Free Just This Once by Jill Gregory Page B

her
own.
    Well, fine, she told herself, setting her
lips together and clinging to the side of the car with her free
hand as the train rocked and clacked down the track. She’d managed
everything on her own all her life, and she could manage this too.
Darned if she couldn’t. At least she was out of Abilene, she
reminded herself, taking a deep breath. And with Snake none the
wiser.
    “I should strangle you and Grismore.” Ethan
Savage bit the words out with grim fury. Josie peeked around the
curtain, her eyes widening uneasily as he rose to his feet. “Why
didn’t you tell me this before?”
    “You wouldn’t let me, sir!”
    “Damn you to hell. That little two-bit hussy
is wrong for this. She’s all wrong. I can see it now—she’d pick
Grismore’s pocket and then where the hell would I be?” He began
pacing back and forth, his long legs moving swiftly up and down the
aisle. Josie suddenly realized on a needle of panic that at any
moment he’d probably send Latherby to fetch her so he could
announce that their little farce had come to an end.
    He couldn’t catch her here, listening, or
he’d call her an eavesdropper as well as a thief. She had to go, to
sneak back out to the other car. Cautiously she eased toward the
door.
    But suddenly the train rocked around a bend
with a heavy jolting motion, and before Josie could catch herself
she’d lost her balance and sprawled forward on the floor. Her
valise went flying. And she landed with a graceless thump square in
the carpeted aisle.
    “What the hell?”
    Ethan spun around at the commotion. When he
saw his bride draped across the floor, his mouth tightened.
    Latherby exclaimed, “Dear heavens!” but
Ethan was already striding past him. As Josie tried to scramble up,
he hauled her to her feet none too gently.
    “What are you doing here?”
    “I’m fine, thank you, so don’t bother
yourself on my account,” Jo muttered breathlessly. She tried to
shake free of his arm, but when she couldn’t, she lifted flashing
eyes to his face. “Don’t worry—I’m not hurt at all.”
    “You will be hurt if you don’t answer my
question. What are you doing in here?”
    “I was coming to see you.”
    “Why? To eavesdrop?”
    “Of course not!”
    His fingers tightened painfully on her
wrist. “You, my sneaky little bride, are a liar as well as a
thief.”
    He said it with certainty, with disgust,
with crude frankness that sent blood roaring into Josie’s face.
Fine, if he wanted to think the worst of her, let him. She didn’t
care.
    “Let me go!”
    “When I’m ready.”
    He dragged her back up the aisle to where
Latherby was gaping in open-mouthed dismay. The little man looked
so distressed, Josie thought he might pop a blood vessel.
    “My lord, you see what I mean,” he
whispered.
    “I see exactly what you mean.” Ethan pushed
Josie backward and she landed with a thud in one of the deep plush
crimson chairs. “Don’t say a word. Not one word.”
    He turned his back on her and on Latherby,
and stalked to the window.
    Josie rubbed her wrist. She was furious—and
totally humiliated. At that moment, staring at Ethan Savage’s
powerful frame, she’d have liked to have dragged him by his dark
curly hair out to the platform linking the train cars, and pushed
him off, sending him rolling, rolling down a gully until he landed
at the bottom—in a rattlesnake pit.
    The image almost made her smile with
satisfaction. Almost. Instead she gritted her teeth, and sealed her
lips, and watched him scowl out the window, imagining all too well
what he was thinking.
    She could hardly blame him—or Latherby—for
thinking so badly of her. But it hurt even so. No amount of
explaining would ever convince Ethan Savage or his Mr. Latherby
that she was not the cheap little thief they thought her to be.
She’d only stolen to get away from Snake—and she would never, ever
take a penny from anyone who looked as if they needed it
themselves. But Ethan Savage wouldn’t believe