too,” Walt put in. “I had to check on that leopard mare this morning. She’s making me nervous with all that pacing around, even though she’s not due to foal for another six weeks.”

      “Me, too,” Grant said; the pregnant mare they called simply Lady was one of their most valuable, and she was in foal to Joker. Their first get had been the colt who had escaped the other day, and Grant had hopes this foal might turn out as well. “But what does that have to do with our…visitor?”

      “By the time I was done, that girl had all the stalls on this side of the barn shoveled out.”

      Grant stared at him. “She was mucking out stalls?”

      “And doin’ a fine job of it, too.”

      Fixing tack. Stacking wood. Cleaning the tack room. Cleaning his rifle. Baking bread. And now slinging hay bales and cleaning stalls.

      She needs to rest, she’s running herself ragged.

      Kristina’s words echoed in his head. If this was what Mercy considered resting, he didn’t want to know what she thought was work. And what she’d been doing wasn’t just work, it was labor, simple, hard, physical labor, requiring a strength and endurance he never would have guessed she had, from her appearance.

      Which should teach him something, he supposed. But he still felt a niggling sense of guilt, as if somehow he’d made her feel she had to earn her keep here, because of his warnings about this being the worst time of year for them here at the ranch. It was true that, while calving time was hectic, and the roundup and branding season was busy, winter was dangerous, to man and beast. But maybe he’d sounded a little harsh to her.

      “—goin’ to do, son?”

      Grant blinked at Walt. “What did you say? I…was thinking.”

      Walt clucked at him mockingly. “Been doin’ a lot o’that lately, boy. Too much thinking ain’t good for a man, you know.”

      “Right,” Grant muttered, and turned on his heel and strode out of the barn without another word.

      He found Mercy in the house, adding a small log to the fire in the stove. She’d apparently gotten into the habit of replacing what they burned every day, something he had always meant to do but had been unable to, with all the demands on his time; the inside stack hadn’t diminished at all since she’d been here.

      “You don’t have to do all this, you know.”

      When Mercy straightened and gave him a puzzled look, he knew it had came out rather abruptly, not at all how he’d meant to say it.

      “Keep the fire going? It’s strictly selfish. I hate it when my teeth chatter indoors.”

      “That’s not what I meant.”

      She closed the tempered-glass door of the stove, dusted her hands off on her jeans—jeans that hugged her hips and backside delightfully; it didn’t seem right that such a little thing had such luscious curves—and turned to face him straight on. A trait he was coming to expect from her. And to suspect was how she faced most things in life.

      Except, perhaps, the death of Nick Corelli.

      “What did you mean, then?”

      “I told you I don’t expect you to work.”

      “And I told you I need to keep busy.”

      “Fine. Keep busy. What you’ve been doing is a big help. But you don’t have to lug hay bales or clean out stalls.”

      “I know I don’t have to.”

      “That’s hard, dirty work. Leave it to the guys whose job it is.”

      She gave him a calculating look. “Oh. But I suppose baking bread and sewing is all right?”

      He’d known when he started this that somehow he was going to end up in trouble.

      “I didn’t mean that. At least not like that.”

      “Then just how did you mean it? You think I can’t do that kind of work?”

      “That would be pretty silly of me, wouldn’t it, when you’ve already proven you can?” he said, trying to be reasonable.

      “Then why are you telling me to stop?”

      He let out a compressed breath. “I’m not. But you’re supposed to be here to rest, not work yourself to death.”

      “Did you ever stop to think,” she said, her voice tight, “that maybe that’s the only way I can rest?”

      “Yes,” he said honestly. “Because I’ve been there. But I’m used to this kind of work. You’re not. And even though you’re a heck of a lot tougher than you look, you could still get hurt.”

      She seemed taken aback at his first words, but by the time he finished, that rebellious look was back in her eyes.

      “All this macho protective stuff might have been appealing when I was twelve and thought the sun rose and set on you,” she snapped, “but I’m not a child anymore, Grant. I don’t need protecting.”

      Grant drew back slightly, both startled and amused by her vehemence. No, it wasn’t a child who was standing toe-to-toe with him, facing him down. It was a woman, and a fierce, passionate one, at that.

      Unfortunate choice of words, he thought as his body surged in response to thoughts brought on just by thinking the word passionate in conjunction with Mercy. Would this ardent intensity carry over into other aspects in her personality? Did she exhibit the same fire and passion in other places, other ways?

      If so, he thought wryly as he tried to quell the heat that was suddenly billowing through him, Nick Corelli had been a very lucky man.

      And realizing he’d just called a man who had been shot to death on a dirty city street lucky was just the absurdity he needed to rein in his own unexpected and unwanted reaction to this woman he’d spent so much time trying not to think about lately.

      “Okay,” he said, keeping his voice light with an effort. “I’m just afraid Kristina’s going to have my head if she finds out I’ve been working you so hard.”

      She accepted the change gracefully. “So that’s it—you’re afraid of your little sister.”

      “Any man in his right mind would be afraid of Kristina.”

      “You’re right.” Mercy smiled, then sighed. “I always wanted to be like her.”

      Grant’s brows furrowed. “What?”

      “You know, glamorous, charming, bubbly. All the things I’m not.”

      “You’ll do just fine as you are,” he said gruffly. “The last thing the world needs is another pampered charmer like Kristina. You’re solid, steady, and not a bit spoiled.”

      “Oh, thank you,” Mercy said, her mouth twisting

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