Jenna Kernan - The Texas Ranger's Daughter

Who had told him? The hope surged, blending with the terror to steal her breath once more. Had he come just for her? Who was he? Who had sent him?

He had her wrist now, and then captured her leg, heaving her back up on the horse without a word. The dungarees stretched tight against her bottom and she feared the seam would fail. She’d never worn any garment that rubbed so intimately against her most private places. A moment later the saddle shifted under his weight as he drew up behind her.

“You’re no girl,” he whispered, his warm breath fanning her neck. He made it sound like a condemnation.

She felt his legs pressing the horse’s sides, and they set off again, into the canyons, away from the riders and into the night.

Boon pulled Laurie flush against him. He didn’t need to, but he figured if he was going to get a bullet in his back over this gal, he might just as well have the benefits of holding on to her.

He gave the horse its head, letting it pick its way along the rough trail left by the mule deer. The horse walked briskly along, but he kept them just shy of a trot. The gelding’s night vision was far superior to his, but he didn’t want his mount stepping into a hole and breaking a leg.

“What is your Christian name, Mr. Boon?” Laurie’s whispered question sounded like a gunshot in the stillness of the night.

His lip curled in response. He wasn’t like most folks with a first and last name. He had only one.

“It’s just Boon.”

He could feel the tension in her. What was she thinking? That he didn’t want her to know his full name? If he had a last name he’d surely tell her. But he did not have one and that was all.

“I see,” she whispered. But she didn’t, couldn’t, not without knowing where he’d come from and damned if he’d tell her that.

He turned his thoughts back to the danger they faced. The men chasing them were all drunk and they couldn’t see in the dark any better than he could. Best to go easy until the moon rose, saving the horses, and then slap leather. That gave him the rest of the night with Laurie in his arms. It was the kind of temptation he never expected to face, having been told he was retrieving a girl.

Boon snuggled her against him, wondering who she was.

Why hadn’t the captain told him that the girl he was rescuing was a full-grown woman? Maybe he didn’t figure he owed Boon any explanation after saving his life.

When the captain took him in, Boon had thought he’d been given a second chance. Now he wasn’t certain. He’d been summoned to the rooms of John Bender, the division head of the Texas Rangers. Bender and his partner, Sam Coats, had argued over whether to send him for Laurie. The captain believed in him, knew he was the best man for the job, but Coats had been against it, claiming you couldn’t reform an outlaw any more than you could reform a rattlesnake. That comment had stuck to him like a cocklebur ever since. Hammer had said the same. He’s one of us, boys.

Two men different as fire and water and both thought they knew him. Maybe they did. Were they right? Would he always be a rattlesnake, dangerous and unpredictable?

His head sank and he breathed deep of the sweet scent of Laurie’s hair. Soap and lavender powder, he realized, on skin soft as a baby bunny.

Why had he let himself believe that this job was his chance to earn the captain’s respect? He still thought so, or he would have ridden the other way the minute he’d left the captain. That made him worse than a fool.

Behind him the gunfire changed direction. Laurie stiffened as he cocked his head.

“They’ve taken the road toward the river,” he whispered, as he had figured.

Laurie’s breathing gradually returned to normal. He stared straight down past the waterfall of dark hair that curled across her shoulder and to her substantial bosom. He blew out a breath. One look at Laurie heated his blood and made his skin tingle as if he stood naked in the pouring rain. He tried to keep his eyes on the horse’s ears as they swiveled to listen to the sounds of the night, but his mind kept throwing images of Laurie in her corset trying to button that shirt. This little gal was a temptation, the kind he’d avoided since leaving the Blue Belle.

Laurie was not what he had expected, not at all. She was all woman and a proper one at that. Her prim little coat and skirts, the upsweep of black hair that had once likely been a modest bun, and the white cotton gloves all made her seem like a lady who had been well cared for. Nothing like any woman he’d ever known.

So why had she kissed him like that?

He recalled her as he had first seen her, sitting still and watchful beside the fire, the orange flames glinting off her dark hair, giving it a red cast. She’d held her gloved hands together as if in prayer, when they were actually bound. Her stillness radiated tension and her face had pinched with worry. Her generous mouth had tipped down at the corners and her dark flashing eyes had been watchful as any cornered animal searching for escape. She’d nearly reached his horse. That showed the kind of fight she’d need if they were to get out of here. All that fit together, a brave lady captured by outlaws. What didn’t fit was that kiss. In that kiss he’d experienced what she had hidden, a raw sensuality about her that burned hotter than a blacksmith’s forge.

It didn’t fit. That kiss, her fancy duds all bustles and lace. Who was she, the captain’s woman? He was surprised at the whirlwind of anger that thought stirred.

Boon compared that first glance to the sight of her, half-dressed, lithe and winsome, standing in that cleft in the red rock struggling with the shirt he’d provided, her shoulders pale as starlight.

He wished he could look at her again, all of her this time. And he wanted to see her face in the sunlight. For now he pictured Laurie in his mind as he breathed in her scent. Her eyes were too widely set for her small oval face, he decided, too dark and too large. Both top and bottom lips were full and ripe, the top shaped like a bow and the bottom had the slightest depression at the center. He wanted to rub his thumb over that bottom lip and see her mouth open for him. Might have been a trick of the light, but her skin seemed flawless and he knew her teeth were white and straight. She was a beauty by any standard. Leave it to the Hammer to want to destroy such a woman. It made him sick.

Her face surely would be temptation enough, but Laurie had curves, full hips, a round tight backside and a full bosom, made more generous by the silly corset that pinched her middle and looked like it might break her in half like a matchstick.

He glanced back into the dark, seeing nothing but the glint of starlight on rock. With luck, Hammer’s men wouldn’t see their tracks until morning; by then they’d be over the rock and have a fighting chance of making the stage station where the captain would be waiting with his men.

Boon pushed the horse to a faster walk, increasing the distance between them and capture. Soon it would be light and they could ride like blue blazes. Until then the dark would hide them. The motion of the saddle rocked his hips into Laurie’s bottom. He winced and shifted as his body reacted to having a beautiful woman in his arms.

Surely Captain Bender had known it would, but had sent him anyway.

Should he tell Laurie that the captain had sent him, ask what she was to him? But what if he didn’t like the answer?

Fighting for her, killing for her had given him funny ideas—wrong ideas—like the notion that he had some claim over her and the feeling that he didn’t want Laurie needing anybody but him. He didn’t want to share her or give her over to a man old enough to be her father. What did Bender want with someone as young and sweet as Laurie? Boon knew Laurie was too good for the likes of him, but maybe she was too good for Bender, too. But Bender didn’t know where to find the Hammer. Only Boon knew that. And while it was true that the Rangers could easily take the outlaws’ camp, to do so would have cost Laurie her life.