Marshal of Hel Dorado (13 page)

 
    
“Frankly, gold is gold. It’s not worth the
blood, sweat and tears folks will weep for it, but that girl…”

 
    
“Leave her out of this.”

 
    
“I wasn’t the one who brought her into it.”
Cob crossed his arms over his chest.

 
    
Sam scowled and wished he were younger so
he could kick his boots and stomp. But he was the damned Marshal, a man and he
couldn’t afford the action, not even in front of a family friend.

 
    
Especially not in front of Cob.

 
    
Cob chuckled, shaking his head.

 
    
“What?” Sam’s temper peaked and snapped.
Four days of irritation filling in the crevices of that single syllable.

 
    
“You got it bad, boy. Maybe you ought to be
thinking about why that girl has you all tied up in knots and less about what
your brother told them folk. He did his job. Give him the credit.

 
    
Then you worry about keeping your lady
safe. Your Pa is not about to let anything happen to her.”

 
    
“She’s not my lady.”

 
    
“As you say.”

 
    
“She’s not.”

 
    
Cob chuckled again and Sam clenched his
fists. Truth be told, he was worried about what that gang would do where
Scarlett was concerned. The judge was on his way. His father was already lining
Jason up to defend her. Micah wanted to court her. Hell, even Cob seemed to be
on her side.

 
    
So why the hell was Sam so frustrated? And
why couldn’t he get the image of her out of his mind?

 
    
Maybe he should pay a call to Miss
Pontfour’s, work out the need burning in his belly.

 
    
But the thought turned him cold. He didn’t
want Miss Pontfour’s ladies.

 
    
“We need to secure the bank.” He changed
the subject, turning away from thoughts of red hair sliding through his fingers
and the curvy softness welcoming his thrusts. His body protested, an angry heat
stoking his need.

 
    
“Already done. I rousted Jake and three of
the boys. They’ve been off the last two days and would have been heading back
to the Flying K tomorrow. They’re standing watch at the bank and will until we
get some more in here to relieve ‘em. I’ll have Kid take a note to Jed
tomorrow.”

 
    
“Should probably spread the word, then.”

 
    
“Boys are hooting it up at the saloon, most
folk who are awake already know. Those that don’t will hear at first light
tomorrow.”

 
    
Sam scowled. Cob handled everything. Which
left Sam with nothing to do. The older man held up his hands in a gesture of
surrender. “Get some sleep, boy. You ain’t had much since you got back to town
and it’s quiet for now. Take advantage of it, I intend to.” With that, Cob
abandoned Sam to his thoughts.

 
    
For the first time, Sam wished Cob weren’t
so efficient. The man did his job better than Sam did. Which is probably why
Cob had moved to town when Sam settled in as the Marshal.

 
    
He could hear his father and Cob now,
sitting on the veranda at the big house, chatting about Sam’s notion to become
a lawman and how it would be good to have someone keep an eye on him.

 
    
Sam scowled at the office, he’d have to
stay here tonight with the drunks sleeping off their tempers rather than his
own bed. Or better still, back at the Flying K, just two doors down from where
Scarlett was ensconced his mother’s suite of rooms.

 
    
That bitter pill still stung. His father
couldn’t have put it more plainly that he was taking up Scarlett’s cause than
installing her in his beloved wife’s blue rooms. He’d never allowed any guest
to stay in there before Scarlett. His father’s tacit approval of the fiery
haired minx just added salt to Sam’s irritation. She was supposed to be a
prisoner.

 
    
He wondered if she was all right. She’d
been on the path to recovery from her fever when Sam’s lust-filled thoughts
drove him off the Flying K. He’d been hard-pressed to leave her sick room when
the doc arrived, even though he’d covered up her nudity. He didn’t want any man
alone in the room with her. Not even a forty-five year old father of four who
didn’t spare Scarlett’s beauty a passing glance before he’d taken to tending
her.

 
    
Sam would have stayed, but Jed ordered him
out. Fevers were like wildfires. If they weren’t contained, they could destroy
whole towns. Sam, Micah and Jed had stood vigil until the doc proclaimed her
fever was broken and that she was sleeping and should be left to it.

 
    
He was on horseback by dawn, riding for
Dorado. It was the last place he wanted to go, he’d rather have gone back to
the sick cabin. Sat with her, tended her, but Miss Lena and her mother, Miss
Annabeth, had taken over the chore and the scandalized women refused to allow
him near Scarlett again, not while she was so vulnerable. They insisted she was
secure enough.

 
    
“Hell.” He swore to the night air. He would
ride for the Flying K at first light, just as soon as he kicked the drunks out
of the cell.

 
    
A movement in the dark jerked his straying
attention back to the street in front of him. He sat forward, hand sliding back
to his pistol, watching. Nothing moved in the darkened streets.

 
    
The shopkeepers having already shuttered
their windows and doors. Laughter burst a staccato sound from the saloon, but
Sam could feel eyes watching him. He rose, slowly, gaze traveling from one end
of the darkened street to the other.

 
    
For a moment, he saw yellow eyes glaring at
him from the darkness. His palm itched to pull the gun, but Sam stayed his
hand. He met the yellow gaze and held it. It was an oversized dog of some kind
or a wolf, but wolves tended to avoid towns.

