Buch lesen: «Renegade Most Wanted»

Emma flashed Matt Suede what she hoped was a seductive smile. She leaned into his hug and became distracted by the playful dusting of freckles frolicking over his nose and across his cheeks.

Matt bent his head, whispering in for a kiss.

Emma pressed two fingers to his lips, preventing what promised to be a fascinating experience.

“Matt, honey, you did promise me a proper wedding. I don’t think we should keep the preacher waiting.”

Matt’s arm stiffened. His fingers cramped about her middle. There was a very good chance that he had quit breathing.

The Marshal let out a deep-bellied laugh that startled poor Pearl and made her whinny. “Looks like you been caught after all, Suede.”

About the Author

While in the third grade, CAROL ARENS had a teacher who noted that she ought to spend less time daydreaming and looking out of the window and more time on her sums. Today, Carol spends as little time on sums as possible. Daydreaming about plots and characters is still far more interesting to her.

As a young girl, she read books by the dozen. She dreamed that one day she would write a book of her own. A few years later Carol set her sights on a new dream. She wanted to be the mother of four children. She was blessed with a son, then three daughters. While raising them she never forgot her goal of becoming a writer. When her last child went to high school she purchased a big old clunky word processor and began to type out a story.

She joined Romance Writers of America, where she met generous authors who taught her the craft of writing a romance novel. With the knowledge she gained she sold her first book and saw her life-long dream come true.

Carol lives with her real-life hero and husband Rick in Southern California, where she was born and raised. She feels blessed to be doing what she loves, with all her children and a growing number of perfect and delightful grandchildren living only a few miles from her front door.

When she is not writing, reading or playing with her grandchildren, Carol loves making trips to the local nursery. She delights in scanning the rows of flowers, envisaging which pretty plants will best brighten her garden.

She enjoys hearing from readers, and invites you to contact her at carolarens@yahoo.com

AUTHOR NOTE

I have always been fascinated by the stories and the people of the Old West. Homesteaders in particular were a resilient lot, who worked hard to build their homes and raise their families. My great-grandmother was one of them. She left behind the special gift of her memoirs.

She echoes through the pages of RENEGADE MOST WANTED. You will find her in both our heroine Emma and her friend Rachael. Like Emma, my great-grandmother was a homesteader, and sold patent medicine for the relief of ‘female complaints’. Like Rachael, she was a preacher.

I am thrilled to bring you Emma Parker and her outlaw cowboy Matt Suede. Come along with them while they wrench their love, their family and their home from the stubborn Kansas prairie.

I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I have enjoyed writing it.

You may contact me at carolarens@yahoo.com

Warm wishes!

Renegade Most Wanted

Carol Arens

www.millsandboon.co.uk

With love to my husband, Rick.

Cheers to thirty-six years!

Chapter One

Dodge City, Kansas, 1881

Land sakes! What did a woman have to do to get a husband in this cowboy-thick town—dance naked on the back of a steer?

Emma Parker licked a film of dust from her lips to make them look moist and alluring, but it was no use. She had been perched upon the bench outside the land office for so long that the wind, a perverse thing that spared no regard for a woman’s appearance, had spun her into a mound of bedraggled frippery.

No wonder the men passing by paid her no mind. July sunshine burned down like a blister to complete the ruination of her gown. Damp pink taffeta clung to her throat while a hank of droopy lace sagged against her bosom. Truly, what had ever made her think to spend a years’ worth of egg money on the ineffective garment?

A drip of perspiration trickled between her breasts, not unlike the disturbing sensation of a spider skittering over her skin. Mercy, for a dime she’d take a plunge into the Arkansas River flowing south of town, new dress be hanged.

There might have been a cooler, less dirt-ridden part of town to seek a spouse, but the men here kept up a constant coming and going. Not a moment passed that one didn’t come out of the mercantile or go into the saloon. This ought to have been as easy as plucking peaches from a tree.

To bolster her spirits, Emma touched her breast where a letter from a former employer was folded between her skin and the lace of her shift. She no longer needed to see the letter in order to read it. Every word was memorized, burned into her heart, giving life to her dreams.

