Beauty and the Bounty Hunter by Lori Austin Read Free Book Online Page B

women in the South. She had her land—scorched as it was. Hell, she had Billy’s. What she didn’t have was money, food, horses, cattle, seeds, parents, or a husband.
    Then Billy returned. The joy Cat felt upon seeing him walk down the lane was short-lived. He was thin and pale. He woke in the night screaming. He knew how to farm. They’d been well off before the war, but not so well off that they hadn’t worked their own land. However, he couldn’t produce money from nothing any more than she could. Then the letter arrived from his brother.
    Ben had left home before the war. There’d been trouble with his father over the wrong friends, too much gambling. But he’d recently become a lawman in Kansas. According to him, the land was fine and a soldier could acquire the title to 160 acres just by living on it fora year. If they sold what they had in Georgia, they’d
have enough money to get started in Kansas. So Billy and Cathleen packed up what was left, parted with everything they could, and headed for the setting sun.
    Life got better. They had their own place. The promise of a future. Billy stopped screaming every night. He started talking more every day. They were working toward something together.
    And then—
    You or her?
    The gunshot made Cat start up; the shriek remained trapped in her throat. She was in the wagon, outside St. Louis, not on a Kansas prairie.
    Billy was still dead. Damn him.
    Though the sun was up and the air around her already sultry with heat, Cat shivered. Knowing Mikhail rested lightly—nothing and no one got by him—had allowed her to fall asleep quickly after Alexi left. Unfortunately, not even Mikhail could ward off dreams. She was beginning to think nothing could.
    Cat peered through the opening in the canvas and frowned at the obscenely large tent that hadn’t been there the night before. Obviously, Alexi no longer retired to the wagon when he didn’t have to.
    Cat closed her eyes, but her mind whirled. As Alexi wouldn’t wake for hours, she threw on her boy’s disguise, set her finger to her lips when Mikhail’s head peeked from Alexi’s wagon as she clambered from her own, then began to walk.
    Though the hour was early for those who made their livings in the dark, the rest of St. Louis had begun to stir. Shopkeepers swept the dust from their doorways, nodding when Cat tugged on the brim of her hat. Carriages and wagons rumbled; in the distance beat the steady pulse of a train.
    She headed for a bakeshop owned by a war widow of her acquaintance who would be happy to sell Cat the first hot loaf from her ovens along with a cup of the best coffee north of Louisiana.
    As she turned into an alley, planning to make her way between one street and the next, Cat stopped. The narrow passage wasn’t empty. A man bent over a scantily dressed woman, face buried in her décolleté. One hand captured her at the waist; the other was busy lifting her skirts.
    Not wanting to interrupt, Cat inched backward. Then the woman made a soft sound—not of pleasure, not even of encouragement—and Cat paused.
    A closer look revealed her struggles; she was pinned against several old barrels; there was nowhere for her to go. She could have screamed for help; she could have bit and scratched. But from the bright, tight nature of her attire—which Cat had worn often enough herself to recognize—she was a working girl, and no one would believe she didn’t have this coming.
    Cat cleared her throat. The girl lifted her head; their eyes met, the younger woman’s widening first with shock, then with hope. Cat considered drawing her gun, but she didn’t want the audience a gunshot would bring. Instead she retrieved her knife from the long, thin pocket she’d sewn into the right leg of her trousers.
    The man kept rooting at the girl’s bosom like a starving piglet even as his fingers crept ever upward beneath the skirts.
    “Hey, mister.” Cat tilted the Arkansas toothpick so the sun flashed off the