Outlaw for Christmas (9781101573020)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have control over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

AN OUTLAW FOR CHRISTMAS

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Zebra Books edition / October 2001

InterMix eBook edition / December 2012

Excerpt from
Beauty and the Bounty Hunter
copyright Â© 2012 by Lori Handeland.

Excerpt from
By Any Other Name
copyright Â© 1998 by Lori Handeland.

Excerpt from
When Morning Comes
copyright Â© 2003 by Lori Handeland.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ISBN: 978-1-101-57302-0

INTERMIX

InterMix Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group

and New American Library, divisions of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

For my favorite nephew and niece: Steven and Jessica Handeland

Ad Astra per Aspera

“To the Stars Through Difficulties”

âKansas State motto

Dear Reader,

I've always wanted to do a Christmas story. That time of year is full of laughter, color, and the joy of familyâthe perfect setting for a novel about love, hope, and faith in others.

I've also long been fascinated with the orphan trains that came west in the late 1800s. As a result of the Civil War, many families were left destitute. Many mothers were forced to give up their children to a better life. Many children had nowhere else to go. For most of these children, the West was a better place. But for some, like Noah Walker, it was not. Thankfully Noah found Ruth and through her love, a better life.

If you enjoyed this story of love in the American West, I hope you'll try one, or all, of the books in a series I'm writing with Linda Devlin for Zebra Ballad called
The Rock Creek Six.
If you liked
The Magnificent Seven
, you'll love the guys who come to Rock Creek, Texas.

Happy Holidays to You All!

Lori Handeland

Prologue

As dusk settled over New York City, the train sped west. Ten-year-old Ruth O'Leary huddled alone in the first seat of the car reserved especially for orphans on their way to Kansas.

No one had asked her to sit with them. No one had even said hello. They'd only stared at her with empty orphan eyesâeyes that had lost hope long ago.

Snuffling a bit, Ruth rubbed her face. If she was going to start a new life, she had to stop being such a baby. If she was going to survive these few days on the train, she'd better not let any of the wolves smell her fear.

Ruth had lived at St. James orphanage for as long as she could recall. Being small in a world where big was valued and scared when she ought to be brave had brought Ruth more than her share of persecution. Being alone in a world that lived in twos, threes, or more had made her feel bereft when she'd never lost anyone she remembered.

“This is the chance of your lifetime,” Sister Maude had told Ruth when she'd brought her to the train station. Despite the assurances of an ancient nun, Ruth had her doubts.

She was most likely exchanging one set of mean-spirited orphans for another, and who knew what awaited her in Kelly Creek, Kansas? Ruth had only the word of Miss Burton, from the Aid Society, that a family waited there hoping for a little girl just like her.

A commotion from the rear of the car made all the children turn about in their seats. Mr. Drake, who along with Miss Burton was taking this group of thirty orphans to Kansas where they would be placed out with families, stood next to the last seat in the car. In his hand he held a rope.

“Sit there and cause no trouble, boy.” Mr. Drake stared into the darkened corner of the seat. “You agreed to this, and I said you'd be kept away from the children.”

Mr. Drake tied one end of the rope to a metal ring on the back wall. Ruth's gaze followed the rope to a shadow much larger than any boy's should be. She could not see his features in the graying light from the window.

Most of the children appeared wary. Miss Burton looked downright scared. Who had Mr. Drake tied to the back wall of the train?

The Aid Society worker scowled at them all. “Never mind him. He's confined. Now turn around, each and every one of you.” He made a shooing motion. “Peruse the countryside while we still have a bit of light. You won't get another chance like this.”

Ruth did as she was told, watching as house after house, street after street, gave way to field after field and river after river. Since the train sped toward the sun, away from the night, she was able to observe for quite a long time. Exhausted, Ruth dozed. Until someone pulled her hairâhard.

She yelped. Snide laughter was her answer. Night threatened, leaving just enough light to distinguish nearby faces. Turning around, Ruth discovered that the two girls in the seat behind her were asleep but the boy across the aisle was not.

“Satan's fire in your hair,” he sneered. “Ought to be yanked out by the roots.”

Though probably Ruth's age or younger, the boy was bigger than she. Most everyone was.

Ruth huddled in the corner of her seat. But every time she began to relax and go back to sleep, the horrid boy reached over and grabbed a handful of her hair, then yanked and laughed. Her poor head felt afire.

Lip trembling, Ruth searched for Miss Burton or Mr. Drake, but both were gone. The horrible boy now had friends, and they all began to jeer at her.

