Out of the Storm (Buckhorn, Montana #1) - B.J. Daniels Page 0,12

her father. Her mother had passed when Mia and Danielle were in their teens, but she and her mother had never been close after Kate’s marriage to Daniel and pregnancy. So her father’s death had been all that more painful only a few years later.

The sander stopped again, making her start as the small woodshop fell silent. Behind her was the quiet cold of the snow and the low howl of the wind. Inside the shop was the promise of warmth. A woodstove crackled in the corner, emitting a warm heat that she felt on her cheeks. Probably why he’d left one of the doors slightly ajar, to release some of the heat.

She hadn’t realized she’d been leaning into the room until the door swung open and she stumbled in. The man suddenly turned and froze at the sight of her standing just inside the doorway, a dark silhouette backlit by the storm.

As the wind caught the door and threw it all the way open, cold and snow blew in, illuminating the man standing there in the white of the storm light. He looked startled to see her. But nothing like she was to see him. She felt a jolt as if struck by a bolt of lightning as she took in the familiar planes of his face, a face she’d given up hope of ever seeing again.

A cry escaped her lips before she said his name. “Danny.” Before everything went black.

CHAPTER FIVE

KATE SURFACED SLOWLY, blinking in the dim light. She became aware of the heat and someone pressing the rim of a cup to her lips. She jerked up, knocking the cup of water away. It pooled on the wood floor, the coffee mug lying in a pile of sawdust at her feet. It took her a moment to realize where she was.

She was sitting on a blanket near the woodstove in the man’s workshop. He’d been so quiet she hadn’t noticed his dark shape squatting next to her until he reached for the mug she’d knocked away. She flinched and crab-crawled back a few inches before memory came charging back.

He picked up the mug and quickly rose as if realizing that he was frightening her. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?” The voice was low and gravelly and...wrong.

As she struggled to her feet, he reached for her as if afraid she would fall again. But at the last minute, he seemed to realize that she didn’t want him touching her. He stepped back, holding up his hands as if in surrender.

In the shaft of bright light coming from the opened carriage-house door, she looked at him hard and felt her initial shock rattle through her once again.

This man was a dead ringer for her dead husband.

Yet something was all wrong about him.

“You took a nasty fall,” he said quietly as if he thought even his voice was scaring her. He sounded hoarse, that gravelly voice not Danny’s. “Maybe you should give it a minute before you—”

But she was already stumbling back toward the open door, wanting to run. Emotions roiled up so close to the surface that she feared she would cry. She rushed out into the storm, her mind whirling like the snow around her.

Seeing the man had come as such a shock. The resemblance so uncanny. For that moment, she’d been so sure that she’d found Danny. Until he moved. Until he spoke. Ice crystals melted instantly on her overheated cheeks as she fled from the workshop. She pushed through the snow drifting in the alley to the main road and turned toward the motel. She had to tuck her face against the snow and wind. It wasn’t until she felt her tears begin to freeze on her cheeks that she realized she was crying.

At the motel, she fumbled her key from her coat pocket, struggling to get it into the lock. Her fingers felt numb like the rest of her body. The key finally turned, the door falling open, her falling in with it.

Collin looked up from where he sat on the bed, his back to the wall, the television on some old movie involving a car chase. “Hey, I was starting to worry about you.” He squinted at her as she stumbled into the room, catching herself on the edge of the spare double bed. “Are you all right?”

She didn’t answer as she frantically began to shed her coat, ripping the scarf from her neck and dropping the coat at her feet—until she finally