Boots Under Her Bed

by Jodi Thomas

  The shot sent the other man stumbling backward, screaming and writhing as he fell. Zeb yanked the gun from the holster and stood, watching Brady’s man cradle his foot and wail. “It could’ve been worse, you know. I could’ve aimed for your nuts.”

  “Fuck you, Crow. Fuck you.”

  “Yeah, I figured you might be thinking that, but here’s the thing.” He set about gathering up his and Maeve’s belongings and redistributing the weight between his two horses. “I’m going to leave you your horse. As long as you can boost your way onto his back, you can get out of here and find yourself a doc to see to that wound.”

  “If I don’t bleed to death first.”

  “You won’t bleed to death. And you won’t even have to walk on that foot. But you might keep it bound up in your saddle so you don’t drip a trail that might bring a pack of wild critters after you.” That said, he swung onto the back of his horse, tipping his hat to the man on the ground still cursing and crying and now no threat at all.

  Zeb held his horse’s reins in one hand, those of the packhorse in the other. Not the most efficient or comfortable way to ride, but he’d make better time without the second animal tied to the first. And time was critical. He had to get to Maeve before it was too late.

  He couldn’t lose everything that mattered to him again.

  Chapter 8

  “I NEED to stop now. Not in another few miles.” Stopping to relieve herself would require Lewis Brady to untie her hands, and Maeve needed her hands free. She had no doubt Zeb would be coming after her, but that didn’t mean she could wait to be rescued. The outlaw guarding Zeb could very well foil any plans he made to get away. Could kill him even, and leave him tied to the tree where she’d last seen him—a thought that brought fear to stab at her heart.

  “You can sit another hour,” Brady said, plodding on. “Then once I have what’s mine—”

  “It’s not yours. I have more rights to it than you do.”

  He glanced over, his expression as foul as the stench rising from his person and his clothes. “You think so, huh?”

  “Yes. After all, my uncle took it from my father,” she said, hoping this game of pretend would save her life and Zeb’s.

  “Well, now it belongs to me. Every bit of it.” He gave a scoffing sort of laugh. “Guess losing all those games to ol’ Mick didn’t turn out so bad after all.”

  If only, if only, if only her hands were untied . . . “You didn’t have to kill him.”

  “Sure I did. He left without settling his debt.” His tone was careless. And callous. “That’s what they call an eye for an eye.”

  “You took his life,” she said. “How is that at all equal to the loss of a few dollars?”

  He waved a dirty hand at her. “Oh, stop with the bellyaching.”

  She waited until she felt able to speak without spewing all her stored hatred. “If you will stop for my aching belly,” she said, too desperate to give sway to embarrassment, “I won’t say another word until we reach San Antonio.”

  “You do and you’ll only have yourself to blame for what happens,” he said as he reached for her reins and brought both horses to a halt, holding her gaze while he untied her. She dismounted as slowly as possible, then circled behind a small thicket of brush, taking her time there, too.

  She wished she had figured out what Uncle Mick had been up to, she mused, staring at the parched ground and the industrious ants scurrying from crack to crack. She’d been curious enough about his comings and goings to follow him, but she hadn’t confronted him with what she’d seen, and she regretted that now more than she could put into words.

  If she had, perhaps he would have confessed the truth of the trouble he was in, or even how he’d come to have money to gamble away in the first place. They could easily have settled his debts before they grew too large, and returned to New York.

  No, Mick would not have wanted to face her father, and she certainly would not have wished to go back to the life she’d left there, but at least Mick would be alive. She would have endured anything, and would even now, to have him with her again, the thought bringing her pent-up tears to flow.

  “You’d better be hurrying it up now, Miss Daugherty,” Lewis Brady called, a snarl in his voice, “before I’m of a mind to come see for myself what the holdup is.”

  The idea of his doing so had Maeve returning to her horse, wiping her eyes with her blouse’s filthy cuffs, then wiping her nose. Still, she took her time walking and took even more mounting her horse unassisted, doing her best to create a delay.