“Little Devil's helper, go back to hell.”

She tried to ignore them. Sometimes that worked. But they only taunted louder. As she continued to say and do nothing, the boys got bolder, yanking her hair
and
punching her arm. Ruth looked to the girls for help but found none. She sighed. No one ever helped her when the bullies came.

They were closing in, and she had to get out. With a cry, Ruth jumped from her seat and ran toward the back of the car, where there was a door, a way out of this torment. She surprised the bad boys enough to get past but not enough to get free.

One of them caught her skirt, another her hair; then they yanked her back. Frantic, Ruth tore away, but someone tripped her. A girl this time, she thought.

Ruth went down face first, bruising her knees, scraping her hands, smacking her chin. She saw stars for a moment. From that fuzzy world came a whisper. Was it God?

“Leave her be.”

No, not God. The bad boys would never scramble back to their seats that fast for Him. Perhaps the Devil they spoke of so freely might command them, but then Satan would care nothing for a little girl huddled upon the cold floor of the train car. Not Satan or anyone else, in Ruth's experience.

Ruth lifted her head. Her chin stung. So did her hands. There was dirt on her tongue; grit scratched between her teeth. None of that mattered. She stared at the shadows still shrouding the last seat of the train. The only thing visible was the end of a rope securely fastened to the ring on the back wall.

Once the horrible boy realized the mysterious traveler was still bound, he would no doubt sneer at her protector, just as he'd sneered at her. But when Ruth glanced behind her, all the tormentors were sitting in their seats, and the nasty fight had gone out of them. Slowly, she got to her feet and took a step toward the shadowed corner.

“Go back.”

The voice that came from the darkness rapidly spreading from the sky outside, through the windows and across the railroad car, was that of a man. Why on earth was a man in the car for orphans?

“They won't bother you again. Will you, boys?”

Heads shook. No one spoke. Who was back there, and why were the others frightened of him?

Ruth didn't want to return to her seat, where she'd been all alone and preyed upon. But the door at the back of the car rattled, and one word shot from the shadows, “Go!”

Ruth ran, reaching her place just as Mr. Drake followed Miss Burton inside. The adults distributed dry bread, which was all they had for supper. The train ride would be short, as such things went, and once in Kansas, food for the orphans would be the problem of their new families.

“Get some sleep, children,” Mr. Drake said. “You'll be amazed at the distance we will have traveled come sunrise tomorrow.”

He frowned at the last seat, then took an empty one nearer the middle of the car. Miss Burton joined some little girls, perhaps two or three years old, who whimpered in a corner all by themselves.

Ruth tried to sleep, but every time she began to drift, she awoke with a start, fearing the bad boys were sneaking up in the dark to pull out all her hair.

The darkness within the train was now complete. No lantern for the orphans. No moon to light the sky. The windows shone as black as Sister Maude's habit.

In all of Ruth's life no one had ever defended her. She had rarely felt safe or protected until one miraculous moment on this train. Ruth wanted to feel that way again.

So she crept from her seat. All the children slept. As she inched down the aisle, the sound of Miss Burton's loud snore came from the left, while Mr. Drake's soft wheeze whispered from the right. Another few feet and she reached the last seat in the car, where she hesitated, peering at the blackness that hovered so thick she could only penetrate the gloom by squinting until her eyes watered.

Dark and unkempt, his clothes dirty, torn, and far too small for him, her savior had the face of a boy and the body of man. Even slouched against the wall, she could tell he was huge. His legs disappeared beneath the seat in front of him, and his chest was as wide as the window.

Now that she could see him better, the slight roundness to his chin was the only thing that spoke of youth. Certainly not the straight blade of his nose and the height of his cheekbones, which were as unusual as the long, dark curtain of his hair. The rope tied about his waist added to the picture of a captured wild thing.

“Are you going to sit down or just stare at me all night long?”

Ruth caught her breath and lifted her gaze from the rope to his light-colored eyes, which shone from his weather-bronzed face. He was awake! And he could see in the dark like an Indian.

She should run all the way back to her seat and never get up until they kicked her off the train in Kansas. She should be scared of this young man they'd tied to the train, at least as scared as everyone else was.

Instead, a whisper of warmth, like a fire on a snowy winter night, curled through her. Sister Maude always said there were angels everywhere. Maybe this terrifying, fascinating man-boy was hers.

