Free High Country Bride by Linda Lael Miller

pardon? Are you telling me, sir, that you do not intend to honor our wedding vows?”
    His handsome face hardened slightly. “A man has needs—”
    Emmeline didn’t let him go one word further; she put both hands on his chest and, before he had time to brace himself, shoved him, hard. He tumbled backward, landing on his rear in the moist grass, with the heel of one boot snagged on the log.
    Emmeline made no move to assist him. Indeed, she was sorely tempted to spit square into his face. “I do believe I have made a serious mistake,” she said.
    Rafe rose slowly, and with dignity, brushing himself off.“That you have,” he replied in a cold voice.“I have half a mind to turn you across my knee and show you who’s the boss in this family.”
    “You try it,” Emmeline responded, drawing on conversations she’d overheard in the corridors of Becky’s place, “and I’ll whack off your privates with the first sharp knife I can find!”
    His mouth dropped open in shock, then he narrowed his eyes.“Madam,” he said,“you are no lady.”
    Those words wounded Emmeline more deeply than anything else he might have said, but she would have died before she let him know that. She whirled on one heel and started for the house at a run. When she looked back, to see if he was giving chase, she stepped in a hole and fell headlong into the grass.
    Rafe, reaching her within a moment or two, chuckled at her plight, though he did extend a hand to help her up.
    She slapped it away.“Don’t touch me, you ruffian!” she cried.
    “Why, you little spitfire,” he said, annoyed again.
    Emmeline scrambled to her feet and backed away.
    He moved in, undaunted, and hoisted her over his shoulder as though she were a sack of barley.
    “Put me down!”
    “I’d love to,” he replied. “Right in middle of the creek. I’d do it, too, if I didn’t think you’d catch your death and make me a widower before I got my money’s worth out of you.”
    Emmeline saw red, but she kept her voice calm. “I’ll scream,” she told him.
    “Go ahead,” he said cheerfully. “Things have been pretty quiet around here lately, and that would surely stir up some excitement. Both my brothers would most likely rush to your rescue, too, and then, of course, I’d have to shoot them.”
    She didn’t believe he would actually shoot Kade and Jeb, not for a moment, but she definitely wanted to be rescued. She drew in a deep breath, fully intending to emit an ear-splintering shriek, but the air went whooshing out of her when he tookother step, causing her middle to bounce hard against his shoulder.
    “Put—me—down!” she repeated.
    He gave her a hard swat on the bottom. “Hush,” he said, quite jovially. “Did anybody ever tell you, Miss Emmeline, that you talk too much?”
    She doubled up both fists and pummeled his back with them.
    “Little hellcat,” he said, and this time he sounded amused, which made her madder still. “I like a woman with some spirit.”
    They reached the kitchen, where Emmeline hoped for salvation, but there wasn’t a soul around. Just her luck.
    “Where,” she whispered fiercely,“are you taking me?”
    “Straight to bed.”
    Emmeline gasped in horror.
    He started up the back stairs.
    “Help,” she said, but it came out as a whisper, which was quite the opposite of what she’d planned.
    Rafe laughed. “You’re going to have to do better than that, Mrs. McKettrick. This is a big house, and the walls are chinked logs, more than a foot thick in most places.”
    They were moving along the corridor now, passing the spare room where she’d napped earlier. At the end of the hallway, Rafe pushed open a door and strode into a darkened room. His room, she knew.
    She began to kick, but he clamped one steely arm across her legs, effectively stilling them. He shouldered the door shut, then crossed the floor and dropped her, from what seemed a very great height, onto the bed. The pleasantly masculine scent of him wafted from