Captivated By A Gunslinger (Emerald Falls Book 3)

by Ivy McAdams

  Captivated by a Gunslinger

  Ivy McAdams

  Captivated by a Gunslinger — Emerald Falls Book 3

  by Ivy McAdams

  Copyright © 2019 Ivy McAdams

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locals is entirely coincidental.

  https://ivymcadams.com

  Emerald Falls Series

  Kidnapped by an Outlaw

  Seduced by a Wrangler

  Captivated by a Gunslinger

  Emerald Falls Novella

  Rescued by a Desperado (prequel)

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Note to Reader

  Next in Series

  Rescued by a Desperado Sample

  Also by Ivy McAdams

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  A bald eagle dipped low over the outskirts of the campsite. The afternoon sun twinkled through the tree branches overhead and cast blocks of light across its magnificent wings. A light breeze blew through the tall grass beneath it and ruffled the blue cotton shirt in Clara McGowen’s hands.

  She watched the eagle soar overhead as she hung the shirt on the line strung between two aspen trees. A long row of swaying socks and undergarments hung on either side. She pushed aside the moving clothes and draped the last pair of trousers from her basket onto the line.

  “I’ve got that tonic you wanted,” a woman called.

  Clara parted the clothes and smiled at Sadie as she approached.

  Even though the woman had only been living in camp for a couple months, she'd quickly become Clara's closest friend. She was a breath of fresh air as the days grew colder and winter approached, with her honey-colored hair and rosy cheeks. The girl was made of smiles and good spirits.

  “Thank you,” Clara said as she took the brown bottle and held it up to the sunlight.

  There was enough of the thick liquid for one dose, then she’d need to set about making more.

  “Is Clover going to be okay?” Sadie asked.

  She stood with a casual jut to her hip, eyes cast into the trees where the horses were gathered. She might have been trying to look confident, but Clara knew better.

  Sadie's fingers were pinched into the fabric of her shirt on her hips, and the fingernail on her index finger was short and rough, as if she'd rubbed it off on a hard surface. Or she'd been chewing on it all morning. Clara's bet was on the latter. Sadie's gaze settled on her gray mare, recently come down with a hot hoof. The poor girl wasn't nearly as calm as she pretended, and Clara squeezed her shoulder.

  "She'll be fine. Another couple of days with this stuff, and she'll be as good as new."

  Sadie’s muscles melted in relief, and she smiled. “Oh, good. I’ve been through a lot with that girl. She can’t go lame on me yet.”

  “Of course. There wasn’t that much swelling. She probably just stepped in a hole or something. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  “We’ll just give her this dose, and I’ll gather up another batch of ingredients so we can make more.”

  “I can do that.”

  Clara put a hand on Sadie’s arm and gave her a look of warning. “You need to take it easy.”

  Sadie rolled her eyes. “I can pick a few herbs and things.”

  Clara pressed her lips together, looking the girl over. It was true that Sadie wasn’t in fragile condition. She didn’t even look pregnant yet, except for slightly larger breasts and a sheen in her hair, but Clara had heard about the dangers of women in such condition overexerting themselves.

  She drew in a long breath and held it as she regarded her friend. Clara had been trying to make a point to at least be less protective than Sadie’s love Clay. “I know you can. I’m sorry. Bridget knows how much to give her.” She handed the tonic back.

  Sadie smiled, smoothing her hand over her bottle. “Do you have a list of what you need?”

  Clara hesitated. “Not written down.”

  Sadie blinked wide eyes. “But doesn’t it need like fifteen things? You really don’t write it down?”

  Clara shrugged with a sheepish smile.

  Sadie snorted a chuckle. “I don’t know how you remember all the things you do.”

  “I have a sticky brain, I guess.”

  The women grinned.

  Clara didn’t need a list for anything.

  “I’ll write down the ingredients for you as soon as I get back to camp. I need to get another basket of clothes to hang and fix up that broken tent on the backside.”

  “Thanks. I’m going down to the river with Clay, and I’ll come collect the list.”

  Clara propped her empty wicker basket on her hip with a nod. “Do be careful down by the water. No roughhousing.” She winked.

  Sadie snickered. “I’ll be careful.”

  Clara walked down the worn path through the grass that led back to the makeshift camp nestled in the middle of a forest clearing. It was originally supposed to have been a temporary stop on the group’s travels westward, but interesting things had happened outside the small town of Emerald Falls, and they’d stayed longer.

  It was good to stay in one place for a while, even if Clara would have picked a different spot. Being so close to the town she’d grown up in was uncomfortable. She hadn’t seen her family in three years, and she wasn’t keen on running into them still.

  At the center of camp was a large fire pit surrounded by logs, hay bales, and anything else sturdy they could find to sit on. She stepped up to a second container of clothes sitting on a hay bale and set the empty basket down in the grass.

