Summer Breeze by Catherine Anderson Read Free Book Online Page B

the floor. No way was he going to sleep in one of the bedrooms with ghosts as his bed companions.
    The thought no sooner moved through Joseph's mind than the air exploded with sound and flying debris. Buddy yelped in fright. Joseph dived for the floor. When the dust settled, he was under the table, his Colt . 45 drawn and ready, two overturned chairs providing him with scant cover.
    Holy shit. Disgusted with himself for drawing his weapon when he knew damned well it was a woman shooting at him, Joseph slipped the revolver back into his holster and retrieved his Stetson, which had been knocked from his head. After putting the hat back on, he cautiously shifted position to see around
    one of the chair seats. Better to make a target of the Stetson than his head, he thought, and then promptly changed his mind when he saw the jagged hole that had appeared dead center in the boarded-up archway. The size of a prize-winning Texas pumpkin, it was well over two feet in diameter, the bottom edge a little over three feet from the ground, telling him that she'd probably fired from the waist instead of her shoulder. Only a shotgun had that kind of blasting power. If aimed anyplace near him, the gun would destroy the table, the overturned chair, his hat, and him.
    Lamplight poured through the opening, lending additional brightness to the already illuminated dining room. With a shotgun-toting crazy woman on the other side of the wall, Joseph didn't count that as a blessing. Total darkness would have pleased him more.
    Judging by the circumference of the hole, he felt fairly sure that Rachel Hollister had emptied both barrels. So far, he hadn't heard the telltale rasp and click of steel to indicate that she'd shoved more cartridges into the chambers. That was encouraging.
    Once again, he thought about calling out to identify himself, but then decided it would be futile.
    If his earlier explanations hadn't satisfied her, telling her his name again wasn't likely to rectify the situation.
    This woman wasn't messing around. She meant to kill him.

Chapter Four
    Ears still ringing from the blast, Rachel lay on her back, arms and legs sprawled, the weapon lying at an angle across her lower body. Her hip throbbed with pain. For a moment, she couldn't think what had happened. Then her spinning confusion slowly settled into rational thought. She'd been standing in the middle of the room, terrified by the sounds of someone breaking into her house and coming toward the kitchen. Heart pounding, she'd swung the gun toward the boards over the doorway. Then something heavy had struck the wall, she'd jumped in fright, and the next thing she knew, she was staring at the ceiling.
    Pushing the weapon off her legs, Rachel struggled to sit up. When she saw the huge hole that the shotgun had blown through her barricade, her heart almost stopped for the second time in as many minutes. Oh, dear God. She scrambled to her feet and retrieved the shotgun.
    "Who's there?" she called, her voice shaking with
    fright. "Get out of my house, or I'll shoot. Don't think I won't!"
    No answer. An awful dread squeezed her chest. What if she had killed him? She frantically tried to remember the name of the man who had knocked on her door. Paxton? The moment he'd told her about Darby being shot, her head had gone muzzy, and then everything had turned black. Just before that, it seemed to her that the other man had introduced himself as the marshal. Oh, God.
    Oh, God. What if he'd been telling the truth, and she'd just shot a lawman?
    Afraid of the sight that might greet her eyes, she inched closer to the opening, the bottom edge of which hit her several inches above the waist, allowing her to look through without ducking. In all her life, she had never harmed anything, not even a spider. To think that she might have killed two men made her stomach roll.
    "Mr. Paxton?" She cautiously poked her head through the hole to see into the other room. The silence that bounced back at her was