Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Copyright

“How about it, mister?”

Her voice was not much above a whisper.

He tried to take a calming breath, only to have it stab at his sore side. Damn it. He was the victim, not this outlaw girl. He wasn’t about to take on the responsibility for her dilemma. He wasn’t about to let her compound the hurt her father’s gang had already inflicted on him. Steeling himself with anger, he looked up and down her slender form and said with deliberate rudeness, “Sorry, miss. I’m not interested.”

The anger died swiftly at her stricken look and sharp intake of breath. He was not used to insulting women. But then, he was not used to getting his ribs broken and his face smashed, either.

She seemed to sag, still holding on to the bars. “I saved your life,” she said again, but the energy had gone out of her voice….

Dear Reader,

Ana Seymour is back this month with her eighth book for Harlequin Historical, Outlaw Wife. When outlaw Willow Davis saves Simon Grant from certain death during a robbery by the notorious Davis gang, the Wyoming rancher feels obligated to save her from the gallows by marrying her. But the two strangers have a lot to learn about love and marriage before they can find true happiness in this moving story.

Nancy Whiskey by Laurel Ames features a daring British nurse and an American spy who discover love and adventure on a journey across the wilds of Pennsylvania, despite incredible hardships, from an author whom Affaire de Coeur describes as “…excitingly original.” In Quicksilver’s Catch by USA Today bestselling author Mary McBride, a runaway heiress throws herself at the mercy of a tough-as-nails bounty hunter who is determined to make as much money as he can from their association, if she doesn’t drive him to drink first.

Margaret Moore’s The Rogue’s Return, our fourth title for the month, is the next installment in her MOST UNSUITABLE…series set in Victorian England, and the story of a devil-may-care nobleman who finds redemption in the arms of a respectable woman.

Whatever your tastes in reading, we hope you’ll keep a lookout for all four titles.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Harlequin Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

Outlaw Wife
Ana Seymour

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ANA SEYMOUR

has been a Western fan since her childhood—the days of the shoot-’em-up movie matinees and television programs. She has followed the course of the Western myth in books and films ever since, and says she was delighted when cowboys started going off into the sunset with their ladies rather than their horses. Ms. Seymour lives with her two daughters near one of Minnesota’s ten thousand lakes.

With thanks to Tracy Farrell for buying my first book five years ago… and to the excellent Harlequin Historical editors I’ve worked with since— Elizabeth Bass, Joyce Mulvaney, Don D’Auria, Margaret O’Neill Marbury and Karen Kosztolnyik. I’ve learned from each one of you.

Prologue

Wyoming Territory, 1882

Somehow Simon Grant had known that it was not going to be a good day. He’d awakened with a damn crick in his neck from sleeping cockeyed on his saddlebag pillow. The stream that had looked inviting when he’d camped out the previous night had been so alkaline that not even his pinto mare, Rain Cloud, would drink from it this morning. He’d set out toward Bramble with an empty canteen and a morning mouth that felt as if it had been stuffed with someone’s old sock. And now this.

There were six of them.

Rain Cloud eased to a stop in instinctive response to her master’s unease.

Their guns were shiny and close at hand. Ready for business. Simon felt his heart slow to a steady deep throb. Six. If it were half that number he might consider resisting. His reputation as the strongest rancher in the territory was not undeserved. He’d run the Saddle Ridge Ranch practically by himself since he was a boy. And his work-honed body had had to serve his own needs and his pa’s, as well.

But he couldn’t take on six of them. Even if it meant losing the entire bankroll he’d just earned selling off thirty prime yearlings at the railhead in Laramie. He laid one hand gently on the pommel of his horse and placed the other on his thigh, inches away from his own gun.

The lead rider approached, stooped over in his saddle. An old man, and not too healthy from the look of his sallow complexion. Though his eyes were sharp enough. They were fixed on Simon’s gun hand.

Simon looked past him to survey the rest of the group. One toward the back looked scrawny enough to be immediately discounted. But that still left four able-bodied opponents. Too many. None had drawn their guns yet.

Simon turned his attention to the man approaching him and said calmly, “Good morning.”

The old man smiled. “We’ve got ourselves a cool one, boys,” he said over his shoulder.

Simon reflected that it was probably a bad sign that the outlaws had not bothered to cover their faces, except for the puny one at the rear, whose oversize neckerchief rode up to hide most of his features.

He considered making a run for it. When she was fresh, Rain Cloud was unmatched in a cross-country race. But they’d ridden hard from Laramie. And she’d had no water since yesterday. Plus, Simon wasn’t interested in a bullet in the back. Especially not in the back. He knew firsthand what back injuries could lead to. He’d rather face head-on whatever was coming.

“Is there something I can do for you gentlemen?” he asked.

The old man’s grin grew wider. “Polite young feller, aren’t you? Well, my boy, since you’re so polite, I expect you’d be more than willing to make a contribution of sorts to a worthy cause.”

“And that cause would be…?” Simon kept his voice pleasant.

The outlaw on the old man’s right side drew his pistol, a six-shooter with a wicked twelve-inch barrel. “Let’s just kill him and get it over with, Seth,” he growled.

The older man looked annoyed. “Would you like to introduce the whole gang? Write down our names for the man to take in to the sheriff?”

The man shrugged. “He’s seen our faces. We’ll have to kill him anyway.”

Simon shifted slightly in his saddle. His father’s weathered face flashed through his mind. It would be hard for Harvey Grant without Simon. Damn hard. “I’m not interested in trouble,” he told the outlaws. “You can have my money. Whatever you want.” Slowly he reached toward a saddlebag, unbuckled it and took out a leather pouch.

“Throw that over here. Gentle like,” the old man said. “And then I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to get down off that pretty little filly of yours.”

Simon gave a pat to Rain Cloud’s neck and dismounted, keeping his hands up as he reached the ground.

By now, all except the old man and the boy had their weapons drawn. “So, shall I shoot him?” the outlaw who had spoken before asked.

The old man appeared to be considering. Simon didn’t move. He felt in complete control of every muscle, and his mind was functioning with a crystal clarity that took in every detail of the scene before him. But he saw no way out. One nod from the old outlaw and Simon was a dead man.

“Take his gun belt and his boots. We’ll leave him tied up.” The old man sat back in his saddle and squinted upward at the cloudless August sky. “More than likely the buzzards’ll do our work for us.”

With obvious reluctance the younger outlaw got off his horse and came toward Simon. “You’re turning soft in your old age, Seth,” he told the older man.

“Shut up, Jake,” the man barked. “I still run things in this outfit. And if you don’t like it, we’ll truss you up for buzzard meat right alongside him.”

Jake grumbled and shook his head, but reached for a coil of twine hanging from his saddle. Sheathing his own gun, he walked over to Simon. “I guess this is your lucky day, cowboy,” he taunted, signaling Simon to put his hands behind his back. He tied them with a brutal tightening of the cord, then reached around Simon to unfasten his gun belt. As his arms brushed against Simon’s sides, he stopped and exclaimed, “He’s wearing a money belt.”

He grabbed Simon’s shoulder and whirled him around, knocking him to the ground, then bent over him and ripped open the front of the shirt. “The bastard was holding out on us,” he said in disbelief.

Wrenching the belt from around Simon’s waist, he held it up in triumph. “It’s nice and heavy,” he said with a smile. Simon struggled to sit up, but the outlaw shoved him to the ground with his heavy boot. He shifted the money belt to his left hand and drew his gun, holding it inches from Simon’s face. “Let me kill the son of a bitch, Seth,” he pleaded.

The old man again seemed to hesitate. He looked back at the young lad in the rear of the outlaws, then turned once again to the man he had called Jake. “I said to leave him. Come on. We’ve got a long way to ride.”

Jake’s eyes had followed the old man as he glanced back at the boy. Simon felt a sudden, fierce gratitude for the young outlaw’s presence. He was almost certain his fate would be different if the boy was not there to witness it. Jake seemed to have come to the same conclusion, but did not appear to share Simon’s gratitude. With an ugly twist of his mouth, he gave Simon another savage kick, caving in the entire lower left side of his rib cage.

Simon fell back in a haze of pain. The outlaw aimed a third blow toward Simon’s head, but the kick was misdirected and glanced off Simon’s jaw instead, almost knocking the outlaw to his feet. In a fury, he pulled back his foot and kicked twice more—sharp, sickening jabs. The second was the one that did it, Simon decided, as he felt himself descending into oblivion. His father had always said that Simon had a head harder than an old maid’s heart. But this time it wasn’t proving hard enough.

It was funny. The blackness came slowly, not all at once as he would have imagined. And through it, he was still aware of what was happening, though it was as if he were watching from a distance. He realized that his boots were being stripped from him, that they’d rolled him over. His side didn’t hurt anymore. Nothing did. And the oddest thing was that just before he let the void swallow him, he saw a vision. The face of a beautiful girl with hair the color of a prairie sunrise. Must be an angel, he thought, finally losing the battle for consciousness. Maybe death wouldn’t be such a bad place after all.

Chapter One

Most weeks not much happened in Bramble, Wyoming Territory. Sheriff John Walker spent his time chasing the truant Mahoney brothers back across the slough to his daughter Cissy’s schoolhouse. Or hauling Frank Clooney out of the Blue Chip Saloon.

When he’d first become sheriff over twenty years ago, John had locked Frank up to sleep off his drunks in the town’s one jail cell. But the jail was part of John’s office, and Frank’s snores were louder than a wounded grizzly. Eventually the two men had come to an understanding. John would put Frank to bed in Frank’s own shack behind the general store, and Frank would consider himself under house arrest there until he was sober enough to walk a straight line out to the privy and back. The arrangement seemed to work.

It did, however, cut down on the town’s jail time. John could hardly remember the last time he’d had an actual criminal behind bars. Bramble was a peaceable kind of town. Of course, the sheriff liked things that way.

He finished his third cup of coffee and sat with his hands on his desk, trying to convince himself to get up out of his brand-new fancy swivel chair and go see Felix Koenig’s milk cow. For want of a better candidate, John had been proclaimed the town’s veterinarian, though he didn’t do much more than read a few books he’d sent for back East and administer a paregoric now and then to ease the pain of the bloat. Animals in Bramble tended pretty much to themselves, just like the people.

The thump against his front door had him lifting his bushy white eyebrows in surprise and crossing the room at a faster pace than he’d have used on his way to Koenig’s cow.

