Bounty Hunter's Bride. Carol Finch

mouth shut so fast she nearly snipped off the end of her tongue. “That is to say, you look positively dashing.”

      Cale glanced over her blond head and smiled reassuringly at Judge Parker, who stared inquisitively at Sarah’s peculiar behavior. Cale knew exactly what she’d thought when he strode up behind her. He’d seen her stiffen, glance speculatively at the window. Her body language had told him that she hadn’t recognized him and that she was preparing to make a hasty departure via the window.

      After James Jensen informed Cale that a Pinkerton agent was snooping around town, Cale had made arrangements to have Sarah driven discreetly to the courthouse. What he didn’t know was why the agent was trailing her. Being suspicious by nature and by habit, he couldn’t help but wonder whom she’d murdered and if the stash of money she carried was stolen.

      Yet there was a decided innocence about Sarah—or whoever she really was, and he intended to find that out very soon. An innocence that made it hard for him to believe she was capable of murder and mayhem. Although he suspected she’d fed him white lies and half-truths up to this point, Cale was more than a little stunned to realize he trusted Little Miz Magnolia’s honor and integrity. And that was saying something, because Cale had learned years ago not to put faith in anyone but himself.

      When Sarah withdrew and stared happily at him, Cale forgot to breathe. His gaze fell to the revealing décolleté that displayed her creamy breasts to their best advantage. He tried to swallow—and couldn’t. To say this woman was beautiful had to be the understatement of the century. Despite the unsightly bruise on her cheek—and he’d like to mutilate and murder the heathen who’d put it there—she was every man’s secret fantasy come true.

      And she wanted to marry him? The question ripped through his mind for the dozenth time. Why?

      Cale figured a gentleman should gush compliments when he beheld such a vision of ravishing beauty, but his tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of his mouth. He simply stood there, drinking in every inch of her luscious swells and curves, itching to run his fingers over her satiny skin.

      Judge Parker cleared his throat and arched a brow as he stared at Cale in wry amusement. “You indicated expedience,” he prompted his tongue-tied deputy marshal. “Shall we get on with it?”

      “Yes,” Sarah insisted as she clutched Cale’s hand and pivoted to face the judge.

      She looked so fiercely determined that Cale had to bite back a grin. Never in his wildest dreams had he envisioned such a sophisticated beauty practically champing at the bit to get herself hitched to him.

      “Please don’t back out on me because a Pinkerton agent is looking for me,” she whispered. “There is nothing illegal or immoral about wanting this marriage to take place. I need the protection of your name, and I will be happy to explain why later. But, please, not now, okay? Can we continue the ceremony?”

      The judge dutifully rattled off the words to legally bind them together. All the while, questions swirled in Cale’s mind. What was she running from that had a Pinkerton agent snooping around town? Cale promised himself that he’d have answers before the night was out. It was easier to be prepared for trouble if you knew what form it took and what to expect rather than wandering blindly into a catastrophe.

      He glanced up, startled, when Sarah gouged him in the ribs.

      “Do you take this woman?” Judge Parker prompted a second time.

      “I do,” he said, and nodded.

      “And do you—” The judge frowned at the name she had written on the piece of paper she handed to him, then gaped at her. “Hanna Malloy?”

      “Malloy?” Cale crowed in disbelief as he stared at his soon-to-be bride. “Good grief!” The well-known, disgustingly wealthy shipping entrepreneur from New Orleans was her father? Even Cale had heard of the dynasty that could practically buy and sell the whole blessed country!

      The beseeching look Hanna Malloy flashed him caused his breath to gush from his lungs. She stared at him as if all her hopes and dreams were pinned on him, as if he held the answer to all her prayers, the key to her future.

      Well, hell. What man could peer into those incredible amethyst eyes, fringed with long thick lashes, and turn her down? Not even him. He wasn’t that hard-hearted.

      “Okay, go on, Judge,” he said with a gusty breath.

      “Do you, Hanna?” the judge asked, still looking a little bewildered.

      “I do.” She sagged in relief and her knees wobbled when the judge finally pronounced them man and wife. Now all that was left was a hasty kiss and the signatures on the license. In a few more moments all would be said and done, and she would be virtually untouchable by her father. Walter Malloy could shout and rant and rave for all he was worth, but he couldn’t undo this marriage. She had her freedom at long last.

      “Kiss your bride, son,” the judge said, smiling.

      Hanna tilted her face upward, expecting a chaste kiss—and found herself practically bent over backward as Cale’s full lips took possession. She sizzled. She burned. She nearly melted in a puddle while he kissed her as if there was no tomorrow and they were sharing their last dying breath.

      Astounded, tingling with unprecedented sensations that channeled in every direction at once, Hanna found herself kissing him back with the same fanatic enthusiasm he directed toward her. Heavens, it was like breathing fire, as if every ounce of sense she’d spent two decades cultivating was being sucked right out of her body, leaving her functioning on nothing but pure desire.

      And then, just as suddenly as he’d grabbed her, he propped her upright. He clamped an arm around her waist when she staggered clumsily, then he reached out to shake hands with the judge.

      “We’ll need witnesses,” Judge Parker declared as he strode toward the door. “I’ll be right back.”

      In openmouthed amazement Hanna stared at her handsome new husband, whose dignified clothes were no more than a civilized veneer concealing the sensual wild man who’d just kissed her senseless.

      “That’s what you get for not telling me who you are,” Cale muttered at her. “And damn it, who’d you kill to send a Pinkerton chasing after you?”

      “I didn’t kill anyone,” she squeaked. “Honestly.”

      Cale’s head was still spinning like a windmill after that mind-boggling, heart-stopping kiss. Furthermore, he couldn’t believe he’d married a shipping heiress. For criminey sake, what could Hanna have been thinking?

      He was still scowling at her and trying to recover from his sudden lust attack when James Jensen and his wife trooped in to sign their names on the three copies of the licenses that Hanna requested. She confiscated the documents before the ink had time to dry and tucked them in her reticule. While she graciously thanked the Jensens and the judge for their assistance, Cale towed her toward the door. Now he was going to get answers, and he’d better get the whole truth from Miz Magnolia or she was going to see him at his absolute worst.

      “I can see that you’re irritated,” she murmured as he whisked her out the door and practically dragged her toward the nearest alley.

      “Irritated?” he said, and snorted. “Lady, you don’t know the half of it! Hanna Malloy, for God’s sake!”

      With Skeet at his heels, Cale bustled Hanna down the back alleys, past the buckboard and his saddle horse, which had been returned to the back exit of the hotel, as he’d requested. He half expected the Pinkerton agent to be standing guard at his hotel door. To his vast relief, no one was in sight.

      “I think we should leave immediately,” Hanna insisted, staring apprehensively at the stairway. “Once we’re en route, I promise to tell you everything you want to know.”

      Cale stared at her long and hard, but he couldn’t work up much contempt for her deception when she gazed pleadingly at him with that colorful bruise on her cheek. Nor with her full breasts all but spilling