Luke’s Runaway Bride by Kate Bridges Read Free Book Online Page A

clenched to keep from slipping off.
    They rode into a muddy clearing, crossed a line of cedars and splashed through a riverbed. As they headed down toward a grass-covered valley, Luke slowed the horse to a trot. Jenny wiped her sweaty palms on her velvet skirts and tried to loosen the stiffness in her arms. Her chest started to feel hot inside the sheepskin coat.
    Ten minutes passed, then an hour. Her breathing steadied. Her hands stopped trembling. The wind tugged at her loosened hair and she found herself enjoying the sensation.
    The horse swayed, and for the tenth time, her cheek brushed Luke’s leather-covered shoulder. His body heat singed her cheek. His thighs rippled against hers once more, and she quivered. To take her mind off the man between her legs, she thought of Daniel.
    Where was he? Did he miss her? How many men had he organized to chase after her? He’d be at the front of the pack, she envisioned, leading everyone. She couldn’t imagine him with a gun, though. Did he carry one? All she ever saw him carry was that silver pocket watch and a cigar. If he never carried a gun, then who had shot Luke in the office yesterday? The guard?
    And she couldn’t imagine Daniel on horseback like Luke was now, roaring through the fields, leaping off the edge of a train, and just…well, just taking a woman he wanted. No, Daniel was a gentleman in every sense of the word, and Luke was…a hotheaded cowboy with no thought of tomorrow.
    She tipped her face to the sun and let it caress her. It warmed her skin. In Boston, she never got to spend much time outdoors, or feel the wind or sun on her skin. If she were riding in Boston, she’d be forced to wear a bonnet.
    Boston had stifled her—being stuck in the house at eighteen, when her grandmother had passed away. Father thought that’s where proper ladies belonged, but Jenny didn’t. What was wrong with getting an education?
    After many fruitless arguments, Jenny had in the end cleaned and laundered and mended alongside Olivia, not because she had to but because of boredom. Soon, Jenny had started sneaking a peek at her brothers’ college books on commerce and accounting. Olivia read the ones about American history. As children, Jenny and Olivia had learned to read together, taught by Jenny’s grandmother.
    Olivia. She hoped Olivia, who was no doubt galloping behind them, was also enjoying the fresh air, for it would give them the vigor to fight when the opportunity came.
    Energized by the sun, Jenny looked up at the wide blue sky, thinking of all her reasons for coming West. Her father had his dreams of expanding the railroad, and her brothers had theirs of mining and working in pharmaceuticals. The men in her family weren’t interested in listening to her, but she would show them all she had a brain and could use it in business as well as they could. Maybe better. It was at times like these, she imagined, that daughters turned to their mothers for guidance. Jenny, at two, had lost her own mother to cholera.
    Ah, well. It had happened a long time ago, and Jenny preferred to look at the future. She smiled in the warm wind, reminding herself that more women owned shops in Denver than they did in Boston. More women were allowed to charge out on their own. Although the two Denver bankers she’d secretly approached for a loan had laughed at her ideas for an undergarment shop, she’d have a store yet. What exactly, she wasn’t sure, but with her beloved’s help she’d do it.
    All she had to do was get back to him. If it weren’t for this man, robbing her of the very freedom she cherished most…
    Jenny reached out and patted the horse’s red coat. The animal’s hooves pounded beneath her in a steady rhythm. She glanced down at the waving grass. Their interlocked shadows, two riders atop a horse, sailed along the ground.
    Why couldn’t she hear the hoofbeats of the other horse? Olivia should be close behind. Shifting in the saddle, letting go of Luke’s coat, Jenny