  Seated again, her pocketed derringer resting against her thigh, she prayed that Zeb wasn’t far behind. She didn’t want to be forced to use the gun before she and Brady reached their destination. Having an outlaw for company was still better than riding alone through this barely tamed land would be.

  By the time they arrived in San Antonio, Maeve’s stomach was tight with nerves and dread. Brady had left her hands untied, allowing her to rub at the red marks on her wrists as they made their way through the wildly bustling city to Fannie Porter’s boardinghouse.

  Her captor dismounted first, secured both of their horses, then reached up to lift her from her saddle. He held tight to her upper arm, guiding her while using her body as a shield, and giving her no chance to reach for the derringer.

  Once through the front door, Brady leaned close to her ear. “Say nothin’ to nobody, you got it? Get the damn bag and hand it over. We walk out the way we walked in. You ride with me as far as the edge of town, then I don’t give a shit what you do.”

  What had he just said? “You’re leaving me behind?”

  “I sure as hell ain’t taking you with me.”

  “But, Zeb—”

  “Hope you said your proper good-byes last night because that was it for you two lovebirds.”

  Maeve gasped, her knees buckling. Brady’s grip tightened as the whispers from the girls in the parlor began, but she didn’t need his warning as he dragged her along. What she needed was a plan, because at the moment she couldn’t think beyond what Zeb might already be suffering at the hands of Brady’s man.

  The derringer was in her pocket, and though she’d had no time to learn its workings, she slid her hand around it, hugging the grip with her palm and resting her finger on the trigger mechanism. As soon as he released her to step toward the closet, she’d turn, she’d fire—damn the layers of her skirt in the way!—and she’d pray.

  They were almost clear of the grand parlor when Miss Porter met them at the hallway leading to Maeve’s old room, her brows arched, her lips pursed as she looked from Maeve to Brady and back. Maeve wasn’t sure whether to panic or breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Miss Daugherty. I’m surprised to see you again so soon.”

  Maeve held the other woman’s gaze, pleading silently for her to hold her questions. “I wasn’t planning to return, but when Mr. Crow and I ran into Mr. Brady, I was reminded that I left something in my room. I hope you haven’t let it out again already. And that I can still access the closet.”

  “The closet?” Miss Porter had been in the room looking on when Maeve had emptied the small storage space and the bureau drawers.

  Maeve nodded. “I had a second carpetbag. I was holding on to it for my uncle. It slipped my mind that it was still in the top.”

  “I see. And, yes. You’re most welcome to fetch anything you left in the room.” She turned then to Maeve’s captor. “Mr. Brady, is it? Could I have one of the girls get you a bourbon or a brandy while you wait?”

  “No need,” Brady said, his fingers gouging Maeve’s upper arm. “I’ll be accompanying Miss Daugherty here.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t allow that.” Miss Porter stepped to block the hallway, her right hand slipping into the pocket of her bronze skirt. “No one but the girls who work for me are permitted into my private rooms.”

  “Miss Daugherty don’t work for you, ma’am.”

  “No, but she did,” she said, her pocketed hand c
oming up with a soft click. “That makes her one of mine. And I always take care of mine.”

  Brady bit off a curse, releasing Maeve and sidling away as Miss Porter gestured. Before he could make another move, or Maeve could flee, a commotion sounded behind them in the front room . . . a clattering of furniture and doors slamming and voices raised in shouted warnings. Male voices, deep and full of demands.

  Resignation pulled angrily at the corners of Brady’s mouth, while a smile spread over Miss Porter’s. Maeve took her cue from the other woman, breathing deeply as she turned back for the parlor, the other two directly behind.

  The scene the group walked into stopped Maeve in her tracks. Brady slammed to a halt as well. Miss Porter pressed her fingers to her mouth to hold back what sounded to Maeve like laughter. Brady wasn’t laughing at all, and no wonder.

