The Gunman's Bride Read Free Page A

gave her friend a quick hug.
    Pulling out of the embrace, Rosie stood and smoothed the rumples in the pink quilt on her bed. There were probably lots of Bart Kingsleys in the world. Besides, she was about as far as she could be from Kansas City and the life she had shared with him. No one was going to find her in Raton, New Mexico. Not her pappy. Not the man who had been her fiancé for the past two years. And certainly not Bart Kingsley.
    “Lock up now, Laurie,” Etta said from the doorway.
    “I’ve put your shoes out in the hall. You’ll see how much better everything will be in the morning.”
     
    Under the bed, Bart watched as Rosie bolted her door and set a chair under the knob. He knew she was afraid. But afraid of Bart, the murdering outlaw? Or afraid of him, the Bart who had married her and then had run off and left her high and dry?
    It wasn’t going to matter much either way if he up and died right under her bed. He needed to slide out from under this bed, wash his wound with some clean water and try to take a look at the damage. He needed ointment and bandages. He needed water. His mouth felt like the inside of an old shoe.
    But he couldn’t risk scaring Rosie by edging out into the open. She’d holler, her friends would come running and that would be that. The sheriff would cart him off to jail, the Pinkerton agent would haul him back to Missouri and the law would hang him high. A half-breed Indian who had robbed trains and banks with Jesse James wouldn’t stand a chance in court.
    Bart swallowed against the bitter gall of memory as he recalled the years he’d squandered. And now, after all this time, he’d found his Rosie again. She had been the one bright spot in his life, and once again she was his only hope.
    He studied her feet as she peeled away her stockings. There had been a time when she would let him hold those feet, rub away their tiredness, kiss each tender pink toe. Her black dress puddled to the floor and a soft white ruffle-hemmed gown took its place, skimming over her pretty ankles.
    She began to hum, and Bart worked his shoulders across the hard floor in hope of a better look. The thought of dying this close to his Rosie without ever really seeing her face again sent an ache through him. He tilted his head so the pink quilt covered just one eye and left the other exposed.
    Her back turned to him, she sat on a chair, let down her hair and began to pull a brush from the dark chocolate roots to the sun-lightened cascade that fell past her waist and over her hips. “Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty,” she counted in a soft voice.
    She swung the mass of hair across her shoulders and began to brush the other side. “Fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three…”
    She had put her feet into a basin of water while she worked on her hair, and Bart could see those bare ankles again. He shut his eyes, swallowing the lump that rose in his throat at the memory of the first time he’d caught a glimpse of Rosie’s feet.
    They had been down at the swimming hole where he and his stepbrothers liked to fool around. But this was a chilly autumn afternoon, and Bart’s stepbrothers were nowhere in sight. Rosie had agreed to meet him at the swimming hole, and he’d been waiting for her like a horse champing at the bit.
    When she finally came, she was full of silliness and laughter, her head tilted back and her brown eyes shining at him with all the love in the world. She had dropped down onto the grassy bank, unlaced her boots and taken off her stockings. Then, while he held his breath, she had lifted the hem of her skirt and waded right into the icy pool.
    Hoo-ee, how he had stared at those pale curvy legs and those thin little ankles. She hadn’t known, of course, what havoc her childlike impulse wreaked in his heart. His prim, sweet Rosie was the essence of innocence.
    Under the bed, Bart suppressed the urge to chuckle at the memory of her sauntering back onto the bank,pulling up her stockings and lacing her