Texas Ranger, Runaway Heiress

“Represent them, yes. Become one of them? Hardly, my dear.” He flicked his wrist, urging her to step out of the coach by herself so he could make his grand entrance into the street. “Please find something flashy to complement my wardrobe before you venture out this evening.”

Grateful to escape the narrow confines of the coach—and Eaton—Bri practically launched herself through the door.

Glancing this way and that, Bri sought out a hotel that offered adequate accommodations. She noticed an establishment above a run-down saloon, but it didn’t appeal to her. Neither did the foul-smelling stack of hides close by. She intended to stay upwind of hide hunters and their pungent bounty.

The moment the driver handed down her two satchels, she hiked toward Brazos Hotel, which sat at the opposite end of town. The sound of tinkling piano music and boisterous laughter that wafted from the string of saloons was a welcome change from the tiresome sound of Eaton’s voice and his haughty criticism. Bri couldn’t wait to ensconce herself in a private room and relax.

“Slow down, my dear!” Eaton called out as he snatched up his four suitcases and clatted after her.

Bri glanced over her shoulder in time to see Eaton nod a flirtatious greeting to one of the thespians who all but floated across the street to greet him. It was lust at first sight for Eaton and the red-haired actress, she decided. She shook her head at the ridiculousness of the public flirtation playing out on the boardwalk. The voluptuous actress, with pouty lips and luminous green eyes, was welcome to Eaton. And vice versa. Bri didn’t want him. Never had.

One of the main objectives of her journey was to disengage herself from Eaton. Another was to enjoy the freedom and independence her mother constantly tried to stifle. Despite her mother’s browbeating efforts, Bri refused to be no more than a social hostess and devoted politician’s wife.

When the redhead twirled gracefully in front of Eaton, who had halted to watch her leap through the air like a ballerina, Bri smiled in amusement. Eaton’s arrogance was astonishing. He seemed to have no idea that she could see right through him and tell what he was thinking while he visually undressed the actress. She would be outraged if she had the slightest interest in the boorish dandy.

Her stomach growled as she hiked past one of the cafés. There would time for food later, she promised herself. First, she wanted to wash away the trail dust and relax in the privacy of her room.

Leaving Eaton to ogle the actress—and her friends, who gathered around to promote their farewell performance—Bri scurried into Brazos Hotel to request a room. She dug in to her purse to pay for her accommodations then trudged up the steps.

She expelled a gigantic sigh when she closed the door behind her and appraised her modestly furnished room. She was never so glad to be anywhere in her life! She could tend to the business of hiring a guide to accompany her to the Ranger camp, where her father was inspecting troops. Even better if her father had received her message in time to send someone to fetch her.

Mercy, it had been too long since she had seen her father. Almost six months, in fact, she mused as she shed her dusty calico gown and changed into a drab gray dress, floppy-brimmed bonnet and shawl that downplayed her feminine physique. She was counting on her father to become her champion against her mother’s unreasonable demands and expectations. He understood her restless spirit, her need for adventure and excitement. She was her father’s daughter, not her mother’s senseless puppet.

A fond smile pursed Bri’s lips as she pulled her bonnet low on her forehead to conceal her facial features. She loved her father dearly and respected him greatly. He didn’t lounge in an office at the state capitol. He personally inspected the troops and assessed the situation in the wilderness to ensure the Ranger battalions had enough manpower and supplies to keep the frontier safe. Winston Price was also feeding his adventurous soul. If he didn’t remember that Bri was the proverbial chip off the block, she vowed to remind him.

It was dark when Hud arrived in The Flat. His first order of business was to lead Rambler to the livery stable and brush him down thoroughly. In his line of work, a man was only as good as his horse. Hud made certain Rambler received full rations and the best of care.

He glanced down the street and told himself he should be enthusiastic about being back in society—if you could call this collection of misfits in The Flat society. He stared down the dimly lit street, noting the gathering crowds and hearing boisterous laughter wafting from a nearby gaming hall. There were all sorts of entertainment to be had. Ironically, all Hud wanted was a bath and a few minutes to stretch out on a real bed for the first time in months.

