Free Sagebrush Bride by Tanya Anne Crosby Page A

least! Had she missed something? She’d been
so lost in her own musings that she’d shut him out completely... almost
completely. She was only too aware of the fact that he was right behind her,
his horse trotting at a snail’s pace. The way that he watched her unnerved the
dickens out of her!
    He came alongside her suddenly, leaning forward in
the saddle, his forearm resting upon the saddle horn, his smile knowing and
crooked as he offered her the almost forgotten slice of jerky. Elizabeth hadn’t
realized how hungry she was until he waved it in front of her, but her mouth
began to water in anticipation. Still, she eyed the strip of meat as though it
were a pit viper he were proffering. Her stomach grumbled in protest when she
didn’t immediately reach out to take it, and she glanced up through her lashes,
wondering anxiously if he’d heard.
    She found him still smiling—curse him to
high heaven and back! Oh, she despised him! Heaven help her, she did! Elizabeth,
who had never despised anyone as long as she’d lived—not even her mother
for leaving—really and truly despised him!
    Giving him her most lethal scowl, she kept
marching, but he seemed completely unaffected by her dismissal, and that made
her all the more irate. How dare he be so nonchalant when she was ready to
burst with fury!
    Why should she starve herself only to spite him?
    Feeling his presence beside her like a thorn in
her side, she turned, snatching the jerky from his still-outstretched hand.
Shoving it angrily into her mouth, she ripped a slice from it as though it were
his head and she were snapping it off. Rage as she’d never known before
spiraled through her, making her vision darken at the edges.
    If he laughed... if he so much as uttered a single
inconsiderate, heartless chuckle at her surrender...
    A hundred terrible words lay teetering on the tip
of her tongue as she plodded onward, alternately ripping off and chewing her
jerky. How she managed to contain them was beyond her, but she did, though her
breast filled with mute anger. Had she been a mite bigger, she might have
yanked him down from the saddle to meet her fists. As it was, that notion
seemed so ridiculous that she merely cursed him under her breath. It wouldn’t
be long, she told herself firmly, before she’d be rid of him. And then, as far
as she was concerned, she never needed to set eyes on the man again!
    Though why did that notion seem to bother her? It
shouldn’t bother her at all! She should be jumping for joy over the prospect...
and she would, indeed, the moment she set eyes on Sioux Falls.
    She glanced back over her shoulder, catching his
arrogant grin—curse the man! Looking down, she noted, not for the first
time, that her poor clothes were covered with grass seed and stained with dirt.
Her torn hem dragged the ground behind her. She supposed she looked a sight.
Ignoring the “whys” of her caring over that fact, she pondered what people
would think of her, dirty as she was and being followed by a grinning idiot to
boot?
    Would they
think the worst?
    To her consternation, Cutter began to whistle, and
though it was a fine, clear tune, it didn’t even begin to improve her mood.
Rather, it grated on her nerves.
    Of course
they would think the worst!
    The odd tune was familiar, but she couldn’t place
it, and it provoked her.
    Desperately she tried to ignore him.
    She couldn’t wait to get home and bathe, and it
was that thought with which she consoled herself: a bath... How wonderful it
would be to sink into a warm tub of water.
    A great believer in cleanliness, Elizabeth loved
her baths and had ordered a tremendous porcelain tub from the catalog, one of
the very few luxuries she’d ever afforded herself. There was just something
about treating so much infirmity that made one want to soak a lifetime in soap
and water. Besides, as much dusty ground as she covered making house calls, a
bath was almost always necessary at the end of the day.
    It helped her to