Tried and True (Wild at Heart Book #1) by Mary Connealy Read Free Book Online Page A

turned silent.
    A breeze cleared the rest of the dust as they rocked, the only sound the creaking of their runners. Aaron was silent for so long, Kylie decided he wasn’t going to say more.
    Finally, when she was fighting the temptation to nag him, his rocker stilled. “When I went home . . . I ran headlong into so much hate.”
    He crossed his chest with one arm and propped his opposite elbow on it, then rested his fist on his mouth as if to stop the words. Again Kylie waited.
    “I fought for the Union. Everyone around me split their loyalties. Half the neighbors went with the North, half with the South. Even our land was split between Virginia and West Virginia. The South used the area I lived in to launch attacks on the North. The Union Army finally got tired of it and razed every house within a hundred miles of the border.”
    “Including yours?”
    “Yep.” He rocked again for a time. “I still don’t know who killed my family. But they were sure as certain all dead. Ma and Pa and two little brothers, who were too young to fight, and two older sisters who were near marrying age before the war ripped away every marriage-aged man in the state. They all stayed home. I thought they were all safe. The boys too young. Pa too old. My ma and sisters too female.”
    Kylie snorted.
    “They all stayed safe at home and died. I went to war and survived. And when I came home, half the neighbors wanted to spit on me for being part of what the Union did, while the other half hated me for not fighting harder for the Union and ending the war before the area was destroyed. The farm was completely leveled, not a building left standing. The thought of rebuilding, alone, was overwhelming. Old friends turned on me. There was one who—”
    The abrupt way Aaron quit talking made what he wasn’t saying seem like the most important part of the story.
    “There was one who what?” Kylie asked quietly.
    Instead of answering, he said, “I left. I’m doing this job for an old commanding officer, and when it’s done I’m going to move farther up into the mountains. Find a nice stretch of land and gather a herd of cattle and live where no one hates me . . . leastwise not for something I didn’t do.”
    “Farther into the mountains?” Kylie felt sick at the thought of a place more remote than this. “You mean you could find a place lonelier and less civilized than here?”
    “You use the word civilized a lot, Miss Wilde. But I lived a short train ride from Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New York City, and Philadelphia.”
    Kylie gasped. It was her dream come true. “You did?”
    “I sure enough did. Some might call them the most civilized cities in America. But what I saw when I got home was a whole lot less than civilized. I want no part of it.”
    “New York City, a short train ride away . . .” Kylie felt light-headed.
    Aaron didn’t respond to that. “There are places farther out than this, and I’m going to find them. As soon as I fulfill my promise to get this land rush settled, I’m going west. I’ve heard there are some beautiful high valleys no white man has ever seen. I’ll set up a ranch in some pretty mountain valley with just me and my cattle and the eagles and the mountain goats. Maybe I’ll build next to a pond so full of fish they’ll jump right on my line. I’ll build a tight cabin against the winter wind, add a porch just like this one, and get myself a rocking chair.”
    His chair creaked quietly as he stared toward the pond. A contented man.
    An idiot.
    Kylie’s overwrought nerves finally calmed. She heaved herself to her feet, and her knees didn’t knock.
    She found herself disgusted with men.
    One without the wits to appreciate a farm back East.
    One without the decency to keep his cattle off her land.
    One without the love to let his children live as normal women ought.
    She plunked her hands on her hips and glared at the only man close enough to feel her wrath.
    “If you mean it about