The Outlaw and the Lady Read Free Page A

husband,” Lee assured him—and she had far too much green material. The puffy sleeves had gotten in his way when he’d struggled to subdue her. The bodice rose to her neck, where a collar circled her throat, every button snugly secure. She only exposed the flesh of her face and hands, and yet she was a temptation he could not explain. Perhaps because she left too much to a man’s imagination. Yet he had a feeling that once a man saw what was beneath all that cloth, he would work diligently to keep it uncovered. “She would have been warming his bed, not walking the streets at midnight.”
    “You find her attractive?” Alejandro asked.
    Incredibly so. More than her petite frame, her lush coloring, and her delicate features, he was attracted by the untamed spirit he’d felt in her when he’d first grabbed her. She was no simpering female willing to follow. She would fighttooth and nail to achieve what she wanted, and right now she craved freedom. He did not trust her, but she lured him like a siren’s song. “She is not so hard on the eyes.”
    “Her hair is too red for my taste,” Alejandro said.
    “I like her hair. It reminds me of…” Something teased his memory, a glimpse into a past he could not remember. Quickly unveiled only to be hidden once again.
    “What? What does it remind you of?” Alejandro asked.
    Lee shook his head. “The flames dancing in a fire.”
    “Then you must be careful, brother. With her, you could get burned.”
    A price he imagined any man without a bounty on his head would be more than willing to pay. He was damned near tempted himself as he watched the morning shafts of sunlight tease her hair and play over the delicate slope of her shoulders. She stumbled again.
    “She is a clumsy one,” Alejandro remarked.
    Narrowing his eyes, Lee studied her more closely. She held out one hand as though to fend off an attacker, when the only thing before her was a copse of trees. She pitched forward once more.
    “Damn it!” Lee barked. He shoved himself away from the tree, strode across the clearing, grabbed the woman’s arm, and spun her around.
    He raked his gaze over her and released a slewof expletives designed to make Satan blush before announcing with disgust at his own stupidity, “She is not clumsy. She is blind! I had no reason to take her.”

Chapter 3
    “I am not blind!”
    Denying the truth, Angela wrenched free of Lee Raven’s unrelenting grasp. The derision in his voice—as though the knowledge he’d gained suddenly made her not worthy of abducting—rankled.
    “It does not bother you to have a man standing before you who is not wearing a stitch of clothing?” he asked in a voice that reminded her of the manner in which whiskey burned her throat.
    Bluff riddled his words; it was as worthless as a man holding nothing but daring to wager everything he possessed. She angled her chin defiantly and narrowed her eyes.
    “You haven’t removed your denim britches or your chambray shirt.” Clothing that fit him so snugly she’d been able to feel the heat of his fleshpenetrating her gown as they’d galloped away from Fortune.
    “You accurately identified my clothing, señorita , but you do not know if I am still wearing it,” he mused, and this time she heard the humor laced in his low-pitched voice and could almost envision him shaking his finger at her. “I bluff. You bluff. I bet you would make an excellent poker player.”
    “I’m one hell of a poker player,” she snapped, having left her patience on the boardwalk outside the bank in Fortune. “And you can stop talking with that irritatingly fake Mexican accent.”
    “What?”
    He sounded truly baffled, but she didn’t think she’d read him wrong. Beneath his Mexican accent was a shadow of another, faint and distant. “I know you’re not Mexican,” she insisted.
    “ Mi madre y mi padre would argue otherwise. Eh, Alejandro?” Then he spewed off a tangle of Spanish that made her doubt her convictions, not