Assured that his horse was in capable hands, Hud strode off to find comfortable accommodations for himself. He pulled up short when a woman in a frilly costume pirouetted in front of him then leaped through the air.

“We’ll be giving our last performance tonight before continuing our tour to Fort Elliot, Tascosa and Mobeetie,” she announced as she circled around him and waved a perfume-scented scarf under his nose. “Come join us, handsome.”

Handsome? Hud inwardly scoffed as the woman flitted off to entice another passerby on the boardwalk. He didn’t consider himself anywhere near handsome. Whiskers lined his jaw. The bags under his eyes testified to his lack of sleep and too damn much time in the saddle.

Thanks to Commander Price, Hud had set a swift pace to reach Fort Griffin to look up Gabrielle and play nursemaid and tour guide.

Scowling, Hud veered into Brazos Hotel to rent a room. After requesting heated water for a bath, he slung his saddlebags over his shoulder then scaled the steps. He smiled appreciatively when he entered his room to see the feather bed and the brass tub in the corner.

Tossing aside his saddlebags, he ambled over to the window to look down on the bustling streets filled with hide hunters, gamblers, cowboys and desperadoes. Turning away to heel-and-toe out of his boots, Hud un-fastened his holsters and set aside his weapons. His gaze skittered around the room again.

“Hell of a life you lead,” he mumbled to himself. “The highlight of your month is bathing in a tub and sleeping on a real bed.”

Chapter Two

After a surprisingly appetizing meal at Garland Café, Bri scurried back to her room. She considered searching out a guide and arranging to rent a horse from the livery this evening. But first things first, she decided. She wanted to confront Eaton Powell II immediately. Although Bri could practically hear her mother pitching a fit—all the way from her palatial drawing room in Austin—she was giving Eaton notice that she had cancelled their engagement. Permanently. He could make his way home without her and he could campaign his heart out while he was at it.

All she wanted was to be rid of him for good.

Determined of purpose, Bri hiked down the hall. Two scraggly-looking characters came to attention as she approached. She kept her head down, her face concealed by the floppy-brimmed gray bonnet. She could feel the weight of the derringer she kept tucked in one garter on her thigh and the cool steel blade of the dagger she stashed on the other.

Anna Roland Price would throw a conniption if she knew what a vast education and unconventional training her daughter had received when she’d been shipped off to that snobbish finishing school in Houston. Bri had befriended a rascally, fun-loving street urchin—who had initially tried to rob her—and then he became her dearest companion.

The thought of Benji Dunlop’s life cut short by his senseless death galvanized her determination. She was not going to be the extension of her mother’s unreasonable expectations and she could handle herself in adversity, thanks to Benji’s thorough training. Bri had become a fair shot with a pistol. She could wield a knife accurately and she had learned to be a scrappy fighter in hand-to-hand combat.

“Don’t let nobody get the drop on you,” Benji had lectured her countless times. “Gotta guard yer own back ’cause you can’t count on nobody else to do it for you.”

Regret and sorrow whipped through Bri, remembering the loss of that treasured friendship. Benji had come to a bad end in a dark alley one night before he was to meet Bri for an evening adventure to Galveston. She had waited two hours but he never showed up. It was the next day before she learned that Benji had died at the hands of three knife-wielding bullies because he refused to give up the shiny gold pocket watch she had given him as a gift.

Bri slid her hand into her pocket to clasp the watch she had recovered at a pawnbroker’s shop. It was a constant reminder of the loyalty of her best friend and the uncertainty of life. Even after three years she still hadn’t recovered from the guilt. If she hadn’t given him the expensive gift that he treasured and carried proudly—visibly—he wouldn’t have lost his life.

“My, my, ain’t you easy on the eye, honey. Care for a little company?”

Bri ignored the tall, greasy-haired hombre whose smile displayed a mouthful of rotten teeth. He looked to be at least a decade older than her twenty-three years and he smelled as if he hadn’t bathed in months. When he grabbed her elbow, she jabbed him in the soft underbelly to ensure that he turned her loose so she could continue on her way.

“I bet I could teach you a thing or two about a woman’s place,” the man growled as he started after her.

