From the relative safety the kitchen, she stood, slicker dripping on the floor, heart pounding, and stared at the scene outside. The sky was a deep green-gray, a color she identified with terror. Wind blew wet leaves and howled through the branches of the nearby trees. Pellets of ice covered the dooryard in a white blanket.

Shaking with cold, she forced herself to remove the slicker, hang it on the back porch and close herself inside. She fed kindling and wood to the stove, then ran up and changed into dry clothing.

Noah, too, would be soaked when he came in, she thought on her way back along the hall. His door stood open, so she entered. The room she'd never seen before was furnished with a bed, a bureau, an armoire, a washstand and an overstuffed chair that looked to have held Noah's form many nights. In the bureau drawers she found clothing, and hurried down to hang her wet dress and stockings on a line behind the stove. Hail hit the metal stovepipe in a deafening torrent.

With trembling hands, she made a pot of tea and sipped a hot cup. The warmth helped soothe the shakes that racked her body, but the hail and wind kept her stomach in a knot. Noah would want coffee when he came in, so she measured grounds and boiled water.

Eventually there was a thump on the back porch and the door burst open. Noah struggled out of a pair of wet boots. He hung his hat and rubbed his hands together. "No more work today. I need to get into dry clothes."

"I fetched clothing down for you. It's in your room?back there."

He looked surprised, but nodded his thanks and went to change. After hanging his own clothing beside

hers on the line, he glanced toward the stove.

He poured a cup of coffee, added sugar and sipped it standing up. "Heck of a storm brewin' out there."

"Did Marjorie go home?"

He shook his head. "Stayed to help Fergie with supper."

"What do you do when it storms like this?"

"Anything. Nothing. Stock still needs fed." He unbuckled his holster and laid the .45 on the table, then

brought a rifle, rags and oil from the back room. He sat at the table and methodically took the guns apart

and cleaned them. The hail stopped and the sky lightened to gray while he worked. The steady drip of rain was less frightening than the wind and hail.

Kate had finished the first book, so she found another and sat at the table in the glow of an oil lamp to read. Eventually, Marjorie brought a kettle of roast, potatoes and carrots, enough for several people. "Will you and Tipper eat with us?" Kate asked hopefully.

Marjorie glanced at Noah.

He nodded. "Stay."

She and Kate set the table and Marjorie went to find Tipper. They took seats, Noah deliberately

isolated at his end and the others on the opposite.

It was obvious that Noah wasn't comfortable with the Bensons there, but he wasn't comfortable with her, either, so she enjoyed their company.

"I think we should make the ride home while there's a break in the clouds," Tipper said once he'd

finished eating and gone to look out the door.

"Go," Kate assured Marjorie at her look of uncertainty. "I can do these few dishes by myself."

Marjorie glanced at Noah, who waved her on, so she wished them a good night and left with her

husband.

"I have to check the barns." Noah walked out behind them.

He didn't return until long after she'd finished the dishes and taken her book upstairs. She read until her

eyes grew weary, then turned down the wick in her lamp and snuggled into the covers. The wind came up again, buffeting the house and rattling the windowpanes. Kate told herself there was nothing to fear. Wind and rain made a lot of harmless noise. But talk to herself all she would, nothing calmed her nerves or her shaking limbs. She'd been this way since she was a girl and a storm had whirled into Boulder with a vengeance.

That particular day Kate's mother had left her home alone while she'd worked at the laundry. Frightened at the lightning and thunder, Kate had run all the way to the laundry house only to find that the workers had taken shelter in a storm cellar and that no one occupied the wash rooms.

In the yard, shirts and trousers whipped in the wind until the lines snapped and clothing spiraled in a frenzy. Terrified, Kate had clung to a clothes pole. A wet sheet tore loose from its mooring and caught on her, wrapping her head to toe. Thunder crashed through the heavens. No one heard her screams or came to comfort her. When the storm had finally passed, workers discovered her, and her mother had punished her for not staying home.

It had happened years ago, but the day was as clear in her memory as if it had been yesterday. Kate could still see the ominous green-gray sky, hear the howling wind and feel the claustrophobic press of the cold wet linen that wrapped her head and body. All it took was rain and thunder and she was shaking like a baby again.

She couldn't bury her head, that was even more frightening, so she buried herself to her chin and curled in a ball in the center of the bed. That had been a long time ago. Children grew up and overcame their fears.

Bright white illuminated the room in a jagged flash. Kate braced herself for the rumble of thunder that followed, and when it came, it shook the house.

Another flash, this one accompanied by a loud cracking sound, made her sit bolt upright in bed. This time when the thunder rolled, it came with the sound of breaking glass. Kate watched in horror as the entire window beside her bed crashed inward and a huge branching shape invaded the room with a swishing noise and a spray of rain water.

Kate shneked. Thunder rattled again and this time the sound was on top of her because the window was gone and part of a tree lay across her bed.

Through the dark, wet branches, she could see the flicker of flames dancing outside. She thought her heart would burst from her chest.

Chapter Five.

"Katherine!" Her door burst open. Noah took one startled look at the scene and shot to her side. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?"

All she could do was cry.

He peeled the covers back from her as far as the branches would allow and glass fell away. Gingerly, he lifted her in his arms and carried her down the hall.

In his room, he placed her on the bed, lit two lamps and carried one to the night table. With infinite concern, he took each arm and inspected it through her cotton gown, then looked at her feet and ankles, studied her face and checked her hair and scalp. "Do you hurt anywhere?"

Kate had calmed minimally. His anxiety over her welfare touched her heart. The shock had begun to wear off as soon as she noticed he wasn't wearing a shirt and that the hair that usually hung over his eye was tucked behind one ear.

