Daisies In The Wind (41 page)

“If I were you, ma’am, I’d step back a pace
or this hombre will bleed all over that pretty dress of yours,” the
stranger drawled without sparing her a second glance.

It was then that Juliana had the wit to tear
her gaze from that magnetic face. Looking down, she saw with a
quiver of horror that he was casually dragging behind him a man’s
blue-and-yellow-shirted, blood-spattered body.

Juliana had never fainted before in her life,
but she’d never seen a dead body before either. She took one look
at the blood and guts spilling from the dead man and felt a great
dry coldness sweep over her. The man was wearing a blue and yellow
shirt—oddly familiar. He had golden blond hair, thick and silky,
falling over his face.

The shirt, the hair ... it came to her with a
jolt, it looked just like ...

“Tommy!” she whispered with a breath of
horror, and then she pitched forward like a rag doll straight into
the stranger’s arms.

The stranger caught her just before she hit
the ground. Cursing, he was forced to release his hold on the dead
man’s shirt and to sweep an arm about the swooning girl before she
crashed onto the boardwalk.
Just what I need
, Cole Rawdon
thought in disgust.
A fool woman to slow me down
.

“Damn it all to hell,” he muttered under his
breath as her hat fell off and a tumble of gold curls cascaded
down, nearly touching the ground.

A crowd was gathering. Rawdon hated
crowds.

“What are you staring at?” He glared at the
sea of faces, and the onlookers scattered. With a grimace he turned
back to the woman, really seeing her for the first time. She was a
slip of a thing, no more. And pretty as pie. Pretty? No, Cole
decided. Pretty didn’t quite describe her. She was beautiful. For a
moment he forgot about the dead man and the crowd, and found
himself studying the girl.

Cole didn’t remember ever seeing skin so
creamy and smooth, or hair quite so pure and dazzling a gold. Or
features so elegant—as though they’d been cut from fine crystal.
Breakable, that’s how she looked. Like she belonged on a china shop
shelf, not the streets of Denver. For a moment he just stared at
her, mesmerized. Then he came to his senses with a start. Hell, it
was damned inconvenient to be stuck holding on to this female in
the middle of Denver when he had to get Gus Borden’s corpse to
Sugar Creek pronto. A two-hundred-dollar reward was waiting at the
end of that four-hour ride—and Cole meant to claim it, and get rid
of Gus, before the outlaw’s body started to rot. For a moment
longer he let his eyes slide over the girl’s willowy form, admiring
the soft curves beneath her fancy dress, the way her breasts
strained against the tight fabric.
Damn, she is something. Too
bad I’m in a hurry
, he thought, his eyes narrowing with
regret.
If I had more time, I’d wait around to see if she knows
how to show a man proper gratitude
. He doubted it. Any girl
who fainted at the sight of a little blood was sure to be too
weak-spined and silly to be any fun at all. Besides, Ina Day was
dancing in the Red Feather Saloon in Sugar Creek tonight and she
always knew how to show him a good time.

Cole tore his gaze from the delicate planes
of the girl’s face with an effort. A thin man with dark whiskers
was watching him warily from ten paces down the boardwalk. “Hey,
you, come here,” he ordered. “Grab ahold of this woman and ... do
something with her.”

As the man nervously approached, Cole saw the
girl’s eyelashes flutter. About time. Suddenly she opened her eyes
and gazed up at him in a dazed fashion. He felt his insides
tighten. She had the most exquisite eyes he’d ever seen—huge,
expressive, green as a Montana valley, and filled just now with a
touching uncertainty that, if he’d been any other man, would have
tugged at his heart. But Cole had been delayed long enough, and
life’s hard blows had toughened whatever he’d once had of a
heart.

“Been a pleasure getting acquainted with you,
ma’am, but I’m afraid I’ve got to be going now,” he drawled, and
dumped her without ceremony into the bewhiskered man’s arms.
Without another glance at the girl who had interfered with the
orderly execution of his business, he seized Gus Borden’s shirt
collar and dragged him over to the sorrel horse tethered in front
of the saloon. Flinging the body over the saddle and tying it
securely in place, Cole forced himself to avoid looking at the
little knot of bonneted women, curious children, and silent men who
had gathered around the girl. He mounted Arrow and spurred the
horse forward, directing the sorrel through the town. Denver,
pretty much inured to violence in the streets and saloons, was
already getting back to normal.

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

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
...”