“‘Dear Emma,’“ she recited in a whisper. “‘We find that we must move on in haste. Our wonderful homestead, a pure piece of paradise, will be free for the taking. We know how you yearn for a home of your own. Time is not on your side, dear. Catch the first train to Dodge before some other lucky soul files on it. May your future return to you all the joy and kindness that you have shown to our children over the years. Please do come quickly. Edna Harkins.’“

So far she had been lucky. The former Harkins place had not been filed on. It was destined to be hers, even if she had to flirt with every last bachelor in Dodge to get it.

Emma watched a prospective groom rumble down the earthen street in his wagon. Her loveliest smile earned no more than a raised hat when he rolled past. Drat if the jingle of his harness didn’t sound as if it was laughing at her.

This rough splintered bench should have been the perfect spot to catch a man. She couldn’t imagine what she was doing wrong. Weren’t the men of the west desperate for helpful mates? She’d always heard that was true, but her efforts at appearing irresistible seemed to be falling flat.

She’d bet a pretty penny that the man in the wagon would have no trouble at all filing a claim. His gender alone would make it a simple thing.

Pinpricks of irritation plucked at her patience. She wouldn’t even need a husband if the politicians who had passed the Homestead Act had been more open-minded about the rules. Even the clerk in the land office acted as if he had written them himself, the way he stuck to the very letter of the law.

Earlier this morning she had explained until her voice had grown hoarse that she was an orphan and no one knew her true age.

“The law says you’ve got to be twenty-one or head of a household. Even if guessing were allowed, you don’t look to be more than twenty.” The clerk scratched the lower of his double chins and wagged his finger at her. “Besides, I don’t see what a pretty little thing like you is going to do with all that land. No sir, it doesn’t seem safe or proper.”

And when had her life ever been safe or proper? The homestead was the one thing that would give her that. On her own land she’d put down deep roots where life’s whims couldn’t blow her about.

“As you’ll recall,” Emma had said, gathering her patience, “I do have—”

“Don’t tell me again that your blind horse qualifies you to be head of a household. You’ve got to have a young’un for that.”

That male-thinking nonsense curdled her stomach.

Since adopting a young’un was the very last thing she intended to do, she was stuck with finding a head of the household to file her claim for her. Anyone still breathing would do. After all, they would be married only the few moments it would take the gent to file her claim. The lucky man would then walk away ten dollars richer.

Heavy boot thumps drummed the wooden sidewalk. Emma twirled her dainty satin parasol and glanced to her left with a wide blink and a smile that felt like yesterday’s flowers.

A tall man, a dandy by the looks of him, blew a ring of cigarette smoke into the fleeting afternoon. He strode past her with his back stiff and his polished boots reflecting arrows of sunlight.

The stench of stale cologne and nicotine trailed behind him long after he disappeared through the land-office doors.

What if the stick-to-the-letter-of-the-law clerk issued the dandified gent the claim to the homestead that she had traveled hundreds of miles by clackety, bone-jarring train to stake as her own? Her mind saw the transaction occurring as clearly as if the building had no walls.

Emma groaned, then glanced across the street through a gap between a pair of buildings. The sun had already begun its long red slide toward a horizon that looked like the end of the earth itself.

Somewhere on that flat, golden prairie was her new home. She intended to sleep there tonight, to listen to the wind blow over her very own grass. In the morning she would wake to a chorus of birds singing about her shining new future.

Emma redoubled her efforts to attract the attention of a farmer crossing the street only a few yards from where she sat. He stepped into the mercantile without so much as a tipped hat.

“Good morning, Mr. Pendragon.” Emma heard an adolescent voice greet the stiff-postured gentleman who had just stepped inside the land office. “Good day for a bank robbery.”

“There will be no holdup today, boy,” a cultured voice snapped. “I’ve taken precautions this time.”

A redheaded youth stepped outside with a broom gripped in his fists. He shoved it back and forth across the boardwalk with a swish and sway.

The boy paused in his sweeping to nod at her. “You sit there long enough, ma’am, and you’ll see The Ghost.”

Emma didn’t want to see a ghost—she wanted to see a willing man. Too bad this boy attacking the dust on the walk was so young.

What had to be Mr. Pendragon’s voice—sounding peeved—carried out of the land-office door. “There is no ghost, young sir! It’s merely a thief determined to get his neck stretched.”

