“WHEN WE LEAVE HERE IN A COUPLE OF DAYS YOU’RE GOING TO LEAD ME TO THAT VALLEY. UNDERSTAND?”
“You can’t make me do anything,” Anabeth challenged him.
“Can’t I?” Jake stood and in the same movement grabbed Anabeth’s hand and yanked her out of the chair. She came flying toward him, stopped only by contact with his broad chest. One of his hands caught a handful of her hair and arched her head back at a painful angle so she had no choice except to look at him. His other arm circled her hips, pinning her against his thighs.
Jake felt the heat in his loins and cursed. “You’ll do what I say, Kid, or I’ll—”
Anabeth opened her mouth to argue, and Jake closed it in the most efficient way possible—with his own.
PRAISE FOR
JOAN JOHNSTON
AND HER WONDERFUL
BEST-SELLING NOVELS
SWEETWATER SEDUCTION
“4½ Hearts … a delectable, humorous love story.… Her memorable cast of characters, the sprightly humor, surprise climax, and sensuality make this irresistible.”
—Romantic Times
“4½ Stars … so good, the reviewer couldn’t put it down.… The characters are wonderful! A happy and delightful story!”
—Affaire de Coeur
“So deliciously told and so enjoyable.… You must get a copy and find a hideaway somewhere and sit back and have a heck of a good time.”
—Rendezvous
THE BAREFOOT BRIDE
“A story that warms your heart and tickles your fancy … Johnston writes about two lonely people who find love, passion and happiness despite themselves.”
—Daily News (N.Y.)
“With tenderness and compassion, as well as humor and sensuality, The Barefoot Bride is a love story that charms its way into your heart.”
—Romantic Times
“A book you will read and remember for a long, long time. Wonderful characters light up the pages and warm your heart.”
—Rendezvous
Dell Books by Joan Johnston
After the Kiss
The Barefoot Bride
The Bodyguard
The Bridegroom
Captive
The Cowboy
The Inheritance
Kid Calhoun
Maverick Heart
Outlaw’s Bride
Sweetwater Seduction
The Loner
The Texan
Frontier Woman
Comanche Woman
Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Random House, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
Copyright © 1993 by Joan Mertens Johnston
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78950-1
v3.1
This book is dedicated to
two women who have
encouraged, emboldened, and exhorted me
always to do my best—
and believe that I will.
My sincere thanks to
my editor Damaris Rowland
and
my agent Denise Marcil.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
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
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Author’s Note
Letter to Readers
About the Author
1
“You cheated!”
Kid Calhoun admitted to a few vices—drinking, smoking, and swearing among them—but he never cheated at cards. The Kid’s mouth flattened and his eyes narrowed at the accusation being flung across the table.
“You cheated! Nobody could have that kind of luck!” the cowboy ranted.
“Those are fighting words, mister,” the Kid said in a quiet, whiskey-laced voice.
The cowboy seemed to realize suddenly how quiet the saloon had become. He glanced around and saw his friend at the bar gesturing frantically, but he had no idea what had his compadre so upset. He looked back at the whelp sitting across the table from him. The stripling was rail thin and had a face as smooth as a baby’s behind. The Kid’s extreme youth rankled. Bluffed by a brat who was still wet behind the ears! It was humiliating. He wasn’t going to stand for it.
The Kid pulled the coins in the center of the table toward him, but his eyes stayed on the grizzled-looking cowboy. Smoke curled lazily from a cigarette caught at the corner of the Kid’s mouth. A sweat-stained hat with a silver concho band was pulled low on his forehead, shadowing his eyes. “I don’t cheat,” the Kid said. “Since I’m in a good mood, I’d be willing to accept an apology for the insult. Assuming you’re man enough to own up to being a bad loser.”
“Why you—”
The cowboy surged out of his chair and grabbed for his gun. He stopped with his fingertips brushing leather and stared, for the Kid already held the barrel of a Colt aimed at his belly. The Kid was fast. Faster than fast. The cowboy swallowed hard. Sweat beaded on his upper lip. Ever so slowly, he moved his hand away from his side.
“I’m waiting for that apology,” the Kid said.
“Figure it was my bad luck did me in,” the cowboy conceded.
The Kid’s lip curled in the semblance of a smile. “Luck’s like that sometimes.” The Kid holstered his gun and reached for the whiskey in front of him. There was a slight movement from the cowboy, and the Kid said, “Don’t.”
The cowboy froze.
“You’re thinking that you’ll be able to draw on me.” The Kid’s eyes left the cowboy and returned to the pile of coins in front of him, as though the cowboy were not standing across from him, waiting for a chance to shoot him down. “I wouldn’t bet on it. Your luck hasn’t been running too good lately.”