He opened the door wide, then drew in a breath of genuine alarm when he saw the slumped body of Simon Grant. Blood covered his face and stained the entire side of his buckskin jacket. “Good Lord, Simon. What’s happened to you?”

He went down on his knees beside the younger man’s inert body and put a finger alongside his neck, feeling for a pulse. It was reassuringly strong. “Can you hear me, Simon?”

When there was no response, he dragged his friend’s body over to the cot where John slept when he wasn’t in the mood to deal with his landlady’s motherly scoldings.

Simon may be alive, but it didn’t take John long to see that he was badly hurt. The sheriff’s first thought was that he’d been stomped by a horse. But he dismissed the notion as unlikely. There wasn’t a better horseman in all Wyoming than Simon Grant.

“What happened to you, son?” he asked again, his voice cracking with distress. Simon had indeed been like a son to him over the years. He would have been one in fact if things had worked out differently between him and Cissy. He’d better go fetch his daughter now. There was no doctor in Bramble, and whatever had happened to Simon, his injuries were beyond John’s veterinary skills.

He straightened up and started to leave, but a moan brought him back to Simon’s bedside. “Beaten… and…robbed,” Simon gasped.

John’s face tightened. “Someone did this to you?”

Simon gave a barely perceptible nod. “Took… all…the money. Took…Rain Cloud.”

“Never mind the money and the horse, lad. What did they do to you? They’ve beaten you half to death.”

“Kicked.”

John blanched. “Who was it? Did you recognize anyone?”

Simon’s head moved a half inch to each side. “Outlaws.”

John clenched a gnarled fist. “Look, Simon. I need to get help. I’m going to fetch Cissy to start patching you up.”

There was the faintest trace of a smile on Simon’s swollen mouth. “She won’t come.”

“Of course she will.”

Simon shook his head, more forcefully this time, then immediately thought better of it. The movement made it feel as if his brains had spun clear around inside him.

“You underestimate my daughter if you think that hurt pride will keep her from helping you at a time like this, Simon,” John said sternly. “I’m fetching her. You stay right there.”

Simon watched the sheriff leave, moving only his eyes. “I’m not going…any where,” he said with a half chuckle that hurt all the way to his toes. Then the blessed blackness came once again.

His pa must have been right about his hard head after all, Simon decided. By midafternoon he could sit up for minutes at a time before the room started spinning again. He even managed to muster a smile of gratitude as Cissy pressed another cool cloth against his swollen cheek.

The diminutive schoolteacher didn’t respond to the gesture. “I must look something fierce,” he said, gently moving her hand away with his.

“You were never that pretty to start out with, Simon Grant, so don’t let your vanity suffer any.”

He would have laughed if he hadn’t already experienced what that felt like along his ribs, which Cissy had pronounced broken. “At least three of them,” she’d said briskly.

John had gone off to send some telegrams about Simon’s bushwhacking. It was the first time he and Cissy had been alone since he’d broken off a twoyear “understanding” that had been understood entirely differently by each of them. “Are we ever going to be friends again, Cissy?” he asked softly.

“So’s I can bake you apple pies every Sunday and be conveniently available as a partner at the socials when it’s too much trouble to find yourself a girl?”

“You do make heavenly pies, Cissy darlin’.” He tried a grin, but it didn’t work. The entire right side of his mouth felt as if it were swollen to the size of a pig’s bladder. It probably looked just about as attractive, too.

Cissy gave a great sigh and slid backward on the sheriff’s tiny cot. “I think you’ll recover, Simon, more’s the pity.”

The tired look in her brown eyes belied her words. He’d only been semiconscious when she’d arrived at the office with her father, but he’d been coherent enough to see that she’d been deeply distressed by his condition. And she’d worked for hours now to get him cleaned up, bathed, his side bandaged. She’d not left him all day, had sat patiently applying wet cloths to his face. A veritable angel of mercy.

For a minute the vision of that other angel flickered through his head. Had he really come that close to heaven?

“You should have been a nurse, Cissy,” he said.

“I might have been. At the time I thought I had my reasons for staying in Bramble instead of heading East to nursing school.” Her reproachful look left no doubt what those reasons had been.

Simon shifted on the cot, then regretted it. “Ahh,” he breathed. “You might as well light into me, Cissy, just like everyone else has today.”

Her expression became contrite. “I’m sorry. You’re right. You don’t need hassling right now.”

She reached toward his cheek with the cloth, but he pushed her hand away. “Don’t worry about it. I’m grateful for your help. Really, I am.” He tried to lean his weight back on his elbows to lever himself off the bed. “Now, if your pa would just get back here with a horse for me, I’ll be on my way.”

Cissy opened her mouth in horror. “You haven’t got the brains of a tortoise, Simon Grant. You’re not going anywhere.”

He slumped back on the bed, convinced by his body rather than Cissy’s words. “I reckon I could set a spell longer,” he gasped.

“You’re not moving from here for the next three days. Maybe more. We’ll send word out to Harvey….”

“No. Don’t send word. Pa’d just fret and probably hurt himself trying to come to town to see me. Chester’s getting too old to bring him in by himself.”

“You need more help out there, Simon.” They both knew that up until a few weeks ago, she’d fully expected to supply that help herself. In fact, assisting Simon with his paralyzed father through the years had been one thing that had interested her in the field of nursing.

“It was different when he had two good strong arms. But since the apoplexy last spring…” Simon shook his head. His father’s left arm was practically useless these days, making it even more difficult for him to get around in his wheelchair. And Simon was terrified that another stroke would take him away altogether. After everything the two had been through, he simply couldn’t imagine life without his father.

“You need more help, is all,” Cissy said. Her tone was brisk, but a touch of sympathy lit her soft eyes.

Simon made a move resembling a nod.

“But right now you should try to sleep.”

“I want to see if your father’s had any word about that gang. They took Rain Cloud, you know.”

It was characteristic that Simon was more worried about his horse than the money he had lost. “I know. It’s a miracle you made it back into town.”

A miracle. Angels and miracles. “It just might have been,” he said thoughtfully. He was sure that he remembered the outlaw called Jake brutally tying his hands and ankles. Yet, when he’d regained consciousness, he’d been free, no ropes in sight. And there’d been a full canteen of water lying on the ground next to him. He would hardly have been able to half walk, half stumble his way into town without it.

It was a mystery. And it made his head throb to think about it.

Cissy laid a cloth on his forehead, and this time he didn’t resist as she traced her fingers through his hair. “Go to sleep, Simon,” she said soothingly. “I’ll wake you when Father comes back.”

But when he awoke Cissy was gone and the earlymorning sun was streaming in through the jail window. He’d slept the entire night. He closed his eyes and took a quick inventory. From the waist down, he seemed to be in tolerable shape. From the waist up, to put it directly, he wasn’t.

“I thought you were going to sleep till next spring like a mama bear.”

John’s booming voice pierced right through Simon’s temples. Simon took a minute to let the air slowly into his sore chest before answering, “Hell, John. I figured I could sleep in this morning, knowing our fearless sheriff was out rounding up those varmints and getting me back my horse.”

John snorted. “You think I want to end up looking like you? I ain’t that crazy, son.”

Simon rolled his eyes and found the movement tolerable. “Excuse me. I guess I just kind of thought that’s what sheriffs were for. To get the bad guys.”

“Nah,” John drawled. “We leave that to the marshals mostly. After all, they’re the ones who get all the glory in those dime novels the kids sneak into Cissy’s school.”

“So where does that leave my horse?”

“Well, we’ll just have to tell Marshal Wyatt Earp about it the next time he comes riding through town.”

Simon glared. “You’re getting to be an old man, John.”

The sheriff pushed himself out of his chair and walked toward Simon. “And I plan to continue right on that path, lad. Which means I don’t intend to get myself shot or end up like you with my skin showing all the colors of the rainbow.”

Simon lifted his head and looked down at his body. This time the movement was not so tolerable. He fell back against the mattress. “I look pretty, do I?”

“Prettier than a prize pig at the town fair.”

Simon smiled. “Help me up.”

“Cissy says you’re not supposed to move from that bed for three days.”

Simon lifted an eyebrow. “Listen, old man, unless you’re planning to take up nursing in your old age, I need to get up and take a trip out back.”

John looked embarrassed. “Oh.”

“I suppose you could call Cissy back to help me out with a bedpan. That might be interesting.”

“Not likely, you randy bastard.” There was the faintest trace of humor in the sheriffs voice and it felt good to both of them. When Simon had decided that his feelings for Cissy were never going to be more than those for a beloved sister, it had been almost as hard for him to tell her father as it had been to tell her. This was the first time he and John had been able to make any reference to the breakup without the hurt feelings surfacing.

“Well, give me a hand, then.”

Together they managed to get him to the outhouse and back again, but the trip convinced Simon that Cissy had been right, as usual. There was no way he’d be riding for at least a couple of days. Fortunately he’d finished his business in Laramie quickly, not liking to be away from home for long these days. His father wouldn’t start looking for him until the end of the week.

“So what did you find out about the bunch who waylaid me?” he asked as the sheriff helped him settle back into bed.

“Sounds like the Davis gang. Old Seth Davis has been keeping himself and his boys one step ahead of the law for years now.”

“Seth!” In his haze yesterday, Simon had forgotten that he’d heard a couple of the outlaws’ names. “They called the leader of the group Seth. And there was another man named Jake.”

“That’d be Jake Patton. A real mean sidewinder from down South somewheres. Has a reputation for being fast with guns and charming with women.”

“Somehow I missed the charming part.”

“Is he the one who kicked you?”

Simon nodded.

John’s eyes went from Simon’s mangled face to his bandaged ribs. “We’re going to get them, Simon,” he said grimly.

“I thought you said you were too old for chasing criminals.”

“I am. But we’re going to get them just the same.”

He looked out the window at the sound of a commotion out on the street. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“What is it?” Simon knew better than to try turning his head that far.

“If my eyes weren’t too old to depend on, I’d say that looks an awful lot like Marshal Torrance.”

“Did you send him a wire?”

John ignored the question. “And the horse with him looks an awful lot like your Rain Cloud.”

Simon rolled over on to his hands to boost himself up enough to see out the window. Sure enough. A man he didn’t know was tying Rain Cloud to the hitching rail out front. She looked none the worse for wear, he saw with relief.

