by Hill, April
Coming Home to Wyoming
Peaceful Valley Series, Book One
By
April Hill
©2016 by Blushing Books® and April Hill
All rights reserved.
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Hill, April
Coming Home to Wyoming
eBook ISBN: 978-1-68259-301-1
Cover Design by ABCD Graphics & Design
This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the Author's advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.
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Table of 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
About April Hill
Ebook Offer
Blushing Books Newsletter
About Blushing Books
CHAPTER ONE
Griff’s leg had begun to ache, again, and he was already bone-weary after being in the saddle for close to fourteen hours, so when he rode past the woman hanging upside down from a tree, he rubbed his eyes for a moment or two before circling back to check it out. He’d seen—or thought he’d seen—some peculiar things when he was this tired, but this one seemed odd enough to warrant a second look. A broken branch, maybe, or the skinned remains of a deer? As he drew closer to the strange apparition, though, it still looked like a woman. A girl, actually, slender and young, wearing a pair of shabby drawers and a blue calico skirt that covered her face. Dead or alive was hard to tell from this distance, but the skin on her arms and legs was pale, and she didn’t appear to be moving. He reined Jack to an abrupt halt, pulled a hunting knife from its sheath on his belt, and went to cut her down.
He had one arm under the girl’s shoulders to support her, and was about to slice the rope or whatever she was hanging from, when a small, dirty hand appeared from beneath the blue calico skirt and lifted the frayed hem by a few inches. The girl opened her eyes and looked at him.
“Well, it’s about time, goddamnit! I figured I was gonna hang here ‘til my fuckin’ eyeballs dropped out and rolled off, somewheres. You wanna go ahead and cut me loose, mister, or maybe stand around for a couple a days and watch while I rot?”
Griff stared for a moment, then reached up and chopped through the snarl of twisted branches and twigs that had entrapped the girl’s badly scratched ankles. He kept his hand on her back while she sank slowly to the ground, with the tattered dress puddled around her, and her legs splayed gracelessly in the dirt.
When he knelt and brushed the mass of bright copper hair from her face, he saw that she was probably younger than he’d first thought—and a lot younger than her vulgar greeting had suggested.
“Are you all right, miss?”
She scowled. “Why wouldn’t I be? I always say there ain’t nothin’ like bein’ strung up like a smokehouse ham to cure what ails you.”
“Who did this to you?”
“I reckon you could say I done it to myself.” She pointed over her head, into the tree branches. “I was after them little bitty crab apples, up top—what the damned birds hadn’t got to, anyways. You ever tried crawlin’ up a tree in a dress and petticoats, mister?”
He chuckled. “No, I can’t say that I have.”
“Well, I ain’t gonna recommend it,” she growled. “I figure I done dumber things in my life, but I can’t recall just now what they mighta been.”
When she tried to stand up, the girl’s knees started to buckle beneath her, and before Griff could prevent it, she sat back down in the dust—hard.
“You’ll probably be a little shaky for a while,” he advised, after asking if she’d hurt herself. “I can get you to a doctor, if you know one close by.”
Seemingly unembarrassed, the girl hiked up the back of her skirt and began rubbing her backside vigorously. “No damn doctors, thank you very much. I ain’t about to waste a half-dollar on some fool-ass sawbones when all I done was land too hard on my backside. I been fallin’ outta trees for years, and I ain’t busted nothin’ yet. I’ll just sit here a spell ‘til my head stops w
hirlin’ around.” She sat quietly for almost a full minute, saying nothing else, and making no attempt to hide the fact that she was studying him—head to foot.
“I guess I should be sayin’ thanks, about now,” she commented, having apparently decided that he was no particular threat. “I been hangin’ like that since mornin,’ watchin’ for someone to come along and cut me down. Lucky I could raise up my damned head ever’ now and then, so the blood wouldn’t be goin’ off in all the wrong places.” She lifted one trembling hand and fanned her face. “Lord a’mighty, it’s hot!”
Griff stood up and walked away long enough to pull a canteen and his spare hat from his saddlebag, then knelt down again and held the canteen to the girl’s parched lips.
