An Outlaw's Christmas. Linda Miller Lael

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СКАЧАТЬ lifting his head without her help this time, and when he’d swallowed most of the ladle’s contents, he lapsed into another faint. His skin was ghastly pale, and his lips had a bluish tinge.

      He belonged in a bed, not on the floor, but moving him any farther was out of the question, given their difference in size. All she could do was cover him, keep the fire going—and pray for a miraculous recovery.

      The night passed slowly, with the man groaning hoarsely in his sleep now and then, and muttering a woman’s name—Josie—often. At times, he seemed almost desperate for a response.

      Oddly stricken by these murmured cries, Piper left her chair several times to kneel beside him, holding his hand.

      “I’m here,” she’d say, hoping he’d think she was this Josie person.

      Whoever she was.

      He’d smile in his sleep then, and rest peacefully for a while, and Piper would go back to her chair and her knitting. At some point, she unraveled the scarf and cast on new stitches; she’d make mittens instead, she decided, to replace the ones she’d had to burn. With so much of the winter still to come, she’d need them, and heaven only knew what she’d do for a cloak; since her salary was barely enough to keep body and soul together. Such a purchase was close to impossible.

      She wasn’t normally the fretful sort—like Dara Rose, she was hardworking and practical and used to squeezing pennies—but, then, this was hardly a normal situation.

      Was this man an outlaw? Perhaps even a murderer?

      He was well dressed and he owned a horse of obvious quality, even to her untrained eyes, but, then, maybe he was highly skilled at thievery, and his belongings were ill-gotten gains.

      Piper nodded off in her chair, awakened with a start, saw that it was morning and the snow had relented a little, still heavy but no longer an impenetrable curtain of white.

      The stranger was either asleep or unconscious, and the thin sunlight struck his toast-colored hair with glints of gold.

      He was handsome, Piper decided. All the more reason to keep her distance.

      She set aside her knitting and proceeded to build up the fire and then put a pot of coffee on to brew, hoping the stuff would restore her waning strength, and finally wrapped herself in her two remaining shawls, drew a deep breath, and left the schoolhouse to trudge around back, to the shed.

      The trees were starkly beautiful, every branch defined, as if etched in glimmering frost.

      To her relief, the buckskin was fine, though the water bucket she’d filled with snow was empty.

      Piper patted the horse, picked up the bucket, and made her way back to the well to fill it. When she got back, the big gelding greeted her with a friendly nicker and drank thirstily from the pail.

      As she was returning to the shelter of the schoolhouse, holding her skirts up so she wouldn’t trip over the hem, she spotted a rider just approaching the gate at the top of the road and recognized him immediately, even through the falling snow.

      Clay McKettrick.

      Piper’s whole being swelled with relief.

      She waited, saw Clay’s grin flash from beneath the round brim of his hat. His horse high-stepped toward her, across the field of snow, steam puffing from its flared nostrils, its mane and tail spangled with tiny icicles.

      “I told Dara Rose you’d be fine here on your own,” Clay remarked cordially, dismounting a few feet from where Piper stood, all but overwhelmed with gratitude, “but she insisted on finding out for sure.” A pause, a troubled frown as he took in her rumpled calico dress. “Where’s your coat? You’ll catch your death traipsing around without it.”

      She ignored the question, wide-eyed and winded from the hard march through the snow.

      Clay was a tall, lean man, muscular in all the right places, and it wasn’t hard to see why her cousin loved him so much. He was pleasing to look at, certainly, but his best feature, in Piper’s opinion, was his rock-solid character. He exuded quiet strength and confidence in all situations.

      He would know what to do in this crisis, and he would do it.

      “There’s a man inside,” Piper blurted, finding her voice at last and gesturing toward the schoolhouse. By then, the cold was indeed penetrating her thin dress. “He’s been shot. His horse is in the shed and—”

      Clay’s expression turned serious, and he brushed past her, leaving his own mount to stand patiently in the yard.

      Piper hurried into the schoolhouse behind Clay.

      He crouched, laying one hand to the man’s unhurt shoulder. “Sawyer?” he rasped. “Damn it, Sawyer—what happened to you?”

      CHAPTER 2

      Sawyer, Piper thought distractedly—Sawyer McKettrick, Clay’s cousin, the man he’d been expecting for weeks now. That explained the initials on the man’s holster, if not much else.

      Down on one knee beside the other man now, Clay took off his snowy hat and tossed it aside. Piper caught the glint of his nickel-plated badge, a star pinned to the front of his heavy coat. Clay was still Blue River’s town marshal, but it was a job he was ready to hand over to someone else, so he could concentrate on ranching and his growing family.

      “Sawyer!” Clay repeated, his tone brusque with concern.

      Sawyer’s eyes rolled open, and a grin played briefly on his mouth. “I must have died and gone to hell,” he said in a slow, raspy drawl, “because I’d swear I’ve come face-to-face with the devil himself.”

      Clay gave a raucous chuckle at that. “You must be better off than you look,” he commented. “Can you get to your feet?”

      Solemnly amused, Sawyer considered the question for a few moments, moistened his lips, which were dry and cracked despite Piper’s repeated efforts to give him water during the night, and struggled to reply, “I don’t think so.”

      “That’s all right,” Clay said, gruffly gentle, while Piper’s weary mind raced. She’d heard a few things about Sawyer, and some of it was worrisome—for instance, no one, including Clay, seemed to know which side of the law he was on—though Dara Rose had liked him. “I’ll help you.” With that, Clay raised Sawyer to a sitting position, causing him to moan again and his bandages to seep with patches of bright red, draped his cousin’s good arm over his shoulders, and stood, bringing the other man up with him.

      “I’ll put Sawyer on your bed, if that’s all right,” Clay said to Piper, already headed toward her quarters in the back. The schoolhouse was small, and everybody knew how it was laid out, since the building of it had been a community effort.

      When word got around that she’d harbored a man under this roof, bleeding and insensible with pain or not, her reputation would be tarnished, at best.

      At worst? Completely ruined.

      The injustice of that was galling to Piper, but nonetheless binding. Lady teachers in particular were scrutinized for the slightest inclination toward wanton behavior, though their male counterparts СКАЧАТЬ