Sweeter Than Honey Read Online Free PDF Page B

just beyond the second bend. Whatever the women had planned wouldn’t make a hill of beans difference. Even if Sheriff Tanner came out to beg her forgiveness on bended knee for his cruelty, she still had to leave.
    Sighing her relief, she reflected it was a good thing she hadn’t let herself fall in love with the man. He’d already come close to breaking her heart.

Chapter Three
    The clopping of hooves woke Honey from her nap. Still groggy from the wine and the enervating heat, she rubbed her eyes, wondering who had come to visit and whether she would even unpack her medicines if they’d come for a cure.
    Then another thought had her eyes widening, and she shot out of her bed and reached for her skirt, which was hanging from a hook beside her dresser.
    Oh hell, had the ladies said something to the sheriff after all? Could it be him coming to apologize? Or worse, remind her she had to leave?
    As quickly as shaking fingers would allow, she pulled on her blouse and hooked the buttons up her back, leaving the top few undone. Her hair would just have to hide her state of undress.
    “ Hallo . Honey, you in there, girl?” came a voice she’d recognize anywhere if only for its gruffness.
    “Letty?” she called out. She opened the door of her wagon and stepped down to the ground to find Letty with her skirts hitched high on either side of her legs, straddling a horse as wide as she was.
    Only Letty wasn’t looking her way. She was turned in her saddle and staring down the road.
    Honey walked up beside her and followed the direction of her gaze to see Daisy and Sally Epperson seated on a buckboard wagon, waving gaily at her as they approached. What were the good ladies up to now?
    Letty tapped Honey on the shoulder. “We brung you a present.”
    Honey’s eyebrows shot up, and she turned to stare at the two women atop the wagon whose smiles couldn’t have been any wider. “Letty, what the hell did you do?”
    “We’re just givin’ you a chance to return a favor,” she said with a naughty waggle of her bushy eyebrows.
    Honey’s heart galloped like a runaway horse. “Tell me you didn’t do what I think you did.” She picked up her skirts and ran to the wagon before the ladies had even pulled back on the reins of the team to halt it.
    As Honey ran around the back, Sally giggled. “I’d be in a hurry too.”
    “Sally, you been dipping into Daisy’s port?” Honey asked as she lowered the back gate.
    “Had to make her a co-consh-pirator,” Daisy said, then giggled herself.
    “We couldn’t have done what we did without a shot of courage,” Sally said, then snorted before breaking into a gale of laughter.
    The bed of the wagon was filled with loose hay. A black boot stuck out from under the straw at the end of the bed.
    Fascinated, Honey gave the boot a pull, half hoping it wasn’t attached to anyone’s foot, but she had no such luck. She gathered handfuls of straw and started dragging it from the wagon to uncover the body of a very large man.
    A very quiet large man.
    With only the half of him she could reach cleared of straw, she didn’t have any trouble recognizing who it was. “Daisy, did you kill him?”
    “Now, Honey,” Daisy said, her normally light and musical voice pitched low with a dirty edge. “I’m a good Christian woman—thatsh what we needed Sally for.”
    “To kill him?” Honey asked, her breaths getting so shallow she thought she might faint.
    “Sh-Shuch a suspicious mind. Although I’m almost flattered you think I could have done it.”
    Honey rolled her eyes, hitched up her skirts and climbed up on the wagon bed. She shoved more hay off the back of the wagon until the sheriff’s upper torso and head were cleared. Leaning close to his broad chest, Honey breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the sheriff’s soft snores. He was out cold. But how?
    “Did you clobber him?” she asked as she felt the back of his head for knots.
    “I already told you that was what we needed Sally