Improper Gentlemen Read Online Free

holster, pointed straight at Justin’s heart—just before the Southerner’s Colt deliberately thundered into action.
    Aspen choked and clapped his hand to his chest. Anger burned through his eyes.
    A hot wind roared past Justin’s left sleeve, but he ignored it and kept his gun at the ready.
    Crimson seeped through the other man’s fingers and Aspen glared at his opponent. Horror flashed in his eyes an instant before his knees sagged like broken straw. He fell face-down, in a crumpled heap as void of movement as a barren field.
    Justin holstered his weapon, his stomach knotted into the same roiling octopus it always assumed after he killed a man. Mother’s gift had saved him once again.
    Now to clean up the mess and go back to what passed for life. Someday flowers would bloom in his life more often than gunfire and young ladies would take his arm instead of giving him the cut direct.
    A woman barreled into his back, all running feet and acres of skirt twisting between his legs to trip him up. Feathers brushed the nape of his neck like spring’s first blossoms.
    He lost his balance and tumbled toward the ground. Only bull-wrestling skills that he’d learned rounding up wild cattle in the Pecos River bottoms saved them both from rolling through the street’s frozen mud. As it was, he wound up cursing viciously, with an armful of unfamiliar female clasped to his chest and his knee thrust between hers.
    She was tall, slender yet curved in all the right ways to make his skin hum in anticipation. Scents of lavender and Castile soap teased his brain. He quickly glanced down to survey his catch but a black velvet bonnet, fashionably trimmed with ribbons and feathers, allowed him no more than a glimpse of creamy skin and a stubborn jaw.
    “Excuse me for disturbing you, sir!” A husky voice snatched his breath away, strong as a jab to his ribs.
    He’d heard that voice once before, in Denver under a springtime moon, when every rich note had shredded his wits faster than the finest brandy. Even Merlin’s beloved sorceress, released from those legendary ice caves, couldn’t be as lovely. Since then, he’d chased news of her like a bloodhound quartering a barren field.
    Justin’s heartbeat skittered for the first time that day.
    She slipped out of his suddenly lax grip but skidded, unable to find solid footing on the treacherous ground. He caught her again, careful not to hurt her arms.
    “Unhand me, sir.” Blue eyes, brighter than any hope of heaven, blazed into his and ungloved hands pushed at his shoulders. “I must catch the next stage.”
    She’d cut him down, right here, with an imperious look from those same eyes less than an hour earlier, as if he was a loathesome criminal. “Ace Moreland?”
    Purest terror flashed across her beautiful face, to be quickly replaced by arrogance. If he hadn’t been holding her and watching her closely, he’d never have seen the dread. She jerked her head in reluctant agreement.
    What the hell was she doing on the street again? What was she running from? Couldn’t be the Pinkerton’s agents who some bastard back East had sent to sniff out her trail across the Rockies.
    None of those buzzards roosted in Wolf Laurel. He could still smell them easily, after hunting them down during the War.
    He leashed his hungers tighter than the buckles holding his guns to his belt and loosened his grip on her.
    Damn it all to hell, blood was matted on the tips of her blond hair. Somebody would pay for that. In their own blood, once he found the bastard.
    His pulse settled into a slow, steady, eager battle rhythm that his first cavalry commander would have applauded.
    Townsfolk sprouted along the boardwalk to watch them, like winter wheat avidly seeking the false spring’s sunlight. More trotted down the alleys in fools’ ever-present search for entertainment.
    Brooks, the town undertaker, threw a tarp over the Aspen Kid’s remains, then scratched a few lines in his notebook, his small frame