Hero? He’d grunt out a laugh at that title if there was room in the cramped saddle.

Zane had been called dirty. He’d heard low-down a few times. He’d felt the curses of mothers and sweethearts follow him for days, even weeks, after he’d collected a fee for a loved one.

“I’m a bounty hunter, ma’am.” He’d better set the record straight before the woman got any fancy ideas about him. “Money-hungry cuss is what I’ve been called more often than not.”

He waited to feel her posture stiffen against his belly. Maybe the gentle lady would even slip off Ace’s back and choose to walk rather than share the space with him.

She turned as best she could to peer at his face. Raindrops hit her skin and dotted it with liquid freckles. Her mouth formed the same perfectly amazed circle that he had seen when he had galloped on by her earlier.

He leaned backward in the saddle, ready to dismount and walk the rest of the way to Green Island.

“Truly? A genuine bounty hunter?” Unbelievably, she broke into a grin that might have shot the clouds out of the sky.

About the Author

While in the third grade, CAROL ARENS had a teacher who noted that she ought to spend less time daydreaming and looking out of the window and more time on her sums. Today, Carol spends as little time on sums as possible. Daydreaming about plots and characters is still far more interesting to her.

As a young girl, she read books by the dozen. She dreamed that one day she would write a book of her own. A few years later Carol set her sights on a new dream. She wanted to be the mother of four children. She was blessed with a son, then three daughters. While raising them she never forgot her goal of becoming a writer. When her last child went to high school she purchased a big old clunky word processor and began to type out a story.

She joined Romance Writers of America, where she met generous authors who taught her the craft of writing a romance novel. With the knowledge she gained she sold her first book and saw her life-long dream come true.

Carol lives with her real-life hero husband Rick in Southern California, where she was born and raised. She feels blessed to be doing what she loves, with all her children and a growing number of perfect and delightful grandchildren living only a few miles from her front door.

When she is not writing, reading or playing with her grandchildren, Carol loves making trips to the local nursery. She delights in scanning the rows of flowers, envisaging which pretty plants will best brighten her garden.

She enjoys hearing from readers, and invites you to contact her at carolsarens@yahoo.com

A previous novel by the same author:

 RENEGADE MOST WANTED

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

Rebel with a Cause

Carol Arens

www.millsandboon.co.uk

AUTHOR NOTE

For me, the idea for a book sometimes comes with a single scene in my head. What if such and such happened? What then?

For REBEL WITH A CAUSE the scene came about because of cows eating newly washed clothes on laundry day. According to my great-grandmother, Rachael, this was not a rare occurrence.

While travelling the preaching circuit, she found it necessary to wash the family’s clothing in nearby creeks. This presented her with a dilemma: carry the heavy wet clothes back up the bank, or dry them on the bushes growing beside the creek and risk them being eaten by an errant cow?

Faced with the same choice, my heroine, Missy Devlin, decides to dry her gown on a bush. I hope you enjoy reading about how her life changes because of a hungry cow.

Warm wishes and happy reading.

To my firstborn, John Michael McDonald, who taught me the strength of a mother’s love.

Chapter One

Cedar County, Nebraska, March 30, 1881

Shivering and nearly naked in her damp, lacy underwear, Missy Devlin gazed across a prairie that seemed as big and empty as the universe.

“The Western Adventures of Missy Lenore Devlin and her Intrepid Pup, Muff,” she wrote in her brand-new copybook.

She dipped her pen in the ink bottle, wishing there was a quicker way to write down her story. Life unfolded faster than she could scribble words across a page.

On only her first full day in the west, adventure had come upon her as easily as a cat comes to cream.

Mercy if she hadn’t fallen bottom-first into a stream rescuing her puppy. Now, here she sat, all alone on God’s great prairie in her next-to-nothings waiting for her dress to dry. It was a mishap that would cause any well-bred young lady no end of distress.

Back home, it was well-known that Missy rarely felt distressed. Truly, she could not have daydreamed a better adventure.

She blinked away an image of her older brother’s frown, intent on savoring the hint of sunshine teasing her bare shoulders. Poor Edwin would turn as red as a Boston sunset if he could see across the miles.

Her brother had tried, valiantly, she would have to admit, to do his duty and keep her on a socially proper path, but sadly for Edwin, some things were just beyond a sibling’s control.

A crisp wind whined through the rotten slats of wood that tacked together the abandoned wagon she sat upon. She licked her lips, certain that she tasted the green of a thousand acres of newly sprouted grass.

The pages of her journal rippled over her scandalously and oh-so-delightfully naked knees. She smoothed the paper flat once more and wrote another line.

“As related to her sister, Suzie,” she read out loud.

Writing tales of adventure was what she had been born to do. Tea parties and cotillions were lovely for her friends, but putting words on paper was what made Missy’s heart soar.

With each page that she wrote the world of black-and-white became more real than the wind nipping at her petticoat.

Shrill yapping beside the stream nearly disrupted her burst of creativity.

“Quit that barking, Muff, you’ll frighten Number Nine!” she called without glancing up from the inspired text.

Number Nine, the horse she had rented this morning in Green Island, whinnied as if he agreed. His hooves splashed in the stream where she had tethered him to a nearby bush.

“Don’t make me tie you to the wagon.” With no little effort she closed her mind to Muff’s racket.

If Suzie were here to entertain the pup, Missy would not have lost the descriptive phrase that had flitted across her mind. She would have read it out loud to her sister and they would both have admired it.

Missy’s heart squeezed in a bittersweet knot. She pictured her twin sitting, hour upon hour, on the front porch of their stylish home. In spite of the fact that it was a haven of security, of love, Suzie would be gazing west, wondering about Missy’s great adventures.

The telling would be a joy and a burden. She would have to pick brilliant words so that Suzie could live the adventure as though they traveled side by side, the way they had always planned to do.

Early this morning, while gazing out the window of her hotel in Green Island, she had determined to begin her tale with a description of the crisp spring scene spread before her.

Seen from the upper floor, the Missouri River cut across land that looked like an endless pasture of rolling green. The hills rose in easy swells and then sloped down just as gently. Scattered patches of a late snow glittered and melted in the sunshine.

Pristine beauty is what she had intended to relate, but upon closer inspection, the Great American West was dirtier than she had first thought.

In only seconds, Muff had fallen victim to burrs, rascally things that burrowed into his fur with ferociousness. Suzie would laugh her corset loose if she could see his ragged condition.

“Hush, Muff! I can’t think of a word with all that barking!” Missy glanced toward the stream. A stern glare would silence him. “Oh, mercy me!”

The splashing in the stream had not been Number Nine. It was a giant cow.

Missy set aside her writing and stood up. Old wood creaked and groaned. She wiped her suddenly damp palms on her corset.

Gently bred eastern cattle had smaller, daintier mouths than their wild western cousins. Missy made a mental note of the fact, determined to remember how a piece of meadow grass clung to a glittering glob of spittle oozing out of the cow’s jowls … while it munched in apparent contentment on the bodice of her dress!

Muff snipped at the cow’s hoof. He whirled to yap at the flick and swing of its fat brown tail.

A brass button shaped like a rosebud clicked against the cow’s lower tooth then snapped off and plopped in the grass.

“Adversity holds the seeds of adventure” was a motto Missy lived by, but really, that was one of her favorite gowns.

“Hello, cow,” she crooned, dismayed to witness a red satin bow disappear between the great hairy jaws. She slid by slow inches off the wagon. “Let go of my dress.”

Missy shuffled a step forward. The cow was shorter than she was, but weighed Heaven’s-own-guess more.

So far, the beast seemed to care for nothing beyond the lovely red-and-white cloth being crushed in its mouth. It didn’t even kick at Muff who resembled a snowball-sized fiend, nipping and yapping at the cow’s muddy hooves.

If the creature wasn’t annoyed enough at Muff to silence him with a kick, perhaps it would be safe to walk right up to it.

Chances are it was someone’s large pet, a creature used to being coddled and fed a daily ration of women’s apparel.

With a deep, steadying breath, she left the security of the wagon behind.

“There’s a good brown cow.” She knelt and gripped the hem of her gown in both fists. “I’ll take my dress now.”

A tug on the fabric made no impression on the beast’s dedicated gnawing.

She glanced about. Perhaps help would come trotting over one of the rolling hills.

Drat! Where was a heroic, handsome cowboy when a girl needed him? Surely the plains must be speckled with them. As far as she could see, though, the only movement was the grass bending under the breeze and a building mass of clouds that darkened the afternoon horizon.

She yanked. The cow yanked back, tossing its head. A seam ripped and a snort from the bovine nose sprayed something unpleasant into the air.

Muff snarled. The heifer’s gaze swung sideways at him. One stomp of the cloven hoof and the dog would be done for.

“Come, Muff, come,” she commanded.

Muff charged. Missy let go of the dress. She snagged him by the curl of his tail.

The cow snorted and pawed the ground. It lunged.

Missy ran.

She scrambled onto the wagon with the heat of a deep “Moo” raising the hair on her neck.

“Quiet, Muff.” She clamped her fingers over his muzzle, her breathing quick with the narrow escape. “Hush or I’ll toss you right back down to get stepped on.”

The beast butted the wagon. Three slats of wood splintered under the impact. Missy scrambled for balance and nearly toppled overboard.

Apparently pleased at having the last say, the cow turned and waddled off, dragging the remains of Missy’s dress through the dirt and across the stream.

Perhaps she ought to mount Number Nine and follow the giant until it became bored with her gown and dropped it. The problem would be keeping Muff out of harm’s way.

Missy plunked down on a slat of wood. She huffed out a sigh. Apparently not considering the day lost, Muff attempted to scramble out of her lap. He would, no doubt, pursue the bovine filcher over hill and dale if he had the chance.

Grasping the fringe of grimy fur that had fallen over his eyes, she flipped it back and settled him securely in her lap.

“You’ve lost your pretty blue ribbon, you little scamp. You won’t be able to see a thing now.”

At least he wouldn’t see how the clouds on the horizon seemed to boil and blacken by the second. The sun shining down on the wagon lost its kiss of warmth.

She tried to tug her own ribbon and curls back to the top of her head but they sagged in a steadfast knot halfway down her scalp.

“Adversity does hold the seeds of adventure,” she announced to a crushed flower on the ground. Its remaining petal twisted in the breeze.

It would take a bit of creativity to write this adventure so that Suzie would laugh and Mother not swoon.

Gossip was bound to spread. She knew from some experience that embarrassing stories had an uncanny way of speeding across the miles.

It wouldn’t do for Edwin to hear that Missy had come trotting down the public streets of Green Island wearing nothing but a dirty shift and toting a bramble-infested, purebred Maltese.

