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“Patricia Potter is a master storyteller, a powerful weaver of romantic tales.”
—New York Times bestselling author
Mary Jo Putney
“Pat Potter writes romantic adventure like nobody else.”
—New York Times bestselling author
Joan Johnston
“Patricia Potter looks deeply into the human soul and finds the best and brightest in each character. This is what romance is all about.”
—RT Book Reviews
“When a historical romance (gets) the Potter treatment, the story line is pure action and excitement and the characters are wonderful.”
—The Book Browser
“One of the romance genre’s finest talents.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Pat Potter proves herself a gifted writer-as-artisan, creating a rich fabric of strong characters whose wit and intelligence will enthrall even as their adventures entertain.”
—BookPage
“It’s Potter’s unique gift for creating unforgettable characters and delving into the deepest parts of their hearts that endears her to readers.”
—RT Book Reviews
Dear Reader,
I’m overjoyed to return to my Western roots after visits to other historical venues and romantic suspense. And when I was offered a chance to write for Harlequin Blaze, well, how could I resist?
My hero and heroine, Jared and Samantha, have long haunted me. In truth, they have been demanding my attention for nearly eight years. I’ve ignored them until now, promising them their day. And this is it.
Sam and Jared are one of the strongest pairs I’ve ever brought to life. She’s the adopted daughter of an outlaw she dearly loves, and Jared is a marshal with a personal vendetta against that same outlaw.
Samantha will do anything, including shooting Jared, to save the man who protected her for most of her life. Jared will do anything to hang the man he believes responsible for the murder of someone dear to him, even if it means breaking the heart of a woman he’s coming to love.
Don’t miss the fireworks!
Patricia Potter
Patricia Potter
THE LAWMAN
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patricia Potter is a bestselling and award-winning author of more than sixty books. Her Western romances have received numerous awards, including an RT Book Reviews Storyteller of the Year, Career Achievement Award for Western Historical Romance and Best Hero of the Year. She is a seven-time RITA® Award finalist for RWA and a three-time Maggie winner. She is a past president of the Romance Writers of America.
Books by Patricia Potter
HARLEQUIN HISTORICAL
6—SWAMPFIRE
15—BETWEEN THE THUNDER
20—SAMARA
26—SEIZE THE FIRE
35—CHASE THE THUNDER
48—DRAGONFIRE
63—THE SILVER LINK
78—THE ABDUCTION
For Carolyn, Barbara and Phyllis for their patience, support and really good advice. I love you guys.
Contents
Prologue
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
Epilogue
Prologue
Colorado Territory
January, 1866
GUILT WEIGHED like an anvil on his heart.
He should have insisted that Emma wait until he could accompany her from Kansas to Denver. He should have been with her.
Now she was dead, and he was responsible.
Just like before.
“You know her, Marshal?”
Jared Evans heard the question but didn’t answer. Instead he picked up the body of the young woman from the inside of the coach and carried her into the office he sometimes shared with Denver’s sheriff. He wanted her away from the prying eyes of curious onlookers.
He gently laid her down on the bench and knelt beside her, choking off the growl that started deep in his chest.
Emma. Pretty, smart Emma lay still, her dress stained with blood from a gunshot to the heart. She’d been all he had left of his wife, Sarah, who’d also died from an outlaw’s bullet three years earlier. Sisters.
She looked so much like Sarah. The same soft, pretty features and golden hair and blue eyes.
Jared hadn’t seen her since he’d returned after the war, only to find his wife, young daughter and brother dead, killed months earlier by Quantrill’s bloody murderers. Emma had taken him to the graves. Watched as he’d knelt down and howled in grief.
Emma was engaged then, and he’d left to track down the men who’d killed his family….
He closed his eyes. Sarah’s face replaced Emma’s in his mind’s eye.
“Marshal?”
He turned around.
“You know her, Marshal?” The driver, who’d followed them inside, asked again.
He nodded.
“Wasn’t no need to kill her,” the driver said. “Wasn’t no need for anyone to git killed. I stopped. But one of them bushwhackers tried to kiss her after he took her purse, and she bit him. He just plain shot her, then turned the gun on me. I dropped when it hit my shoulder. Heard someone use the name Thornton.”
Thornton. He knew the name. Knew it too damned well. He’d been chasing the Thornton gang for more than eight months. Confederates who didn’t know the damn war was over. Been robbing mostly military payrolls all over the territory. The jobs had been meticulously planned.
No one had been killed until now.
He touched Emma’s hair and closed her eyes. Rage and a terrible grief warred in his heart. For the second time in his life, he was too late to save someone close to his heart. “I’ll get them for you,” he said to her. “If it’s the last thing I ever do, every one of them will hang.”
1
Colorado, 1876
SHOOT HIM!
