Outlaw Wife

“What time is it?” he asked.

Willow blinked, her eyes dry. She’d been staring for longer than she thought. “It’s getting dark.”

Simon sat up, keeping his hand in place. “Damn drugs. That’s the last time I drink John’s coffee. I can’t keep my eyes open for more than five minutes at a time.”

Willow’s throat felt tight. She couldn’t decide if it was due to this man’s importance to her father’s future or to the easy ripple of the muscles of his bare arms as he pushed himself up. She forced herself to smile at him.

“Where is he, anyway?” he asked, looking around.

“The sheriff?”

Simon nodded, swinging his legs to the floor and using the momentum to stand.

“He went to have dinner with the marshal and the deputy.” Standing, Simon Grant looked much more powerful than he had on the cot. Willow swallowed away the odd knot in her throat. She might not have another opportunity to get this critical witness on their side. “How…how are your injuries?” she ventured. Desperately she wished that she’d paid more attention to Aunt Maud’s proclamations about the relationship between the genders. Not that Aunt Maud would have been the best teacher. She’d never been married, and Willow couldn’t imagine her proper, staid aunt ever falling in love.

The wounded man grimaced. “I’m all right.” He finally broke his gaze and began looking around the room. “If I knew what John did with my shirt…” he muttered.

“Is that it?” She pointed to a chair in the corner of the room.

“Oh, right.” He walked over to retrieve it.

Willow felt a moment of panic. “Ah…you’re not leaving?”

His eyes went back to her. Earlier in the day she had thought she’d seen interest in his expression and something like pity. Now he just looked tired. “I’ll head over to the hotel, I guess. I don’t suppose you two can cause much trouble locked up like that.”

“But I…I wanted to talk to you.” Her fingers made tight curls around the steel bars.

He shrugged awkwardly into his shirt. “Talk about what?”

“I…You were right. I was there when they robbed you.”

“I know. I saw you.”

“And I did cut the ropes and leave you the water.”

“For which I’m much obliged, like I said.” He turned toward the door.

“No, wait! I saved your life—you admitted it yourself.”

Simon stopped and looked at her with his eyes narrowed. “Forgive me for not being too grateful at the moment, miss. My head’s throbbing and my side aches. I guess I’m just one of those people who gets surly when they’re near stomped to death. So I thank you for your help, but I would give quite a lot of money right now to have never set eyes on you, your father or the congenial bunch you ride with.”

“Jake’s the worst of them. The rest aren’t so bad.”

“I’d just as soon not find out.”

Willow thought about batting her eyes, but somehow she didn’t think it would help Mr. Grant’s mood. Anyway, it hadn’t worked on the sheriff. Perhaps Willow just didn’t know how to do it right. She’d never been very good at playacting. She gave a deep sigh. “The truth is, Mr. Grant. I need your help.”

He looked surprised, but not the least sympathetic.

“Your testimony can put me in prison.”

He nodded. “I reckon.”

“But what’s even more important to me is that it could send my father to his death.”

Simon made no reply. He leaned against the far wall, waiting for her to continue.

“I untied you,” she said again, trying to keep the desperation from her tone.

“I’m willing to testify to that in court, miss,” he said. “And if that keeps you out of prison, it’ll be all right by me. But I don’t think it’ll help your father any. From the sound of things, they have enough piled up on him whether I testify or not.”

Willow’s eyes darted to the sheriff’s desk, then back to the man across the room. The sheriff had not lit the lamps before he left. In the darkening shadows, Simon Grant’s battered face looked monstrous. She couldn’t blame him for not having much charity toward her. But he was her only hope. “You could save him by handing me the keys to this door and looking the other way for five minutes.”

Simon gave a chuckle of disbelief. “Now why in tarnation would I do that, Miss Davis?”

“I…We could pay you. My father would give you money…whatever you want.”

Simon shook his head slowly. “No thanks.”

Willow bit her lip and tried to study his face in the gloom. There was no sign of that kind of male interest she thought she’d seen earlier. She may have been mistaken that it had ever been there. But at this point, she couldn’t think of anything else to try. She looked back at her father to assure herself that he was still sleeping. He’d skin her alive if he heard what she was about to say. She let the words come out in a rush. “Maybe I could pay you with something other than money.”

Simon straightened up and dropped the hand he held at his side. He took three halting steps closer to her. His dark eyes were inscrutable. “What did you have in mind?” he asked in a low voice.

To tell the truth, Willow didn’t know exactly what she had in mind. Aunt Maud had told her how men always wanted something from women. And Willow knew it had to do with mating, like the frantic couplings of the animals on the farm. But she hadn’t let her thoughts linger on the matter. It wasn’t something she’d ever intended to find out for herself.

He was watching her with that odd expression on his face again. Willow felt a strange flutter at the base of her stomach. She looked him square in the face. “I would do anything to save my pa, mister. Anything you want.”

There was a slight tremble to her voice as she said the last words. Simon could see that her hands were gripping the bars so tightly that her fingernails had gone white. All at once he found it impossible to meet those clear blue eyes. The girl might be nineteen, might have ridden with an outlaw gang, but she was obviously an innocent Her father had been right when he’d said that she didn’t belong in that cell. She waited like a lamb at a slaughterhouse for him to respond to her offer. An offer he was almost sure she didn’t even understand.

Suddenly it was as if he was the guilty one. As if it was somehow his fault that he had ended up at the wrong end of Jake Patton’s boot, robbed and beaten, and that as a result this young woman and her father were facing an uncertain future. How the hell had she managed to turn the tables like that?

“How about it, mister?” Her voice was not much more than a whisper.

He tried to take a calming breath, only to have it stab at his sore side. Damn it. He was the victim, not this outlaw girl. He wasn’t about to take on the responsibility for her dilemma. He wasn’t about to let her compound the hurt her father’s gang had already inflicted on him. Steeling himself with anger, he looked up and down her slender form and said with deliberate rudeness, “Sorry, miss. I’m just not interested.”

The anger died swiftly at her stricken look and sharp intake of breath. He was not used to insulting women. But then, he was not used to getting his ribs broken and his face smashed, either.

She seemed to sag, still holding on to the bars. “I saved your life,” she said again, but the energy had gone out of her voice.

“Yeah, well, that’s one point in your favor. But I reckon it’s up to a jury to see how much it counts.” There was an expression in her eyes that made Simon want to say something more. It was something underneath the hurt and frustration. In spite of the girl’s bravado, deep down in those eyes he was almost certain he could see fear. It made him pause for a minute, but he forced himself to turn around and head toward the door. It was none of his business if the girl was afraid.

“Please, mister. Please help me.”

His back stiffened at her soft plea. But he didn’t turn around. Snatching his hat from the rack, he opened the door and left.

“What the hell are you doing here?” the sheriff greeted Simon with a scowl.

Simon pulled out a chair next to Tom Sneed, the deputy, and nodded across the table at Marshal Torrance. “Good evening, gentlemen. Don’t mind John’s manners.”