Carol Finch - Texas Bride

She had a lot of living left to do. She had a life and family to return to, would-be fiancés waiting in the wings—if her story was to be believed. All Jonah had to his name was a well-trained horse and an arsenal of weapons. His only connection was to a company of Rangers who were careful about getting too attached to each other for fear of losing a dear friend when a gun battle broke out.

“You’ll have to find yourself an experienced guide at Fort Griffin,” Jonah said a few miles later. “A novice won’t do you a damn bit of good. Your two pistol-packing friends mean business.”

“Would you please stop referring to those bushwhackers as my friends?” She scowled at him. “And for your information, I am not going to hire another guide or take the stage. I refuse to involve anyone else in my problems or become personally responsible for causing someone else’s injury or death.”

Jonah swiveled in the saddle to stare disapprovingly at her. He wasn’t surprised to see her chin elevate a stubborn notch when she met his gaze head-on. The woman had cornered the market on stubborn and defiant.

“And furthermore, you are fired,” Maddie decreed. “You have an injured arm already. I have to get used to taking care of myself and I’m sorry I made the selfish mistake of involving you in this affair.”

“One kiss does not make an affair,” he said dryly.

Maddie flung him another irritated glance. “Don’t practice your rarely used sense of humor on me, Danhill. I am not a simpleton whose attention is easily diverted. I will not be listed as the cause on your death certificate.” To make her point she drew the mare to a halt, then hitched her thumb over her shoulder. “You’re off the hook. Go back to Coyote Springs. You didn’t want to come in the first place.”

He had expected her to stick to him like a sand burr after the ambush, but he’d forgotten to take into account her independent nature. Every mishap she had encountered since he’d met her served to stiffen her resolve about confronting her problems alone. He admired that—in a frustrated sort of way—but he’d made a promise he intended to honor.

“Damn it, Jonah,” she railed at him when he nudged his steed forward. “What does it take to get rid of you?”

“I would have left if you had walked naked from the water. That would’ve evened the score between us,” he teased, straight-faced. “Now that’s what it’ll take to get rid of me. Go ahead, strip naked and I’ll backtrack to town.”

Maddie’s disbelieving snort transformed into a chuckle. “You are, without a doubt, the most outrageous, perplexing, disagreeable and impossible man I have ever met. I swear, it seems you have made it your mission to deliberately shock and provoke me.”

“Sticks and stones, Garret,” he said with a careless shrug. “But regardless, I’m going to take the roundabout route to Fort Griffin so we can avoid your cohorts.”

“How is it that you know this area so well when you claimed you never trekked across it?”

Her question convinced Jonah that she had finally given up her objections to his friends-and-cohorts comments. “I didn’t say I wasn’t familiar with the area,” he corrected grimly. “I said that I preferred to avoid it.” He stared stonily at her. “I’m half Comanche. The half that counts. This is where I grew up. This was the Comanchería, until the army descended like hornets to slaughter Comanche warriors, old men, women and children, and march the survivors to Indian Territory.”

Maddie flinched when she noticed the hard expression that settled on his rugged features. She had unintentionally hit an exposed nerve. Quite frankly, she was surprised that he had opened up to her, since he had refused to do so earlier. Jonah was a prickly man who had built walls around himself and rarely let others close enough to know and understand him.

“I was fourteen when I watched my father die,” he muttered as he stared into the distance. “I was fifteen when I was herded onto a train with the rest of the Comanche children and shipped to Pennsylvania to a boarding school designed to train us to think and behave like whites. I was seventeen when I sneaked away, took a new name and made my way back to Texas to work any job I could get in order to survive.”

His gaze swung back to her and she could see bitter emotion shimmering in those emerald depths. “When I look across this frontier I see ghosts of the past and hear the anguished cries of a people who were forced off their sacred land. It’s like walking over graves, princess. There are too many painful memories, too much resentment.”

“All the more reason for you to turn back,” Maddie murmured as tears of compassion clouded her vision. “If this ordeal with Christina ends badly, I’ll be tempted to walk away from a host of bad memories, too.”

Maddie curled her arm around Jonah’s neck and pulled him forward to press her lips gently to his. She kissed him because her heart went out to him, because the swift taste she’d had of him earlier hadn’t lasted long enough to appease her. In addition, this rapidly developing craving to make emotional and physical contact with him overwhelmed her.

Her senses filled to overflowing as his mouth moved upon hers. Sensual lightning flickered through her as she breathed him in, tasted him, savored the tantalizing sensations she had never experienced in her limited encounters with men. His darting tongue delved deeper, stealing her breath, then returning it to her in the most arousing manner imaginable. Desire intensified until her mind was reeling and her body was burning with unfamiliar need and simmering with erotic pleasure.

Suddenly he jerked away and retreated into his own space—long before she was ready to give him up. Maddie was so unprepared for his abrupt withdrawal that she nearly dived off her horse before she could regain her balance. She clutched at the pommel of the saddle and dragged herself upright.

Sweet mercy, when Jonah Danhill decided to let loose and kiss a woman senseless he could knock her world completely off-kilter!

“Why’d you do that?” he demanded in a strangled voice.

“Why’d you kiss me earlier?” she retorted promptly.

“To snap you out of your fear-induced trance and get you moving,” he said reasonably. “So why’d you do it?”

She smiled mischievously as she took the lead, though she had no idea where in the devil she was going. “Because I have seen you naked already.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe it means that, having seen all there is to see of you, I find you irresistible.”

“I doubt it. And for the record, two kisses is two too many. From now on, this is strictly a business arrangement. You’re paying me to escort you on the first leg of your journey. Simple and as temporary as that.”

“I thought you said you were tagging along, just for the chance of seeing me in the altogether.” She tossed a cheeky grin over her shoulder, finding that she enjoyed saucy flirtation—with Jonah, specifically. “I’ve got news for you, Danhill. I’m not going to bare my body and soul until long past Fort Griffin.”

“My loss, Garret. I’ll be long gone by then.”

And he would, too, Jonah promised himself as he trotted past Maddie to ensure she didn’t lead them in the wrong direction. He was not tramping deeper into Comanche territory to revisit sacred ground that might stir up another caldron of bubbling resentment.

He would convince Maddie to hire an experienced guide—or at the very least, take the stage—because she was not going to go it alone, no matter what she said to the contrary.

On that determined thought Jonah picked up the pace and headed due west. He didn’t slow down until they had galloped across a wide-open meadow and took cover in the thicket of cottonwoods and oaks that lined the meandering river. He knew of one place in particular that provided a natural fortress where they could bed down without worrying about being set upon by the bushwhacking duo.