Nan Ryan - The Sheriff

“You know how to use that thing?”

Kate VanNam swallowed hard as she raised the revolver. “Certainly,” she lied. “I’m an excellent—”

Before Kate could finish her sentence, Sheriff Travis McCloud had taken the gun away from her and then pulled her up against him. “Never aim a weapon unless you mean to fire it. You hear me?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Damn it to hell, I knew it.”

“Knew what?” she asked, intensely aware that his slim hips and long legs were pressed flush against hers. She could feel the heat radiating from him, making her own body warm.

“That you’d be trouble. You are trouble. You’ll cause trouble. For yourself. For me.”

“That’s a lot of trouble, Sheriff.”

“Too much trouble,” he said, releasing her before he placed the revolver on the sofa bed. “Why don’t you pack up and leave before somebody gets hurt?”

“I am staying in Fortune, and if you don’t like it I’d suggest you stay out of my sight.”

Both annoyed and amused by Kate’s determination, Travis raised his hands in surrender. “Fine, Miss VanNam, but if I catch you anywhere near a saloon or out on the streets after dark, you’re going to jail.”

“Fair enough, Sheriff,” Kate said. “And if I catch you anywhere near this house after dark, I’ll be forced to shoot you.”

DUCHESS FOR A DAY

CHIEFTAIN

NAUGHTY MARIETTA

THE SCANDALOUS MISS HOWARD

THE SEDUCTION OF ELLEN

THE COUNTESS MISBEHAVES

WANTING YOU

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For my fellow classmates with whom I graduated dear old Bryson High on that warm Texas night all those summers ago.

Fannie Ainsworth

Rollins Bilby

Vernon Crager

John Denning

Joe Gillespie

Jerry Graybill

Shirley Harrison

Joyce King

LaRue Matlock

Imogene McNear

Bobby Mitchell

Glenda Odom

Delores Shook

Dorothy Sims

Malvin Teague

Betty Lou Wells

Colleen Wolfe

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

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

In a candlelit hotel room on San Francisco’s rowdy Barbary Coast, a handsome man lay on his back upon the bed.

He was naked.

So was the woman astride him.

The pair were making hot, eager love.

They had been at each other from the minute they rushed into the room, locked the door and hurriedly began stripping off their clothes.

Now the lusty pair moved together in a frenzied mating. The voluptuous woman’s heavy breasts bounced and swayed with her rapid movements. She gripped the man’s ribs and murmured his name repeatedly.

A blue officer’s campaign cap bobbed atop the woman’s head. A captain’s uniform was draped over a bedpost.

And atop the bureau, a pair of golden spurs gleamed on freshly polished black boots.

In minutes, the pair climaxed.

Immediately after the loving, the man anxiously asked, “Did he die?”

“Yes,” the woman replied breathlessly, doffing the campaign hat and brushing back her long dark hair to reveal a blue trinity tattoo on the side of her neck.

He nodded. “Did you get the assay?”

“Yes, I did,” she confirmed.

“Did the doctor or nurse see you?”

“No one saw me,” she assured and leaned down to kiss his doubts away. On the Embarcadero below, drunken miners shouted and fired their guns in the air.

Boston, Massachusetts

March 1855

A cold winter afternoon, in a sparsely furnished room in Boston’s South End, twenty-two-year-old Kate VanNam read to her elderly, hard-of-hearing uncle. Nelson VanNam was a gentle, caring, life-long bachelor, who had raised Kate and her older brother, Gregory, after their parents had perished in a fire at sea a dozen years earlier.

For a short time, he had been a successful and prosperous businessman who had provided well for his niece and nephew. But in 1849, an unexpected reversal of fortune had changed all that. The once prominent VanNams had fallen on hard times. The grand Chestnut Street mansion in Beacon Hill had been lost, along with the VanNam fortune.

When the fortune disappeared, so did Gregory VanNam. The senior VanNam was now in failing health and eternally grateful to his sweet-natured niece for selflessly tending him.

On this bitter January day, the two sat as close to the fire in the grate as was safe, blankets draped over their knees. As Kate read to her uncle—shouted, actually—she heard a loud knock on the door.

Kate lowered her well-worn copy of the Dickens novel Oliver Twist, and gave her uncle a questioning look. He shrugged his thin shoulders. Kate laid the book aside.

“I’ll see who it is. Stay right where you are,” she said to her uncle.

Nelson nodded.

Kate opened the door. A uniformed messenger stood shivering on the steps. He handed her a sealed envelope on which only her name was written in neat script. She started to speak, but the youth who delivered the message had already turned and left.

Puzzled, Kate closed the door and returned to the fire and her uncle. She held out the envelope to him.

Squinting, he read what was written. “It’s addressed to you, my dear. Open it.”

Kate tore open the end of the sealed envelope and slipped out the folded velum paper. After reading the brief message quickly, she explained to her uncle that it was a summons for her to come to the law offices of J. J. Clement, the attorney who, like his father before him, had always represented the VanNam family.

“Why on earth would Clement want to see me?” Kate mused aloud, as she handed the message to her uncle.

“I have no idea, child,” he stated, reading the missive. “But I’m sure it can wait. No need for you to…”

He stopped speaking, shook his white head and began to smile. The curious Kate was already reaching for her heavy woolen cape hanging on the coat tree beside the front door.

Swirling it around her slender shoulders, she said, “It’s time for your afternoon nap, Uncle Nelson. While you rest I’ll walk to the law offices and see what this is all about.” She smiled at him as she buttoned the cape beneath her chin and drew the hood up over her gleaming golden hair. “I will be back within the hour, the mystery solved.”

Nelson VanNam knew it would do no good to argue that it was far too cold for Kate to be walking to the attorney’s office. His pretty niece, while as kind and caring as a ministering angel, was also a decisive, strong-willed young woman who discharged duties and met challenges with an immediacy that was admirable, if at times somewhat annoying.