The boy stopped sweeping and leaned against the broom handle. He gazed down the sidewalk, past the mercantile toward the bank.

“He’s a thief, all right,” he muttered to Emma. “The money’s always good and gone. But he’s no mortal bank robber—anyone will say so.”

“They will?” Emma asked, trying to ignore the sun slipping another notch toward the horizon.

“There’s a ghost and it’s a fact.” The boy resumed his sweeping, stirring up a swell of dust that settled on her eyelashes and tickled her nose.

“I expect even The Ghost is married,” Emma mumbled.

“Beg pardon, ma’am?”

“Never mind. What makes you so certain the bank will be robbed today?”

The boy sat down beside her on the bench. He lowered his voice to a confidential whisper.

“That fellow inside, Mr. Pendragon, got paid on a load of cattle he shipped east. Made a big deposit to the bank this morning.” He nodded toward the doorway of the land office. “The Ghost only robs Mr. Pendragon.”

“How considerate.” She tapped her toe on the boardwalk. Time was quickly becoming her enemy. “Mr. Pendragon sounds like an English gentleman.”

“He’s someone lordly. Got a huge spread outside of town. Each week he sends in one of his hands to take up homesteads on the deserted places all around. Before long, nobody will have a steer that doesn’t graze on Pendragon land.”

Emma’s heart dropped and spun around. A less purposeful woman might have felt a ladylike swoon coming on.

Lands! She needed a husband. If she didn’t get one quickly, Pendragon would snatch up her homestead!

Apparently finished with ghost tales, the boy got up and went back inside the land office.

Emma snatched her shotgun from her lap and tucked it under her skirt, leaving only a few inches of the barrel in view. Maybe that’s what was scaring the gents away. They wouldn’t know it was unloaded and that she had never fired more than a pebble at a rat in the henhouse. It wouldn’t be wise to let it go completely unseen in a half-settled cow town like Dodge, but surely she looked more sociable now.

After twenty minutes of smiling like the dickens and quietly cursing under her breath, Emma stood up to regain the circulation in her backside. She shook the dust from her parasol and brushed up a cloud of it from her skirt. Lord only knew what the palms of her frilly white gloves would look like when she was finished.

After what seemed an eternity, the Englishman strutted out of the land office and blew out a lungful of smoke. He flicked the butt of his cigarette on the sidewalk, then ground it out with his boot heel.

“You’ll make sure my man gets that piece of property?” he called back inside.

Emma didn’t hear the answer, but it must have been yes, for a smug grin shot over his narrow jaw before he lurched into a buggy and drove his team out of town down Front Street.

It must be her land he had spoken of! Surely it was, since the place was said to be no less than paradise on earth. What other piece of ground could he have wanted?

With her heart flip-flopping in her chest, Emma rushed through the land-office doorway. She stomped toward the clerk lounging at his desk.

Drat, she hadn’t noticed that she had led the way with her shotgun until the boy dropped his broom. It clattered like scattered marbles on the floor.

The clerk choked on a swallow of something that he had raised to his lips in a ruby-colored glass. She was unlikely to win any favors from the man now.

“Was that my land he wanted?” She tried to sound like sweetness and light, but it was no good. She pointed the nose of the gun toward the floor. “It’s not actually loaded.”

A pair of relieved sighs whooshed through the office.

“Well, now, Miss Parker.” The land-office manager tipped back in his chair and folded his hands across his wide belly. “Unless you’ve turned twenty-one or become the head of a household since you came in this morning, I can’t give you that homestead.”

“Did the Englishman take it?”

“No, miss, he wanted another.”

“Praise be!” Emma spun about and fairly skipped out the door, her hope renewed. The expensive lace border on her dress caught Mr. Pendragon’s discarded cigarette ashes like the best of brooms. Her gown was getting grayer by the hour. Unless she found a man soon she’d be the dingiest bride to ever wed in Dodge.

She resumed her seat on the bench, fluffed her withered skirt and set her smile in place. In spite of the obstacles Dodge City had thrown in her way, she would catch a husband, and she would do it today.

Days didn’t come along much finer than this one. Matt Suede tugged his hat brim down to shade his eyes from the afternoon sun. His boot heels clicking on the boardwalk echoed up and down Front Street.