  “Clay. Ace. Sadie,” she muttered as she dug through the dirty clothes. It was difficult not to separate them as she went, but it was a habit she’d managed to control.

  “Afternoon, Miss Clara,” a man in a white hat said as he approached. He had a bounce in his step, a chipper voice.

  Clara glanced up at Mason with a smile. “Good afternoon. I take it you had a good morning ride.”

  “Of course. Bridget and I went halfway to St. Aspen so she could pick some raspberries. We saw a herd of bison moving on the west end. It was spectacular. Bridget loves those big herds.”

  “It must be so different than what she had growing up.”

  Herds of any animals were common in the northern Wyoming territory, especially bison and elk. But for a city girl like Bridget, some of those things were still quite new. She’d only been that far west for the last few months.

  “It is. She loves seeing those big brutes all over the place.”

  “Speaking of herds, would you happen to be going hunting today?” Clara asked as she lifted the laundry basket onto her hip. “We could use some meat for dinn
er."

  “Well, Bridget is napping, so I suppose I could go take a look. Anything for you, Miss Clara.”

  She smiled, a genuine thanks for how helpful some of the men in camp were. Not all of them, of course. They were a bunch of outlaws, after all. She was thankful one had recently been thrown in jail a few towns away.

  “Much obliged, Mason. I’ll even throw some of those green onions you like so much into the pot.”

  His eyes shone a little brighter. “I can’t wait. I’ll get out on the game trails now.” He turned and headed for the north end of camp.

  She tucked a loose strand of blonde hair behind her ear as she headed back to the river to wash clothes.

  “Oh, wait,” Mason said as he wheeled back to face her. “Have you seen my hunting knife? The big one with the―”

  “―the deer etched into the wooden handle and a cross carved into the left side of the blade?”

  He cracked a grin. “That’s the one.”

  She scrolled through her memories of the most recent times she’d seen the knife, quick bursts of scenes. The last time had been when he and Clay had skinned a deer a few days before.

  "You stuck it into the dirt near the Hanging Tree roots. I'll bet it's half-covered by fallen leaves by now."

  He glanced toward the oak tree standing along the edge of camp. A strong, low-hanging branch stood out from the trunk, dangling a thick rope toward the ground. The men used the branch to haul deer and bigger game into the air to skin them. Weapons often littered the ground there.

  His teeth flashed in a lopsided grin as he shook his head. “How do you always know where everything is?”

  She gave him a stiff smile. How could she forget?

  “Just lucky I guess.”

  “Thanks, Clara,” he said with a wave as he headed for the tree.

  She hugged her basket tighter on her hip and turned back to the river. She still had to finish the clothes, get a list of ingredients to Sadie, fix a broken post on Jeremiah’s tent, and start putting together the evening meal. There was never a dull moment in running a campsite, especially one full of outlaws and misfits. People were always busy, dirty, and doing their best not to lead any strangers back in.

  They were lucky she loved her makeshift family so much.

  As she stepped out past the last of the tents, a rumble of hooves and snapping sticks rolled through the trees. A wagon pulled by two gray horses broke through the tree line, slipping through one of the many trails in the forest.

  A handful of loose horses dotting the edge of the clearing lifted their heads, ears perked and nostrils wide as the commotion approached.

  Two men sat in the rear of the wagon, Jeremiah with skin as dark as night and Nelson, his long white beard looking even shaggier than normal. The man driving the team was the one who truly drew her eye.

  Ace Van den Berg was dressed in black with a dark hat set low over his eyes. He sat on the driver’s bench with reins gripped delicately in his hands.

  Clara’s gaze rested on him a bit longer as they approached, and the dark frown on his face became clearer. A creased brow over dark eyes. Mouth set in a hard line with a trim patch of hair on his chin. Ace had an array of facial expressions, but when he wasn’t talking to anyone or was doing something as mundane as driving a cart, his face settled into a hard scowl that always caught her eye.

  He was a handsome man to boot, and Clara often found it difficult to keep her eyes to herself. Even if he was the head of the family and not anyone she needed to be staring at.

  As the wagon rolled into the outskirts of camp, Clara averted her eyes and gave the men in the back a wave.

  “Welcome back, boys,” she called.

  The wagon came to a stop in front of her. Jeremiah gave her a polite tip of his hat while Nelson hopped down with a grunt.

  “Afternoon, Miss McGowen.” His voice rattled with decades of tobacco use.

  Two barrels and four crates sat in the wagon bed behind him.

  “Looks like you fellas did well on your run this morning,” she said. “Did you get that soap I needed? Oh, and the fruit?”

  Ace turned in his seat and draped an arm over the back of the bench.