No sooner had Muff settled into a quiet, filthy ball on her lap than he growled and scrambled to his paws, stretching to look taller than he was.

“Now what?” She glanced across the prairie, peering through an afternoon being steadily dimmed by the heavy-hung clouds.

A man appeared over the rise of a distant hill, walking. He spotted her and waved his arm.

She had wished for a bold cowboy to ride to her aid and was a good bit disappointed.

The man, breaking into a trot and shouting, “Hello,” looked like a gentleman, with his cravat neatly tied and his polished shoes winking with the last ray of sunshine. His pale cheeks jiggled with his awkward gait.

He might as well have been plucked from her mother’s drawing room.

Zane Coldridge fastened the top button of his coat against the rising wind and tugged his Stetson low on his forehead.

“We’ve nearly got him, boy,” he murmured to his horse.

The criminal, Wesley Wage, had so far been able to outrun the five-hundred-dollar price on his head, but if his behavior of the past two hundred miles held true, Zane would be able to track him to the saloon in Dry Leaf.

From a quarter mile away, Dry Leaf looked like a pass-through town. With any luck the slick bank robber would follow his usual pattern and be settled in at the saloon, belly-up to the bar, without the marshal being any the wiser.

That was often the way it went. Wesley Wage looked like an eastern dandy so folks seldom realized he was the robber who had been terrorizing innocent bank patrons over the greater part of three states.

Zane urged his horse down the main street of Dry Leaf, taking note of the location of the saloon and the marshal’s office. The two were far enough apart so that a busy or inattentive lawman might be unaware that his town harbored a criminal.

Zane tied his horse beside a trough of water outside the marshal’s office.

“Take a long drink and a short rest, Ace.” He stroked away a film of prairie dust on the horse’s neck. “We might not be here any longer than the last ten towns we’ve ridden through.”

Zane took the steps to the marshal’s office two at a time, swatting a clinging layer of dirt off his wool coat.

A feminine giggle met him when he opened the door. The rustle of a petticoat and a gasp welcomed him inside. A woman, blushing like a summer peach, leaped off the lap of a young man sitting behind a big polished desk. The marshal’s badge hung from his shirt as though it was too heavy.

He didn’t look to be more than a boy. The sudden blush of red flooding his cheeks didn’t age the image.

“Afternoon, Marshal.” Zane nodded to the couple. The woman spun away, tugging at the bodice of her dress. “Miss.”

“Mrs.,” she muttered. She turned again with her clothing restored. “Mrs. Taylor.”

“My wife just …” The young man stood up and extended his hand across the desk. Zane shook it. “… she just brought lunch.”

The couple must have been quick eaters. Zane didn’t spot a single crumb on anything that might be an eating surface.

“Mind if I have a look at your wanted posters?”

The boy marshal indicated the wall beside the door, the crimson in his cheeks fading to mottled pink.

“Not much to look at,” he said. “Don’t get a lot of criminal traffic through Dry Leaf.”

Not any that the marshal would recognize by the faded posters on the wall, at least. Wesley Wage was there, half hidden under a bright new page with the sketch of a young lady on it.

Zane stared at her likeness for a moment. She had a pretty smile. On top of her head sat a bundle of curls held up by a ribbon. She seemed to stare out at him with eyes all sparkling with humor and curiosity. He’d give up a cold beer to know whether they were blue or brown. Maybe even green?

She didn’t look like any criminal he’d ever trailed, but someone wanted her bad enough to offer a two-thousand-dollar reward.

“What’s the lady’s crime?”

“Oh, there’s no crime, mister. She’s just a runaway whose family wants her back in the worst way.” The marshal walked over to the wall of wanted posters and tapped the likeness on the nose. “If you read the small print down here on the bottom, you’ll see that the money’s only good if Lenore Devlin is returned in as chaste and unharmed a condition as she was when she fled the bosom of her family.”

“What about this one?” Zane flipped the woman’s poster up to reveal the faded image of Wesley Wage. “Have you seen him?”

“Like I said, wanted men don’t pass through Dry Leaf much.”

“I’ve lived here all my life.” A sigh shoved the curve of Mrs. Taylor’s bosom against the boy’s canvas sleeve.

“I can’t recall ever seeing anyone notorious.”

The marshal glanced down at his wife’s chest and hiccupped. Likely, a villainous horde could ride down the main street of Dry Leaf and Marshal Taylor would never see it.

“Thank you for your time.” Zane opened the door and stepped out onto the boardwalk. “I’ll leave the two of you to finish your … lunch.”

He hadn’t taken two steps toward the saloon before he heard Mrs. Taylor’s giggle cut short by the closing of the door.

He ought to feel relieved that the lawman was too occupied with wedded bliss to notice that Wage had passed his way, but instead he felt an odd sorrow tugging at his gut. Being witness to their intimacy set a yearning smack in his heart.

Zane shook himself from the inside out. He didn’t want a wife, couldn’t have one even if he did. The life of a bounty hunter was a solitary one.

He set his sights on the saloon half a block down. Wage might be able to outrun the law, but that five-hundred-dollar bounty was about to come crashing down on his head.

The only crashing inside the peaceable saloon in Dry Leaf had been Zane’s spirits. According to the patrons inside, Wage had, once again, lit out just a rope toss ahead of him.

Zane stood tall in the stirrups and stared out over the greening hills of the Nebraska countryside. He drew his coat closer about himself. There would be rain before nightfall and the wind whistling past his ears promised that it would be plenty cold.

Unless he caught up with the bank robber soon, he’d spend a long shivering night wrapped up in the rain canvas tucked away in his pack.

It was a shame that life hadn’t led him to be a shopkeeper or a banker where chilly nights could be spent gathered around a comfortable fire with a friend or two. Bounty-hunting was cold, dirty and occasionally heartless work, but it paid better than any easeful occupation he’d ever heard of. Any occupation that was legal, anyway.

“There’ll be a warm stall with extra hay in it for you, Ace, once we collect that five hundred dollars.” He tipped the brim of his hat against the wind. Damned if it didn’t just smell cold.

The horse whickered, tossed his black mane, then dug his hooves into the turf. He stood still with his nose flaring at the wind.

“What’s the problem, fella, smell trouble?” Zane scanned the horizon but saw nothing more amiss than the ink-stained clouds that seemed to darken while he watched.

He listened, straining to hear over the hiss of blowing grass. He recognized the gallop of pounding hooves an instant before a horse burst over the rise a few hundred feet to his left.

“Looks like luck just fell right out of the sky, boy.” He stood tall in the stirrups, gazing hard at the horse that flew over the prairie as if it was being carried along by a wicked gust of wind. “Unless I’m wrong, Wage just lost his mount.”

Capturing the runaway horse would be wise but would cost a good amount of time. Wage could only have a few miles on him and Zane wasn’t about to let that advantage slip away. If it came to Wage walking to the nearest town in mud up over his ankles, tied to the knot end of a rope, the man was only beginning to collect his due.

The criminal couldn’t be behind bars soon enough. With one more bank robber put away, it would be safer for younglings to go along with their mothers to the bank. They’d never have to hear a shot crashing through glass. They’d never feel the jerk backward when—

Zane shook his head, scattering the thought. He touched the worn lace ribbon holding his hair in a neat tail at his collar. The sooner Wesley Wage was put away the sooner he’d have his pocket full of money.

“Let’s get him, boy.” Zane leaned forward. That was all the urging that Ace needed. The horse cared for nothing more than to run, to let his mane and tail fly straight out in the wind.

At the rise of the first hill Zane ripped the ribbon from his nape and let out a shout. He liked the thrill of cold freedom whipping his hair as much as his horse did.

Racing across the little valley made it feel as though Ace had wings instead of hooves. Fresh air filled Zane’s lungs and cleared his brain of lingering memories.

Wage ought to be close, likely over the next hilltop. Coming over the ridge, he scanned the land falling away swiftly before him.

“What the hell?”

He almost stopped Ace in his stride to be sure of what he was seeing, but if his eyes weren’t playing tricks he’d need to push the horse to its limits.

He blinked … twice, then leaned low and loose beside Ace’s great muscular neck.

Wage was no more than a few hundred yards away, but he wasn’t alone. There was a woman dressed in … yes, by heavens … in her underclothes trying to keep Wage from stealing her horse.

She wasn’t likely to win that battle, being only three-quarters of Wage’s height and half of his weight. Given Wage’s meanness he was likely to lean down from his place on the saddle and hit her to break her grip on the horse’s bridle.

The woman’s petticoat caught in the wind and whipped up to slap her chin. She struggled with it and tried to keep hold of the horse at the same time. Zane figured he must have dust in his eyes. It looked like a piece of her undergarment had come loose and begun to whip and whirl about the horse’s hooves all on its own accord.

Damned if the woman didn’t let go of the bridle to scramble after the bit of whatever was about to be stepped on by the horse.

Wage, not one for missing an opportunity, took that instant to give the horse a hard kick. The pony lurched forward then galloped double-time toward the west.

With massive clouds dimming the light, Zane nearly missed seeing the woman’s mouth form a perfectly pink circle of surprise when Ace galloped past her.

Guilt squirmed in his conscience for hightailing on by like that. It couldn’t be noble to leave a lady stranded so far from town in her underwear, not with one hell of a storm ready to strike the earth like a hammer.

He glanced back to see her clutching the odd white bundle that she had been chasing. Setting his sights on Wage again, he noted the outlaw was still a good distance in the lead, but losing some ground to Ace.

One fat, chilly raindrop smacked him on the cheek. It wouldn’t be long until this whole area turned into a mud puddle. He could likely reach Wage before that happened. With Ace in his stride, the other horse might as well be walking.

The bit of worn lace that he had yanked from his hair slapped his thumb.

He sighed hard. Heat skimmed his lips. He sat up slow and leaned back in the saddle. Understanding the unspoken command, the horse slowed to an impatient trot.

“Hold up, boy.”

Zane watched Wage disappear over the next hill. His whole body and soul itched to be on the run after the outlaw. With a sour lump in his gut, he turned to look once more at the stranded woman.

Damned if she didn’t look like an abandoned angel with her petticoat flapping and fluttering. Blue bows on her underwear caught the wind and looked like a passel of butterflies whirling wild. Through it all, she clung tight to that squirming … animal? … in her arms.

Zane tied the ribbon in his hair then turned Ace’s head about.

Missy’s mouth hung open in disbelief. It was surely an unbecoming gesture that her mother would reprimand her for if she could see it.

Suzie would swoon in pure delight, though, when Missy wrote home, describing the vision bearing down upon her with his black coat tails flapping like the wings of some great dreaded bird.

The hooves of his huge horse pummeled the ground. Clumps of sod, ripped from the soil, flew about. The earth trembled, bringing her hero closer.