Town was quiet this time of day, with the morning’s business completed and the evening’s not yet begun, just the way it suited him, but something felt wrong.

He ought to pay attention to that niggling feeling. The smart thing would be to call off the bank robbery for today. Then again, it would be his last holdup and he’d like to get it over with.

A dust devil whirled down the middle of the street. A woman sitting on a bench outside the land office swung up her parasol, hiding from the gust until it passed by.

Matt slowed his pace. The lady was something to look at, as appealing as a prairie flower. She shook dust from her umbrella, then fluffed her skirt out on the bench.

Her hair had mostly come undone from the bun at her neck. Sunlight speckled gold threads in the curls that tumbled down her back.

When he had the time he’d have to remember her delicate womanhood and make up a song about her. He’d sing it to the beeves to soothe them at roundup some long dark night from now.

He might have approached her if his plans for the afternoon had been different, but he shouldn’t have slowed his pace as it was.

He’d passed by the marshal’s office and been relieved to see Dodge’s lawman asleep. His snorts and snores should have been reassuring, but the air was ripe with something being wrong.

Matt glanced up and down the street, ready to duck behind the building where his cousin and accomplice, Billy, waited with a getaway horse in a gully covered with brush. There was just enough space between overgrowth and sand to hide a man and a horse, but not for long.

He’d just made up his mind to sneak around back when Gray Derby Bart, the meanest drunk in Dodge, staggered up to the woman on the bench. She smiled at him politely, but she had no idea what she might be getting into just by that common act of friendliness.

Bart might be a small man but he was mean through and through, especially when it came to the gentler sex.

Matt quick-footed it past the bank. Billy could wait a few minutes. The woman could not.

The sky at sunrise wasn’t as pretty as her blue eyes. From the spark of interest glittering in Bart’s rheumy gaze, he must have thought the same, but not in any respectful way a man should look at a decent woman.

“Afternoon, ma’am … Bart?” Matt tipped his hat. The lady turned her smile away from Bart and let it shine on him. Chilly nights on the cow trail would be considerably warmer if he could remember her smile, just so.

“Good afternoon.” Her voice washed clean through him. It was the sweetest sound he’d heard in some time.

“I hope Bart here isn’t causing you any concern, miss.”

“My concern ain’t no concern of yours, Matthew Suede.” Bart’s lip curled up in one corner, like an old dog snapping for a fight. “Me and the lady were conducting some personal business.”

Sometimes when he was in his cups Bart imagined things. This sure would be one of those times, since this delicate woman would not be likely to have dealings with a scoundrel.

Matt dug into his pocket and withdrew a dollar bill. He pushed it into Bart’s fist. “Go on over to the Long Branch and give that business some further thought.”

Bart glanced at the money, then at the lady. Oddly enough, she didn’t seem pleased. Surely she couldn’t be sorry to be rid of Bart.

“I’ll be back shortly, sweet thing. You wait right here for me and we’ll finish what we were up to.” Bart closed one eye in a lewd wink. A dribble of spit leaked out the corner of his mouth when he leaned forward as though he thought to kiss the lady.

She snapped her umbrella up. Such a frilly weapon wouldn’t discourage that snake. The lady wouldn’t know not to make an enemy of Bart. Best to keep him pointed toward the saloon and let him drink his meanness into a stupor.

“Go on, now.” Matt stepped between the parasol and the drunk. He directed Bart down the steps much as he would herd a straying cow. “Bad luck to let good whiskey go waiting.”

“Don’t you move, sweet thing,” Bart called from halfway across the street.

From behind, a rustling of silk and lace told Matt that the woman had risen from the bench. He’d like to stay a while and bask in her gratitude for getting rid of Bart, but Billy was probably getting nervous by now.

If the day had been different he would have invited the lady for a steak at Del Monico’s. They could get acquainted in a proper way.

“Blast and tarnation!”

Startled, Matt spun about and found himself gazing down at the woman’s shifting bustle. Too soon she straightened, then whirled on him with a shotgun gripped in her small, lacy-gloved fists.

This rose had thorns all up and down her pretty stem.

“Why, you interfering do-gooder!” She must have seen him go wide-eyed, for she plunked her weapon, nose-first, onto the boardwalk. “I was just about to get a—”

All of a sudden her gaze turned speculative. She slid the shotgun onto the bench behind her along with her umbrella. She planted her hands on her hips, swaying ever so slightly while she looked him up and down. Now he knew how a steer would feel, being priced for market.

