The Unlikely Groom

“You can be sure that Soapy didn’t pull the trigger himself, Ashlynne.” Neither of them could afford to forget that truth. “He’s very careful about things like that.”

“That doesn’t mean he isn’t the man who’s responsible,” she insisted stubbornly. “You know it as well as I do. You told me so.”

“I—” Lucas cut off his reply when a man stepped out onto the boardwalk from a nearby saloon, one of Lucas’s competitors. He didn’t know the man by name, but he recognized the face.

One of Soapy’s men…and Lucas and Ashlynne remained standing outside the deputy marshal’s office. Worse, if anyone cared to overhear, they were talking about the very things that Taylor had commanded her to keep private.

“Come on.” Lucas grabbed her arm and tugged it through his, keeping hold of her forearm as he pulled her down the boardwalk. He steered them back the way he’d come—and away from Soapy’s man.

“Where are you staying?” he asked.

“Wait!” Ashlynne tried to resist, but Lucas would have no part of it and hurried her along.

“Tell me where you’re staying. When you’re not sleeping in my bed, of course.” He added the last deliberately, meaning it to upset her enough that she’d quit fighting him and follow his lead with a bit more cooperation.

His words had the opposite effect. She stopped more suddenly than he could have imagined and dug in her heels, refusing to move another inch.

Dammit! You should have expected it, he told himself with no small irritation. Ashlynne had done nothing the way in which he’d anticipated that she would.

“Why?” She jerked her arm from his.

“Ashlynne, come along.” He shot her a glare as hard as stone and said in a voice that was no softer, “You don’t want to openly defy Deputy Taylor. Not now, when he just warned you away.”

“How do you know what I want to do?” She planted her hands on her hips and glared back at him.

He would have had an excellent view of her figure if she hadn’t been wearing that ridiculously bulky cloak, now cinched at the waist by her hands. As it was, he found it far too easy to recall exactly the curve of her hips, her waist, her breasts. Until he looked into her eyes.

She was doing her best to appear angry and purposeful—and she probably even felt that way. At least in part. But a flicker of uneasiness—even fear—lurked in the depths of her gaze. That, and a certain weariness, as well. And if she looked a bit worse for the wear today, well, he could hardly blame her.

She hadn’t scraped her hair back with the same painful neatness as she’d worn it the night before; rather, she’d secured it in something of a loose bun. The softer look appealed to Lucas on a very basic, masculine level and his blood warmed despite the chill of the afternoon.

Stop noticing her as a woman! he snapped to himself.

Aloud, it took little effort to roughen the tone of his voice enough to get her attention. “You don’t strike me as a stupid woman, Ashlynne. We both know what you should want to do—and that is not to act on a rash impulse. You tried that once already today. You might want to think carefully about just what you want to do next.”

She stared at him with some apparent curiosity, as though she actually considered his words. A part of him breathed a sigh of relief at the unexpected cooperation, but the truth was he doubted that he’d done all that much to encourage it. It seemed unlikely that any woman in her position would forget a confrontation with a man like Taylor all that easily. After that, Ashlynne could hardly deny that Lucas only spoke the truth now.

She blinked and turned in the direction they’d been heading. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m staying at the Clifford House.” They walked in silence until she asked, “Why didn’t you take me there last night?”

Lucas shrugged, wishing not for the first time that it had been possible. “I told you, I didn’t know what else to do with you. I didn’t know where you were staying and you couldn’t seem to tell me.”

Her breath caught with a sharp hiss and she slanted him a glare of clear frustration. “I told you I don’t drink spirits.”

“Last night wasn’t a typical situation. The little bit of whiskey you had won’t ruin you.”

“It wasn’t a good thing for me, either.”

Lucas disagreed, but the finality of her tone told him there was no point in arguing with her. Frankly he didn’t care enough to quarrel with her over it. He owned and operated a saloon; she disapproved—highly—of such places.

What did it matter if they disagreed? Now that she’d seen the truth of what to expect from Taylor and his brand of law enforcement, she would be on her way back Outside on the next available ship. Lucas would remain here, where he belonged, and they would both be the better for it.