He slowed his animal to a trot. She watched the man’s mouth move. He might have spoken a colorful word. Indeed, he appeared to have uttered a whole string of them. If only she could have heard over Muff’s snarling and snapping.

The coat settled over his thighs when he stopped in front of her. The horse’s dark hooves danced and pawed as though it longed to keep running. She managed to snap her mouth shut, but her eyes popped wide open.

In her whole sheltered eastern life she’d never seen a man like this. The West rode wild in his smoky brown eyes. Black eyebrows slashed across his forehead like fired bullets. This was a man of adventure!

He slid from his horse in a smooth, muscular leap. The tails of his coat rippled and snapped in the wind. Missy’s heart felt like a moth battering at a lantern.

Was it her imagination that the blustery gust had ridden in with him? That it whooshed about her as cold and delightfully fearsome as he was?

“Are you all right, miss? Did he harm you?” His words sounded cordial but his jaw pulsed with tension. Stepping closer, the man’s worn boots stomped down the rippling grass.

For all that the sight of him made her heart quake, his deep voice, slow and sweet as summer honey, made her insides turn to mush … hot mush. She ought to be shivering in her undergarments like a proper blushing virgin instead of breaking out in a mystifying sweat.

Still, it wasn’t until she tipped her head back to peer at his beard-shadowed face, until her gaze locked on lips framed by a dusky slash of mustache, that she felt the need to swoon.

Even she, who considered swooning silly, thought it might be an appropriate course of action at this very point in time. Unfortunately, she hadn’t seen a fainting couch since she’d sneaked away from her mother’s parlor.

“Ma’am?” His hand, muscular and calloused, and unlike any gentleman’s hand she’d ever seen, reached for her elbow.

She must have swayed, even without a couch at hand. Mother would be pleased at that anyway.

“You’re quite fascinat—” Muff growled, he snapped. Oh, gracious, she’d lost all sense of propriety. She pinched her fingers over Muff’s muzzle. “Yes—I’m fine … well, not exactly fine.”

“Apparently.”

His lips pressed together, looking as tight as her corset strings. His eyes darted over her inadequate attire. A flash of mischief turned his somber brown gaze to hot cocoa. Missy settled Muff squarely over her bosom.

“You’ve got to catch that man!” She nodded toward the horizon. “He’s stolen Mr. Goodwin’s horse and an article of great importance to me.”

Eyes so briefly warmed with humor turned cold. “He’ll pay for accosting you, ma’am. I’ll see to it.”

He glanced west, glowering as though pursuing the cad with his eyes. A strand of ebony hair whipped loose from a ribbon at his nape and blew across his lips. He shoved it under the brim of his hat.

“There’s nothing I’d like better than to run him down.” He looked at her. The anger flaring across his face faded to polite concern. “But there’s one hell of a storm ready to dump on us. There’s no time to fret over the garment he stole from you. You’ll be dressed quicker if I take you home.”

Perhaps she should weep and moan at her state of undress. She supposed that’s what a well-brought-up young lady ought to do in this situation. Although, truth be told, she had never known anyone who had gotten into such a fix.

Not a fix, Missy reminded herself, an adventure!

“It was the cow that took my dress, not the man.” Missy shot a frown at the darkening prairie. “The man took something of much more value.”

As if by reflex, he touched the gun slung in his holster. What a sight the weapon was, riding alongside his hip, so big and ferocious-looking.

“You don’t have to say it out loud, miss, but if the outlaw has harmed you … if he’s taken … liberties, just nod your head and he’ll be dead by morning.”

Outlaw? Dead by morning? Missy struggled to remember those exact words. When she got her journal back, with the inspired first chapter, she’d want to share every one of them with Suzie.

“Oh, gracious! My … my virtue is doing quite well.” Why on earth were her breasts suddenly prickled with an odd tingle?

His flaring eyebrows lifted, creasing his forehead in confused lines. The expression made him look almost sweet, in a big, bold, black sort of way.

“This whole thing was Muff’s fault, actually, for getting muddy. I don’t suppose it was his fault that I slipped in the water, but then I don’t think you can blame a silly cow for anything.”

Like a lightning flash, his mouth twitched up then jerked just as swiftly to a stern line.

“I’m purely sorry for your misadventure, ma’am. I can’t say I understand it, but I’d better get you back to where you came from before pure hell breaks out of the sky.”

“I came from the hotel in Green Island, but, naturally, I can’t go back until well after dark.” She tugged Muff in tightly but he was a poor substitute for her missing dress. “It wouldn’t be seemly.”

“Seemly or not, I don’t plan to stay out here and get washed away.”

Clearly, the man did not understand her predicament. Mother would perish, Edwin would have heart failure if they got word that Missy had come parading down a public thoroughfare in her soaking underwear … sharing a saddle with a man!

“You are free as a feather to go, Mr …?”

“Zane Coldridge.”

What a bold and wonderful name. Her own sounded weak by comparison.

“My name is Missy Devlin.” She spoke the name with force but Missy still sounded like a pampered, eastern name. “It was kind of you to stop, Mr. Coldridge, but I’m obliged to stay here until well after dark.”

He whistled to his horse. It trotted up behind him and nudged his arm. He reached his hand out to her. “Let’s go.”

She backed up a pace, just out of reach.

“Go along, please, Mr. Coldridge. I’d take it as a kindness if you’d leave me now.”

“Leaving a woman to drown in the rain doesn’t sound like any sort of kindness I ever heard of.”

“Oh, it would be! Being a man, you wouldn’t know what becomes of a ladies’ undergarments when they get wet. I can assure you, I can’t be seen in town that way.”

“Ha!” His bark of a laugh nearly unbalanced her. He bent over, bracing his wide hands on his knees.

Muff wiggled to be free. She twisted her fingers in his fur to keep him still. The last thing she needed was to have to defend Mr. Coldridge’s boots against attack.

“Hush, Muff, be still!”

At long last her hero straightened up. He shrugged out of his coat and handed it to her.

She put it on, shifting Muff from one arm to the other. The lingering warmth of Zane Coldridge’s body wrapped around her.

“Let’s go,” he repeated and held out his hand once again.

The sleeve of his coat flopped over her fingertips by several inches. She lifted her arm and let the fabric slide over her bare skin. It left a tingle, just as though the cloth might have been the man stroking her flesh.

“Thank you,” she murmured and placed her pale hand in his rough palm.

How on earth would she find enough delicious words to describe Zane Coldridge to Suzie?

Chapter Two

The stream had already washed over its boundaries when the first splat of rain hit Zane square in the back.

The icy slap promised to be only the beginning of a miserable night. Somewhere, not too far off, the squall had to be pumping misery from the sky like no storm he’d ever run afoul of before.

He’d been caught out in the elements many times, even seen the Missouri overflow its banks, but he’d never known gullies swell to the size of rivers before the first drop hit the earth.

He’d sure never had to take on the care of a delicate eastern woman and her … whatever that thing squirming in her lap was.

“What is that critter?” he asked, seeking a distraction from the icy trickle racing down his back.

“Surely you’ve seen a dog before, Mr. Coldridge.” She turned about and glanced up at him. Even in the gathering dusk, with the storm clouds pressing out the last bit of light from the day, he caught the teasing blue sparkle in her eyes.

“I’ve seen dogs.” A full dozen raindrops driven by a frigid wind bit through his shirt. He tried not to shiver since there wasn’t enough space for two people and a questionable animal to ride in the saddle with any extra movement. “I’ve also seen rats. That’s a rat.”

“Did you hear that, Muff?” She tucked the animal inside his borrowed coat and held the front closed with fingers that looked like blue porcelain in the cold. “If you’d behaved like a proper Maltese and not gotten all muddy and prickly, our hero would have recognized you as a dog right off.”

Hero? He’d grunt out a laugh at that title if there had been room in the cramped saddle. Zane had been called dirty. He’d heard low down a few times. He’d felt the curses of mothers and sweethearts follow him for days, even weeks, after he’d collected a fee for a loved one.

“I’m a bounty hunter, ma’am.” He’d better set the record straight before the woman got any fancy ideas about him. “Money-hungry cuss is what I’ve been called more often than not.”

He waited to feel her posture stiffen against his belly. Maybe the gentle lady would even slip off Ace’s back and choose to walk rather than share the space with him.

She turned as best she could to peer at his face. Raindrops hit her skin and dotted it with liquid freckles. Her mouth formed the same perfectly amazed circle that he had seen when he had galloped on by her earlier.

He leaned backward in the saddle, ready to dismount and walk the rest of the way to Green Island.

“Truly? A genuine bounty hunter?” Unbelievably, she broke into a grin that might have shot the clouds out of the sky. “You must have been chasing that awful man, earlier … Oh, mercy, was he an in-the-flesh outlaw?”

“Yes, ma’am, he was.”

“A treacherous outlaw has stolen our belongings,” she murmured down the neckline of the coat to the dog resting, warm and cozy, inside.

She wiped at the water gathering on her face and slicked back her hair. The silky-looking tresses had turned from sunshine to dark gold with the dampness.

“What was his crime? Murder? Kidnapping? Forgery?” Her eyes snapped. They sparkled in apparent delight. “He was a horse thief, I’ll bet!”

“He’s a horse thief now, but he’s wanted for bank robbery.”

“I was in mortal battle with a genuine bank robber? Did you hear that, Muff? Isn’t it marvelous?”

A shot rang out from a buried corner of Zane’s memory. He heard the blast of shattering glass and the ting of it falling on a hard pine floor. He felt Missy Devlin’s gasp when his arm clamped about her ribs.

Thunder, he realized with sudden relief. The boom and crash had only been thunder.

“There’s not a thing marvelous about that bank robber, Miss Devlin. He’d have hurt you in a second and felt no remorse for it.”

“Surely not!” She frowned, putting a pretty crease between her eyes. “He looked like a gentleman. Why, I’d nearly recovered my horse when Muff interfered.”

“Maybe where you come from, he’d have hopped right down and handed you the reins, but this is the West. Gentlemen and ladies last about ten minutes out here.” It was the truth. This hothouse flower sitting so sweetly in front of him would wither in no time. “If we don’t drown before we reach Green Island, I’d suggest you take the first train back to where you came from.”

As if to confirm his prediction of drowning, the sky opened up like a horse trough being dumped from the sky. Rain so cold that it stopped just short of being snow made puddles the size of ponds all over the low-lying area.

There was nothing for it but to get to higher ground and hope to make it to Green Island before the storm cut the town off.

Even though the great American West was a good bit wetter than Missy had expected, she had no intention of catching a train home. Just because monstrous torrents of water poured down upon her head and washed over her body in an icy bath was no cause for retreat.

