He had Malika by the waist and was trying to muscle her onto his horse.Side-eye was having none of it and kept shying away.Malika was having even less to do with it than Side-eye.She elbowed Cassidy in the gut, spun in his arms, popped him in the nose with the heel of her hand, then slammed her knee into his groin.Cassidy collapsed like a leaky balloon, one hand to his nose and the other cradling his family jewels.She kicked him in the ribs for good measure.
Jayce winced in sympathy, then trotted over.He couldn’t come up with the right thing to say to her in this situation, becauseGood jobmight sound insensitive, so he went with, “Let’s hope he lives.”
Malika flung her hair away from her face and went allSheik Ali’s privileged baby sisteron Cassidy, which normally Jayce enjoyed, but right now made him fearful on Cassidy’s behalf.He was lucky she’d lost her frypan.
“I will never agree to marry you,” she said coldly.
Cassidy shook off a handful of the blood that dripped from his nose.Then, proving he wasn’t yet down for the count, he jerked his gun out of its holster, flicked off the safety, and fired.
The paintball caught Jayce in the chest hard enough to throw him off-balance, and even though he was wearing the Kevlar vest Pearl had insisted on, it hurt every bit as much as he’d expected.
Malika, never one to sit back and watch when she could take action, fumbled with her skirt, pulled a spray can from a pocket, and shot a blast of bear spray directly into Cassidy’s face.
The angry roar he let out would have done a grizzly proud.
Side-eye, catching a whiff of the spray, decided he’d had enough adventure for one day and took off for the stable, stirrups flailing.Jayce, who was supposed to be dead, started coughing.Malika coughed, too.He’d have thought she would have learned her lesson about the dangers of bear spray after the last incident, but no.
Sheriff Danvers jogged over, looking harassed.“Got a bit of an Indian problem going on at the moment,” he said to Jayce, who was doing his best to play dead.“Everything okay over here?”
“Everything’s fine,” Malika said, which wasn’t true, seeing as how Jayce was dead and Cassidy was dying.
But Andy, who didn’t handle stress very well, opted to take her at her word and dashed off.What a hero.
All Cassidy had to do now was make his escape and the adventure was over.Jayce was counting the seconds.Except Adam was AWOL, Side-eye had fled, the townspeople were trying to save the town from burning, and Cassidy was temporarily blind.Things couldn’t possibly get any worse.
A man on horseback rode into town.He emerged as a dark silhouette from the dust and the smoke with the bright light of an angry dawn firing the skyline behind him.He surveyed the chaos—the fires, the angry Natives, and the remains of the bank.
He reined in his horse beside Jayce, who remained motionless on the ground, grateful that he was already dead, because his future wasn’t looking too promising.
“What is going on here?”Sheik Ali said.
*
Malika
Adeel’s calmness shouldnever be mistaken for patience.His eyes told the true tale.
He was displeased.
Malika knew which battles to pick.This one wasn’t it.She fetched the bucket of cold water he ordered.Eli plunged his head into the bucket to rinse off the bear spray, although the spray was oil-based, and it took several buckets.
Jayce, who’d given up playing dead, took the used buckets of water and joined the fire brigade to help douse the fires, although the outbreaks were small and mostly under control.
Adeel then escorted Eli to the guest lodge.
“I’ll speak to you later,” he said to Malika before he left, which only alarmed her a little.
He needn’t think he could intimidate her.She was the one who’d been wronged.And she could avoid him for days if she wanted.
She joined Jayce as he tossed his last bucket of water on a pocket of flame on the boardwalk in front of the long-suffering saloon.Judging by the scorch marks on its log outer wall, this wasn’t the first Indian attack it had survived.
Jayce wiped his forehead with his dirty sleeve, leaving a long streak of dirt on his cheek.“How did you manage to survive this and not get a speck of dust on you?”he asked.
“I didn’t roll around on the ground, pretending to be dead.”She slipped her hand into his.“I was so worried about you when the bank blew up.”
“It didn’t really come as that much of a surprise.”He dropped a kiss on her lips.“Thank you for avenging my murder.”
The kiss made her heart glow.He didn’t seem to care if anyone saw.
