Free The Legend of Smuggler's Cave by Paula Graves Page A

I’d been wanting a gun of my own. Of course, my daddy taught me to use a rifle earlier, I guess when I was six or so.”
    “That young?”
    She shot him a look that made him feel like an idiot. “If you’re going to have guns in the house with kids around, you need to teach them young that they’re not to be toyed with. I’ve already introduced Logan to my pistol and my shotgun. He knows not to touch them, even if they’re not loaded. When he’s a little older, I’ll teach him how to shoot.”
    “My father wasn’t much of a gun person.” Almost as soon as the words escaped his lips, he felt a hot wave of embarrassment flush through him. He felt Briar’s gaze on him but he couldn’t quite meet her gaze. “Lucky for Dana Massey, huh?”
    Not too long ago, his father had taken a few potshots at Dana when she’d started nosing around in her mother’s past. Apparently, his father and grandfather had feared she was getting too close to the truth about Dalton’s parentage, and they’d decided to take dire steps to stop her. But it had been his father who’d ended up with a bullet in his shoulder and a future in jail stretching out in front of him. “Dana thinks your father didn’t really want his shots to hit her. That’s why he missed so badly.”
    Dalton handed her the borrowed rifle and walked a few steps away. “I think he was just a bad shot.”
    When she didn’t say anything else, he ventured a quick look at her. She was just looking at him, a thoughtful expression on her face.
    It struck him, not for the first time over the past couple of days, that Briar Blackwood was a pretty woman. It wasn’t the kind of polished beauty he met in his work or even the corn-fed cuteness of small-town beauty queens who rode parade floats or won the local pageant crowns. She wasn’t wearing a stitch of makeup, and her hair was a mess, but he found he liked looking at her anyway. She had a natural sort of prettiness that came from good health, good genes and, he was beginning to believe, a good soul.
    He had seen earlier at his house that she felt out of place there. She’d tried not to let it show, but her poker face wasn’t nearly as good as she’d probably like to believe. She didn’t enjoy feeling obligated to him, like some poor mountain girl he’d taken pity on.
    He didn’t pity her, though. She was, in many ways, a remarkable woman. A strong woman, with discipline, integrity and guts.
    Dalton had done his homework on Briar Blackwood before he’d ever approached her, looking into the basics of who she was and what kind of life she’d lived before and after marrying Johnny Blackwood. She had been born a Culpepper, and a person didn’t grow up in Bitterwood, Tennessee, without knowing a Culpepper was more likely than not to break the law. How she’d dodged that family tradition he didn’t know, but her record was clean, and now she was that most rare of creatures, a Ridge County Culpepper who wore a badge.
    She’d married Johnny Blackwood when she turned eighteen and remained his wife until Johnny’s death nine years later. She’d worked as an emergency services dispatcher while going to community college part-time to get her criminal justice degree. She’d gone through the Bitterwood Police Academy and graduated with honors back in December.
    By all accounts, she was a good-hearted, hardworking woman liked by one and all. He certainly couldn’t claim such a thing about himself, not since his life had gone so askew. There were plenty of people who didn’t care much for him at all, starting with the Bitterwood chief of police.
    Doyle had arrived at the rifle range about fifteen minutes ago. Dalton had spotted the chief about the time Briar finished her brief primer on shooting a rifle. Doyle must have seen Logan with Detective Nix, who had agreed to watch the boy at the police station while Briar gave Dalton shooting lessons. No doubt the prospect of watching Dalton make a fool of himself on the