Читать книгу Lady Renegade - Carol Finch, Carol Finch - Страница 10

Lori wheeled around to escape from the infuriating marshal who tormented and humiliated her to no end. She yanked on the leash, hoping he’d lose his grasp, but he held on tightly. She yelped when he jerked hard, pulling her off balance. Before she hit the ground, he was looming over her, looking as fierce and deadly as any four-legged predator she’d ever encountered.

“Don’t try to escape because you’ll never win,” he growled harshly.

“If I hadn’t been half-starved these past few days, I’d have had the strength to put up a better fight,” she blurted before she could bite back the remark.

“It was fight enough, hellion. But it damn well better be the last because I won’t go this easy on you next time.”

“You call this going easy?” She gave an unladylike sniff and glared in defiance.

“If you get on my bad side, honey, I guarantee that I will make your life miserable,” he said menacingly.

“I suspect that all your sides are bad sides,” she countered before good sense warned her to shut her mouth.

Curse it, her knee-jerk reaction was to sass him. It was like asking to die. She couldn’t understand why she couldn’t restrain her rebelliousness when he looked so ominous.

“I just gave you a test and you failed it.”

She grumbled under her breath. She should’ve known he’d purposely provoked her. And she was too sensitive to everything he said and did. Consequently, her temper got the better of her and she’d reacted the same way she did to men’s unwanted advances. She fought back. It was a natural reflex.

“Not only are you willing but also quite capable of violence,” he told her as he eased down on her hips to restrict her movement. “You provoked me to retaliate,” she muttered begrudgingly. “You bring out the worst in me.”

“I’m left to wonder if your former lover refused to marry you and that’s why you shot him.”

“That is not what happened and I don’t like you at all, Gideon Fox,” she said with a spiteful hiss.

“I can live with that.” He stared intently at her. “Are you carrying his child and he rejected you?”

His suspicion outraged her. “No, I’m not!”

To her further frustration, having Gideon sitting on her in such a suggestive manner left her thoughts galloping off in the most improper direction. She could not possibly be attracted to this maddening marshal…could she? He taunted her, provoked her, tested her…and still she lay here wondering how she would respond if he leaned down and kissed her, despite the stubble of his five o’clock shadow that had progressed past the shadow stage days earlier.

She’d gone insane. That was the only logical explanation.

Her emotions were in the worst possible turmoil. An unknown assailant had shot at her accidentally. Tony had died tragically. Two hired hands from the stage station—and maybe the killer himself—were chasing after her. She’d gone to Gideon Fox for protection and he had arrested her.

Fool that she was, she’d looked to him for comfort and support and he believed her to be guilty—without bothering to open an investigation.

Her thoughts scattered when his raven head moved deliberately toward hers. The air practically popped and crackled between them as he settled his sensuous lips over hers. The scrape of his whiskers was in direct contrast to the surprisingly gentle manner that he stole the breath right out of her lungs. His tongue glided into her mouth and he breathed new life into her.

Lori closed her eyes involuntarily. When he settled suggestively on top of her, the tension melted from her body and she instinctively shifted beneath him, unsure what she wanted or needed, but she definitely needed something his mind-boggling kisses only hinted at.

This man—her sworn enemy who believed the worst about her—was not supposed to taste like heaven or make her feel these warm, throbbing sensations that left no part of her body untouched. But he did.

Before she realized what she’d done, she looped her bound hands over his head and emulated his arousing technique. Suddenly she was ravishing his mouth as he’d ravaged hers. She matched him, kiss for impatient kiss, using everything he had unknowingly taught her. She hoped he felt half as devastated as she did while they were chest-to-chest, hip-to-hip and kiss-to-breathless-kiss.

She shifted restlessly as he nudged his knee between her legs. The erotic sensations he incited took on a life of their own as she breathed him in, tasted him, teased him as he teased her with tantalizing kisses that seemed to go on forever.

His hands moved over the fabric covering her breasts and she arched helplessly into him when the fire of desire burned brighter, more intense. She forgot to breathe when his hand settled between her legs, touching her in that secret place where she burned for him the most.

