Archer's Lady: Bloodhounds, Book 3 Read Online Free PDF Page A

not a good woman. Maybe I’d started to believe that I was, living here so long and being treated with respect. These are good people who have treated me well, and I don’t want to hurt them.”
    “Then don’t,” Diana urged. “I won’t stop you from leaving, Grace. I don’t believe in that. People are who they are—or who they want to be. Either one, you just have to choose.”
    Grace laughed, and it sounded as helpless as she felt. “Archer sees through me too. I must be more transparent than glass.”
    “Only to people who care enough to look closely, I think.”
    Or to people who’d seen enough of the rougher side of life to recognize a fellow survivor. Grace shivered as she drew her braid over her shoulder and tugged the ribbon free of the end. “Do I really have to show him around?”
    “It’s you or me,” Diana answered brightly, “and I’m fairly sure he’d prefer you.”
    If only she could take the words innocently. “He could eat a sweet small-town schoolteacher alive.”
    Diana grinned. “Yes, I imagine he could.”
    “ Diana. ” Grace pushed back the curtain of her unbound hair just to glare at her friend. “It’s serious. I might be able to handle the man, but the lady I’ve been trying so hard to be surely couldn’t. What should I do?”
    “Anyone who would care is gone, Grace. Be yourself.”
    Excellent advice—or perhaps only exactly what she wanted to hear. Grace shook her hair back and nodded. “I can do that. Would you let him know I’ll be down within a quarter hour?”
    “Sure.” Diana rolled off the bed and stretched. “Do you think he’ll go back and tell the Guild about me? Cecil thinks so.”
    “I think…” Odd that, in such a short time, she already had a sense of the man. Or perhaps not so odd, considering how she’d once made her living. “I think he won’t, if you ask him not to.”
    “Hmm.” Her friend turned for the door. “We’ll see.”
    She let Diana put a hand on the knob before she asked the most important question. “Do you want him to?”
    The woman turned, her back against the door. “It’s lonely, not knowing anyone else like you.”
    “I know.” Which made Grace all the more determined to marshal her defenses where Archer was concerned. Perhaps he could be talked into helping Diana find a place where she could belong, where she could be who and what she was meant to be.
    Diana deserved that more than Grace ever had.
     
     
    If one more person clapped him on the back and called him a hero, Archer might explode.
    He leaned against a hitching post outside the saloon and watched the people milling about. There were more this morning, no doubt emboldened by the destroyed vampires’ nest.
    They had no idea what was coming for them.
    Grace did. He could see it in her ice blue eyes as she freed herself from a knot of people and stepped off the wooden sidewalk, headed toward him.
    She was dressed in nicer clothes today, but he wasn’t self-centered enough to think it was for his benefit. She wasn’t running away, for one, with an interminable ride in her future. No reason not to look her best. “Morning, Grace.”
    “Archer.” She stopped a few paces away. “Diana indicated you needed my assistance today?”
    “I need a guide,” he clarified. “Someone to show me Crystal Springs, tell me a little about the town.” Perhaps shed some light on why such a tiny hamlet would be important enough for local vampires to mount a three-month siege.
    Grace nodded and turned to the right. “Shall we start at the east end? I can show you some of our resources. Plenty of the homes and businesses are unusually modern for the border area.”
    “I was wondering more about the families in town. The ones still here?”
    Her frown creased the spot between her eyebrows. “Farmers, for the most part.” After casting a glance at the gathering crowd, all of whom seemed far too focused in their attempts to eavesdrop, she took a step forward. “The sheriff