His Wicked Dream (Velvet Lies, Book 2) Read Free Page A

iron-fisted bully he'd become that night. "What difference does it make?"
    She seemed surprised. "Don't you want to tell a tinstar?"
    "What for?"
    "He'll arrest them."
    "Not if I deserved it."
    Her brows knitted. "But... you didn't, did you?"
    He averted his gaze. "Someone died because of me."
    "Oh."
    A long silence stretched between them. She busied herself with her apron. "Is that why you aren't wearing any guns?"
    "Why would you ask that?"
    "Well, I figured you must have shot someone, and since you feel so bad about it, you went ahead and gave up gunfighting."
    His lips quirked. She really was naive.
    "Gunfighters don't think that way."
    "They don't?"
    "No. They just go ahead and kill someone else when they want to feel better. They don't have a conscience."
    She grew grave as she considered this viewpoint.
    "Well, you have a conscience. Otherwise, you wouldn't feel so bad."
    "I suppose."
    "So you're not as evil as you think."
    He arched an eyebrow. "Are you calling me a liar?"
    She blushed, red cheeks against red hair. He found it charming.
    "Well... no. I mean, even if you are, it's none of my business."
    "That's what I've been trying to tell you."
    Her heart-shaped face grew even redder, if that was possible. "You don't have to be so surly. I'm just trying to help. Papa's a doctor and—"
    "The rain stopped," he interrupted sharply, having no desire to explain himself to a doctor. Especially a competent one.
    She cocked her head, listening. The droning on the tin roof had dwindled to an occasional plop. The thunder was a mere whisper compared to its former cannonading.
    "The storm's over," he insisted more gruffly. "You can leave now."
    Anxious eyes, darkly fringed and greener than spring, delved into his. "I can't leave you alone."
    "I'll survive. Unfortunately."
    "That's a terrible thing to say."
    "Which part?"
    She opened her mouth, hesitated, then pressed her lips together. "You're just trying to make me mad."
    "Nope. I'm trying to make you leave."
    She wrinkled her nose, crowding her freckles together. "So you can die?"
    Her question hit his gut like a sledgehammer. As little appeal as living held, dying, apparently, held less.
    Craven ,he scorned himself. Gabriel had more courage in his big toe than you do in all your two hundred pounds. My God, he crossed the threshold of death all alone! He did it bravely, while you dozed at his bedside.
    Michael began to quake, remembering that horrible discovery and the scene his reverend father had made.
    "Laggard!" Jedidiah Jones had railed, his forefinger trembling. "I send you to school to make your brother well, and what do you do? You snore through his death throes!"
    Michael choked. Squeezing his eyes closed, he clutched his chest, trying to force back the waves of grief that wrenched him from bone to soul. Damn the plague. He'd tried so hard to find consumption's cure. Awake before dawn, burning candles long into the night, he'd studied feverishly, finishing his university courses in record time so he could spend the last few months with Gabriel.
    But none of his new-fangled prescriptions, none of his research findings or fancy instrumentation had even eased Gabriel's pain. Weeping uncontrollably over the emaciated little corpse in his arms, Michael had been forced to surrender his kid brother to the undertaker.
    I'm sorry, Gabriel. It should have been me, not you. It should have been me!
    "I'm sorry, mister," the girl murmured, her breath warm and sweet against his cheek.
    Soft fingers laced through his, holding his hand over his crumbling heart. He blinked, and his angel swam above him, a vision of autumn-colored hair and golden lamplight shining through his tears. When she brushed a curl from his forehead, he flinched. He didn't deserve tenderness.
    "I didn't mean any offense," she whispered, contrite. "Papa says I shouldn't always say the first thing that pops into my head."
    Michael sniffed, dragging his last shreds of dignity like a suit of armor around