Gunslingers Don’t Die
Wanda Ann Thomas
~ Book Description ~
BOOK TWO in the BRIDES OF SWEET CREEK RANCH SERIES—A SWEET HISTORICAL WESTERN ROMANCE
MAGGIE REED HAVEN, formerly known as Lady Lily, Female Bounty Hunter, once loved risk and adventure, but she has exchanged her reckless ways for a more stable life. Ready to begin her career as a teacher, she has the shock of her life when she discovers that the gunslinger she had foolishly married, and who she believed had promptly got himself killed in a shootout, is alive and well. The revelation presents an enormous, unavoidable problem—Boone Haven is the father of her three-year-old son. Determined to do right by her son and Boone she returns to Wyoming, where the wild allure of the West and the dark danger of the gunslinger tempt her to give up the new life she has created. Maggie finds herself torn between her tornado-like attraction for this deadly gorgeous man and her need for a safe, respectable future.
BOONE HAVEN hates his lonely life. But a man who makes his living as a hired gun, is bound to attract a passel of trouble. Hounded by the outlaws, he can’t go home. But when Maggie, aka Lady Lily, explodes back into his life with his son and dog in tow, Boone has no good choices. If he stops running, he risks exposing his loved ones to danger. If he continues his wandering existence, his son might never know his father. And if he forgives Maggie, he risks falling under her powerful spell again.
Can the gunslinger escape his past, and learn to trust and love? What does the future hold for the teacher when she discovers…GUNSLINGERS DON’T DIE?
Copyright © 2016 by Wanda Ann Thomas
Published by Wanda Ann Thomas of Maine. All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
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~ Books By Wanda Ann Thomas ~
BRIDES of SWEET CREEK RANCH
The Mail-Order Bride Carries a Gun (Book One)
Gunslingers Don’t Die (Book Two)
THE HEROD CHRONICLES
The Warrior (Book 1)
The Stonecutter (A Herod Chronicles Novella)
The Barbarian (Book 2)
Warring Desires (Book 3)
For more information, please visit my website: www.wandaannthomas.com
~ Contents ~
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Book Description
Copyright
Other Books
Author Note
CHAPTER ONE
1891, St. Louis
The city bustled awake outside Maggie Haven’s kitchen window on a windswept spring day. The two-bedroom shotgun style apartment in the commercial district was a far cry from Frank Reed’s showy lavender townhouse on the banks of the Mississippi River, but the quaint rooms suited her.
She glanced from the Globe-Democrat listing her name among the newly hired school teachers to three-year-old Colt, munching on a triangle of toast, grape jelly staining his chin. Joy somersaulted through her heart. Her dear son would have a mother he could be proud of. In four short years, she’d gone from the alias Lady Lily Margaret, Female Bounty Hunter to Miss Maggie, kindergarten teacher. “Be careful not to drip jelly on your frock. You don’t want to cause extra work for Nanny Bri.”
Colt examined his sailor collar. “I’m sorry. I keep forgetting not to be messy.”
Twenty-one-year-old Brigetta Lyndtz carried her teacup to the sink and dipped it in sudsy dishwater. The high color in her girlish face revealed a moon-shaped rose birthmark curving gently from brow to upper cheek that only showed when she was overheated, angry, or embarrassed. After three years’ employment as Colt’s nanny, the Swedish immigrant’s English was quite good. “There’s no cow on the ice, ja?”
Colt nodded. “The ice on the river is all melted.”
Colt’s interpretations of her Swedish sayings always amused, but this one had Maggie stumped. “Cow on the ice?”
“Everyone knows no good can come of a cow on ice,” Bri said, as if cattle venturing out onto a frozen river or pond was an everyday occurrence. “And a bit of jelly on a collar is not the end of the world.”
Maggie wished she was half as practical as Bri. “I know you don’t mind cleaning up after Colt, but he’s not a baby anymore.”
Blond braids crowning her head, Bri whisked to the table and wiped Colt’s face with a wet cloth. “Tomorrow I will put apple jelly on your toast. A spot or two on your pretty white collar will hardly show. How does that sound, my dumpling?”
Colt held out jelly-stained hands. “Dumpling is a baby name.”
Bri tickled him, then scrubbed his fingers. “What? My grandmother still calls my older brother ‘dumpling.’”
“Don’t forget your manners, my love,” Maggie admonished Colt, scanning the W. Boyer Mercantile sales advertisement, and calculating if she had sufficient funds to purchase new shoes for Colt.
“I like to eat pudding,” Colt said, his large black eyes shining adorably.
Bri pushed his bangs off his forehead. “If you promise to sit still for a haircut, I will make you some chocolate pudding.”
Colt sighed. “Why do I need a haircut? Mama is starting school. Not me.”
Bri and Colt’s negotiations a pleasant hum in the background, Maggie’s anticipation over her new job loomed as exciting and frightening as a ride in a hot air balloon. A kindergarten teacher. She wanted to shout the news from the rooftop.
