Free As the Cowboy Commands [Ecstasy in the Old West 2] (Siren Publishing Allure) by Robin Gideon Page A

nodded toward the steaming tub. “You’d better get in while the water’s still nice and hot.”
    Jared removed his coat and put it over the bentwood chair near the fireplace. Next he slipped off the shoulder holster that held his deadly Colt revolver and looped that over the chair. His back was to Helen as he pulled off one boot, and then the other. His socks went next, then his shirt. Finally, he unbuckled his belt and removed his gabardine trousers. Very slowly, unsure of how he would be received while wearing only his underwear, he turned around. Helen hadn’t moved a muscle, and in fact had hardly breathed. There was a slight blush in her cheeks that hadn’t been there earlier.
    Suddenly having been caught staring at the nearly naked man, she muttered, “I’m sorry,” and turned away quickly.
    Jared grinned, wondering how many nude men she’d seen in her life, wondering, too, of the physique of those men. Every new thing he learned about Helen Miller pleased him.
    He had at first felt himself to be astonishingly unlucky to stumble across the assault on her, since a man like him couldn’t simply not intervene. By doing so it put his life in grave jeopardy against a vicious enemy that vastly outnumbered him. But now, with the danger behind him and Helen still with him, he was beginning to consider this past night and morning to be perhaps the finest, luckiest moments of his life.
    Near the washbasin he saw a small, glass plate that held the thin, oval remains of a bar of soap. He picked up the soap, untied the drawstring of his underwear, and then pushed them down to his ankles before stepping out of them. He calmly crossed the room and eased himself down into the hot, clean water. He had noticed that Helen had watched his every move out of the corner of her eyes. He knew better than to tease her for watching, and he kept his expression as bland as when he was at the poker table.
    “I can’t thank you enough for this hot bath,” Jared said as he began trying to get some soap suds worked up between his palms. The bar of soap was much smaller than his palms and thin as a coin.
    He looked up at Helen, and she suddenly smiled broadly. “Wait!” she exclaimed, then hurried over to a cabinet near the small dinner table, oblivious to what hurrying did to her ostentatiously feminine body with all those luscious curves that were only barely hidden beneath cotton so thin it was nearly “clothing” in name only.
    Jared watched as Helen, from a cabinet containing provisions and supplies, extracted a new, white bar of soap. The new bar was about the size of a small, red builder’s brick. She hurried over to him, unintentionally giving him an unhampered view of her naked legs all the way up to her thighs when her robe split open during her haste. And when she bent over to hand Jared the soap—well, that robe was doing all it could to contain Helen’s voluptuous curves, and though succeeding, abject failure was an ever-present possibility. Jared had seen all of Helen’s generously endowed physical charms, but seeing her flouncing and jouncing, bouncing and swaying in the pathetically old and worn cotton robe, was both astonishingly erotic and emotionally painful. That pathetic robe was the finest summer-weight robe she owned, and in the back of Jared’s mind, much to his astonishment, he was already wondering what stores in Whitetail Creek there were that might have some clothes suitable for a woman as worthy as Helen Miller.
    Before accepting the fresh block of soap, Jared asked, “For sure?”
    “Please, I want you to have it.” Helen stood at the edge of the tub, looking down through the clear water at Jared as he began soaping himself. She could see his naked body. Soon the water became cloudy with soap. In a quiet voice, she asked, “You’re not even a little bit embarrassed, are you?”
    Jared looked up at her, dark eyes beneath slanting brows not really hiding the amusement he felt. “Embarrassed? About