“And I think they’ve got at least some of your outlaws,” the sheriff continued jubilantly. He raced to the door, flung it open and disappeared out into the street.

Simon groaned as he heaved his legs over the side of the bed and straightened up. His side screamed in protest, but he ignored it as he swiftly calculated the number of steps it would take him to reach the door. Six. Seven, maybe. He could do that. And then another two across the sidewalk to Rain Cloud.

He held one hand tightly against his bandage and put the other out to balance himself. He didn’t even want to think about how much it would hurt to fall. As it turned out, they were more shuffles than steps, and it took about ten. Finally he reached the door and leaned heavily against one side of the frame.

When he looked outside, the first sight to greet him was Rain Cloud, lifting her head with a soft nicker of recognition. Then he turned his head and saw her. His vision. The heavenly features and glorious hair. She was real. And John Walker had the barrel of his revolver pressed tight against her head.

“She kicked me,” he explained as he saw Simon’s expression.

“She’s a hellion, all right,” agreed the man standing next to John. He had a double-holstered gun belt on and a tin badge displayed prominently on his black shirt. Simon supposed that he must be Marshal Torrance.

The scrawny outlaw he had thought was a boy was a girl dressed in male clothing. But she didn’t look like a hellion to Simon. She looked young and scared. “Just keep your hands off me,” the girl muttered into her oversize neckerchief. Simon shook his head. He must have been half-asleep not to have seen it. Even in jeans and a heavy wool jacket she was obviously female. The jeans molded around legs that were long and slender. The jacket filled out at just the right places. And then there was that face. He’d been blind not to have realized.

He tore his gaze away from her and held on to the door frame for support as John and the marshal ushered their prisoners past him into the jail.

“I’d rather keep this as quiet as possible,” Marshal Torrance was saying. “The rest of the gang’s still out there, and they might decide to spring these two.”

His back pressed against the door, Simon surveyed the scene. The other man with the marshal was evidently a deputy. They’d caught only two of the outlaws—the old man and the girl. That left the four most dangerous still on the loose. He leaned out the door to look up and down the street. Everything seemed normal.

“They probably think we’re heading back to the territorial jail in Cheyenne,” the marshal continued. “Which is exactly where we’ll have to take them after Tom and I have had some sleep.” He nodded at his companion. “This is Tom Sneed. Deputy marshal.”

John was opening the cell with a big iron key. “We’ll keep them safe for you, Marshal. You and Mr. Sneed can get yourselves a nice rest over at the hotel. Take your time.”

Simon’s eyes were fastened once again on the girl. She saw him looking at her and turned away. “What about the others?” he asked the marshal.

“I don’t know. It was pure dumb luck that we got these two. I’d just gotten Walker’s wire at the stage depot in Prescott when they rode up trying to sell your pinto. We rode most of the night to get here so’s you could identify them. I’ve been trying to get something pinned on Seth Davis for a good long time.” His voice was rich with satisfaction.

The old outlaw shook his head. “Most danged fool thing I ever done,” he said. He looked from the marshal to the girl. “I guess I kind of knew that I’d just about run my course. But my daughter had nothing to do with any of it.”

“Daughter!” Simon and the sheriff exclaimed in unison.

Seth Davis nodded and wagged a bony finger at the papers covering the sheriff’s desk. “Just write down there that it was co-er-shun or whatever fancy legal terms you need. She’s no outlaw.”

The marshal tiredly wiped the back of his hands across his eyes. “The last three robberies attributed to the Davis gang have reported six outlaws, not five. And Simon Grant here can testify that your daughter was riding with them at the time that he was robbed and beaten.”

The old outlaw and his daughter both turned toward Simon. Her eyes were blue and enormous. “Well, I…” he began.

“So, as far as I’m concerned,” the marshal continued, “I’m taking her in. We’ll leave it up to the courts after that.”

“You heard the marshal,” John said. His gaze was also on the girl, and Simon recognized a hint of sympathy in his expression. But when neither outlaw made a move toward the cell, the sheriff took her arm and pushed her inside.

Deputy Sneed shoved the tip of his gun barrel into the old man’s back. “Get on in there, Davis,” he barked. He waited while the outlaw went in the cell, then shut the iron door with a clang.

“We’ll take you up on your offer, Sheriff,” the marshal said, holstering his gun. “I don’t think they can give you any trouble locked away like that. Just be sure you don’t get too close to that spitfire.” He nodded toward the girl, who stood stiffly just behind the bars, her eyes down, arms folded.

“How about grub?” the sheriff asked. “Have they been fed?”

“Nope. But I wouldn’t worry about it much. It won’t hurt them to go hungry for a while.” The marshal craned his neck tiredly. “Do whatever you like. I’m heading for bed.”

Without another word he turned and went out the door, his deputy following closely behind.

Willow Davis watched the men leave and gave a little shudder of relief. She wasn’t concerned for herself. The deputy had had no compunction about putting his hands all over her when he’d searched her for a weapon, but spending time among outlaws, she was used to men’s rude ways. Her concern was for her father. Seth Davis had prided himself on never being arrested. And she was sure that if it hadn’t been for her presence, he would have shot his way out of it this time. She still expected him to try something foolish any minute, and the marshal didn’t look like a man who would think twice about shooting an escaping prisoner in cold blood.

“Are you two hungry?” the sheriff was asking. He looked much easier to handle than the marshal and the deputy. His weathered skin was crisscrossed with smile lines and his snowy white hair made him look like a kindly grandfather rather than a lawman.

Seth Davis approached the bars. “I reckon we could stand something to eat, Sheriff, but I want to ask you again to release my daughter. She hasn’t done anything.”

The sheriff shrugged. “It’s not in my hands. I’m just holding on to you for the marshal. And it sounds to me like he’s pretty determined to take both of you in.”

Willow could swear that there was almost an apology in his expression as he glanced at her, in spite of the fact that she had kicked him with the solid toe of her boot. It puzzled her.

“I’ll take some food, Sheriff,” she said, relaxing her tense stance.

“I reckon you look like you could use it,” the sheriff replied. “Though you kick hard enough for a scrawny thing.”

Willow hesitated. “I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I’ve been having a bad day.”

For the first time she smiled, and Simon felt as if the air had been sucked out of his gut. While it was true that she was almost too slender, she was anything but “scrawny.” And when she smiled, her face lit up like daybreak on a hazy summer morning. He hardly heard the sheriff’s question.

“Will you be all right while I go arrange some food?”

“Excuse me?” He tore his eyes away from the girl and turned toward John.

“Get back down on that bed, Simon. You look as if you’re about to keel over.”

Simon moved over to the cot and sat down heavily. “I need to see to Rain Cloud.”

“I’ll take care of Rain Cloud. You lie back down and behave yourself or I’m going to get Cissy over here again to start in on you.”

Simon smiled. It would be no hardship, he decided, to sit here a spell and feast his eyes on the young outlaw girl. Though it was a pity to think that anything so pretty was on the wrong side of the law. “I appreciate that, John. And I’ll keep a close watch on your prisoners here while you’re gone.”

John followed Simon’s gaze over toward the cell, where the girl had taken off her hat, letting loose a cloud of thick reddish gold hair. “I expect you will. On one of them anyway,” he muttered, turning toward the door.

When he’d left, Simon looked back over at the cell. The old man was sitting on one of the cell’s two cots. The girl was ruefully examining the other. “Was it you?” Simon asked softly. “Were you the one who untied me and left me water?”

Seth Davis’s head came up.

The girl continued her examination of the bed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Simon settled back against the wall. His chest would feel better if he were lying down, but then he wouldn’t be able to watch her. “I think I remember seeing you.”

“You couldn’t have seen her.” The old outlaw spoke sharply. “She wasn’t there. I’m trying to tell you that my daughter isn’t guilty of anything.”

Simon shook his head slowly. “It was you, wasn’t it? You probably saved my life, you know.”

The girl evidently decided that the dirty blanket of the cot was a better alternative than the cold floor and she sank down on it, curling her long legs up underneath her like a child. “You heard my father. I wasn’t there. So I couldn’t very well have saved your life, could I?”

Simon was fascinated. Her voice was low and remarkably controlled for one so young. “How old are you?” he asked, without even considering the question.

“She’s fourteen,” the old man said promptly. “A baby. And she doesn’t belong in a jail.”

“I’m nineteen,” the girl said calmly, throwing her father an affectionate smile. “I’m old enough, I reckon. But that doesn’t make me an outlaw.”

“Plenty old enough to untie the ropes of an unconscious man,” Simon replied.

“If I’d been there.”

Simon gave a nod. He wasn’t going to press the point. What he’d said had been the truth. The girl had undoubtedly saved his life. First by her mere presence at the scene, and then by loosening his bonds. He had no desire to be the one to send her to prison.

“I was a danged fool to let you live,” Seth said bitterly.

Simon looked from the outlaw to his daughter. The girl might have saved him, but he wasn’t about to forget that her father had sat by and let one of his men nearly kill him. He had no sympathy whatsoever for Seth Davis. The two men’s eyes locked. “I reckon you were,” Simon said grimly.

Chapter Two

After their brief exchange, the three occupants of the sheriffs office had settled down in silence, each busy with their own thoughts. Willow’s had been gloomy. She was thinking back over the past several months, trying to decide exactly where her life had begun to spin out of control.

She could now appreciate the lengths to which her father had gone to protect her from his lawless world. Growing up, she’d resented it. Resented his absences. Resented the fact that she’d had to live with Aunt Maud on a tiny ranch in the middle of the endless bare plains of Nebraska, never seeing anyone. Never visiting a neighbor or being visited by one. When Aunt Maud had died last year, she’d been almost glad because it had forced her father to take her away from the desolation of that place.

Now she finally realized what he had been shielding her from.

She looked around at the jail cell. It had two cots, which were the only furnishings. A chamber pot stood in one corner, without so much as a screen for modesty. Would she have to use it—in plain view of everyone? Would she have to sleep here, watched by strange men? She rubbed her hand along the blanket. It was old and greasy. She swallowed down rising tears.

“They can’t hold you in here, darlin’,” her father told her softly from across the cell, reading her dismay.

She looked out at the man on the bed—the one she’d watched Jake stomp so savagely yesterday that she’d almost lost her breakfast. Simon Grant, the marshall had called him. He appeared to be sleeping. Turning back to her father, she said, “But I was there, Pa. And I did ride with you on those last few jobs.”