She did feel a bit guilty that the horse had some difficulty plucking its hooves from the muck with each step. The weight of two humans must have made each cold squish in the mud a trial for the beast. Still, she had come to tell the tale of the West for Suzie and a storm would not prevent her from doing it.

Her hero, Zane Coldridge, let out an occasional curse, watching the water flood the gullies and low areas of the land. The tops of the distant hills looked like floating islands.

“Come on, Ace,” Zane Coldridge muttered. “Green Island is just over the next hill.”

That would be a relief! It wasn’t a bit prissy to be longing for the shelter of her hotel room. It wasn’t weak-spirited to wish for the comfort of dry clothing. Surely even the man behind her wished for the same. Perhaps they could share a dinner by a cozy fire. He could tell her all of his adventures while they listened to the patter of rain on the windows.

Missy peered through the water dripping off the brim of the hat that Mr. Coldridge had long since removed from his own head and placed on hers. The tall steeple of the Congregational Church made a white slash through the low-hung clouds in the distance.

“Look!” She raised her arm and wagged her finger at the welcome sight. “There’s Green Island.”

Against her back, Zane Coldridge’s chest rose and crashed. He uttered the most colorful word she had ever heard.

“Wait here a minute, darlin’.”

With a leap, he washed off the horse. He took long mud-sucking strides up to the high point of the ridge. He looked out to where the steeple vanished then appeared again through the rain.

He made to snatch his hat from his head and toss it down in apparent frustration. Naturally, he grabbed wet air since the hat at this moment dripped in a limp heap from her head.

“What’s wrong?” she called over the slap of water on mud.

He walked back, slipping then catching his step on the slick downward slope.

“Green Island’s surrounded by water.” She hoped to hear him call her darlin’ again, but he only frowned and wiped his sleeve across his forehead. “Looks like we’ll be spending the night here.”

“Here … where?” She craned her neck right and left but didn’t see a shelter.

He pointed to the top of the hill and picked up the horse’s reins. “The higher up we are, the better.”

“But the hotel is so close by. Surely we can get to it.”

“The town’s cut off.” Zane Coldridge patted the horse’s neck to encourage him up the slope. “It will be full dark soon and cold as a witch’s … heart. We’d better settle in before things get any worse.”

What they were going to settle in to was beyond her imagination. A few bare trees dotted the hill. Not much in the way of shelter there.

It might take some imagination to make this into a lovely tale for Suzie. It would be best to leave out the part about spending the night with a handsome stranger. If her missive ever fell into the wrong hands, well … there would be no end to the scandal. Her most mortifying exploit to date would pale by comparison.

When they reached the top of the hill, Zane helped her down from the horse then went about the task of untying something from behind the saddle.

Luckily, Muff slept soundly under the coat. She hated to think of the mucky consequences of letting him loose to take care of his needs.

“Mr. Coldridge, would you like your coat back now?” She hated to give it up but her hero looked as frigid as a block of ice. If she wasn’t mistaken, his boldly framed shoulders had begun to shiver.

He gave her a slow, silent shake of his head. Rain pelted his hair. The ribbon securing it at the back of his neck sagged like one of cook’s overdone noodles.

It was hard to tell through the deepening gloom, but she thought he flashed her an angry glare just before he spread out a tarp on the ground.

“Lay down.” He pointed to the middle of the canvas.

The man must be addled by the cold. What possible good could lying out in the rain do? Still, he hadn’t taken his coat back, or even his hat, so it was only right to go along with him for the moment.

She knelt on the canvas then lay down with one arm curled around Muff and the other straight and stiff at her side. With her knees locked, the toes of her shoes pointed up to the clouds.

“Like this?”

“That’ll do,” he mumbled then sat down beside her.

He yanked the tarp this way and that until he lay prone beside her with the canvas tucked and folded in such a way that it kept out the rain.

What an amazing shelter! Even though water soaked her clothing the warmth of two people protected from the pelting fury outside gradually took some of the bite out of the chill. It wasn’t warm, as the shivering body beside her attested to, but it was sanctuary from the elements.

What a shame she wouldn’t be able to write about how she’d spent the night, as close as pearls on a strand to Zane Coldridge.

The fainting couch would be worn out if mother ever knew.

Missy Devlin’s breath beat warm puffs of air against his neck. That was the only inch of Zane’s body not taken with shivers. Even though the rain no longer touched him under the canvas wrap, the icy water had done its damage. It might be some time before a pair of bodies, not entwined, would generate any warmth.

“Tell me about your bounty-hunting adventures, Mr. Coldridge.” The lady’s voice shivered, but it might have been from foolish excitement as much as chill. Apparently, the woman had some pretty, eastern notion of the West that had nothing to do with real life.

“Haven’t got any adventure, miss. I make a living, and an ugly one at that.”

“Surely your brain must be packed with tales of peril and risk.” Rain pounded on the canvas but not so loudly that it drowned her voice. “Ugly or not, they must be thrilling.”

“Somehow, Miss Devlin, I don’t see life as a pack of thrilling stories. Just living, some good and some bad.”

“Oh, but that’s not true!”

He felt her wiggle onto her side. The plump swell of her breast pressed against his arm and warmed it like a hot cushion. The sultry simmer had to be pure imagination since no part of this miserable night was anything close to hot.

“Life is all made up of stories, some wonderful and some not, but it’s all adventure in one way or another.”

“Fancy notions from a proper eastern lady.”

“Wouldn’t mother be pleased if that were true?” she mumbled under her breath.

In the dark, he felt her hand brush across his shirt, light and hesitant. Plainly, Missy Devlin fell short of pleasing her mother.

“You’re about to shake to pieces, Mr. Coldridge.”

It wasn’t the manliest of behavior, but still true. He was a shaking mess. With a different kind of woman he’d know how to get warmed up. Mother’s opinion or not, this was a respectable young lady and the most he could do was dream of the warmth her plush little body might provide.

She touched him, her palm over his heart, and his imagination sparked to full-blown life. The scent of warm, womanly skin seeped through the soaked coat that wrapped her up in a tempting package.

A gust of wind howled along the ground and snapped the canvas over their heads, but by some mercy, it held.

“You’re not your mother’s perfect angel, then?” he asked, trying to get the blamed image of a bare hot woman out of his mind.

“On occasion, I fall a bit short.”

Was that an icy finger poking under the space between the buttons of his shirt? Not a single finger, but all four and a thumb!

“Suzie, my twin, and I weren’t always the socially graceful young ladies that mother longed for … She loved us like the dickens but—I think that if we wrap our arms around each other we might borrow one another’s warmth.”

Zane fought the urge to tear out of the canvas when she nuzzled her cheek against his neck then snuggled in as close as a wanton woman. His breath left him in a rush when her fingers tiptoed across his wet shirt and curled about his ribs.

“Suzie and I warmed up this way on many a winter’s night.”

How innocent could a woman be to believe that his reaction was anything close to what her sister’s had been?

“There, that’s better already, don’t you think?”

A grunt was the best answer he could give until he caught his breath.

“How on earth did your mother ever let you out of the house?”

“Oh, she didn’t let me out. I ran away in the dead of night.”

Missy Devlin sighed and her thumb tripped across the pocket of his shirt. Heat flushed through his chest.

“It’s a wonder she didn’t tie you to the bedpost.”

“If mother had tied me to the post, Suzie would have let me loose. Now, my brother Edwin would have tied us both … Here, put your arms around me just like this.”

To illustrate, she squeezed him closer. If he were a stronger man with a lick of sense, he’d go stand in the rain where the only dangers were the sidelong wind and the creeping flood, but her warmth had already begun to ease the shakiness out of his bones, so he turned to face her.

He tucked his chin on top of her hair and smelled damp roses. He laid his arm across her waist then pressed his palm to the middle of her back, drawing her in.

Since he wanted to put his mouth to use in a way that didn’t involve tasting the floral-scented warmth that blushed from her cheeks he asked, “Why did you run away from home, Miss Devlin?”

“To write the great American dime novel.”

He felt her smile tickle his neck. He wished he could see it, foolish as the reason for the smile was.

“You ought to have stayed home. All those stories are made up. Pure scandalous trash is all they are.”

“I’m sure that’s not true, Mr. Coldridge!” Her body squirmed in apparent protest. “Why, in one day Muff and I have been assaulted by a bank robber and rescued by a bounty hunter. I’ve had my dress eaten and my manuscript stolen. If that is not adventure, I can’t tell you what is.”

“Sounds more like a string of misfortunes to me.”

Evidently Missy Devlin lived in a different world than most folks.

“What on God’s earth made you leave the safety and comfort of home for a place like this?”

“Can I trust you not to mock me? You seem to be less than admiring of my ambition.”

“You can.” At least he wouldn’t do it out loud. “I’ll take this as the beginning of a friendship, then. Will you call me Missy … and let me call you Zane?”

Since talking was the only honorable way to spend this long, close night, he agreed.

“Well, then, Zane,” she said, relaxing against him in a way more friendly than she must realize. “Let me tell you, safe and comfortable are well and good, but also tedious and restricting. Why, the minute a girl kicks up her heels and does something the slightest bit daring, she gets frowns and stares from everyone she meets.”

She sighed. Her breath warmed his neck. Between her belly and his, the animal she called a dog began to squirm.

“A sweet little thing like you getting frowns and stares? It baffles the mind.”

“And not only me. Suzie, too!” All at once her voice softened, the spark that animated her snuffed out, as though the tarp had suddenly come loose and the rain doused it. “At least, she used to. Suzie’s quite subdued these days.”

A long silence stretched, filled up with the beating of rain on the tarp. Close at hand, although he didn’t know exactly where, he heard Ace snort in wet misery.

Surprisingly, the thought of a person just like Missy subdued didn’t set easy on his heart.

“Why is that?” Maybe he was prying, but she was the one who had declared them friends.

“My sister was paralyzed two years ago when our buggy slipped off a bridge in the rain. Papa died … I got a bruised chin. Edwin had to grow up, just like that. One day he was a boy flirting with girls and the next he was raising them.”

He drew her in with a squeeze, offering comfort that he knew could not be found. He understood such grief. Even years from now the loss would sting.

“Since Suzie can’t come West, I’m sending the West home to her.”

“Darlin’, this isn’t the place for you. It’s not what you think. It’s dirty and wild and unpredictable. Listen, do you hear that?” As if on cue, thunder rolled low and threatening overhead. “The weather alone should be warning enough.”

The little dog whined. It wiggled out from between them. It crawled to Missy’s face, licked her cheek, and then wagged its musty-smelling tail across Zane’s nose. He pushed the dog down, toward his knees.

