Code of the Wolf Read Online Free Page B

her.
    Slumping back against the partition, she closed her eyes. She didn’t realize how exhausted she was until she woke suddenly from a standing doze. Instantly shelooked down. The man was staring back at her with cool gray eyes.
    â€œMa’am,” he croaked. “Would you mind telling me…where am I?”

CHAPTER TWO
    T HE WOMAN DIDN ’T answer at first, and that was just as well. Jacob was far from ready to get up, and talking at all was difficult. He was naked under the blanket someone had thrown over him, his gun and knives were gone, and he had no idea where he was.
    But his wounds hurt less, his mouth had a little moisture in it, and he was finally able to get a good look at his savior. What he saw surprised him.
    At first glance she didn’t look like the kind of woman who could face down a band of outlaws and outshoot them with exquisite precision. She was petite and fine-boned, with almost delicate features and dark blond hair pulled severely away from her face.
    And she was pretty. By no means a great beauty, but then, a woman who carried a gun on her hip wasn’t likely to be overly concerned with her appearance. Her face was tanned and unpainted, her figure completely concealed by baggy boy’s trousers and a shirt, with only a telltale dip at the waist where her belt held her clothing closer to her body. He was willing to bet she wasn’t wearing a corset, either. Most men would have judged her appearance beyond the pale of anything proper for a female.
    Once Jacob might have done the same. He wonderedabout her male kinfolk; few men worth their salt would let a wife or daughter or sister dress that way, or ride into the desert with only a couple of other females as an escort. It was a man’s place to protect his women, and there was no excuse for such a lapse. No excuse at all.
    Yet for all her small size, nothing in the lady’s appearance or in her steady glare suggested weakness or dependence on anyone.
    He remembered her name. Serenity. The woman who was anything but serene.
    Without a word, she retrieved a pitcher standing on a stool against the wall to his left and sloshed water into a glass. Jacob remembered someone giving him water before, but he didn’t think it had been this woman. The hands had been gentle, the face—what he had been able to see of it in his delirium—entirely different.
    Stiffly the woman bent over him, as if she hoped to put the glass to his lips without coming anywhere near him. After a moment she knelt, still keeping her distance, and put the glass down just long enough to push the sack of grain that served as his pillow higher under his shoulders.
    â€œDrink,” she said, and set the rim of the glass to his lips. The water tasted like ambrosia as it coated his mouth and trickled down his throat. The moment he had had enough, the woman put the glass down, stood and resumed her place against the wall.
    Jacob half closed his eyes. It was difficult to keep them open, but he had to know more about thiswoman and why she, though so obviously hostile, had helped him.
    â€œMa’am,” he tried again, “I’d be obliged if you would tell me where I am.”
    She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at some point behind his head as if she could burn a hole in the wall with her stare. “You’re at Avalon,” she said.
    Avalon. He’d heard her speak the word before, but it also echoed in other memories. Somewhere, sometime long past, when he’d been only a boy, he’d heard the name. It meant nothing to him now.
    â€œA ranch?” he asked.
    â€œYes.”
    Her voice was no longer distorted by distance or his delirium, but it still didn’t match the delicacy of her face. It should have been soft and soothing, not harsh, as it was when she spoke to him. It should have been like Ruth’s.
    But Ruth would never have put on a man’s clothes or carried a gun. The thought would