Breed True by Gem Sivad Read Free Book Online Page A

unimportant.
    Grady upped his opinion of her intelligence. Frank Rossiter earned his death and she isn't wasting time pretending false concern.
    He could almost see her brain working as she processed the information, including the rising sound of a mob outside the house. Someone had been busy getting the rowdies stirred into frenzy.
    "They will arrive soon. While we wait, I have a proposition for you." She straightened to face him, tiredness wiped away, as the fighter returned to face this new threat.
    "I need a white wife; you have the bloodlines of the Scots. It's in your features, your hair, and the color of your skin." He almost smiled at the faint surprise on her face. It wasn't what she'd been expecting.
    "Irish," she corrected him. "My dad called our people ridgerunners, redheaded Irish."
    One woman against—he counted heads, three men and a woman who wanted her children. He admired her control. If it was him, he might have had to kill someone.
    And then she spoke directly to all of them, moving toward him and the door he now blocked.
    "Let me get this straight." She swept the room with a quick look of disgust. "Mr.
    Hawks, you want to parade me around the territory as your white wife, to prove how civilized you are. And Mr. Quince, you want me to give my children to your wife, a move that would also eliminate any inconvenience that might disrupt the show Mr.
    Hawks plans to put on."
    Then she looked at Hiram Potter, who was clearly uncomfortable with the way the evening had gone. But she spoke to both him and Judge Conklin, "And you two, they brought in to make everything legal and tight."
    After all the bullshit that had been spattered around in the talking, she'd filtered out what affected her. He gave her the courtesy of a tight smile. She considered him for a minute while the rest of the room studied her. She appeared calmer than she had been all night … and resolved.
    "No one gets my daughters, understand that. My children stay with me." Then she focused on him, and he was reminded that she wasn't a tame dog to be frightened into submission.
    "Are you talking a real wife?" At his raised brow of incredulity that she might consider otherwise, she paused a moment and then amended her question. "Where would this magnificent coupling take place?"
    He almost laughed out loud at her assessment but did her the courtesy of a straight answer. "Hawks Nest Ranch abuts the Double-Q ranch east of town. It stretches above the foothills behind Eclipse."
    "Is it isolated? Can people come and go?" Evidently, the gambler's woman needed a place to lay low with her daughters for awhile. He declined to mention the duration of her visit.
    It seemed to him that the location of the land might be the only temptation to her agreeing. She needed a haven. Maybe Hawks Nest would be that place.
    Her knuckles showed white as she backed against a heavy piece of furniture and clutched the edge of the desk. So, she's not as tough as she wants us to believe. As Grady watched, her translucent skin blanched even whiter, displaying clearly the degree of her exhaustion, as her knees began to buckle.
    He was on her in a second, his arm sweeping familiarly around her shoulders for support. "Only folks coming onto my land are those I allow entrance."
    "I've had a husband, and I don't want another," she told him desperately, but already her gaze assessed him.
    She was interrupted by Hamilton Quince, who edged close enough to follow the conversation. "Want plays a poor second to need, and right now, Mrs. Rossiter, it would appear that you need the protection of a man."
    Grady remained expressionless and silent, letting Quince make his case. But the gambler's woman didn't spare a glance for Hamilton, intent on answers to her questions.
    She skimmed the room with a suspicious gaze at the same time she spoke softly to him, pitching her voice so that even Quince couldn't hear.
    "Pretty convenient me just being made a widow." Her tone was intimate, and