Forever And A Day. Mary McBride

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СКАЧАТЬ you’d just hand back the money and accompany me to the sheriff’s office? What a dolt. What a fool. I’d have been better off if you’d just shot me. Left me for dead on the damn bank floor. Or cut my arm off and left me for the buzzards ten miles back. I’d have been better off—”

      “Are you done?” he drawled.

      Honey blinked. “Oh! Are you?”

      He buttoned his pants. “Your turn, sweetheart.”

      “I should think not,” she said with a sniff.

      “Suit yourself.” He started back toward the horse with Honey stumbling in his wake.

      But this time it was Honey who halted, digging her heels into the dry ground, resisting the pull on her wrist. “I demand to know where you’re taking me, Mr. Summerfield. Where, and what your intentions are.”

      Gideon gritted his teeth. His intentions, for chrissake! For the past couple hours his intentions had been at war with his baser instincts as he held this lush package of female in his arms, as he breathed in the sweet, clean scent of her hair and made himself dizzy contemplating the delicate shape of her ear and the pale, smooth curve of her neck. He looked into the blue-green defiance of her eyes. Then he reeled her in by flexing his arm.

      Honey collided with the toes of his boots, the solid wall of his chest. “Don’t,” she snapped, trying to twist away.

      “Don’t what?” Gideon’s lips just brushed the crown of her head. “Don’t breathe in your woman scent? Don’t touch you? What?” He slid his fingers into the wealth of her hair, then clenched a fistful of the dark silk, pulling back, tilting her face to meet his. “Don’t kiss you?”

      Honey stiffened beneath his gaze. “Don’t act like a brute, Mr. Summerfield.”

      His eyes roved slowly over her face—saw the spark of fear in her eyes, the hectic color on her cheeks, the defiant twist of her sensuous mouth. This brute, he thought, hadn’t touched another human being in five years except to give or receive punches, except to clap his hand on the hard shoulder of a convict in front of him to shuffle down a corridor in lockstep. He’d felt the cold stone floor of his cell, the icy metal of his cage, the sting of leather, the clout of wood. And this brute was dazed now, dizzy with the touch and smell and sight of sweet flesh and moist lips. He didn’t want to possess her so much as blanket himself in the softness of her, lose himself in the womanliness and purity of her, warm himself in her essential fire.

      They were in the middle of nowhere with only scrub and dust, a weary horse and a hot blind sun for witnesses. She was his for the taking. And Gideon Summerfield, brute, hard and hot and wanting her, let her go.

      His teeth were clenched so hard he could barely form the words. “Don’t worry, bright eyes. You’re not my type.” It wasn’t so far from the truth, after all. The women in his life had been whores for the most part, professional or not so professional. There had been a lady or two along the way, more curious than amorous, more interested in bedding a notorious thief than making love to a man. Not like this lady, though. Young as she was, her quality ran deep. More quality than he could handle at the moment.

      When he eased his hand from her hair, Honey straightened up and smoothed the folds of her skirt, keeping her head down to hide the hot flush that had spread like wildfire over her cheeks. “I should hope not,” she snapped. “And I’d like an answer to my question. About where we’re going. And when you plan to let me go.”

      The sooner the better, she thought. For one heart-stopping moment, she had thought he was going to kiss her. But then he didn’t, and rather than relief, Honey had felt a vague and bewildering disappointment. She didn’t want this desperado to kiss her. Most assuredly she didn’t.

      She raised her chin and gave him the most scathing look she could muster. “When do you plan to let me go?”

      His mouth hooked into a lazy grin and he lifted their joined wrists. “Let you go? Hell, I thought I was your prisoner, bright eyes.”

      “That isn’t very funny, Mr. Summerfield.”

      “Gideon,” he said.

      “I beg your pardon?”

      He shrugged. “Look. Why not call me by my Christian name as long as we’re going to be cuffed together for a while.” He slanted a meaningful glance toward their wrists. “And you might as well tell me your name while we’re at it. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense keeping up such niceties when we’re going to have to be answering nature’s—”

      “Edwina,” she said sharply, cutting him off.

      An odd smile touched his lips. “Doesn’t suit you.”

      “Neither do you, Mr. Summerfield.”

      He hung his head in mock surrender, and as he did a lock of hair fell across his forehead. For the first time, Honey noticed its rich color. Nutmeg? No. More like cinnamon. It looked warm and spicy where it curled over the collar of his shirt. There were glints of gold wherever the sun touched it.

      “Edwina,” he murmured now, making the name sound antique, if not downright crotchety. “You got a better last name?”

      Still contemplating his hair, Honey was about to reply with the truth, but suddenly and thankfully refrained. If he knew she was the daughter of the owner of Logan Savings and Loan, there was no telling what this desperado would do. Even if he did have spice-colored hair and such an engaging, lopsided little grin. “Cassidy,” she said.

      He lifted a finely shaped hand to touch the brim of his hat. It was a gesture Honey found most men performed awkwardly, like gawky little boys. But this outlaw managed it with the ease and grace of a man who had spent his past few years in a palace rather than a prison.

      “Pleased to meet you, Miss Edwina Cassidy. We’d best get on our way now.” He slid his gaze toward the shrubs. “You sure you don’t have to...”

      “I’m quite sure, Mr. Summer—”

      “Gideon,” he corrected as he swept her up into his arms and carried her toward the grazing horse.

      After he settled behind her, Honey angled her head over her shoulder. “You never did tell me where we were headed, Mr...um, Gideon.”

      He slid an arm around her waist, fanning his fingers out on her midriff. “Didn’t I?” He urged the big horse forward with a nudge of his heels, then added with a deep-throated chuckle, “Fancy that.”

      * * *

      “We need a room.” Gideon’s voice was a low rumble as he approached the desk clerk. Miss Edwina Cassidy slept soundly in his arms while he attempted to keep his own right hand as well as hers hidden in the folds of her skirts.

      The gangly young clerk eyed him blandly, suppressing a yawn. “You and the missus?”

      “That’s right.”

      The boy let out a knowing little snort, coupled with a wink. Since the small hotel on the main street of Cerrillos was the front half of a dance hall, Gideon suspected the kid had seen women taken up to rooms every which way—awake, asleep, alive or dead drunk.

      “That’ll be СКАЧАТЬ