Deborah Camp Read Online Free PDF Page A

you’re made of, whether your word is as good as gold or as worthless as Confederate currency.”
    Adele pushed back her shoulders and faced him. “I assure you, my word is solid gold.”
    A smirk worked its way up through him to find his mouth. “So how does tomorrow morning strike you? Think you can lasso a preacher to marry us?”
    “Yes.” She sized him up, her green eyes flashing. “I expect I can fashion you into a decent human being. You’ve lost your way, obviously, but I believe I’m just the woman to herd you back onto the right path.”
    “Is that so?” Reno asked, resentment rising in him like a fist. He ached to tell her that he could buy and sell her ten times over, but held his tongue because he suspected she had decided to wed him only to change him. She was, after all, her mother’s daughter. Victoria Bishop had been one hell of a woman; she never saw an injustice she didn’t try to put right or a lost cause she didn’t join. “Aren’t I the lucky bastard.”
    She gasped at the ugly word. “Watch your tongue, Reno Gold. You are in the company of a lady!”
    He grinned, glad to have ruffled her feathers. “Pardon me all to hell and back, Dellie.” Chuckling, heremoved his pocket watch and checked the time. “Guess I’ll stay in a hotel tonight and be back here bright and early to collect my bride.” He winked and she blushed. “Say eight o’clock?”
    “Make it nine. We can marry between the breakfast and dinner rush.”
    “You expect to work tomorrow?”
    She gave a definite nod. “And I expect the same of you. I won’t allow any freeloaders around me.”
    He gritted his teeth to keep from speaking his mind and pivoted sharply away from her.
    Locating his belongings piled by the restaurant door, he gathered them up and stepped outside into the velvety night. He realized he was sweating and felt sick. And why not? he mocked himself. He’d just demanded that a woman make an honest man of him!
    With a soft groan he struck out for the inconstant lights of town and tried not to think too hard about tomorrow or listen to the voice in his pounding head that was calling him one vile name after another.
    Inside, Adele slumped in the chair and stared blindly at the flicking flame in the oil lamp.
    “Well, I’ve gone and lost my mind,” she said to the room at large. “And very possibly ruined my life.”
    She didn’t blink for a long spell, and when she did, a fat tear rolled down her cheek. The first of many.

Chapter 3
     
    “Y ou may kiss the bride.”
    Everything went very still inside Adele when the preacher intoned those words, then her nerves fluttered through her like a flock of startled birds. Beside her Reno turned and placed a hand on her shoulder. She trembled and looked up into his face.
    His face. She had dreamed of this face and had imagined how it would have changed over the years. Actually the changes were subtle yet telling. His eyes, dark blue and glinting with deep-seated mischief, had acquired crow’s feet at the corners. His jaw had squared with maturity, his dimples had deepened; his whiskers had darkened and become more plentiful, the evidence of them faintly shading the lower half of his face.
    As a boy he’d been tall and gangly. As a man he was tall and lean, graceful and powerfully built. His mouth was quite beautiful, the most beautiful mouth she’d ever seen on a man, with its full lower lip and wavy upper one.
    He’d changed his hair. It used to be too long and sometimes shaggy; now it was shorter and straight, sometimes falling in a sweep across his forehead until he pushed it brusquely back into place.
    And the way he looked at her was altogether different. Back in Lawrence he had hardly made eye contact with her, his gaze darting away any time she tried to engage it. Now he looked boldly into her eyes and held her hands in his. She noticed that his lashes were thick and sooty and that one brow arched sardonically.
    “Mrs. Reno Gold, so glad to make