“Not too fast,” he cautioned, pulling the water away when she began drinking too greedily. He plopped the hat on her head against the broiling sun. “Just sit there and rest for a while. When you’re feelin’ up to it, I’ll take you home.” He glanced around. “I didn’t notice any farms or houses close by. You live near here?”
“Nope.”
“Do you have family around here?”
“You sure ask a lot of questions,” she observed suspiciously. “You ain’t the law, or somethin’ like that, are you?”
He looked at her more closely. “No, I’m not the law, or even something like it, whatever that might be.”
“You tryin’ to tell me you ain’t never heard of such a thing as a goddamned bounty hunter?”
“Bounty hunter?” he repeated. “Why would a bounty… Are you running from…”
“I ain’t runnin’ from nothin,’” she growled, struggling to her feet and brushing the twigs and dried leaves from her clothing. “And it ain’t no business of yours if I was. Since when does helpin’ a person down from a damned tree give another person the right to ask a lot of fool questions?”
He ignored the outburst, and asked another question. “You’re pretty young to be traveling alone. How old are you, anyway?”
“You see, now that’s what I was talkin’ about,” she said sullenly. “It’s none of your danged business how old I am. How old are you, come to that? Pretty old, from the look of it—like you been rode hard and put away wet. I bet if you was to get back on that horse of yours and find yourself a fancy-pants barber somewheres, you could get yourself a shave and a haircut, instead of standin’ around like a dried-up cow turd, pryin’ into other folks’ private business. And since we’re askin’ questions, how’d you come by that limp you got,” she asked, pointing to his leg. “Someone shoot you for pokin’ your nose in where it shouldn’t be?”
“I broke my leg a couple of years back,” he said simply, without bothering to explain that the sometimes noticeable limp in his right leg was a battlefield “souvenir” from his time in the U.S. Second Cavalry. “And I’m sorry if I look like a tramp. I’ve been on the move for a few weeks, so it’s been a long time between shaves and haircuts. But if I’m beginning to scare young ladies like you, I guess I haven’t been looking in the mirror often enough.”
The girl had clearly intended her comments to be insulting, and when he didn’t appear to take offense, she launched into what sounded to Griff like a bashful half-apology—as if she had become suddenly conscious of her own disheveled appearance.
“I wasn’t tryin’ to… Well, I reckon I know… what you mean,” she stammered. “I been findin’ it real hard to keep up what my grandma used to call my toilettie—while I been on the road and all. I’m headed for San Francisco, myself. That’s in California. How about you?”
“San Francisco!” Griff exclaimed. “We’re more than a thousand miles from San Francisco. How do you plan to…”
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step,” she said smugly. “I read that in a book, somewhere. Some Chinese fella wrote it.”
“True enough, but that’s still a whole lot of steps,” he commented, with a pointed glance at her bare, dusty feet, “especially for a young lady with no shoes.”
She looked down at her feet. “I got shoes,” she announced huffily. “And some nicer duds, than what I got on, too. They was in my good green velvet valise when I crawled up that goldarned tree.” She marched over to the ancient tree and circled it several times, presumably searching for the missing green valise. “It’s gotta be around here, somewheres,” she muttered, “lessen some no-good thief come along and snatched it while I was givin’ my eyes a rest. Seems like a person just can’t trust nobody these days. That there valise cost me near three dollars. Best one they had in the whole danged store.”
Griff tried not to smile at the lie. It was fairly obvious from the way she was dressed that this was one young lady who’d never in her life had three dollars in her pocket at one time. He was trying to avoid thinking that she’d probably stolen the item she was pretending to look for, if the green valise even existed. “There’s a town up ahead a couple of miles,” he remarked. “Called Brewer’s Creek. Not much to look at, but there’s a mercantile that’ll probably carry what you need—shoes, and some ladies’ wear, anyway.”
“I’m sorta on whatcha could call a budget,” she said quickly.
“I could help you out, if you need it,” he suggested— and immediately regretted the offer. This girl was obviously proud —and probably quick to take offense.
