Orphan 3 - Caroline and the Raider by Linda Lael Miller

Author:Linda Lael Miller
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 2008-06-19T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter

Guthrie awakened Caroline at first light. She rose, grumbling, and made her way to the stream, where she splashed cold water over her face. Birds were chirping in the birch trees that lined the banks, and the air was chilly.

There was coffee, Caroline found, when she went back to the campfire, but breakfast consisted of beef jerky. She gave Guthrie an accusing look over the rim of her mug. “No rabbit? No fish?”

Guthrie’s beard was growing in and his clothes were rumpled, and Caroline tried to resign herself to the fact that she’d given her heart to another rascal. “Sorry, Your Highness,” he answered, with a grand bow. “I didn’t have time to hunt.”

Caroline looked around at the trees and the waterfall and the soft, fragrant grass where they’d lain together in the night. In those moments, she almost wished she and Guthrie could stay there forever, just the two of them, living like Adam and Eve in the garden. “Speaking of hunting, do you have any idea which way Mr. Flynn might have gone?”

Guthrie was saddling Caroline’s horse. “None at all,” he replied, without turning to look at her. “Yesterday, I would have said he’d gone south, but now I think you might be right. Flynn’s just enough of a bastard—and a fool—to stay in Wyoming Territory and wait for a chance at the both of us.”

Finished with her coffee, Caroline went to the stream and rinsed out her mug and Guthrie’s, then tucked them back into his gear. It made her nervous to think of Seaton lying in wait somewhere, ready to ambush them. And the idea of his touching her in an intimate fashion sent bile surging into the back of her throat.

“Don’t look so scared, Wildcat,” Guthrie said, hoisting her up into her saddle. His eyes were intent and amused as he met her gaze. “I’m not going to let anybody hurt you.”

Caroline looked away. It obviously hadn’t occurred to Guthrie that he might be the one to hurt her. All he’d have to do, really, was marry Adabelle Rogers and bring her to Bolton to live. Then Caroline would encounter his pretty wife in the mercantile and at church, and later she would teach his children in the town’s one-room schoolhouse. And every moment would be agony, because, for better or worse, Caroline was desperately in love with Guthrie.

He swung up into his own saddle, after tossing a curious glance in her direction, and set off through the trees. Caroline followed, hoping her affection for Mr. Hayes would pass, like a case of the grippe, but all the while she knew it wouldn’t. What she felt for him was far deeper and more complex than the silly infatuation she’d borne for Seaton Flynn.

The really terrible thing was that she suspected nothing Guthrie could do would be bad enough to make her stop loving him. Even if he turned out to be a murderer, every bit as cold and cruel as Seaton was, Caroline knew her feelings wouldn’t change.

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