It was plain the cowboy wanted to draw his gun. And just as plain that the Kid wasn’t particularly worried about the prospect. The Kid continued holding the whiskey glass in his gun hand, while his other hand sorted through the pot on the table. Could the Kid really beat him to the draw under those circumstances?
The men in the saloon remained silent, waiting to see whether the cowboy would call the Kid’s bluff.
“What’s going on here? Everything all right, Kid?”
The tall man standing at the batwing doors to the saloon bore a striking resemblance to the Kid, having the same crow-wing black hair and blue eyes. But the man showed the promise of the boy. He was broad-shouldered and lean-hipped, with a voice an octave lower and a strong jaw shadowed by a day’s beard.
“No problem, Uncle Booth. Everything’s fine,” the Kid answered.
The cowboy welcomed the interruption like a long-lost brother. “Just a difference of opinion,” he said to the tall man. Now that the Kid had reinforcements, he could retreat without losing any more of his prid
e. He turned and headed for the bar where his friend was standing.
“Do you know who you was callin’ a cheat?” his friend hissed. “That was Kid Calhoun. Fast as greased lightning. He ain’t never killed a man, but it’s only a matter of time.
“Always has lots of money to spend, but nobody knows where he gets it. Says he’s got a mine down south a ways, but all you have to do is see his hands to know he ain’t workin’ no claim.
“There’s them that say the Calhouns—the Kid and his uncle—have been robbin’ stagecoaches from here to Texas. But ain’t never been nobody could peg ’em for sure. You was damned lucky to get off with a whole skin!”
The cowboy called for a rye and downed it in a gulp. He had been luckier than he’d thought.
“It’s time we were leaving, Kid,” the man at the door said. “Gather up your winnings, and I’ll meet you at the hotel.”
The Kid nodded his agreement. He finished his whiskey and dropped the coins from the table into his calfskin vest pocket as though he were in no hurry to leave. Then he stood and crossed to the door. At first, his hands hung down easily at his sides. The men in the saloon shifted uneasily when halfway to the door he slowly curled them into fists.
Little did they know the Kid had done it to hide the fact his hands were trembling. The Kid shoved his way through the batwing doors and stalked down the Santa Fe boardwalk to a boot and saddle shop halfway between the saloon and the hotel. To anyone who passed by, it appeared as though he was admiring a black saddle decorated with silver conchos displayed in the window. For a moment, he did.
Then his gaze slipped to the dressmaker’s shop next door. To the fashionable Wedgwood blue silk taffeta dress, with its frog trim decorating the fitted waist and long sleeves, and eighteen cloth-covered buttons down the front. Kid Calhoun took a deep, shuddery breath and let it out. This time things had almost gone too far. This time, he had almost had to kill a man. The day was bound to come when he wouldn’t be able to bluff his way free. Then there would be no turning back. All his hopes and dreams for the future would be lost forever.
The Kid hung his head for a moment. This charade had to stop. It had been Uncle Booth’s idea, and it had been a good one at the time, but the situation had gotten out of hand. Imagine how angry that cowboy would have been if he had realized it was not a young man who had backed him down, but a young woman! Imagine his wrath if he had realized that the Kid’s real name was Anabeth Calhoun!
Anabeth looked longingly at the stylish dress from beneath lowered lashes. She had never worn a dress, at least not that she could remember. From the age of six, Anabeth had lived in a stone house in an isolated, hidden valley southwest of Santa Fe. She had been raised by her father and her uncle, who had headed west from their farm in Pennsylvania the year her mother died. The two men had discovered Treasure Valley while prospecting for gold shortly after they arrived in New Mexico thirteen years ago.
The grassy valley, with its wealth of fresh water, had been a treasure, all right, but it was the only one they had found. The valley was a vast oval of land surrounded by impenetrable rock walls, totally invisible from the outside, and only barely accessible to humans. To this day, none of her uncle Booth’s outlaw gang knew where it was. It had provided a haven from marauding Apaches and, lately, a refuge from the law.
But her father hadn’t found much joy of it. He had been crippled in a mine cave-in when she was nine. Her uncle Booth had supposedly continued working in the Two Brothers Mine, located several miles west of the valley, eking out enough to support them. Meanwhile, she had nursed her invalid father, raised vegetables in a garden, and studied from books that Booth brought her from Santa Fe.
It wasn’t until her father’s death of pneumonia when she was sixteen that Anabeth had learned the truth about where Booth had gotten the money to support them. Her uncle hadn’t dug all that gold from the Two Brothers Mine with backbreaking labor. He had stolen it from other people. While he was supposedly off working in the mine, he had been playing cards and living the high life in Santa Fe.
In hindsight, Anabeth saw how the outlaw trail must have appealed to her uncle. As a younger brother, he had always depended on her father to lead the way—and do the bulk of the work. Booth was a dreamer and used to getting what he wanted by his wits and his charm, rather than by working for it. He had been much indulged by Anabeth’s father, who was a full fifteen years older and used to smoothing Booth’s path in life for him.
