Free Coming Home to Wyoming (Peaceful Valley Series Book 1) by April Hill Page A

write better than you do now. You’re going to learn to talk without saying ain’t, and without cussing. You’re going to start behaving like a lady, even if you never get to be one. You’re going to learn the names of every goddamned president—in order—and the names of all the states, and the continents, and the oceans, too. And if I get one single letter from the Goodspeeds telling me that you’re giving them trouble, I swear I’ll come back here from wherever I am, and set your stubborn backside on goddamned fire—three times a day if I have to!”
    “Yeah?” she growled. “And what’s to keep me from runnin’ off again, when you ain’t around to stop me?”
    Griff shook his head. “Do you know what the word, incentive means?”
    “Never heard it, but I reckon I know where you can put it, and all them other fancy words of yours. You can stick it up your damned—”
    The final two words of the ancient insult were drowned out by the sound of Griff’s broad palm impacting the seat of Miss O’Malley’s drenched drawers. A few seconds after that first swat, the drawers had vanished—yanked down and tossed aside to go bobbing down the creek in the swift current. Meanwhile, Griff had seated himself on the same large rock and dragged the two-time horse thief across his knee, screaming in protest, and bare from her waist to her muddy toes.
    The bank of the creek was littered with dead branches and driftwood, making Griff’s search for the perfect spanking weapon quick, easy, and with no risk of losing his firm hold on the victim—who was now doing everything she could to bite him.
    He settled for a foot-long section of torn birch—flat, smooth on one side, yet still “nubby” enough to leave a very satisfying pattern on a soft, naked bottom. If Griff had any lingering doubts about the propriety of delivering a bare-bottomed spanking to a very young woman he’d only known for a few days, his uneasiness vanished when she sank her small white teeth into his lower leg.
    And besides, he told himself, it was Martha—an acknowledged authority on child rearing—who had recommended exactly this course of action.
    The birch branch proved itself to be an even better weapon than he thought, with the first resounding smack across Eileen a ‘Roon’s chilled backside drawing a yelp of surprise from her, followed by a wail of outrage and a couple of profane insults—which, of course, called for a few additional smacks, followed by a few more wails, etc. etc. In just under a minute, by Griff’s reckoning, Miss O’Malley’s well-spanked ass was covered in red splotches and stripes from mid-buttock to knee.
    But while she had wailed long and loud in protest, it didn’t escape Griff’s notice that she hadn’t shed a single tear—or an apology for running away, biting him, or for stealing his horse.
    When he allowed her to stand up, she turned her back and began straightening her dripping skirts as well as she could, an unusual bit of modesty that Griff knew wasn’t just for his sake. She was too proud to have Martha and Abner know what had happened. And while it was still too early to know for certain that she wouldn’t try to run away again, Griff had a strong feeling that she was ready, at last, to stay put. He couldn’t have explained why he felt that way, unless it had something to do with her sense of honor. Halfway through the whipping, he had asked that very question: “Will you at least promise to stay here long enough to finish school?” The only reply had been a nod and a small grunt, but to Griff, and hopefully to her , it sounded something like a promise.
    * * *
    When they returned to the house, cold and wet, Martha asked him to stay for one more night, an offer he was grateful to accept. And the following morning, when Eileen a ‘Roon seemed quietly resigned to her situation, he started down to the barn with a sense of having had a weight lifted form his shoulders. He still wasn’t totally