“Try it and I’ll scream this place down around you. You can spend your evening in jail,” she muttered as she glared over her shoulder at him.

His slate-gray eyes narrowed menacingly. When he stepped toward her, his friend clamped hold of him to hold him at bay.

“Leave me alone, Pete,” the man said, and scowled.

“Easy, Joe, we got places we gotta be tonight. No need to call unnecessary attention to ourselves,” Pete, the heavyset, auburn-haired man insisted. “The boss wouldn’t like it.”

Bri ignored Joe Whoever-He-Was. She remained on high alert, in case the scoundrel wormed loose from his companion’s grasp and came after her.

She was proud to be the daughter of a veteran of the Confederate Army and Rangers’ upper echelon, as well as the best friend of a scrappy street fighter. Men didn’t expect her to be capable of defending herself. It was that element of surprise that had saved her several times when she chose to venture off alone to escape the restrictions of high society.

Bri silently rehearsed what she intended to say to Eaton before she wished him a final fare-thee-well. All the while, she cautiously monitored the whereabouts of the two men. She breathed a sigh of relief when they ducked into the room three doors down from her own. She halted in front of Eaton’s room and drew herself up to full stature, trying to make the most of her five-foot-three inch height.

She smirked at the thought of Eaton demanding the two-room dignitary suite. Nothing but the best for Eaton. He had convinced himself that he was entitled and he constantly put on airs to assure the public that he was something special.

Her thoughts flittered off when she heard a burst of feminine laughter on the other side of the door. Bri frowned then looked up at the room number. Yes, this was Eaton’s suite. She had come to the right place.

A man’s rumbling laugher caught Bri’s attention. It dawned on her that her soon-to-be ex-fiancé was entertaining a woman. She turned the doorknob and found it unlocked. When she poked her head around the edge of the door, she saw a string of garments—male and female—that formed a path across the small sitting room to the bedroom. The mirror hanging above the dresser in the adjoining room provided her with a view of the bed that sat against the back wall.

Bri gasped in shock when she saw a woman’s red head and bare breasts. She recognized the actress from the theater troupe. She was tumbling around in bed with Eaton, who was bare to the—

With a muffled squawk, she squeezed her eyes shut after she got a clear view of Eaton’s buttocks. She cursed under her breath when she realized belatedly that she had emitted a sound that interrupted the two lovers.

“What was that?” Eaton said as he yanked the sheet over his bare hips.

The redhead jerked the corner of the bedspread over her breasts. “Did you remember to lock the door?”

“Hell, no, you were pulling clothes off me left and right,” he muttered as he rolled off the bed to grab his breeches.

Heart pounding, Bri eased the door shut while Eaton stabbed a leg into his breeches. She really should confront him with his infidelity, here and now, she supposed. However, seeing him naked with the actress rattled her more than she expected. Her face felt as if it had gone up in flames and she couldn’t get the image out of her mind.

She became frantic when she heard the wooden floor creak as Eaton hurried to investigate. She glanced down the hall, trying to calculate how long it would take to reach her room and duck out of sight. Too blasted long, she decided.

She had to make a choice. She could face Eaton now while she was struggling to gather her composure or try to slip into the room next door until the coast was clear. She chose the latter.

To her relief the knob turned easily and silently. She darted inside the dark room and eased the door shut with a quiet click.

“What the hell—?”

Bri found herself staring at yet another bare chest. However, the man who owned it put Eaton to shame. Washboarded muscles rippled down his belly. His shoulders were much broader than Eaton’s and he stood six foot three inches in his stocking feet. His whiskered face was in deep shadows because his back was to the dim lantern light that was blocked by the dressing screen in the corner.

When Bri heard Eaton whip open his door to check for unwanted visitors in the hall, she glanced wildly at the brawny frontiersman who was staring warily at her. When he opened his mouth—in what she anticipated to be a terse demand to know why she had burst into his room unannounced—she did the only thing she could think to do to silence him quickly.

