Daisies In The Wind
Page 31
So much for Denver, and fainting women. As he left the town behind for the solitude of sagebrush and plains, Cole tried not to think about the girl with the golden cloud of hair. Tommy, she had said, just before she fainted, She’d been looking at Borden when she said it. Strange. Equally strange was the fact that the girl had been about to enter the saloon. She didn’t look like any fallen dove he’d ever seen; she looked damned respectable—aristocratic, even—but then, Cole thought, spurring Arrow on across the foothills, what did he know about women? Only what he’d learned from Liza, and that was all bad. Ina Day and the other dance-hall girls and whores he frequented now and then were fine and dandy conveniences for fulfilling the needs of a man’s body, but he didn’t know a damned thing about any one of them, and he didn’t care to, either. Women were tricky, cunning, and treacherous creatures, that’s all he knew or needed to know. The prettier they were, the more dangerous they could be. According to this way of figuring things, that gold-haired beauty back there could be downright fatal.
Cole knew one thing. The sooner he forgot about her, the better off he’d be...
Continue on for an excerpt from When the Heart Beckons
WHEN THE HEART BECKONS
Annabel waited, pressing back against the stall. She heard the blacksmith return to work, swearing under his breath, and then she eased her way to the rear door and out once more into the quickly falling dusk.
But as she rounded the corner of the building, heading back toward the hotel, she suddenly collided with a rock-hard wall of sheer male muscle looming directly before her.
“Ma’am.” The harshness of Roy Steele’s voice raised gooseflesh on her arms. She tried to answer in kind.
“Mr. Steele.”
“You know my name.”
For the second time since she’d met him, Annabel felt the hot blush warming her cheeks, but she recovered smoothly. “Why, yes, the clerk at the hotel mentioned it. May I pass, please?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Mr. Steele ...”
“You’re not going anywhere until you answer a question. Why are you following me?”
“Following you? Mr. Steele, you obviously have an exaggerated sense of your power over women. I assure you I am not ...”
“You are.”
She shook her head and let a light laugh trill from her lips. “Well. If you aren’t the vainest man I’ve ever met. Merely because I happen to find myself in the same vicinity as you twice in one day—to my own regret, I assure you ...”
Icy fury clamped down over his implacable features. “Stop prattling. Answer my question or I’ll ...”
“You’ll what? Shoot me? Oh, heavens, I am quite shaking in my boots!”
Annabel was amazed at her own audacity. Truth be told, she was shaking in her boots; her knees rattled quite humiliatingly beneath her serviceable traveling skirt. But she kept her face schooled into an expression of outraged scorn. If there was one thing she hated, it was a bully, and Roy Steele was nothing but a bully, she assured herself.
A bully who looked as if he would like to wring her neck. He reached out one hand and for an agonizing second Annabel thought he was really going to choke her, but he only gripped her by the shoulder. “If you weren’t following me, lady, what the hell are you doing in this alley? A little while ago, I saw you behind me on Main Street, pretending to look in a shop window.”
“You’re quite mad, Mr. Steele. Quite mad. And if you don’t let me go this very instant ...”
“Steele! Freeze!”
A voice like hell’s own thunder roared through the alley. Annabel and Steele both spun toward it.
Annabel’s eyes widened at the sight before her. Good God, not one, but two vicious-looking gunmen glared at them from less than twenty feet away.
They must be outlaws—or gunfighters, Annabel guessed, fighting back a rush of faintness. Her heart was banging against the wall of her chest like an Indian war drum. She’d never seen such dirty, unkempt, savage-looking men.
Unshaven, their faces pockmarked and tough as buffalo hide beneath their stringy brown hair, they looked like the type of men who would as soon wring a cat’s neck as pet it. They both wore long greasy yellow dusters over dirt-stained pants and cracked boots that were torn and splattered with mud. One man was taller than the other, with even tinier, beadier eyes. Annabel noted in alarm that his gun was drawn and pointed straight at Roy Steele. The other man had a long mustache and a scar looping from his cheek down across his pointed chin. They bore a startling resemblance to each other: the same long gangly build, the same flat, squashed noses, the same aura of evil radiating from them, right down to the expression of leering hatred on their faces.
“Who are they?” she whispered to Steele, swallowing past the lump of fear in her throat.
“The Hart brothers. Outlaws. Reckon they mean to kill me.”
“In that case, I think I’ll be going,” she murmured, but as she took one tentative step away from him, the taller gunman fired off a shot that scattered pebbles near her feet.
“Don’t neither of you move none!” he ordered. His brother spat into the dirt and grinned at Steele.
