A Bride for Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

his arms.

      “I can walk,” Francis said abruptly.

      “You’d have better luck flying at the moment,” Flint said as he put a hand on each of her hips and braced himself. “Put your arms around my neck and I’ll swing you around.”

      “I don’t think—” Francis began. Flint’s hands swept past her hips and wrapped themselves around her waist. She took a quick, involuntary breath. Surely he could feel her heart pounding inside her body. The material on this wretched dress the girls had talked her into wearing was not at all good for this sort of thing. It was much too thin. She could feel the heat from Flint’s hands as he cradled her waist.

      “You don’t need to think—just move with me,” Flint directed. He couldn’t take much more of this.

      It must be the cold that made his hands even more sensitive than usual. He not only felt every ridge of beaded sequin on the dress, he felt every move of her muscles beneath the palm of his hands. He knew she was trying to pull herself away from him. That she was struggling to move her leg without his help. The knowledge didn’t do much for a man’s confidence. He remembered the days when she used to want him to hold her.

      “You’re going to scare the horse,” Flint cautioned softly. Beneath the sequins, the dress felt like liquid silk. Flint had all he could do to stop his hands from caressing Francis instead of merely holding her firm so he could lift her off the horse.

      “Where’d you get the horse, anyway?” Francis forced her mind to start working. Everything has a place, she reminded herself. If she could only find the place of everything, this whole nightmare would come aright. She could make sense and order out of this whole madness if she worked at solving one piece of the puzzle and then went on to the next piece. She’d start with the horse.

      “A small farm outside of Billings,” Flint answered. His hands spanned Francis’s rib cage. He could feel her heart pounding. “They rent horses.”

      “Why would you rent a horse?” Francis persisted. One question at a time. It helped her focus and forget about the hands around her. “You don’t live around here. They must usually rent to ranchers.”

      Flint stopped. He could hardly say he needed a horse to rescue her. She’d never believe that. Then he remembered he didn’t need an answer. “That’s classified information. Government.” Flint had her circled, and there was no reason to stall. “Move with me on the count of three.”

      All thought of the horse—and its order—fled Francis’s mind.

      “One. Two.” Flint braced himself. “Three.”

      When Flint pulled, his hands slid from the middle of Francis’s rib cage to the top. He almost stopped. But Honey was beginning to tap-dance around again, and he had to follow through.

      Francis gasped. The man’s hands were moving upward from her rib cage. There was nothing for it but to put her arms around his neck and swing forward.

      “Atta girl,” Flint murmured. Even he didn’t know if he was talking to Francis or the horse. And it didn’t matter. He had Francis once again in his arms. Well, maybe not in his arms, but she was swinging from his neck. That had to count for something.

      Francis winced. Her leg was swinging off the horse along with the rest of her body, and her leg was protesting. But she gritted her teeth. “Let me down.”

      Flint went from ice to fire in a heartbeat. He’d been without a jacket after he gave it to Francis, and his chest was cold. But the minute Francis swung against him, his whole insides flamed. His jacket had only been draped over her, and now it fell back to her shoulders. He felt the cool smoothness of her bare arms wrapped around his neck and the swell of her breasts pressed against his shirt.

      “I can’t let you down.” Flint ground the words out. “You can’t walk through a snowdrift in those heels.”

      “I can walk barefoot.”

      “Not with that leg,” Flint shifted Francis’s weight so his neck didn’t carry her. Instead, he had his arms around her properly this time. There were no bad guys here. He could carry her like a gentleman. “Besides, you’d get frostbite.”

      Francis didn’t argue. She simply couldn’t think of anything to say. She had been swiveled, swept up in his arms and now rested on Flint’s shoulder with a view of his chin. This was not the way anything was supposed to go. She was supposed to be forgetting him. “You nicked your chin the night of the prom, too.”

      “Huh?”

      “When you shaved—the night of the prom, you nicked your chin. Almost in the same place.”

      “I was nervous.”

      “Me, too.”

      “You didn’t look nervous,” Flint said softly. He had tied Honey to a branch and was carrying Francis out of the pine grove. “You were cool as a cucumber.”

      “I hadn’t been able to eat all day.”

      “You were perfect,” Flint said simply. He was walking toward the small wood frame house. “Everybody is hungry at those things, anyway. You think there’ll be food and it turns out to be pickled mushrooms or something with toothpicks in it.”

      Flint stopped. He was halfway to the house, and he knew someone had been here recently besides himself and Honey. A faint smell was coming from the house—the smell of cigars. He’d only known one man to ever smoke that particular brand.

      “I’m going to set you down and check out the house,” Flint whispered. It could be a trap. The cigars weren’t a secret. “Be quiet.”

      Francis shivered, and not from the cold. Even in a whisper, Flint’s voice sounded deadly serious. For the first time, she was truly afraid. And, for the first time, it occurred to her that if it were known by now that she was kidnapped—and it surely would be known once Jess checked around the barn—then someone would be out to rescue her. And if they intended to rescue her, they would also be out to hurt—maybe even kill—Flint.

      The very thought of it turned her to ice. She could cheerfully strangle Flint herself. But seeing him hurt—really hurt—was something else again.

      Think, Francis, think, she told herself as Flint slid her out of his arms to a dry space near a pine tree. The shade of the tree made the night darker here than anywhere. Even the light of the moon did not reflect off her sequins when she was sitting here. She could no longer see his face. He was a black shadow who crouched beside her.

      “Be careful,” she whispered at his back as he turned to leave. The words sounded futile to her ears. And then she saw his black silhouette as he drew a gun from somewhere. He must have had a gun in the saddlebag. Or maybe he had a shoulder holster.

      Francis didn’t want to be responsible for Flint being hurt. But anyone who was here to rescue her would think nothing of shooting Flint. Think, Francis, think. There had to be a solution. She couldn’t just sit here and wait for the gunfire to begin.

      That’s it, she thought victoriously. She knew she could think of a solution. It just needed an orderly mind. If there were no kidnapping, there would be no need for any shooting.

      Francis forced herself to stand. Her one leg wobbled, but it would have to do. She took a step forward, praying whoever was inside that wooden house would have sense enough to recognize her voice.

      “Flint, darling,” she called in what she hoped was a gay and flirtatious voice. She was out of practice, but even if her voice wasn’t seductive she knew it was loud enough to be heard through the thickest walls. “I thought you said there was a bed inside this old house for us to use.”

      There, she thought in satisfaction, that should quell any questions about a kidnapping. It would, of course, raise all sorts of other questions, but she could deal with that later. She wondered who of the many Dry Creek men had come to her rescue.

      Flint froze. Only years of training stopped