The Ranger's Bride. Laurie Grant

wished he had been sitting next to her, instead of across from her. Then he could have stolen closer while she slept. It would have been torture to feel the length of his thigh against hers, but still damn well worth it.

      Rede, there’s just no use putting yourself through that for a lady. Ladies had no time for a man like him, a man with no permanent home and with a job that could put him on the receiving end of a bullet at any time. A lady wanted a man who was settled, with a little bit of land and maybe a thriving business to boot. A man who didn’t feel he had something to prove. A man who had not been already disgraced by the last name he’d been born with—a name his mother had changed as soon as she’d finally left James Fogarty.

      He hadn’t answered the lady truthfully when she’d asked him what was wrong because he could not have said what had made him uneasy and given him that prickling along his spine. He’d been unable to identify its cause as he’d gazed out over the rocky landscape of the Texas hill country. He had seen nothing unusual—not even the telltale flash of metal that could indicate the presence of horsemen hiding in ambush.

      He preferred the flatter terrain of farther south—it was harder for Indians or white rascals to hide in that country, where the tallest things in it were scrubby mesquite and knee-high clumps of prickly pear. Anything or anyone could hide in this rolling country of wide, juniper- and mesquite-covered hills and limestone outcroppings.

      For the hundredth time he wished he wasn’t in this swaying, rattling box, and had his good roan gelding under him. But he’d known he had a better chance of sneaking into the area without the news reaching the Fogartys if he wasn’t seen riding into town on his roan. Word had a way of spreading fast, as if the wind whispered the news.

      “Three Mile Hill,” the woman murmured as she let go of the flap and sat back on her seat. “I’ll be home soon.”

      She had a pretty voice, Rede thought. Not high and shrill, or mannishly low, but pleasantly pitched. Not twangy-Texan, either, though it wasn’t nasal or clipped like a Yankee’s. She’d been raised somewhere else, somewhere in the Midwest, he guessed. He wished he could ask her, but knew he wouldn’t.

      “You live in Connor’s Crossing?” the big man between her and the window asked her, exhaling down on her so gustily that a loose tendril at her forehead fluttered for a moment.

      Rede saw her nostrils flare involuntarily, and guessed she had gotten a potent whiff of the man’s beer-and-onion scented breath. But her smile was polite as she nodded.

      “Well, ain’t that nice,” the big man said. “Happens that’s where I’m headed. Gonna set up a business there. Mebbe I could come callin’ sometime, mebbe take you drivin’, soon’s I get me a rig and a hoss.”

      “I’m sorry, but I’m a widow,” she said, with a meaningful glance at her clothing.

      Rede had been so intent on the sweet curves of her body, he hadn’t noticed she was dressed in half-mourning, a gray dress banded in black. Such shades indicated the death had been some time ago, didn’t it? Several months, or was it a year or more?

      He wondered how she had felt about her husband. Had she been devastated by his death? Did she still grieve? A man couldn’t judge by her answer to the big smelly man—most women would have used any excuse not to have that one come calling.

      Rede felt a flare of anger, not only that the man had been such an insensitive idiot, but also, he recognized, because the man had made overtures to the very woman Rede wanted himself. A part of him already thought of the woman as his.

      If only things had been different. Idiot.

      But not as bad an idiot as the big man. He couldn’t imagine the green-eyed woman would have consented to let the malodorous big man call on her even if he’d been the only gent left in Texas.

      “Sorry, ma’am,” said the other man. “I jes’ saw you were wearin’ half-mournin’, and I thought maybe it’d been long e…” His voice trailed off, as Rede purposefully intercepted his gaze and narrowed his eyes in warning. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

      “Ain’t this the road the Fogarty Gang used to rob the stage along, back before the war?” the drummer asked just then.

      The woman’s eyes widened with alarm, and her face paled. Rede longed to slam his elbow into the skinny drummer’s ribs hard enough to make him lose his dinner, just for frightening her.

      “But I heard they hadn’t been robbing stages around here for years,” she said. “Ever since—”

      “They haven’t,” Rede said flatly, wanting to banish the furrow of worry from her forehead. “Not since m—since Jim Fogarty was hanged.” My father. My father died at the end of a choking rope—years ago.

      James Fogarty’s execution for the killing of a stagecoach driver should have taught the rest of the gang a lesson, and it had—for a while. They had lit out to the wild Pecos country for several years. But recently they’d been inching back to their old locale, the limestone-studded hills of central Texas.

      “Harrumph. They better keep their eyes peeled and the shotgun ready,” the drummer said, jerking his head to indicate the driver and the stagecoach guard riding up on top.

      A lot of good that would do, if the Fogartys wanted to rob this stage, Rede thought, watching the color slowly ebb back into the woman’s face.

      He wondered what her name was. Something prim and fancy, he thought. Not harsh, like Harriet, or dowdy-sounding, like Ethel.

      Elizabeth, he decided. He wondered if she went by Beth or Liza.

      Then all hell broke loose.

      Chapter Two

      A rifle cracked suddenly from somewhere behind the stoop, followed closely by a sharp cry from the stagecoach driver. Addy heard a thud, then suddenly the team of horses was plunging off the road at a full gallop.

      The thin woman with the migraine screamed.

      “Bandits! The driver’s shot!” cried the shotgun guard. Addy could hear him scrambling around on top. No doubt he was struggling to grab the dropped reins while still holding the shotgun. Had the thud she’d heard been the sound of the driver’s body hitting the road?

      The drummer yanked up the leather flap. “We’re ’bout to be held up!” he shouted.

      Many things happened at once. The stranger grabbed for his saddlebags, thrusting a hand into one and coming out with the Colt revolver Addy had suspected was there. The older woman on Addy’s left began to whimper in chorus with the other woman across from her.

      Addy was sick with fear. She felt a scream bubbling up inside herself, but the knot of terror in her throat wouldn’t let it out. She wanted to look out the window, but bullets whizzed past and she knew it wouldn’t be wise.

      “Get down on the floor!” the stranger ordered Addy and the old women. Then, when the old woman seemed frozen to her seat, he yelled, “Do it! Right now!”

      Addy heard him cock his gun, and for a single panicked second, she thought he was in league with the outlaws. Then she decided it was more likely he was trying to get a clear shot at the robbers and didn’t want the two women in the line of fire.

      “Get down with me, ma’am!” she cried, pulling at the resisting old woman’s hands. “He’s just trying to help us!” But the woman yanked her hands out of Addy’s, clenched them into a fist at each ear and screamed.

      “Whip up those horses there!” she heard the big man yell to the man on top. “We can outrun—”

      He never finished his sentence. There was another loud crack, and suddenly he slumped over across Addy. She couldn’t tell where he was hit, but a warm crimson fountain instantly bathed Addy, running down her cheek in a warm, sickening flow.

      It was too much. She felt a black mist descend over her, and suddenly there