Carol Finch - Bounty Hunter's Bride

Hanna snickered as he set her on the porch. “My, I have married well, haven’t I? I have a husband who places my comfort above all else—”

She barely had time to complete the teasing comment before Cale clutched her hand and nearly dragged her up the steps in his haste for privacy. A blush exploded on her cheeks when the stage owner—a wiry little man with frizzy gray hair—glanced up from where he sat, warming himself by the fire. He grinned wryly as his gaze bounced back and forth between her and Cale.

Hanna decided she didn’t care if the proprietor knew why they were in an all-fired rush to reach their room. If her legs had been longer, she’d have been the one tugging Cale up the steps.

Call of the White Wolf

“The wholesome goodness of the characters…will touch your heart and soul.”

—Rendezvous

“A love story that aims straight for the heart and never misses.”

—Romantic Times

#636 BADLANDS HEART

Ruth Langan

#637 NORWYCK’S LADY

Margo Maguire

#638 LORD SEBASTIAN’S WIFE

Katy Cooper

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Call of the White Wolf #592

Bounty Hunter’s Bride #635

Other works include:

Harlequin Duets

Fit To Be Tied #36

A Regular Joe #45

Mr. Predictable #62

The Family Feud #72

Lonesome Ryder?/Restaurant Romeo* #81

Silhouette Special Edition

Not Just Another Cowboy #1242

Soul Mates #1320

This book is dedicated to my husband,

Ed, and our children—Kurt, Jill, Christie, Jeff and Jon.

And to our grandchildren,

Livia, Blake, Kennedy and Brooklynn.

Hugs and kisses!

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

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Fort Smith, 1870s

“Oh, my God, what have I done?” Hanna Malloy whispered apprehensively as she stepped off the steamboat that had transported her upriver from New Orleans. She stared at the gloomy, overcast sky, which promised another spring rain shower at any moment and listened to the drone of insects that swarmed near the river. In dismay, she surveyed the muddy frontier outpost of Fort Smith. This was her salvation? This was the answer to her prayers and her reward for six months of careful planning to seize control of her future? What in heaven’s name could she have been thinking!

“Want some help with them bags, missy?”

Hanna stepped away from the foul-smelling miscreant who’d approached her while she was lost in thought. The shaggy-haired man with beady gray eyes flashed her a smile that was missing two front teeth.

“Thank you for your kind offer of assistance, but I can manage on my own,” she replied.

The short, pudgy brute eyed her carpetbags covetously, glanced this way and that, then lumbered off. Hanna had the unmistakable feeling that if there hadn’t been dozens of river boatmen, cowboys fresh from trail drives, gamblers and railroad workers bustling around her, the man would’ve snatched her bags and taken off at a dead run.

Hanna gulped and glanced uneasily around her. She wasn’t in the best of company at the moment. Indeed, in all her twenty years of existence, she’d never been in such bad company without the protection of a chaperon.

A sense of panic and disillusionment very nearly overwhelmed Hanna. For moral support and a sense of comfort, she clasped the golden locket—a childhood gift from her mother—that hung around her neck. Inhaling a bracing breath, she strode past the abandoned, stone-walled garrison that had been built on a sandstone bluff overlooking the Arkansas River.

“Oh, Lord,” Hanna muttered as she hiked toward the frontier town set a mere hundred yards from the eastern border of infamous Indian Territory—where thieves and murderers were reported to run rampant. There were no paved avenues, no luxurious hotels, no fashionable boutiques and no lights to illuminate the mud-caked streets. There were, however, Hanna noted, amazed, a string of thirty saloons, a newspaper office, one bank and several shops that provided basic necessities. Dozens of wagons, hacks and saddle horses waited beside the uneven boardwalks.

She’d planned and schemed, hoarded her monthly allowance and used the funds her departed mother had set aside for her wedding trousseau for this? Sweet merciful heavens! Even in her modest-priced lavender gown Hanna looked overdressed and out of place in comparison to the few women she passed on the street.

Hanna squared her shoulders, hitched up the hem of her dress and marched determinedly forward. She had to remind herself—repeatedly—why she’d turned her back on her aristocratic lifestyle, sacrificed all the opulent luxuries in New Orleans and left her father’s handpicked groom at the altar. She, who had what most women aspired to, had climbed out the window of a church filled to capacity, and made a mad dash to the riverboat that would deliver her to the precious freedom she’d craved—dreamed of—for years. For the sake of independence, she’d have to learn to adjust and accept life on different terms than what was familiar.

Hanna stepped onto the uneven boardwalk in front of a saloon to avoid the heavily rutted mud street. Tinkling piano music, masculine laughter and the smell of cigar smoke greeted her as she passed one tavern after another, to reach one of the ramshackle hotels in the offensive frontier town.

When a drunken ruffian stumbled from one of the saloons and rammed her broadside, Hanna clamped her arms around a rough-hewn post to prevent herself from being catapulted into the mud. Her carpetbags swung crazily from her fingertips.

“Well, what have we here?” the man slurred, licking his lips and leering at her through bloodshot eyes.

Thunder boomed overhead, signaling impending doom and threatening Hanna’s firm resolve. If she had any sense at all she’d reverse direction and hightail it back to the river to catch the next steamboat to New Orleans and the familiarity of life as she knew it. The thrill of reaching her personal promised land had been dashed, replaced with disillusionment and uncertainty.

“Why don’t you ’n me find us a room and git better ‘quainted?” the drunkard suggested, in what she presumed to be his most seductive voice. It fell miserably short of the mark.

Hanna shivered with repulsion and pushed herself away from the splintered post. “Excuse me, sir,” she said stiffly. “I’m on my way to meet my fiancé.” That was a half-truth, probably one of many she’d have to tell before she got where she was going.