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nervously approached, Cole saw the
girl’s eyelashes flutter. About time. Suddenly she opened her eyes
and gazed up at him in a dazed fashion. He felt his insides
tighten. She had the most exquisite eyes he’d ever seen—huge,
expressive, green as a Montana valley, and filled just now with a
touching uncertainty that, if he’d been any other man, would have
tugged at his heart. But Cole had been delayed long enough, and
life’s hard blows had toughened whatever he’d once had of a
heart.
    “Been a pleasure getting acquainted with you,
ma’am, but I’m afraid I’ve got to be going now,” he drawled, and
dumped her without ceremony into the bewhiskered man’s arms.
Without another glance at the girl who had interfered with the
orderly execution of his business, he seized Gus Borden’s shirt
collar and dragged him over to the sorrel horse tethered in front
of the saloon. Flinging the body over the saddle and tying it
securely in place, Cole forced himself to avoid looking at the
little knot of bonneted women, curious children, and silent men who
had gathered around the girl. He mounted Arrow and spurred the
horse forward, directing the sorrel through the town. Denver,
pretty much inured to violence in the streets and saloons, was
already getting back to normal.
    So much for Denver, and fainting women. As he
left the town behind for the solitude of sagebrush and plains, Cole
tried not to think about the girl with the golden cloud of hair.
Tommy
, she had said, just before she fainted. She’d been
looking at Borden when she said it. Strange. Equally strange was
the fact that the girl had been about to enter the saloon. She
didn’t look like any fallen dove he’d ever seen; she looked damned
respectable—aristocratic, even—but then, Cole thought, spurring
Arrow on across the foothills, what did he know about women? Only
what he’d learned from Liza, and that was all bad. Ina Day and the
other dance-hall girls and whores he frequented now and then were
fine and dandy conveniences for fulfilling the needs of a man’s
body, but he didn’t know a damned thing about any one of them, and
he didn’t care to, either. Women were tricky, cunning, and
treacherous creatures, that’s all he knew or needed to know. The
prettier they were, the more dangerous they could be. According to
this way of figuring things, that gold-haired beauty back there
could be downright fatal.
    Cole knew one thing. The sooner he forgot
about her, the better off he’d be. He turned his mind to Borden,
and the reward, and how he’d celebrate finishing the job by looking
up Ina and letting her entertain him for the night. That kind of
company he could handle. Short, sweet, and uncomplicated, a night
with Ina would make him forget all about the girl who’d fainted, a
girl Cole was certain he’d never see again.
    The foothills rose about him as he rode away
from Denver, soothing him with their wildness, their solitude,
their lonely embrace. Cole settled down for the ride and fixed his
sights on Ina Day, a feather bed, and a bottle of the Red Feather’s
finest.
    Juliana, meanwhile, came dazedly awake to
find herself in the arms of a thin, frightened-looking man with
black whiskers and a bulbous nose.
Ugh. No. That wasn’t the
face at all
. Dizzy, she shut her eyes again, and a soft moan
escaped her lips. She tried to summon up the image of a handsome
young face, rugged and strong and hard. Hadn’t she just seen that
face? Where had it gone?
    Her uncle’s voice rang with cold fury through
the air, shattering her dreamy haze. “Juliana, what is the meaning
of this? What are you doing down here in the street?”
    Her eyes blinked open. She found herself in
the center of a little crowd of people, all eyeing her curiously.
Aunt Katharine, Uncle Edward, and Victoria were glaring at her as
if she had just marched naked through a garden party. Why?
Frantically, she tried to clear her foggy brain.
    “Is she yours, mister?” The bewhiskered