-deep snow, he'd plucked her up.
"I wish you'd stop that. I'm perfectly capable of walking through a little snow."
"City boots. Pretty enough, though," he commented as he carried her onto the porch. "You've got little feet. Stay out," he ordered the dogs. Smoothly he opened the door, elbowed it aside and carried her in.
"Hey, Rafe, what you got there?"
Grinning, Rafe shifted Regan in his arms and winked at Shane. "Got me a female."
"Good-looking one, too." Shane tossed the log he held onto the fire, straightened. His eyes, the color of fog over seawater, warmed in appreciation. "Hi there, Regan."
"Shane."
"Any coffee hot?" Rafe asked.
"Sure." Shane kicked the log into place with his boot. "Kitchen's never closed."
"Fine. Now get lost."
"Well, that was certainly rude." Regan blew her hair out of her eyes as Rafe carted her down the hall and into the kitchen.
"You're an only child, right?"
"Yes, but—"
"Figured." He dropped her into one of the cane chairs at the kitchen table. "What do you take in your coffee?"
"Nothing-black."
"What a woman." He stripped off his coat, tossed it over a peg by the back door, where his brother's heavy work jacket already hung. From a glass-fronted cupboard, he chose two glossy white mugs. "Want anything to go with it? Some hopeful woman's always baking Shane cookies. It's that pretty, innocent face of his."
"Pretty, maybe. You're all pretty." She shrugged out of her coat with a murmur of appreciation for the warmth of the room. "And I'll pass on the cookies."
He set a steaming mug in front of her. Out of habit, he turned a chair around and straddled it. "So, are you going to pass on the house, too?"
Biding her time, she studied her coffee, sampled it, and found it superb. "I have a number of pieces in stock that I think you'll find more than suitable when you're ready to furnish. I also did some research on the traditional color schemes and fabrics from that era."
"Is that a yes or a no, Regan?"
"No, I'm not going to pass." She lifted her gaze to his. "And it's going to cost you."
"You're not worried?"
"I didn't say that, exactly. But now I know what to expect. I can guarantee I won't be fainting at your feet a second time."
"I'd just as soon you didn't. You scared the life out of me." He reached over to play with the fingers of the hand she'd laid on the table. He liked the delicacy of them, and the glint of stones and gold. "In your research, did you dig up anything on the two corporals?"
"The two corporals?"
"You should have asked old lady Metz. She loves telling the story. What kind of watch is this?" Curious, Rafe flicked a finger under the twin black elastic bands.
"Circa 1920. Elastic and marcasite. What about the corporals?"
"It seems these two soldiers got separated from their regiments during the battle. The cornfield east of here was thick with smoke, black powder exploding. Some of the troops were engaged in the trees, others just lost or dying there."
"Some of the battle took place here, on your fields?" she asked.
"Some of it. The park service has markers up. Anyway, these two, one Union, one Confederate, got separated. They were just boys, probably terrified. Bad luck brought them together in the woods that form the boundary between MacKade land and Barlow."