Noah's chest was a mass of V-shaped and ragged scars. The sight and the thought of the pain he must have suffered gave her a physical ache. In her shock, she placed a hand to her own breast and her gaze traveled upward. The skin beside his eye was puckered and pulled the lid downward slightly.

But his eyes. His eyes were kind and full of concern.

She wanted to cry for him. Tears smarted behind her eyelids.

"Katherine, are you hurt?" he said more forcefully.

She shook her head and whispered, "No."

He realized then. She knew the moment the awareness flooded over him. His posture stiffened and he

took a step backward, holding up a palm. "Stay right here." Without turning his back on her, he moved away and yanked a shirt from a hook by the door and donned it, missing buttons in his haste. Hobbling into a pair of boots, he ran out and down the stairs. The commotion outside and orders being shouted registered dimly.

An accident, Estelle had said. What kind of accident scarred a body so severely? Numb now, she glanced around his room, got up and fed wood to the warming stove and climbed back on the bed. After several minutes he returned, his hair and shirt damp, the muscular contours of his upper body illuminated by the lantern. "Lightning struck that big old tree. Rain put out the fire. Men are covering the hole best they can till morning." He took the towel from the nightstand, dried his hair and face, then returned to study her where she sat in the middle of his bed. "You're shaking."

"I'm afraid of storms."

He pulled up the covers, urging her to lie back, and added another blanket from a chest at the foot of the bed. "You can sleep here if you feel safer." "What about you?" "I'll take the chair," he answered. "That won't be comfortable." "Want me to leave? I can put you in another room." She sat up quickly, ashamed of her childishness, but unwilling to stay alone. "No. No, don't leave.

Please."

"I'll change into dry clothes, then."

She turned away and listened to his clothing rustle. A moment later, he settled into the chair.

He meant to stay. She lay back down and pulled up the covers. The sheets smelled like cedar.

"I've been afraid since I was just a girl." She told him the story of being caught in the storm and wrapped inside the sheet for the duration. "Ever since then I try to tell myself rain is just rain, but 1 can't help what happens to me."

"A tree coming in the window didn't help," he said.

"Thanks for letting me stay with you. It's a comfort to have you here. Comforting to be here, too."

A few minutes passed and the only sounds were his pocket watch on the bureau and the now distant rumble of thunder. In the lamplight, Noah studied the curve of her cheek and the shadow of her lashes. He imagined what her cheek would feel like if he stroked his finger across it.

The image of his scarred hand near her perfect face was too ugly to entertain, so he dismissed the fantasy and looked at her small form lying in his bed. A tremor of sexual awareness ran through his body, shaming him for its crudeness. She was as trusting and pure as anyone he'd ever known, and thinking of her presence in a lustful manner was wrong.

He'd never had a woman in his bed before.

He'd never had a woman.

Noah didn't want to think of Levi touching her, kissing her, making love to her. The image disturbed him, and he couldn't get past the conclusion that Levi had taken advantage of her.

She was sweet and wholesome and undoubtedly ignorant of men like his brother. Of men like himself, for that matter. If she thought he even imagined anything sexual about her being here, she would be out that door and down the road, storm or no storm.

He extinguished the nearest lamp and left the one on the bureau burning. Katherine's braid trailed across his sheets like a thick rope of honey-colored silk. Her creamy-white cheek lay upon his pillow. He imagined the rest of her tucked so cozily in his bed-slender limbs, curving hips, soft breasts and the swell of her belly.

It had all happened so fast, but he'd carried her against his bare skin from her room to his. He'd felt her delicate frame and soft form in his arms and against his chest.

His chest. He'd been in such a panic to reach her that he hadn't grabbed his shirt. If she'd been halfway coherent at all, she had seen him. He'd seen her shocked expression. The thought made him feel sick.

Perhaps the shock had been from the storm and the breaking window, he tried to convince himself. After all, she hadn't mentioned it?and she talked about everything.

"Noah?" she said softly, breaking the silence.

"What."

"What happened to you?"

She had seen. His world curled protectively inward. He'd never let anyone see. He'd never been

careless. Hiding was as natural as breathing. He glanced at her, but she wasn't looking at him. Her eyes

were closed as though life and its meaning didn't hinge on his reply. And at that moment he realized that, for her, it didn't. She hadn't lived her whole life in this body, cringing from prying eyes and curious stares. She had told him everything about her, frank as you please. She'd shared her childhood, her misery at being left in Boulder and the dread she felt when she thought she might have to raise her child there. She'd told him about her love of the stars, her fear of storms.

He could tell her something, too. "I was thirteen," he began. He'd never told anyone before. Never said the words. His throat felt tight. "My father and I were stringing barbed wire. A wire snapped and it wrapped around me."

Just words. Just words, but so much more. So much pain and shame behind them.

"Cut me all over. Cut a nerve in my face. My father had to snip and pull the wire away to get me free. That hell took forever. I was covered with blood. So was he." "You must have been so afraid," she said softly. "And hurting so much." He didn't remember the pain much. He remembered the horror on his father's face. And the guilt. And the way the man never looked at him again after that. For all the rest of his father's years, he had been so repulsed by Noah's appearance that he'd never looked straight at him again. Estelle had always talked about Noah and how repulsive his appearance was as though he wasn't there. As though he'd died. In some warped way her treatment had been easier to bear than his father's.

Katherine sat up. "I'm so sorry."

At the sound of her voice, he realized how much he'd revealed and looked at her.

There were tears in her eyes and on her cheeks.

Something in his chest ached when she'd spoken those words. Some indefinable thing that made his

heart beat faster and his stomach feel as though he'd been kicked by a horse. He was wealing a shirt and he'd let his hair fall back over his face, but he'd never felt more exposed. "It was a long time ago."

"But it seems like yesterday. I know."