All of a sudden the woman appeared soft, like a cuddly kitten that had retracted its claws.

“You stay clear of that old man, miss. He may not look like much, but he’s mean as a mad dog.”

Matt spun about. It was definitely time to meet his cousin.

“Mr. Suede,” he heard the lady call out from behind. “Are you a married man?”

He glanced back, smiled and tipped his hat, but his boots couldn’t carry him down the walk fast enough.

Emma pushed open the door to the livery and stepped inside. A beam of light from a window near the rafters stabbed through the interior of the huge barn, making it feel almost like church on a quiet afternoon. If it hadn’t been for the dust particles swirling lazily about, she’d have been of a mind to get on her knees and ask the almighty for a man. But she’d had about enough of dust for one day. The livery floor, while clean enough for a barn, wasn’t the place to kneel in a prolonged prayer, and prolonged prayer was what she would need to get a husband before the land office closed for the day.

“Mr. Adams?” Emma called out.

Jesse Adams kept his livery as neat as a woman kept a house. It smelled good in here, with the scent of polished leather, fresh hay and clean horses all mixed together.

A door in the back of the barn creaked open. A man poked his head through the opening but didn’t come inside. From a dim corner a horse nickered a greeting.

“Oh … good afternoon, Miss Parker.” Jesse Adams took a glance back at whatever he had been doing, then flashed a fresh, friendly grin at her. Too bad the man claimed to be nearly engaged. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“I’ve just come by to check on my horse and my supplies. Do you mind if I stay here for a while?”

A frown creased his forehead while he considered her request but he said, “You make yourself at home, ma’am. I’ll be right out back. Holler if you need something.”

If only hollering would get her what she needed. She’d come so close, too. That old gent in front of the mercantile had all but agreed to marry her, and for only ten dollars. True, he had been drunk and smelly, but she could have overlooked those flaws for the few moments she would need to borrow his name.

Drat that fine-looking Mr. Suede. If he hadn’t filled her prospect’s fist with money and sent him along to the saloon, she’d be hitching up her rented team, ready to cross the wide-open prairie by now. She’d finally be going home.

Not to someone else’s home, to her own. What a wonder it would be to plant trees in her own soil and watch them grow. Wouldn’t it be fine to not have to continually move on, and leave her plantings to grow up without her?

In her new life there wouldn’t be other people’s children hanging on her skirts wanting this and that. Emma had still been a child herself when she had started raising other folks’ babies. Praise be that the days of other people’s children were behind her. No more wiping runny noses, sitting up all night through fevers and cheering their first steps and words, just to be forced to take another position and never see them again.

From now on it was just Emma, free to come and go, free to sit or stand, with nobody wanting a thing from her.

Emma watched the rectangle of light grow dark when Jesse closed the barn door. She turned about and walked with open arms toward her horse.

“Well, Pearl, old girl.” Pearl wasn’t really old, but she was blind and tended to move with caution, which gave her an aged look. Emma stroked the velvety nose that nudged her ribs in welcome. “I missed you, too. There’s just a little chance that you’ll have to spend the night at the livery one more time. Seems like the men here are a bit skittish when it comes to matrimony. It’s not at all like everyone back in Indiana says.”

No indeed, it was so much more complicated getting a husband. She had expected to simply file on the land that Edna Harkins had written her about and gone to live on a piece of earth that would be her own.

She hadn’t figured on the trials of having to get a man. Well, that was just one more complication of having been an orphan. Being left on the steps of a church as a newborn had made her who she was, for good and for ill.

Emma rubbed Pearl behind one ear, then patted the white diamond on the chestnut head before she went to the corner of the livery where her rented wagon stood ready and waiting to make the trip to her homestead.

“Don’t you worry, Pearl, we’ll go home soon,” Emma called out to the horse while she lifted the flap covering the goods necessary to set up housekeeping. She had passed the morning at various shops in Dodge using an uncomfortable portion of her savings, but she had spent wisely and had the funds to get started and then some.

Emma touched the bag of money tied about her waist. It couldn’t be seen beneath her skirt, but when she walked, it hit her thigh with a reassuring slap.

