Wildfire in His Arms (10 page)

“So why did you kill him?”

She gave him a pointed stare. “You want to hear this or not?” He didn't answer and his gaze was a lot more pointed than hers was, so she grudgingly continued, “Life was good in Bingham Hills while I was growing up. I had lots of friends, the boys and girls I went to school with, and we had fun hunting, fishing, and riding. I even enjoyed our sewing circle though I was terrible with a needle, but we did more gossiping than sewing and laughed a lot. But it all changed when I turned sixteen because the boys in town wouldn't leave me alone. I'd filled out by then and had long blond hair. I told you why I cut it, but I couldn't do much to disguise my other attributes”—his gaze moved down to her vest, bringing a slight blush to her cheeks—“because Gran insisted I dress properly in skirts and blouses except when I was hunting. The boys were paying me so much attention that my girlfriends got jealous and stopped talking to me. Gran took a broom to the boys more'n once, and my brother, Johnny, would hide in the bushes and shoot rocks at them with his slingshot. Even that didn't stop them from coming around.”

“So you didn't always wear a gun?”

“Goodness, no. I never would have dreamed of wearing a Colt over my skirts—then.” She chuckled for a moment. “I was the hunter in the family after my pa took off and never came back. I never carried my rifle in town, but I started carrying a small gun in my skirt pocket when Bingham junior became more aggressive than the other boys and began making inappropriate remarks and advances to me after I turned sixteen.”

“The mayor?”

“No, his son, Evan. I used to go fishing with him and his best friend, Tom, when we were kids, until the day Evan bragged that I'd be marrying him someday because his pa told him I would. I didn't believe the mayor had said any such thing, but I avoided Evan and his friends after that. Then he started asking me to marry him. That year, he must've asked about eight times. I wouldn't have said yes even if I wasn't courting the new young man in town at the time.”

“Doing what?”

She stared at him. “Do I really need to explain courting to you?”

“I think maybe you do.”

“I don't mean I would've asked Billy Johnston to marry me, if that's what you're thinking. I'm bold but not that kind of bold. I just let him know I was interested, saved my smiles just for him, that sort of thing. But Billy left Bingham Hills before I was seventeen, and then the mayor himself asked me to marry him. I probably shouldn't have laughed at the old coot's proposal.”

Degan raised a brow. “Just how old was this man?”

“Heck, he's older than my grandmother by some ten years. Even she laughed when I told her about it. Carl had Evan real late in life. Rumor is he went through four wives trying for a kid till he finally got one. But after I refused him, he must've figured that compromising me would get Gran to insist on a wedding.”

“Did it?”

“I said he figured it would, not that he actually succeeded. But he sure did try, the bastard. He had his puppet of a sheriff take me to his house late one morning. He even got rid of most of his servants for the day 'cept for his half-deaf cook, who wouldn't hear me yelling. I wouldn't have known the cook was in the house if Carl didn't tell me I could stay for lunch after we were done and that the meal would be ready soon. I think he really expected me to be civil afterward, as if his compromising me were just ordinary business for him. But after some tussling on his sofa, I managed to get my little gun out of my pocket so he'd back off. I even shoved it in his gut so he'd know just how serious I was.”

“Then you did shoot him?”

“No, but I sure as hell would have. It turned out my brother, Johnny, saw the sheriff dragging me to Bingham's house and followed us. Johnny waited until the sheriff left, then started looking through the windows. What he saw through one of them was Carl trying to force himself on me. But no one died that day. At least Carl was still alive when I left him. And I didn't even shoot him—my brother did through the open window, trying to protect me. But Carl looked down and saw the blood and fainted like a girl. So he probably thought I did fire at him. I was hoping he would think it. I wasn't going to let him have my brother arrested for his good deed. I took off so I'd get blamed for it.”

“Which obviously worked.”

“Yeah, blamed for a flesh wound on his shoulder, which is all it was and barely bleeding at that. I checked, just to make sure he wouldn't bleed out before someone found him. I was just going to give Carl some time to cool off about the whole incident and come to his senses, maybe marry another young woman, and not blame me for trying to defend myself. But he or his son sent a posse after me. It took me months to lose them. Carl paid well when he wanted something bad. His son, Evan, is just like him. But before the year was out a bounty hunter found me and showed me the wanted-for-murder poster.”

“How'd you get out of that?”

The waiter arrived with their breakfast so she didn't answer. She couldn't take her eyes off those plates piled high with flapjacks and sausage and the basket filled with toasted sourdough slices and flaky pastries. She was too hungry not to start eating right away and have her plate half-cleaned before she got around to saying, “I was wearing a six-shooter by then, but the bounty hunter got me to drop my gun. So I convinced him he'd made a mistake by showing him that I was a girl.”

“The same way you showed me?”

Her cheeks reddened. She
knew
he'd felt her breast when he'd been about to punch her last night. He hadn't needed her to show him. She flushed with heat every time she thought of it, and the instinctive, seductive way she'd shown off her breasts to him. It was so embarrassing. Which was why she was glaring at Degan when she said, “No, I just had to flirt with the man a little and take off my vest so he could see I wasn't trying to bluff him. My
vest
, not my shirt. Then I asked him nicely to get the hell out of my camp. I made sure he wasn't following me when I took off.”

“You're lying again.”

She sat back with a huff. “Why would I lie about something I didn't have to volunteer?”

“Showing him you were a girl wouldn't have changed a bounty hunter's mind when your likeness on that poster is so good.”

