Carol Finch - Lady Renegade

The instant she turned her back to reach for the horse’s reins Gideon pounced. He snaked his arm around her waist and slammed her curvaceous body against his, entrapping her. Instant awareness shot through his body when she squirmed against him in a fierce effort to escape. He was doing a fine job of holding on to his alluring captive and controlling a flaming case of lust until she gouged her elbow into his chest with such force that he couldn’t draw breath. Then she kicked him in the knee—and she would have landed a disabling blow to his crotch if he hadn’t reacted instinctively by jackknifing his body and spinning away.

Growling, Gideon recoiled, then lunged at her when she squirmed from his arms and tried to leap onto her horse. He launched himself through the air and tackled her around the knees before she stuffed a booted foot in the stirrup. She yelped when he forced her facedown on the ground and crawled atop her. She spat out a mouthful of gravel and dirt and cursed him soundly as she tried to buck him off.

“So much for the angelic image you tried to project, hellion,” he growled at the back of her curly head, while she wormed and wriggled ineffectively beneath him.

“What is the matter with you!” she yelled at him.

“There’s a warrant out for your arrest and a price on your head. I’m arresting you for murder,” he snapped as he rolled her to her back and pinned her wrists to the ground.

Wide amber eyes swept up as her full breasts heaved from exertion. Gideon noticed the second button on her shirt had come undone during their scuffle. Before his overly active imagination ran away with itself—again—he retrieved the spare set of handcuffs that hung on his double holster.

“How did you know about that already?” Lori panted as he snapped the metal bracelets in place.

“I’m a Deputy U.S. Marshal and I’m half Osage. I know all and see all. I can sure as hell see you for what you are,” he muttered as he hauled her abruptly to her feet.

This could not be happening! Lori thought in dismay. She had come to Gideon Fox for help and he had turned on her without giving away the fact that he knew who she was. He had been waiting to pounce on her, damn him.

“Nice horse,” he complimented as he picked her up and tossed her onto the saddle. “Did you steal it?”

“No, Drifter is mine. A gift from my father, in fact.”

She glowered at the brawny marshal whose stubbled beard and collar-length raven hair gave him the appearance of the dark angel of doom. His vivid blue eyes missed nothing as he looked her up and down while he retrieved a coil of rope from his back pocket to lash her foot to the stirrup. She was poised to gouge Drifter the instant Gideon circled to restrain her other foot.

“Don’t try it, honey,” he ordered. “You’re wanted dead or alive, just like Pecos Clem Murphy. Apparently you know what it’s like to shoot somebody so you know it’s messy business. I don’t want to have to do that to you unless necessary.”

“You’d shoot an innocent woman?”

His long, thick lashes framed his steady gaze. He focused on her while he secured her foot. “I have before. The innocent part was up for debate.” He stared pointedly at her. “It is now, too.” This was not the kind of man Lori had hoped to contact to help her clear up the horrible misunderstanding that left her running for her life—and now captured. She needed sympathy and compassion. She needed a man with an open-minded attitude.

Instead, she had tangled with this hard-edged, stone-hearted lawman of mixed heritage. The part of him that carried Indian blood probably resented all white intruders on tribal property. She doubted he cared one whit that she and her father had a special trader’s license to sell goods and transport travelers across the river.

In addition, Gideon Fox had taken one cynical look at her and judged her guilty of the charges mistakenly leveled against her. But then, who was she to criticize? she asked herself. She’d only known him fifteen minutes and she disliked him already. Not because he had his booted feet in two separate civilizations. Not because he was rough around the edges, abrupt mannered and didn’t look the least bit sophisticated or dignified. But because he had wrongly misjudged her and he cared only about the reward he could collect when he hauled her and Clem to Fort Smith for trial.

When Gideon bounded up behind her in the saddle, she stiffened. He was whipcord muscle and imposing strength and she resented the feeling of helpless frustration riveting her. She forgot to breathe when he tucked his chin on her shoulder and wrapped both swarthy arms around her to hold her manacled hands to the pommel of the saddle.

He must have sensed her discomfort because he said, “Easy, honey. I’m only making double damn sure you don’t gouge me in the chest and emasculate me with a blow to the crotch. What little virtue you have left is safe with me.”

“I am not now, nor will I ever be your honey,” she snapped, unsettled and annoyed by the betraying sensation of pleasure that having him wrapped around her provoked.

“Nothing but a careless endearment, I assure you,” he breathed against the side of her neck, setting off another round of tingles that had no business whatsoever assailing her when she so disliked this heartless lawman.

“Would you prefer that I call you witch or hellion instead of honey?”

“I would prefer that you release me.” She shifted restlessly in the circle of his sinewy arms. “Get your own horse, Marshal. Drifter doesn’t like having you riding him and I’m not fond of it, either.”

“You don’t want me riding you?” he asked with entirely too much teasing amusement in his rich baritone voice.

Lori was grateful that he couldn’t see the beet-red blush that worked its way up her neck to splash across her face. “Certainly not!”

His rumbling chuckle reverberated through his broad chest and vibrated against her back, increasing her awareness of him to the extreme. “But if you and I rode together, you would expect me to favor you with a quick release from your handcuffs so you could dash off again. Just so you know, I don’t like to be propositioned by lady outlaws.”

“That was as far from a proposition as it could get!” she huffed as she nudged him—hard—with her shoulder. “Give me some space, Fox. I don’t like any man crowding me.”

“Is that why you shot your former lover?”

“I didn’t shoot Tony!” she all but yelled at the infuriating man. “He was bushwhacked and I was nearly a victim caught in the cross fire. In fact, I think maybe you gunned him down to collect a reward.”

“Me? Hell and damn, woman. I was nowhere near the west side of Osage reservation. I’ve been tracking Pecos Clem.”

“Well then, if not you specifically, then another glorified executioner for hire whose only concern is the price on a person’s head.”

So there, she thought spitefully as they approached Pecos Clem, who had been secured so effectively he couldn’t have gotten loose if his life depended on it. Now Gideon knew what she thought of bounty hunters wearing the sanctioned labels of Deputy U.S. Marshal. Maybe the marshals who patrolled the territory were the unsung heroes who tried to enforce law and order. But some of them—like Gideon Fox, obviously—were only interested in collecting bounties and relying on decrees of dead or alive to make their job easier.

“If you think I’ll sit here and endure a lecture from a feisty, smart-mouthed murderess then you’re wrong,” he growled in her ear. “You can tell your story to Judge Parker. I’m not the least bit interested in what you have to say. My job is to bring you in. Nothing more. Nothing less.”