Free Beauty and the Bounty Hunter by Lori Austin

been her name?—then tossing it into a bag when he had to leave town in a hurry without ever seeing her again.
    “May I use this?”
    He nodded, unable to speak as she shrugged off the shirt, then began to wrap the material around and around her breasts, crushing them, hiding them from both him and the world.
    Alexi lifted his glass and drained what was left.
    “Boots,” she muttered, staring at her dust-covered toes. “You didn’t burn those, did you?”
    “Of course not.” Boots were expensive and hard to come by. Besides—
    He glanced at his feet, then at hers. She could roll up the cuffs of his pants, use a rope around the waist, cover the billowing shirt with an equally billowing coat, but his boots would fall right off her feet.
    “I’m not going to sleep with you, Alexi.”
    His gaze on her breasts, or where her breasts layflattened beneath the shirt and the green cotton, he lifted his eyes and allowed his lips to curve in mockery. “No?”
    Cat muttered a curse. She knew him so well. By saying that, she’d only made certain he’d stop at nothing until she did.
    “No,” she said firmly.
    He nodded, then considered the decanter of wine, turning the glass in his hand and wondering how it had gotten so empty.
    “Did something happen after I left?”
    The concern in her voice made him set down the glass. “My heart broke,
mon ami.
”
    “You don’t have a heart.”
    He placed a palm against his chest. “You wound me.”
    “Your heart’s on the other side.”
    He dropped his hand and shrugged. “You left, and we moved on. Now you are back, and we must do the same.”
    Mikhail loomed in the doorway. Cat started. She had obviously not heard him approach. Despite his size, very few heard Mikhail coming before he was already there.
    “Gotta pack the tent,” Mikhail said.
    “Everything else is ready?” Mikhail nodded. “The posse?”
    “Gone.”
    Alexi released an impatient huff. Talking with Mikhail could give anyone a headache. He answered only the question that was posed and nothing more. A good habit, in truth, less trouble that way. But it could be maddening at times.
    “Gone where?”
    “Away.”
    Alexi rubbed his forehead, and Cat stepped in. “They didn’t ride off, then follow their back trail, did they?”
    Understanding spread over the big man’s face like the sun spreading over the earth at dawn. “No, Miss Cathy. They were tryin’ to figger out how you…I mean, she…I mean—” His mouth kept working, but no more words came out.
    “I understand,” Cat said. “They believed our charade.”
    Alexi snorted.
Who wouldn’t?
He’d once pretended to be an eighty-year-old Frenchwoman, and everyone had offered their seats and called him
Madame
. Cat was almost that good. She was definitely accomplished enough to have fooled the posse.
    “They did,” Mikhail agreed. “I followed ’em a piece and listened. They kept a-goin’. Ain’t gonna sneak up on us and make me—” He stopped, clamping his lips together before glancing at Alexi.
    “Bring Cat’s boots,” Alexi ordered. “I tossed them into her wagon.”
    Mikhail disappeared much faster than a man of his size should have been able to.
    “Why do you make him?” Cat asked.
    “
They
make him.”
    “The only person who can convince Mikhail to do anything is you.”
    “You’re mistaken.”
    “You don’t tell Mikhail who to get rid of and how?”
    “Why would I?”
    Cat gave a muffled half shriek, half gurgle and pulled on her hair as if she would go mad. Alexi stifled a smirk. He could be as annoying as Mikhail when he wanted to be.
    “Why don’t you do your own dirty work?” Cat asked.
    Alexi’s smile faded. “If I could,
il mio dolce,
I would.”
    He walked out of the tent as memories flickered. Once dirty work had been his specialty.
    The report of a gun made him flinch. But the sound was only in his mind; it probably always would be.
    Mikhail approached with Cat’s boots and held them out. Alexi shook his