 
    
Unless they were mad or sick.

 
    
The great beast stood in the center of the
street, just at the edge of the kerosene lantern’s reach. It was the biggest
damn wolf Sam had ever seen. There was an odd awareness in those yellow eyes,
it gave Sam the sense that it was sizing him up. He braced himself, hoping no
one chose this moment to stride out into the darkened street.

 
    
Another burst of laughter accompanied by
the slapping of the batwing doors cut through the night air and between one
blink and the next, the wolf disappeared into the night. He’d not even seen it
move.

 
    
Wary, Sam unholstered his gun.

 
    
Thieves stealing gold from a sealed vault.

 
    
A man who disappeared through walls.

 
    
A fiery-haired vixen dominating his
thoughts.

 
    
Now a yellow eyed wolf in the middle of the
street.

 
    
What the hell was happening to Dorado?

 
    
What was happening to him?

 
    
H
is
body hovered over hers, his well-muscled thighs pushing her legs apart. His
mouth teased a path down her throat, nipping, licking and tasting. Fire
scorched her insides, liquid desire racing through her veins. She stroked her
hands over the hard planes of his shoulders, nails scoring against the skin.

 
    
The hard length of his arousal prodded at
the moist juncture of her thighs. She knew what was coming next. She could feel
the restraint in every rigid muscle of his body. Impatient, she arched up,
eager to taste the first sting of womanhood, to take him into her body and to
lose herself to the blind passion consuming her.

 
    
“Scarlett!” Buck’s voice sliced through her
phantom lover, turning Sam into ether. She bolted upright on the bed, gathering
the sheets to herself. Her heart pounded against her ribs.

 
    
Her brother stood at the foot of the bed,
one hand bracing against the oak post, eyes averted while she covered herself.
The room around them grayed as he took control of the dream.

 
    
“Well, at least now I know why you were
hard to reach.” Buck’s tone was dry as the winter winds stirring the sands on
the desert flats that bordered the mountains.

 
    
“It’s my dream, Buck.” She refused to be
embarrassed, even as her stomach twisted.

 
    
Frowning, she concentrated, clothes
shimmering into existence. Her denim britches, cloth shirt and boots were her
preferred dress. Buck and Quanto told her repeatedly in dreams, anything was
possible, and she just had to exert that control.

 
    
“It better just be a dream,” Buck’s tone
was mild, but laden with censure. She glared at her brother and he glared back.
Despite the closeness of their ages, Buck always acted far older.

 
    
“And if it’s not?” What was it to him if
she tasted what every one of her brothers had?

 
    
She’d heard them talking about the ladies
they’d tumbled. Granted, they didn’t discuss it right in front of her, but it
was hard not to hear when they were laughing over how easy some skirts went up
than others. She’d watched them ride out time and again, off to make a man of
one or the other of them. They always returned with bawdy laughter and
enormously pleased expressions.

 
    
Buck sighed. The grayscale around them
lightened, a cooler breeze traveling down from a snowy pass. Buck’s control
transformed the blue ranch house bedroom to the valley that nestled their lake
and home in the mountains. The gray brightened to blue skies with fat, ripe
clouds stacking up like so much cream on a pie.

 
    
A cry of mating hawks split the sky
overhead and Scarlett grinned at the sight of them.

 
    
Her heart squeezed. She missed her home.

 
    
“This is why, Scarlett.” Buck’s voice
gentled, his hand came down on her shoulder and pulled her back to him in a
loose hug. “We’re worried about you. We’ve been worried. I’ve been reaching for
your dreams for days, but I couldn’t find you.”

 
    
Undone by the simple kindness and genuine
affection, she turned, hugging Buck tight.

 
    
She missed all of them too. She’d longed
for an adventure with them, not one that tore her away.

 
    
“I’m sorry. I was sick.”

 
    
Buck pulled back, concern knitting his
black brows together. “Did they hurt you?”

 
    
“No.” She shook her head, unsurprised that
her hair fell out of the braid she’d envisioned.

 
    
The brothers loved it when she let her hair
flag, except when they were coming down out of the mountains. Then they wanted
it covered. Her lips twisted into an amused smile. If it wasn’t telling her to
put her hair up, it was telling her to watch her posture, or steer clear of the
wilder horses or mind the house with Quanto while they fetched what she needed.

 
    
“Scarlett, don’t lie to protect them, if
they hurt you…”

 
    
She pressed her fingers to his lips,
meeting his gaze, letting him see the truth in her words. “They haven’t hurt
me. The Marshal took me out of Dorado because the townsfolk were threatening to
hang me. They’ve treated me very well.”

 
    
He caught her hand at his lips, pulling it
down to hold it over his heart. “What sickness?”

 
    
“My fire. I got scared and a little upset.
I couldn’t control it.” The confession cost, but Buck would understand. All of
her brothers would. The Kanes, Lena, even Miss Annabeth had been gentle and
kind to her, treating her ‘fever,’ but she couldn’t tell them it was the fire
she needed to release that was burning her up. It wasn’t until they’d nearly
drowned her in ice that she’d gotten the control back to bank the heat within.