“What I know is that storms don’t last forever. Why, under this tarp we are getting as warm as can be.”

“What if I hadn’t come along? How long would you have lasted out there without even the clothes on your back to protect you?”

“But you did come along.”

The dog scrambled over his hip; a nettlesome growl rumbled in its throat.

“Let’s say I didn’t? What if it was just you and Wage? There’s even worse than him out there who’d have taken more than your horse.”

“Muff, no!” Missy reached for her dog.

She grabbed for Muff, reaching above her head, then down Zane’s neck and over his chest. When she groped for the dog in a place he’d never invited a proper woman, he did a quick flip.

In the scuffle he managed to keep the dog near his feet without opening the canvas to the rain. The trouble was, he’d also gotten Missy pinned underneath him.

In the darkness, the whisper of her shallow breathing filled the canvas. The quick brush of it against his face filled his nose with her rosy scent.

“It’s a lucky thing for me that you’re the one who came along,” she murmured.

Maybe not so lucky. Even under the coat, he felt the curves of her breasts rising and falling beneath the trip and hammer of his heart. The layer of petticoats wasn’t thick enough to keep him from noticing a pair of shapely female legs go rigid, then relax beneath his.

Heated breath moistened his mouth. Her lips couldn’t be more than an inch away. He nearly groaned into the tiny space of simmering darkness that separated them.

Would she turn her face aside in outrage if he kissed her? Maybe slap him across the cheek with her slender hand?

Or worse, would she welcome it? Would she melt against his mouth then give herself over to him with an eagerness that would singe his mustache?

With the possibility only a searing gasp away, he shouldn’t let himself get carried away with the dream of what it might be like to brush his tongue over her lips, to taste them and explore the shape and delicate texture of them.

Missy’s heat flashed through him, spun about his insides then settled low and urgent where it shouldn’t. It was wrong to allow his imagination to run wild. His brain, ready to boil over, was a thought away from becoming reckless.

Somehow, the little lady had gotten him stirred up inside, and all by lying perfectly still.

How was it that she made him want to run like hell away and dive in headlong all at once?

One thing he was sure of, if he didn’t grit his teeth together, take a big bite of bitter reality, this would be one adventure that Missy Devlin would never write to her sister about.

He pressed the canvas on each side of her shoulders then pushed himself up so that he didn’t feel the tug of her breath calling him to behave disgracefully. He lifted up as far as he could without dislodging the shelter and letting in the rain.

There must be some remnant of honor left in him.

The close air stirred, fabric shifted, she touched both of his cheeks with her fingertips. They felt like hot butter against the week-old growth of his beard.

“Go to sleep now, Missy.” He settled down beside her then kissed her forehead with a quick peck. The dog scratched and plumped the canvas near Missy’s feet. “I’ll see you safe on the train first thing in the morning.”

Chapter Three

Missy snuggled into the cocoon-like shelter. The rain on the canvas had slowed to a steady splat.

Hours must have passed. It ought to be morning since the absolute black inside the tarp had given way to shadowed gray.

She felt rested … even energized. Such amazing things had happened in twenty-four hours. Her fingers fairly itched to write them down.

Zane’s slow, even breathing told her that he was still asleep … with his arms around her and his chin resting on top of her head! She could only hope that Muff would not need to get out. It would be fine to lie here until the rain quit, feeling the slow rise and fall of her hero’s chest, heartbeat to heartbeat against her own.

Last night, she had taken his advice and gone to sleep at once. Her emotions and her body had been tumbling in confusion and delight. A few hours’ rest to figure them out had been what she needed. Luckily, sleep always came easily, as sweet as a little bird settling into a nest.

Zane didn’t know it, but his vow to put her on the first train home had been wasted breath. It was a wonder that he hadn’t felt her silent bubble of laughter.

Out here in the West, free of the restrictions that Edwin had put on her behavior, she was an independent woman. Yes, indeed, free as a feather on the breeze. She certainly hadn’t come to Nebraska to have Zane Coldridge take Edwin’s place.

Suddenly, Zane sat up. The canvas cocoon burst open with a rush of cold, wet air. Missy noticed his hand reach for his gun even before he had come fully alert.

“What’s wrong?” she sputtered against the rain tapping on her mouth.

He didn’t speak. He touched her lips with two fingers and cocked his head to the left, listening.

She felt a slight rumbling in the ground a second before she heard a great roar and boom pound the air. Muff exploded from the folds of the canvas, trembling and barking.

Zane leaped to his feet and grabbed her hand. He yanked her up and pulled her along toward the rise of the hill.

Through the rain she looked down on the flood that engulfed Green Island.

Water lapped at the front porch of the hotel. While she watched, a wave washed inside the lobby. A man ran out, lifting his feet high in an attempt to clear the water. Luckily, her belongings were on the second floor and likely safe.

“Damn it all to hell,” Zane whispered under his breath and this time his curse didn’t sound at all colorful.

Missy followed his gaze upriver to see a massive chunk of ice floating on the current.

“The gorge up in the narrows must have burst.” He gripped her fingers tighter. “We’ll be safe enough up here.”

He scooped Muff up from the ground and stuffed him in the big pocket of her borrowed coat.

Upriver, several boulder-sized ice chunks bobbed after the first. The river was jammed with them, jouncing and crashing into one another, piling up on the shoreline then breaking loose with furious screeches and cracks.

Zane glanced backward, toward the flattened shelter of the canvas. He let out a shrill whistle, barely audible over the thunder of the ice. A second later his horse trotted into view with mud caked on his large black hooves.

He gripped the horse’s reins tightly in his fist. If it was truly safe on top of this hill, why did Zane seem to lean toward the horse as though ready to leap upon its great wide back at any second? Why did a silent shiver race through his arm and into hers?

The first of the giant ice floes hit the Congregational Church. Its tall spire shook but the building held … for a moment.

Hit by three more vicious blocks of ice, the structure left its foundation in one piece. It floated gracefully away with the current. A bend in the river took it out of view. Only the white steeple bobbed in and out of sight behind a grove of bare-branched trees.

The snap of shattering wood splintered the air. The church steeple tipped, then vanished.

Even over the rumble and thunder of the river, Missy heard the splitting screech go on and on. The church must have broken, shattered like toothpicks among the trees downriver.

Missy looked back toward the hotel. The man who had run outside had taken refuge on the roof. He called out to a group of men running and waving their arms on the far bank.

A pair of ice floes hit the hotel and sent it floating after the church. The man flopped down on his belly and rode the peak of the roof.

“God protect him,” Zane mumbled. Missy barely heard him over the shriek of splitting buildings.

In only a few moments the river had robbed Green Island of every building but one, and that one looked half caved-in and fully flooded.

Many of the structures floated away whole, only to be shattered to bits around the bend. A few others broke apart before her eyes.

Still, the worst wasn’t the ruined homes and businesses. It was the men, women and children clinging to rooftops, floating doors or any other surface to keep from being sucked into the turbulent water or crushed by a random shift of ice.

People from Yankton, the town bordering the north side of the river, ran along the shore, shouting and waving their arms, helpless to do anything more because of the treacherous current.

On the side of the river where Missy and Zane stood, a roof floated past carrying a family of five. They held tight against the violent lurch and sway.

The roof split down the middle when a jag of ice, pushed to the river bottom by a downward wave, suddenly lurched up again. One member of the family, a little girl of no more than three, clung to the separated piece.

The child’s mother tried to scramble into the water but her husband prevented her, holding her down with the weight of his body.

In only a moment, the family’s screams faded, carried away downriver along with the rooftop. The baby’s wail of terror grew louder when the current swirled her fragile section of shingles toward the shoreline not thirty feet below.

“Stay here,” Zane ordered.

He placed the horse’s reins in her hand then ripped the ribbon from his hair. He placed the worn scrap of lace in her fist then curled her fingers around it.

In the second that it took him to scramble down the bank, the roof snagged on the shoreline. It bucked and heaved against the current. It reminded Missy of a drawing she had seen in a dime novel of a wild horse trying to dislodge its rider.

The little girl held on as well as any bronco-buster she had ever read about.

But, Lord have mercy, her strength would be no match for the huge hunk of ice set on a dead aim for her fragile section of roof.

The wood roof pitched upward just as Zane lunged for it. A splinter of wood that felt like a two-by-four stabbed him under his thumbnail. He bit down on the pain and pulled up with straining arms until he got one leg over the rooftop.

A wave from behind washed him up and over. From an arm’s reach away the little girl looked at him. Big brown eyes blinked through hair plastered against her face.

“Hold on, baby, I’ve got you.” He hung on to the slippery roof with his injured hand and ignored the gush of crimson washing from his thumb. He stretched his arm out, straining at the shoulder to touch the child.

He’d just grabbed on to her tiny wrist, cold and slick with water, when a wave tossed her up. Her hand slipped out of his grip. She flew up, over his head. He caught a flash of calico skirt and yanked her back by it.

In the instant that he wrapped her to his chest he spotted the hunk of ice carried in the wave’s wake.

“Hold on.” She looped skinny arms about his neck then squeezed as tight as any binding rope would have. “Good girl.”

The jag of ice crashed down on the roof. It tossed him airborne. Turning and twisting, he dug his fingers into the child’s dress.

Upside down and spinning, he thought he saw Missy rushing toward the river, towing Ace behind her. That couldn’t be since he’d told her to stay put. Surely it was only a jumbled illusion that she wasn’t safely on the hilltop.

Hour-like seconds passed before he crashed back down into the water.

The wonder was that he hadn’t been hit by a deadly object coming down. The horror was, that he was down, way down under the water, still tumbling and turning and not knowing which way was up.

His hip crashed into something and then his shoulder. The little girl struggled in his grasp, needing air.

The current dragged him across the river bottom then slammed his back against a solid object. It knocked the breath from his lungs. Bubbles floated in front of his face. He loosened one arm from around the baby to grip the solid thing that he had hit. He pulled upward following the bubbles.

He broke the surface and lifted the child high against his shoulder. Her terrified screech filled his ear. Thank God.

It turned out to be an uprooted tree that he’d collided with. He wrapped one arm around a wide twisted root.

“It’s all right, sweetling. Hang on tight.”

His words must have sounded confident because the child clung to his neck like a summer vine twined around a post.

The tree, his only lifeline, shifted in the current. It wouldn’t be long before it ripped loose or debris racing downriver crashed into it.

More than twenty feet of turbulent river lay between this unstable sanctuary and the shore. If he let go, made a swim for the bank one-armed, he and the child would likely drown.

“Hush now. Everything’s going to be fine.” Somehow.

“Zane!” He barely heard Missy call his name over the rumble of river rushing past, carrying its cargo of deadly debris. “Zane!”

