Disobeying the Marshal Read Online Free

arrived,” he whispered, rubbing her back. The shots had brought the cowboys camped nearby with the rest of their herd and all had been pretty much settled before he’d arrived. That’s how it usually was. El Dorado had calmed down the past few years. It was now a quiet town, full of good, honest and peaceful people. “You’re safe, Florie, you’re safe,” he repeated.
    “I’m so sorry,” she whimpered.
    “Shh,” he insisted. “Go back to sleep.”
    “But, the Win—”
    He pressed a finger to her lips. “Sleep now.”
    She let out a little groan, as if fighting to wake.
    “Shh,” he repeated, letting his finger slip off her lips when she let out a soft sigh. She was safe, and for that he was thankful. The Winter gang must have tracked him to her place. The brothers were from Missouri and had somehow got it in their heads to rob an MKT train last fall. He’d been chasing them down when he got shot in the shoulder. The tumble off his horse had messed up his knee—the thing still ached like a fishbone caught in a tooth. He sat then, on the edge of her bed, giving his knee a rest while still rubbing her back, and listening to her slumbering breaths.
    Somehow, he’d managed to get back on his horse that day, and later—hours or days, he didn’t know which—the animal had ambled into the Rockford place. Florie found him trying to dismount in the barn. She’d practically carried him into the little house where she’d healed his wounds and stolen his heart within a few short days.
    So this is it, he thought, drawing his hand off Florie’s back. All the years of saying he was married to his badge, all the times he’d told his mother he wasn’t cut out for wedded bliss, had come back to haunt him.
    Cord stood then, and left the room, with his mother’s words— be careful what you wish for —echoing in his mind. He certainly hadn’t wished to fall in love with a married woman, yet that’s what he’d got.
    He’d set his life on a path of righteousness. Born and bred on honesty, and seeking justice for a living. The guilt gouging his insides was the worst he’d ever imagined. He’d compromised one of man’s greatest vows. Slept with a married woman.
    Cord crawled into his own bed, but dreams jerked him awake every time he closed his eyes. They were a juncture of excited fantasies involving him and Florie, and nightmares of her husband, an unknown, faceless man, taking her away. When the sun tossed faint streaks of light into the room, he threw off the covers and dressed.
    Florie still slept and, captivated, he stood in the doorway of her room, wondering where her dreams took her.
    She stirred, burying her cheek deeper into the pillow. He pushed off the wall and made his way downstairs. After building a fire, he set a pot of coffee on a burner and went out the back door.
    The morning air was brisk, and made him think of Florie walking all the way from her place. She’d walked over seventy miles to warn him about outlaws he’d captured three days ago. His nerves quivered beneath his skin at the number of things that could have happened to her along the way.
    “Good morning, Cord.”
    He turned.
    Della Cramer, the woman who ran the boarding house next door was on her back porch, shaking out a rug. She was a good neighbor—the best. He paid her to clean his home and prepare the meals for prisoners as well as the plates left in the icebox or warming in the oven for him and Deputy Monroe.
    “Morning, Della,” he responded, turning back toward his house.
    Pushing open the door, he shook his head. Florie was married. Of all things. It was still a shocking thought, one that shook him to the core. He’d never, ever, so much as taken a second look at another man’s wife.
    And it just didn’t fit. Florie was too pure and innocent to—
    His sixth sense kicked in, making him stiffen as he pushed aside the coffeepot that was bubbling over, sizzling and steaming against the cast iron of the stove.
    Taking a