She pushed up on tiptoe and flung her arms around his neck. She kissed him soundly—sucking the breath from his lungs and the question off his tongue. When he tried to rear back to get a look at her, she held his head to hers and leaned sensuously against his solid chest. She put all she had into the embrace so she could keep him distracted until Eaton returned to his paramour.

A moment later, she heard the stranger’s rumbling purr. Then he said, “Well, if you insist, sweetheart…”

His arm glided around her waist to hold her intimately against him. To her surprise, he lifted her off the floor and kissed her back in a way she had never allowed a man to kiss her before. And now she knew why. It was entirely too intimate and personal and demanded more than she preferred to give.

Yet, for a dazed moment, she forgot her objective of keeping the half-dressed stranger quiet until Eaton reentered his suite. She told herself that she should be thinking about scuttling to her room once the coast was clear. But first she had to recover from the titillating sensation of being swallowed up in the powerful arms of the raven-haired stranger, whose sensuous lips were making a feast of her mouth. Despite the abrasive brush of his whiskers, Bri enjoyed the reckless embrace—in an utterly wicked and devilishly delightful kind of way.

Which was completely out of character for her. She didn’t go around grabbing men and kissing them until they gave in and kissed her back enthusiastically. She had become intrigued by kissing this brawny stranger. Then she had been swamped by a flood tide of physical pleasure that surely must be lust in its purest form.

The erotic misadventure left her experiencing the most incredible sensations imaginable. The man tasted good and he felt even better while he pressed her familiarly to his muscled planes and contours. If she was going to behave recklessly and irrationally, who better to experiment with than a perfect stranger who didn’t know who she was and had no expectations except sharing a mind-boggling kiss in the dark?

Bri gave herself up completely to the exquisite pleasure that consumed her and promptly forgot Eaton Powell II existed.

Hud’s mind went blank and his body hummed with unbridled desire while the mysterious woman, who had darted into his room unexpectedly, kissed him deaf, blind and stupid. His initial reaction upon seeing the woman in gray, whose face was concealed by the droopy brim of her bonnet, had been to lunge for the pistol that he’d tossed on the bed. But she’d caught him off guard when she latched onto him as if he were the missing half of her soul reunited after an eternity.

When she delivered that first lip-sizzling wallop of a kiss, Hud forgot everything he ever knew. It was the most bizarre moment of his life. He couldn’t see the color of her hair or the color of her eyes. He couldn’t tell much of anything about her appearance because she was no more than a gray shadow within the inky shadows of his dimly lit room. Yet, he kissed her for all he was worth and she clung to him with the same reckless abandonment.

Damn, in all his thirty-three years he’d never been so bewildered or out of control. Even his years of soldiering and rangering hadn’t prepared him for a surprise attack that assaulted all his senses at once. The unidentified female left him aching with lust and shaking with need in nothing flat. He responded instinctively to the taste of her kiss and the enticing feel of her shapely body molded to his.

After a long, hungry moment of pressing her hips against his hard arousal and kissing her as if there were no tomorrow—or the day after—he heard the door to the next room snap shut and the lock click into place. Then suddenly the kissing bandit lurched backward. Hud impulsively tried to pull her back into his arms but she bent his wrist at a painful angle and darted from his reach.

“Ouch,” he said to the back of her bonnet-covered head. “Mind telling me what the hell’s going on here—?”

“Shh-shh-shh!” she said without glancing back at him.

Then poof! She slipped out the door and scampered down the hall.

Hud craned his neck around the partially open door, noting the mysterious female in the dowdy gray gown and shawl was careful to cling to the shadows of the hall. When she reached the staircase, she turned her head away from him to conceal her facial features. Then she flew down the steps and disappeared from sight. He hadn’t had a clear view of her from her dramatic arrival to her abrupt departure.

He couldn’t describe the elusive night visitor or identify her voice. Yet, he knew the appealing taste of her, knew her alluring scent and he knew how amazingly good her curvaceous body felt in his arms.

Frowning, Hud shook his head to clear the erotic sensations that fogged his senses. He glanced toward the waiting tub of bathwater behind the dressing screen and smiled wryly. If the kissing bandit had arrived two minutes later, Hud would have been stark naked. That would have been an interesting way to make her acquaintance. Of course, her way of introducing herself with a steamy, mind-blowing kiss and “shh-shh-shh” was peculiar enough.

