Read Online A Love Forbidden by Kathleen Morgan - Free Book Online Page B

asked that evening after supper, as the two women visited in Shiloh’s bedroom. From her comfortable perch on her big trunk, Shiloh glanced up from the scarf she was knitting and across to where her friend sat in the room’s only chair.
    “Pretty much exactly as I told it to your father,” she replied. “I saw no reason to leave anything out.”
    “Oh, I didn’t mean how it went with Jack,” Josie said with a giggle. “I meant how did it go with Jesse?”
    Shiloh could feel the warmth creep up her neck and into her cheeks. She looked back down at her knitting and realized she had just dropped a stitch.
    “It went exactly as I suspected it would. He pretty much told me I didn’t understand anything about the Utes or their plight. That I was a do-gooder and out of touch with reality.” She expelled a weary sigh. “And he didn’t help me at all with Captain Jack.”
    “Not at all?” Josie asked, her voice tinged with disbelief.
    “Well, he fetched the saddlebag of trinkets for me,” Shiloh admitted reluctantly, “and told Jack I was capable of speaking for myself. And he also,” she added, “told Jack he should hear me out.”
    As if in thought, her friend pursed her lips, then nodded. “See, he did help you.” She grinned. “Oh, I just knew it was the right thing to do, getting Jesse to be your escort!”
    “So, you did have more of a hand in this than you first claimed.” Shiloh narrowed her eyes. “I thought so.”
    Josie shrugged. “I think he’s sweet on you.”
    “What?” Shiloh gaped at her in astonishment. “Who’s sweet on . . .”
    As the realization dawned that Josie was speaking of Jesse, Shiloh vehemently shook her head. “No. You’re just an incurable romantic and seeing things that aren’t there. Not only does Jesse now hate me for some reason, but he’s five years older than me!”
    “My, my,” the other woman said, clucking her tongue, “nearly old enough to be your father, he is.”
    “Oh, come on, Josie. I didn’t mean it was as bad as that. I guess when I was twelve, someone seventeen seemed so much older. Like I was a child and he was—”
    “Almost a grown man?”
    Shiloh nodded. “Yes. That’s it.”
    “So now he’s what, twenty-six, and you’re soon to be twenty-one? Not so wide an age difference anymore, is it? You both being all grown up now.”
    With Josie putting their age difference in the proper perspective, Shiloh couldn’t help feeling like a fool. Still, it didn’t really matter. Jesse wasn’t now nor had he ever been interested in her in “that way.”
    “So what if our ages don’t much matter anymore?” she demanded. “It doesn’t change the fact that Jesse Blackwater likely blames me for what happened to him when he worked at our ranch.”
    Josie leaned forward to rest her forearms on her thighs, clasped her hands, and cocked her head. “I always suspected he had a story—a difficult one, I mean. What exactly happened all those years ago? If you don’t mind me asking?”
    She supposed it didn’t matter, telling about Jesse’s whipping and all that had led up to it. And if it would help Josie understand the basis of what seemed to be Jesse’s antipathy toward her these days, then it might squelch further romantic imaginings about them.
    “No, I don’t mind telling you,” Shiloh said. “As I mentioned before, when I was twelve, Jesse came to work for us as a ranch hand . . .”
    It didn’t take long to finish the story, and she tried her best to downplay her sister’s considerable role in the event. Not that Shiloh didn’t still hold Jordan fully responsible. She just felt her sister’s behavior was family business and no one else’s.
    “Well, that explains the scars I saw on his back this past summer,” Josie said when Shiloh had finished the tale. “And a lot, perhaps, of the basis for his hostility toward the Agency staff, and especially my father. But I wonder if just that one incident could’ve soured Jesse as