by Mary McBride
Boot heels clomped on the opposite side of the counter, followed by the distinct sound of iron clearing leather. And then a deep, whiskey-rich drawl.
“The name’s Summerfield.”
What little color remained in Kenneth Crane’s face drained away. His Adam’s apple somersaulted in his throat as he mumbled something unintelligible, then crumpled into a dead faint on the floor beside Honey’s knees.
* * *
“Gideon Summerfield?” she exclaimed.
Gideon contemplated the pretty face that had bobbed up from behind the counter like a windflower after a warm spring rain. The blue-green eyes that bloomed big and round with surprise. The moist petaled lips that forgot to close completely after speech. The dark tendrils of hair that framed her face, then spilled over her shoulders and couldn’t quite conceal a breathless, ample bosom.
After five years in prison, the sight of a female—pretty or otherwise—windflower or weed—was enough to snap every nerve in his body. And the sight of this particular female jolted him like white-hot lightning. For a dizzying second, he didn’t know where he was...or why.
“The Gideon Summerfield?” The blue-green eyes blinked and the petaled lips quivered.
He wrenched himself from the empty-headed bewilderment. For crissake! If he wasn’t careful, Gideon thought, he’d be on his way back to Jefferson City in leg irons and steel bracelets. No woman in the world was worth that.
“That’s right, sweetheart. And now that you know who, let’s move on to why.” He leaned against the counter, edging the barrel of his pistol between the brass bars. “Hand it over.”
Honey wasn’t sure which terrified her more—the Colt or the deadly, gunmetal gray of the eyes that were narrowed on her face. Gideon Summerfield! If what she had read in the papers was true, this man wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. Frank and Jesse James. Cole Younger. Gideon Summerfield. Dwight Samuel. The names rolled through her mind like a funeral march. They were cold-blooded killers, all.
Her knees were knocking together beneath the counter as Honey raised her hand, still clutching some of the bills she had gathered from the floor. “Here.” She shoved them beneath the brass grille. “Take these.”
The gunmetal gaze dipped to the crumpled banknotes, then swung back to Honey’s face. A tiny grin played at the corners of his mouth as Gideon Summerfield tipped back the brim of his hat with the muzzle of his gun.
“Must be all of twenty dollars there,” he drawled.
That amused expression only chilled her more. “Just...just take it and get out. I won’t scream. I promise. I won’t even tell anyone you were here.”
His grin flashed wider. “Hard to make a living robbing banks at twenty bucks a throw, wouldn’t you say?”
She stood there just staring at him now, her turquoise eyes big and bright with fear, her lips pressed together to still the trembling, her chin tilted that defiant little notch.
Something twisted in Gideon Summerfield’s gut then. What the hell kind of a man was Race Logan to leave a windflower to face this situation alone? The girl was terrified, and rightly so with the cold barrel of a Colt pointed at her young heart. Logan no doubt had figured a defenseless flower would cause the least trouble, provoke the least amount of violence from the jailbird. But, dammit, didn’t the banker have any inkling how frightened this little teller would be? Didn’t he care?
Gideon cursed himself for his own misguided sympathy. What good would it do anyway? Most likely just land him back in a dank five-by-eight cell in Missouri. Hell, the little bank clerk would survive this fine, even wind up with a doozy of a tale to tell her grandchildren one day.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said brusquely. “Let’s just get this over with. Hand over the money.”
“No.”
He stared at her in disbelief, not certain he had heard her right. “This isn’t a Presbyterian social, darlin’. I wasn’t asking you to dance. I said hand over the money.”
Her chin came up another notch. “No.”
“You’re playing this out for all it’s worth, aren’t you, sweetheart?” He thumbed back the hammer of his gun as his eyes narrowed to steely slits. “The money. Now.”
Honey was about to tell him no again when Kenneth Crane rose shakily behind her.
“I—I’ll get it for you,” he stammered.
“Much obliged.” Gideon’s eyes remained on the windflower, whose pretty face had puckered indignantly at the old man’s words. There was as much fire in her eyes now as fear.
“Kenneth, don’t you dare...” she began, then fell silent when the tip of Gideon’s pistol touched her chin.