Then, while she lay breathless, yielding and starving for something she couldn’t name, he reared back, nearly jerking her arms from her shoulder sockets. Scowling, he grabbed her wrists and pulled her bound arms over his head. He stared at her with the strangest expression, as if she had somehow betrayed him. Though why he would think any such thing made no sense to her. Honestly, nothing about the last few minutes made any sense to her.

“I suppose I just failed another of your mysterious tests, Marshal Fox,” she said, her voice nowhere near as steady as she’d hoped. “I consider it very unfair that you don’t give me time to study for these spur-of-the-moment tests.”

His expression transformed into a scowl as he hauled her to her feet and set her away from him. He said not one word as he shepherded her back to where Clem was tethered to his horse and the tree, then tossed her unceremoniously on Drifter’s back. Then he tied her hands and feet in place.

While they rode toward camp, with Clem in tow, Lori forcefully discarded the memory of kissing Gideon Hard-Hearted Fox for all she was worth and of him kissing her back with the same wild, reckless desperation. She fixed her attention on the three marshals guarding the wagon where five outlaws sat cross-legged in a six-by-eight-foot jail cage.

“This is what the first level of my private hell looks like,” she murmured to herself as they approached camp.

It’s what she deserved for kissing Gideon Fox…and liking it so much.

Gideon cursed himself up one side and down the other for his unprofessional mishandling of Lori’s escape attempt and the subsequent embrace. Damn the woman! She’d stunned him by knocking the air out of him. If she’d hit him harder with her doubled fists she could’ve broken his jaw, but she knew how much pressure to apply without maiming. Her double-fisted uppercut had jarred him. And embarrassed the hell out of him.

So naturally, he’d punished her by kissing her—and inadvertently punished himself to the extreme.

Hell and damn! Was he out of his mind? Must be. There was no other reasonable explanation for his inexcusable behavior. Unless you counted being bewitched by a wicked siren that lured him into the depths of forbidden desire and left him drowning in erotic pleasure.

Gideon was thoroughly ashamed of kissing her—and yearning for another taste of her. He’d tested her temper on purpose and he’d provoked her to retaliate. Unfortunately, he’d also discovered that no matter how mad she made him, he couldn’t resist kissing her lush pink lips, sinking into her soft body and skimming his hands over her tantalizing curves and swells.

Gideon decided he was more than ready for a mental and physical break from the grueling demands of chasing fugitives, sleeping with one eye open and standing at the ready to fight for his life. Dealing with criminals who’d just as soon kill him as look at him was wearing him down. Hence, his absurd reaction to the lady renegade he toted to camp.

When he reached camp, every pair of male eyes zeroed in on Lori. Her trim-fitting clothing called entirely too much attention to her tempting body. Fellow marshals and outlaws alike drooled and fantasized about doing the same thing he’d done several minutes earlier.

He had no reason whatsoever to feel protective or possessive, just because he’d impulsively kissed this seductive woman who was wanted for murder.

You’d think the charges against her would be deterrent enough. But no, he’d ignored common sense in his reckless desire to taste her and touch her.

Gideon shifted his attention to Pecos Clem, who was glaring hot pokers at his two cohorts—the men Gideon had forcefully persuaded to give up their leader’s hiding place.

“Nice work, Fox,” Deputy U.S. Marshal Stephen Wilson remarked while he made a close inspection of Lori’s feminine assets—and she had plenty of them, damn it. Then Phen dragged his eyes off her long enough to glance questioningly at Gideon. “Who is she, and does she have a few sisters who look just like her?”

The other men snickered at Phen’s question…until Gideon said, “This is Lorelei Russell. Remember the name?”

The three marshals studied her speculatively then frowned. A moment later Deputy U.S. Marshal Noel Perkins strode over to untie Pecos Clem’s feet from the stirrups then hauled him to the ground. “Your friends have been missing you, Clem. Glad you can join them.”

