The Drifter's Bride Read Free

the pain of failing to rescue those young girls so many years before. ‘I rode through the night,’ he admitted finally. ‘Slowly, mind you, not to risk injury to the roan.’
    ‘I’m sorry that my father…tricked you…’
    He listened to her muttered words and shrugged to dismiss the reluctant apology. He’d deal with her father when they got back to the farm. ‘I’ll go and have a wash,’ he informed her, and rubbed a hand over his bristly jaw. ‘Shave, too.’
    ‘If I hadn’t dropped my soap when you grabbed me, I could lend it to you.’
    ‘It’s all right.’ He gave a grudging nod to indicate that he appreciated her gesture of friendship. With a wry smile, he added, ‘I wouldn’t want to go around smelling of honeysuckle. Attracts flies almost as much as it attracts men. I have a cake of carbolic in my saddlebags.’
    ‘Do you have any food?’
    He sauntered across the clearing and pulled a bar of soap and a towel from his saddlebags on the ground. Then he tossed the worn leather satchels in front of her and walked over to his horse. ‘You’ll find something to eat inside,’ he promised. ‘I’ll take Grace down to the creek with me.’
    ‘Grace? You gave a woman’s name to a gelding?’
    ‘Seemed fitting. The horse is the most precious thing I own.’ He regretted the words as soon as they were out, but Jade didn’t stop to question the comment.
    ‘Beans…jerky…coffee,’ she muttered as she dug in the saddlebags.
    A few paces down the path, Carl brought the roan to a halt and turned to look back over his shoulder. ‘Remember,’ he told the girl. ‘I’ll take you back, and I’ll get paid for it. If you run, I’ll catch you every time. I’ll take you back because that’s what I do. And I always get paid for my trouble.’
    Past memories flickered through his mind. Too often as a child he’d worked until his body ached and his hands bled raw, and then had not been given what he’d been promised, even if it might have only been a few scraps of food.
    Never again.
    If Carl Ritter took on a job, he’d damn well collect his pay.

Chapter Two
    Jade stirred the pan of beans over the flames. Behind her she heard the clatter of hooves as the man led his horse back up the slope. Moving without a sound, like a shadow in the thickening darkness, he paused to secure the gelding to a grassy spot on the edge of the clearing and then came to sit down on the ground beside her.
    ‘I’ll give you the plate and spoon,’ she told him, focused on the food she was dishing out. ‘I’ll use the wooden ladle and eat from the pan.’ She turned to pass him the heaped plate. As her gaze fell on him, she almost tipped the beans and jerky into the dust.
    He had shaved, and since he hadn’t taken a razor from his saddlebags, he must have used the bowie knife he kept in his boot. A frisson crept over Jade as she imagined the lethal blade scraping against his skin. He’d managed it with only two cuts, one on the side of his jaw, the other at the corner of his mouth—the exact spot where a woman would place her lips if she couldn’t decide whether to kiss him on the cheek or full on the mouth.
    Up to now, she hadn’t realized how young he was. He couldn’t be more than thirty. And he was beautiful. His face was sharply drawn, with high cheekbones, a straight nose and a square chin. The wide, full mouth contrasted with the hollow leanness of his cheeks—a leanness she suspected was natural to his features, for his body lacked the gauntness of a man suffering from starvation.
    Unaware of her scrutiny, he took the plate from her. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and directed his attention to the food. After a moment, he spoke again. ‘Your father wants you home, but you’d rather be with the Apache. Is that right?’
    She nodded. ‘That’s about the size of it.’
    ‘Why?’ he asked.
    ‘Why what? Why I go to the Apache, or why my father wants me back?’
    ‘Both.’
    Jade dunked the wooden spoon into