LITMIR.BIZ

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      Shad eased away from the man’s grasp. “And you just happened to do it on the same day Amos’s daughters got to town, I guess.”

      “Pure coincidence,” Hoyt boomed. He threw Libby a wink. “Ain’t that something?”

      “That’s something, all right,” Shad said through clenched teeth as he reached across the table and jerked Libby up and out of her chair, then brought her into the protective curve of his arm. “Too bad we’re just leaving, Hoyt. Nice seeing you though.”

      “Now wait just a damn minute, Jones.” The burly man got hold of Libby’s hand again. “I’m only being neighborly here.”

      Shad laughed. “That’s what a fox claims when he sneaks into the chicken coop, you old devil.” He tossed two gold coins onto the table, then tightened his arm around Libby. “Come on, Miss Kingsland. Let’s go while you still have a few feathers left to pluck.”

      

      Outside the restaurant Libby dug her heels into the planked sidewalk. The big cowboy was sweeping her along like a broom, as if she were some inanimate object he could just push this way and that. “Stop it,” she hissed.

      He stopped walking, but his arm was still wrapped around her like a boa constrictor, and he continued to curse under his breath. It seemed to be a perpetual thing with him—like a dark melody twisting through an opera.

      She wriggled out of his grasp, and stood there trying to repair some of the damage he’d inflicted on her. Her hat was askew; one glove was on while the other dangled from her bare hand. Her corset felt as if it were climbing up her neck.

      Worse, now she found that she was muttering, too. Words like “rude” and “insufferable.” Even a few choice curses of her own. Shadrach Jones, she decided, was definitely bringing out the worst in her.

      “You know who that fella was, don’t you?” he growled at her now.

      “Of course I do,” Libby snapped back. “Hoyt Backus. He and my father used to be partners until they had some kind of falling-out.” She lifted her chin to glare at him. “That’s no excuse to be rude to him. Or,” she added hotly, “to manhandle me.”

      “Manhandle!” He swiped his hat off and slapped it against his leg, then shouted the word once more, nearly choking on it. “Manhandle!”

      Libby stiffened her spine, as much to demonstrate her outrage as to reposition her errant corset stays. Then she sniffed indignantly. “Well, your ears work, Mr. Jones.” She graced him with a tight little smile. “Now why don’t we see if your feet do as well? Would you mind escorting me back to the hotel?”

      “Glad to, ma’am.” The statement might as well have been another oath, the way he swore it.

      “Fine, then.”

      “Fine,” he snarled, slapping his hat back on his head, gesturing down the street. “After you.”

      She took off like a jackrabbit in a silly hat. Shad stalked behind her, gritting his teeth, trying not to step on the damn drag of her dress, then thinking maybe he would. That would bring her to a right quick stop. Then he could take her by the shoulders and shake a little sense into whatever lay beneath that milliner’s nightmare. Hoyt Backus hadn’t come to Corpus today to keep tabs on any lawyers, and it was no coincidence he’d just happened into them at the restaurant. The man was getting a reckoning on his competition for Paradise.

      It didn’t take a lawyer to figure it out. With Amos on his deathbed, the ranch would soon belong to his daughters. And if they decided to sell the place, Hoyt intended to be first in line, his big fist stuffed with cash. If the Kingsland sisters decided to keep it…hell, who knew what that wily old fox would do then? Who cared? Shad wasn’t going to be around once Amos was dead and buried.

      He’d been walking—head down and his hands jammed into his back pockets—thinking so hard about Hoyt that he didn’t notice when Libby stopped in front of the hotel. He rammed right into her. Then he blistered the air with curses as he wrapped his arms around her before she hit the sidewalk. Tiny. God, she was just a little bit of a thing under all those pleats and puffs. Well, most of her, he thought, vaguely aware that his hand was curved around a firm, fine breast.

      Shad couldn’t let go fast enough. Good thing, too, because he needed both hands to deflect her flying little fists.

      “Whoa now, Miss Kingsland.”

      The prim little lady was suddenly a hellcat, hissing. And turning him into a howling fool when her foot slammed into his shinbone. What the hell was wrong with her? When he turned his head to see the little crowd that was gathering around them, her palm connected with his cheek. If word got back to Paradise that the foreman couldn’t control five feet two inches of female, he’d be trying to live this incident down much longer than he cared to imagine.

      A little fist caught him in the rib cage now.

      “That’s it, honey,” somebody cheered. “Use your knee now and give that big lug something to really remember.”

      Her knee came up.

      “Dammit, Miss Libby.” Shad yanked her toward him and wrapped his arms around her, crushing her against him in a defensive embrace.

      She squirmed like an eel. “Let me go,” she demanded into his shirtfront.

      “No, ma’am. Not till you calm down.”

      “I am calm.”

      “Like the eye of a hurricane,” he said through clenched teeth, then he lowered his head to whisper roughly, “There are about two dozen folks standing around us, taking great delight in watching just how calm you are, lady.”

      Libby opened one eye just wide enough to glimpse a greasy smile centered in a bystander’s greasy beard.

      “Atta, girl, honey,” the beard called. “You give that fella of yours what for.”

      Dear God! What had she done? For a bleak moment Libby wasn’t even sure who she was. Certainly not the woman who never lost her temper, the one who used reason and good sense no matter how angry or vexed, the one who used well-chosen words to express herself rather than her fists. She’d gone from articulate lady to street brawler in the course of an evening. It had to be the champagne. Liquor was poison. She’d always known that.

      But she hadn’t even felt its effects until Shadrach Jones had manhandled her. Which he was still doing now, she realized. She couldn’t move at all. It was like being bound to an enormous oak. Then the tree leaned back a fraction and scowled down at her.

      “Go on. Kiss her,” somebody called out.

      “Yeah. Kiss and make up, you two,” another voice urged.

      The crowd took up the chant.

      The tree cursed once more—rough as bark—and then a firm hand curved to Libby’s chin, lifted it, and a warm, wet mouth slanted over hers. She was vaguely aware of cheers and a sprinkling of applause at her back. Most of her senses, however, were magnetized by her first real kiss. By soft lips. By a tingling scrape of whiskers. By a faint taste of champagne and the slow, seductive touch of a tongue.

      Shad was about to lift his head, thought better of it—or worse, didn’t think at all—and kept kissing her. Kept losing himself in the prim little mouth that had melted like sunstruck butter beneath his own. Kept telling himself the unexpected kiss was only to convince the crowd their “lovers’ quarrel” was over. It was just for show and he shouldn’t be feeling anything. Especially not the hammering in his chest and the hot surge of blood through every inch of him. She was a lady, for God’s sake. Ladies were poison. Sweet, warm, succulent poison. And nobody knew that better than Shadrach Jones.

      He broke the kiss, literally ripped his mouth from hers, and stepped back so abruptly that Libby nearly fell. Then he was growling—at her, at the several curious spectators who remained on the sidewalk, at the world in general—as he gripped her elbow

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