What would her mother and first husband Frank Jr. and her father-in-law Frank Reed think if they were still alive and could see all she’d accomplished these past few years? She imagined they’d be surprised at how far she’d come since her hasty marriage to a gunslinger, who then promptly got himself killed in a shootout. But the whirlwind marriage to Boone Haven had turned out to be a tremendous blessing. Boone had given her the precious gift of Colt.
And motherhood had instilled a new sense of purpose. She wanted her son to be proud of his mother. Who would ever believe she had pos
sessed the discipline to study to be a teacher while raising a child?
The yellow dog Jack, who had a knack for sensing when her mind drifted to Boone, got up from the rug in front of the door and padded over. Boone’s eight-year-old dog rested his graying muzzle on her lap. She had saved the dog’s life and he repaid her with loyal affection.
What would their lives be like if Boone had lived? She pushed the thought away. “I love you too, dog.”
Jack wagged his tail.
An outdoor adventure always added cheer to the day. “Who wants to take a walk in Tower Grove Park?” she asked, turning the page of the newspaper.
Colt squirmed with delight and raised his hand. “Me. Me.”
Jack woofed and pranced to the door.
“Finish your toast, and we will—” Maggie’s thoughts derailed at the haunted face staring at her from the pages of the Globe-Democrat.
Boone Haven.
Impossible.
Boone was dead.
Newspaper trembling in her hands, she scanned the caption under the inky picture of two cowboys. Gunslinger Boone Haven and rancher Buck Goodman confront cattle barons over corrupt practices.
A cold sweat dampened her brow. But Frank had said Boone died in jail from wounds sustained in a gunfight. Why would Frank lie?
Her stomach sank. She of all people knew Frank played loose with the truth. A bounty hunter and self-proclaimed lawman, Frank loved having his picture in the newspapers, standing beside the criminals he hunted down.
After Frank Jr. died, her father-in-law had enlisted her to pretend to be a mail-order bride in order to lure in wanted men.
Maggie had jumped at the chance to be a bounty hunter and thought it a wonderful adventure, never expecting to fall head-over-heels in love with the Cowboy Assassin. But Boone stole her heart, and they married for real, and the next three days and nights had been the most glorious of her life.
She examined the dark eyes hooded beneath the black cowboy hat. Why didn’t you come looking for me? Or send a telegram? Or—
She gripped the newspaper as if an earthquake shook the room. Had Boone learned she was a bounty hunter? But how? Did it matter? Why hadn’t she told him the truth before marrying?
“Is something wrong?” Brigetta asked, hovering over Maggie’s shoulder.
Wrong? Not two seconds ago she’d been congratulating herself on how far she’d come and viewing her marriage to Boone with idyllic bliss. Head-over-heels in love. Married for real. The three most glorious days of her life. Any rational-minded person would judge her actions as foolhardy.
Maggie smoothed her coiffured chignon. “I met with some unexpected news.”
“Can we go to the park still?” Colt asked, hopeful.
She couldn’t forget what Boone had looked like because she saw his face in her black-haired, black-eyed son. Colt Boone Haven. That’s what she’d named him. And she was Maggie Haven.
Angels help her. If Boone was alive that meant she was still Mrs. Boone Haven. Or was she? What did she really know about Boone Haven? Beside the fact he was a gunslinger. And a wanted man. And why hadn’t she asked these questions four years ago?
Brigetta squeezed Colt’s shoulder. “We can go to the park while your mother rests.”
Colt’s eyes widened. “But, Mama, you just woke up.”
Her ordered life shattering into a thousand pieces, Maggie would love nothing better than to put her head down and have a good cry. She managed a smile. “I wouldn’t miss going to the park with you.”
“Will you play catch?” Colt asked, hopeful.
Heartache and fear warred in her heart. How many times had she lamented the fact Colt wasn’t being raised by his father? And how often had she wished Boone had lived to see his beautiful son. “You will need your glove and baseball.”
“I’m going to play baseball for the Brown Stockings when I grow up,” Colt said, hopping out of his chair and racing for the bedroom.
Last week he’d told her he wanted to be the engineer on a train. A chill went through her. She didn’t care what he did as long as he wasn’t a gunslinger.
Brigetta followed Colt. “I will make sure he puts on a coat.”
The room fell quiet save for the window shutter tapping against the house in the gusting wind. She traced Boone’s picture and the guns hanging from his gun belt, and glanced up at the cupboard where she’d placed Boone’s twin Colt .45s for safekeeping. Naming Colt after his father’s guns seemed silly now, but twenty-two years old at the time and frightened at the prospect of raising a child alone, she’d been desperate to hold on to any connection with Boone. She had planned to give the guns to Colt someday, leaving out the part about his father being a gunslinger.
Her eyes went back to Boone’s picture. He was standing in front of a train station. A sign over his shoulder read, Aurora, Wyoming. What am I supposed to do now?
Jack’s wet nose nudged her elbow.