“Get back!” The child whimpered against his neck, probably startled by his outburst, but he couldn’t believe what his eyes told him. “Get out of here!”

Six feet out from the shore, with the insane tug of the Missouri pressing and heaving, Missy sat atop Ace. She urged him forward against any instinct the animal had of self-preservation.

“Hold on!” she cried. A wave splashed over the toe of her delicate boot. “I’m nearly there.”

“You’ll get yourself and my horse killed! Get back!”

“Don’t let go!”

Rain beat down on her. The coat blew open revealing her white lace corset with its droopy blue bows. Her dog poked his wet head out of the coat pocket, quiet for once.

“Don’t be an idiot,” he mumbled. But she didn’t look like an idiot. She looked brave and beautiful and too fragile to be urging Ace on through the torrent.

After a few more of those hour-long seconds, Ace stood beside the log in belly-deep water, holding steady. Missy reached down. He lifted the little girl into her arms.

“I’ll be back.” Missy shouted. “Hold on.”

“Damn it, no! Get to shore and stay there!” Ace was strong, but it was only luck that he hadn’t been knocked down by debris hidden in the current.

He watched Missy’s mouth open and close with some words that he guessed meant he’d wasted his breath on insisting she stay put, but a sudden crack of ice close by drowned out the sound.

She turned Ace’s head toward shore and whispered something to the little girl. A second later she glanced back, her face set in an expression that would excuse her brother tying her to the bedpost.

She’d come back all right, and probably die trying.

He lunged for Ace’s tail. By Heaven’s own luck he caught it and tangled his fingers in the thick, wet mass.

The horse’s first step toward shore made Zane swing wide into the current. He hung on, wincing against the pain from the splinter lodged in his thumb.

The brave animal didn’t protest the weight hanging on his tail even when a slap of water washed over his haunches. He whinnied then pointed his soaking black nose toward the shore.

It was a miracle. Missy had heard the declaration from the mouths of everyone she encountered that morning. Not a human soul had perished. Livestock and buildings had been washed away to their doom, but each and every human had been reunited with friends and loved ones.

Amazingly, the family of the little girl had claimed her a few moments after Zane crawled out of the river. He had barely caught his breath before the child’s mother hugged it out of him again.

With each soul accounted for, people now focused on retrieving their lost goods. Along the riverbank, families hunted under rubble and up in tree branches for pieces of their shattered lives.

Missy lifted a splintered scrap of lumber and peeked underneath it. Scattered about in the muck were the remains of the hotel. Surely she would find one or two of her belongings.

A timid finger of sunshine teased her shoulder blades without offering any heat. Muff, napping in the coat pocket, did warm one side of her knee.

“You’ve been searching for three hours.” Zane lifted a window frame and peered underneath it. “You won’t find anything.”

Maybe not, but it was a day for miracles, even small ones like finding a dress or a matching pair of shoes.

“Did you hear the church bell ring?” Missy asked, stopping for a moment to arch her back against a cramp.

“The church didn’t have a bell.” Zane tossed a piece of lumber aside and lifted a muddy hat up for Missy to see.

“Not mine.” The ache in her back tightened with the stretch. “And yet half the town of Yankton heard it.”

Zane placed the hat on a mangled tree branch sticking up from the mud. “Even if there had been a bell, no one could have heard it ringing.”

“They could if it had been a special bell … Oh, look at this.” She lifted a milk pail and hung it on the branch near the hat. “A natural bell couldn’t be heard, but a supernatural one could.”

“Darlin’, that might happen where you come from, but out here bells are pretty much brass or iron.”

It was hard to tell whether he was annoyed or amused since his hat shaded his eyes and his voice gave nothing away.

“Well, there you have it, then,” she said.

He straightened, plucking a man’s pipe from the mud. He shoved his hat back from his face. The sun shone bright on his expression.

It was not annoyed or amused. His eyebrows arched in bewilderment. “Have what?”

Mercy, what a handsome man! He nearly made her lose her train of thought.

“Proof, of course. If a brass or iron bell couldn’t be heard, and there wasn’t one to hear, but so many folks swear that they heard it, then what else could it be?”

“Delirium.”

“Magic.”

Zane turned and wedged the pipe behind the drooping yellow ribbon on the hat. He glanced back at her with a hot-coffee gaze. The simmer nearly made her knees knock together.

“Did you hear the bell?” he asked.

“No, but—”

“There was no bell.” He raised his hands, calloused palms out as though to block her words. “You didn’t hear it and I didn’t hear it.”

“In my book there will be a bell.”

“That’s the trouble with dime novels. For every word of truth there’s ten of fancy.”

“That’s simply not true. Lots of people heard that bell and it wasn’t fancy to them, it was hope.”

“I’ll tell you what’s true. Everything you own is spread across half the county. That’s a fact and no matter how you try to twist it into some sort of a bell-ringing adventure it all amounts to a hill of trouble.”

So true, but she had long believed that trouble was made to be overcome. “No one died and that was a bell-ringing miracle.”

“Take a peek around at your miracle, darlin’. This town is gone. Look at your own situation. You’ve got less than some others. You can’t even borrow clothes because no one has any to lend.”

“That is a challenge.” A rather big challenge that nearly made her feel like weeping. She had to remind herself that adversity held the seeds of adventure.

“No need for a tear.” He touched his thumb to her cheek. “If the tracks haven’t washed out, you can take the afternoon train home. I’ll stand by you until then.”

“That certainly was not a tear. I was just considering what to do.”

“That’s wise.” He dabbed her other cheek with his finger.

“I’ve decided to stay with you.”

He jumped backward. His brows arched like dark wings. His eyes widened in apparent horror. Quick as a blink he narrowed them in an uncanny reflection of the grim set of his mouth.

“That’s not possible.” His voice deepened. It sounded calm but a muscle twitched in his jaw. “I’ve got an outlaw to catch.”

“And so do I. That bank robber had my journal tucked under his arm when he managed to escape me!” Missy paused when a thought hit her. The theft was just another of the day’s miracles. If she had made it safely back to town the journal would have been washed away. At least now she had a chance of getting it back. “I need to go with you.”

“I ride alone.”

“It wouldn’t be right to leave me here to be a burden to the folks of Green Island. Even Yankton will have its hands full taking care of its own.”

“Go home, Missy. At least there, you’ll only be a burden to your brother.” Zane whistled for his horse.

“True enough.” Missy couldn’t blame him for being annoyed. He’d gone through some discomfort during the last day on her account. She heard Ace’s hooves snapping scattered twigs. “But all things considered, I’ll stay here.”

“Suit yourself, then.” He grabbed Ace’s reins then lifted up into the saddle.

“Thank you for the loan of your coat.” She plucked Muff from the pocket and slid it off her shoulders. Chilly air prickled her skin.

“You keep it.” He turned the horse toward the open prairie.

“Thank you!” she called out. “I’ll return it to you when we meet on the trail of the outlaw.”

He stopped Ace midstride, turned and gave her a hard frown. He shook his head then leaned forward in the saddle. The horse bolted away, racing for the horizon.

She tucked the coat tight against the icy breeze. The cloth smelled like campfire, horse and open prairie. The aroma of Zane Coldridge wrapped her up.

What a shame that such a bold and wonderful hero had come and gone like a flash. When she retrieved her journal, she might use up every page writing about one man, alone.

She stared after him. The drum of Ace’s hoof-beats faded against the earth. The breeze carried a shout of triumph when someone found a half-buried plow.

Missy watched Zane and his horse become a small dot on the crest of a distant hill and wondered if it would be right to borrow the hat with the yellow ribbon.

She lifted it from the broken branch, removed the pipe then placed the bonnet on her head. It might be someone’s favorite. The yellow ribbon, even though it looked defeated and wilted, felt like pure luxury given the circumstances.

Surely, it would be some devastated woman’s hope of a new day. Missy took it off and returned it to the branch with the pipe, once again, tucked into the ribbon.

She glanced at the horizon, expecting to see it empty, but the black dot that had been Zane seemed bigger. She watched while it grew to the size of a pea, then an apple.

At last it took the form of a man and horse coming closer across the prairie.

The horse halted two feet in front of her but pawed at a clump of grass as though impatient to be on its way.

Zane reached down, his calloused palm open.

“I’ll take you as far as Luminary.”

Chapter Four

Zane peered through the noon sun shimmering off Ballico Street. Luminary looked better by night. For the first time he noticed that much of the town’s facade consisted of peeling, faded paint.

It was odd that he had never noticed the splintered wood of the sidewalks or the flies spinning around horse manure deposited near half-cocked hitching posts.

Nightfall ought to improve the look. Lanterns would puncture the dark on both sides of the street. Oil lamps would glint a welcome from the windows of business establishments all over town. Pianos, cranking out tinny tunes from open saloon doors, would weave a ripple of gaiety from one bar to the next.

Somehow, during his younger years in Luminary, he hadn’t noticed that the town looked rundown. Maybe it was Missy sitting stiff-backed and proper in front of him that made him see it so. The genteel lady from Boston was sure to take note of every broken window over every weed-filled flowerpot. She would notice that the only freshly painted signs in town advertised alcohol and women.

Luminary would give her plenty to write home about.

Missy turned in the saddle. She gazed up at him with blue eyes gone wide.

“Is this a bawdy town?” she asked.

He had been a fool to bring her here, even though it was the most likely place that Wage would have run to. He ought to have put her on a train headed east, tied her to the bench with his own hands if it came to that.

“It’s as bawdy as can be.” In truth, there wasn’t a place much worse. Funny, it hadn’t bothered him until now.

A door squeaked open on a second-story balcony. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee filtered down and mingled with the dusty odor of the street. With the day half gone, Luminary was just beginning to stir. A dog barked in the distance. Muff leaped to his feet in Missy’s lap. He stretched as tall as his ten inches would allow.

“Zane Coldridge, where have you been?” A woman’s sleep-tumbled voice drifted down from the balcony. “We figured you were dead.”

He looked up, past the front door of Maybelle’s Place to the sign that declared in bold red letters, Spirits, Gaming, and Dancing Women. On the balcony just over the sign the speaker leaned against the railing with a cup of steaming coffee cupped in her palms.

It was as though he saw her for the first time. The way Missy must be seeing her.

Red hair that he knew was not natural fell in messy curls over bare shoulders. Pale breasts propped up by her forearms seemed ready to spill over the top of her crimson corset. Whatever she had used to make her lashes black had slid while she slept and given her under-eyes a coal shadow. A white feather, limp from a night of hard work, flopped over one eye.

Missy sagged backward against him.

“Is that …?” she whispered. “Is she …?”

“Miss Emily Perkins.”

Muff whined. His dirty tail whipped up a cloud of dust.