His words were directed to the teller, who was heading for the paneled oak door of the office, but his gaze skewered Honey. “I appreciate your compliance, mister. I’ll appreciate your speed even more.”
“Kenneth!” Honey wailed.
“Shh. Hush up, sweetheart. It’ll all be over within a minute or two. Nobody’ll blame you for this.”
Honey glared at him. “A lot you know, you... you...”
His lips quirked into another grin and one eyebrow lifted rakishly. “Thief?”
“No-good, degenerate snake!”
Gideon Summerfield laughed out loud. “Plenty of folks would agree with you, darlin’, but none of them would have the vinegar to say it to my face.” Gray eyes skimmed her face, her throat, the lace frills on the bodice of her dress. “Vinegar,” he murmured huskily, “and lace and honey. Sweet, warm honey.”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
His gaze jerked up to her face and the remnants of his smile disappeared. “You should be,” he ground out from between clenched teeth, thinking if she had even a glimmer of the fire blazing in him right now this little girl would run screaming from the bank, whether he held a gun on her or not.
“Well, I’m not.” What she feared right now was facing her father’s rage when he discovered his bank had been robbed while his daughter was in it. If she had ever hoped to impress him with her responsibility, this incident would dash those hopes irreparably. He’d never let her even visit the bank again, much less work in it.
Damnation! She wanted to reach across the counter and just choke this desperado for the way he was messing up her plans and her life. Her hands clenched into fists at the thought, and then Honey realized she was still wearing half of the wrist cuffs. The legal half. Jewelry for a thief. Now, if only...
Kenneth Crane came out of the office, lugging a large canvas bag by its leather handles. “Here...here it is,” he said as he shuffled toward Summerfield on the public side of the counter.
Ignoring the gun, Honey scurried around the counter. Then, just as Gideon Summerfield extended his hand for the bag, Honey reached out and clamped the empty cuff around his wrist. At the sound of the click, her eyes blazed victoriously and her mouth settled into a smug line.
“Oh, Lord,” breathed Kenneth Crane, appearing to wither inside his suit.
Honey flicked the teller a disdainful look. She had expected that from the fainthearted wretch. From Gideon Summerfield, on the other hand, she expected curses and a battle royal with fists and fingernails and feet. She stiffened her body in preparation.
He did curse—a soft, almost whispered expletive that seemed more prayer than oath—and then he shook his head just before his free arm circled Honey and he hoisted her onto his hip.
“Put me down,” she shrieked. “Kenneth, for God’s sake, don’t just stand there gawking. Do something.”
“Oh, Lord,” the teller moaned. “I don’t know what to do.”
It was Gideon Summerfield who answered him with a growl. “I’ll tell you what to do, fella. You tell your boss to be a whole lot more careful about who he invites to his parties.”
Then, with the money bag in one hand and a flailing Honey in the other, he walked out the door.
Chapter Two
“Here now. You drink this, Miz Kate. It’ll put them roses back in your cheeks.”
Kate Logan gave Isaac Goodman a weak but grateful smile as she took the proffered glass, then drained it.
“Better?” Isaac raised a grizzled eyebrow, watching her shiver slightly after swallowing the brandy.
She nodded. “What are we going to do, Isaac?” she asked the bear-size former slave, who had been her husband’s partner on the Santa Fe Trail as well as her own dear and trusted friend for so many years. “What in the world are we going to do?”
Kenneth Crane had come and gone from the rambling adobe house just off the plaza. The bank teller—chalk faced and trembling on the verge of tears—had told them of Honey’s return and her unplanned involvement in the planned robbery. But the news that had left Kate pale and weak had had the opposite effect on her husband. Race had exploded. His curses had thundered through the house, and even now the pounding of his footsteps and the sound of slamming drawers and doors shook the oak floors and the thick adobe walls.
“We ain’t going to do anything,” Isaac answered, angling his head toward the hallway in the direction of Race’s resounding curses. “‘Neath all that thunderation, I suspect Horace is working out a plan. He’ll get her back, Miz Kate. You know he will.”
Kate’s hands fluttered in her lap. “I’m so frightened for her, Isaac. She’s out there all alone.”