Dismounting, Gideon walked over to untie Lori’s feet. Instead of pulling her none too gently from the saddle, as Perkins had done to Clem, he clamped his hands on her narrow waist…and wished the hell he hadn’t. Touching her again, no matter how inadvertently or innocently, sparked fiery sensations and memories of their scorching-hot kisses. The minute her feet touched the ground he set her away from him, as if he’d been burned—because that’s exactly how he felt.

While she stared up at him, her golden eyes smoldering with anger and resentment, he turned away. He gestured to the three marshals who waited introduction.

“Lorelei Russell, these are my compatriots. Phen Wilson, Noel Perkins and Mitch Hines. They ride for Parker, same as I do.” He gestured toward the jail wagon. “Two of the men in the cage are with Pecos Clem. The other three are Chester Felding, Leland Bates and Ambrose Thomas. They are wanted in Missouri for bank robbery and assault.”

Lori surveyed the scruffy men in the metal cage, then inwardly cringed at the prospect of being stuffed in the mobile jail with them. Felding, who had a square face, bulky shoulders and a missing front tooth, leered at her as if she were standing naked. Thomas, a frizzy red-haired, overweight prisoner with arms and legs like tree stumps, licked his lips as if she were his next meal.

Bates reminded her of a rat with his pointy nose, dark, beady eyes and scarecrow-thin features. His leer made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

Clem’s two cohorts were no better. The scraggly scoundrels ogled her unblinkingly, making her squirm uncomfortably.

Repulsed, she shifted her attention to the three deputy marshals who scrutinized her closely. Better the devil I know, she thought, glancing sideways at Gideon. Then again, she might find compassion in one of the other lawmen.

She hadn’t found it in Gideon Tough-As-Nails-Fox.

Lori tossed around a polite smile to Phen Wilson, the lanky, blond-haired marshal with pale blue eyes, high cheekbones and a cleft in his chin. He looked to be thirty-five or thereabouts.

Noel Perkins was about the same age as Phen Wilson. He had straight brown hair and hazel eyes. He was thick-chested, stocky and not as tall as Gideon, who towered over everyone.

Mitch Hines had a friendly smile and Lori hoped she could count on him for the simplest of necessities during her captivity. She nodded a greeting to Mitch, whose gray eyes swept over her in careful assessment a second time. His sandy blond head was a little too big for his narrow shoulders, but she predicted he was quick of foot and as agile as a cat.

She wouldn’t want to get into a footrace with him during an escape attempt—if and when she could manage one.

The impulse to flee suddenly assailed her and she shifted restlessly from one scuffed boot to the other.

“Don’t even think about it,” Gideon murmured, as if he’d read her mind, damn him. “The odds are not in your favor. There isn’t an incompetent lawman in the bunch.”

“The odds are against me no matter where I go,” she grumbled. “You refuse to listen to my side of the story and you won’t accompany me home to investigate.”

When he infuriated her by tugging on the rope leash still attached to her metal bracelets, she glared holes in his broad back. Lori had never felt so outraged and powerless and she never wanted to feel this way again. It was humiliating and exasperating and she blamed all her woes on Gideon Fox.

He was so blasted mistrusting and cynical…and it incensed her to no end this bullheaded marshal physically appealed to her. She thought she had better taste in men!

“What are you going to do with her?” Phen Wilson asked. “We can’t cage her with those men and you damn well know it.”

Gideon glanced this way and that. “We’ll stake her out under a shade tree,” he suggested.

Perkins glanced over at Lori and frowned. “That sounds a little harsh. She’s a woman.”

“A woman wanted for murder,” Gideon reminded him. “She didn’t show her last lover much sympathy.”

Lori stamped her foot in frustration. “He was not my lover,” she protested. “He was my friend and I didn’t kill him. For all I know my friend was hiding out in the territory, like your prisoners, and a bounty hunter identified him, shot him and claimed the reward for Tony after I left. I might have been cleared of this disastrous mistake—” she doubted it, but there was an outside chance “—but Marshal Fox refuses to take me back to find out for certain!”

