LITMIR.BIZ

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desperado to kiss her. Most assuredly she didn’t.

      She raised her chin and gave him the most scathing look she could muster. “When do you plan to let me go?”

      His mouth hooked into a lazy grin and he lifted their joined wrists. “Let you go? Hell, I thought I was your prisoner, bright eyes.”

      “That isn’t very funny, Mr. Summerfield.”

      “Gideon,” he said.

      “I beg your pardon?”

      He shrugged. “Look. Why not call me by my Christian name as long as we’re going to be cuffed together for a while.” He slanted a meaningful glance toward their wrists. “And you might as well tell me your name while we’re at it. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense keeping up such niceties when we’re going to have to be answering nature’s—”

      “Edwina,” she said sharply, cutting him off.

      An odd smile touched his lips. “Doesn’t suit you.”

      “Neither do you, Mr. Summerfield.”

      He hung his head in mock surrender, and as he did a lock of hair fell across his forehead. For the first time, Honey noticed its rich color. Nutmeg? No. More like cinnamon. It looked warm and spicy where it curled over the collar of his shirt. There were glints of gold wherever the sun touched it.

      “Edwina,” he murmured now, making the name sound antique, if not downright crotchety. “You got a better last name?”

      Still contemplating his hair, Honey was about to reply with the truth, but suddenly and thankfully refrained. If he knew she was the daughter of the owner of Logan Savings and Loan, there was no telling what this desperado would do. Even if he did have spice-colored hair and such an engaging, lopsided little grin. “Cassidy,” she said.

      He lifted a finely shaped hand to touch the brim of his hat. It was a gesture Honey found most men performed awkwardly, like gawky little boys. But this outlaw managed it with the ease and grace of a man who had spent his past few years in a palace rather than a prison.

      “Pleased to meet you, Miss Edwina Cassidy. We’d best get on our way now.” He slid his gaze toward the shrubs. “You sure you don’t have to...”

      “I’m quite sure, Mr. Summer—”

      “Gideon,” he corrected as he swept her up into his arms and carried her toward the grazing horse.

      After he settled behind her, Honey angled her head over her shoulder. “You never did tell me where we were headed, Mr...um, Gideon.”

      He slid an arm around her waist, fanning his fingers out on her midriff. “Didn’t I?” He urged the big horse forward with a nudge of his heels, then added with a deep-throated chuckle, “Fancy that.”

      * * *

      “We need a room.” Gideon’s voice was a low rumble as he approached the desk clerk. Miss Edwina Cassidy slept soundly in his arms while he attempted to keep his own right hand as well as hers hidden in the folds of her skirts.

      The gangly young clerk eyed him blandly, suppressing a yawn. “You and the missus?”

      “That’s right.”

      The boy let out a knowing little snort, coupled with a wink. Since the small hotel on the main street of Cerrillos was the front half of a dance hall, Gideon suspected the kid had seen women taken up to rooms every which way—awake, asleep, alive or dead drunk.

      “That’ll be four dollars, in advance,” the boy told him now.

      Gideon shifted the little bank clerk’s deadweight so he could dig into his pocket. “Here’s five,” he said, flipping a gold coin onto the counter. “Make sure we get some hot water and clean towels.”

      “Yeah. Sure thing.” The boy pushed a brass key toward him. “Up those stairs and down the hall on the right,” he said, angling his head in that direction.

      “Dance hall stay open all night?” Gideon asked him.

      The boy looked at the sleeping female, shifted his gaze back to Gideon’s face, then winked again. “All night. All morning. All the liquor you can tuck away. All the women you can—”

      Gideon cut him off. “You want me to sign a register or something?”

      “Dad-blast, I almost forgot.” The boy dipped a bent-tipped pen in an inkwell and passed it, dribbling, across the stained counter. “Just scribble anything,” he mumbled. “It don’t matter.”

      Slowly, with his left hand while balancing his sleeping cuff-mate on one hip, Gideon printed his name, then turned the book so the boy could read it. “How’s that?”

      “Yeah. Sure.” The boy’s bored, half-open eyes skimmed the page, then widened and bulged. “Its fine, Mr. Summerfield.” His throat crackled as he attempted to swallow. “It’s just fine, sir. I’ll be sure and get those clean towels for you. Hot water, too. Anything else I can do for you, sir?”

      “Nope. Towels and water will do fine. Much obliged.” Gideon shifted the soft burden in his arms, then headed up the stairs, all the while feeling the boy’s amazed gaze on his back. Five years in prison, he thought, hadn’t dimmed his reputation all that much. Good thing, too. He was going to need every bit of it to accomplish what he had to do.

      The room was small and spare and no doubt flyspecked, but to Gideon’s eyes anything with four walls and a bed was sheer heaven compared to iron bars and a wooden pallet. He closed the door with his foot, then lowered the sleeping woman onto the mattress.

      She didn’t wake, but Gideon hadn’t expected her to. The ride from Santa Fe had been long and hard. Twelve hours in the saddle under a relentless sun. He’d offered her his hat, but she had refused with a proud stiffening of her shoulders and a cluck of her tongue that told him pretty clearly where she thought he could put his hat. She had ignored him for the most part, staring ahead, stewing, fretting, plotting Lord only knew what as her teeth worried her lower lip.

      By moonrise, though, she hadn’t been able to fight exhaustion anymore, and her proud chin had dipped wearily onto the high-buttoned bodice of her dress. Gideon had tucked her head onto his shoulder and pressed his cheek to the soft fall of her hair, easing back on the reins and slowing the big roan to a lullaby walk. He wasn’t in such a hurry for cold revenge that he couldn’t savor the warmth of Miss Edwina Cassidy for a quiet little while.

      He sat beside her now, watching as the light from a three-quarter moon glossed the dark tangle of her hair. With his free hand, he reached to smooth it away from her sunburned face, thinking maybe he could scare up some vinegar to take some of the sting out of that delicate skin. Lord knew his own was smarting from the harsh New Mexico sun.

      Sighing, he reached in the pocket of his shirt and withdrew a quill toothpick. While his mouth twitched in a grin, it took him all of a minute to jimmy the lock on his half of the cuffs. It took him a tad longer, though, to wrestle the limp lady out of her rumpled dress.

      “Stupid,” he muttered softly as he felt the dampness of her underskirts. Damn stubborn female would have let her insides explode rather than lose her confounded dignity. Only total exhaustion and sleep had finally relieved her.

      With a gruff curse, Gideon proceeded to strip her of the wet underthings. He swore again when he discovered she wore a combination. Corsets and drawers came off easy, but these damn one-piece garments were hell on a man in a hurry, or one with a decent purpose and trembling fingers such as his were now while they worked the buttons down the front then slipped the soft cotton from her shoulders.

      Moonlight silvered the pale skin beneath his fingertips and gleamed in the deep valley between her lovely breasts. Their crests bloomed like roses in a night garden. As he beheld her, Gideon realized he wasn’t breathing. His mouth had gone dry as sand, and his hands had clenched into tight fists as his leaden, shuttered gaze failed to respond to his wish to turn away. His lips moved soundlessly, once again damning

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