“Ah, well, I guess you have to expect such things in a boisterous town like The Flat,” he said to himself as he unfastened the placket of his breeches on his way to the tub.

Hud smirked at the steam drifting from the water. Now he was going to need a cool bath instead of a warm one, because the kissing bandit had left him hot and bothered.

Bri halted at the bottom of the steps to inhale several bolstering breaths. Lord have mercy! That unexpected encounter, coming so quickly on the heels of viewing Eaton’s tryst, left her head spinning like a windmill. At least she’d had the presence of mind to rush downstairs rather than scamper to her room. Otherwise, the raven-haired stranger would have known where to find her. He might have dropped by to ask the kind of embarrassing questions she didn’t want to answer, even to herself.

After striding across the boardwalk in front of the hotel, Bri paused to grab hold of the supporting beam to steady herself. She glanced toward the opera house, watching the actors give one last pitch to attend their final performance. Bri was still staring in that direction, lost in thought, when the redhead exited the Brazos Hotel hastily and scuttled down the street to rejoin her troupe. Bri wondered if other thespians spent their spare time giving command performances behind closed doors. One did, apparently.

After five minutes passed, Eaton swaggered from the lobby, dressed fit to kill—as usual. Unless he was tripping the light fantastic with a paramour. In which case he stripped naked.

Discarding the unpleasant image of Eaton’s soft, pale flesh, Bri drew herself up, squared her shoulders and walked over to plant herself squarely in Eaton’s path.

“Ah, there you are, sweetheart. I’ve missed you,” he had the nerve to say.

Missed me? My eye, she thought sourly.

“I’d like a word with you, Eaton,” she demanded.

He glanced over the top of her drooping gray bonnet to stare at the opera house. “Can’t it wait? I’d like to catch the last theater performance before the troupe packs up and heads west.”

“You already did,” she said, smirking. “Private showing, I believe you call it.”

He tried to look blithely innocent and befuddled, but his demeanor became noticeably cautious. “Pardon? I don’t have the faintest notion what you mean.”

“Of course you do. Remember that unexplained noise you heard while you and the redhead were naked together in bed?” she prompted. “That was me gasping in shock.”

Bri took grand satisfaction in watching the arrogant dandy’s brown eyes pop from their sockets. His freshly shaved jaw sagged on its hinges. Then he recovered enough to shake his head vigorously in denial.

“I have no idea what you’re babbling about.” He struck a haughty pose and looked down his nose at her drab garments. “Furthermore, you look hideous in that shapeless gray outfit. Really, Gabrielle, go change into something suitable and we’ll attend the theater performance.” He flicked his wrist to shoo her on her way. “I’ll wait for you here.”

“In the first place, you know exactly what I’m referring to,” she said in a stern tone. “Secondly, you can stop lying to me. I know who and what I saw. Having said that, you shouldn’t be surprised that I am officially canceling our engagement. You can see yourself home on the next stagecoach.”

“You are not canceling out on me,” he snapped, his polite facade fizzling out. “Your family and mine have made an arrangement and we are sticking with it.”

“No, we aren’t. Your tryst made it null and void.”

“Your mother and my aunt already made the announcement and set the plans in motion,” he all but growled at her.

“My mother doesn’t speak for me when it pertains to important decisions that affect my future,” she replied. “I’m going west to visit my father and I don’t want to see you when I return here. You can campaign all the way home if you like, but this is where we part company permanently.”

He took a step closer, trying to intimidate her, but Bri didn’t scare easily. “You are making a gigantic mistake,” he snarled, all his practiced charm gone with the wind.

“My mistake was keeping silent so long about this disastrous mismatch.” Bri thrust back her shoulders and elevated her chin when he clutched her arm painfully. “Back away, Eaton. There are witnesses here about and don’t think I won’t land a strategic blow that will drop you to your knees and ruin your next tryst with the redhead.”

Eaton’s dark eyes glistened with fury. He gnashed his teeth as he released her arm to spin on his well-shod heels. “We will continue this conversation later.”