As the other three marshals stared pensively at her she kept talking, hoping to sway them into being lenient and volunteering to check out her story. “Please consider that I’m upset about Tony’s death. It’s bad enough that he proposed and I turned him down right before someone ambushed him and very nearly shot me in the process. There are questions that need to be answered!”

“Why’d you turn him down?” Mitch Hines asked curiously.

She stared into his pale gray eyes and said, “Because I didn’t love him and he wanted me to elope to anywhere, as long as it was out of the territory. Which made me wonder if he felt the need to run from the law. Tony was likable and he was kind to me but he was very secretive about his past.”

Just when she thought she might be making headway with the other marshals a shout erupted in the distance. Lori glanced over her shoulder to see a man in his midtwenties—with raven hair and a bronzed complexion that resembled Gideon’s—galloping toward them, riding an Appaloosa gelding.

Gideon tugged on her leash as he headed toward the new arrival, forcing her to scurry to catch up with his long, urgent strides.

“What’s wrong, Glenn?” Gideon demanded as he reached out to grab the Appaloosa’s reins.

“Galen was shot in the arm last night when two horse thieves swooped down to steal our horses,” Glenn reported gruffly. “You have to come, Gid. Sarah and I have tried to keep Galen down so he can heal, but he’s determined to find our prize horses….”

His voice trailed off when he glanced past Gideon to appraise Lori with his dark eyes. “Ma’am,” he greeted politely. “A pleasure to meet you.”

Gideon rolled his eyes and said, “Lorelei Russell, this is my youngest brother, Glenn.”

“Hello, Glenn.” She flashed him a smile as she stepped up beside Gideon. “I’d shake your hand but your big brother has mistakenly tied me up.”

“She’s wanted for murder.”

Glenn’s dark eyes popped and his jaw sagged against his chest. “She’s your prisoner?” he chirped incredulously.

“I’m not guilty but your mule-headed brother refuses to listen to reason,” Lori inserted.

Gideon glanced at her in annoyance then looked over his shoulder at the men in the cage. “How many of you are innocent?” he called out to the prisoners.

All the outlaws gave a shout while Gideon stared pointedly at Lori. “You can see why your proclamations fall on deaf ears. Everyone around here is misunderstood, just like you, hellion.”

“Well, she doesn’t look guilty to me,” Glenn said as he gave her the once-over again, paying particular attention to Lori’s alluring curves and swells.

“Looks can be deceiving and don’t you forget it, Glenn.”

Hell and damn, thought Gideon. His twenty-six-year-old brother wasn’t immune to Lori’s charms, either. Just what he needed, a love-starved little brother taking Lori’s side.

“Are you coming?” Glenn asked anxiously. “Sarah is upset.”

“Who’s Sarah?” Lori inquired.

“Galen’s wife. She’s afraid he’ll take off while I’m fetching Gideon and she can’t chase after him because she’s five months pregnant.”

Gideon pivoted toward his horse. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he called to the other marshals.

“What about the woman?” Phen Wilson questioned as he glanced from the cage of men to Gideon.

Gideon blew out a frustrated breath. As much as he wanted to get this sassy spitfire out from underfoot—because he’d proved he couldn’t trust himself with the forbidden temptation she presented—he didn’t feel comfortable leaving her in camp, either. It wasn’t that he didn’t expect the other marshals to treat her humanely. It was just that she was…

He scowled at himself. It was just that she fascinated him and he didn’t want to leave her here indefinitely to captivate one of the other lawmen to the point that he stole a few kisses and caresses from her. Plus, he didn’t want her to work her wiles on the other lawmen who might accompany her cross-country. There was no telling what might happen while she and one of his fellow marshals were alone.

“I must be out of my mind,” he growled to himself as he scooped up Lori and plunked her down on Drifter’s saddle.

All three marshals waggled their eyebrows and grinned speculatively. Gideon hated what they were thinking. But he couldn’t leave her behind. He felt so conflicted he wanted to swear two blue streaks. Nevertheless, he clamped down on his tongue, ignored the taunting stares and mounted Pirate.

