Secondhand Bride by Linda Lael Miller

Author:Linda Lael Miller [Miller, Linda Lael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Westerns, Fiction, Romance, Western, Historical, General
ISBN: 9780743422758
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 2004-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

32

Jack Barrett rode overland, bent low in the saddle, for several long hours. It was near dawn when he reached the cabin, and Sue Ellen came out to meet him, holding a lantern in one hand and a rifle in the other.

He pitched forward, wrapped both arms around the horse’s neck to keep from hitting the hard, stone-strewn ground.

Sue Ellen cried out, leaned the rifle against the outside wall, set the lantern on the chopping block next to the woodpile, and rushed over, braced to break his fall if she could.

“That bastard McKettrick shot me,” he said, through his teeth.

She helped him down from the saddle, positioned her small, strong body under his left arm. “Dammit, Jack,” she hissed, “you went ahead and did it, didn’t you? It wasn’t just talk. You killed Jeb McKettrick!”

The open doorway of the cabin loomed ahead; Jack set his mind on staying upright long enough to get through it and leaned heavily on Sue Ellen. “I wish I had,” he said, “but there were riders coming, so I had to leave before I’d finished him.”

“You wretched fool,” she berated, even as they stepped over the high threshold and into the dark house, “you’ll bring the whole lot of them down on us now!”

Right then, the collective wrath of the McKettrick clan was the least of Jack’s concerns, though he reckoned it might get to be an issue later on. “Just get me some whiskey, Sue Ellen,” he grumbled, “and shut up.”

She fetched him to the bed, where he fell heavily, then scared up some rotgut from someplace and gave him a dose.

“I should have kept going, after I left the Circle C, instead of letting you talk me into staying around,” Sue Ellen fussed, after she’d retrieved the lantern, shut and latched the door, and come back to the bedside to peer at his wound.

“You wanted revenge on the McKettricks as much as I did,” Jack pointed out, flinching when she helped herself to his jackknife and cut a slash in his trouser leg.

“Just Holt,” she snapped. “Not the whole damn Triple M outfit!”

Jack drew in a hissing breath and swore. “Take it easy, will you? That hurts!”

“Good,” she retorted, and plunged what felt like a hot poker into the gash in his flesh.

“Anyways, Holt’s a McKettrick, whatever he calls himself,” Jack grated. “He’ll be in the thick of this, you can count on that.”

She hesitated; he felt it in the motions of her hands. “I don’t want you to kill him,” she said.

“Too late for tender sentiments,” Jack answered. “Give me some more of that whiskey.”

She held the flask to his lips, and he drained it to the dregs.

“I mean it, Jack,” she went on, not so haughty as before. “I was furious when he sent me away, and I wanted him to be sorry for what he did, but I didn’t bargain for any killing.”

“You’re in as deep as I am,” Jack said. “No going back now.”

Her eyes glittered in the bleak dimness of the cabin.

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