Very soon, life would be grander than she could have ever imagined. Those days of caring for everyone but herself were at an end. Poor orphan Emma, whom everyone pitied enough to take into their home in exchange for working her youth away, was about to become queen of her world.

“This time tomorrow, Pearl, you’ll be grazing on land so nice and flat and big that you can wander about all day and never leave home.”

Poor blind Pearl—Emma hoped that the horse would enjoy the freedom of the open country. Years ago an employer had given her the horse as a parting gift when he had decided to move his family to the East Coast. Families came and went, but Pearl was her own.

With a sigh, she put away misty memories of children that were not her own and trees that grew tall without her.

The troublesome search for a husband had done her in. Surely she would have better luck after she was fresh and rested. Just behind her rented wagon was a clean heap of straw that would do for a short nap. She lay down on it, spread her arms wide and watched dust specks play tag in a beam of light.

Wasn’t this fine? To simply lie back without an employer needing this or that seemed the life of luxury.

Just as soon as she borrowed a man, life would be cherries and cream.

Emma came awake to the urgent whispers of two men behind the livery. As the pleasant fuzziness of her nap cleared from her mind, she recognized one voice as that of Jesse Adams.

She sat up, then heard running bootsteps pounding outside, following the sidewall of the livery. They made a skidding turn, then dashed inside.

The wagon, loaded with her supplies, prevented her from seeing who the running boots belonged to, but she heard the quick rush of a man’s winded breathing.

His feet shuffled in the dirt and then three white stockings came flying over the wagon. They whooshed past her face and drifted down onto her straw bed.

She snatched them up. The livery filled with shouting male voices, one deep voice barking out over the rest for order.

“Look what we’ve got here, boys,” the deep voice said. Emma scrunched low on her bed of straw, lying flat on her belly to peer through the spokes of the wagon wheels.

One pair of motionless boots faced half a dozen pair that shuffled up dust on the livery floor.

With seven men in the livery, odds were fair that at least one of them was a single man.

“Afternoon, Marshal Deeds,” said the owner of the pair of boots facing the others.

“Afternoon, Suede. You happen to see a ghost run in here?” Deep guffaws followed the marshal’s question.

A ghost? Emma opened the stockings wadded up in her fists. Yes, indeed, a ghost. Her fingers popped right through the cut-out eyeholes of one of the scraps.

“You been drinking on the job, Marshal?”

“Mighty funny, Matt, that The Ghost comes flying into the livery and here you happen to be, all alone.” This voice came from the back of the gathering of boots.

Lands! That handsome Mr. Suede who had sent her drunk prospect packing was a bank robber? He’d seemed such a decent sort. Perhaps there was some personal grudge between Mr. Pendragon and … The Ghost, since the dandy was the only one who got robbed.

“It’s no crime to be in the livery.”

“Give it up, Suede. Everyone here saw you run inside.”

The boots belonging to the marshal took a step forward. Matt Suede’s boots didn’t move a piece of grit out of place.

“I’m going to have to arrest you, Suede.”

“Pendragon’s going to see that you hang,” the owner of a pair of boots with a rip in one toe said. “You might have ate your last meal and not even known it.”

Mercy! Just when things seemed darkest, life always seemed to take a bright turn.

Emma opened the first button of her bodice, glanced down to judge the effect, then opened three more. For good measure she stuffed in a hank of straw. Hopefully her eyes still had a sleepy, languid look from her nap. A few more pieces of straw would be just the thing. She snatched them up, poked them into her hair, then mussed the whole thing with her fingertips.

She wadded up the stocking scraps and slowly, silently shoved them deep into the straw.

“Matt? Honey …” Emma stood up from the straw bed stretching and yawning like a cat full of cream. “Come on back here—you can check on poor blind Pearl later.”

Matt Suede turned in a slow pivot. His manly jaw fell open. Earth-colored brows shot up over golden-brown eyes gone wide with surprise. Gradually his mouth closed, his grin stretched wide. Wrinkles creased the corners of eyes that seemed to be laughing in relief and mischief. Mostly mischief.

Emma stepped out from behind the wagon looking down and pretending to struggle with the buttons of her gown as though she hadn’t noticed the men gawking at her.