When The Heart Beckons by Jill Gregory Read Free Book Online Page A

stock.”
    Steele holstered the gun in one swift, fluid
movement. “Much obliged. But there’s one more thing. Don’t tell
anyone else where McCallum has gone.”
    Chatham shook his head in bewilderment. “You
mean someone else is tracking him besides you?”
    “Could be. So if anyone
asks—
anyone
—give a false answer, my friend, or I’ll come
back and kill you myself before you even know I’m there.”
    “I won’t ... say a word,” the blacksmith
croaked.
    Steele, after regarding him intently for a
moment, turned on his heel and stalked from the stable.
    Annabel waited, pressing back against the
stall. She heard the blacksmith return to work, swearing under his
breath, and then she eased her way to the rear door and out once
more into the quickly falling dusk.
    But as she rounded the corner of the
building, heading back toward the hotel, she suddenly collided with
a rock-hard wall of sheer male muscle looming directly before
her.
    “Ma’am.” The harshness of Roy Steele’s voice
raised gooseflesh on her arms. She tried to answer in kind.
    “Mr. Steele.”
    “You know my name.”
    For the second time since she’d met him,
Annabel felt the hot blush warming her cheeks, but she recovered
smoothly. “Why, yes, the clerk at the hotel mentioned it. May I
pass, please?”
    “Uh-uh.”
    “Mr. Steele ...”
    “You’re not going anywhere until you answer
a question. Why are you following me?”
    “Following you? Mr. Steele, you obviously
have an exaggerated sense of your power over women. I assure you I
am not ...”
    “You are.”
    She shook her head and let a light laugh
trill from her lips. “Well. If you aren’t the vainest man I’ve ever
met. Merely because I happen to find myself in the same vicinity as
you twice in one day—to my own regret, I assure you ...”
    Icy fury clamped down over his implacable
features. “Stop prattling. Answer my question or I’ll ...”
    “You’ll what? Shoot me? Oh, heavens, I am
quite shaking in my boots!”
    Annabel was amazed at her own audacity.
Truth be told, she was shaking in her boots; her knees rattled
quite humiliatingly beneath her serviceable traveling skirt. But
she kept her face schooled into an expression of outraged scorn. If
there was one thing she hated, it was a bully, and Roy Steele was
nothing but a bully, she assured herself.
    A bully who looked as if he would like to
wring her neck. He reached out one hand and for an agonizing second
Annabel thought he was really going to choke her, but he only
gripped her by the shoulder. “If you weren’t following me, lady,
what the hell are you doing in this alley? A little while ago, I
saw you behind me on Main Street, pretending to look in a shop
window.”
    “You’re quite mad, Mr. Steele.
Quite
mad. And if you don’t let me go this very instant
...”
    “Steele! Freeze!”
    A voice like hell’s own thunder roared
through the alley. Annabel and Steele both spun toward it.
    Annabel’s eyes widened at the sight before
her. Good God, not one, but two vicious-looking gunmen glared at
them from less than twenty feet away.
    They must be outlaws—or gunfighters, Annabel
guessed, fighting back a rush of faintness. Her heart was banging
against the wall of her chest like an Indian war drum. She’d never
seen such dirty, unkempt, savage-looking men.
    Unshaven, their faces pockmarked and tough
as buffalo hide beneath their stringy brown hair, they looked like
the type of men who would as soon wring a cat’s neck as pet it.
They both wore long greasy yellow dusters over dirt-stained pants
and cracked boots that were torn and splattered with mud. One man
was taller than the other, with even tinier, beadier eyes. Annabel
noted in alarm that his gun was drawn and pointed straight at Roy
Steele. The other man had a long mustache and a scar looping from
his cheek down across his pointed chin. They bore a startling
resemblance to each other: the same long gangly build, the same
flat, squashed noses, the same