The black man eased himself into the chair beside hers. He sighed as he reached out his one good arm to pat Kate’s trembling hand. “Well, now, she ain’t exactly alone, is she?”
Kate threw a dark glance at the beamed ceiling. “I almost wish she were. Whatever was that child thinking, leaving school without permission and then clamping herself to an outlaw like Gideon Summerfield?”
“She wasn’t thinking.” Race Logan’s voice reverberated off the thick walls of the parlor as he stomped across the threshold. “Your daughter hasn’t used her head once in her life as far as I can tell. It’s the Cassidy influence on her. Goddamn moon-faced people who couldn’t find their way out of a privy without a map and a torch.”
Isaac Goodman grinned and settled back in his chair. The mere mention of the Cassidy name always guaranteed a good ten minutes of fireworks between Race Logan and his wife. Twenty years ago in Leavenworth, Kansas, a pregnant Kate had married Ned Cassidy in desperation when she believed Race Logan had abandoned her. It never seemed to matter that the sickly, round-faced storekeeper had died before Kate’s child was born or that she’d never loved him anyway. Truth and logic never seemed to count for much when Race got heated up. Nothing could light a fire under him like the name Cassidy. And nothing could light up Miz Kate like Race. Isaac looked at her now—anticipating her fiery reaction. He wasn’t disappointed.
Her green eyes flashed like emeralds. “Your daughter inherited the Cassidy fortune, Race, not the Cassidy blood. It’s your hot blood that runs through her veins and your hard head on her shoulders. If she quit her schooling and clamped herself onto some cutthroat you hired to rob your bank, the Cassidys have nothing to do with it. Honey’s pure Logan.” She paused only long enough to catch her breath. “And just what do you think you’re doing, strapping on that gun?”
Race glared at her, then gave his belt a yank to settle the holster against his thigh. “What does it look like, Kate?” he muttered as he bent to tie the leg strap.
“It looks like you’re leaving me again.” Kate’s voice quivered and tears brimmed in her eyes.
Race straightened up from anchoring his sidearm. For a second his big hands hung helplessly at his sides. “Katie.” His voice was gentle now. “Look at me, love.”
Her lids lifted to find warmth and solace in his lake-colored gaze.
“I won’t be gone long. I promise you.” He bent on one knee and grasped her fidgeting hand, then pressed it to his lips. “Only long enough to find her and bring her back.”
“Don’t go alone,” she pleaded. “Can’t you organize a posse? Since Summerfield is supposed to have robbed the bank...”
Race’s mouth tautened.
“Too many eager guns in a posse,” Isaac said. “Horace’ll do fine by himself, Miz Kate. Besides, there ain’t no stopping him now. Leastways nothing comes to mind.”
“That’s right, partner,” Race said, straightening up and shooting the old man a hard look. “Can I count on you staying put and keeping an eye on Kate and the boys for me?”
Isaac grinned. “I’m getting too old to go traipsing off after you, Horace. But you might want to remember that you ain’t getting any younger neither. You’re carrying about twenty years that convict ain’t even seen yet.”
“He took off with my daughter, Isaac.”
The older man slowly raised an eyebrow. “From what that pale, shaky teller of yours observed, Horace, didn’t sound like the man had much choice.”
Kate rose from her chair and moved close to her husband. Touching his arm, she could feel the tension that hardened his muscular frame. It didn’t matter what Isaac said. Race was done listening. Rage and determination emanated from his body like pure heat, and she knew from experience that the combination made her husband a dangerous man. In twenty years, his hair had silvered some and his face had a few more weather marks, but his temper was still a fearsome thing. Gideon Summerfield, God help him, wouldn’t be the first man Race Logan had killed.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Honey chastised herself for the hundredth time. Dumber than a post. That was what she should have cuffed him to. A post. A rail. Something permanent rather than five and a half feet of portable female. Gideon Summerfield had carried her out of the bank, then had slung her up onto his saddle like a sack of potatoes, swinging himself up behind her and jamming his heels into his big roan gelding. They’d been riding hard ever since. Two hours. Maybe three. Honey wasn’t sure. Her sole certainty was her own damn blasted stupidity. That, and the outlaw’s hot breath on the nape of her neck and his iron grip around her middle.
