Promises Linger (Promise Series)

by Sarah McCarty

  Promises Linger

  Book 1 in the Promises series by Sarah McCarty.

  Elizabeth Coyote will do anything, anything at all, to save the ranch she loves, including marrying Asa MacIntyre, a broad-shouldered, lean-hipped silver-eyed gunslinger with a ruthless reputation for getting the job done.

  Asa dreams of a place of his own, a wife, and the respect that comes with both. Marrying Elizabeth may have started as a means to an end, but nothing in Asa's wildest dreams prepares him for the excitement of unleashing the carnal woman beneath his wife’s prim and proper exterior.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Praise for the novels of Sarah McCarty:

  “Few writers can match the skill of Sarah McCarty…The fast-paced story line hooks the audience.”—Midwest Book Review

  “Masterfully written.” —Romance Readers Connection

  “Powerfully erotic, emotional, and thought provoking.” —Ecataromance

  “Has the WOW factor . . . Characters that jump off the pages!”

  —Just Erotic Romance Reviews

  “Toe curling.” —Fallen Angel Reviews (Recommended Read)

  “Ms. McCarty is a genius!” —Romance Junkies

  “Erotic romance at its best.” —Reviewer’s Choice Award Ecataromance

  “… has taken my breath away.”—Gold Star JERR

  “If you think an erotic romance can't surprise you, think again!”—Jerr

  “Seduces and holds a reader captive!”—Road to Romance

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Published By:

  Sarah McCarty

  Promises Linger

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Promises Linger Copyright © 2011 Sarah McCarty

  Cover Art Copyright © 2011 Kendra Egert

  This book is licensed for personal enjoyment only. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away free to other people without the permission of the author. Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, you are violation of copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Promises Linger

  Sarah McCarty

  Chapter One

  1868 Wyoming Territory

  It wasn’t every day a lady strolled into Dell’s. A few strumpets graced the place, but Asa was willing to bet every dollar in his pocket that the last time a buttoned-down, poker-backed lady had entered this rundown excuse of a saloon was never. One by one, the other patrons noticed the gray clad intruder. The cacophony of voices dropped until, with a resounding clank on the keys, the piano player took note.

  Asa watched as the woman turned this way and that, no doubt straining to see through the murk. He lifted his whiskey to his lips, took a sip, and waited. He wondered whether it was a husband or a lover she was seeking. He hoped it was the former. A wife in search of an errant husband was bound to put on a better show.

  With a sharp tug on each finger, she yanked off her gloves. Backlit as she was by the doorway, Asa had an excellent view of her silhouette. Petite and curvaceous with softly turned hips that had Asa thinking in terms of sinking deep and riding hard. He took another sip of his whiskey. As it burned the back of his throat, he tried to figure out why the sight of this woman had his cock sitting up and taking notice. Maybe it was the way she stood that piqued his interest. Kind of a cross between it’s-snowing-in-hell panic and hell-bent-for-leather determination. Then again, maybe he was just the contrary sort and his cock followed suit, longing after what he could never have. Respectable women like her were the wives of bankers and judges. They were never seen within a country mile of a saddle tramp such as himself. Just because this one was perched on the doorstep of the seediest saloon in town didn’t change that fact.

  The sun peeped out from behind a cloud. The feeble shaft of light curved around the door, illuminating the woman’s profile. His cock came fully erect and he almost wasted a swallow of rot gut choking on his surprise.

  A man could look at a face like that for years and never get tired. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, though she was mighty easy on the eyes. It was the way the planes and hollows came together in a delicate balance of strength, humor and bone-deep sensuality that had him gaping like a green kid. A face like that spoke of endurance and character. A face like that invited visions of naked bodies and long, lusty, leisurely nights. And her mouth, hell, her mouth was a fantasy unto itself. He couldn’t begin to corral the ideas the sight of those wide plump lips had running through his head.

  He shifted in his chair to ease the pressure on his manhood and reigned in his imagination. The woman might be every fantasy he’d ever had wrapped into one delectable armful, but she was about as attainable as the moon. And the sooner he forced himself to accept that fact, the better he’d be. He’d stopped lusting after what he couldn’t have about the same time he had realized the son of a whore and a passing through gambler was good for only one thing in the townsfolk’s eyes. Cleaning up other people’s messes. He’d gotten real good at cleaning up over the years, and someday he was going to take the money he had earned bringing in robbers and murderers, and he was going to buy a future for himself and his kids. Someday.

  He forced his fingers to relax their grip on his glass before it cracked under the pressure. He didn’t know why this woman was stirring up old demons, but he didn’t like it. He’d long since adjusted to the way the world worked, and he wasn’t about to let the sight of a woman, no matter how temptingly packaged, upset the peace he’d made with life’s ironies.

  A quartet of poker two tables over from Asa broke into yells. A fancy gambler with his back to the door let out a hoot and leaned over the table, raking in the winnings.

  As if that were the signal she’d been waiting on, the woman launched into motion. Head high, shoulders back, she crossed the cramped room with a determination that sent the working girls in her path fleeing for cover. Asa released the breath he’d been holding and tipped his chair back on two legs until his shoulders connected with the wall. Raising his glass, he toasted her grit. Not many women had the wherewithal to confront their man’s shortcomings.

