[Montacroix Royal Family Series 03] - The Outlaw Read Free Page A

awaiting her in Arizona?
    "Because I'll be back in time for you to walk me down the aisle."
    "I am pleased to hear that." He nodded his satisfaction as he turned the Rolls-Royce onto the road leading to the terminal. "Because your mother worries."
    Although the Air France flight attendants unfailingly upheld the airline's tradition of esprit de service , Noel grew increasingly on edge as the plane sped across the sky on its way to America.
    After picking unenthusiastically at what she knew was undoubtedly a superb meal of grilled squab and tender roasted potatoes, she turned on her overhead light and attempted to settle down with a copy of the London financial Journal . But the text could have been written in Sanskrit, for all the sense it made to her.
    Sighing, she turned instead to this month's issue of French Elle , but the magazine failed to capture her attention. Instead, her mind kept rerunning the rainy scene of the man on horseback. Who was he? And why was he calling out to her?
    Finally, sheer exhaustion got the better of her. Noel leaned her head back against the gray leather seat, closed her eyes and instantly fell into a deep, almost trancelike sleep and began to dream.
    There was music—someone, somewhere, was playing the piano. Her body ached. Uncomfortable, she shifted on the satin sheets beneath her.
    "The girl's in pretty bad shape," she heard a female voice say. The sweet scent of lilacs and roses drifted closer, mingling with the pleasant aroma of juniper wood emanating from a nearby fireplace.
    "Her injuries appear worse than they are." The man's voice was as deep and dark as a starless night.
    "That's a good thing," the woman responded. "Since the poor little thing looks like something the cat dragged in."
    The man mumbled something Noel could not quite catch. Then, "Hand me that bowl."
    A moment later, she felt a cool cloth stroking her throbbing forehead and breathed in the soothing scent of lavender water. The cloth moved over her face, down her neck, across her shoulder blades. When he hit a tender spot, she flinched and moaned again.
    "Shh." He pressed a fingertip against her lip, then brushed her hair back from her forehead with an infinitely tender touch.
    She was basking in the comforting touch, when the voice of the flight attendant, announcing their imminent arrival in New York, caused the dream to shatter into a thousand crystalline pieces.
    Still unsettled from the vivid, too-real dream, Noel managed to thank the smiling young woman for the warm moist towel the attendants always handed out prior to landing. As she washed her face and hands, Noel imagined that the white cloth carried the soothing scent of lavender.
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    Whiskey River, 1896
    The dream crept into Wolfe Longwalker's mind shortly before dawn, his thoughts tangling with a woman who was dreaming of him. Her hair was as pale as corn silk bathed in the golden glow of July sunshine. Her scent, as fragrant as a meadow in full bloom, surrounded him, infiltrating his mind, tantalizing his senses. Unable to resist the creamy lure of her skin, he reached out and touched her cheek with his fingertips, finding it to be just as soft as he'd imagined.
    He drew her into his arms, but as he lowered his mouth to her softly smiling one, she vanished, like the seductive dream she was.
    Cursing, Wolfe pushed himself off the wood-plank floor where he'd been sleeping, having found the cot too short and too narrow. He walked to the barred window and looked out at the wooden scaffold that was being built in his honor.
    As he planned his escape, the dream, and the woman, faded from his mind.
    Whiskey River, 1996
    Thirty-six long and exhausting hours after leaving Montacroix, Noel was in love. She had, of course, traveled to her mother's home country many times. But except for an occasional trip to southern California, she'd never been west of Chicago. Until now.
    All her life she'd been enamored with the mythology of the American