Her Galahad Read Online Free

first…"
    A sudden horn blast made her hand jerk on the wheel. The van skidded, fishtailing toward the red-mud shoulder of the road.
    "He won't have to, the way you're driving—you'll kill us both." He grabbed the wheel for the second time. "Hold the bloody wheel straight, with both hands preferably, and ease off the accelerator. You're spinning the van out. Keep it steady."
    "He's right beside us!" she screamed.
    He squinted, trying to see inside the tinted dark glass of the car pulling level with them. "Don't panic yet. Slow down. Let him pass and see what happens."
    In a flash she sped up, holding the steering wheel in one shaking fist—and the gun was back in her other hand. "You filthy bastard, was that the plan?" She held the gun on him while trying to right the car. "Gain my trust by returning the gun, get me alone, let him overtake us and hand me over to him? Do you think I trust you any further than I could kick you?"
    "Not any more than I trust you," was his brutal rejoinder. "And any plans I might have don't include getting you locked up for killing a half-tanked city cowboy out on a 'roo shoot My plans didn't include my truck getting blown up, or your rolling a van at high speed with me in it. If Beller offered a million bucks, it ain't much use to me if I'm dead."
    After a moment, she nodded. "Okay. I can accept that."
    "Then get on the right side of the road. Let the Ford pass us. I don't think it's Beller. Your wanna-be classy husband wouldn't be seen dead in anything less than a Jag or Range Rover," he said dryly. "We're almost at the turnoff. If we have to double back on ourselves it gives Beller time to find us."
    He could almost taste the bile of fear on her tongue, but she nodded again. "Okay." She slowed down, moving back to the legal side of the road and let off on the accelerator.
    With another horn blast, the Ford roared past them down the empty highway. The van shuddered in its wake.
    Tessa wiped her face with her sleeve. "W-where's the turnoff?"
    "Left in about two minutes. There's a back way to Marshal's Creek. I reckon he'll be searching the highway for us tonight. He'll expect us to be together by now."
    "How long have you been in Lynch Hill?"
    "Just over a week."
    She flashed a look at him, a look of magnificent fire, and he rocketed back in time to his first sight of her.
    A golden-skinned pagan goddess in cut-off shorts and tank top, her silky dark hair flying around her face like an aura of dangerous magic in the warm wind of a summer's day, her strange, beautiful eyes devouring him, drinking him in like ambrosia and nectar of the gods.
    A vivid face, full of life—every emotion inside her so easy to read. One look and he was gone. She exploded inside his heart, catching hold of the flying pieces in her loving hands; and in all the years he'd hated her, he'd never found a way to take them back.
    Her voice of furious scorn jerked him back to a less tender present. "…and you never let me know. You leave me for six years, don't bother to contact me until he shows up and then you say, 'Hey, Tessa, I'm alive. Let's leave town together'?"
    He shrugged, fighting a half urge to grin. "Yeah, well, expect the unexpected. At least I'm never boring."
    Again that quick, flashing glance of molten gold, searing his veins with her inner fire. "No, I never had time to be bored with you. I only grieved for you!"
    "Oh, yeah, you must have grieved for me real bad," he shot back. "A whole month, wasn't it, before you became Mrs. Beller—no, sorry, I heard you actually waited a whole five weeks out of respect for my memory. Nice grief, Tessa."
    She flushed. "If I'd known you were alive—"
    "What? You wouldn't have committed bigamy, or you'd just have divorced me first?"
    She gasped and hit the brakes, making them both jerk forward and back in their seats.
    He laughed again, but it was a harsh, jeering sound. "Yeah, that's right, princess—little Miss High Society Theresa Earldon-Beller's a bigamist. How