The Tracker by Mary Burton Read Free Book Online Page A

laughing as they compared their attributes. But as much as Ellie had seen and heard, she had never touched a naked man.
    She set down her cloth. “How bad can it be?”
    Ellie pulled a sheet over his legs and covered his more private regions. She reached under the sheet for his belt buckle and unfastened it. The marshal’s flat belly rose and fell with each breath. Coarse hair brushed her knuckles.
    She moved to the foot of the bed and grabbed his pant legs. She started to pull. The pants didn’t move. She tugged harder. Nothing.
    Ellie blew a stray curl off her face. “I don’t suppose you could lift your hips?”
    Unconscious, he didn’t respond.
    Ellie moved to the middle of the bed, reached under the sheets and grabbed his waistband. His skin was warm beneath her fingers. Keeping her gaze averted, she tugged. The pants started to slide down his hips. So did the sheet. Then the pants caught on the bandage.
    She dropped her gaze.
    Her cheeks flamed.
    This man was well constructed. The girls at the Silver Slipper would have done their best to attract his attention. They’d have called him a Handsome Devil.
    She covered him with the sheet and gingerly worked his pants off. She tossed them on the floor.
    Without warning, his arm captured her wrist and he pulled her against him. Her lips were but inches from his. Then he lifted his lips to hers.
    He tasted salty and sweet and soft and hard all at the same time. Smoldering embers in her body ignited. Heat spread from the core of her body through her limbs. She relaxed into the kiss and savored the taste of his lips and the feel of his body.
    “Crystal,” he murmured, his eyes closed. His hand dropped away.
    She pulled back, feeling a thousand times the fool.
    Here she sat kissing a man who not only belonged to another woman, but who had brought nothing but trouble to her life. Lord, but she was a pitiful, weak-willed creature.
    She rose from the edge of the bed, wanting nothing more than to put distance between them.
    At least he’d been asleep when they’d kissed. He wouldn’t remember a thing.
    If only she could forget.
     
    O VER THE NEXT FEW DAYS , Ellie fell into a routine. She cleaned the marshal’s wound, drained it and watched for gangrene, which blessedly never showed.
    Early in the morning of the sixth day, the marshal’s fever had eased a little. It looked as if his body would fight off the infection. He would live.
    This realization fostered a new set of worries. What if she couldn’t convince him that she didn’t have Frank’s gold? Would he take her to jail? Could he take Rose away? He’d already proven himself hardheaded and single-minded.
    Gathering the logs she’d just split, she walked up to the porch and inside the house. The door to his room remained ajar, as she’d left it. The sound of his deep, even breathing filled the house.
    She set the logs in the box by the fireplace and then, wiping her hands on her apron, looked down into the cradle at Rose. Since the marshal had taken over her room, she’d moved the cradle out to the main room. At night, she slept on a pallet by the cradle so that she’d be close to the marshal.
    The floorboards creaked behind her and she whirled around. The marshal stood in the center of the cabin, buck-naked. He leaned heavily against the wall, careful to keep the weight off his injured leg.
    Her gaze darted from his wild eyes to his well-muscled chest. She didn’t dare look any lower.
    Her womb tightened and a hot restless feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. She remembered their kiss and heat rose in her cheeks.
    “I want my gun!” the marshal shouted.
    Shocked back to her senses, Ellie snapped her mouth shut. Color flooded her face.
    “Gun!”
    The marshal squinted at her. “Pistol.”
    Her mind cleared. “Oh.”
    In a low growl full of menace, he repeated himself. “My gun, Ellie.”
    She lifted her chin, but held her ground. “No guns at the coach stop. It’s Miss Annie’s policy.”
    The