“They can’t prove that, Willow. Swear to me that you’ll deny everything if they ask you.”

She glanced again beyond the bars to the injured man. “He said he saw me there.”

“He said he thought he saw you. He was too far gone to know what he saw.”

“I was foolish. I should have kept my neckerchief in place.”

“You were damned foolish to go back to him in the first place. I should have suspected you weren’t off all that time on ‘feminine business’ as you so sweetly put it.”

“He would have died.”

“And we would have sold his blasted horse and been three counties from here by now.”

Willow looked down at her lap. “I’m sorry, Pa.”

Seth hoisted himself up off the bed and went to sit beside his daughter, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Not much use in frettin’ over it now.” He lifted her chin. “You’re not going to turn all Weepy Willow, now are you?”

It had been one of his pet names for her when she was a child, crying to see him ride off yet again for who knew how many months. “Don’t you get Weepy Willow on me,” he’d say teasingly, then he’d take her in his arms and gently wipe away the tears.

“What’s to become of us?” she asked.

“I reckon it depends on that young feller lying over there. They’ve already got about a mountain of things to pin on me. If they can add his testimony, it should be enough to put me at the end of a rope.”

Willow stiffened. The stark words sent a chill right through her middle. They might actually hang her father? It was unthinkable. She looked out again at the stranger who held such power over their fate. “What if he doesn’t testify?” she asked softly.

Seth shrugged. “Not much hope in that. You see what Jake’s boots did to him. Wouldn’t you testify if you were him?”

Her spell of self-pity over, Willow felt her mind beginning to work again. This battle was not lost. As he himself had pointed out, she’d saved their victim’s life. And there’d been a look in his eyes when he’d said it. She’d come to know that look in the year she’d been riding with the band. It meant that a man was interested, as her aunt Maud used to say. She’d never been the least bit interested in return, and she wasn’t now. But if keeping Mr. Grant interested would mean he wouldn’t testify against her and her father, she’d be willing to give it a try.

“Now what’s going through that busy little head of yours?” her father asked.

“Maybe we can convince him not to testify against us.”

Her father pulled his arm away from her. “You can stop that line of thinking right now, Winifred Lou Davis. You just keep your mouth shut and don’t admit anything. It’ll be fine. They can’t keep a young girl locked up like a hardened criminal.”

“Mmm.” She leaned over and planted a kiss on his leathery cheek. Not even Aunt Maud had ever called her by her real name. She’d been Willow since she was a baby, and the only time her father ever called her Winifred Lou was when he was angry or very, very serious.

Seth Davis shook his head and stood. “I’m going to get some shut-eye myself. I can’t even think straight. If the sheriff ever gets back here with that food he promised, wake me up.”

He went over to the other cot and lay down.

Within seconds, Willow could hear his light snores. A life on the run had taught Seth Davis to sleep when he could—anytime, anywhere. But even though they’d been up all night, Willow was wide-awake. She was going over again the brief conversation she and her father had had with the man whose testimony could cost her father his life. She was more and more certain that she hadn’t been mistaken about the way he’d looked at her. Now all she had to do was figure out a way to take advantage of it.

Simon felt as if he’d slept through another entire day, but it couldn’t have been long at all. John was just walking in the door of his office with a tray heaped with food. For the first time since his beating, Simon was hungry. His stomach rumbled in anticipation.

He sat up, feeling almost normal. His horse was back. The marshal had recovered his money belt with almost the entire bankroll intact. He could move again without wanting to puke. Things weren’t so bad after all.

He looked over at the cell. The old outlaw had evidently been sleeping, but he sat up as John walked into the room. The girl was still on the other cot, leaning back against the wall. Her eyes were fixed on him. He ventured a smile.

She smiled back. Lord, she was a beauty. Grimy male clothes and all.

“Sorry it took me so long,” John said, placing the heavy tray on his desk. “Mrs. Harris insisted that I sit myself down for a hot meal before I came back. Land sakes, but the woman’s a pain in the posterior.”

“And you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself if you didn’t have her yappin’ at you,” Simon agreed with a grin that didn’t even hurt.

“How’ve my prisoners been behaving?” John asked, ignoring his friend’s comment.

“I’m afraid I’m not such a good watchman, John. I fell sound asleep again. Sorry. I feel like a tuckeredout two-year-old.”

John busied himself with the tray of food, filling three plates with sausages and beans. “That would be the laudanum. I laced your coffee this morning.”

“The hell you did.”

John shrugged. “Cissy’s orders.” And that was that.

Simon let in enough air to qualify as a sigh. He had to admit that whatever John had given him had eased the pain. But it seemed…cowardly, somehow. His father had never allowed himself to be medicated, no matter what he was suffering. He glanced at the cell. The girl was still watching him. “A shot of whiskey would’ve worked just as well,” he said under his breath.

John didn’t appear the least affected by Simon’s grumbling. “Help yourself,” he said indifferently. “It’s in the desk drawer.” He reached over and thrust a plate at Simon. “I’d eat something first, though.”

Simon took the food and watched as the sheriff picked up the other two plates. “Do you want me to…ah…cover you while you hand that in to them?” he asked, glancing uncertainly toward the two prisoners.

John chuckled. “I think I can handle it, son. They don’t look that fierce.”

In fact, at the moment, the pair in the cell looked rather forlorn. The old man was rubbing the sleep from his eyes, his chest moving rhythmically in a silent cough. The daughter sat with her arms clutching her hunched knees. She had shifted her gaze from Simon to her father, and her eyes had clouded with worry.

“Ready for some lunch?” John asked, balancing the two plates on one arm as he turned the key in the cell door.

The girl unfurled herself and stood. She moved with the grace of a mountain cat. Simon felt a rumble in his stomach that did not come from the odor of Francine Harris’s baked beans. He watched as she crossed the cell and took the plates from John. “Thank you, Sheriff,” she said. “I can tell that, unlike the marshal and that awful deputy, you are a real gentleman. And I am sorry I kicked you.”

Simon couldn’t tell if the well-modulated tone of her voice and her shy smile were calculated. If so, her calculations were right on the mark as far as Simon was concerned. If he’d been John, he’d have flung open the cell door and let her walk right on out of there. John, it appeared, was made of sterner stuff.

“Well, I’m sorry you kicked me, too, miss. I’ll carry that mark awhile, I reckon. Now, if you’d just move back out of the way, I’ll be locking this door up again.”

The girl’s mouth gave a little twist of annoyance. But then she smiled again and stepped back. “Whatever you say, Sheriff.” Her eyes went once again to Simon, and her smile was not quite so shy.

Seth Davis stood to take his plate from his daughter. “We aren’t about to give you any trouble, Sheriff,” he said. “But I can’t say as much for the rest of my men if they find out you’re holding us here.”

John went to sit heavily in his chair. “We’ll just have to hope they won’t find out then, won’t we?”

“Myself, I wouldn’t mind meeting up with them again, as long as the odds are slightly better than the last time,” Simon put in. He set his plate alongside him on the cot and held a hand against his sore side as he settled into a comfortable position against the wall.

“Right,” John snorted. “You look like you’re in great shape for a showdown with a pack of gunmen.”

“I’d rather it wouldn’t be today,” Simon agreed with a faint smile.

“If you’d let us go, there would be no showdown,” the girl interrupted. “My father would take his men and ride clear out of the territory. I’d see to it.”

John leaned back and swiveled back and forth in his new chair. He chuckled. “I don’t mean any insult, miss, but it’s a little hard to picture you ordering around the likes of Jake Patton.”

“Jake’ll do anything I tell him to.” There was absolute conviction in her voice.

“Is Jake your man or something?” John asked.

Simon felt himself holding a breath on the girl’s answer. It was none of his business, but the thought of the man who had kicked him with such viciousness being involved with this girl, putting his hands on her, made him want to toss back the greasy sausage that had just slid down his throat.

She gave a chilly smile. “I don’t have a man. Don’t intend to, either. Not ever.”

There was a finality to the way she said it that seemed just a little sad to Simon. Of course, he’d said the same thing himself about not intending to hitch himself up with a woman, but his circumstances were far different from this outlaw daughter. He had a ranch to run and an invalid father to care for. That was all the future he needed. But what did this girl have ahead of her? Prison, perhaps. Then back to a life on the run. Would she end up after all with some unscrupulous bastard like Patton?

John’s kindly gray eyes held a touch of sympathy as he chuckled and said, “It’s the kind of thing that usually just happens, whether we intend it or not. You’re young yet. But I’m glad to hear that you’re not mixed up with Patton.” He straightened his chair and his expression sobered. “’Cause if he’s the one who messed with Simon, here, I wouldn’t count on him having much of a future.”

Willow paced the length of the cell for what must have been the thousandth time. The afternoon had seemed one of the longest in her life. Her father had spent most of it dozing fitfully, waking only to cough in that quiet, ominous way that seemed to reverberate through his entire body. She’d been urging him to see a doctor for weeks, but he’d brushed her off.

“I don’t need any damned sawbones poking at me” had been his standard reply. “Don’t you worry that pretty head, Weepy Willow.”

Now, if his dire predictions were true, the cough would be the least of his problems. She stopped walking for a minute and shrugged the tenseness out of her shoulders. Her father had been uncharacteristically passive since the arrest. Except for his protest over her involvement, he’d seemed almost resigned to his fate. It was just one more indication that things were not right with him. Which meant it was up to her to do something about the situation.

The sheriff had discouraged all her attempts to draw him into conversation. He’d been polite enough, and had agreed to accompany her out to the privy in back instead of making her use the jar in the cell. But when she’d tried batting her eyes at him, the way Aunt Maud had said girls did when they wanted a man’s attention, he’d appeared not to notice.

Which left the other man: Simon Grant. He, too, had been dozing most of the afternoon, sleeping off the effects of the laudanum, the sheriff had said. She went over to the bars to look at him. He wore no shirt over the wide swath of bandages around his middle. Her eyes were fixed on the even rise and fall of his chest with its sprinkling of dark hair. It was darker than the wavy hair on his head where there were highlights, no doubt from long days in the sun. She’d spent the past year riding with men, but she couldn’t remember ever studying one who was half-naked. Her father had been real fussy about how his men dressed and behaved in her presence.

With a half-conscious groan, the man on the cot moved, his hand clutching his side. Then his eyes opened, focused directly on her.

“What time is it?” he asked.