While Glenn took the lead, and Gideon held the reins to Lori’s strawberry roan gelding, the procession headed north. Twenty minutes later, Glenn dug into his saddlebag and leaned over to offer Lori a slice of home-cooked bread and a stick of beef jerky. She smiled gratefully as she accepted the food with her bound hands.

“Thank you, Glenn. Truth is that I’m famished. I’ve been living in a cave for several days with little nourishment.”

Gideon shifted uncomfortably in the saddle when Glenn stared disapprovingly at him. However, in his defense, Gideon had been busy interrogating Pecos Clem’s cohorts and tracking down the dangerous fugitive. Then he’d spent the day trying to ignore a woman who posed so much temptation that he’d broken his rule about becoming involved with any prisoner—especially a woman prisoner—and stopped just short of burying himself in her lush body in a weak, mindless, lusty moment.

Sweet mercy! What had he been thinking?

“Surely you don’t think she’s guilty of anything except being too beautiful for her own good,” Glenn murmured for his ears only.

“I have a good deal more experience with fugitives and their melodramatics than you do,” Gideon said confidentially. “You start believing every sad tale someone tells and you could wind up shot, stabbed or knocked unconscious, while your fugitive makes a fast getaway and leaves you for dead.”

Glenn glanced over at Lori and smiled longingly. Gideon had to admit that she looked exceptionally fetching with her flame-gold hair dancing in the breeze and the sun spotlighting her beguiling figure. He knew from personal experience that staring into her alluring features and getting lost in those entrancing golden eyes could make a man believe what she wanted him to believe.

Clearly, Glenn had made a snap judgment. Thanks to encouragement from his lusty male body, he’d decided Lorelei Russell was a victim of circumstances beyond her control. Certainly not a murderess with a hefty reward on her head.

A lot the kid knew, Gideon mused sourly.

“What can you tell me about the horse thieves?” Gideon asked, hoping to distract his moon-eyed brother.

“Not much to tell,” Glenn replied then bit into Sarah’s mouthwatering bread. “It happened last night. We heard the horses stamping around in the corral and we dashed outside to check on them. The thieves wore bandannas over their faces and they started shooting. Unfortunately, Galen was in the direct line of fire.”

“What kind of horses were they riding?” Gideon asked. “Did you notice any brands?”

Glenn shook his head, munched on his food and frowned thoughtfully. “Just brown horses, I guess. It was dark and foggy, but I didn’t see any brands…. More bread, ma’am?”

Gideon sighed in exasperation while Glenn smiled and extended more food to Lori. She graced Glenn—the smitten fool—with a dazzling smile that practically outshone the sun.

“Thank you, Glenn. It’s very generous of you to share your food with me. I appreciate it.”

My, she was pouring on the charm, wasn’t she? If Gideon had to listen to much more of this sticky sweetness he’d have a toothache. And Glenn had an idiotically happy expression on his face that made him look about twelve.

“No trouble, ma’am. Shame on Gid for not offering you food until now.”

“Please call me Lori,” she insisted, casting him another dimpled smile.

Glenn bowed from the saddle, looking as charming and rakish as Gideon had ever seen him. “Lori it is. Where do you hail from?”

Gideon thought he was going to be sick. Nonetheless, he remained silent while Lori filled Glenn in on her life story. The cynic in Gideon wondered how much truth there was to it. He tried to pretend he wasn’t listening and didn’t give a damn, but he was curious about her.

“My father was a lieutenant colonel in the army and we moved from one post to another for years. I was eleven when I lost my mother and younger brother to a diphtheria epidemic. Papa said he couldn’t be around military posts without the memories of Mama breaking his heart. He acquired a special trader’s license and we opened a trading post in the Osage Nation. When the number of travelers increased and the stage company wanted to provide service in the Pawnee Nation to the south we staked the river to provide ferry service.”

She smiled at Glenn again and ignored Gideon as if he were invisible. “What about you and your family, Glenn?”

“Our father was a French trapper,” he replied. “Our mother was full-blood Osage. I was twelve when someone killed our father and stole his furs while he was on his way to Rendezvous.”

