LITMIR.BIZ

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night in the dark he’d had an idea of what to do with her, but now, in the practical light of day, he wasn’t so sure.

      He’d made a vow to protect her, but a nagging voice deep in his gut warned him that his bride didn’t want protecting.

      “For now, I’m going to take her back to town.” Matt stood. He watched Emma riding back with a sunny smile on her face. Maybe she had a better idea of where they were going than he did. “Let’s load up that wagon and head on back to Dodge, boys.”

      Emma’s pretty face lifted his spirits enough to let him sing while he walked down to the stream to get the rented team.

      Lucy plopped the frog into the water. Her lower lip trembled when she glanced up, so Matt made his song a funny one about Mr. Hoppety being crowned king of the creek.

      “Mr. Hoppety thinks you sing silly, Papa,” she said, but her lips stopped quivering and turned into a laugh.

      Matt glanced up when he heard hoofbeats splashing across the creek. For a blind horse, Pearl trotted forward with amazing confidence. She didn’t see him or Lucy as she cantered up the bank of the stream, but Emma did.

      The lovely smile that had reached him over the waving grass had turned into a frown that made poor Mr. Hoppety squeeze under a rock.

      “Lucy, there’s a tin of cookies in the wagon. Ask Red to get one for you,” Emma said, her lips looking as tight as a string on a fiddle.

      “Red!” Lucy called, half running, half skipping toward the wagon. “Mama said to find me a cookie!”

      Whatever had gotten under Emma’s bustle must be something he wanted to keep clear of if she didn’t want to discuss it in front of Lucy.

      “Guess I’ll get a cookie, too.” Matt hurried after his daughter, hoping to be halfway to the wagon before Emma had a chance to speak so that he could pretend he didn’t hear her.

      “Unload my wagon while you’re doing it.” For a small woman, her voice carried like a trail boss’s.

      It was hard to pretend not to hear insanity. Matt stopped and pivoted on his boot heel. He studied her face, praying that the determination settling in didn’t really mean that she intended to stay here.

      “We’re going back to town, darlin’. Unloading that wagon would be purely foolish.”

      “The five of you are free as can be to take the wagon and go back to town, but my goods are staying here with me.”

      What had ever made him think this woman favored a delicate flower? She might be tiny, her skin might resemble petals and her scent nectar, but her roots were stubborn as weeds.

      Apparently, once she had her mind set on a course, it was roped and tied. He’d have to do some mighty fine convincing to show her how wrong she was.

      Matt pressed two fingers to his lips and let out a shrill whistle. Thunder, faithful as the best of dogs, trotted up from the creek shaking his full glossy mane. If only women could be more like horses.

      He leaped up on Thunder’s back, bringing him close to Emma and Pearl.

      “I believe we need to ride a bit, Mrs. Suede. We have a few matters to work through.”

      “I believe we do, Mr. Suede.”

      Emma urged her horse to take the lead, but Pearl, being a proper female, seemed happy to trail along after Thunder.

      They had ridden well away from the dugout and still Matt hadn’t spoken a single word. Hopefully, he wouldn’t. It would be ever so easy if he kept quiet while she convinced him that he and his child should return to town while she remained here.

      “I’m sure, since you have nothing to say, you’ve come to see that the only fitting thing is for you and Lucy to go home to Dodge. You can tell the marshal that I turned out to be as foul tempered as the number two-rooster in the barnyard.” Since she was not well acquainted with the man, he couldn’t say otherwise.

      “I could tell him that.”

      Was that a grin playing at the corners of his mouth? “You could tell him that Lucy didn’t take to me.”

      “Now, that would be a lie.”

      “If you’re going to tell one, you might as well tell two.”

      Matt barked out a laugh.

      “I’m not much for lying.” He reined Thunder to a stop, then leaned forward in the saddle with his elbow resting on the horn. “And I do keep my vows.”

      “You can rob all the banks you’ve a mind to, if it will keep your friend happy, but go away and leave me in peace.”

      All of a sudden it felt as if bees buzzed inside her. She didn’t want to say anything cruel to him—after all, he’d made her dream come true, or what there was of it. She swung off the saddle. A good stroll over her land should calm her down.

      Imagine him believing that she had the temper of a second rooster! She’d taken only two steps when she heard the click of a gun’s hammer.

      “Get back in the saddle … now.” His voice had become as hard as the metal he gripped in his fist. “Don’t argue, just do it.”

      She took another step away from Pearl. “Why you low-down w—”

      The mouth of the gun flashed orange. A puff of earth exploded near her foot. The blast sent Pearl on a run back over the creek.

      Emma felt a scream gathering in her throat, but she turned it into a foul word.

      “Rattlers sometimes travel in pairs.” He scooted back in the saddle as far as he could. “If I were you I’d climb up here on Thunder.”

      She glanced down. Lordy! Only the fact that Matt had shot the viper’s head off had kept her from stepping on it. It took only a second for her to reach Thunder’s side and lift a trembling hand to Matt. He pulled her up into the saddle ahead of him, then turned the horse to follow the river, south, away from the homestead.

      “Darlin’, you just might be the death of me. Let me have a look at your shoes.”

      Since he seemed so determined that they were truly married, she yanked her skirt nearly to her knee. She turned the shoe, one half of her prettiest pair, this way and that.

      “Any woman who goes homesteading in dancing slippers needs to be watched out for.”

      The nerve of him, pointing out the error of her footwear! She’d put them on only because she had been thinking of the way she and Matt had fit together so easily under that canvas last night.

      “What kind of a man brings a little girl to a place where snakes look the same as the dirt?”

      “Lucy just turned four years old, but she’s known how to keep clear of snakes since she hit the ground walking.”

      Holding on to a temper against someone who had just saved her life proved purely difficult.

      “I don’t know why it is, Matt, but every now and then you bring out the pickle in me.” Why was that? Most of her life she’d been the soul of kindness to nearly everyone she’d met. “Well, once again I’m sorry I called you that name.”

      “Wasn’t such a bad name, considering I’d just fired a gun at your feet for no good reason that you knew of.” His words rustled the top of her hair when he spoke. The hard, shifting muscles of his chest grazed her back with each clip-clop of Thunder’s hooves.

      If she let herself believe that they were truly wed, there would be some things about marriage that she would like to explore. Things to do with the fact that Matt’s abdomen was no longer flat where her backside rocked against him to the sway of the horse’s stride.

      In the past, she’d tried not to wonder about such things. When they popped into her mind she dismissed them by focusing her thoughts on some task

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