Willow blinked, her eyes dry. She’d been staring for longer than she thought. “It’s getting dark.”

Simon sat up, keeping his hand in place. “Damn drugs. That’s the last time I drink John’s coffee. I can’t keep my eyes open for more than five minutes at a time.”

Willow’s throat felt tight. She couldn’t decide if it was due to this man’s importance to her father’s future or to the easy ripple of the muscles of his bare arms as he pushed himself up. She forced herself to smile at him.

“Where is he, anyway?” he asked, looking around.

“The sheriff?”

Simon nodded, swinging his legs to the floor and using the momentum to stand.

“He went to have dinner with the marshal and the deputy.” Standing, Simon Grant looked much more powerful than he had on the cot. Willow swallowed away the odd knot in her throat. She might not have another opportunity to get this critical witness on their side. “How…how are your injuries?” she ventured. Desperately she wished that she’d paid more attention to Aunt Maud’s proclamations about the relationship between the genders. Not that Aunt Maud would have been the best teacher. She’d never been married, and Willow couldn’t imagine her proper, staid aunt ever falling in love.

The wounded man grimaced. “I’m all right.” He finally broke his gaze and began looking around the room. “If I knew what John did with my shirt…” he muttered.

“Is that it?” She pointed to a chair in the corner of the room.

“Oh, right.” He walked over to retrieve it.

Willow felt a moment of panic. “Ah…you’re not leaving?”

His eyes went back to her. Earlier in the day she had thought she’d seen interest in his expression and something like pity. Now he just looked tired. “I’ll head over to the hotel, I guess. I don’t suppose you two can cause much trouble locked up like that.”

“But I…I wanted to talk to you.” Her fingers made tight curls around the steel bars.

He shrugged awkwardly into his shirt. “Talk about what?”

“I…You were right. I was there when they robbed you.”

“I know. I saw you.”

“And I did cut the ropes and leave you the water.”

“For which I’m much obliged, like I said.” He turned toward the door.

“No, wait! I saved your life—you admitted it yourself.”

Simon stopped and looked at her with his eyes narrowed. “Forgive me for not being too grateful at the moment, miss. My head’s throbbing and my side aches. I guess I’m just one of those people who gets surly when they’re near stomped to death. So I thank you for your help, but I would give quite a lot of money right now to have never set eyes on you, your father or the congenial bunch you ride with.”

“Jake’s the worst of them. The rest aren’t so bad.”

“I’d just as soon not find out.”

Willow thought about batting her eyes, but somehow she didn’t think it would help Mr. Grant’s mood. Anyway, it hadn’t worked on the sheriff. Perhaps Willow just didn’t know how to do it right. She’d never been very good at playacting. She gave a deep sigh. “The truth is, Mr. Grant. I need your help.”

He looked surprised, but not the least sympathetic.

“Your testimony can put me in prison.”

He nodded. “I reckon.”

“But what’s even more important to me is that it could send my father to his death.”

Simon made no reply. He leaned against the far wall, waiting for her to continue.

“I untied you,” she said again, trying to keep the desperation from her tone.

“I’m willing to testify to that in court, miss,” he said. “And if that keeps you out of prison, it’ll be all right by me. But I don’t think it’ll help your father any. From the sound of things, they have enough piled up on him whether I testify or not.”

Willow’s eyes darted to the sheriff’s desk, then back to the man across the room. The sheriff had not lit the lamps before he left. In the darkening shadows, Simon Grant’s battered face looked monstrous. She couldn’t blame him for not having much charity toward her. But he was her only hope. “You could save him by handing me the keys to this door and looking the other way for five minutes.”

Simon gave a chuckle of disbelief. “Now why in tarnation would I do that, Miss Davis?”

“I…We could pay you. My father would give you money…whatever you want.”

Simon shook his head slowly. “No thanks.”

Willow bit her lip and tried to study his face in the gloom. There was no sign of that kind of male interest she thought she’d seen earlier. She may have been mistaken that it had ever been there. But at this point, she couldn’t think of anything else to try. She looked back at her father to assure herself that he was still sleeping. He’d skin her alive if he heard what she was about to say. She let the words come out in a rush. “Maybe I could pay you with something other than money.”

Simon straightened up and dropped the hand he held at his side. He took three halting steps closer to her. His dark eyes were inscrutable. “What did you have in mind?” he asked in a low voice.

To tell the truth, Willow didn’t know exactly what she had in mind. Aunt Maud had told her how men always wanted something from women. And Willow knew it had to do with mating, like the frantic couplings of the animals on the farm. But she hadn’t let her thoughts linger on the matter. It wasn’t something she’d ever intended to find out for herself.

He was watching her with that odd expression on his face again. Willow felt a strange flutter at the base of her stomach. She looked him square in the face. “I would do anything to save my pa, mister. Anything you want.”

There was a slight tremble to her voice as she said the last words. Simon could see that her hands were gripping the bars so tightly that her fingernails had gone white. All at once he found it impossible to meet those clear blue eyes. The girl might be nineteen, might have ridden with an outlaw gang, but she was obviously an innocent Her father had been right when he’d said that she didn’t belong in that cell. She waited like a lamb at a slaughterhouse for him to respond to her offer. An offer he was almost sure she didn’t even understand.

Suddenly it was as if he was the guilty one. As if it was somehow his fault that he had ended up at the wrong end of Jake Patton’s boot, robbed and beaten, and that as a result this young woman and her father were facing an uncertain future. How the hell had she managed to turn the tables like that?

“How about it, mister?” Her voice was not much more than a whisper.

He tried to take a calming breath, only to have it stab at his sore side. Damn it. He was the victim, not this outlaw girl. He wasn’t about to take on the responsibility for her dilemma. He wasn’t about to let her compound the hurt her father’s gang had already inflicted on him. Steeling himself with anger, he looked up and down her slender form and said with deliberate rudeness, “Sorry, miss. I’m just not interested.”

The anger died swiftly at her stricken look and sharp intake of breath. He was not used to insulting women. But then, he was not used to getting his ribs broken and his face smashed, either.

She seemed to sag, still holding on to the bars. “I saved your life,” she said again, but the energy had gone out of her voice.

“Yeah, well, that’s one point in your favor. But I reckon it’s up to a jury to see how much it counts.” There was an expression in her eyes that made Simon want to say something more. It was something underneath the hurt and frustration. In spite of the girl’s bravado, deep down in those eyes he was almost certain he could see fear. It made him pause for a minute, but he forced himself to turn around and head toward the door. It was none of his business if the girl was afraid.

“Please, mister. Please help me.”

His back stiffened at her soft plea. But he didn’t turn around. Snatching his hat from the rack, he opened the door and left.

“What the hell are you doing here?” the sheriff greeted Simon with a scowl.

Simon pulled out a chair next to Tom Sneed, the deputy, and nodded across the table at Marshal Torrance. “Good evening, gentlemen. Don’t mind John’s manners.”

“You’re supposed to be in bed, goldang it.”

“I need some coffee—some real coffee, not the stuff you drugged me with this morning.”

“I was going to bring you something when I finished here.”

“Kind of you, John. But I think I’ve imposed on your hospitality enough.”

“Hog swill.”

Simon smiled and motioned to Porter Smith, the hotel’s only waiter, to bring him some coffee. “Are you two about ready to set out for Cheyenne?” he asked the marshal.

Torrance stabbed a piece of his well-done steak. “That’s what we were just discussing when you arrived, Grant.”

His tone warned Simon that something was amiss. “Is there a problem?”

“We’ve had word from the deputy over at Cat’s Butte. He says the remaining members of the Davis gang were seen staking out the road between here and Cheyenne.”

“You figure they’re going to try to free their boss?”

“As sure as a puppy knows how to bark.”

John’s round face was creased with worry. “You can’t ride out there to be ambushed, Marshal.”

Sneed was the only one at the table with whiskey rather than coffee. He lifted the tumbler and took a deep drink. “I wouldn’t mind meeting up with that crew,” he said, swiping his hand across his mouth.

“I don’t intend to be ambushed, John,” the marshal replied. “We’ll skirt around them—ride through the hills.”

“There’s some rough country,” the sheriff pointed out.

“I’d rather deal with rough country than that quartet of Davis’s. Jake Patton alone can drill a nickel at sixty paces. And he’s a mean son of a gun with his fists.”

“He’s none too gentle with his boots, either,” Simon added.

John shook his head. “I say you all wait here until they can send reinforcements. Call in some help from the army.”

The marshal pushed away his plate. “No. We’ll handle it. Go easy on that, Tom,” he said as his deputy drained his glass.

Simon and John shared a glance that mirrored each other’s doubt. “At least let me keep the girl here,” the sheriff said finally. “Davis is the one you really want to nail, and you’ll have a better chance without a female along.”

“When the female’s as tasty as that little cottontail, she’s no trouble at all,” Sneed said with a leer.

“Shut up, Tom,” Marshal Torrance barked. “You might have something there, John. It’s Seth Davis I want to see swinging. I don’t really give a damn about the daughter.”

“I can hold her until the Davis gang clears out of the territory. Then you can send someone to fetch her.”

The marshal considered for a moment. “All right,” he said, standing. “I’ll take you up on your offer. One less problem for me to worry about. C’mon, Sneed.”

The deputy rose unsteadily to his feet. John stood along with them, but Simon stayed sitting, letting comfort take precedence over courtesy.

“Do you need me to go open the cell for you?” John asked.

“No, finish your supper. We know where the keys are.” Torrance and John shook hands. “I’ll send word when I make arrangements for the girl.”

The two lawmen said goodbye and walked out of the restaurant, leaving John to settle back down in his chair. “So it looks like I have a real prisoner on my hands for a while.”

“I don’t know why you offered to keep her. She’ll be madder’n hell when they take her father away, and you’ll be the one she’ll take it out on.”

“We’ll be the ones,” John corrected.

“Uh-uh. I’m going home.”

“You’re not riding for two more days, remember?”

“If you’ll let me have another dose of that stuff you gave me this morning, I can just float home.” Porter came over to the table to fill their coffee cups, and Simon ordered a steak.

“Bloody,” he told the stocky old gentleman who had been waiting tables at the Buckhorn Inn as long as Simon could remember. “Tell Mrs. Harris to just pat the cow on its head and send it on in here.”

Porter chuckled and shuffled off into the kitchen.

