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“No,yousee here, Mr. Banff,” she interrupted. “I wanted just a few days of peace to mourn my father. I see now I was foolish to hope you’d show some common decency. You’re nothing if not persistent, I’ll give you that. But I’m going to tell you the same thing I told you yesterday when you showed up at my home only an hour after my father’s funeral, offering to solve all my problems with money or marriage if I’d just part with my property. The answer isno. The answer is always going to beno. It doesn’t matter how many times you show up with the sheriff and your cronies in tow. Though ambushing me at my father’s gravesite is particularly loathsome, even for you.”
The sheriff at least had the grace to look sheepish at their intrusion, though the rest of Banff’s men surrounding them didn’t have the same decency. Even if they didn’t like what he was doing, it wouldn’t stop any of them from following Josiah’s lead. Which was apparently to aggravate her into giving in.
It wouldn’t work. He hadn’t even seen stubborn yet.
The sheriff stepped up after a glare from Josiah. “Now, Miss Douglas, it wouldn’t hurt to just hear him out.” Her glare had him scurrying back like the spineless creature he was.
She returned her attention to Josiah. “I don’t need to hear you out again. I’ve heard more than I ever care to hear from you in a lifetime.”
“Like it or not, missy, things are different now that your father is dead. A woman alone is—”
He waved toward her homestead with an impatient gesture. “What are you going to do out here all on your own? Take care of all this land by yourself? It’s going to waste without the money and resources to make it truly profitable. Now, if you’d just see reason… I’m offering well more than what the land is worth, and you know it. You could take the money and move back east.”
“Why should I move when I’m perfectly happy where I am?”
He got that glint in his eye that she detested. “Then marry me. I’ll take care of you. I’d even let you continue to rent out your little bungalow like you’ve been doing and keep the money for yourself.”
He’dlether. She opened her mouth and pressed her hand to her chest, as though she were overcome by his generosity.
“You mean you’d let me continue to do something I’m already doing and keep my own money to boot, instead of handing it over to you? Why, sir, you are generous to a fault.” She batted her lashes at him a few times with a sickly-sweet smile. When Josiah smiled in return, she rolled her eyes. He couldn’t possibly think she’d been serious.
“What are you playing at?” he asked.
“Oh, for the love of God, it’s called sarcasm, Josiah! I’d rather sleep in a pit full of vipers than spend one moment as your wife.”
One or two of his men not-so-casually rested their hands on their guns, their eyes flashing indignation. But a few of his men gasped, their eyes darting between one another and their boss. Apparently, they weren’t used to anyone speaking to him that way. Well, they’d better get used to it, because she was just getting started. And she wasn’t afraid of anyone.
Josiah sucked in a deep breath and his chest puffed out far enough he was in danger of losing a few buttons. It would have been comical…if not for the rage burning behind his eyes. His hand edged toward his gun, his men echoing his movements, and she instinctively took a step back.
Still, Josiah needed to get it through his thick head that she wasn’t going to cave to his demands. The sooner he accepted that and moved on, the better.
She stepped forward again, though she kept one eye on his trigger finger, and opened her mouth to tell him what he could go do with himself—
A soft snuffling sound followed by horse hooves thumping the ground interrupted her, and they all turned and stared as a horse wandered into the clearing. Mercy froze as it came right up to her, breathed in her face, and then nuzzled at the pocket of her skirt.
She choked out a laugh and pulled out the apple she’d dropped in there earlier.
“All the apples in the orchard and you want the one in my pocket?” she said with a smile, momentarily distracted from her other unwanted visitors.
“Who does that horse belong to?” Josiah asked, frowning.
“She’s mine,” a man said, strolling toward them. He glanced around at all of them, his brow furrowing slightly as they continued to stare at him, open-mouthed. “Don’t get many visitors here, eh?” he said, reaching over almost leisurely to take the horse’s reins.
He dodged a poorly aimed nip from the horse and gathered her reins more tightly, scowling at her. “I saw that,” he muttered.
“Were you thrown?” Mercy asked, though she should have probably been polite enough to introduce herself first.
The man frowned. “No. Why?”
Her cheeks flushed. “Oh…no reason…I…” She stammered to a stop, looking him over again. Maybe it had been a rude question, but what else was she to think? The man looked as though he’d rolled in several bushes and been dragged a few dozen yards. His hair was cut short but still managed to stick out in odd places from beneath his hat, and his clothing was rumpled, though upon closer inspection, not dirty exactly. Not clean, either.
Her eyes met his and her cheeks flushed hotter when his eyebrows rose a notch. Then his gaze very obviously roamed over her. She sucked in a scandalized breath and stepped back. He rose one mocking eyebrow and shrugged.
Well, she could hardly berate him for doing the same thing she’d done. Though she was sorely tempted. His perusal had been borderline salacious. She, on the other hand, had merely been curious. He was handsome. If she looked closely enough. Tall enough to be a commanding presence without being so tall she’d get a crick in her neck from looking up at him. Muscles that spoke of years in the saddle…though they were perhaps blurring a bit at the edges. Toffee-colored eyes lined with long, dark lashes that many a woman would kill for. By far his most attractive feature. Behind the silver-sprinkled scruff of his whiskers, the lines of his face weren’t quite as deeply etched as she’d first thought.
She knocked a few years off his age to late thirties. Then added a few back on when he let out a grunt as he bent to retrieve something that had fallen from one of his bags.
Josiah glanced at him with annoyance. “Is there something you needed, stranger?”
