Johanna Lindsey - Angel

While he was fighting to keep his seat— he was damned if he was going to face that enormous animal on the ground — the woman spoke again, one word. When his horse had all four hooves back on the ground, he saw that the cat had stopped and was just sitting there now, not five feet away, looking up at him with large yellow eyes.

Marabelle, she’d said, in a tone meant to be obeyed. He hadn’t heard her wrong. Marabelle… and he did something he never did, something he couldn’t afford to do in his line of work. He got mad and showed it.

“Lady, if you don’t get that animal out of my sight immediately,” he gritted out in what was by force of habit a very moderate tone, “I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

She seemed to take exception to that, probably because she was the one holding the gun — still trained on him. “You aren’t in a position to—”

What happened took only seconds, Angel palming his gun and sending off one shot that knocked the weapon from her hand, her cry of “Son of a bitch!” as she shook her stinging fingers, the cat snarling, loudly , in response to her cry, and Angel’s horse starting to buck wildly in response to the cat’s snarl. Angel ended up in the dirt this time, the horse lit out for the next county, and the now hissing cat was no more than a foot away from him before she said it again, that one word that stopped the feline immediately. Marabelle .

He had a mind to shoot it anyway. He had a mind to shoot her, too. He couldn’t remember when he’d been so out of control of his emotions. An idiot could surmise that the cat, whatever it was, belonged to her. A pet. It had to be a pet to obey her like that. And she’d let it out to terrify his horse, terrify him, too, he didn’t doubt.

Even as angry as he was, and realizing that the cat had to be tame, or somewhat tame, he still had considerable courage to take his eyes off an animal that size that was sitting no more than a foot away, especially with him down on the ground with it, the two of them eyeball-to-eyeball. But he did it, found her again, still up on the porch, and narrowed his eyes on her.

She’d managed to retrieve her gun and was holding it in her other hand, the hand with the sore fingers squeezed between her arm and her side. It was doubtful the gun would shoot now without a visit to a gunsmith first, but she didn’t seem to think of that and was pointing the damn thing at him again.

“I’ll tell you right now that my aim’s as good as yours, mister, but I won’t have to shoot you. You move that weapon you’re holding even a quarter inch in my direction, and Marabelle will tear you to pieces.”

Whether she could hit what she aimed at was debatable. Shooting his hat off could have been deliberate, just to get his attention, or she could have been trying to kill him and missed. The second threat he didn’t doubt, however. But she had to be afraid of him to issue a double threat like that. Well, she’d seen what he was capable of. He’d disarmed her when she’d had her gun pointed right at him and his had still been holstered. And she had good reason to fear him right now, as angry as he was.

“You’re crazy if you think I’m putting my gun away with this thing breathing down my neck.” They could have had a standoff at that point, neither willing to budge an inch. In fact, several long moments of silence passed before Angel decided he’d rather get rid of the cat, so he added grudgingly, “Call it off, lady, and maybe we’ll talk.”

Her chin rose a notch. “There won’t be any talking, since you’ll be leaving. And you can tell them they had no reason to bring in a fast gun.”

“They?”

“Whichever of them hired you.”

“No one hired me, lady. Lewis Pickens sent me to—”

“Well, for God’s sake,” she cut in, and lowered her weapon. “Why didn’t you say so to begin with?” And then: “Marabelle, come here, baby. He’s harmless.”

This had to be the first time Angel had ever been called harmless since he’d reached manhood. He didn’t take exception to it. He waited to see if the animal would obey, and damned if the large head didn’t swing around to look at the woman, then the long, sleek body slowly followed as the cat ambled across the yard and went up the steps. Angel let out a sigh, but he didn’t put his gun away until the feline was inside the house.

“You can go back to the kitchen, Maria,” the woman said to someone just inside the door, adding before she closed it, “Do you actually know how to shoot that rifle?”

Angel cringed. He’d had another gun trained on him and hadn’t even sensed it. He was getting careless. No, his senses had all been attuned to that monstrous black animal and that idiot woman on the porch — please, God, don’t let her be Cassandra Stuart.

She was coming down the steps toward him now. For the first time he noticed her fancy attire, a long black coat with fur trimming over ice-blue lace at her throat, and five layers of blue pleated ruffles in the skirt, which was seen only from her knees to her toes. A small beaver hat was perched at a jaunty angle on dark brown hair. Citified clothes, to be sure, but the incongruity of the outfit was that she wore a gun holster on the outside of the coat.

She slipped the gun into that holster just before she held out her hand to him. “I’m Cassandra Stuart. Will Mr. Pickens be arriving soon?”

Angel ignored the hand, unsure what she expected him to do with it. There was even a smile that came with it, as if she hadn’t shot at him, sent that man-eating cat after him, and run off his horse. He ignored the smile, too.

That she was apparently the woman he had to deal with made him curse silently as he got to his feet and dusted off his slicker. At the moment, the last thing he wanted to do was help the woman. But that’s what he was here for. A debt was a debt He went after his hat before he answered her. Seeing the bullet hole that had passed dead-center through the crown had him swearing again, this time aloud. Hell, she could have killed him!

He swung around and gave her a dark look. “When you get that six-shooter fixed, I want to see proof that you know how to use it.”

All she did was frown, take out her gun again and examine it, then exclaim, “Damn, you’ve ruined it!”

“And you’ve ruined my hat.”

She gave him a narrow look. “This happens to be a special-made weapon, mister — who are you, anyway?”

“Angel — and this happens to be a twenty-dollar hat, ma’am .”

“I’ll replace your damn hat—” She paused to take a step back. “What do you mean Angel ? You aren’t the Angel, are you? The one they call the Angel of Death?”

His lips twisted sourly. Most folks never said it within his hearing. “I don’t care for that name.”

“I don’t blame you,” she replied.

But there was a wary look in her silver-gray eyes now that gave Angel a wealth of satisfaction to see. It should have been there sooner. Even folks who didn’t know who he was usually gave him a wide berth. He simply had a look about him that said “Beware.”

“Well,” she said with a nervous laugh when he just stared at her. “It’s lucky for you that I have more than one of these modified Colts, or I would probably be quite angry now.”

“You better hope it don’t take me long to find my horse, lady, or you’ll find out what angry—”

“If you lay a hand on me—”

“I was thinking more along the lines of shooting you.”

He didn’t mean it, but she didn’t know that. And he wondered what the hell he was doing, letting his anger build back up again when he’d had it under control. He never made idle threats. But there was something about her that just irritated the hell out of him, even when she wasn’t pointing a gun in his direction.