Lawless by Emma Wildes Read Free Book Online

for him, much less a well-educated beauty from a good family.
    He looked away. At the plain but homey interior of the small cabin with its rustic, rough furnishings; a bed made of hand-hewn pine and piled with Indian blankets, the river stone hearth, the small table with two benches. There was a single window, the shutters now closed against the chill of the mountain air, and shelves with supplies already stocked for the winter. Flour, lard, salt, sacks of potatoes…it looked like Gabe was ready if there was an early snow. Winters could be fierce this high up.
    The fire crackled, a log snapping as resin bubbled out of it, the sweet smell mingling with the fragrance of the stew. Cal contemplated the flames as he sipped a cup of coffee, all too aware of the woman sitting a few feet away.
    Every curve of her luscious body was branded in his memory. The softness of her lips, the silken feel of her hair, the smooth, flawless warmth of her skin…
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    Lawless
    Damn it, he needed to stop thinking about her.
    “You wantin’ me to ride out in the morning?” Gabe came and sat down next to him, cradling a tin cup in his big hands.
    “Yes.”
    “I can do that. I’ve been waitin’ for you to show up.” His friend took a flask from his pocket, tipped some liquor into his cup and passed it over.
    “If that’s the firewater you make yourself, no thanks.” Cal eyed the offering with suspicion. “The last time I drank some of that I lost three days.”
    “That’s because you don’t do anything halfway, son. A little won’t hurt you. A lot isn’t a good idea. If I remember correctly, the time you mention was after the Las Animas robbery where Gil Holbert killed all those people.”
    It had been. Cal still had nightmares over it. The fact he’d shot Holbert himself after the killing spree didn’t help much. Thank goodness no one recognized him and the sheriff thought Holbert had been caught in the crossfire between the thieves and the lawmen who tried to stop them leaving the scene.
    “You were there?” Laurel seemed to rouse a little.
    Cal heard the horror and reproof in the question and felt a cold weight settle in his stomach. He said nothing, just stared at the fire.
    “Dear God, he gunned down ten people in cold blood.” She sat on the edge of the bed, her expression etched with shock.
    “That’s why Cal killed him.” Gabe said the words in a matter-of-fact tone. “He faced down Holbert, dared him to draw and bored him for doin’ that to a bunch of innocent folks, but the local sheriff took the credit.”
    “There is no credit in killing a man,” Cal interjected. “And shut up, Gabe. She doesn’t need to know any of this.”
    “From what I heard, they tracked down the whole gang and they were hanged not long afterwards.”
    The last thing he wanted was for her to make the correct correlation between that and what was about to happen to the River Bend Outfit once he passed along the exact www.samhainpublishing.com 37

    Emma Wildes
    location of their hideaway. He said in a cool tone, “The Las Animas deal didn’t sit well with me so I left. What happened after that wasn’t my concern then or now. I go my own way.”
    “You killed Holbert for what he did.”
    Cal gave Gabe a look of pure annoyance. “Maybe. I’d be just as glad, Miss Daniels, if no one ever found that out.”
    “Last night you called me Laurel.”
    The soft reminder startled him. He finally looked at her, a vision in her rumpled clothes, a tumbled mass of her golden hair around her face. With only the firelight for illumination, it was hard to read her expression, but at least she wasn’t looking at him as if he was a cold-blooded murderer any longer. He had given that snake Holbert a chance to go for his gun, which was a lot more than the slinking coward had offered the poor people in the bank, but that was all past and gone. He’d found out a long time ago that torturing himself over things gone wrong was