The hard rancher disappeared.

Ethan kissed Sarah’s forehead and whispered something into her hair before setting her down.

Then Sarah noticed Mary.

Her expression closed immediately.

She looked from Mary to Clara.

Then back to Ethan.

“Who are they?”

Ethan hesitated.

Mary watched him carefully.

“This is Mrs. Whitfield,” he said. “And her daughter, Clara.”

Sarah’s eyes narrowed.

“Are they staying?”

“Maybe.”

The child went perfectly still.

“No.”

“Sarah—”

“I don’t want another one.”

Mary felt as though she had walked somewhere private without permission.

Ethan’s face tightened.

“Another what?”

“Mother.”

Sarah spun around and ran into the house.

The screen door slammed.

Mary looked at Ethan.

“I think your daughter has expressed her opinion.”

He rubbed his jaw.

“She’s had a hard time.”

“So has mine.”

“I know.”

Again, there was something in his voice.

Too much certainty.

Mary’s suspicion returned.

How could Ethan Cole possibly know how hard Clara’s life had been?

The house smelled of cedar, coffee and bread.

It was clean enough to function but disorderly enough to prove no woman had managed it recently. Boots crowded the entryway. A saddle blanket lay across a chair. Newspapers were stacked beneath the stairs.

Clara thought it magnificent.

“There are stairs, Mama!”

“I see them.”

“And curtains!”

“Yes.”

“And a cat!”

A large orange cat fled the room.

Clara pursued it.

Mary started after her, but Ethan said, “She’s safe.”

Those two words nearly undid her.

Safe.

Mary could no longer remember the last time she had believed them.

Ethan showed her a bedroom upstairs.

A real mattress.

A washstand.

Quilts.

A window overlooking the creek.

“This would be yours.”

Mary stared at him.

“Mine?”

“If you stayed.”

“Where would you sleep?”

“My room is across the hall.”

She blinked.

“I thought your bed needed a wife.”

Color rose faintly along his neck.

“That may have been the stupidest sentence I’ve spoken in forty years.”

“You’re forty?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“That explains it.”

He almost smiled.

Then his expression became serious.

“Mary, if you agreed to marry me, I would never force you into anything. Not my bed. Not affection. Nothing.”

The sincerity in his face frightened her more than arrogance might have.

Because arrogance was easy to reject.

Kindness was harder.

“Why would you marry a woman who might never love you?”

Ethan was silent.

Then he said, “There are worse foundations for a marriage than kindness.”

Mary thought of her late husband.

Thomas Whitfield had been able to make her laugh even during terrible years. He had kissed Clara’s tiny feet the day she was born. He had sung badly while repairing chairs, burned pancakes every Sunday and called Mary beautiful when she was nine months pregnant and furious with the entire world.

Then a logging wagon overturned on a mountain road sixteen months earlier.

Thomas never returned home.

They had buried a closed coffin because his body had been too badly crushed for viewing.

Mary had believed grief would kill her.

Instead, poverty nearly had.

“I loved my husband,” she whispered.

“I know.”

Mary’s head lifted sharply.

Ethan froze.

“What?”

He looked away.