Louisiana Laydown Read Online Free Page A

“Remember to keep that Colt of yours handy and try not to be distracted by the women of the house. During the game, I’d rather have you thinking with the gun on your belt, and not the one in your pants.”
    “It won’t be a problem,” Fargo said.
    Parker laughed again. “If the look in the eye of that woman who brought us our drinks was any indication, I suspect that despite your appearance, you are something of a ladies’ man.”
    Fargo grinned like a wolf. “I don’t object to their company in general, but I like to work one job at a time.”
    “Good,” Parker said. He gestured toward the poker tables. “Should we resume our pursuit of the game?”
    Glancing around, Fargo noted that the waitress who’d served him dinner earlier was now standing in the entryway with an all-too-familiar gleam in her eye. “You go ahead,” he said. “I have another bit of work today before I can call it a night.”
    He stood up from the table and headed toward the woman. Behind him, Parker laughed, and said, “Just as I suspected, Fargo. You carry two guns, but it’s not the one on your hip that gets the ladies’ attention.”
    Fargo shrugged and kept walking. She hadn’t made him wait for his service earlier, so he figured the least he could do was the same.
    Her name was Louisa Cantrell, and her voice had a soft Southern lilt that was almost as fetching as her figure. Fargo took her by the arm and they strolled around the deck, admiring the view of the passing shoreline in the moonlight as the riverboat chugged its way downriver. A warm breeze kept the mosquitoes away, and the water smelled of spring greens and copper, like the first minerals in a mountain stream.
    “Is it true what the crew is saying?” she asked, when they paused at one point to take in the view.
    “I don’t know,” Fargo said. “What is the crew saying?”
    “That you caught a man cheating at cards and shot him twice—once in each knee—beneath the table.” She looked him in the eye as she said it, and Fargo admired her grit. There weren’t a great many women who could talk about violence and look the man who’d done it in the face. Her eyes were a deep brown, like the heavy stones at the foothills of the Rockies.
    He nodded. “Yes, it’s true. I hate a cheat.”
    "You must not have hated him all that much,” she said.
    “How’s that?”
    “Otherwise, I think a man like you would have killed him.”
    “I did worse than kill him,” Fargo said. “He won’t be walking again anytime soon, and I exposed him as a cheat. He’ll have trouble the rest of his days because of it.”
    “So you think it would have been a mercy to kill him?”
    “Sometimes death is a mercy,” Fargo admitted.
    “You are a hard man,” she said. She turned to the river, leaning back into him. Her dress exposed the curve of her neck, and the line of her shoulder, white and beautiful in the moonlight. “Do you know what I like about you?” she asked.
    “Tell me,” he said.
    “I like a man with good aim,” she said. “With his mind as well as his guns. You don’t bandy words and play about like most of the fools I meet on this boat.” She turned into his arms, and he met her halfway, wrapping himself around her.
    He caught up her hair in his hands, pulling out the pins and letting it fall free. It was longer than he’d thought it would be, full and luxurious. “Do you know what I like about you?” he asked, pulling her closer still, burying his face in her neck and smelling her sweet scent. He felt her jaw muscles clench as he trailed a slow kiss up her neck.
    “Tell me,” she moaned, under her breath.
    “That you know what you want,” he said. “And go after it.”
    He raised his head up and crushed her mouth with a bruising kiss and she moaned again, the sound reverberating off his lips and tongue in a pleasant buzz.
    “Do you think your aim is still good, Fargo?” she whispered. “Can you show me?”
    “I thought you’d never ask,”