  “We got you enough soap to choke a cow, and as for that fruit. Let’s just say we got that lot for free.”

  His white teeth flashed, and Clara fought off the smile that pulled at her lips.

  “You stole them?”

  Ace frowned, face half-hidden in the shadow of his hat. “Of course not. I won them.”

  She turned deadpan eyes on him with a hand on her hip. “You won fruit?”

  “That boy thought it’d be fun to challenge Ace with a gun,” Jeremiah said, his deep voice rolling into a chuckle. “Boy knows better now.”

  Her gaze leapt back to Ace, who gave a smug smile and popped the hat up on his head.

  It wasn't often that Clara left camp and saw the outlaws in their elements, shooting guns and doing less-than-fair trades for items they needed, but she'd certainly heard of Ace's sharpshooting abilities. What he did with them, she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know.

  “You shot someone?”

  Ace’s straight handsome nose bunched on the side as his mouth split into a lopsided grin. “Nah. Not someone. Ridiculous kid out by the train tracks looked like he was supposed to be making a delivery, and his wagon got stuck in the mud.”

  She realized for the first time that Ace had splatters of dried mud on the legs of his pants, something she usually would have noticed right away. If she hadn't been so distracted by his face.

  “He’d just given up I guess, and was puttin’ some bullets down the tracks at some melons he’d set up. Waste of food if you ask me. Since he didn’t seem to care that much about it, I told him I’d challenge him. Ten apples, ten shots. Easiest game ever.”

  Ace hopped down from the wagon and patted the nearest horse on the rump.

  “So you did win the fruit,” she said with an amused lift of her brow.

  “Yes, ma’am. Winner takes all. Got you an assortment of apples, pears, melons, and berries. Whatever you can eat.”

  An excited warmth filled her as she glanced over the supplies again. One of the crates was most definitely some sort of beer―that was not shocking―but the others were things she’d requested, and she nodded her approval.

  “Many thanks to you, boys.”

  Ace propped an arm against the wagon to lean on it, the proud smile on his face growing even bigger.

  “That ain’t even the half of it. Wait until you hear what else we stumbled upon.”

  She held her gaze tight on his, refusing to let it drop to take in his tall, trim figure in front of her. It smelled of dirt and peppermint. Outlaw and city man. A mixture that stirred her senses.

  Ace never stood so close to her, and she found it quite distracting. After many months of living among the Van den Berg gang, she knew admiring him from afar was the safest option by a wide margin.

  It wasn’t as if she were attracted to him. Her late husband Lloyd had made sure she never found another man alluring again. And yet, whatever good fortune Ace had dug up had him beaming at her like a giddy child. It was impossible for the twinkle in his eye not to touch her at all.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Round up the folks at the campfire. It’s going to blow your mind.”

  Chapter 2

  Chatter went around the fire pit as the gang gathered. It was rare that everyone in camp was there at the same time. Even at dinner, people came and went as they ate. Nearly every spare seat on the hay bales and crates was occupied.

  Clara perched on the edge of a log, watching a happy Ace pace back and forth as the last of the family gathered. When all ten members were present, he put his hands on his hips and regarded each of them.

  “Evening, folks,” he began. “I’m sure you know a few of us went into town today, and I’m here to tell you there’s a buzz going on down there. A big rumor that instantly caught my ear.”r />
  Whispers were already moving around the group, and Clara leaned in with a curious tilt of her head.

  She’d spent most of her life in Emerald Falls, up until Lloyd had moved her to the outskirts of Hollard some thirty miles away. Despite the separation, she had always considered Emerald Falls home. Her family still lived there. The thought of a rumor circulating in town grabbed her interest.

  “It seems there’s some news going around town that involves one of our very own,” Ace said.

  Clara’s chest tightened. A rumor about one of them? She closed her eyes briefly and snagged the cross hanging at her neck in tight fingers.

  She’d been so careful not to go too close to town. The last thing she wanted was to be recognized. She couldn’t face her family after the horrible thing she’d done. Especially not her father.

  What would Sheriff McGowen think of her after she’d murdered her husband?

  “It’s not on you, Jack,” Ace scoffed. “Get your eyeballs back in your head. Although later you come talk to me and tell me what you did this time. No, no. It’s nothing bad.”

  His smile returned, and Clara’s chest relaxed.

  Nothing bad? She blinked wide eyes, the wave of curiosity returning.

  “This has to do with our own Sadie Tanner.”

  Ace knelt in front of Sadie, who looked as if she’d just seen him sprout a second head. Clay’s large form hunched next to her on a crate, eyebrows tightening a fraction and the muscle in his cheek working.

  Ace didn’t seem to notice, eyes only for Sadie as he continued. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, my dear, but rumor has it that your dear Aunt Hilda has passed on.”