“Is Miss Perkins a dancing woman?” Missy settled Muff on her lap with quiet fuss and scolding. She must be trying hard not to stare at Emily.

“She knows a step or two.”

“You’ve … danced with her?” It was a bold question from someone who had suddenly blushed the same shade of red as Emily’s sleep-smudged rouge.

“We grew up together. Emily is like a sister to me.” And she was, but she hadn’t always been. There had been that long-ago summer, just before Emily’s folks had died of the cholera, when the pair of them had been green sixteen-year-olds. Emily hadn’t been like a sister then.

“She’s beautiful.”

Missy Devlin was a woman of neverending surprise. “You aren’t offended by her?”

“Mercy, no! If all the women in Luminary dress like your friend, I can give you back your coat.”

He ought to feel relieved by her attitude. Now he wouldn’t lose time trailing Wage while he took Missy to a more appropriate town. But he didn’t feel relieved, he felt worried. Her eyes shone too brightly. Her smile curved with anticipation. No doubt by sundown she would get a new journal and write to her sister, describing every step that she saw the dancing women of Luminary take.

Zane slid backward off Ace then led him to the hitching post outside Maybelle’s.

“Let’s go in, I’ll introduce you to Maybelle.”

He reached up. She leaned down, keeping both arms around Muff. She didn’t tense when his fingers closed about her ribs. She fell into his hands with perfect trust. Unease shivered up his spine. A fearless innocent in Luminary equaled a victim.

He’d have to pay Maybelle extra to keep Missy out of trouble until he arranged her way home.

Missy’s hands itched. Words trembled at her fingertips, eager to pop out. Everything she had written before would pale against the description of this cherry-red room.

Enchantment in the form of red velvet curtains covered whole walls. Purple couches sat boldly on a gold carpet. Not a finger of daylight strayed through the windows, so six crystal chandeliers were lit, casting fairy lights on ceiling, walls and floor. On the right side of the room was a marble-topped bar that ran the length of the wall. Behind the bar was an endlessly long mirror framed in polished wood. Above that hung a huge painting of a woman lying bare on a couch that looked very much like the couches in this marvelous parlor.

She had been warned often enough that it was rude to stare, but she had never seen a woman so seductively nude. It was difficult to draw her gaze away from the honey-brown eyes and the moist red mouth that seemed to smile with a great secret. Surely, with her arms sprawled languidly over her head and her breasts pointing at the viewer, with her hips turned so that the black shadow between her thighs was right there for all to see, the woman could have no secrets.

The grand room was empty, quiet except for the swish of Muff’s tail stirring the air.

“Maybelle?” Zane called out.

A gray bun streaked with brown popped up from behind the polished bar. The woman’s head turned, revealing a round face. Laughter spun in honey-brown eyes. Missy glanced at the painting then at the smiling woman. Her eyes still held a secret.

“Welcome home, sugar.” The woman, dressed in plain brown wool, swished out from behind the bar. She hopped, sparrow-like, toward him with her arms flapping in welcome. “Where have you been gone to for so long?”

Zane took half a dozen steps across the room, caught the woman’s plump embrace and spun her about. Crisp petticoats swished through the air. Crinkling lace flashed past a piano that gleamed like a mirror.

Missy’s fingers itched again. What a surprise to find such a fine instrument in this prairie-weathered town. She could hardly think over the words crowding her mind. She would need them all to describe Maybelle and her decadent, opulent and oh-so-delightful establishment.

“Earning a living.” Zane set Maybelle on the floor then pecked her cheek with a quick kiss.

The worldly-wise yet down-to-earth-looking woman blushed and touched her cheek.

“You always were a sweet boy. The girls have missed you.”

Sweet boy? Missy looked him over with narrowed eyes. His hair glinted midnight-blue in the light of the chandelier, his thighs swelled beneath his jeans, his feet would be long and lean under his well-worn boots. Possibly Maybelle hadn’t seen the way his shoulders filled his flannel shirt. Evidently she hadn’t taken note of the way his eyes could melt a woman in her shoes. Certainly, the woman could never have felt the scrape of his beard stubble under her fingertips.

It had been some time since Zane Coldridge was a sweet boy.

Throaty giggles erupted at the top of the stairs. Like a swarm of multicolored butterflies, women fluttered down the steps. Bare arms reached, bosoms jiggled over corsets, red mouths puckered for kisses.

Maybelle had been dead-on about the girls missing Zane.

“Have you brought me a new girl, dear?” Maybelle called out over the brightly colored heads of the women surrounding Zane. She wrapped Missy in a soft, quick hug that Muff didn’t seem to mind. Then she took a step back, smiling all the while. “Turn around, dear. Let me get a good look at you.”

Missy made a pretty pirouette with one hand out, palm up. Muff, wedged against her side, wiggled in apparent delight.

“Very nice,” Maybelle crooned. “Take off that old coat, dearie, and let me see if you will appeal to our gentlemen.”

The coat hadn’t slipped to her waist before Zane had extricated himself from the flock of soiled doves and yanked the lapels back over her bosom.

“I’d like you to meet Missy Devlin.” He fastened the top button and tugged to make sure it held. “She’s not a professional lady.”

The professional ladies made a colorful circle, gazing at her with interest.

“Why, then, is she in her underwear?” Emily asked. Curly heads of red, black and blond nodded all about.

“Yes, dear, what has happened to your clothing?” Maybelle asked, her voice soft with concern. “Zane?” This time her voice had a bite to it.

“I started off yesterday with a lovely dress, white and red with pretty bows and brass buttons shaped like roses, but it was eaten.” A multivoiced gasp came from the circle. Six pairs of eyes stared at Zane with disapproval.

“By a cow!” Zane rushed to clarify.

“Ohhh!” The women sighed as one.

Emily nodded her head in apparent understanding, as though gowns were a regular part of bovine diet in the West.

“Missy is trying to get home to her family in Boston,” Zane said to Maybelle. “She lost everything that she had in the flood that took out Green Island.”

Maybelle touched Missy’s elbow. “Oh, you poor lamb. I heard about that. What a mercy that Zane found you. He’s brought me many a stray over the years. Not many women, you understand, but puppies and kittens, even a sick old man once. Our Zane just has a knack for bringing home castoffs.”

“Can you put Missy up for a while?” Zane asked.

“She can have your old room.” To Missy, she said, “It’s lovely and quiet at the top of the house so nothing will disturb you.”

If only she could stay for a while. Why, the stories she would be able to tell! But first she had to get her journal back and return poor Mr. Goodwin’s rental horse. Very likely, the stolen animal would be the only part of his business to have survived the flood.

“Thank you for your kindness, Maybelle, but I can’t stay a moment longer. I have business to take care of.”

“In that pretty shift?” A blonde with a scar on her chin asked. “I thought you wasn’t a whore?”

“Janie, you know we don’t use that word here,” Maybelle admonished. She smoothed her hands on the front of her modest dress. “We are professional ladies, purveyors of pleasure to discriminating gentlemen.”

“Janie didn’t begin her career at Maybelle’s. She came from outside.” Emily inclined her head toward the closed door. “She started at Pete’s Palace. Life out there is different.”

“It’s mean,” said a woman who touched her shoulder, appearing to rub away some old pain.

“And dirty,” added a brunette with shiny curls.

Maybelle scratched Muff behind his mud-crusted ear. “You and your pup will stay with us until you can find your way home, but I have to warn you, Luminary isn’t the place for a lady like you.”

“You are a prize, Maybelle.” Zane kissed her cheek. “I’ll be on my way.”

“You chasing some outlaw?” Emily asked.

“Hot on his heels, darlin’.”

Missy’s heart gave a kick when he called the woman darlin’. It had been naive to think that he’d meant something personal when he’d called Missy that.

Zane passed quick kisses all around. Except for Missy. He wished her luck then strode out the front door.

“I sure do hope it’s not another year before we see that man.” Emily took Muff from Missy’s arms. “What a sweet little poochie.”

“Let me have that dirty old coat, dearie.” Maybelle slid it off her, held the coat at arm’s length and wrinkled her nose. “Who knows when this was last laundered?”

“I can’t stay, really.” Missy sprinted toward the door.

Maybe if she offered Zane a huge sum of money he would take her along.

She yanked open the door then remembered that she didn’t have a huge amount of money. She had no money. The only way she had to get money was to wire Edwin and beg him for some.

Missy stepped onto the boardwalk. Bright sunlight nearly blinded her. She shaded her eyes with her hand and watched Zane trot away in a haze of dust.

“Hey, chuckie!”

Missy turned to see a man, greasy hair hanging past his shoulders and black spittle oozing from the corner of his mouth, crossing the street. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a small coin. “This’ll be all your’n if you let me taste your—”

Whatever revolting thing the man had intended to say was cut short by a gunshot. The coin vanished from between his fingers. He let out a yelp of profanity and chewing tobacco.

Missy spun toward the sound of the shot. Zane sat tall in his saddle with a gun sitting easy as a heartbeat in his steady hand. Wisps of smoke twirled out of the gun barrel. The fury in his eyes made her shiver. It made the greasy man run for cover.

Half a dozen hands from behind grabbed her shift and yanked her back through Maybelle’s front door.

An hour before sundown, Zane settled Ace into the Dereton livery. He gave the liveryman an additional coin to make sure the horse had an extra bag of oats and the best stall. At the stable door he paused and glanced back. The extras he had purchased were bare payment for a couple of hard days. He whistled softly in good-bye and got a whickered reply.

Reassured that Ace was well-tended, Zane walked two blocks to the marshal’s office.

The marshal, Joseph Tuner, was a family man who would likely be home for supper with his wife and younglings. Unless he had a tenant in a jail cell, his habit was to leave his office unlocked. That would suit Zane fine. If he could skip a drawn-out conversation, he would be able to search the establishments where Wage might be before he had the relief of checking in to the hotel for a dry night’s sleep.

As he had expected, the door was unlocked; it swung open with a rusty groan. The last hour of daylight shot across the floor and cast an orange glow on the wanted posters pinned to the wall behind the marshal’s desk. Outside, a dog barked, footsteps passed behind Zane, thumping down the boardwalk. A handbill with the ink barely dry stared back at him.

“Blue eyes,” he said out loud then rounded the desk. He tapped the likeness of Missy Lenore Devlin on the nose with his finger. He traced the curls winding pertly on top of her head.

He ought to have known who she was from the first. The clothing on the sketch, particularly the collar, standing stiff and prim, must have thrown him off. The tidy loops of hair marked in pen didn’t reflect the sun’s gleam the way the true tresses did. But strike him silly, he should have recognized those eyes. The artist had captured the spark of whimsy and lurking mischief that he had struggled to put out of his mind on the short ride from Luminary to Dereton.