Samantha Blair’s fingers flexed as she watched the tall, lean man approach with an easy, graceful stride. The man she intended to stop at any cost.
She had stepped off the crumbling porch of the saloon just seconds earlier and stood in the middle of the rutted street in a stance that was all challenge.
Her long duster coat was confining and hot on this unusually warm day, but it disguised her sex. So did her loose shirt and worn pants. A hat covered her short hair, and she’d pulled the brim down over her forehead to cut the glare from the afternoon sun.
Sweat dampened her leather gloves as she stared across the forty feet that separated her from the man with a hard face and a star on his vest. His skin was deeply browned by the sun, his hair black and his eyes deep set. He looked like a hawk to her, dark and predatory. His grim expression did nothing to allay the impression of deadly competence. He moved with a grace that persisted even as he halted.
She pushed her coat back on the right side. He stopped, stiffened when he saw the gun. The intent.
The dry wind kicked up dust, and a hot sun bore down on her and the man who had hunted Mac, one of the three people in the world she loved, for years. She was a healer, not a killer. But now Mac was helpless. Critically wounded. Defenseless.
Except for her.
Mac didn’t know she was here. The sign over the saloon—one of only a few structures left in the small mining town of Gideon’s Hope after a disastrous fire�
��hung drunkenly by a chain, while the rest of the building looked as if it were about to fall in.
In the distance she heard Dawg yowl, as if he knew something was terribly wrong. The old hound would be clawing at the door, desperate to come to her aid.
“Go home,” the lanky man said in a soft drawl. “I don’t shoot kids.”
She stiffened. “I’m not a kid,” she retorted. She’d hoped her height would offset the impression of youth. “I’ve killed before,” she added, willing him not to see the lie in her eyes. She hadn’t killed, but she was good with targets. Very good. And fast.
She could do this, she reassured herself. She had to do it. She wouldn’t let doubt rock her. She didn’t want to kill the man. Blue blazes, she didn’t want to kill anyone. Just stop him. A bullet in the leg would do. Or arm.
Always go for the heart or head. Hit anything else and your opponent will kill you.
How many times had Mac told her that when he’d taught her to shoot? To protect herself. Don’t ever expect a gunman to give you an advantage. He won’t. And the marshal was a gunman. She knew his reputation. Had dreaded it for years.
The lawman took a step toward her. “I don’t want trouble. I’m looking for an outlaw.”
“There’s no outlaw here,” she said.
His mouth curved into a half smile. “Then I’ll look and be on my way.”
“We don’t like strangers, and we especially don’t like the law,” she said.
“Who is we?” he asked, his voice controlled. No fear. But then he was a lawman, and there was something very sure, very competent in every small movement.
“Don’t matter,” she replied, trying to keep her voice husky. Her heart pounded. Only the conviction that she alone stood between this man and Mac kept her from turning away.
“It matters to me,” he said, taking another step.
It was now or never. If he got past her, then he would go after Mac. Her hand moved to her side, just inches from her Colt.
She had no choice. Mac was like a father to her. Now shattered by three bullet wounds, he lay unconscious in a room inside the saloon. She had to protect him. There was no one else. No one.
“Look, I have no quarrel with you,” he tried again. “I don’t even know who the hell you are.”
“We don’t like strangers,” Sam repeated. She tried to hide her abhorrence at what she was doing. The fear that turned her blood cold in the hot temperature.
It’s for Mac.
Archie was with Mac now. Archie, another of her “godfathers,” was the oldest of the three men who had loved her mother and taken over Sam’s care when her mother died. Now he needed glasses to see across the room. He would have tried to help if he knew what was happening. And he would have been killed.
Only she stood between the marshal and Mac.
She’d be damned—or dead—before she’d let this man take Mac to hang.
She could have ambushed him, but that went against everything Mac had told her. Only cowards ambushed.
“Leave,” she tried again, hoping her desperation didn’t reveal itself in her voice. “There’s other guns aimed at you.” Even as she voiced the words, she knew he wouldn’t retreat. Knew his reputation as a ruthless hunter. Still, she had to try. Her heart pounded so hard she feared he could hear it even from a distance.
“Can’t do that,” the intruder replied. His lips were twisted into a frown. She tried not to look at his holster. Mac said never look at the holster. Or the hand. Look at the eyes. They told you when your opponent was going to draw.
The eyes. Not the face. Concentrate on the eyes. Dark with a glint of blue. Unblinking.
“I’m a U.S. Marshal looking for Cal Thornton. He might be going by the name of MacDonald these days,” the lawman continued. “I don’t have a quarrel with anyone else.” His voice suddenly hardened as he added, “Unless they interfere.”
“Don’t know no Thornton,” she said. “Or MacDonald, either. And that badge don’t mean nothing to me.”
