Luke's Runaway Bride. Kate Bridges

the floor. Buns rolled in all directions. “I knew it was the third thing, I knew it!” Olivia bellowed, wailing as if she were being scalped. She grabbed her skirts and ran.

      Luke cocked the hammer of his gun with a loud click. Olivia stopped cold. When she slowly turned around, the women stared numbly at each other. Jenny frowned fiercely, desperately wishing her friend, at least, might escape. Her breathing was harsh and rapid.

      “Keep quiet,” he said, “or I’ll…shoot the both of you.”

      Trembling, Jenny stepped closer to Olivia. She shot him a hostile glare. “I’ll never help a stranger again.”

      Luke pushed a hand through his hair and glared at her in exasperation. “Yes, you will. You can’t help it.” He struggled to catch his breath. “Woman, you tire me out.”

      She stood her ground.

      Finally, he tilted his rugged face toward Olivia. “Do you have a husband, ma’am?”

      Scowling, Olivia shrugged a shoulder. “No.”

      Jenny stepped forward. “What’s that got to do—”

      He raised his palm in the air and silenced her. “Just answer the question. Who do you live with?”

      The worry lines around Olivia’s eyes sharpened. “Jenny and her father.”

      Slowly, his gaze traveled to Jenny, and another qualm of fear shuddered through her. “Well, that’s good,” he said. “No one’s going to miss you then. It’ll seem natural Jenny took you with her on her trip.”

      Olivia slumped against her. A cold shiver whispered over Jenny. “You intend on taking us both?”

      He nodded. “You can each be leverage for the other.”

      Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, leverage?”

      “You’ll see soon enough. If you do as I ask, without fighting back, then you’ll return to Denver with no harm done. If you fight me, it’ll take longer, but you’ll still lose, and you’ll get bruised along the way.”

      He pointed his gun toward the heavy drapes. “Now, Olivia—ma’am—pack up the food you just brought in. We’ll put it in my saddlebag. Jenny, you find us some notepaper. We need to leave a message.”

      With skirts swishing, Olivia did as she was told. As she crouched beside the desk, reaching for the fallen jerky, she peeped up at the stranger.

      Jenny watched her friend scamper to do his bidding, and humiliation seeped into her. She scooped her shawl off the floor and stepped in front of Olivia. “If it’s Daniel you’re after, why don’t you take me and let Olivia go?”

      Luke focused his intense gaze on Jenny. “You’d trade your life for your friend’s?”

      She shuddered. “You plan on killing me?”

      “No. I didn’t mean it like that.” His forehead creased in furrows, as if he were disgusted with the thought, and in an inexplicable way, Jenny believed him. She’d attacked him with whiskey, thrown a rock at him, even bitten him, but he hadn’t hit her back. She knew many men would.

      She flung her shawl over her shoulders, fidgeting with the colorful feathers. Maybe he planned on getting even later, on the road. Her throat tightened. She took an abrupt step forward, smoothing the velvet at her sides. “Leave Olivia out of this. Please,” she added, staring up at his stubborn face, shivering at the memory of his touch. This was what Daniel got in return for his help all those years ago? Daniel’s family had helped this man get back on his feet, and in gratitude, he threatened Daniel’s fiancée?

      Luke inclined his windburned face. “She must mean an awful lot to you.”

      Her hopes rose as she stared at his stubborn features. Perhaps he had a heart, one she could appeal to. “Olivia’s been with me since I was a baby. We grew up together and I consider her a sister. She’s the only family I have in Denver, besides Father.” Her brothers were joining them in the spring, but if the four of them were here now, they’d pound the living daylights out of him. Rightly so. He deserved a wicked beating.

      Luke’s eyes flickered. He looked her up and down, and she felt herself flush. “I hope Daniel appreciates your loyalty.”

      She blinked. What did he have against Daniel?

      “Keep packing,” Luke snarled to Olivia. With maddening arrogance, he turned to Jenny. “I appreciate how you feel toward your friend here, but I can’t take the chance.”

      “What chance?”

      “The chance that she’ll tell everyone in town I took you at gunpoint. Daniel’s more likely to follow us alone, without the law, if I keep this quiet for him.”

      She glared at him. “The whole town will know, anyway. It’ll be Daniel himself who’ll tell them.”

      “Oh, no, he won’t.”

      Jenny squirmed. “Of course he will. He’ll get the sheriff and they’ll get a posse together. And,” she added with a hot twinge of delight, “they’ll string you up from the nearest tree.”

      His gaze was calm and cool, but a twitch of amusement pulled at his mouth. “I know you’d be in the front row to watch. But believe me, Daniel won’t tell a soul.”

      She swayed back and gripped the desk behind her, more uncertain than ever. “Then…then my father will.”

      “No,” he said, pulling his vest off the chair and sliding his muscled arms into it, “your father will go along with whatever twisted explanation Daniel gives him of your disappearance. I don’t rightly care, as long as Daniel comes to get you.” He moaned with obvious pain, and Lord forgive her, she prayed his pain would double. Then maybe they could escape.

      But he seemed so sure of what he said, and this confidence, this audacity, bewildered her. “Why?”

      He swung the gun toward her. “You ask too many questions. Now pull out a paper and write Daniel a note.”

      She stomped behind the desk. Pulling the top drawer open, she rifled through it. “I suppose you have your story all made up. What lies do you want me to write?”

      “Write the truth.”

      Her gaze swung to his in surprise. She watched him calmly toss his jacket over his broad shoulders. Why was he doing this?

      Money, of course, she told herself with repulsion. He wanted money for their return. That’s why he was kidnapping them. That’s what he’d taken at Daniel’s office today. He didn’t have a money bag with him, she noticed with a frown, but he’d had plenty of time to stash one.

      Plopping into the chair behind the desk, Jenny dipped the quill into the inkwell and began writing, mortified at her thoughts…about their heated embrace earlier, her curiosity about being kissed. She wasn’t to blame. He’d attacked her. She thrust out her chin.

      “My dearest Daniel,

      A man who claims to be your friend, Luke McLintock, is holding a gun to my head—the same man who tried to rob you this afternoon. He says he’s taking me to Wyoming, along with Olivia, says you’ll know where to find us. Please find us quickly, Daniel, and if something should happen…”

      She paused, then wrote “know how much I love you.”

      Guilt slithered up her spine. It was the first time either one of them had mentioned the word love. And she’d done it only at gunpoint. It didn’t matter, she rationalized; these were tragic circumstances.

      She blamed this cowardly man for turning her mind upside down. Well, he wouldn’t get away with it. Daniel, together with her father, would send every available man and bounty hunter after them.

      “All right.” He yanked her off the chair with a muscled grip. “Let’s go.”

      She’d try to stall him.