Katy Run Away by Maren Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

out back. He opened the door and gestured for her to precede him, but for the second time, Katy paused in the threshold.
    “Don’t worry,” he told her when she only stared inside at the bed. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”
    She had twin spots of color burning in her cheeks again. She glanced back down the hall the way they’d come, then sidestepped, allowing the proprietor enough space to lug an oblong tin tub into the room. Laying a towel on the floor, he placed the tub in the center and then got out of the way, allowing the two women who had followed him to empty into it the four steaming buckets they’d been carrying. When they were done, four inches of heated water covered the bottom of the tub and Katy and Cal were once more left alone to stare at one another.
    “Well?” she said, bracing her hands on her hips.
    Sinking into a cushioned chair by the window, Cal propped his feet up on the table and let out a groan of relief. “I promise not to peek.”
    Katy glared at him, her hands knuckling into fists. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to—and after a moment, Cal dragged his feet back down off the table. Stifling another groan, this time, certainly not one of relief, he stood up again.
    “I’ll bring you something to eat.” He crossed the room, noting how she edged away from him as he trudged back out into the hall. “You’ve got ten minutes. Don’t take all the hot—”
    She went inside and closed the door before he could finish.
    “Water.” Cal nodded once, then he shook his head. His weary footsteps seemed heavy and loud as he headed down the hall for the stairs.
    “Two hot dinners,” he told the proprietor as he passed the counter. “A sweet tea for the lady, and I’m going to need a beer. We’ll take them in our room in about fifteen minutes.”
    “Certainly.”
    Cal tapped the bar and nodded, but he didn’t stop walking. He left the hotel, making an immediate right and heading to the end of the wooden walkway, around the corner of the hotel and all the way down the alley to the rear of the building. The lumberyard was busy. He could see half a dozen men scraping bark from a variety of tree trunks, preparing them for the saw. Now that was a difficult job. It was hard, hot, physical labor.
    It almost compared to this.
    As he rounded the back of the hotel, Cal unbuckled his belt and tugged the worn length of leather from his belt loops. He was still wrapping the buckled end around his palm when the brunette from the Abilene saw him, squeaked and ran. Katy was hanging completely out of the upper story window, dangling by both hands from the windowsill and feeling with her feet for the thin frame across the top of the lower floor window directly below. As low as she could get, she pushed away from the wall and jumped, landing on her feet and only a little off balance.
    “Ha!” she crowed, and stood. Her smile vanished when she saw him coming. She tried to run, but he caught the scruff of her dress first and then her arm. Her shrieks caught the attention of the men in the lumberyard. “No, wait! Cal! Don’t!”
    “This is just a taste.” He snapped his belt across her bottom with a great deal more force than he would have used, but for all the layers of clothing that padded her bottom from the full effects of the leather. Those three sharp strokes still made her hips jolt outward, eliciting fresh yelps from Katy. “Something for you to think about until I get you back upstairs, where I’m going to bare your bottom and do the job properly.”
    He gave her one last lick, laying it low across the very tops of her thighs, and from her howling, bouncing response, he guessed she was probably wishing she had more protective padding, not less.
    In the lumberyard beyond them, some of the men had paused to see what the commotion was about. Others were already going back to work. Cal wasn’t sure if she had even noticed they had an audience. If she had, it obviously did not rank high on