  “Hello, Brent.”

  Her voice was well modulated, without any hint of a drawl.

  The blond-haired gambler froze in the act of raking in his winnings. The woman moved around the table, murmuring “Excuse me” as she went, stopping when she reached the man’s side. The flickering glow from the oil lamps set off the red highlights in her scraped-back hair. Those sparks were nothing compared to the fury raging in her vivid green eyes. One of which was black and blue.

  “What in hell are you doing here, Elly?” Brent growled.

  The name landed wrong on Asa’s ear. No one that buttoned-down could ever be an Elly.

  “I came for my money.”

  “You don’t have anything I don’t give you,” the gambler retorted in a snide voice that just made Asa itch to feed him a few of his own teeth.

  The woman didn’t seem to share his irritation. Cool as a cucumber, she replied. “You’re wrong.” Reaching across her husband’s arm, the woman snatched a pile of bills. “This is mine.”

  She was halfway through the stack before one of the other players thought to react.

  “Hey! We’re playing a game here.”

  “M
r. Doyle is cashing out,” she said, not looking up from her counting.

  Mr. Doyle apparently had other ideas. “Put the money back, Elizabeth.”

  That, Asa thought, was a more fitting name for the lady.

  Elizabeth looked up from her counting. “You owe me two hundred dollars more.”

  “I don’t owe you anything, woman.” Despite the confidence in his voice, Brent’s hands clamped down on the rest of his winnings. “Put it back, Elly.”

  Elizabeth tucked the bills she’d confiscated into her reticule. Not by a flutter of an eyelash did she indicate she heard the warning in her husband’s voice. “You took four hundred dollars from my bank account this morning. Money that rightly belongs to the hands that put in a hard month’s work. Two hundred I just put in my reticule. Hand me two hundred more, and we can both consider this unfortunate circumstance finished.”

  “Since when,” Brent asked, pulling out a cheroot from his pocket and scraping a match across his boot sole, “does a man have to account to his wife for anything?”

  Elizabeth placed a small circle of gold on the table. “We aren’t married.”

  “Like hell.” Brent eyed her steadily over his cupped hand as he touched the tip of the match to his cheroot.

  Asa noted the distinctive band around the tip of the cheroot. Elizabeth’s husband had expensive taste.

  “The hell would have been if I were truly trapped into a marriage with you,” Elizabeth stated flatly. “Fortunately, I’m not.”

  “Oh, we’re married.” Brent shoved his chair back. He tossed the match into the nearby spittoon. At the end of the sharp movement, his hand curled into a fist. With the tip of the cheroot, he indicated the ring on the table. “And as your husband, I’m telling you to put that ring back on and get yourself back home where you belong.”

  Elizabeth made no move to take the ring or hit the door. She merely stood for the span of two heartbeats, doing nothing but meeting her husband’s stare with one of her own. The tension between the two was thick enough to chew on.

  Around Asa, men started shifting restlessly. No mistaking it, this argument was getting ugly fast. It was easy to tell from the set of Elizabeth’s shoulders that she was a proud woman. Too proud to back down. It was just as easy to tell from Brent’s demeanor that he was more than willing to make the discussion physical. Asa didn’t know about the rest of the men in the saloon, but he’d be hard put to watch a man take his fists to a woman. Wife or not.

  With a sigh, Elizabeth, broke the stare-down. “You’re such an egotistical fool.”

  Asa wondered if the disgust in Elizabeth’s voice was aimed at Brent or herself, for it was becoming more obvious by the second that, if husbands were apples, Elizabeth’s choice had been core rotten.

  Brent growled low in his throat and ground out his cheroot beneath the heel of his boot. With a jerk of his chin, he indicated the remains of his cigar. “I’ll be taking the price of that out of your hide tonight.”

  Elizabeth calmly put her gloves and reticule in the pocket of her skirt. “You won’t be doing anything tonight, I imagine, besides crying into the bottom of a liquor bottle. For you see, due to what I suspect is typical ineptness on your part, yesterday’s so-called marriage between us has not been consummated.”

  Loud hoots and ribald offers broke through the privacy of the argument to fill the saloon. Brent’s pale face grew red. His gaze ricocheted between the speakers, as if every comment were a blow from an unseen fist. If Elizabeth had been looking to get a bit of her own back, she couldn’t have chosen a better weapon, Asa decided. Attacking a man’s mother or his privates was a guaranteed reaction-getter. Respect was a hard animal to corral here in the territory. Once a man had it roped and fenced, he didn’t just open the gate and let it get away. Especially as respect had a way of turning wily once it slipped a man’s lariat. Wasn’t a man born who didn’t know that or hadn’t learned it the hard way.

  From what Asa could see of the bottom line, Brent had fouled up big time as a husband, and Elizabeth had gotten a bit of her own back. While he didn’t think the two had a shot at making a peaceful marriage, this game was about played out. Someone had to give, and he didn’t think it was going to be Brent. Elizabeth had her husband backed into a corner. From the way Brent was sitting, shoulders squared, fists at the ready, Asa figured he was planning to come out fighting. Asa couldn’t tell if Elizabeth saw, or if she was so disappointed in her choice of husband, she just didn’t care, because, to his amazement, she kept driving her point deeper.

