Lady Renegade. Carol Finch

shoot an innocent woman?”

      His long, thick lashes framed his steady gaze. He focused on her while he secured her foot. “I have before. The innocent part was up for debate.” He stared pointedly at her. “It is now, too.” This was not the kind of man Lori had hoped to contact to help her clear up the horrible misunderstanding that left her running for her life—and now captured. She needed sympathy and compassion. She needed a man with an open-minded attitude.

      Instead, she had tangled with this hard-edged, stone-hearted lawman of mixed heritage. The part of him that carried Indian blood probably resented all white intruders on tribal property. She doubted he cared one whit that she and her father had a special trader’s license to sell goods and transport travelers across the river.

      In addition, Gideon Fox had taken one cynical look at her and judged her guilty of the charges mistakenly leveled against her. But then, who was she to criticize? she asked herself. She’d only known him fifteen minutes and she disliked him already. Not because he had his booted feet in two separate civilizations. Not because he was rough around the edges, abrupt mannered and didn’t look the least bit sophisticated or dignified. But because he had wrongly misjudged her and he cared only about the reward he could collect when he hauled her and Clem to Fort Smith for trial.

      When Gideon bounded up behind her in the saddle, she stiffened. He was whipcord muscle and imposing strength and she resented the feeling of helpless frustration riveting her. She forgot to breathe when he tucked his chin on her shoulder and wrapped both swarthy arms around her to hold her manacled hands to the pommel of the saddle.

      He must have sensed her discomfort because he said, “Easy, honey. I’m only making double damn sure you don’t gouge me in the chest and emasculate me with a blow to the crotch. What little virtue you have left is safe with me.”

      “I am not now, nor will I ever be your honey,” she snapped, unsettled and annoyed by the betraying sensation of pleasure that having him wrapped around her provoked.

      “Nothing but a careless endearment, I assure you,” he breathed against the side of her neck, setting off another round of tingles that had no business whatsoever assailing her when she so disliked this heartless lawman.

      “Would you prefer that I call you witch or hellion instead of honey?”

      “I would prefer that you release me.” She shifted restlessly in the circle of his sinewy arms. “Get your own horse, Marshal. Drifter doesn’t like having you riding him and I’m not fond of it, either.”

      “You don’t want me riding you?” he asked with entirely too much teasing amusement in his rich baritone voice.

      Lori was grateful that he couldn’t see the beet-red blush that worked its way up her neck to splash across her face. “Certainly not!”

      His rumbling chuckle reverberated through his broad chest and vibrated against her back, increasing her awareness of him to the extreme. “But if you and I rode together, you would expect me to favor you with a quick release from your handcuffs so you could dash off again. Just so you know, I don’t like to be propositioned by lady outlaws.”

      “That was as far from a proposition as it could get!” she huffed as she nudged him—hard—with her shoulder. “Give me some space, Fox. I don’t like any man crowding me.”

      “Is that why you shot your former lover?”

      “I didn’t shoot Tony!” she all but yelled at the infuriating man. “He was bushwhacked and I was nearly a victim caught in the cross fire. In fact, I think maybe you gunned him down to collect a reward.”

      “Me? Hell and damn, woman. I was nowhere near the west side of Osage reservation. I’ve been tracking Pecos Clem.”

      “Well then, if not you specifically, then another glorified executioner for hire whose only concern is the price on a person’s head.”

      So there, she thought spitefully as they approached Pecos Clem, who had been secured so effectively he couldn’t have gotten loose if his life depended on it. Now Gideon knew what she thought of bounty hunters wearing the sanctioned labels of Deputy U.S. Marshal. Maybe the marshals who patrolled the territory were the unsung heroes who tried to enforce law and order. But some of them—like Gideon Fox, obviously—were only interested in collecting bounties and relying on decrees of dead or alive to make their job easier.

      “If you think I’ll sit here and endure a lecture from a feisty, smart-mouthed murderess then you’re wrong,” he growled in her ear. “You can tell your story to Judge Parker. I’m not the least bit interested in what you have to say. My job is to bring you in. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

      “But I need to return to the trading post to reassure my father that I’m all right,” she protested hotly. “That is the very least you can do.”

      “I’ll send him a note…if I get around to it.”

      “That will not suffice,” she snapped at him. “The real murderer is running loose. He might have killed Tony for the bounty on his head.”

      “Your former lover was an outlaw? Why am I not surprised.”

      “I don’t know if he was or not,” she muttered, exasperated. “Tony was secretive about his past and I’ve been wondering if he’d had a brush with the law and hid out in the territory. He might have been using an alias, for all I know. But what I do know is that he was nice to me. It’s up to you to find out the truth. And for your information, he wasn’t my lover. He wanted to marry me and I—”

      Lori dragged in a steadying breath. The awful scene exploded in her mind’s eye and the horrid memory of watching Tony collapse after the sniper shot him, while trying to shield her from harm, bombarded her with killing force. She choked back a sob, refusing to dissolve into tears in front of this hard-hearted marshal.

      No doubt, he’d think she was putting on an act to milk his sympathy. As if he had a sympathetic bone in his powerful body—one that he pressed up against her as if he were her own shadow.

      “He wanted to marry you so you shot him?” he remarked caustically. “You could have just said no.”

      “Damn it, Fox. You are an ass!” she sniped furiously and blinked back the tormenting tears that threatened to destroy her crumbling composure.

      “And you are a cold-blooded killer,” he said in a steely voice. “If there’s such a thing as a femme fatale, you’re it.”

      “You are going to be eternally sorry when you discover that I’m telling the truth. I lost a dear friend to an unknown assailant.”

      “Right,” he said, and smirked.

      It was pure torment for Gideon to use his body to surround his alluring captive. With each movement of the horse beneath him, he could feel Lori’s rounded rump brushing provocatively against his crotch. He could smell the appetizing scent of her body and it threatened to cloud his senses the same way the fog clogged the Osage Hills.

      The sooner he delivered this sinfully seductive siren and Pecos Clem, the horse thief, to headquarters the happier he’d be. She could spout her lies nonstop, but Gideon wouldn’t fall prey to them—or her. He’d heard hundreds of convoluted claims in his day. The jail in Fort Smith was teeming with inmates who shouted their innocence to high heaven. They lied through their teeth—anything to ensure they could escape justice.

      Gideon glanced at Clem, who was still secured to the horse and the tree. He veered right and breathed a gigantic sigh of relief when he reached the spot where he’d left his horse, Pirate. The black-and-white pinto-and-Appaloosa crossbreed had a patch of black around his right eye—hence the name. Gideon was exceptionally fond of his well-trained, reliable mount. Like himself, Pirate was of mixed breeding. The spirited stud was part of the prize herd Gideon and his brothers, Galen and Glenn, raised on their combined properties near Heartstrings River.

      Ignoring his thoughts, Gideon dismounted Lori’s horse but kept a firm