Damn, he might never forget the look on her face when he shot the coin from the derelict’s fingers. She hadn’t uttered a word, but her round eyes and sagging jaw had shown her astonishment.

She looked pretty when she was astonished. He shook his head to dispel the image.

There was the poster of Wage. The poster, as usual, had been pinned under another one, newer with a higher reward.

The sum on Missy’s poster nearly blinded him. He ought to turn back to Luminary, collect Missy and deliver her to her mother’s doorstep. Two thousand dollars would sit pretty in his bank account. Life would be a good deal more comfortable with that sum behind him.

The reward tempted him, to be sure, but it couldn’t sway him from his purpose. Catching Wage, and others like him, made him get up in the morning. It made him saddle up Ace, head out to dangerous, ugly places and do dangerous, ugly things.

Maybe when he quit hearing his mother’s dying breath in his ear, if the day came when he didn’t feel her blood sticky on his young hands, then he would follow a bounty of sky-blue eyes.

Not today, though. For now, he was after Wage, even at only five hundred dollars.

Zane plucked Missy’s flyer from the wall, folded it up and put it in his pocket. For an instant, he thought that her eyes flashed with humor. Of course, if he tried to take her back to Boston it would not be humor that flashed in her eyes.

Pity the bounty hunter who tried to bring Miss Devlin home.

Missy followed Maybelle’s swaying skirts up a narrow stairway to the only room on the third floor of the brothel.

“Every great while, we have a guest who only wants to sleep.” Maybelle jingled a set of keys attached to a chain looped about her waist. She selected a polished brass key and opened the door. “It’s mostly quiet up here, if you keep the windows closed. You will do that, won’t you, dearie?”

Missy glanced at the window. It was a small dormer with lace curtains tied back with white satin sashes. It looked tasteful, ladylike even.

Maybelle spun about, giving the room a critical glance. Apparently not expecting an answer to the window question, she didn’t catch the negative shake of Missy’s head. Who knew what mysteries the night would reveal through an open window?

“Please do understand that this is for your good as well as mine.” Maybelle rubbed the room key with her thumb. “I wouldn’t want any of my gentlemen to get the wrong idea about you. Since you have everything you need for now, I’ll say good night.”

The wrong idea? A dozen fascinating stories flashed through her mind at once. In that instant Maybelle swished out the door, closed it and turned the key in the lock with a swift snap.

Missy stared at the door that she only now noticed had two locks. One to keep strangers out and one to keep her … locked in!

Arms spread wide she fell backward onto the bed, mentally borrowing some of the colorful words she had heard Zane use. Drat! She wouldn’t learn a thing of interest locked in the tower like a fairy-tale princess.

She stared at the ceiling. It sloped at a narrow angle following the line of the roof. The room would be a cozy place to spend a night if one were not a prisoner. Mercy, but the bed did feel like a cloud after sleeping on the ground last night.

As pleasant as the feather cloud felt, the adventure with Zane had been thrilling. She’d never slept in a man’s arms before. Ever since, she’d savored that memory, musing over words to preserve the experience in just the right way.

She had never spent the night in a house of sporting ladies either, but the adventure of it was shut away from her by a locked door.

Still, there was the window. Luckily, she hadn’t agreed to keep it closed and could relish whatever sounds came through it without feeling guilty.

Missy bounded up from the bed. She pulled a chair to the window and stood on it to get a good view through the deep dormer. She lifted it open, not a crack but all the way. This close to dusk, the air was too nippy for comfort but some things had to be braved in the name of literature.

Below, the street was quiet but, come dark, her head would be so full of things to write about she would never be able to remember them all.

She turned and slid onto the seat of the chair with a thump. How would she manage without paper and an ink pen?

“Adversity holds the seeds of adventure,” she recited to the room.

Adversity she had by the bucketful. She couldn’t write without supplies. She couldn’t obtain the supplies while clad in her underwear and Maybelle surely would not unlock the door until she was decently clothed.

“What I need …” Missy leaped from the chair. The idea was so bold it stole her breath. She pressed her palm to her chest to still her heart. Suzie would be thrilled, neither of them had ever had this thing. None of her acquaintances had ever had it.

“What I need … is a job!”

Chapter Five

Missy leaned out of the dormer window, certain that she could not be seen from the lantern-lit street three stories down. A cold breeze prickled her skin but she didn’t dare pop back inside to get Zane’s coat. Something interesting might happen which she would not want to miss.

So far, a man had urinated in the alley across the street and a drunk had stumbled into a pole. Things couldn’t help but turn livelier.

In the very instant that a woman let out a lusty laugh from an unseen saloon, there was a tap at Missy’s door. She slid the window closed then plopped down into the chair.

While the key turned in the lock, she caught a messy curl in her finger, twirled it in a bored fashion and sighed like a proper captive.

“Sorry about the locked door. Maybelle is one for caution.” Emily stepped inside with a swirl of purple petticoats. She toted Muff in one arm, freshly groomed and smelling of roses. “Moe will be along with a bath in a bit.”

Emily set Muff on the floor then laid a sparkling crimson dress across the bed.

“Jolene left this behind last year when she went respectable. Maybelle thought it would be a fit for you.” Emily looked her over with narrow eyes. “It might be a little tight in the chest. Not that that ever hurt anything.”

Missy leaped up and nearly dashed to the bed. The fabric of the dress winked at her. She touched a ruffle of red feathers trimming the low-cut neckline. The tickle under her fingertips was a call to adventure. If she wore this gown in Boston she would be banned from polite society for years.

Muff hopped onto the chair then jumped to the dormer. He looked out the window, barking and waving his tail madly.

“That dog is as sweet as he can be now that he’s cleaned up.” Emily wrinkled her nose. “Those pretty drawers of yours are a mess. Here … let me have them. We’ll give them to Moe when he comes up. He can wash as good as a woman.”

Emily gave no indication that she had said anything shocking. Evidently, in Luminary, ladies stripped and handed their clothes to washermen every day. Since she’d been a toddler, the only one to see her in the all-together had been Suzie.

“Honey, you look positively scandalized. I purely forgot you were a lady for a minute, with you in your underwear.” Emily settled on the bed. Muff hopped down from the window and found a soft place on her lap. “I guess when you start whoring, modesty is the first thing you forget.”

Surely Emily had misread her expression. Missy Lenore Devlin had never been one to be scandalized! Why, ask anyone back home, she was the one creating a scandal.

She stepped out of her petticoat and let it fall in a heap about her feet. Undressing in front of a stranger was about as adventurous as one could get. Pray that she wasn’t blushing herself to embarrassment.

When the last of her garments hit the floor, she kicked them into a corner and sat in the chair with her legs crossed at the ankles and her hands folded on her knees. So what if she was naked in front of a semi-clad stranger? She lifted her gaze, determined to meet this challenge with a confident grin.

Emily was not looking in her direction. Instead, she fluffed Muff’s fur and spoke softly to him. She glanced up and smiled.

“What a sweet little fellow.”

“Yes … sweet. He’s been nothing but that for the entire trip. Why, back home that’s what everyone calls him, sweet little Muff.” Missy knew she was babbling, but what did one say in such a circumstance? My, isn’t it a lovely evening to be sitting in a whorehouse naked?

“I used to be like you.” Emily said.

“I suppose it’s all a part of your job.”

“What?” Confusion lifted Emily’s painted-on eyebrows.

“Bare as a jay?”

“Respectable.” She shrugged her shoulders, twirling her fingers in Muff’s fur and looking at something in her mind. “Once I had dreams. There was a day when I’d have turned as red as you are now.”

Missy would have protested her blushing condition, but that was not what this conversation was about. To outward appearances, Emily looked like a goddess in satin and feathers, with her breasts peeking through her sheer underwear and her bare calves showing. Somehow, though, she didn’t look a bit like the soiled doves of the novels, laughing and flirting and dancing the night away with glasses of something wicked and intoxicating gripped in their gay fingers.

Emily looked beaten-down. Her smile seemed distant … hopeless even.

“Still, if it hadn’t been for Zane, I’d probably be dead.” With that, her spirits appeared to rally.

“Me, too.” Missy pulled the pins from her dirty hair. She fluffed it about her shoulders then frowned at her fingers where grit had lodged under her fingernails. “He also saved a little girl in the flood.”

“A lot of folks are indebted to Zane.” When Emily looked at her, Missy was sure that she did not see nakedness. “Then too, a lot of folks don’t wish him well.”

“Why would you be dead?”

“My folks passed when I was sixteen,” she said.

“My father died in a buggy accident.” How interesting, Missy thought, that the pampered eastern darling and the scorned fallen woman had so much in common.

“Mine died of scarlet fever. We were homesteaders just outside of town. Some others died, too.”

“That’s a pure tragedy. Did you have someone to go to?” As much as Missy sought freedom from her restrictive family, she knew from some experience that they could be counted on in a crisis.

“Zane was the only one. We were close back then. Really, he’s all I had. I tried to support myself by doing laundry, but my hands bled with the lye. My eyes aren’t good enough for sewing. There’s only one way a woman can support herself around here when her folks are gone.”

“Dancing,” Missy said with a sigh.

“Sure … dancing. I was so hungry and lonely, it was easy to tell myself, ‘Okay, Emily, you can do it for a little while, till you get back on your feet.’ The thing is, this business keeps you mostly off your feet. It’s hard to get back up.”

“How did Zane save you?”

“I meant to go to Pete’s Palace, but Zane wouldn’t have it. He said if I meant to take up the … dancing … life it would have to be at Maybelle’s.”

“He might have taken you to another town. Maybe a better life.”

“Oh, he tried. Years back I was so young and proud. I was set on making my own way in the world. Maybelle’s was the best he could do for me. Besides, he grew up here, Maybelle was like an auntie to him, it didn’t seem so bad back then.”

“What about now? You’re a grown woman. You could leave the sporting life, surely?”

Emily studied her fingertips making whirls in Muff’s fur. “There is one way.” She shook her head, staring hard at Missy. “I don’t know that I’d feel right about it, though.”

A heavy knock beat on the door. The knob turned. Missy dove for Zane’s coat and wrapped herself up a second after Moe stepped into the room with two buckets of steaming water.

He didn’t seem to take note of her flash of skin, but by heavens, there were some adventures that she did not need to have.

Missy stared at Herman Meyer of Herman Meyer’s Mercantile over a display of canned goods on the counter. He seemed perplexed. Speechless, he stared at the red hat that had been a gift from Emily. His eyes scanned downward over the feathers that tickled her cleavage.

“I said,” Missy pronounced loudly in case the man’s problem was that he was hard of hearing, “I’m here about your help-wanted sign in the window.”

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