Read Online Coming Home to Wyoming (Peaceful Valley Series Book 1) by April Hill - Free Book Online

Martha’s fragrant, steaming pot roast, though, he felt a small stab of guilt for the pleasure he was taking in knowing that stubborn little Eileen a’ Roon O’Malley was about to pass a long, miserable night in the dark. Cold, wet, and alone—except for his own ungrateful horse.
    * * *
    A cold, gray morning light was already showing through Martha’s simple muslin curtains by the time Griff began to stir. He had forced himself awake and begun pulling on his pants when he heard a soft knock on the door. A moment later, Abner opened the bedroom door and came in.
    “Thee’d best come downstairs, Griff,” he announced, grinning broadly. “Thee has a visitor.”
    “ I have a visitor?” Griff mumbled, still half awake, but Abner had already left the room. Griff finished dressing quickly, and went downstairs barefoot, fumbling to tuck in the tail of his shirt.
    Eileen a ‘Roon was seated at the kitchen table, with a heavy blanket around her shoulders, and Griff was surprised at the wave of relief that swept over him, seeing her safe and all in one piece. Her face was pale, and she was wearing a dress that was much too big for her. In the oversized dress, and with her snarled hair still dripping, she looked like a doll someone had left out in the rain, but all that mattered now, was that she had made it here safely, with no visible injuries. After walking five miles in a downpour, he had wanted more than anything else to find this irritating girl, take her over his knee, and wallop her stubborn behind until she was howling for mercy. But now, seeing her pale and cold, huddled under a blanket, all he wanted was take her in his arms and sit by the fire with her in his lap—to keep her close to him until the color returned to her face, and until her body felt dry against his own.
    And after she was warm and dry, he’d get to the walloping—and do his damnedest to make up for at least some of his sleepless nights and pointless worrying.
    The problem for Griff was that the hardest part of what he’d come here to do was still in front of him. Mercifully, Martha and Abner had already done their share, by agreeing to let her stay. The fact was, they seemed to be genuinely overjoyed at the prospect of sharing their home with a rebellious, profane, half-literate runaway who’d made it abundantly clear to everyone within earshot that she didn’t want to stay here, and would like more than anything else to put a load of birdshot in his butt for bringing her here in the first place.
    Martha sat down next to Eileen a’ Roon, and tucked the blanket closer around the girl’s shoulders.
    “Thee’s heard what Griffin would have thee do, and what Abner and myself would like for thee,” she said, in her usual patient, kindly way of speaking. “Now, we will listen and not speak while thee tells us what thee wishes to do.”
    Suddenly, Griff realized that he had never bothered to ask that one simple question. Because he was still thinking of her as a child, all he’d done was give her a choice of two things that he already knew that she didn’t want to do.
    After a few moments, while she was obviously trying to come up with an answer that wouldn’t hurt Martha’s feelings, the girl said simply, “I guess I ain’t too sure, just yet.”
    Martha nodded. “I see. Well, then, could thee perhaps see thyself staying with us just a while, until thee knows thy mind? Thee may stay as long as thee wishes, and have my word that thee’ll be treated as one of our own. And when thee wants to leave, neither Abner nor myself will stand in thy way. Neither will we ask that thee love us as thee would thy own parents, though if thee chooses to do that, one day, we will see it as a blessing from God.”
    Griff smiled. He had always believed that if she hadn’t found the white man’s God, Martha Walks in Tall Grass could have made her way in life by hawking snake oil from the back of a painted wagon. She had always had the uncanny ability to