John resumed his argument. “Just because you don’t feel the pain, doesn’t mean you’re mended. Do you want Cissy riding out to Saddle Ridge to give you a piece of her mind?”

“Not especially.”

“Then just forget about it. You and Miss Davis will be nice cozy roommates over at the office for the next couple of days.” One of John’s white eyebrows shot up. “Anyway, I didn’t notice you finding it a hardship to look at her.”

“Looking’s one thing. Listening’s another.”

“Listening?”

“Before I came over here she was trying to talk me into letting her and her pa go. She said I owed it to her because she saved my life.”

John gave a whistle. “I expect that could be a powerful argument for a softy like you, Simon.”

“I wasn’t tempted,” Simon said, not entirely sure he was telling the truth.

“Good lad. But it’ll be close quarters over the next two days. Do you think she can change your mind?”

“I may be soft when it comes to kids and old folks like you, John, but I have no charity in my heart for outlaws.”

“Not even pretty ones?”

Simon hesitated just enough to let a grin begin to light John’s face, then said firmly, “Not even pretty ones.”

Chapter Three

When John and Simon returned to the sheriff’s office, the pretty outlaw was clearly upset. The minute they opened the door she launched herself against the bars like a caged wildcat and said in an anguished voice, “You have no right to keep me here. I want to go with my father. He’s not well. He…he needs me.”

Her attractive features were strained and desperate and on closer perusal, Simon could see traces of tears on her cheeks. But she wasn’t crying now.

“I demand to see a lawyer,” she said to the sheriff, her voice a little calmer.

John picked up the papers the marshal had left on his desk and began to examine them. “If you want a will signed or a deed filed, Judge Abercrombie’ll see to you. But he’s retired from criminal cases, and the only other lawyer available is Philip Sutton.”

“Then I want to see him.”

Simon’s eyes were on the girl’s lips. She licked them nervously, then clamped them in a stubborn line. They were full and red, he noted idly, feeling a stir. He hung his hat up and went over to the cot with a rueful shake of his head. The girl was an outlaw, behind bars. She was upset and desperate and in trouble up to her ears. And here he was letting himself get bothered by a pair of lips. He sat down with a jolt of pain. Hell, even three broken ribs couldn’t keep his body in line. He hadn’t been with a woman since he and Cissy had broken up. Perhaps it was time for him to find someone for a Saturday-night tumble in the hay.

“I’ll let Sutton know,” the sheriff answered her. “He rides through here every six weeks.”

“Six weeks!” Willow’s exclamation turned into an undecipherable sputter.

“I’m turning in for the night,” the sheriff continued, unperturbed by her anger. “Do you need to take a trip out back before I go?”

“I’m not staying here,” she said again.

Simon tried to bend far enough to pull off his boots, but gave up the attempt almost immediately. “I need you to nursemaid me one more time, John. Sorry.”

“Is he staying the night here, too?” she asked as the sheriff went to help Simon.

John gave her a quick glance. “If you’ll be quiet long enough to let him get some sleep.” Then he turned back to pull off Simon’s other boot and said to him, “Maybe you should come with me to the hotel.”

“I’m not up to Mrs. Harris’s mothering, John. One of her hugs and I’d have the right side of my rib cage as sore as the left.”

“I could tell her to go easy on you.”

“No, thanks. I’ll take my chances with Miss Davis, here. At least she’s behind bars.”

“Bars don’t keep out the sound,” John pointed out.

Simon looked over at the girl, who had grown silent. In spite of the vehemence of her protests about her father, she didn’t look the least formidable. She looked tired. “Will you give us both a break, miss, and save your complaining until tomorrow?” he asked her.

Her gaze went from him to the sheriff and back. “You can’t keep me here,” she said. “But I guess it can wait until morning. I haven’t slept for fortyeight hours and I reckon I could fall asleep in a den of rattlesnakes tonight.”

“Do you suppose we fit the description, John?” Simon asked dryly. Then he lay back on the cot and pulled the blanket over him.

“You’re sure you’ll be all right?” John asked.

Simon nodded. “Go on and get out of here. Mrs. Harris is probably waiting to sing you a lullaby.”

If he hadn’t known better, Simon would have sworn that there was a blush on the sheriff’s face as he mumbled and turned to leave. He turned the wick on the lamp before he left, leaving the room illuminated only by the moonlight streaming in through the lone window.

In spite of sleeping most of the day, Simon felt exhausted. The aftereffects of the medicine, he supposed. He shifted on the bed, trying to find the least painful position for his torso. It would be a relief to give himself up to sleep for a few hours.

“Mr. Grant.” Her voice was soft, but insistent.

Simon groaned. Without lifting his head he said, “I thought you said you’d go to sleep.”

There was a long moment of silence and Simon let his eyes drift shut again.

“I know…but I…The sheriff left before I could tell him that I do need to go out back.”

Now Simon felt his own face grow hot. Since he was twelve years old, he’d been helping his father out with the most intimate personal needs, but that was his father. A man. Simon and his father lived in a man’s world. He’d never had to worry about the mysterious things women did in their private moments. And he wasn’t anxious to start now. “Are you sure?” he asked without thinking. The question and the painful silence that followed only made matters worse.

“I…If you want to leave the room for a minute I guess I could use the jar here.”

Gritting his teeth, Simon boosted himself up. “If I have to move to get up, I might as well take you out.” Without putting on his boots, he crossed the room and retrieved the key from John’s desk.

Willow watched as he hobbled painfully along. When she had made her request, the reason had been real enough, but now that she realized Simon Grant was actually going to open the cell and let her loose, she made a quick analysis of the possibilities. He was obviously sore, and evidently he wasn’t even going to put on his boots for the trip out back. It shouldn’t be too difficult to catch him off guard and escape. In his condition, she could easily outrun him.

“I’m much obliged, Mr. Grant,” she said meekly.

“I reckon you might as well call me Simon, seeing as how we’re spending the night together, in a manner of speaking,” he said, opening the cell and motioning her to walk ahead of him.

She smiled as she glided past him. “I reckon. And you may call me Willow.”

“Willow?”

She nodded and watched as her smile drew a corresponding one from him. She felt a little surge of excitement. This was going to be as easy as shucking an ear of corn.

She walked beside him without speaking as he moved slowly along the wooden sidewalk and turned down the alley to the back. She’d planned to make her move on the way back, but her opportunity came sooner than expected.

They stepped off the sidewalk into the alley, and Simon exclaimed, “Dad blast it!” as his stocking foot hit a rock. Instinctively he lifted his foot to rub it, then clutched at his side with a gasp of pain.

Willow pushed away a pang of pity. Biting her lip for courage, she shoved his broad back as hard as she could, sending him sprawling in the dirt. Then she jumped nimbly over his tangled legs and took off into the dark alley.

It took Simon a minute to realize what had happened. And another minute to believe it. The little wretch had actually pushed him into the dirt! Fortunately, he’d landed on his good side, though the reverberations through his chest sent a wave of pain that he could feel all the way through his jawbone. But unfortunately for Miss Willow Davis, he was definitely on the mend. And there was no way he was going to let her get away with her nasty stunt. Ignoring the hurt, he scrambled to his feet and took off after her, his feet padding over the uneven dirt road. She’d darted behind the jail to the right and disappeared. On a dark night he might not have spotted her racing across the yard to Potter’s Feed Mill, but the full moon hung high in the eastern sky, and her silhouette was unmistakable.

Breathing in short, deep bursts to keep from reinjuring his ribs, he ran diagonally behind the general store, leapt over the water trough and closed the distance between them. She glanced back at him over her shoulder, her face grim, and knotted her fists trying to increase her speed. But just as she was about to round the corner of the mill, he hurled himself the final few feet, knocking them both off their feet.

“Get away…get off me!” she sputtered, struggling, as he pressed her shoulders down with his hands and straddled her waist with his thighs.

Her hands were still free, flailing wildly, and one caught him right in the side. “Stop it, you damn little…brat,” he hissed. He flattened himself out on top of her, using his entire body to pin her to the ground.

“Let me go,” she said, squirming beneath him. “You’re too heavy. You’re hurting me.” She was out of breath and near tears.

“Shut up and stop fighting or I’m not moving from here.”

She stopped her frantic wiggles. “Get off,” she said again.

Her body was firm against his. Through his cotton shirt, he could feel the pointed tips of her breasts. He suspected that if his side didn’t hurt so much, the position would be awakening a lot more than anger in him.

“First you tell me exactly what you expected to accomplish by that little trick.”

“I…I was escaping.”

“Yeah. I understood that part. And then what? You were going to just head out of town by yourself without food, weapons, a horse?”

She tried pulling her right wrist free, but he held it in a deathlock. “I could have stolen a horse.”

“I thought you said you weren’t a thief.”

For a long moment she didn’t say anything. They lay still as Simon began to feel a slow radiation from the warmth of the contact of their bodies. Then she sighed, sending a ripple along her chest underneath him. He answered with a shortened breath of his own. Maybe his side didn’t hurt quite as much as he thought.

“I’m not a thief. Not yet. I don’t know what I was planning, if you must know. But anything would be better than going back to that awful cell.”

For his own sanity, Simon eased away from her, letting some space in between them while still holding down her arms. “I assume it was the accommodation you objected to and not the company,” he said.

She didn’t respond to the touch of humor in his tone. “Don’t make me go back there, Mr. Grant” The moonlight pooled in her eyes as she looked at him, pleading.

“Damn it, woman. I’ve got nothing to do with the matter. If I let you go, I’d be committing a crime myself.”

“But the sheriff’s your friend….”

“Which doesn’t mean he’d let me break the law.” He pushed himself up on his knees, then stood, keeping a firm grip on her wrist. “Come on. I’m locking you back up. And as far as I’m concerned, this time you’ll stay there until you rot.”

Simon awoke the next morning with a blessedly clear head. The effects of Jake Patton’s handiwork and John’s medications both appeared to have diminished substantially. He stretched his legs out on John’s hard cot and took a moment to relish the feeling. His broken ribs were no more than a slight nag, in spite of the tumble in the dirt last night. He scowled at the memory and turned his head toward the cell.

She was watching him, sitting on her bed with her back against the cell wall, her long legs thrust out in front of her, exactly the way he’d last seen her before he’d turned toward the wall to sleep last night.

“Bejeezus, don’t you sleep, woman?” he asked her.

Her eyes were shadowed with fatigue. “Not in this place, I don’t.”

