A Bride for Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ after having done something so brave.

      The angle wasn’t perfect for what he needed to do, but Flint found that if he bent his knee and slowly lowered Francis until she was securely perched on the knee, he could crane his neck and do what he needed to do.

      He bent his head down and kissed her. He knew his lips were cold and chapped by now. He knew that the quick indrawn breath he heard from Francis was shock rather than passion. But he also knew that they both needed this kiss more than they needed the air they were breathing.

      Flint took his time. He’d waited twenty years for this kiss and, planned or not, he needed to take his time. He felt the stiffness leave Francis’s lips and he felt them move against him like they used to. He and his Francis were home again.

      “Thank you.” Francis was the first one to breathe after the kiss ended. Her pulse was beating fast, but she willed it to slow. “At least now your boss won’t think I’m delusional—he’ll think you at least tried to seduce me. Middle-aged or not.” Francis stopped speaking to peer into the darkness of the broken windows. “He is watching, isn’t he?”

      For the first time since he’d bent down on one knee, Flint felt the bone-chilling cold of the snow beneath him. He might be home again, but Francis wasn’t. “You think the kiss was for my boss’s benefit?”

      “Of course. And I appreciate it. I really do.”

      Flint only grunted. He must be losing his touch. He went back and picked up his jacket to wrap around Francis.

      Chapter Three

      “There’s trouble in Dry Creek.” The words came out of the other man’s mouth the moment Flint kicked open the door to the abandoned house and, still holding Francis, stepped inside. “Kidnapping.”

      “I know,” Francis said stiffly. She was glad she’d have the chance to show she wasn’t a ninny. “That’s me.”

      “Not unless you got here in the back of a cattle truck, it’s not,” the other man said mildly, a lit cigar in his mouth and a cell phone in his hand. The only light in the room was a small flashlight the man must have laid on the table recently. The flashlight gave a glow to the rather large room and showed some bookcases and a few wooden chairs scattered around the table.

      “Well, surely there’s no point in kidnapping more than me.”

      “It appears they have some woman named Sylvia Bannister and then Garth Elkton.”

      “Oh, no.” Francis half twisted herself out of Flint’s arms. “I’ll need to go help them.”

      “You can’t go.” Flint finished carrying her over to one of the chairs and gently sat her down.

      “That’s right. I’m a prisoner.”

      “You’re not a prisoner,” Flint said impatiently and then turned to the older man. “It better be me that goes. I’ve gotten a little acquainted with the guys responsible for this. Might have picked up a tip or two.”

      While Flint was talking, he was rummaging through a backpack resting on another chair. He pulled out an ammunitions cartridge and put it in the pocket of a dry jacket that was wrapped around the back of the chair. Then he pulled out a pair of leather gloves.

      “Mrs. B called it in.” The older man gestured to his cell phone. “Said to hurry. Some kids are chasing the truck in a bus as we speak. You can use my Jeep. Parked it behind the trees over there.” The older man jerked his head in the opposite direction they had ridden in from. “It’ll get you there faster.”

      “Not faster than Honey,” Flint said with a smile as he walked toward the door. “She can beat a Jeep any day. She makes her own roads.”

      Flint opened the door and was gone in a little less than five seconds. Francis knew it was five seconds because she was counting to ten and had only reached five when the door creaked shut. Her teeth were chattering and she didn’t know if it was because she was near frozen or because she was scared to death. She hoped counting would force her to focus and make it all better. It didn’t.

      “I’ve got one of those emergency blankets in here someplace,” the older man said as he turned to a backpack of his own leaning in the corner of the room. “Prevents heat loss, that sort of thing.”

      “I’m okay.” Francis shivered through the words. She felt helpless to be sitting here when someone had kidnapped Sylvia and Garth.

      “Not much to that dress,” the older man said as he walked over to her and wrapped what looked like a huge foil paper around her. “Especially in ten below weather.”

      The paper crinkled when she moved, but Francis noticed a pocket of warmth was forming around her legs. It would spread. “I didn’t plan to be out in it for so long without my coat.”

      “I expect you didn’t.” The man went back to his pack and pulled out a small hand-cranked lantern. He twisted the handle a few times and set the lantern on the table. A soft glow lit up the whole room. “Something must have gone wrong.”

      “Flint kidnapped me.”

      That fact seemed to amuse the older man. “Yes, I forgot. You mentioned that earlier. Sorry to spoil your plans.”

      “They were hardly my plans. You’re the boss. They were your plans.” Francis knew it wasn’t always wise to confront criminals. But the old man seemed fairly harmless, and she did like to keep things clear.

      “Sounded more like a lover’s tryst to me.” The man sat on one of the chairs.

      “Humph.” Francis didn’t want to go into that.

      “Not that it’s any of my business,” the man continued and looked around the room. “Although I can assure you that if Flint told you there was a bed, he lied.”

      “Humph.” Francis was feeling the warmth steel up her whole body. She could almost feel cozy. “We don’t really need a bed.”

      “Good.”

      The man sat for a few minutes in silence and then got up and went to his pack and drew out a can. “Peaches?”

      “I’d like that.”

      The man opened the peaches with the can-opening edge of a Swiss knife.

      “Handy thing,” he said as he flipped the blades into the knife and put it in his pocket. “Flint gave me this one almost fifteen years ago now.”

      “You’ve known him for that long?”

      The man nodded. “Almost as long as you have if you’re who I think you are.”

      Francis wondered if this were a trick to find out who she was. But then, she reasoned, it hardly mattered. Flint certainly knew who she was, and he would be back soon to tell his boss anyway.

      “I’m Francis Elkton.”

      The man nodded again. “Thought you must be. But I guess I’ll share my peaches with you anyway. Figure you must have had your reasons for what you did.”

      “Reasons СКАЧАТЬ