Jenny Bouchard shivered beneath her widow’s weeds. The clothes were heavy, black and scratchy as hell--which was where she was wishing her husband at this very moment.

The moon had cast a blue glimmer across her land.The scent of newly-blossomed milkweed and the chirring of cicadas and crickets filled the evening. A coyote yelped and howled, its horrible sounds like the war cries of a wild savage.

She went back inside her tiny cabin and lit a candle, taking comfort in the dim glow and flickering shadows. She slipped out of her dress and underwear and dipped a cloth in a basin of frigid well water. Her skin retracted as she drew it over her heated face and arms.

Certain God would not approve, Jenny tried to will away the anger she felt towards Jacques for dying and leaving her alone in this unforgiving land. He may have been a disinterested husband but for three years he’d taken care of her and given her a home of her own. How foolish she’d been to take that for granted.

The worn cotton shift she slipped over her head was thin and cool against her skin. She skimmed her hands over her breasts, down her stomach and across her hip bones, feeling ambushed by the painful yearning that filled her chest. Jacques had never awakened this nebulous need. He’d never touched her where she so desperately wanted to be touched--deep inside her soul.

And now he’d gone to Glory Land leaving her with a harvest she couldn’t bring in alone and a herd of cattle about to be repossessed. Sorrow nudged aside her resentment. Grief for a man she’d lived with but never loved--a man who had died too young--mingled with grief for the death of her dreams. She should have realized years ago, Providence would never smile on her.

Shadows danced on the cabin walls, making Jenny think of the music Jacques had sometimes played on his harmonica. She carried the candle over to his dresser and, for the first time since his demise, opened the top drawer. How strange to think whatever had been his now belonged to her.

She found a tin of matches and the stack of handkerchiefs she’d painstakingly made for him. Cold fingers touched her spine when she brushed against Jacques’ pistol. She’d seen him use it twice; once on a rabid skunk, once to shoot a wounded wolf. It was time she learned to shoot it.

Finally, her seeking hand fell on the smooth wood of Jacques’ harmonica. She set the candle down and turned the mouth organ over and over in her palm, trying to figure out how on earth he had made it sing so sweetly.

She blew a puff of air into the holes along its side and jumped at the wail she made. Her cat, Minerva, arched and bristled then scampered under the bed.

Jenny took a full breath and blew several puffs, drawing the harmonica across her lips. The discordant clamor filled the tiny cabin. It wrapped around her brain and made her heart race. She no longer felt quite so alone. She slammed the drawer shut and got down to the business of making music.

Jenny huffed and blew and swiped the instrument across her mouth until her cheeks started to ache and her lips turned raw. She whirled and twirled in awkward abandon, trying to make her rhythm match the cadence of the flicking candlelight.

When her mouth grew too tired to continue she tossed the harmonica on her bed and stood with her arms over her head, swaying to the sound of her own singing. Something inside her chest built, then burst, setting her body to tingling. She crossed her arms over her chest in an effort to hold herself together. Her head fell back.

The tears on the woman’s cheeks glistened in the weak light and were evident to the man who stood outside watching her through the window.

Her graceful moves, the thing she wore, stirred up all kinds of feelings Matthew had no business having. He hadn’t intended to watch her but the music--if you could call it that--had drawn his attention. When the woman started to cry he dropped his gaze. He figured it wasn’t right, spying on her like this, anyway.

He re-checked a well-creased map by the light of a match, then folded it and shoved it in his pocket. This couldn’t be the Bouchard ranch. There was nothing here but a rough cabin with a few ramshackle outhouses and a dozen or so acres of poor crops. Flicking his cigarette away, he ambled back to his horse, cursing the luck that made him owner of Jacques Bouchard’s ranch, in Nebraska of all places--the middle of nowhere.

Matthew's body ached for a soft bed and he would sell his soul for a tepid bath. He carefully made his way back to where his men had set up camp. As he rode through a carpet of prairie grass that moved and hissed in the moonlight, visions of the woman in the cabin drifted through his mind.

When she’d dropped that damned mouth organ and started singing, desire was pushed aside by a longing for something he couldn’t name.

Without a shred of guilt, he knew he’d think about her tonight. He could almost feel his fingers tangle in that fiery hair. Would her pale skin be as soft as it looked? Maybe thoughts of her would follow him into sleep and keep the usual nightmares away.