Anabeth could remember a long-ago day when her father had labored with a pick-ax while Booth sat on a stone in the shade nearby and created marvelously accurate drawings of his brother at work. Then Booth had busied himself creating truly lifelike creatures carved from wood. By the end of the day, her father had dug out a scant ounce of gold, and Anabeth had added a burro to her collection of wooden animals.
When her father had been crippled, the responsibility for supporting the three of them had fallen squarely on Booth’s shoulders. To his credit, Booth hadn’t shirked his duty. He had simply found an easier way of providing for them that didn’t require the sweat of his brow.
When Anabeth had learned the truth about Uncle Booth three years ago, she had been appalled. It was hard to think of her charming, fun-loving uncle as an outlaw. But at the age of sixteen she had been well aware of Booth’s penchant for doing things the easy way. And being an outlaw was apparently easier than working to earn a living.
The way Booth described it, he was simply relieving people of gold who had more than they needed. Her uncle made it sound like he was some sort of Robin Hood—only he was the poor soul who ended up with the rich man’s gold. To Anabeth, the outlaw life appeared both daring and romantic. So much so, that she had begged Booth to let her come along and see for herself.
It was because her uncle had indulged her, that Anabeth was in this fix now. Because when she had insisted that Booth take her along on one of his holdups—for the adventure it promised—he hadn’t been sensible enough to deny her.
Booth had come up with the idea of dressing her as a boy and passing her off as his nephew. She had braided her long black hair and tucked it up under a battered Stetson. To the members of Booth’s gang—Whiskey, Reed, Solano, Grier, Snake, and Teague—she was “The Kid.”
The hardened outlaws had treated her like the troublesome, if entertaining, brat she often was. Indifferently. Irascibly. And downright inhospitably. Booth had taught her how to shoot to protect herself, and along the way she had acquired a few vices that added to her disguise.
It hadn’t taken long riding with Booth’s gang before Anabeth realized that she didn’t want to spend her life as an outlaw. As far as she was concerned, the rewards were never as great as the fear of getting killed—or of having to kill someone.
Anabeth should have quit riding with the gang. But she was too anxious about Booth’s safety when he rode off alone. She was a better shot than he was, and she paid more attention to the details that kept them safe, both during the robberies and afterward.
Anabeth had soon realized that if anyone was going to do something to put them back on the right side of the law, it was going to have to be her. So she had begun asking for a portion of Booth’s share of the loot to save toward the day when they could leave the outlaw trade. Booth had laughed at her, but he had given her what she asked for.
It hadn’t been easy saving. Booth spent his share of the spoils on whiskey and women, and it never seemed to last very long. Anabeth always ended up giving her uncle a part of her savings to delay the necessity of having to hold up another stage.
Despite her uncle’s faults, Anabeth loved him dearly. She lived in dread of the day when all her carefully laid plans to go straight would go awry. What if Booth were shot and killed? Or they got caught? Unfortunately, her dream of saving enough money to buy a ranch in Colorado—where Booth had never robbed a stage—was a long way from being realized. Sometimes she felt as though she were fighting a losing battle.
Only it was a
battle she couldn’t afford to lose. Because Anabeth didn’t want to spend the rest of her life masquerading as a man, either. She wanted to see what it was like to dress and act like a woman. She had watched the ladies stroll the boardwalk in Santa Fe, so she knew a lot about how to walk with small, delicate steps, how to smile flirtatiously and twirl a parasol. But she had never had the chance to try it out.
Anabeth knew from seeing her uncle with Sierra Starr at the Town House Saloon that there was also a physical side to being female. But she had no inclination to rut with a man. Her lack of desire shouldn’t have bothered her, but it did. She worried that there must be something wrong with her because, at nineteen, she didn’t possess the more tender feelings a woman was supposed to display toward a man.
It was easy to excuse why she hadn’t been attracted to any of the men in Booth’s gang. For each one she could find a fault—too old, too drunk, too dirty, too mean. But there was another man who should have been attractive to her, for whom she should have been able to feel something, and hadn’t.
Wolf.
She had met the Apache years ago when they were both children. Wolf had discovered the valley when he had trailed a deer there. Each of them had filled a void in the other’s life, and they had become fast—if secret—friends.
In the years since they had met, Wolf had taught her all he knew of the Apache; she had taught him the white man’s customs and tongue. More recently he had helped her capture wild mustangs and taught her how to tame them. The seven horses she had now were the beginning of what she hoped would be a herd she could someday take to Colorado.
Lately, she had noticed a change in Wolf’s behavior toward her. The last time she had seen him, just before she left the valley to come north to Santa Fe, she had realized for the first time that he desired her as a woman. Anabeth felt a knot in her stomach when she remembered what had happened between them that day.
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