“I look to you like I need charity, mister?” she demanded. Once again, Griff had to make an effort not to smile. When her cheeks reddened, his amused first thought was that she’d make a damned poor poker player. Her skin was unusually fair—so pale that it seemed almost transparent in the sunlight. And when she became excited, the full gamut of her emotions showed plainly on her face. When she was angry—as she was now—even the sprinkling of light freckles across the bridge of her nose seemed to turn color.
“Helping out a fellow traveler when he—or she—is in a temporary fix isn’t charity,” he insisted, hoping to remove the sting from his inadvertent insult. “It’s just good manners, and the right thing to do. I guess you could call it the unwritten rule of the road. You’d do the same for me, wouldn’t you, if I needed a buck or two?”
“Well, sure I would,” she conceded. “Anybody decent would. Like you said, it’s just plain good manners. Sorry if I… It’s just that I gotta watch what I spend, so’s I can get me a decent place once I get to where I’m goin.’ They got this real nice place in San Francisco I heard about—called Nob Hill. I figured I might give it a try, when I get there.”
Once again, Griff had to suppress a smile. He’d been in San Francisco two years earlier, while the city was experiencing another boom. Even the simplest residence on Nob Hill could be thousands of dollars—probably even higher by now.
“I’ve heard good things about that neighborhood, myself,” he said solemnly.
The girl beamed with pleasure. “Well, then, I reckon you see why I can’t go throwin’ money around, like I was old muttonchops Vanderbilt, or somethin’, right?”
“You sound to me like a very wise young woman, Miss…”
She hesitated for a moment before answering, obviously wary of giving away too much to a stranger—even one who was offering her money. And in that one cautious moment before she gave her name, Griff felt suddenly, massively stupid. The chances were better than good that the girl had come across a lot of other men ready to offer her money—in exchange for something more than she was willing to give in return.
“My name’s Clarinda,” she announced, finally. “Clarinda… Worthington. Well, it’s really Clarinda Isabella Worthington, but I just go by Clarinda.”
Griff smiled as he tipped his hat and extended his hand. “Glad to meet you, Miss Worthington. My name’s Griffin Harper, but you can call me Griff.”
The girl gave him an odd look. “Harper, huh?”
“Yes. Do you know someone else with that name? Someone around here that I can find to help you?”
She shook her head. “No. I was just thinkin’ that—ain’t a harper what f
olks call the fella who plays the harp in one o’ them big orcha… whatever?”
“You mean, in an orchestra?”
She nodded.
“I think a person who plays a harp is called a harpist.” He smiled. “Which I don’t. I’m just a plain, ordinary, run of the mill Harper—who used to be from Nebraska.”
* * *
Two hours later, with Clarinda Isabella Worthington riding astraddle behind his bedroll, and her arms wrapped snugly around his waist, plain ordinary Griffin Harper rode into Brewer’s Creek—and into trouble.
CHAPTER TWO
Brewer’s Creek wasn’t much to look at, but since it was the only place within fifty miles where the local ranchers could do business, it tried to offer the basic necessities, including a seedy, two-story hotel and a well-stocked general store. After a quick assessment of what the girl was wearing, Griff pointed out the store, and explained that the first thing they needed to do while they were in town was to buy her a new set of clothes, a suggestion she flatly rejected three times in a row. On the fourth try, she finally agreed to take his money, after he assured her that any funds that changed hands wouldn’t be charity, but a straightforward loan, repayable with interest. Even when she’d conceded, though, he had to explain to her what the word, ‘interest’ meant.
Griff had knocked around long enough to know that he was taking a risk. Once Clarinda Isabella Worthington had the “loan proceeds” in her small, grubby hands, the odds were that she’d take off for parts unknown, without bothering to look back—or worry too much about accrued interest. While he could easily afford the loss of the few dollars he’d given her, he disliked being cheated by anyone—especially by a smart-mouthed kid he’d gone out of his way to help, in a move he was pretty sure he was going to live to regret. But when she insisted that she could do her shopping alone—and added a sweetly innocent smile—he decided to go ahead and take a chance. There was something about this young woman that appealed to him, and made him trust her—until she proved him wrong.