  Zeb stood behind the parlor’s center settee, his hands curled over the frame near the shoulders of the two men who sat there. Both were scruffy and dusty and in extreme need of a bath. Such was often the case with those of their ilk who used Miss Porter’s brothel as a stop-off when on the run from the law.

  “Desperate” had always been the word to come to mind when Maeve had heard tales of Robert LeRoy Parker, the leader of the Wild Bunch. She’d thought the same of his accomplice, Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, whose girlfriend, Etta Place, was one of Fannie Porter’s girls. And, desperate or not, the tableau made for the most perfect greeting.

  Robert sat on the right, one ankle squared over the opposite knee, a gun balanced on his calf and pointed at Brady. Harry sat forward, his elbows on his thighs, his gun held with both hands and aimed in the same direction. Maeve could only surmise, based on the men’s expressions, that Lewis Brady was not a friend of either Butch Cassidy or the Sundance Kid.

  She was relishing the scene when Brady suddenly spun away from Miss Porter, backing into the nearest wall and pulling Maeve to his chest. With his free hand he reached for the gun at his hip. But he was slow getting it out of the holster, and Maeve still had her hand in her pocket.

  She palmed the derringer, shoved the barrel into Brady’s abdomen, and looked up as she cocked it. Brady froze and looked down—not into her face but at the hard piece of metal wrapped in her skirt’s fabric that was easily distinguishable as the weapon it was.

  He released her arm, cursing beneath his breath, and raised both his hands. Zeb came purposefully around the settee, grabbed Brady’s gun, and took her aside, reaching into her pocket for the derringer. He shook his head with disbelief, asking, “You had a gun?”

  Before she could speak, however, he put her behind him and backed them across the room, where she held his arm and peered from around his side. Robert and Harry pushed up from the settee as one, neither holstering his weapon, both giving Brady a look that had Maeve trembling. Things after that happened quickly.

  Miss Porter herded her girls from the parlor toward the kitchen at the same time that the two Wild Bunch members escorted Lewis Brady from the room and out the front door. Only after it closed did anyone speak, though Maeve ignored the shrill chatter, having only one question for Zeb.

  She looked up into his blue eyes and thought she might drown. “Are you okay? Did the man he left you with hurt you?”

  His arm tightened around her waist. “As long as you’re fine, I’m fine.”

  “I thought you—”

  “Stop thinking, Maeve. You need food and sleep and a hot bath. The hotel down the street—”

  “You’re not taking her anywhere,” Miss Porter said, obviously having heard part of their conversation. “And if you don’t think a woman can stop you, let me remind you of what happened not ten minutes ago.” Her tone was firm, her jaw set.

  And still Zeb laughed before saying, “Yes, ma’am.”

  When the other woman bit off some choice words, Maeve wanted to laugh, too, but held her tongue.

  Once again composed, Miss Porter said to Zeb, “She needs a bath. She needs clean clothes. She needs a night’s sleep in a decent bed. Upstairs. If she doesn’t wish for you to join her,” she added, and Maeve felt her whole body flush, “you can sleep in the room she was using while in my employ. But she is staying the night. And that’s that.”

  • • •

  “THIS seems so . . . scandalous,” Maeve said, perched on the foot of the plush bed, bouncing in agitation as she watched Zeb rid himself of his gun belt and boots. Her throat was tight. Her chest was tight. Even her fingers were tight where she curled them into the quilt. It felt as if it were filled with feathers and clouds and air. “So totally inappropriate. So indecent. Are you sure—”

  He turned to her with a gaze that burned, his deft fingers making quick work of his vest buttons and his shirt, stripping both garments away until his torso was left beautifully bare. “I couldn’t give less of a damn what anyone thinks is proper or seemly or anything close to appropriate. All I care about is you being safe.”

  “I don’t know why,” she said, scooting away from him to the center of the bed, her heart in her throat, an ache blooming in her breasts and in her limbs, in her belly, and below.

