The Spinster Bride
Page 29
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His little shadow was back.
For two days, Mitch had noticed . . . someone. He wasn’t quite sure whether it was male or female, but that didn’t matter. Out here in the middle of nowhere, where a man could disappear and never be found, a man had to be careful. A man had to make certain his rifle was loaded, his canteen filled, and he listened to his gut. And right about now, his gut was telling him whoever had been watching him for two days was up to no good.
“You wait here, Millie.” Mitch patted his mule and tied her to a scraggly white pine. If Millie really got in a mind to escape, the sapling wouldn’t do much to keep her in place, but he very much doubted Millie would take a notion to do more than nibble on some grass.
Mitch was no stranger to the mountains of Yosemite. He guessed he knew them better than most. He knew how to walk silently and he knew when to make a noise that might scare a grizzly away. That was one creature he wasn’t ashamed to admit he didn’t much care for. He’d seen the results of a bear attack and was quite certain he didn’t want to be on the receiving end of one of those razor-sharp claws. Other than grizzlies and men with guns, he wasn’t afraid of much else. A man who’d seen and done what he had learned not to be afraid.
Whoever was trailing him was high up, likely taking little peeks over the rocks that jutted out above him like crooked teeth. He climbed silently, his boots pressing into the thick cushion of pine needles, until he was pretty sure he was above his prey. He scanned the area, Winchester in hand, fully loaded and ready to fire. Then he saw movement, a flash of hair.
“Well, damn,” he whispered, looking at the girl through his sights. At least he thought it must be a girl with that long, pale braid down her back. She was lying on her stomach, no doubt staring at Millie and wondering where the heck the man she’d been spying on had disappeared to. His eyes moved down, following the trail of her braid, until he reached the decidedly feminine curve of her backside. Definitely female.
Now, a man didn’t like holding a rifle on a woman or a girl, but he’d learned the hard way that women and girls could be just as dangerous with a gun as a man, so he wasn’t about to take chances. If any of his friends back home saw him, they’d probably punch him in the jaw. But this wasn’t New York City and that girl was no debutante, so he held his gun on her real careful. She turned her head and he saw the delicate curve of her smooth cheek. Seeing that bit of feminine beauty in such an unlikely place did something odd to his stomach. It was like seeing the first crocus after a long and terrible winter. He eased his gun down. The girl didn’t have a weapon that he could see, and he relaxed slightly.
“Looking for someone, darlin’?”
Jane Goodger lives in Rhode Island with her husband and three children. Jane, a former journalist, has written and published numerous historical romances. When she isn’t writing, she’s reading, walking, playing with her kids, or anything else completely unrelated to cleaning a house. You can visit her website at www.janegoodger.com.
Don’t miss these other charming Victorian romances in Jane Goodger’s Lords and Ladies series.
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Copyright © 2015 by Jane Goodger
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First Electronic Edition: February 2015
eISBN-13: 978-1-60183-163-7
eISBN-10: 1-60183-163-3
ISBN: 978-1-6018-3163-7