The Cowboy's Reluctant Bride

The Cowboy's Reluctant Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: The Cowboy's Reluctant Bride Read Online Free PDF
Author: Debra Cowan
didn’t dismiss her theory.
    Her guest looked her over slowly, sparking all her nerve endings. A muscle flexed in his jaw. “Does he always put his hands on you like that?”
    “He didn’t pay me much mind until Tom died.” And he had certainly never made her feel halfway dizzy the way Gideon just had with only a look. “Do you think he might be behind this?”
    “I’m considerin’ the possibility. He wants you.”
    “Well, it isn’t mutual,” she said hotly. The idea made her shudder.
    Gideon turned and stepped off the porch, kneeling near the hitching post.
    Ivy followed him outside. “What are you doing?”
    “Checking his horse’s tracks.”
    So if he saw them again, he would recognize them, she realized. She should do the same. She moved behind him and to his other side. He wore his hat now, drawing her attention to the nape of his corded neck. Skirts brushing against his shoulder, she bent over to study the hoofprints, too.
    “Is there anything distinctive about them?” she asked.
    He pointed to the impressions in the mud. “His mount lists to the right. Like she has one front leg shorter than the other.”
    Too aware of the way his powerful thigh muscles pulled his trousers taut, she forced herself to look at what he was showing her.
    When he half turned to study the stage driver’s boot prints, she did the same.
    “I can’t tell anything about them,” she said.
    “Yeah, they’re just scuff marks in the dirt. I plan to keep an eye out for him. If something happens tonight, we’ll have some tracks to compare, and maybe we can start to figure out who’s doing these things.”
    She nodded.
    His gaze trailed over her almost impersonally, as if he were checking to make sure she was all right. He tipped his hat. “If you need me, I’ll be around the barn doing chores.”
    Conrad’s visit had almost made her forget what had happened at lunch with Gideon. The way she’d ambushed him with all those questions.
    “Do you want more coffee?”
    “No, thanks.”
    “All right.” She watched him walk away, taking in the broad line of his shoulders. The way they narrowed to his lean hips.
    The reason he wasn’t coming back inside was probably because she’d opened old wounds with her questions. The information was a curiosity to her, but it was his life, his past. A clearly painful past he didn’t want to share.
    That was fine. Gideon Black could keep his secrets. And she would keep hers.
    * * *
    Now Ivy knew he’d done murder. Once she’d had time to absorb that he had killed a man, he’d see the familiar revulsion and wariness in her eyes that he saw in everyone’s, except Smith’s and Smith’s parents.
    Gideon eased out a breath. He didn’t like her stirring up the past, and he wasn’t having it. He would never tell her about the man he’d killed or the woman he’d killed for.
    He was living here, so she might deserve to know a few things, but she had no right to get inside his head. Inside him.
    She hadn’t liked that he wouldn’t answer every question she asked, especially about Smith. Too bad. There was no way he was telling her that he had saved her brother’s life after fighting off five men who were beating the hell out of him. He also wasn’t giving up to her how Smith had saved him after Gideon had been jumped and strung up by the neck in his own cell. And she wouldn’t be learning that he had other scars he’d gotten before going to prison.
    Ivy didn’t need to know any of that.
    He didn’t intend to answer any more questions. If she didn’t like it, she could send him packing. Or try. He wasn’t leaving until he figured out what was going on. Regardless of what Ivy did, he wouldn’t let Smith down. And he didn’t have to be her friend in order to protect her.
    He could do what needed to be done without taking his meals with her, although it would be difficult to walk away from good food after years of prison slop. Still, he’d done harder things.
    He’d keep to
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