Her Sheriff Bodyguard. Lynna Banning

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       Chapter Four

      My lady very angry today. I think is because riding on horseback make her hurt. She is frightened, but she not admit. Señor Rivera say nothing, not even buenos días, until he drink three cups of the coffee I make extra strong. And I listen to my lady complain about everything, the blanket she sleep in, the boots, the biscuits he make for our supper, everything. She is mad, I think, because underneath she feel scared.

      Caroline had never felt so miserable in her entire life, not even the hours spent in dusty stagecoaches rattling through the wilds of Oklahoma and Texas. She was hot and sticky and her derriere hurt as if she’d been bouncing for hours on a pincushion. A pincushion made of hard leather.

      It was all the fault of that odious man, Rivera. He was bossy. Rude. And ill-mannered. No matter how admiringly Fernanda gazed at the tall sheriff, the man was nothing but a bully with a shiny silver badge.

      With distaste she surveyed their sleeping arrangements for the night. A single blanket apiece and a saddle for a pillow? How primitive. Even the Indians slept in tents, did they not?

      Fernanda had taken the tin plates and spoons to rinse off in the stream; when she returned Caroline would ask her to hold up a blanket so she could undress in what limited privacy she could manage. She wondered with a stab of unease whether she would be able to get her boots off without bending over.

      Rivera strode off to hobble the horses and she seized her chance. “Fernanda, hold up one of those blankets to make a screen, would you?”

      “But you don’t need—”

      “Just do it,” she hissed. “Quickly! Before he gets back.”

      Her companion sent her an odd look but dutifully unrolled a square of striped wool and held it aloft. Caroline stepped behind it and started to undo her shirt.

      “Hold it!” An unwelcome male voice stopped her midbutton.

      “I am undressing, Mr. Rivera. Turn your back. Please,” she added as an afterthought. She couldn’t stand the thought that he would laugh at her. But the truth was she was, well, frightened. She didn’t know how to behave in a camp out in the wilderness with a man nearby.

      “Not so fast. Out here on the trail we sleep in our clothes.”

      “You may do just that, sir. I, however, will not.”

      Before she could slip free one more button, he yanked the blanket out of Fernanda’s upraised hands and tossed it onto the bed of pine needles behind him.

      “You hard of hearing? I said out here—”

      “I heard you perfectly well. The question is, did you hear me?” She couldn’t continue undressing until he turned away. Caroline pressed her lips together and waited.

      “Button yourself back up, lady. You’re gonna sleep fully clothed.”

      “I—I cannot.” She would not let him see how uncertain she felt about sleeping out in the open. Next to a man. Most of all, she could not confess that her stiff denim jeans chafed the inside of her thighs, despite the liniment Fernanda had rubbed on earlier. Or that her sunburned neck smarted under her shirt collar. She needed to be free of anything that rubbed her skin.

      “Like hell,” he muttered. The next thing she knew he had yanked her up like a sack of meal and dumped her onto the blanket closest to the fire pit.

      “Ouch!”

      He knelt next to her. “I’ll take off your boots so you won’t have to stretch. Give me your foot.” He turned his back, straddled her leg and began pulling off the leather boots.

      How humiliating! With her foot in his control she could not wriggle away from him. Oh, she felt so out of place in the West. So incompetent. She hated not knowing how to do something as simple as taking off her own boots.

      But the relief she felt when her boot came off overcame her urge to complain. Bliss! She flexed her toes and closed her eyes with pleasure.

      “I think my boots are too small,” she said. “My heels are rubbed raw.”

      “Not too small,” he countered. “They’re СКАЧАТЬ