Daisies In The Wind Read Online Free

before her.
    Rebeccah gasped.
    It was
his
face, strong and stern
and quiet. And strikingly familiar, even after all these years.
    Wolf Bodine.
    He was the same—and yet different.
    He could be no more than thirty years old,
but there was a grim hardness now in the set of his jaw, a sort of
weathered toughness that had matured and intensified over the
years. The cool gray eyes had tiny fine lines around their edges
now, a hint of sadness or bitterness or perhaps harshness reflected
in their clear depths—and they glinted like polished stones,
missing nothing.
    Oh, God. He was as handsome as she
remembered—no, she realized dazedly, more so. The years had
chiseled him, hardened him, stamped him with a keen, fine-honed
ruggedness. His body was corded with muscle. His stomach was flat,
his hips lean beneath his dark trousers.
    Wolf Bodine.
    How can this be?
she thought with a
quivering disbelief, her gaze taking in those compelling eyes, the
clean-shaven jaw, the burnished chestnut hair that just reached the
collar of his shirt. She trembled inwardly at the bronzed toughness
of that never-to-be-forgotten face, lost herself in the long-lashed
gray eyes that pierced her like tomahawks as she held her ground on
the boardwalk. She was all too aware of the sinewy muscularity of
his imposing frame, of his steady, quiet manner that was no less
dangerous for all its calm. It was
him
.
    She had seen him a thousand times in her
memories, her dreams, her thoughts. He was the one ... the one
she’d been foolishly, idiotically in love with since she was twelve
years old.
    Loco. That’s what she was. Loco to have
thought all this time about a man she’d met as a child, a man she’d
spent only moments with, a man who was her father’s enemy.
    A man she’d left for dead on the dirt floor
of a hideaway cabin in the middle of nowhere.
2
    His badge glittered in the late-afternoon
sun. Rebeccah clenched the silken strap of her reticule and worked
at not letting her feet fidget. Bear always said her feet twitched
when she was nervous. And lawmen always made her nervous.
    Reflex, probably. She’d spent a good portion
of her life running from the law.
    But there’s no reason to be in such a
tizzy over Wolf Bodine
, she told herself desperately.
You’re a grown woman now, nearly twenty-one years old, not a
stupid little girl
.
    And you’ve done nothing wrong.
    Besides, he didn’t remember her. He was
staring at her with a cool detachment that held no trace of
recognition.
    Well, why should he remember a filthy kid
who’d spit in his face and let him get clobbered with a Colt
revolver?
    Better if he never remembered any of that,
she realized hastily. She gulped in a deep breath. She knew she’d
scream if the silence went on another moment.
    “Sheriff,” she blurted out, her words
tumbling a shade too fast, “that man up there, the dead one, tried
to rob our stagecoach. I shot him in self-defense. The driver says
he is a wanted man by the name of Scoop Parmalee—of the Parmalee
gang. There is a price on his head. I wish therefore to claim the
reward money.”
    He had his thumbs hooked in his gunbelt, and
he was staring at her, staring hard.
    “Have we met before?”
    “No ... oo.” She went pink. The lie had just
jumped out before she even realized it, and now it was too late to
take it back.
    His cool eyes studied her. “I’m reckoned to
be good with faces.”
    “How nice for you.” Sweat dripped down her
armpits, dampening her gown.
    “Ever been to Tucson?”
    Relentless, that’s what he was. Typical
lawman. Rebeccah’s nerves stretched taut.
Think!
    Her mind racing, she dropped her reticule to
give herself more time. She wasn’t very good at this business of
feminine wiles, but if ever there was a time for it, Rebeccah
concluded, this must be it. The small bag struck the boardwalk with
a thud.
    Wolf Bodine moved not a muscle.
    “Oh, dear.” She tried to sound helpless and
dismayed.
    Still he made no move to retrieve it