She had spent the first hour screaming and cursing and railing over her shoulder at him, catching glimpses of the hard set of his mouth and the steely cast in his gray eyes. The outlaw remained silent, soaking up her ravings like a sponge. After that—hoarse, exhausted, expecting at any moment to be yanked from the saddle then flung to the ground and raped—Honey settled into a grim and wary silence as Santa Fe fell farther and farther behind them. Ahead there was nothing but sky and sage-dotted hills.
And it was so damn hot, Honey thought she might melt like a stick of butter. After two years in St. Louis she had forgotten just how fiercely a June sun could blaze in the territory. It wasn’t helping any, either, having a man’s chest—as hard and hot as a stovetop—rubbing against her shoulder blades and his breath like the blast of a furnace on her neck.
“Stupid,” she hissed, this time out loud.
Gideon Summerfield’s hand twitched on her rib cage. His other hand pulled back on the reins. “Yup,” he said as he slid to the ground, jerking her right hand along with his.
All of Honey’s senses sharpened in self-defense. “Stop it. What do you think you’re doing?” she squealed as he hauled her down from the tall horse.
“Answering nature’s call.” He began walking toward a low-growing juniper, towing Honey along at arm’s length.
“You’re not,” she said. “I mean, you...you can’t.”
Gideon Summerfield continued toward the bush. “Lady, I can and I am.”
“But we’re...I’m...there’s no privacy,” she wailed.
He halted. “You should have thought of that before you decided to be my Siamese twin, sweetheart.” Saying that, Gideon Summerfield reached to unbutton his fly.
Honey twisted her head in the opposite direction, closed her eyes and her ears as well. She had been prepared to deal with rape, with a violent assault on her person. But not this. It was an assault on sheer decency. Mortified, her face burning, she began babbling.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid. What was I thinking? That you’d just hand back the money and accompany me to the sheriff’s office? What a
dolt. What a fool. I’d have been better off if you’d just shot me. Left me for dead on the damn bank floor. Or cut my arm off and left me for the buzzards ten miles back. I’d have been better off—”
“Are you done?” he drawled.
Honey blinked. “Oh! Are you?”
He buttoned his pants. “Your turn, sweetheart.”
“I should think not,” she said with a sniff.
“Suit yourself.” He started back toward the horse with Honey stumbling in his wake.
But this time it was Honey who halted, digging her heels into the dry ground, resisting the pull on her wrist. “I demand to know where you’re taking me, Mr. Summerfield. Where, and what your intentions are.”
Gideon gritted his teeth. His intentions, for chrissake! For the past couple hours his intentions had been at war with his baser instincts as he held this lush package of female in his arms, as he breathed in the sweet, clean scent of her hair and made himself dizzy contemplating the delicate shape of her ear and the pale, smooth curve of her neck. He looked into the blue-green defiance of her eyes. Then he reeled her in by flexing his arm.
Honey collided with the toes of his boots, the solid wall of his chest. “Don’t,” she snapped, trying to twist away.
“Don’t what?” Gideon’s lips just brushed the crown of her head. “Don’t breathe in your woman scent? Don’t touch you? What?” He slid his fingers into the wealth of her hair, then clenched a fistful of the dark silk, pulling back, tilting her face to meet his. “Don’t kiss you?”
Honey stiffened beneath his gaze. “Don’t act like a brute, Mr. Summerfield.”
His eyes roved slowly over her face—saw the spark of fear in her eyes, the hectic color on her cheeks, the defiant twist of her sensuous mouth. This brute, he thought, hadn’t touched another human being in five years except to give or receive punches, except to clap his hand on the hard shoulder of a convict in front of him to shuffle down a corridor in lockstep. He’d felt the cold stone floor of his cell, the icy metal of his cage, the sting of leather, the clout of wood. And this brute was dazed now, dizzy with the touch and smell and sight of sweet flesh and moist lips. He didn’t want to possess her so much as blanket himself in the softness of her, lose himself in the womanliness and purity of her, warm himself in her essential fire.
