Once an Outlaw Read Online Free Page B

but… but I thought—” He took a deep breath, still clinging to her neck with all his strength. “Are you sure he wasn’t c-coming for me?”
    “I’m very sure. I promise you. You’re safe here, Joey. Very, very safe.”
    Emily spent the next half hour silently cursing the lawman, even as she reassured Joey again and again that there was no danger. It wasn’t until she had fixed the little boy a glass of warm milk, tucked him back into bed, and sat with him until he fell asleep again that she realized Lonesome’s sheriff had come and gone, scared both her and Joey half to death, left her with a warning … and never even told her his name.

LINT B ARCLAY TOSSED THE DOG- eared pile of wanted posters onto his desk and rubbed a hand across his eyes. He leaned back in his chair, trying to block out the loud snoring of the drunken old miner sleeping it off in the jail cell a dozen yards away. Shrieks and shouts of raucous merriment drifted in through the open window of the office, along with loud singing and the banging of piano keys. Sounded like things were getting pretty wild down at Coyote Jack’s Saloon. And it was only a little past suppertime, Clint noted.
    He figured he’d probably have to head over there and calm things down before too long.
    But it wasn’t only the miner’s snoring or the saloon’s rowdiness that kept him from concentrating on the wanted posters, memorizing the faces drawn on each one so that he could recognize any of the outlaws at a moment’s notice, if he happened to spot one.
    Another face kept appearing in his mind.
    A far more appealing one.
    The delicately sculpted prettily oval face of Emily Spoon.
    Clint shook his head in bafflement. How come withnearly every female in this town devoting her spare time to trying to run his life and find him an eligible bride, foisting every daughter, cousin, niece, and acquaintance upon him in an attempt to corral him into marriage, the only woman whose face seemed stuck in his mind was a rifle-toting, icy-tongued beauty from a family of low-down outlaws?
    It made no sense at all.
    You don’t want
that
little handful for a bride, that’s for damn sure
, he told himself with a grin. He’d be better off with Mrs. Dune’s whiny-voiced niece, or Mary Kellogg’s sister—or even Carla Mangley, he reflected with a shudder as he thought of the latter young woman’s overbearing mother—than anyone related to Jake Spoon.
    Still, it dumbfounded him that a family as low and common and crooked as the Spoons could produce such a gorgeous woman. Especially since there was nothing the least bit low or common about her—not as far as he could see. The raven-haired Miss Spoon spoke as finely as his own elegant sister-in-law, his brother Wade’s new wife, Caitlin Barclay herself. Clint had just returned from Wade and Caitlin’s wedding in Silver Valley, Wyoming, when he’d found out the bad news about the Spoon family moving into town.
    But while the eastern-bred and -schooled Caitlin was blonde, cool, and sunny, Emily Spoon with her dark hair and smoldering gray eyes was all fire, earth, and ice.
    Clint raked a hand through his hair, thinking of how determined she’d been to wrest that Winchester back from him. No doubt she’d have used it too, if he hadn’t taken it away from her so quickly in the first place.
    Two days had passed and Jake Spoon still hadn’t shown up with his supposed deed to the Sutter place. No one had spotted him in town either. Must be away still, Clint reflected.
    But doing what?
he wondered suspiciously. If old Jake thought he was going to start holding up trains or banks or stagecoaches in other parts of the state, then hightail it to the fringes of Lonesome and hide out in the Sutter cabin, claiming he’d been ranching all the while, he’d sure as hell have another thing coming.
    If he doesn’t show up by tomorrow
, Clint thought,
maybe I’ll just pay Miss Spoon another visit and see if she’s still all alone at that