She grinned cheekily. “It is, ain't it? On this new poster anyway. This whole episode with the bounty hunter took place over a year ago, and the poster he had wasn't nearly as detailed. The sketch looked like every other immature eighteen-year-old boy. But even after I saw the bounty hunter's reward poster, I still couldn't believe Carl had died from that flesh wound Johnny gave him.”

“Wounds can fester.”

“Yeah, I know, but Carl would have had the town's best doctors taking care of him. Whether he's dead or alive, I can't go back home now because they'll hang me for sure.”

“And in the meantime you took up bank robbery to get by?”

“Now
that
was a joke,” she grumbled with a snort. “I was packed up, ready to ride out that day. I stopped at the bank to take my own money out of it, all sixty-four dollars I'd earned from selling meat in town to whoever wanted it. Bingham Hills only had one bank. Carl owned that, too, of course. Wilson Cox ran it for him. It was too small for more'n one employee, so when Wilson took a break to eat lunch, there was no one to help the customers. He didn't bother to close shop though. He likely assumed everyone in town knew better than to try to do any banking at noon. But how was I to know that? I didn't go to the bank often. I walked in and asked for my money. Wilson refused to help me. We argued. He wouldn't budge. He was going to make me stand there and wait for a half hour when he was sitting right there in front of the cash drawer!”

“So you robbed the bank.”

“
No, I did not!
But I took out my little gun and told Wilson he could stop eating for two minutes and hand me my money. He stuffed it in a sack and threw it at me, he was so annoyed. Like I wasn't furious at his orneriness? It wasn't until a week later when I emptied the sack that I found an extra hundred and three dollars in it. He couldn't just give me what I asked for, no. In his haste he put my money in a sack that contained someone else's money. The mistake was on his part, probably because he just wanted me gone so he could get back to his lunch.”

“Is this the money in your saddlebag that you refuse to spend?”

“Yeah, and I'll be giving it back, every damn dollar—­someday.”

“You were right. It's laughable—if it actually happened that way.”

“It did, so why aren't you laughing?”

He didn't answer. Obviously, he didn't believe anything she'd just told him. Not that it would have made a difference if he did. He'd already made it clear that it wasn't his job to decide her fate, merely to turn her over to the law so others could.

He stood and grabbed their hats. “Time to go.”

She didn't budge. This was it. The sheriff couldn't be more'n a block or two away. Would Degan shoot her right there in front of witnesses if she tried one more time to run?

“W
HATEVER YOU
'
RE THINKING, KID,
stop thinking it. Yes, I will donate a bullet to your leg, and, yes, I will do it right here—in case you were wondering.”

“So now you're a mind reader, too?” Max growled up at Degan.

He tossed some money on the table and nodded toward the front door. “We're stopping by my hotel first, so how about you behave and I won't have to put you over my shoulder again to get there.”

Another reprieve? Max got up, started to walk to the door, but didn't feel like getting yanked around anymore today, so she stopped to wait for Degan, only to have him bump into her back because he'd already been right on her heels. She heard an aggravated sigh. Oh my God, she'd annoyed him? His emotions
could
get ruffled? She would have grinned if he weren't throwing her in jail today. Fat lot of good it did her to know he was susceptible to some needling when they would be parting ways shortly.

He didn't have them mount up, he just picked up the reins before leading her down the street. It was more crowded in the late morning, mostly with miners, but there were businessmen, too, and cowboys riding by. Delivery wagons were being unloaded in front of stores, and women with baskets on their arms were doing their morning shopping. Glancing around, Max noticed that she was drawing no attention, but Degan sure was. People were eyeing him covertly. She chalked it up to human nature that people were so curious about someone as menacing as him.

He stopped at a stable in the next block and paid to have both horses brushed and fed. While that might not take long, Max still viewed it as another delay for her. She was pleased until she realized the jail could be really close now. In fact, she might not be seeing her horse again. Ever. She hugged Noble's neck one last time and whispered her apologies in case that proved true. They'd been through a lot together. He'd gotten her out of a lot of close calls. . . . Damnit, she didn't want to say good-bye to him!

“You think they'll let Noble tag along even—?”

“Who?”

“My horse.”

“Nice name.”

“I gave it to him for encouragement.” Then she added in a whisper so Noble wouldn't hear, “He was a mite clumsy when he was younger. But will they let him tag along even if they stick me in a backbreaking cage for that trip to Texas?”

He handed her saddlebags to her, but paused to stare at her, probably because she'd just sounded hopeful and chagrined at the same time. While she never tried to hide her emotions and was pretty darn clear about what she was feeling, Degan's gaze was as inscrutable as ever. “I believe you're talking about prison transports. You haven't been convicted yet.”

“Then how will they take me to Texas?”

He shrugged and tossed his own saddlebags over his shoulder. “By train, stage, or horse would be my guess. You can be shackled while using two of those means of transportation. Worried?”

“I was worried about my back, yeah. It'll be broken by the end of that long trip. You can't stand up in those cages, you know.”

He didn't reply because he simply didn't care. Why would he? She was nothing to him but money in his pocket, and a damn lot of it, too. She was going to make him rich today if he wasn't already.

His hotel was across the street from the stable. Stepping into it was like stepping into another world. Suddenly, she was surrounded by plush velvet sofas and chairs, carved tables with fancy flower vases on them, huge paintings, shiny marble floors, lit chandeliers! Max looked around with wide eyes as Degan pulled her toward the lobby desk. She'd thought that she would be making him rich with her reward, but he had to be rich already to stay in an elegant hotel such as this.