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“I don’t dispute the need. But I do want her home safe.”

His eyes narrowed, fixed and grim, he set off in search of the girl while Hannah was left to wait.

A sudden knock on the door woke Hannah from a troubled nap. Her eyes jerked open and a chill ran up her spine. Who could that possibly be?

She tiptoed to the door and cracked it open just a bit, seeing one of Beau’s good friends on the other side. She didn’t know the boy well, but the fellow seemed like a nice enough chap; not like the tougher boys who wildly ran about the county playing havoc on the farmers.

“Sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Crowe, but I bring news to you from Beau,” the young man said, sounding worried.

“What is it?” She opened the door a little wider.

“He’s had a fall. . .coming here to talk to you, but he didn’t make it.”

“My God, where is he? Anything broken?”

“I don’t know, missus. I tried to check him, but he’s complained so that I couldn’t. He’s hurt bad, ma’am. If you could… well, you know, come along…”

The flustered woman gazed nervously about the house. If only Daniel had been there; he would have gone himself. But what could she do? Her heart beat with a furious thunder, while the boy himself fidgeted nervously waiting for her to respond.

Fearing that Beau was in mortal danger, she suddenly grabbed her coat and, pulling it on, climbed up in the saddle behind the stranger and rode out into the night with him. It was just a mile or two beyond the farm, when she spotted through a blanket of darkness, the shapes of several men.

“Where’s Beau?” she asked suspiciously as they slowed down and trotted into their midst. On seeing the group of men before her she sensed that she’d been tricked. If she’d ridden her own horse, she would have turned away right then. But she’d stupidly, foolishly ridden behind the young hooligan on his horse, and there was no way to successfully flee.

“Beau ain’t here,” she heard the familiar sound of Eldon Tremaine speaking to her from the darkness and a miserable chill made her entire body quake in fear.

Somehow in the seconds that followed, she was removed from the horse and set on her feet. A low campfire lapped the night, casting an evil look about the landscape of the woods.

“I thought since I was so close, Mrs. Crowe, that I’d enjoy my evening better taking my pleasure with a willing woman.” Though she didn’t see him immediately, Jarrett Cain’s voice was clearly recognizable.

“You blackguard filth!” She stepped further into the smoky light and saw the figure of the ominous man looming in the shadows. His surly grin made her stomach wrench.

“Haven’t heard a thing from your delinquent brother, have you? Well, it’s time I was getting another payment.”

“Payment?”

“You know what I’m after.”

“You dare come to me at a moment like this and… and…” she stammered but couldn’t complete the sentence. Her brain would not cooperate; her frantic emotions had seen to that.

“A little pleasure is all I’ll be wanting tonight. We’ll save the really hard stuff for when I have you at my ranch.”

“You can’t mean that!”

“Oh, but Mrs. Crowe, I believe I made myself clear the other day. You’ll give up the sweetness of your lovely body until Beau Noble finally gives himself up to me.”

He moved a step forward and pulled her into him; then the two disappeared into the woods a few feet from the others who waited in agitated silence. The man’s large body was warm and smelled of wood smoke—hardly as unpleasant as Hannah would have expected. In response to his firm and commanding hands, an unwanted heat rose up inside her that she dare not transmit to him.

But seeing the pleased look in his eyes, perhaps he felt her reply regardless of her attempts to squelch the feeling.

“Don’t worry, ma’am, this won’t take long.” His lips formed a lecherous smile. “You know, I imagine that before we’re through, I’ll have you eating out of the palm of my hand. I’ll have you squirming in your drawers for the hardness of my body and the crude pleasure you’ll get from me.”

“Never!” she spit out.

His hand was already underneath her skirt, as he forcefully pressed her body against the scratchy trunk of a gnarled oak tree. With his probing fingers moving adroitly inside her bottom cleft, a powerful wave of sensation engulfed her loins. She gasped when a sudden spasm of fiery sensation shot through her lower belly.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you liked this, Mrs. Crowe.”

“Don’t fool yourself!” she barked back.

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