Page 4 of Luna

“Is Tony or Kade meeting you?” Hunter asked, glancing around the sea of faces that flowed around them.

Luna had sent a note to Tony and Ilsa, letting them know she was planning to come before June, but she hadn’t given them an exact arrival date. Now, she wished she had. It was generous of them to invite her to stay at their home. The polite thing would have been to send a telegram to let them know when to expect her.

Here she was, surrounded by strangers, with no idea how to locate Tony, Ilsa, or Caterina, for that matter. Caterina had offered her a job working in her restaurant for the summer, and Luna had been more than happy to accept the work. Only, she wished she’d been more forthcoming with her travel plans so her cousins would have known to meet the afternoon train.

An unexpected and unwelcome woozy feeling settled over Luna as the crowd pressed around her. She clutched the basket she carried tightly against her stomach, as though it might serve as a shield.

“Miss Campanelli? Is anyone coming to meet you?” Hunter asked, but his voice sounded far away, like he spoke from the end of a tunnel.

Luna shook her head, fighting against a wave of fear. Her chest tightened until she felt as though she couldn’t breathe, while her vision blurred and her knees threatened to collapse. When a nearby auto backfired, she ducked, dropped her basket, and covered her head with her arms in a protective crouch.

No longer was she standing on the platform outside the Pendleton depot. The noise and crowds transported her to a New York street where she relived the trauma of the day that swallowed all her plans for her future. Hers and Matteo’s.

“Miss Campanelli?” Hunter’s voice grew even more distant before Luna closed her eyes and let the blackness consume her.

At least it was something familiar.

Chapter Two

“Miss Campanelli? Luna?” Hunter Douglas caught the young woman as she fainted, uncertain what had happened to her.

He frantically glanced around, hoping someone more equipped to handle the situation, like local deputies Kade Rawlings or Lars Thorsen, might magically appear.

When the two men failed to materialize, Hunter shifted Luna in his arms, making sure he had her satchel and the basket she’d clung to like it held some prized possession. Without delay, he marched across the platform, down the steps, and up the street, intent on taking her directly to Ilsa Campanelli’s dress shop.

Luna moaned as though she was in pain. Hunter glanced down at her, noticing a scar on her neck that had been hidden by the high lace collar of her shirtwaist. The scar looked angry and red, and he wondered what had happened to her.

He had no idea what had caused Luna to faint. One moment, they’d been joking as they stepped off the train. In the next, a look of panic had settled over her delicate, beautiful features. She’d looked terrified when an automobile had backfired. Out of what had seemed to be pure instinct, she’d ducked.

Why she had, though, was a mystery.

Did she think someone had fired a gun? Had something happened to her that made her so skittish around crowds? He pondered if whatever had upset her had something to do with the wicked scar on her neck.

Regrettably, the only one who could answer his multitude of questions was currently unconscious in his arms.

Hunter hastened his steps, anxious to deliver Luna to her family. Part of him wanted to stop for a moment and study her pert nose, flawless skin, and the way her long eyelashes rested on her cheeks. Her heart-shaped face gave her an undeniable look of sweetness, although, if she was anything like Caterina, she possessed more than her share of spunk.

When he’d boarded the train, he’d felt a spurt of gratitude for running late because it meant he had no place else to sit other than beside the pretty girl with the rosy cheeks and shy smile. Sunlight streaming in the window had turned the tendrils of her rich brown hair into shimmering strands of silk and caressed her face with a warm glow, making him long to touch her.

At first, he thought Luna might crawl into the luggage compartment overhead just to get away from him. Then, to his delight, she’d offered him part of her sack of pastries. He’d realized she was perhaps just trying to behave as any female might who was young, traveling alone, and found a large, sweaty, smelly man seated next to her.

Hunter couldn’t help being sweaty or smelling like horses. He’d had to rent a horse at the livery in town, ride out to the Jordan Ranch and deliver the horse Dally had trained to Jack Jordan, and then ride the rented horse back to Baker City, all before his train departed. Of course, he’d stayed far longer than he should have at the ranch, visiting with the Jordan family and looking over their horses as well as their cattle operation. When he’d realized the time, he’d ridden back to Baker City like his life depended on it. He’d had to run all the way from the livery but managed to jump onto the train in the nick of time.

Aware he wasn’t at his best, Hunter didn’t mind overly much that he looked like a trail-weary cowboy. Rarely did he have the opportunity to enjoy the luxury of being just a man who’d been working hard all day and not one of the heirs to his family’s riches. Perhaps he took more pleasure than he should have in letting Luna think he was Dally’s hired help with the horses. Eventually, she’d figure out he was Dally’s brother.

Truthfully, he was working for Dally this summer. Beyond breaking horses for his sister, he had also set in motion his plans for his future.

Every summer, he traveled to Pendleton to spend time at the B Bar D Ranch, where his mother had been raised and Nik and Dally now called home. But Hunter was ready to buy property of his own.

In the past month, he’d graduated from college with a degree in business, inherited half a million dollars his grandfather had left for him in an account not to be touched until he turned twenty-one, and informed his parents he intended to move to Pendleton permanently.

His mother had appeared secretly pleased about his plans to make Pendleton his home, while his father had looked disappointed. Bramble Hall had been in the Douglas family for generations. Located near Asheville, North Carolina, it was a beautiful place with acres of apple orchards, white-painted fences surrounding pastures full of the thoroughbred horses they raised, and a grand home that had miraculously survived the War Between the States without any lasting damage.

Hunter knew his father wanted him to take over managing the estate and all its enterprises, but his heart had always been in Pendleton. As children, Hunter and Dally had lived for the summer months they spent in Pendleton riding horses, chasing cattle, and absorbing a lifestyle so different from what they knew the rest of the year in Asheville.

It was Jeff, Hunter’s younger brother, who lived and breathed for Bramble Hall. Jeff, who had just turned eighteen, had been born to manage the place. When the time was right, he’d do a spectacular job of it. Eventually, his father and Jeff would accept the fact that Hunter had no interest in taking charge of the huge house or the businesses tied to the estate.

Hunter wanted to forge his own path, and he was convinced the place to do it was Pendleton.

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