Free Beautiful Bad Man by Ellen O'Connell Page B

in town, you’re safe, but I can’t keep them away from you much longer. I’ve been thinking of moving on.”
    Good. With luck he’d stop thinking about it and do it. One night like this to leave everyday cares behind and eat in a restaurant was a treat, and she wanted to erase the memory of that terrible shrieking time, but she didn’t want him in her life.
    “Where will you go?”
    “West. It’s a big land.”
    “I’m glad you’re going to quit working for Mr. Van Cleve. I can’t understand a man like that. Why is he so greedy? He has so much land. Even when he first started pushing people out years ago, he already had so much.”
    “Some men are just made that way. If he owned everything from here to the Mississippi, he’d start coveting everything to the ocean.”
    “And you, Caleb Sutton? Are you just made a certain way? Couldn’t you live some other way?”
    “I don’t want to live another way. Look around you. Everyone you see is either predator or prey, wolf or rabbit. Wolf is better.”
    Norah feigned interest in the last of her meal. She didn’t want to see the world in such stark terms. She didn’t want to hear any more ugly things from Caleb Sutton.
    They avoided touchy subjects after that and walked back to Tindells’ in silence. Safely inside with the door locked behind her, Norah leaned her head against the door and listened as his footsteps crunched on the gravel walk and faded away.

Chapter 7
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    A NIGHT IN the hotel left Cal scratching at red welts and determined never to set foot in the place again. Yet hopping the first train out of Hubbell was no longer possible.
    Last night Norah Hawkins had been the kind of woman he’d always pictured the Girl growing to be.
    The first sight of her hanging laundry in Tindells’ yard had been a pleasant surprise. The dark hair made such a thick knot at the back of her neck he had to wonder how long that hair would be down. Her face was still too thin, but her eyes no longer looked like bruises. She was pretty, even if that big white apron and the colorless shawl that didn’t seem to be keeping her warm made her into some sexless servant.
    In the restaurant, though — in the restaurant the first sight of her without the pathetic excuse for a coat had taken his breath away. The thin fabric of her old dress outlined her unmentionables underneath and the real shape of her, and her real shape was just fine.
    She was as she should be, female in an honest way, the curves of her breast, waist, and rear inviting hands. His first instinct had been to wrap her right up in the coat again. Then he’d realized the lamplight wasn’t strong enough for anyone farther away than he was to see what he saw and settled in to enjoy the sight.
    She also acted the way the Girl should act, not having a female conniption fit when he told her about Jake Kepler. If a good temper tantrum had jerked her out of that spineless, suicidal behavior he’d first seen, he’d be happy to keep her angry for....
    Catching where his thoughts were headed, he stopped them in their tracks. Whatever else he owed her, not thinking about her like that had to be high on the list.
    If she lived a quiet life with that husband on their farm, her claim they were even would wash, but as long as she was a target for Van Cleve, she couldn’t set him free, and he couldn’t see how to free himself.
    So he needed a place to stay, a place close enough to keep an eye on her, and her house was sitting empty and would do fine. After all, something about it appealed, and he was staying around Hubbell because of her. He’d ’fess up and pay her rent when he left, which would add to her cash supply.
    Of course staying in the soddy presented its own problems. He could get enough supplies out there on a packhorse, but he’d have to buy one. Two horses in winter needed feed. Not only was there none on the place, there wasn’t so much as a foot of fencing to keep them from wandering off what