  He followed her, crawled over her, his weight on one elbow as he looked down. His beard was dark, his hair, falling forward, was dark, and his chest was shadowed with a pelt that was equally so. All that darkness and yet she felt no fear, only anticipation and hunger and nervousness at the unknown.

  “The last three years in New York, you made it bearable. You were like a light, always burning, always there. My life . . .” He brushed her hair from her face, drawing his fingers against her scalp until her body wanted to burst from the lightning-bolt shivers. “Everything in it had been dark for so long.”

  She didn’t want to think about her father’s criminal dealings. She didn’t want to think about her father at all. It confused and angered her. The idea that she was important to Zebulon, this man who had rescued her and protected her when no one else would, that was all that mattered right now. . . .

  She reached up and brushed a fall of hair from his brow, following the strands with her fingers and tucking them behind his ear. His eyes were so very bright, so very blue. She wondered what he saw when he looked at her, because she saw her entire life when she looked at him.

  His gaze softened, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepening as he smiled, and bringing to mind tiny footprints, as if happiness had stepped there and stayed. “You are my world and my life. I love you, Maeve Daugherty.”

  “Then you don’t hold that night in my father’s library against me?”

  He dropped his forehead to hers, breathed heavily before asking her, “Do you know how hard it was for me not to undress you then and there?”

  The very idea left her breathless, as if her heart had swelled to squeeze the air from her lungs. “And what would you have done if you had?”

  “Do you want me to tell you? Or do you want me to show you?”

  Instead of answering, she smiled and lay back in the deliciously decadent bed on the second floor of Fannie Porter’s brothel. “I want to ask you something first.”

  He nuzzled his cheek to her neck. “What’s that?”

  “Are we going back to New York?” When he shook his head, hope blossomed within her. “Are we going to stay here?”

  He leaned his head to the side and considered her like he might a valuable gem. “In Texas? Yeah. I think so. But in San Antonio only long enough to get married.” When she didn’t respond right away—how could she when his words wouldn’t settle long enough for her to grab them?—he asked, “What’s wrong?”

  She was frowning when she came back with, “Did you just ask me to marry you?”

  The grin that broke across his face had her toes curling in her stockings. “I believe that was exactly what I was asking you. Unless that’s not what you want.”

  “It’s everything I want,” she said and kissed him. “Oh, Zeb. I love you.”

  “Good. Because I love you, too.”

  “So now
that we’ve settled that, are you going to show me?”

  “If that’s what you want,” he said, arching a brow in question.

  She pushed at his shoulder and tumbled him back, rolling over him and climbing up to straddle his thighs. He moved his hands to her waist, spanning her as if she were the tiniest thing in the world. He held her gaze for a long, tender moment before bringing his hands to her shoulders, then quickly to her face, pulling her mouth down to his.

  But before she kissed him, she told him, “What I want is you.” And truer words had never been spoken.

  Alison Kent is the bestselling author of nearly fifty novels, novellas, and short stories written across multiple subgenres: contemporary, action-adventure, romantic suspense, and erotic romance. She is very active online in the reading and writing community, and lives in Houston with her petroleum geologist husband and three rescue dogs, one a Hurricane Katrina survivor. Visit her website at alisonkent.com.

  Don’t miss her latest Dalton Gang novel, Unforgettable, available now from Berkley Heat. Turn to the back of this book for a sneak preview.

  BETTING THE RAINBOW

  by Jodi Thomas

  Available April 2014 from Berkley

  New York Times bestselling author Jodi Thomas returns to the town of Harmony, Texas, where life has a way of making better plans than anyone ever imagined . . .

  Sisters Abby and Dusti Delaney have spent their entire lives on Rainbow Lane, but they dream of something bigger. So when a poker tournament comes to town, Dusti is determined to win enough money to pay for Abby to finish school. Enlisting expert Kieran O’Toole to teach her the game, Dusti feels the sparks fly as they play their hands. But Kieran refuses to stand in the way of her dream, even if it means losing her forever . . .