Mail-Order Groom. Lisa Plumley

reckon …” Mose pursed his mouth. “That’s likely true.”

      “See? Have pity on the poor man. He’s liable to be in way over his head with Western life. Now he’s got a passel of healing to do, to boot. We’ll have to be very patient with him.”

      “I guess.” Grudgingly but carefully, Mose lifted the man.

      As her friend slung her wounded groom over his shoulder, a pitiful groan came from their patient. Heartsick at the pain-filled sound, Savannah rushed to his side. She stroked his hand.

      As though he sensed her touch, his eyelids fluttered. But he didn’t awaken. That worried Savannah all the more.

      “Please let us help you,” she whispered to him as they moved toward the station. “Please. And don’t you run away again, either. You are my best chance at starting over—that means I’m counting on you. You can’t let me down. You just can’t. Not now.” She inhaled deeply, then ladled as much fierceness as she could into her tone. “Not when I’m so close. You hear?”

      He moaned but didn’t speak. Savannah didn’t say any more. All during the jostling trek back to the station, she watched her mail-order groom. and she thought about him, too. She might be eager, but she wasn’t naive. The undeniable truth was, her injured groom’s flight into the woods—like his guns and his knives—had unsettled her. Something didn’t feel right here.

      She might be counting on her mail-order groom but she didn’t plan on trusting him. Not yet. They had a long way to go before that happened—if it happened at all. Suddenly Savannah had as many doubts as she did questions, and she needed answers.

       Chapter Four

      Vivid sunshine pushed open Adam’s eyes at a time he judged long past sunrise. Disoriented and aching, he tried to sit up.

      Raw throbbing pain cut short his motions. Gasping, he sank back again. He was in a bed. In a room. In the tiny Morrow Creek adjunct telegraph station, far from his partner and his mission.

      Mariana. Last night, he’d tried to find her. He’d trudged through the wooded hillside in the dark, bleeding and hurting. After what had felt like hours, he’d found his earlier trail.

      He’d located the iron post he’d used to stake out his horse. But his progress had ended there. The rope attached to the post had been hacked off, its frayed ends still in place. His horse had been gone. Stolen, if he didn’t miss his mark.

      Bedell and his boys had been thorough. With no horse, no sense of where the confidence man had gone or how long ago he’d left—and with a gunshot wound and other injuries to slow him down—Adam had little hope of tracking them. At least for a while.

      What’s more, he still had a job to do here at the station. Bedell’s mark still needed him. Savannah Reed still needed him. If that sharper were still loitering around, waiting to make his move on an innocent woman, Adam had to be there to stop him.

      Bedell didn’t yet have the windfall he’d planned to steal from Savannah, Adam reminded himself. If he waited at the station, he figured Bedell would return. Doubtless, he’d do it sooner rather than later, too. Roy Bedell and his brothers had never shown any signs of being less than greedy and impatient.

      And Savannah Reed had never shown any signs of being less than trusting and gullible. You are my best chance at starting over, he remembered her telling him last night. That means I’m counting on you. You can’t let me down. You just can’t.

      Her words had been truer than she’d known. She was counting on him. She had to. And he, in turn, had to protect her.

      Last night, all Adam had been able to think about was helping Mariana. But in the clear light of day, with a lucid mind and the force of all his hard-won experience to guide him, he thought about Savannah, too. There were so many things she didn’t know about the mail-order groom she’d been waiting for.

      Roy Bedell had lied to her from the start. He was a thief and a coldhearted killer. Adam had hoped to nab the knuck before it became necessary to make such revelations to Bedell’s latest target. Now that plan seemed nigh impossible. But, he wondered unhappily, how did a man begin to tell a woman that she’d made arrangements to share her life with a ruthless sharper?

      Adam didn’t know. He’d figure out something later. Because as things stood now, he didn’t have much choice. He was hurt and weak, gunshot and dizzy. Bedell and his boys were out of reach. Mariana was missing. For now, all he could do was trust that his partner had done the right thing and stayed far away, like he’d told her to do. If he were lucky, Mariana had already ridden on to Morrow Creek to wire the agency for new instructions.

      And maybe for a new partner, too.

      Grudgingly Adam felt heartened by the thought. Mariana was experienced. She was strong and smart and resourceful. She might not even need him to ride to her rescue, like he’d planned.

       Why, Mr. Corwin! Are you still trying to protect me?

      Remembering Mariana’s brash, flippant words, Adam felt his heart give a sentimental squeeze. He devoutly hoped she was safe. If she wasn’t, he didn’t know how he’d forgive himself.

      At least here at the station, though, he might still be helpful to someone else. He might still be able to warn Savannah about Bedell—to prepare her for a possible confrontation with the confidence man she’d unwittingly lured west with all her sweetly worded letters … and that pretty picture of hers, too.

      Adam had spent far too much time gazing at the picture he’d pilfered. But he couldn’t regret that. Not after everything that had happened. Looking at Savannah’s picture had been the best part of this mission so far, he reckoned. Not that he intended to reveal as much in his mandatory report to the agency.

      Reminded of that report, Adam grew newly alert.

      Where was his agency journal? He usually kept it in his saddlebags, but …

      But they were lost, he remembered, along with his horse.

      His journal was gone right along with them, then. So was all the proof he’d gathered over the past year of Roy Bedell’s criminal nature. The official wanted poster. The newspaper clippings. The tattered correspondence from the family of the woman Bedell had murdered in Kansas City. They’d been the ones to contact the agency. They’d been the ones who’d specially requested Adam, counting on his past as a former U.S. Marshall to bring in the confidence man when others had lost his trail.

      Looking into their grieving faces, Adam had sworn to bring their daughter’s killer to justice. He refused to fail them now.

      Maybe he could convince Savannah to let him stay at the station awhile—to lay a trap for Bedell. With her cooperation, Adam could double his chances of catching the man, and he could protect her at the same time. It was the only way to proceed.

      With that decided, Adam tried moving again. Helpless against the pain in his shoulder, head and ribs, he groaned.

      Instantly Savannah Reed rushed into the room. Her rustling skirts warned him of her arrival—but nothing could have prepared him for the sight of her. In the light streaming from the room’s single curtained window, she appeared downright angelic. Her face was scrubbed clean, her golden hair was wound high, and her eyes were the same shade of guileless blue as the sky outside.

      “You’re awake! Glory be. Now don’t strain yourself.”

      She hurried to his side. She fluttered her hands in a moment’s indecision, then placed them on his arms to help him get upright. Next, she leaned to arrange the pillows behind him. The flowery smell of her skin caught Adam unawares. So did the hasty glimpse he caught of her bosom. He cursed himself for noticing it, even dazedly. Sternly he jerked his gaze upward.

      That didn’t help. Her face was alight with warmth, her cheeks pink and her features filled with a caring he’d scarcely seen—much less been the