“Your Translator is Lying!” — Widow’s Daughter Warns Millionaire Cowboy in Fluent German Before Deal

Chapter 2

He tried to push himself up, and she put her hand flat on his shoulder. Don’t, she said, simply, not harshly. He stopped. Not because she was strong enough to hold him down — she wasn’t — but because his body had stopped listening to him. She could see the cost of that one attempted movement. His jaw tightened, then went slack, and he lay back.

I don’t need —

I know, she said. I know you don’t need anything. Right now I need you to be quiet while I get this fire going.

She built the fire with wood from the porch. Plenty of it there, neatly split, stacked by a man who had planned ahead for a winter he hadn’t expected to spend on his own floor. She got the flames good and strong before she went back to him. She found a blanket folded on the chair by the window and draped it over his shoulders, careful not to look at the way his hands were shaking.

Your horses hadn’t been fed, she said, sitting back on her heels so she was level with him instead of standing over him. She’d learned that, too — that you don’t stand over a man who’s already on the ground. I fed them before I came in.