***

Noah Walker blinked when the girl slid in next to him instead of running like a bunny all the way back to her seat. He'd watched her walk down the aisle, and she'd looked more terrified now than when that crazy little brat had knocked her down. Yet still she sat next to him, even inched closer as the silence stretched long.

“Aren't you afraid of me?”

She started, and her huge green eyes touched on his face, then flicked away. “Why would you hurt me now when you were the only one who helped me then?”

Noah stifled a curse. Why
had
he intervened? In his fifteen years he'd seen worse things than what had been happening to the little redheaded girl. One of the adults would have shown up and taken care of things. Even knowing that, he had been unable to sit still, say nothing, and he couldn't figure out why.

She'd probably follow him about like a long-eared puppy dog forevermoreâor at least for the duration of this trip to his newest jail.

“I'm Ruth. Who're you?”

“Noah Walker.”

“How comeâ” She broke off, and her large, expressive eyes widened in her pixielike face.

“How come I'm tied up?” She nodded. “Because I should be in jail, but they're sending me to Kansas instead.”

She frowned. “Being adopted is like jail?”

“I'm not being adopted. I'm too old. I'll be working until I'm eighteen and able to be on my own again. That was the deal, and I took it.”

“Wh-what did you do?”

He stared at her for a moment, but she didn't flinch or back down. In fact, the fear that had been written all over her face when she crept down the aisle was gone. She seemed as comfortable with him as anyone ever had been.

A life on the streets and worse had hardened Noah long before his tenth birthday. He'd learned to intimidate with his size and frighten with his glares, and it hadn't hurt that his voice became a man's when he was twelve. He was big, dark, and mean looking even when he didn't try. Folks walked wary of him. No one had ever sat this close to Noah by choice. He had a feeling no one but Ruth ever would.

“I stole something,” he admitted.

“Uh-oh.” She shook her head. “Thou shalt not.”

“I like to eat,” he snapped.

It could still make him madder than a wet cat when he thought about getting caught. He'd
never
been caught before. Which was one reason he was being given a free ride to hellâmore commonly known as Kansas these days.

“I still don't understand why you're tied.” Her small fingers toyed with the knot. “Stealing isn't killing, even if they're both shalt nots.”

Noah's lips twitched at her simple words. She had a way of saying things that cut right to the center of the matter.

“Just for show,” he explained. “I could get out of that knot easy.”

Not really. When he'd tried earlier, his large hands and clumsy fingers had not been able to budge the thoroughly fastened leash one bit.

“But where would you go?”

“Exactly. I may as well go to Kansas as back to jail.”

“If you aren't going to run, then why did they tie you up like a dog?” She sounded as angry about it as he was.

Noah shrugged, pretending without thought that this wasn't the most humiliating experience of his life. “Drake promised I wouldn't be allowed near the little ones. But there's only one car for us, so the rope is to keep me away from all you poor orphan children.”

She nodded slowly, and her young face suddenly appeared ancient. “They're mean. But
you
shouldn't be embarrassed.
They
should be embarrassed for tying you like that.”

He scowled. No one ever saw through his shrugs and sneers.
No one.
The only way he could keep going and remain strong was to pretend there were no longer any feelings left beneath his hardening hide.

Ruth patted Noah's arm, and he jerked away. No one ever touched him gently. No one ever touched him at all unless it was to grab him or tie him or put him where he didn't want to be.

She wasn't offended by his desire not to be touched. Instead, she put her little fingers back on the knot and plucked. The sight of her hand, so tiny and white, only made Noah remember how his fingers, hulking and dark, had fumbled with the knot and gotten nowhere.

“Quit fooling with that,” he snapped.

“Oops,” she whispered, and her wide, watchful gaze lifted from the free length of rope in her lap to his face.

Quietly, she handed him the tether, laying her hand in his along with it. Noah stared in horror at her tiny fingers resting in his huge paw. One wrong move and he'd snap her like a twig. How on earth had the frailest girl in the car end up sitting with the biggest brute on the train?

Noah turned her hand in his and found bloody scrapes becoming scabs along her palm. Protectiveness rushed through himâalien but strongâand his fingers clenched hers. Ruth made a soft sound of pain, and Noah pulled away.

He hurt her without even trying. She should be terrified of him. Instead, she patted his rough cheek with her tiny, injured hand. The expression in her eyes made him feel strange. No one had ever looked at him as if he were strong and smart, admirable and cherished.

With a gentle sigh, Ruth curled against his side. “G'night, Noah.”

Amazed when she went right to sleep, he listened to her soft, steady breathing and tried to figure out what had just happened.

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