She slid to the floor, hugged Jack, and buried her face in his soft fur. “Do you want to go home, dog?” Though uncertain about almost everything where Boone was concerned, she knew this. He loved his guns and his dog. He’d want them back. It was only right to tell him Jack was alive, and to arrange to return Jack and the guns.
Was she truly going to do it? Was she going to track down Boone Haven?
Should she tell him about Colt?
Her throat constricted. There was a question she wasn’t prepared to answer.
CHAPTER TWO
The cows and horses fed and watered and settling down on beds of fresh straw, Boone Haven closed the barn door and walked into the face of the brisk spring wind rolling off the Big Horn Mountains and buffeting “the prettiest little ranch house in Wyoming” as Ma Viola used to say.
A piece of heaven on Earth. That’s what Sweet Creek Ranch was. Though he didn’t get back home often enough, the homestead he and Pa Malcolm and Ma Viola and Ty had carved out of the wilderness always filled him with pride and accomplishment. Not only was the ranch a first-rate cattle operation, but it also served as a refuge for homeless boys in need of a new start. Boone and Ty had been Pa and Ma’s first second-chance boys.
Boone’s stomach sickened every time he recalled how close the dream had come to dying.
Four years ago a record-cold winter had put most cattle ranches out of business, but his brother Ty and sister-in-law Ella had scraped by and managed to rebuild the longhorn herd from fifty to two hundred head of cattle.
Boone climbed the stairs of the low-slung veranda porch. The calico farm cat Fox Bait meowed from her perch on the railing and the red-spotted dog Millie thumped her white tail in greeting.
“Good girl,” Boone said, stroking Millie’s soft ears, his heart still heavy at the loss of his dog Jack. Gunslinging was a lonely life, and Jack had been his best friend and faithful companion. Ty and Ella kept encouraging him to get another dog, but he couldn’t risk it.
Gunslingers made for unsafe company, especially when pimple-faced cowboys with rocks for brains or hardened outlaws intent on proving they were the next Jesse James felt it necessary to pick a fight with the Cowboy Assassin. Boone hated the name, but at thirty-four years of age, it was too late to correct the past. Not that the future held much appeal either.
Pa and Ma and Jack had been killed when bad men came looking for him. No one else he loved would suffer the same fate. Not if he could help it.
He removed his black Stetson, raked his fingers through his hair, and ambled into the ranch house. Bright chatter and soft lamplight bounced off the hand-finished post and beam ceiling. A welcoming fire glowed in the floor-to-ceiling fireplace constructed from river-polished stones that Boone had hauled by hand from the nearby creek.
Ty and Ella sat at the pine dining table, each cradling one of their newborn twin daughters. Viola and Vivien’s big brother, two-year-old Malcolm, who had the same cornflower blue eyes as his mother, squirmed on the pine bench, giggling over whatever Tucker was whispering in his ear.
&n
bsp; Angelic-faced Tucker was the newest second-chance boy. The six-year-old orphaned son of a dance hall girl, the boy had been foraging through the garbage behind a Nebraska slaughterhouse when Boone had found him. Filthy from head to toe, with large innocent eyes, he looked a sorry sight, but the bruises covering his arms and legs were what had boiled Boone’s blood. Coaxing the gut-wrenching story out of the frightened child, Boone had administered justice on the saloon owner with his knuckles. The spineless man could expect worse if Boone heard of him beating on more defenseless woman and children.
Tucker spotted him and grinned wide. “Mr. Boone, I made the biscuits. Come sit beside me. I saved the two biggest for you.”
He headed to the opposite end of the table, took a seat and grabbed a warm biscuit from a nearby basket. Buttering it, he pretended not to see the disapproving frowns.
Eighteen-year-old Seth, a second-chance boy Boone had rescued four years ago, made a sound of disgust and plopped down beside Tucker. “Don’t cry, kid. Learn to ignore Mr. Boone because sure as spit he will go on ignoring you.”
Fifteen-year old, doleful Juan, whom Boone had delivered to the ranch two years ago, nodded sympathetically, standing beside the wood cook stove, spooning meatloaf and potatoes onto a platter. “Mr. Boone is one quiet gringo. At first, I think he don’t like me. But now I know he don’t like no one.”
The walls closing in, Boone kept his head down.
The last of the second-chance boys currently residing at the ranch, fourteen-year-old freckle-faced Billy, grunted in agreement. “I was sure Mr. Boone was going to shoot me and Seth after he found us, and Seth kept talking back. Mr. Ty and Miss Ella said I didn’t have to be afraid, but I just about peed my pants whenever Mr. Boone walked by with those twin Colt .45s strapped to his hips.”
Seth snickered. “Sweet Creek Ranch will be a sight more pleasant when the Cowboy Assassin skedaddles like he always—”
“Seth, go give Juan a hand.” Ty said, patiently but firmly.
Gunslingers Don't Die: A Sweet Historical Western Romance (Brides of Sweet Creek Ranch Book 2) Page 1