Tracie Peterson - [New Mexico Sunset 03] by Angel's Cause Read Free Book Online Page B

Angeline, if I’d been given that right.”
    Gavin physically let out a sigh of relief, causing Lillie to smile sympathetically. “Did you think we were going to roast you over hot coals?”
    Gavin smiled. “I was ready for just about anything.”
    “Good,” Daniel said before Lillie could reply, “because we have a problem.”
    “I suppose Angeline’s in the middle of it,” Gavin surmised.
    “No,” Daniel replied. “She is the whole problem.”
    Gavin grinned at his father’s best friend. In all the world, Garrett Lucas had told his son, there was no better man than Daniel Monroe. “Go on,” Gavin urged.
    “Angeline has run away,” Daniel began. “She got it in her mind to join the Women’s Suffrage Movement and travel the country whistlestopping and stumping for equal rights and the vote.”
    Gavin shook his head. “Angel does enjoy her causes.”
    “That’s not the half of it,” Lillie joined in. “We forbade her to go. We tried to reason with her and thought we’d made her see our side of it, but last night, she sneaked out of the house and caught the train for Springer. From there she plans to travel south to Santa Fe with a suffragist named Willa Neal.”
    “What do you want me to do?” Gavin asked, coming to the edge of his seat. He hoped Daniel’s and Lillie’s words would affirm what he already had in mind.
    “We’d like for you to go after her,” Daniel said solemnly. “We’d of course pay your expenses.”
    “No need for that,” Gavin said, getting to his feet. “I was serious about marrying Angel. I know she cares for me the same way I care for her. But, she’s also young and stubborn. This time, though, she may well have gotten herself into more trouble than she can handle.”
    “Our thoughts exactly,” Daniel concurred. “I don’t care what it takes, I just want her back here safe and sound. From that point we’ll just have to take it day by day.”
    Lillie reached out and poured a cup of coffee. “Why don’t you have some,” she said, extending the cup to Gavin.
    “No thank you, Aunt Lillie,” he said, knowing that one day he would call her by another name. That was, if he could find Angeline before she caused herself harm. Then, he’d have to somehow convince her to marry him, but that was all immaterial at this point.
    “I’ll need to go home first,” he said, already heading for the door. “My folks will need to know what I’m up to.”
    Lillie and Daniel followed him. “Of course,” they said in unison.
    Gavin turned at the door. “Try not to worry. Angeline’s stubborn, but she’s got a good head on her shoulders.”
    “Thank you, Gavin,” Lillie said, reaching out to hug the stern-faced young man.
    “I’ll get her back,” he whispered for her ears only, and Lillie hugged him even tighter.
    “I know you will.”
    ❧
    Gavin found a captive audience when he returned to the ranch. Maggie and Garrett immediately sensed the urgency in their son and shooed his brothers from the room in order to privately speak with their eldest.
    “Is something wrong?” Maggie asked, the worry clearly written in her eyes.
    “Yeah,” Gavin said with a nod, “it seems Angel has run off to join the Suffrage Movement.” Maggie and Garrett both looked rather surprised before Gavin continued. “Lillie and Dan want me to go after her, and I told them I would.”
    Garrett grinned at his wife, who’d already told him that their son intended to marry their best friends’ daughter. “Bet that was a hard decision to make.”
    Gavin couldn’t help but flush a bit. “Who told you?”
    Maggie laughed out loud at the look of surprise on her son’s face. She reached out and rumpled his hair as she’d done when he was a small child. “Does it matter? Do you mind us knowing that you’re in love with Angeline?”
    Gavin shook his head, then rolled his eyes heavenward. “Please tell me they don’t know,” he moaned, motioning in the direction Maggie had sent his