Simon sat up, shaking his head. Some part of him deep in his gut wanted to pity her. But he tamped down the feeling. She was an outlaw, after all. And she had tricked him last night. She’d hurt his side and his vanity, as well. He kept his tone cold. “Suit yourself. Sooner or later you’ll have to sleep, I reckon.”

“So are you going to tell the sheriff that I ran last night?”

Before he could answer, both turned their heads at the sound of the door opening. Simon expected to see John, but instead John’s daughter breezed into the office.

“I hear you and my father are guarding a big bad prisoner,” she said, her voice disdainful.

She spared Simon barely a glance and walked right over to the cell. “You poor thing. What in the world can these men be thinking to keep you locked up in there?”

Willow looked at the tiny newcomer with suspicion.

“Good morning to you, too,” Simon said to Cissy’s back.

Cissy glanced at him over her shoulder. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Simon. How can you sleep there while this poor young thing sits on that filthy bed and…”

Simon held up his hand in protest. “Whoa. Your father’s the sheriff, remember? And I’m here on your orders, as I understand. You told John you’d have my hide if I tried to go home.”

“I’m not talking about you and your aches. Isn’t it just like a man to turn the subject around to himself?” She turned to the prisoner for confirmation. Willow was regarding her with amazement. Cissy was wearing pink, her favorite color, with lace running in delicate rolls up and down the front of her trim bodice. She looked deceptively demure, but her voice cut like a cleaver, and the looks she was throwing Simon were dagger sharp. “How old are you, child?” she asked.

Willow opened her mouth twice before the sound came out. “Nineteen.”

“Hmm. Older than you look. It’s those awful pants.” Cissy turned back to Simon again, her hands on her hips, and demanded, “What exactly is my father planning to do with her?”

Simon’s head was starting to ache again. “I…I don’t know. Keep her here. The marshal will be sending for her one of these days.”

Cissy looked around the room in disbelief. “And he expects her to live here while some marshal takes his sweet time deciding what’s to become of her?”

“She’s an outlaw, Cissy.”

“Horsefeathers.”

Simon was feeling increasingly uncomfortable. Cissy had always had the uncanny ability to make him feel like a schoolboy who’d copied his friend’s homework. “Take it up with your father,” he grumbled.

“Take what up with her father?” John asked as he pushed open the door.

With a new victim, Cissy began her tirade all over again, until Willow interrupted, asking in a small voice if the sheriff would be kind enough to escort her to the outhouse. She gave Simon a wary look when the sheriff released her from the cell, as if waiting for him to relate the events of the previous evening.

Simon closed his eyes, leaned heavily back against the wall and held his tongue. It was time for him to go home, he decided, broken ribs or not. He’d had enough of Bramble for a good spell. All he wanted was to get back home to peace and quiet with his father and with Chester, who rarely strung together more than five words at a time. He opened his eyes. Cissy was still there.

“Are you going to sit back and let my father keep her here?” she asked.

“It’s just until the marshal sends for her.”

“Sends who? A man like that deputy? I saw him over at the hotel, half-drunk and eyeing every woman in the place. What do you think is in store for her if she’s at the mercy of men like that?”

Simon’s stomach rolled at the sudden vision of the slender young outlaw struggling on the ground, as she had against him last night. Only, this time it was Sneed on top of her…pressing her down, forcing her…

“I don’t like the idea any better than you do, Cissy, but what’s the answer? She was riding with the gang. The outlaws who nearly killed me. Remember?”

Cissy walked over to her father’s desk and sat in his chair, chewing on a nail, lost in thought. “I don’t know what the answer is, Simon. But there must be some way…”

Simon boosted himself off the bed. “Well, if I can help out, let me know. For now, I’m going home.”

Before Cissy could protest, he crossed the room and took her by the shoulders. “I don’t care if I rebreak every blamed rib in the process,” he said, leaning over to plant a kiss on her cheek. “Thanks for the nursing.” Then he spun around and walked as fast as he could out the door.

In spite of his bravado, it was harder than Simon had anticipated to boost himself onto Rain Cloud’s back, even with the stable boy, Buck, one of the truant Mahoney brothers, giving him a hand up.

But it felt good to be back in the saddle, and even better to be on his way home—to his father’s gruff affection and Chester’s hearty cooking. The day was bright with the lush, grassy smell of late summer. Simon whistled a little tune as he walked Rain Cloud past the Red Eye Saloon and turned to ride south out of town.

Simon called a greeting to Jim Trumbull who was sweeping in front of his general store, then turned his head in the other direction to avoid catching the eye of the widow Halley. He’d squired her daughter, Priscilla, a time or two to the town dances, and ever since, the buxom widow had marked him down as her private mission. At the moment, he was in no mood for a sermon.

He gave Rain Cloud a nudge with his knees, spurring her to pick up her pace, then regretted the command as she moved immediately into a bone-jarring trot. “I guess we’d be better off taking it easy this trip, girl,” he said aloud, pulling gently on the reins. The horse hesitated, then stopped, waiting for her master to make up his mind. Simon laughed.

“Looks like you’re feeling better, Grant.” Simon hadn’t even noticed the rider approaching from the road out of town. He looked up in surprise to see that it was the deputy, Tom Sneed.

“What are you doing back here?” Simon asked, concerned. “Did you run into trouble with Davis?”

Sneed pulled his horse up in front of Simon and stopped. “Nah. The territorial marshal’s office had sent some men down to look for the rest of Davis’s gang, but it appears they’ve cleared out. So they’re going to ride with Torrance and Davis to Cheyenne. Torrance sent me back here to fetch the girl.”

He had a thin, sharp face that showed the effects of too much smoke and too much liquor. Simon instinctively disliked the man. But he did wear a federal deputy’s badge. He had every legal authority to take Willow Davis with him. Cissy’s words came back to him. What do you think is in store for her if she’s at the mercy of men like that?

“Are you riding out with her right away?”

One side of Sneed’s mouth came up in a leer that showed two blackened teeth. “I figured I’d take myself a bit of recreation first. Torrance hauled me out of your Red Eye Saloon yesterday morning before I’d gotten my money’s worth out of a dainty little blond piece. I gave her three bucks, and I figure she still owes me a hump or two.”

Simon made no effort to soften his grimace of distaste.

“Whatsa matter, Grant? You mean to tell me you don’t hire yourself a whore now and then over at the Red Eye? Maybe them women’s a bit tame for you? You like ‘em wild—like that she-wolf in the jail.”

Simon pictured Willow’s gaunt face, pleading with him to look the other way and let her go free. She was anything but a she-wolf. She was as frightened as a wild rabbit, a nineteen-year-old kid trying to act brave, and worried as hell about her father, even if he was an outlaw. If they’d been on the ground, Simon would have had trouble fighting his impulse to put a fist through Sneed’s grinning face. As it was, he merely shook his head in disgust, gripped Rain Cloud’s reins and started to ride past him.

“I intend to give her a tryout, too, before I’m through,” Sneed taunted to his back. “Might cost me a scratch or two, but she looks like she’d be worth it.”

His good humor shattered, Simon let Rain Cloud head of her own volition in the direction of the ranch. It was none of his business, he told himself firmly. The girl had saved his life, but she’d also been part of the gang who had robbed and beaten him, he told himself for the hundredth time. It was not his responsibility to worry about what would happen to her. His mental battle lasted for about two miles. He’d almost reached Indian Head Butte when he gave up and hauled on the reins.

“Ah, hell. We’re going back,” he told his horse. And when Rain Cloud turned her head as if to ask what in the world was the matter with her master today, he nodded in agreement with her confusion. “Yeah, I know. I’m out of my mind. Loonier than a dogie on locoweed.” Then he wheeled her around and headed back to town.

Chapter Four

As Simon suspected, Cissy and John were in a heated discussion by the time he got back to the jail. John was in his chair behind his desk and Cissy had planted herself on top of it, her skirts ballooning over the stacks of papers. The prisoner was in her accustomed position sitting upright against the wall. Her expression was stony, but her eyes showed that she was following every word of their conversation.

“Simon, you came back!” Cissy cried as he walked in the door.

“I saw Sneed on the road. Has he been here?”

“Been and gone,” John said with a snort. “He said he had some business over at the Red Eye. That man’s a disgrace to his badge.”

“And you’ll be a disgrace to yours if you don’t do something about this situation,” his daughter added.

John molded both hands around his coffee cup and stared gloomily at the contents.

“We can’t let Sneed take her,” Simon agreed. Cissy sent him a surprised but grateful look. He’d come to the conclusion on the way into town. No matter how tough Willow Davis might look in her male attire, no matter how rough the company she’d been keeping, she was a nineteen-year-old girl. Probably a darn scared one. And one who had saved his life.

“What would happen if she just wasn’t here when Sneed came back for her?” Simon asked carefully.

John put his head up sharply, and for the first time, Willow moved inside the cell, letting her feet drop from the cot to the floor. “What’re you saying?” the sheriff asked.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Sneed doesn’t surface for a day or two. A word to Brad Tilton would make certain of it.” The proprietor of the Red Eye was a respected citizen in town, in spite of the nature of his business.

John set his cup on the desk, safely away from his daughter’s dress. “Do you mean to tell me that you think I should just let her go?” he asked, addressing Simon.

“Yes,” Cissy answered.

“Well…” Simon hedged.

John rolled back his chair, stood and started pacing the room, his hands clasped behind his back. His expression was thoughtful.

“Surely you don’t think this girl is a criminal, Father…” Cissy began, but stopped talking when her father shushed her with an impatient movement of his hand.

“Just let me think a minute,” he said.

They all waited as the sheriff walked to the opposite wall and appeared to be studying a wall ad for chewing tobacco, which had been there since Simon was a boy.

Finally the prisoner spoke. “I’d hightail it out of here if you let me go. I’d never be a problem again. I promise.” Her voice held a tightly leashed note of hope that made Simon’s throat go taut.

There was a moment of silence so complete that the ticking of the sheriffs wall clock seemed to echo in the room. Then he turned around and looked from the prisoner to his daughter and finally to Simon.

“I’ve been wearing this badge more years than this girl is old,” he said with a gesture toward Willow. “And I’m not about to let an accused felon walk out of my jail to get into who knows what further mischief.”

Simon, Cissy and Willow all erupted at once with protests, but the sheriff waved them once again to silence, his eyes still on Simon.

