Shotgun Bride Read Free Page A

desperate bid for courage, then fixed Curry with a glare. He thrived on other folks’ fright, and he could smell it, like the wild animal he was. She’d learned a long time ago not to show fear, whether he was around or not.
    “What do you want?” she asked, chin raised and jutting a little. She thought of Cree, her half brother, and hoped he was far away, and safe.
    Curry raised his free hand as if to backhand her, then apparently thought better of the idea and let it fall to his side. “I want to know where that little war-whoop brother of yours is right now. He’s been bad-mouthing me, and messing in my business.”
    Mandy might have called out for help just then, if there had been more people on the street, but the nip in the air and the rising fear of trouble between the various ranches had driven most of them inside. “I haven’t seen him,” she said, and made sure she was snippy about it, though it might just earn her a beating. Or worse. “But if I had, I wouldn’t tell you.”
    Gig looked as if he might be about to choke her again. “You double-crossing little—”
    She tried to stare him down.
    “Now you listen to me, Amanda Rose. If that savage gets the chance, he’ll ambush me, and that means my life is on the line. There’s one person in all the world he gives a good goddamn about, and that’s you. So it does seem to me that you might need a little persuasion to get that memory of yours fired up.”
    As if she’d betray her brother for any reason. He was the only person in the world she’d ever completely trusted and, besides her mama, the only one she’d loved. “Cree’s no savage,” she said. “He makes ten of you.”
    Gig lifted his hand again, and this time, she knew he wouldn’t hold back; he meant to hit her hard enough to loosen her teeth. The way he’d done with her mother so many times, and with Cree, too, before he’d got his fill of it, when he was just sixteen, and ridden out for good.
    Door hinges creaked nearby, and Mandy’s heart squeezed itself into her throat. In a glance, she saw Kade McKettrick standing on the back stoop, about to light a cheroot. He’d shed his trail-worn coat and left his hat inside, but a .45 rode low on his right hip, loose and ready in its holster. Mandy’s attention went right to that gun and got stuck there for a long moment.
    Kade put out the match he’d just struck, slipped the unlit cheroot into his shirt pocket. “There some difficulty here?” he asked easily, but some quality underlying his words reverberated through Mandy like the hiss of a rattler, invisible in the tall grass, primed to sink fangs into flesh.
    Seeing Kade, Gig muttered a curse, and Mandy figured he must have been skulking around long enough to learn who was who around Indian Rock, starting with the McKettricks. His eyes blazed with a brief, ancient malevolence; he hated most folks, just on general principle, but especially the ones he perceived as privileged.
    The display was quelled in an instant. Curry was part reptile himself; he could slither right out of his skin when it didn’t serve his purposes and take on a whole new aspect, just that easy.
    “No difficulty at all,” he said, taking a step back. His smile was ingenuous, mild, and wholly false. Mandy reckoned the devil probably smiled like that while he was watching souls roast in the fires of hell.
    She shuddered at the image. If stealing was indeed a mortal sin, she’d surely end up in Hades herself, turning on a spit.
    Mandy forced herself to breathe slowly, by dint of will, and to calm down. Straightening her habit and adjusting her wimple, she struggled against an undignified inclination to dash over to the stoop and hide out behind McKettrick. Her fierce pride prevailed, though, even over the instinct to protect herself, and she stayed where she was.
    “It’s cold out here,” her rescuer said moderately, addressing his words to Mandy, though his gaze remained fixed on Gig and slightly narrowed.