The admission sat between them, soft and honest and more dangerous than any argument she could have offered.She wasn’t playing at frontier adventure.She was searching for a place to begin again.Caleb knew more than a little about that.
“You tell Doc that, Sheila.He’ll want to know why, but you’ll see.It’ll all turn out fine.”
The smile on her face blossomed like a morning glory on a summer day.“You think so?”
Caleb knew he ought to keep his hands to himself, but his fingers seemed to have a will of their own.He reached out and brushed the smudge of dirt from her cheek.Her skin was soft beneath his thumb, soft enough to make a man forget himself entirely.
Her eyes opened wide, and suddenly his breath caught hard in his chest.
For one dangerous moment, the whole mountain seemed to fall silent.No wind through the trees.No foxes crying in the distance.No far-off howl of wolves.There was only the warmth of her skin beneath his hand and the startled, tender look in her eyes.A look that made him wonder what might happen if he leaned the slightest bit closer.
“I do,” he said quietly, his voice rougher now than before.“Now get.You might want to have that conversation with your father sooner rather than later.”
Sheila jumped to her feet and disappeared into the darkness like a flash.
Caleb shook his head at the thoughts that had rushed into his mind.All he’d been doing was talking and admiring her smile and her skin and how damn pretty she was.And kissing her wasn’t the only thing he was thinking about.
“No,” he said out loud.A man would be a low-down dirty dog to mess around with his friend’s daughter.It just wasn’t done.
Not when she’d trusted him.Not when Doc trusted him.Not when every good thing in him ought to know better.
Damn it.
When he got back to town, the first thing he was gonna do was make a long-overdue visit to one of them girls at the Belle Saloon.
Except the thought sat wrong the moment it crossed his mind.Wrong in a way it never had before.
Hearing her coming back, Caleb turned to look at her.He’d need to apologize.But before he could say a word, he froze.It was Doc’s daughter, but she wasn’t alone.The man behind her was young and big, and the smirk on his face was nothing if not nasty.And the look in Sheila’s face told him exactly who the man was.
“Weren’t that touching?I damn near started bawling over here.”
Dodger was holding his pistol to Sheila’s temple and using her as shield.
“And I’m much obliged to you, Miss Burnett, for distracting Marlowe like you done.”
Caleb went cold inside.The kind of cold that cleared the mind and steadied the hand.Whatever happened next, Dodger had made the worst mistake of his life.
ChapterThirty-Eight
“Raisethem hands up nice and high.”
As Caleb raised them, he looked steadily at the gunslick.
There was no doubt who he was facing, and there was something familiar about him.Beneath the brown, wide-brimmed hat, the face was round and boyish.He could have been sixteen or twenty-five; it was difficult to tell.Gunslingers just kept getting younger, he thought.But that didn’t mean they’d live to see thirty.
This one wouldn’t.
Just as Imala had described him at the cabin she shared with her dead husband, Dodger was wearing a dark-brown coat and a dark bandana.His black vest was worn and missing buttons.The tan wool pants he wore tucked into his scuffed boots were filthy.He had a second Remington holstered on his right hip that matched the one pointed at Sheila’s head.
She’d lost her hat, and Dodger had a grip on her hair that he used to give her a good jerk, just as a reminder for her that he was there.
This burly gunslinger was not making a very good first impression on Caleb.
Nor was Caleb inclined to give him time to make a second.
“Now lower your right hand and ease that nice, shiny Colt out and lay it on the ground.And if your finger decides to go anywhere near that trigger, I’m gonna blow this pretty little thing’s brains all over this rock.And I know that ain’t something you wanna see happen.”
“Don’t do it.”Sheila’s eyes met Caleb’s.“He’ll kill both of us anyway.And if you think you’re doing me a favor keeping me alive…think again.”