“But I can’t say as how I think any good would be served by handing her over to a snake like Sneed. So I have a proposition for you, my friend.”

“For me?” Simon asked, confused.

John walked over to the cell and peered in at Willow, his eyes sharp under the bushy brows. “Come on over here, girl.”

Slowly Willow stood and walked up to the bars.

“Were you telling me the truth when you said that Jake Patton is not your man?” the sheriff asked her.

Willow looked as confused as Simon, but nodded.

“You don’t have yourself a man, right?” the sheriff persisted.

“I don’t need a man,” Willow answered sharply, her back stiffening with irritation.

John nodded, then turned back to Simon. “I’ll let her go on one condition. I’ll release her if you agree to take her as your wife.”

Simon’s laugh died in his throat as John continued watching him with a serious expression. “You are joking, aren’t you?” he asked his friend. He looked over at Cissy for confirmation of the ridiculous nature of John’s remark, only to feel his mouth grow dry at the stricken look in her eyes. More than anything it told him that her father’s offer had not been made in jest.

Simon was about to speak when his protest was made for him. “You’re plumb out of your mind, Sheriff,” Willow said with an indignant laugh.

John turned to her, his tone sober. “Would you rather go riding off alone with Tom Sneed?”

“Why can’t you just let her go, Father?” Cissy asked, the words slightly stilted.

“What would she do on her own? Where would she go? Do you want to just send her off into the wilderness and hope we never see her again? Would that be any kinder than letting her go to trial in Cheyenne?”

Simon found himself backed up against the door. “Wait,” he said, holding up his hands as if to ask for peace. “I could put her up out at the ranch for a while, if that’s what you want, John. I reckon I owe her that much for saving my hide.”

The sheriff shook his head. “Not good enough.” He walked over to his desk and picked up a piece of paper. “It says here that Miss Winifred Lou Davis is under arrest for armed robbery. Unless we want the marshal’s office swarming down on us, that person has to disappear.”

“You mean you want me to hide her out on Saddle Ridge?”

“I mean that there’ll be a new Mrs. Grant at Saddle Ridge.”

Simon rubbed his chin in agitation. “You’re crazy, John. How would I explain this sudden acquisition of a wife to my father?”

John shrugged. “Love at first sight? You were swept off your feet in the middle of selling your cattle in Laramie and couldn’t resist her charms.”

Cissy jumped off the desk. Her face was flushed and she was obviously upset. “You’re doing this because of me,” she accused her father.

Now Simon looked even more mystified. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The sheriff walked over to put a gentle arm around his daughter’s shoulders. “Now, honey, weren’t you the first one who said we shouldn’t keep this girl locked up?”

“But I never suggested that you marry her off to Simon. That little scheme came out of that devious brain of yours. And it’s not going to work.”

Simon watched as Cissy pulled herself away from her father’s comforting arm. Was it possible that there was some truth to her accusation? He, himself, would never have accused John of being devious, but the sheriff was one of the smartest men he knew. And there was nothing more important to John than his daughter’s happiness. “I want to talk with you alone,” he told the older man.

John nodded and reached over to pull open the door. “We’ll be right back, ladies,” he said, giving his daughter a worried smile.

Once they were outside, Simon asked directly, “What exactly is going on here, John? What does Willow Davis’s future have to do with me and Cissy?”

John’s gray sideburns twitched as he searched for the right words. “Nothing. The girl needs a new identity. And you’re in a position to provide it for her. You can let Harvey in on it or not, as you choose. But as far as the rest of this town is concerned, she’ll be Mrs. Simon Grant, your lawful, wedded wife—a beautiful young thing who spun your head around so fast that you ended up marrying her. She’s plenty pretty enough to make the story believable.”

Simon looked at him suspiciously. “And this has nothing to do with my breakup with Cissy?”

John’s eyes were grave. “I won’t lie to you, Simon. Cissy hasn’t been able to move on the way I’d like since you two split. She should be looking out for some other young fellow. Why, Will Waxton would have her in a minute if she’d so much as look his way.”

Simon looked down at the wooden sidewalk. “Would he make her happy, do you think?”

“How the hell do I know? Maybe she should go back East to that nursing school she always talked about before she took it into her head that she wanted you. All I know is that if it didn’t happen between the two of you in the two years you dawdled on about it, it probably never will. And I’m not about to let her spend the rest of her life mourning what might have been.”

Simon clapped a hand on John’s shoulder. It seemed to him that the sheriff had lost something in height in the past couple years, but perhaps it was just that Simon had grown to tower over him. “Don’t you think it’s a little drastic to marry me off so that your daughter can be happy?” he asked with a twist of humor.

John’s eyes twinkled. “I call it divine justice.”

Simon rolled his eyes.

“The lass did save your life, Simon.”

“Look, John. I’ll talk to Cissy. I’ll make her see that she can’t refuse to look at new opportunities because of me. But there’s no way I’m going to hitch myself to some…”

The door to the sheriffs office opened and the object of their conversation stepped between them. “I think you should do it, Simon,” Cissy said in a low, calm voice.

“Then you’re crazy, too,” he snapped.

“If it doesn’t work out, you can always get a quiet divorce down the line….”

All humor gone from the situation, Simon looked from the sheriff to his daughter as if both had suddenly sprouted tulips from their heads. “If what doesn’t work out?” he shouted. “You can’t be suggesting that there could ever be any real marriage between me and this…this…”

“Woman, Simon,” Cissy filled in. “Marriages usually take place between a man and a woman.”

Simon shook his head and stepped backward, nearly tumbling off the sidewalk. “I should’ve just kept on riding back to the ranch,” he mumbled.

“And why didn’t you?” John asked sharply. “How come you came back?”

Simon hesitated. “Well…some of the things Sneed said just stuck in my craw.”

John gave a satisfied nod. “Of course they did. They would to any decent man—especially one who owes a debt to the female Sneed’s got his eyes on. So what’ll it be? Do I release Miss Davis to Sneed…or to you?”

Simon was still feeling the way he had when he was fifteen and a bull in the south pasture had broadsided him, tossing him into the air and knocking all the air out of his body with a great whoosh.

In one long, insane afternoon, his entire, orderly existence had been shattered. He was officially, signed and sealed by Judge Abercrombie, with Cissy and John as witnesses, a married man. It defied belief.

When he had some time to think about it all, he’d try to figure out exactly why he hadn’t been able to hold firm against the relentless onslaught of both Walkers. He suspected that deep down it had something to with the look of fear he’d glimpsed so fleetingly in the outlaw girl’s blue eyes. His wife’s eyes. Lordamercy.

She rode alongside him in silence on Cissy’s horse. John and his daughter, who had pretty much taken over the arrangements as Simon and Willow played their parts with dazed acquiescence, had decided that it wouldn’t do to have Willow claim her own horse, which was in legal custody at the livery. They didn’t think that either Sneed or Marshal Torrance would spend much effort looking for Davis’s daughter, but if they should decide to ride out to Saddle Ridge, it would be enough to hide Willow without having to hide her horse, as well.

John had suggested that Simon and Willow could ride double out to the ranch, but Cissy had said that Simon shouldn’t risk further injury by bouncing around in the saddle with another person.

Cissy left briefly, returning with her horse in tow and a carpetbag. She’d sent her father off to fetch the judge, and then had shooed Simon out the door. “It’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding,” she’d told him breezily.

He’d paced up to the Red Eye and back again to the jail. The door was shut and the shade pulled over the window. So he walked over to Trumbull’s store for some cinnamon sticks for Chester that he’d forgotten to buy in Cheyenne—all the time wondering if that blow to the head had affected him more than he’d thought it had. Surely he was dreaming all this.

But when he’d gotten back to the sheriff’s office once again, the door had been open, and waiting inside were Cissy, Judge Abercrombie, John and a transformed Willow.

With some of that mysterious feminine magic, Cissy had cleaned her up, swept her cloud of hair into some kind of chignon that finally made her look her nineteen years and more, and dressed her in one of Cissy’s own pink gowns. The coloring was not right with the reddish hair and tanned face, and the dress hung loose on Willow’s slender frame, but at least he hadn’t had to get married to someone wearing trousers.

As if reading his thoughts, Willow spoke for the first time since they’d left town. “What happened to my clothes?”

“Cissy packed them in here,” he answered, indicating the carpetbag that was tied to the pommel of his saddle.

“What made her do all this for me?”

Simon shrugged. “She’s a good person. She cares about people.”

“The way it looks to me, she cares about you, Mr. Grant.”

Simon rode along in thought for a couple minutes, then finally said only, “I reckon she does.”

Willow sat up straight in her saddle and twisted toward him. She was utterly comfortable, even on a strange mount, Simon noted. “Well, hell’s bells! How come she was pushing to marry you off to me, then?”

Simon kept his eyes on the road ahead. “I’ll ask you to watch your language when we get out to the ranch,” he said stiffly.

Willow’s chin went up. “Why? Have you got a mother there who’ll be horrified that her son has taken up with an outlaw girl like me?”

“My mother died when I was twelve. But I’ve got a father, and he’s not in good health.”

“Oh. Well, Mr. Grant, you’ll just have to remember that I’ve been riding with outlaws for the past year. I’ll do the best I can, but I’m not making any promises.” They rode for another couple minutes, then she asked, “Are you going to tell him the truth about me?”

“If you swear like a shantyboy, I won’t have any choice. But I’d rather not. He had a stroke last spring, and I try to keep him from hearing things that are likely to upset him.”

“Which would be me.”

“Which would be the fact that his son has just married a girl whom. he’s known for a grand total of three days and who is a fugitive from the law, wanted for armed robbery.”

He looked over at her, and for the first time all day, she smiled. “I see your point,” she said.

“Good.” Reluctantly he smiled back. They were both in this thing now, for better or worse, as the judge had said. It made sense to keep the arrangement as friendly as possible.

“But you didn’t answer my question. About the sheriff’s daughter,” she prompted.

“Cissy and I kept company for a while. But that ended some time ago.”

“How long a while?”

“Hmm?”

“How long did you and she keep company?”

“I don’t know…. A couple of years, I suppose.”

Willow let the air rush through her teeth. “Whew. A couple of years is a long time.”

“Yup.” She appeared to be expecting further explanation, but Simon wasn’t about to go into the details of his and Cissy’s relationship with someone he’d barely met. Especially a woman. He’d never even discussed Cissy with his father.

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