Tried and True (Wild at Heart Book #1) (26 page)

“I just realized you’re wearing britches.” He laughed again.

Kylie looked down at herself and back up, blushing. “I forgot I even had them on. I let Bailey convince me to wear them while we moved.” She smiled. “I really do want to live near civilization, Aaron, but there are a few things about living a more manly life that are quite convenient.”

Aaron shook his head and chuckled.

“You can quit laughing at me now.”

He let go of her shoulders and scrubbed both hands over his face. “Don’t you see? I’m apologizing to you for the rugged way we’ll have to live when we rebuild, and all the while you’re standing here in britches and I didn’t even notice.”

He kissed her long and hard. “I think that civilized world you want so badly back in Virginia is never going to be the same after it meets you, Kylie Wilde Masterson.” As he drew her toward the bedroom, he added, “I know I never will be.”

1

A
UGUST
1, 1866
A
SPEN
R
IDGE
, D
AKOTA
T
ERRITORY
/I
DAHO
T
ERRITORY
B
ORDER

M
att Tucker could take people for only so long and then he had to get up into the mountains. All the way up—where he was more likely to run into a golden eagle than a man. He’d wander in the thin, pure air for a week or two, to clear his thoughts. Forget the smell and behavior of men.

He slung a haversack over his shoulder—the pack contained everything he needed to live—and rambled up a trail that’d scare the hair off a mountain goat. He’d left his horse behind, wanting to travel light and go places even his tough gray mustang couldn’t go.

This time it wasn’t men driving him to the high-up peaks. This time it was a certain head full of black curls and a pair of shining blue eyes. Not a
man
—though no one would admit it—which was so odd he almost turned around.

In fact, he wanted to turn around so badly he walked faster.

That hair and those eyes were why he wasn’t paying attention, which was a good way to get a man killed in wild country.

He scooted past a boulder on a trail as narrow as coal-black lashes on bright blue eyes, then rounded a curve as tight as black curls—and stomped on the toe of a bear cub.

A squall drew his eyes down. A roar dragged them up. He looked into the gaping maw of an angry mama grizzly. He hadn’t heard her or smelled her. Honestly, that was so careless and stupid he almost deserved to die.

She swung a massive paw, and he had no time to dodge. She knocked him over the side of that mountain. Not a cliff, but the next thing to it. He slammed into an aspen. He bounced off. Dirt flew around him, and he gasped from the pain and sucked a mouthful of grit into his lungs. He plummeted.

He hit the next aspen so hard his ribs howled in pain. He grabbed, trying to stop his plunge. Branches cracked, and he lost hold. Loosened stones pelted and clattered, falling along with him.

He snagged. His arms, legs, and torso whipped forward, but his haversack held. It had saved him.

He heard a roar that brought his head around.

The mama wasn’t satisfied with knocking him off a mountain. She was coming and coming fast, finding a way down somehow. She was running almost as quickly as he’d fallen, closing in with teeth bared. He had no time to think up any crafty plans.

With sickening inevitability, Tucker had no choice but to tear the sack’s strap loose from the tree and let himself
fall on down, with no idea where the bottom was, only knowing stopping made him grizzly food.

He rolled on, hitting one tree after another, grasping at trunks, trying to slow his fall. One tumble landed him on his back, and he gained his feet, ran a few steps, tripped over a stone, dove face first, and twisted into a shoulder roll to keep from breaking his neck.

A long, high yell ripped from his throat. Tucker saw no point in being quiet about this.

He hit his head hard enough he thought maybe he heard angels singing, or birds tweeting, or maybe both or neither. That bear roared above the music, and Tucker kept on falling. Finally he slammed into level ground and stopped, sprawled flat on his back. He flicked his eyes open, knowing he had to get up and run. The bear was bound to still be coming.

His blurred vision filled with a cap of black curls and the prettiest blue eyes he’d ever seen.

Well, no. Not
ever
.

Because he’d seen them before on the roof of Aaron and Kylie Masterson’s cabin. He wanted to just lie there and look at those eyes forever.

And then that dratted bear roared and those blue eyes, looking at him all worried, glanced uphill and the concern turned to horror.

The pretty little filly reached down, grabbed Tucker by the front of his shirt, and hauled him upright. What was she going to do, throw him over her shoulder and run? He didn’t think that was going to work. He was about six inches taller and outweighed her by one hundred pounds.

But Mama Grizz was coming, so someone was going
to have to do something. They couldn’t stay here, and Tucker wasn’t sure he was up to moving on his own. Of course he’d only had about two seconds to think about it. He hadn’t really tried.

“Hang on!” She shoved him backward, clinging so tight it was like he’d gotten a second pack hooked on.

She screamed.

They flew. There was no more rolling. No more aspens. No more rocks. They soared.

Tucker saw the walls of the cliff rushing past and knew where they were. Worse yet, he knew where they were going to land. “Are you crazy?”

He’d just been killed by a woman as wild as he was. Well, he wasn’t killed yet. But it was only a few seconds ahead of them.

The bear roared overhead.

The black-curled woman shouted, “I hope Bailey’s not too stubborn to tend my sheep!”

“I hate sheep.”

They hit the water so hard it was like slamming into granite.

The water took over trying to kill him as it swept him forward, pulled him under, and slammed him into a wall all at the same time, then threw him over another cliff.