  “If I were to need an annulment, Jesse Graham informs me that’s all the cause I’d need.”

  “You went to a son of a bitching lawyer?”

  Asa returned the front legs of his chair to the floor. He might have been off in his assessment. If the gambler wanted to come out of this with some skin left on his pride, he might want to withdraw and regroup in private. Elizabeth was one resourceful woman. Unwelcome admiration cozied up to the arousal humming through his blood. Damn. He didn’t need to be in the middle of this.

  “A woman has so few options, she can’t afford to be ill informed,” Elizabeth stated simply. “Especially when she has the poor sense to take up with a pathetic excuse of a man such as you.”

  With a roar, Brent came out of the chair. He made it halfway to his feet before a stool broke across his face, pole-axing him to the floor where he struggled to find up from down.

  Like everyone else in the saloon, Asa found himself sitting in slack-jawed amazement as the pristine example of a lady dropped the remains of the stool, turned, and deftly whipped a six-shooter out of the holster of a man who was wisely scrambling for safety. With a familiarity that eased his mind, she checked to be sure it was loaded, cocked the hammer, and aimed it dead center between her husband’s eyes.

  “If I were you,” she said in a very soft, very controlled voice. “I’d stay put.”

  “Damned bitch.” Brent swore, holding his bleeding nose. “I’m going to beat you black and blue for this.”

  “No.” Elizabeth adjusted the aim of the pistol a little to the left until it lined up with the freckle on the corner of Brent’s eyebrow. The one she’d once viewed as his perfect imperfection. “You’re not.”

  He was never going to touch her again. Of that, Elizabeth was sure. She’d die before she allowed that to happen.

  Brent pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the blood from his nose. “Who’s going to stop me?”

  Her lips didn’t quite make it into the confident smile she was struggling for. Elizabeth could feel them hang up somewhere in the range of a grimace. She hoped the resulting expression wasn’t too pathetic. She didn’t need to be showing weakness in front of this crowd. “For sixteen years before I was the Miss Elizabeth Coyote you claim to love, I was Coyote Bill’s wild daughter. And, I assure you, four years back East in a fancy finishing school hasn’t done much to smooth my rough edges.”

  “I knew she looked familiar,” an old timer at the far end of the bar crowed, slapping his thigh.

  Brent looked at her over the bulk of the handkerchief he held to his nose, the wad of bloody linen doing nothing to diminish his skepticism. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

  “It means you’d best watch your back, gambler man, if you’re the one who blacked Wild Elly’s eye,” the old timer hooted.

  Brent didn’t take his eyes off the gun aimed at his head. “Shut up, you old fool.”

  “Appears to me you ain’t the one in charge right now.”

  “I will be.”

  “How very like you to be a braggart to the humiliating end.” Elizabeth cut in, taking a step forward. “I cannot believe I was so stupid as to think grammar and dress made the man.”

  It was a mistake she wouldn’t be making again.

  With her elbow, Elizabeth indicated the pile of money still lying on the table. “Could someone count two hundred and twenty dollars out of that pile?”

  “Hey,” Brent protested as a you
ng cowpoke hastened to help out. “You said two hundred before.”

  “That was before I had to reimburse the owner of this fine establishment for a chair.”

  “Here’s your money, ma’am.”

  “As my hands are occupied, could you put it in my pocket? Without stepping between me and my almost-husband,” she tacked on as the young man made to step in front of her.

  For a few minutes, everyone watched as the kid fumbled in the vicinity of Elizabeth’s right side, too shy to actually touch her skirt.

  “Whatever are you doing?” Her question was sharper than she intended, betraying her nervousness. She took a breath and mentally counted to ten, maintaining her composure through sheer force of will as, with an embarrassed mumble, the red-faced kid shoved the money hard enough into her skirt pocket to tip her sideways. The guffaws following her small teeter set her nerves to screaming again. The only reason this crowd hadn’t turned on her was they were enjoying the show, but that could change any second. She needed to finish what she started and get out of here fast if she intended to get out of here at all

  Elizabeth took two cautious steps back. “Good riddance, Brent.”

  “I’ll see you back at the ranch, Elly,” Brent retorted. His confidence in his rights was supposed to scare her, she knew. Snap her back in line like a cur who’d forgotten its place. It just went to show how little Brent knew her that he actually thought it would work.

  As the warning hung in the air, floating on the smoke-filled haze, Elizabeth knew all eyes were upon her. She could feel them, like hands reaching out of the murk. Some laughing, some goading, but all of them waiting for her to flinch or back down. She wasn’t doing either. She’d been expecting the threat. Someone as blindly selfish as Brent would never take a woman seriously. The knowledge didn’t prevent a shiver of fear from snaking down her spine when she thought of what would happen if Brent ever got his hands on her again. Her finger tightened on the trigger. The only thing that kept the bullet in the chamber was the scorn-laced memory of her father’s voice saying, “You lose control, Elly, you lose everything.”