Wildest Dreams - By Rosanne Bittner Page 0,11

talk to her, tell her how you feel. And if you expect her to tell you all of it, then you've got to be straight with her, too, Luke. Something tells me you haven't told us everything about your own past, the truth about the trouble with your father. She has a right to know all of it, just the same as you have the right to know everything about Lettie. You don't have to tell me if you don't want, but you tell Lettie. I want your promise on that."

Luke nodded. "I'll tell her."

Henry glanced at the lonely grave. "I don't want my Lettie to end up like that, Luke, buried up there in Montana in some nameless grave."

"That won't happen. I'll make sure of it."

Henry studied the sincerity in Luke's eyes. "I like you, Luke. I know you'll do your best, and I think you have what it takes to do everything you set out to do. I see a burning desire in those eyes, a hunger to be a man of wealth and importance some day. Whatever is driving you, and I think it's some kind of hurt your father has set on you, it will take you far. Just don't lose sight of what is really important along the way, like your wife and children. I've seen it happen."

Luke shook his hand. "I love her too much for that, the boy, too. They'll always come first."

In the distance Lettie looked around from behind a wagon to see her father and Luke shaking hands. She grasped her stomach, anticipation and apprehension both fighting a war inside of her. She knew what that handshake meant. It would be up to her now, and somehow she would have to find a way to tell Luke Fontaine no. It didn't matter that she had enjoyed that kiss, that it still lingered on her lips. It didn't matter that she felt safe and protected when Luke Fontaine's arms were around her. It didn't matter that she had fallen in love with the strong, handsome, skilled descendent of a French trapper, whose touch sent fire through her blood.

She was not worthy of him, not worthy of any man. She could never belong just to him. She had been robbed of the most precious gift a woman could give her husband, and it had left her tainted. How could he say that what had happened could not keep him from loving her? It didn't seem possible. Maybe he wasn't even asking for her hand.

Maybe he was explaining to her father why he had decided to go his own way soon. He had surely decided he could never marry her. Besides, the thought of marriage and what it meant frightened her, even though a part of her wanted to throw her arms around Luke and tell him she would follow him to the end of the earth; and God knew a place like Montana was as close to that as a man, or woman, could get. He might as well ask her to go to Australia or Africa. Montana seemed just as remote, and that was just one more reason to say no.

CHAPTER 3

Luke donned his best suit of black silk, with a white ruffled shirt and black bow tie. He glanced at himself in a mirror he had hung on a tree, smoothing back his dark hair by the light of a fast-setting sun, then rubbed at his clean-shaven face. For a moment he wondered, as he had so many times for the last fourteen years, if his features really had come from someone other than his own father. He didn't really look much like Jacques Fontaine, but he had the man's build. Maybe it was someone else's build he'd inherited. His coloring was completely different from his father's. He could hardly remember his mother, who had died when he was only four, and his father had refused to let him see any pictures of her.

He turned away from the mirror, shaking off the hurt such memories brought him. Maybe it didn't matter what Lettie had been through. Once she knew the truth about his own background, that would be reason enough to turn down his proposal. There had been another woman... back in St. Louis. Pretty Lynnanne Haley had loved him, too, or at least she had claimed she did. She was the daughter of another prominent merchant, and he had loved her as much as a twenty-two-year-old man can love the