The Shoshone called this the Slaughter River.

Those little black curls that had him so curious—and the woman they were attached to—had just thrown him into the worst stretch of water maybe in the whole Rocky Mountains. What did Tucker know? Maybe in the whole world. A stretch so wild Tucker had never heard of anyone riding through it alive, though he’d heard of a few dead bodies being fished out on the far end.

They hit the roiling foam at the bottom of the waterfall. The first of seven. Each one worse than the one before.

All he could do now was hang onto the woman and try to keep them both alive, which he very much doubted he could do.

He grabbed the whip he kept on his belt and lashed them together. It seemed like the gentlemanly thing.

He slammed up against a rock and was dragged under and took her with him. His attempt to save her might get her killed. Maybe he oughta let her loose. Before he could give that plan much thought, they went flying again. She screamed in his ear fit to leave him deaf for the rest of his life. Of course, his life probably wasn’t gonna be all that long so what did it matter if he was deaf?

Blast it, all he’d wanted was to go see a few golden eagles. Was that too much to ask?

Matt Tucker. Shannon Wilde had figured out who he was while he was still falling down that mountain. She’d recognize the good-looking wild man anywhere. That he was two paces ahead of a frothing-at-the-mouth grizzly had kept her from giving his looks much thought at the time.

She’d have climbed a tree—she had plenty of time to get away from the bear—except she had to wait for Tucker to fall the rest of the way and take him with her, and that, plus his dead weight, cut tree-climbing out of her choices. And that left her with one option only: dive over a cliff.

A miserable option if ever she’d ever been given one.

She’d grabbed him and jumped, glad she didn’t have much time to think about what she was doing.

They’d lived through the cliff.

They’d lived through the first, second, and third waterfall.

They’d lived through two stretches of water churned white as snow and studded with rocks.

And now, though the river was still racing like mad, when she thought she might be able to flip Tucker onto his back and drag the poor, battered man to shore, he’d tied her to him with a whip of all things, and she couldn’t get away and swim.

She should’ve let the bear have him.

“Tucker, no. Untie me.”

He wrapped his arms around her, as tight as the whip, as if they weren’t tangled up enough already. She knew they’d never get to shore this way. She’d had some experience in the water, thanks to her experiences during the Civil War, and knew how to rescue a person.

They were going under, so she drew in a chest full of air and sank. The world bubbled as they raced along. Under the icy, clear water, she stared at him, and he looked right back.

He kicked heavy boots, rapping her ankles. But she was protected by her own boots, so no damage was done. She matched those few swimming moves and they surfaced, face-to-face. Gasping for air, rushing along, she tried to be rational.

“I know how to swim. Take this whip off, and I can get us to shore.”

“No you can’t.”

“Yes I can.”

“Shore is a hundred feet of sheer rock, straight up. There ain’t no shore to climb out on for miles and miles. Hang on for the ride, Miss Wilde.”

She hadn’t been called
Miss
Wilde in years. It was a reminder that she was supposed to be masquerading as a man. In all the fuss, she’d forgotten that. Here she was in britches, with short hair and a man’s shirt and boots, and yet Tucker didn’t seem to have one single doubt in his mind that she was a woman. For some reason—some reason she didn’t understand at all—right this very second, she didn’t want to be anything other than a woman.

She looked up at the sheer canyon walls they were being swept past and saw he was absolutely right. “I seem to have no choice but to hang on, Mr. Tucker. Your whip has made it impossible for me to do anything else.”

“We’ll do better if we don’t get separated. I’m familiar with this stretch of river.”

“Is the worst over?”

Tucker gave her the biggest smile she’d ever seen. Of course she didn’t think she’d ever been this close to any man before. His animal-like white teeth looked ready to gobble her right up, and she wondered if the grizzly bear might have been safer after all.

“What’s so funny?”

“The worst, Miss Wilde? You think that was the worst?”

“You don’t have to call me Miss Wilde.”

“So you’re still claiming to be Kylie’s brother, huh? You expect me to believe you’re a man?”

“I’m Kylie’s sister.” Shannon was glad for the britches, though. It was much easier to swim in pants than a skirt.

Tucker smiled a little wider.

“I said you don’t have to call me Miss Wilde because,
considering what we’re going through together, you can call me Shannon.”

There was a long pause while they looked at each other, and then she called over the noise of the water, “So there’s more to come, then?” Her voice sounded uncharacteristically hoarse.

“They call this the Slaughter River, and I am mighty afraid there is a lot more to come for you and me.”

We hope you enjoyed this sample of
Now and Forever
by Mary Connealy. For more information on this book, please visit
www.maryconnealy.com
or
www.bethanyhouse.com
.

Mary Connealy
writes romantic comedies about cowboys. She’s the author of the acclaimed T
ROUBLE
IN
T
EXAS
and T
HE
K
INCAID
B
RIDES
series, as well as several other series. Mary has been nominated for a Christy Award, was a finalist for a RITA Award, and is a two-time winner of the Carol Award. She lives on a ranch in eastern Nebraska with her very own romantic cowboy hero. They have four grown daughters—Joslyn, married to Matt; Wendy; Shelly, married to Aaron; and Katy—and a little bevy of spectacular grandchildren. Learn more about Mary and her books at:

maryconnealy
.com

mconnealy.blogspot.com

seekerville.blogspot.com

petticoatsandpistols.com