Free Midnight Lover by Barbara Bretton

in life?
    She wanted to slap him again until his blue eyes clouded with pain. She wanted to drag her nails down his face and see his blood run free. She wanted to make him feel one fraction of the pain that clutched at her heart and made her future stretch before her, an endless void of broken promises and shattered dreams.
    "I wouldn't do that," Reardon said as she raised her hand once again. "I got a policy when it comes to that kind of thing."
    She hesitated, hand hovering in the heated air between them. "You deserve this and more," she said, her voice a hiss of fury.
    "Might be but I only let a woman get in one free shot. After that I fight back."
    "You would strike a woman?"
    "If she hit me first, I would."
    "You're despicable."
    "Because I don't take kindly to being hit, Car-o-line?"
    "You're no gentleman, Mr. Reardon."
    "Never made claim to being one."
    Her palm itched to feel his cheekbone burn beneath it. She longed to experience the sheer joy of erasing that smug expression from his face but caution held her captive. His expression was impassive, unreadable; his blue eyes watched her intently and she knew how a deer felt before a hunter's arrow met its mark.
    "I mean what I say, Car-o-line." Reardon moved closer. "I don't think you'd look real pretty with a few of those pearly teeth missing."
    "You truly would hit me," she said in amazement. "You'd hit a defenseless woman."
    "Hit me again and you'll find out for your own self." He grinned. "Besides, it don't seem to me you're all that defenseless."
    "Unlike you I don't carry a six-shooter, Mr. Reardon," she pointed out.
    "Women got other weapons." His eyes raked her body from her boots to her bodice. "Of course it don't mean much if the lady in question don't know what to do with them."
    "You may save your insults for a more willing victim."
    "You seemed mighty willin' under that stagecoach."
    She considered his words thoughtfully, praying a blush didn't flood her cheeks. "Perhaps I should add assault to your list of mis-deeds."
    Reardon laughed out loud. "Tell it to the judge."
    "I fully intend to. Certainly even Silver Spur has one."
    "Circuit judge. Don't expect him around until the middle of next month. You ain't likely to be around that long."
    "That's where you're wrong, Mr. Reardon. I most definitely intend to be around that long—and longer. Silver Spur is my new home." He pulled a cigar from his shirt pocket and bit off the end. Caroline tried not to notice the disgusting noise the tip made when he spat it into a cuspidor a few feet away
    "The hell it is," he said easily.
    "The hell it isn't," she retorted, slipping into language as salty as his own, another legacy from her father. "This is my saloon and my property and now this town is my home and it doesn't matter what you think of that situation, Jesse Reardon, because I am here to stay."
    Reardon clamped his cigar between his teeth and took another step closer. "Last chance, Car-o-line."
    "You don't frighten me, Mr. Reardon," she lied.
    "Then I'll do what I should've done right at the start."
    With that he swept her over his shoulder with a move so smooth that she didn't realize what had happened until they were halfway out the front door of the Crazy Arrow.
    "Put me down!" she commanded as he stormed down the stairs and into the street. "I order you to put me down, Reardon!" How on earth was she to set up a business in a town where she'd been disgraced twice within her first hour?
    "I ain't puttin' you down until I put you down inside the stagecoach heading east."
    Whirls of dust rose from his bootheels and tickled her nostrils while tortoiseshell hairpins fell from her chignon, marking her trail like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs.
    "My hair!" she cried as long ropes of golden blonde waves tumbled down and threatened to become entangled in his jangling spurs. "If you have any decency at all in your black heart, you'll—"
    He skidded to an abrupt stop and her chin bumped into his hard, muscular back.