Johanna Lindsey - A Man to Call My Own

However, with Will laying down his weapon as ordered, at that precise moment they only had Chad to deal with. One rifle was all it would take, though, with good aim. The question was then, did they think they might be better and faster? Only they knew how good they were.

There was a brief spat of whispered conversation between the two, then some swearing. Chad patiently waited it out. He'd almost been hoping they wouldn't back down. But while he wouldn't hesitate to put a bullet through the big fellow, he drew the line at shooting teenagers or female desperadoes, whichever the kid was. So he was somewhat relieved when the short one kicked the dirt, then hightailed it into the brush where their horses were staked. The big guy backed away more slowly, but in another moment, he was gone from sight as well. Chad still waited, alert, and didn't relax until he heard their horses galloping away.

"That was real stupid," Will grumbled as he retrieved his gun from the floorboard and shoved it back in his holster. "There's usually a few more hiding on the sides, ready for any opposition."

"Usually didn't apply here, now did it?" Chad replied with a shrug.

"No, but you sure as hell didn't know that. Just pure luck that it was only them two. Why I've seen so many bullets flying at a coach once, the dang wheel was shot off. And that time, only two of the robbers made themselves visible as well, but it turned out there were six in all."

"Maybe you need to find a new job."

"Maybe I do," Will agreed with a snort. "But in the meantime, why'n't you get yourself in a better mood so you don't go getting me killed."

Chad figured diat was just nervous tension shooting its mouth off, so he didn't take offense. But when the same nervous tension came at him from a different direction, he sure as hell did.

She shot out of the coach, her face red with fury, and started shouting at him, "Don't you ever put us in jeopardy like that again. You—we could've been killed! A few trunks of clothes and money aren't worth human lives!"

He plays the hero and gets his head chewed off. It was the last straw. He jumped down from the coach, grabbed the spinster by her arm, and dragged her a good twenty yards away before he stopped, and snarled, "I've a hankering to shake you until you rattle.

Say one more word, and I just might. That was a controlled situation, Missy. If I didn't already have my hands on my rifle, it might Ve gone differently. And if you hadn't already riled me with your silly accusations, it might have gone differently as well. So maybe you should consider keeping your mouth shut from now on, and you might just arrive at the Twisting Barb in one piece."

He left her there to go check on Amanda. She was probably still frightened, might need comforting. He opened the coach door to find Ella Mae's calm eyes on him—nothing seemed to ruffle the Latons' maid, and Amanda fast asleep. The little beauty had slept through the whole thing.

MARIAN WAS IN THE very pits of the doldrums. She wasn't used to making such a complete fool of herself, and doing it deliberately. Granted she would usually start out with any new acquaintance, at least any that might have a chance of becoming a friend or a suitor, by giving them a bad first impression of herself, just enough for them to mark her down as not worth knowing.

This was her safety tactic, to make sure right from the start that her sister wouldn't get jealous. And she'd been doing it for so long that it was automatic on her part.

She'd made that effort with Chad Kinkaid the day he'd found them. Accusing him of nefarious deeds, when she'd had no doubt he was there to rescue them, should have been enough. He'd been obviously insulted and avoided her ever since, wouldn't talk to her, wouldn't even look in her general direction. The perfect results. She just hadn't counted on the effect he would have on her.

There was no getting around it, she liked him—too much. The initial attraction she'd felt toward him didn't diminish with his cold shoulders as it should have. She found herself thinking about him constantly, listening for the sound of his voice, trying to catch glimpses of him when he rode beside the coach, everything she shouldn't have been doing, but she just couldn't seem to help herself.

Amanda hadn't noticed her interest in Chad yet because she was consumed with her own discomfort. But if she thought for even a second that Marian liked him, she'd put herself out to win him for herself, not to keep him, of course, but just to spite Marian.

So it wasn't that Marian needed to reinforce Chad's dislike of her. He already disliked her just fine. It was that she needed to burn her own bridges more thoroughly, to make sure that there was absolutely no possibility, ever, that he could be hers. Because even if she lost her last bit of sense and let him know that she liked him, she knew she couldn't compete with her sister over him.

Amanda would use every trick in the book to get what she wanted. If what she wanted was a man, she'd even sleep with him, even if only once, just to get him thoroughly devoted to her. She'd done it before, and made sure that Marian knew about it, if it happened to be a man Marian had shown some interest in. So until Amanda was married and had moved somewhere far away from her, she couldn't begin to think of getting married herself.

So she'd made a fool of herself, again, and now she was miserable with embarrassment because of it. And it wasn't even intentional this time. Bumping into Chad that afternoon had been no more than an accident. But finding herself about to apologize for it had set off alarm bells in her head. She didn't want him to think she was just clumsy. That wasn't a bad enough trait to prompt extreme dislike. Another unwarranted accusation was, though.

But she could have at least been a little more inventive. Charging him with being mean to children was beyond ridiculous. It just showed how utterly flustered she'd been, finding herself in such close proximity to him that she couldn't even think straight.

She would have thought she couldn't get more embarrassed. But lo and behold, he faces a little danger during that aborted stage robbery, and she loses all common sense. She wasn't even sure what was worse, experiencing fear for him or behaving like an idiot because of it.

Definite doldrums. Then to find herself eating dinner with him that night of all nights, when high color was rising up her cheeks every few minutes, when she couldn't stop thinking about her silly behavior. But there was no help for it, at least not that night. The town was small, there was only the one eating establishment in the single hotel, and only one table left empty in it, and the dining room was closing — the cook already gone home—so she couldn't make some excuse, then come back to eat later, and neither could he.

At least they weren't served a round of the usual long-winded complaints from Amanda with the meal. She'd slept through the entire robbery that day, so hadn't had to experience any worry over it, had only been told about it afterward, when they were halfway to the next town, and was actually in a somewhat good mood because of it. And Amanda in a good mood meant flirtation with every man within her sights.

Marian found the food tasteless, could barely swallow it. She had so many mixed feelings stirred up that her head began to ache. It was one thing to know what could happen and quite another to sit there and watch Amanda gain Chad's rapt attention. Even poor Will Candles got utterly flustered by Amanda's smiles. It made Marian sick to her stomach.

The headache was a good excuse to leave, and she took it. So what if she went to sleep hungry. She'd be lucky if she could sleep at all.

No one but Ella Mae really heard her make the excuse or noticed her leaving, she did such a good job of making herself ignorable. She found her way to the room she'd be sharing with her sister and their maid, even though the light had burned out in the hall. She was too miserable to light the lamp in the room, either. She just released her hair from the tight bun, tossed her spectacles on the nearest table, dropped her dress to the floor, and crawled under the covers on the bed to nurse her misery.