“I’m sorry,” Lori commiserated. “It’s difficult to lose a loved one.”

“Yes, it is,” Glenn murmured. “Out of loneliness and desperation, my mother remarried two years later.”

“Unfortunately, the abusive bastard played the role of the attentive suitor convincingly…until he got what he wanted. A place to stay and rapport with our people so he could cheat us all,” Gideon added bitterly.

“I’m sorry about that, too,” Lori murmured.

“He was the one who was sorry,” Glenn remarked. “He shoved our mother during one of his mean drunks. When she hit her head and collapsed, he left her to die. Gideon went after him. He’d been working with the Osage Police to support our family and he tracked down our stepfather. The fool tried to shoot Gideon out of the saddle.”

Lori glanced curiously at Gideon. “Were you injured?”

He nodded. “I took a gunshot in the thigh.”

“But he put our stepfather down and the bastard didn’t get up again,” Glenn said grimly. “Gideon became brother, mother and father to Galen and me after that.”

Lori wondered if Gideon’s abusive stepfather was the first fatality of his job as a law enforcement officer. But she didn’t ask. Both men lapsed into silence for several minutes after telling the grim tale.

When she glanced at Glenn, he was staring at her with masculine appreciation. Even if his cynical older brother didn’t trust her, Glenn seemed willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Too bad he wasn’t a marshal who’d listen to her story and agree to open an investigation.

“What do you do these days, Glenn?” she inquired as she resettled herself more comfortably in the saddle.

“I help Galen with the horses and other livestock. I do most of the field work while he’s on police duty on the reservation.” He glanced quickly at Gideon then looked away. “I want to serve with the Osage Police like Galen, and like Gideon did before Judge Parker recruited him to be a Deputy U.S. Marshal.”

“So why haven’t you?” she questioned.

He hitched his thumb toward Gideon. “Because my big brother says having two brothers being shot at on a daily basis is enough. But it turns out I’m as good a shot as Gid, not that it matters to him.”

Gideon barked a laugh. “Not even on your good day, kid. When you can hit a target, backward and blindfolded, we’ll talk.”

Glenn’s broad chest puffed up like an offended toad’s. “I’m twenty-six years old, damn it… Excuse my language, Lori. I can do whatever I want, if I want. You aren’t my boss anymore.”

While Glenn and Gideon exchanged teasing taunts, Lori smiled to herself. She missed having a brother. For years, it had been only Lori and her father, working together to establish the trading post to feed, supply and transport travelers.

After hearing about Gideon’s dealings with his scheming, abusive stepfather, she understood why he was wary of believing strangers’ stories. She knew he felt the burden of responsibility to care for and protect his family. She wondered how it would feel to have him protect her rather than distrust her motives and spew his cynicism at her.

Come to think of it, why had he brought her along when he could’ve foisted her off on his fellow marshals and be done with her? That’s what she’d expected, but he’d surprised her.

She couldn’t help but ask him about it.

He shifted awkwardly on the striking Pinto-and-Appaloosa stallion. For a moment, she didn’t think he planned to answer. He didn’t bother to do her the courtesy of glancing in her direction when he finally spoke.

“You’re my prisoner and I’m collecting my bounty money.”

The comment cut her to the core. She told herself she suspected as much. It wasn’t because he didn’t trust the other marshals to keep her captive. It wasn’t because he thought she might come to harm while caged with known outlaws who might maul her or molest her during the trek to Fort Smith.

No, it was about the money he’d collect when he delivered her to trial.

“At least you’re honest,” she mumbled.

“One of us should be.”

Lori gnashed her teeth. “I’m really beginning to dislike you intensely, Marshal Fox.”

“It’s not my duty to win friends, Miz Russell.”

“Good thing. You’d fail miserably. You have the charm and disposition of a rattlesnake.”

Glenn chuckled at the unflattering exchange. “Too bad Galen isn’t here to enjoy this. Very few people dare to talk back to my big brother.”

She figured the only reason Gideon allowed her to get away with it was because he didn’t want to shoot her or strangle her while his youngest brother was an eyewitness.