Only 04 - Only Love

sudden speculation in them. She very much wanted to look at Reno, to see what he thought of Whip and the woman who might or might not be a widow, the woman Whip obviously didn’t like to think about as married at all.
    “I see,” Eve murmured. “Was Shannon too tired after the ride down from Echo Basin to come here?”
    “I left her with Willy and Cal. I was hoping Shannon would want to live with them and help Willy.”
    “That would be nice,” Eve said. “Willow has been looking to hire a girl for—”
    “Not as hired help,” Whip interrupted roughly. “Not really. Sort of like a sister or a maiden aunt.”
    Eve cleared her throat rather than point out that a widow was nobody’s maiden aunt. She knew the Moran men too well not to recognize the warning in Whip’s clear, bleak eyes. He was a man caught between a rock and a hard place, unable to move.
    Yet he had to move.
    Yondering man.
    Half of Eve’s heart went out to Whip and his pain. The other half of her heart went out to Shannon, whom she suspected was caught in pain as Eve had once been caught, in love with a man who wasn’t ready to love her. But in the end, Reno had come to love her.
    Eve wondered if Shannon would be that lucky.
    She looked at the big, blond-haired man whose eyes were clear as autumn ice. Whip could be gentle and loving, but God help anyone who tried to hold him when he would rather roam.
    “A family kind of thing, room and board and a little egg money,” Whip explained. “And safety. That most of all.”
    A sideways glance at Reno told Eve that her husband was both amused and bemused by his brother. The gentle curve of Reno’s mouth told of his sympathy, as well.
    “Is that what Shannon wants?” Eve asked, curious. “Safety and a little egg money?”
    The line of Whip’s mouth flattened even more. Put that way, it sounded like a paltry kind of existence for anyone, much less for a young woman like Shannon.
    Silence stretched uncomfortably.
    “If Shannon is half the woman you make her out to be,” Eve said finally, her voice careful, “you won’t need to worry about her for long. Some smart man will come down the road and give her a lot more than room and board and a little egg money.”
    Whip’s head came up. His eyes were narrowed to splinters of glittering gray.
    “He’ll give her his name and his children and build a home for her,” Eve said calmly. “She won’t have to live on the kindness of others. She’ll have her own home to enjoy, her own man to love, and her own children to raise. He will be her safety and she will be his refuge.”
    “No.”
    Whip didn’t know he had spoken aloud until he heard the echo of his own savage denial at thethought of Shannon bearing another man’s child. Whip’s hands gripped the edge of the table until his skin was white. He shouldn’t feel this way about Shannon and another man.
    But he did.
    Eve’s dark gold eyebrows raised in silent query at Whip’s vehemence.
    “She doesn’t have to marry some man and have his kids to be safe,” Whip said doggedly. “All she needs is…”
    His voice died.
    “I take it you don’t want to marry her yourself,” Eve said neutrally.
    “It’s nothing against Shannon.” Whip’s voice was raw. “If s me.”
    “Sugar,” Reno said softly, “it would be no kindness for Whip to marry Shannon. She might as well marry the wind.”
    “Does she know that?” Eve asked.
    “She knows,” Whip said flatly. “She told me she’d never marry a man who loved a sunrise he had never seen more than he loved her.”
    “Smart woman,” Eve said.
    “Stubborn woman,” Whip shot back. “She won’t leave the high country and it’s not safe there for a woman alone.”
    “Why won’t she leave?”
    “Up there, she isn’t beholden to anyone for her salt and bread.”
    “Very smart woman,” Eve said.
    “Very damned stubborn woman,” Whip snarled. “I can’t leave her at the mercy of those miners and I can’t stay up there with her until she comes to her senses.”
    Eve made a sound that was sympathetic, questioning, and subtly goading.
    “The only way out of the mess,” Whip said, “is to find enough gold on those damned claims to buy her a place in Denver or back east or whatever, just so I know she’s safe.”
    “And unmarried?” Eve suggested sardonically.
    The bleak anger in Whip’s eyes was all the answer she needed.
    “Whip, for the love of heaven!” she said, exasperated. “If you don’t want to marry