“Steele, you son of a bitch, I’m gonna blow your damned head off.”
“Or else I will!” his brother vowed.
The gunfighter answered with a cool laugh. “You reckon so, Les?”
Annabel could scarcely believe her ears. There was no mistaking the icy nonchalance in Steele’s voice. Peeking over at him, she saw that there was no fear on his face. Not a trace of it. Only a sneer of contempt. She drew in a deep breath though her lungs were tight with fear. Glancing at the other two men, her heart sank. The hatred on their faces had hardened with his cool words and arrogant demeanor. Steele, she thought and it was almost a prayer breathed in the late afternoon stillness, you’d better be good. Damned good.
“You kin wipe that smug look off your face, Steele, ‘cause we got you now, and you know it,” Mustache crowed with glee. “You knew we’d get you for killing Jesse. Wal, your time has come. You’re going to hell where you belong.”
Steele kept his gaze riveted on the men, but spoke to Annabel in a calm, offhand tone. “I’d get out of here if I were you.”
“H-how do you suggest I do that?”
“Run.”
Run. Run away and leave him there to face these cutthroats alone. Well, why not? He certainly seemed able to take care of himself, and he was hardly her concern. Yet Annabel hated the idea of dashing away like a scared rabbit before these two ugly lumps of vermin. “I never run, Mr. Steele,” she murmured, her gaze fixed warily on the Hart brothers all the while. “It’s so undignified ...”
“You little fool. This isn’t a parlor game. Run.”
Les waved his gun. “What’re you talkin’ to your lady friend fer? Pay attention, you low-down bastard—you’re about to die!”
Steele let out another low, cold laugh. The sound of it chilled Annabel’s blood. “Does this female look like any lady friend of mine, Les? Hell, I don’t even know this woman. And I don’t want to. Get her out of here so the three of us can settle this.”
“Mebbe she’d like to watch. How ‘bout it, little lady? You want to watch this hombre die?”
“I’d much rather have a cup of tea at the hotel,” she confessed, trying to smile though her lips felt like cardboard. “And I’d like to ask your permission to go there right now and do just that—but first I feel I must point out to you that two against one is hardly fair odds, gentlemen. And you might not realize this, Mr., er, Les, but you already have your gun drawn! That’s not a typical gun duel, not at all, from everything I’ve seen and read. Why, you’ll go to jail.”
Mustache shoved his hat back on his head. “Not if there ain’t no witnesses.”
The implication of this remark made Annabel swallow hard. “I admire you for thinking ahead,” she managed faintly, “but perhaps you gentlemen could just discuss this first ...”
“No more talk.” Les
Hart suddenly went tense with readiness, his eyes razoring in on Steele once more. “Steele, you never shoulda killed our brother.”
“We’ve been waiting a long time to git you, and we’re not goin’ to wait a minute more,” Mustache growled. “I jest wanted to see the look on your face and now ...”
“Watch out! Behind you!” Annabel shouted, her arm lifting to point and instinctively the two men jerked around.
At the same moment Roy Steele knocked her to the ground.
Then the street exploded in a thunderous, violent blur.
Gunshots rent the air, dust and smoke billowed, blood erupted. Annabel, face down in the dust, heard herself screaming.
She stopped at last, jamming a dirty fist into her mouth and lifting her head to stare in disbelief at the bloody tableau.
The Hart brothers sprawled dead in the alley. At least one was dead, she amended, gulping down the sick nausea that rose in her throat. The other still twitched in a grotesquely horrible little dance. After what seemed like endless seconds, his elbows and knees went still and the gurgling in his throat stopped.
Roy Steele stood calmly, feet planted apart, surveying the scene. He looked as cool and remote as a glacier. His gaze flickered to her, his black eyes gleaming above the wisp of blue smoke that curled upward from his Colt .45.
“I told you to run.”
* * * * * * * * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jill Gregory is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of more than thirty historical and contemporary novels and has been honored with the Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as with back-to-back Reviewer’s Choice awards for Best Western Historical Romance. Her books have been published in more than twenty-four countries. Jill grew up in Chicago and received her bachelor of arts degree in English from the University of Illinois. An animal lover, Jill loves long walks, reading, hot tea on a winter’s day, and the company of friends. She lives in Michigan with her husband, and enjoys her home overlooking the woods where the deer, rabbits, squirrels, and an occasional owl or hawk come out to play. Visit Jill on the web at www.jillgregory.net.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Excerpt from Cherished
Excerpt from When the Heart Beckons
About the Author