His gaze didn’t leave her face. “That old man in the livery said the owner of the horse there was in the saloon. Thornton rode that horse. There aren’t many pintos like it.”
“He’s crazy. I won that horse in a wager.”
“Then I’ll just take a look and move on.”
“No,” she said flatly.
Something about her answer made his lips twist into a smile.
“Where is he, kid?”
She realized with a sick feeling that she’d confirmed the fact that Mac was here. It didn’t make any difference, though. She’d seen him talk to old Burley, then start in the direction of the saloon without hesitation. If he’d ridden this far to find Mac, he wouldn’t be stopped by a denial. Only a bullet could do that.
She held her ground as he took another step. His gaze met hers, weighing her. Watching her every move.
“No closer,” she said. “I’ll shoot.”
“Are you sure, kid?” His voice was steady. “I bet you never shot a man before.”
Her eyes didn’t leave the marshal’s face. It looked carved from a rock. Lines were etched around his eyes, and she sensed they weren’t caused by laughter but by harsher emotions. He studied her with a cool perusal.
Then he started to turn away from her. “I’m going to look in that saloon,” he said.
Now. She had to make her move now.
Her heart pounded hard, and her throat was so dry she could barely breathe. She shifted and concentrated. She was good with a gun. As good as any man, Mac said. But he had taught her to shoot only for self-protection. In her heart, she knew he would not approve of this.
“One more step, and I’ll kill you,” she said.
He turned back to her.
“Go away,” she tried one last time. “No one here but a few ghosts.”
“And you.” His dark gaze seemed to search her soul. “What’s he to you?” He was trying to disarm her. She knew it, even as she realized it might be working. She widened her stance slightly and didn’t bother to answer. Instead, her fingers inched closer to her holster. Don’t stand there talking, Mac had taught her. Some gunmen will try to distract you with talk.
“Don’t know what you mean.”
“Why isn’t he here? Why is he letting a kid protect him?”
She didn’t reply. She had the terrible feeling that every time she did, she revealed more than she intended, that he saw under the disguise she’d so carefully assembled.
“I just want to take Thornton to trial. It will be fair.”
“Not bloody likely.”
He raised an eyebrow at that. “Then Thornton is here.”
Blazes. She’d said too much.
She hadn’t had much time to plan after a friend of Mac’s from the old days had ridden in three hours earlier to warn him that a marshal named Evans was on the way. He’d moved on after issuing the warning. The man had a price on his head, as well.
Evans. She’d known that name. He’d been dogging Mac for years. A vendetta, Archie said once.
She tried to keep her hand from shaking as she stared into the marshal’s eyes. She didn’t want to kill him. Blazes, she didn’t want to shoot him at all. But she could. She knew she could. She was fast. As fast as Mac had been in his heyday, and she’d beaten him to the draw more than once.
But this was no game between teacher and student.
The lawman took a step toward her, his arms at ease. He obviously didn’t believe she would really draw.
Her heart quaked. If he reached her, he could easily disarm her. She was strong for a woman, but he was well over six feet and she suspected his lean body was all muscle.
Now.
“Draw!”
Her hand dove to the butt of her Colt. She saw a change in his eyes. He believed her now. His hand started toward his pistol, as well. A gust of hot wind caught her coat and flung the other side open.
Her finger pulled the trigger at the same second she realized his hand had stopp
ed moving.
She heard the shot echo down the dirt road and saw the surprise in his eyes as his body buckled and he went down.
2
THE IMPACT of the bullet took Jared Evans by surprise.
Blood flowed from his right leg as it started to fold underneath him. The pain would follow. He knew that from too much experience. He prepared himself for it, even as he stared at the woman who had shot him.
In that split second as she went for the gun, the wind brushed open the coat and outlined the slim body. A woman. God damn, a woman. He’d been distracted just long enough…
He looked at her. She stood where she’d fired, gun firmly clutched in her hand.
He still held his gun as he fell to one knee. Instinct. Never let go. His fingers tightened around the grip. He tried to stand again, but his leg was deadweight. The dirt beneath him seemed to move, or was it him? He looked at his leg. Blood. Too much blood. An artery must have been hit.
He debated trying to return the shot. The woman still pointed her gun at him. He didn’t know her intentions. She might come in for the kill. But he’d never shot a woman. He dropped the weapon and reached for the bandanna around his neck. Tie off the leg….
A woman, dammit….
The sun beat down on him as pain hit him. Sudden, searing pain ripped through his thigh as blood continued to flow from the wound and puddle on the ground. He finally tore the bandanna from his neck when he saw the shadow of the woman. If she shot again…
He looked up. She stood above him, her right hand still holding the Colt. He looked at his own gun. He could try to defend himself. But he’d seen enough wounds to know he didn’t stand a chance if he didn’t stop the bleeding. And his fingers didn’t want to work….
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