Free Cherish by Catherine Anderson Page A

even shriller. “You’re a horrible, conscienceless creature who doesn’t deserve to be called a man. A black-hearted, lowlife scoundrel !”
    A sob caught in her chest. He searched her gaze. She was trying to summon the courage to kill him. He’d seen murder in the eyes of too many men to mistake it now. Confident the gun wouldn’t fire, he watched her in a detached sort of way, wondering if he’d misjudged her, after all. She was mighty scared, and panic could push even a gentle person to violence.
    He’d thought never to see anyone tremble more violently than she had been a minute ago. But as she tried to tighten her finger over the trigger, her arms began jerking as though she’d been taken with fits. Fresh tears welled in her eyes.
    Those eyes . Looking into them, Race felt his heart break a little. Shattered. That was the only word to describe the expression in them. Like pretty blue glass, broken into a thousand fragments and washed with raindrops. Ruined dreams, destroyed innocence, desperation, and a growing terror as she realized she couldn’t bring herself to kill him.
    “Ah, honey, don’t…” His voice rasped like a fingernail over the backside of silk. “I told you, I ain’t gonna harm you. Just put down the gun.”
    She didn’t believe that he meant her no harm. He could read that in her eyes as well.
    Before Race could anticipate what she meant to do or try to stop her, she turned the gun on herself. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Point-blank at her temple, the barrel snug to the side of her head. Pulling the most awful face he’d ever seen, she hunched her shoulders, closed her eyes, and tried to draw back on the trigger. When the curved metal refused to budge, her eyes fluttered open, the expression that moved over her face a mix of startlement, bitter disappointment, and panic. She glanced at the gun, evidently realized it had to be cocked, and hooked her thumb over the hammer spur. Fortunately, the cylinder latch was still locked, which prevented the mechanism from working.
    Race launched himself at her, seizing her slender wrist just as she reached with her other hand to feel for the latch. Fortunately for her—and also for him because he would have carried the guilt of her death to his grave—he was able to twist her arm and aim the gun at the floor as he tackled her.
    Nonetheless, it had been close. Too damned close. Fear robbing him of caution, he wrestled her none too gently to the pallet, his longer and more powerful body pinning her to the quilts, his hands vised on her wrists. Pressing on the nerve below the heel of her hand, he paralyzed her fingers, enabling him to shake the revolver from her grasp.
    She sobbed, bucking and twisting as she fought to escape his hold, but Race was having none of that. He’d learned his lesson, and a bitter one it was. The girl might not have it in her to kill him, but she wouldn’t hesitate to kill herself. He had laid the sheathed knife on the pallet as well, had no idea where it might have gotten kicked during their tussle, and wasn’t about to turn loose of herto find out. Not when she was in this frame of mind.
    She had more staying power than he would have guessed, straining against his greater strength until her face went shiny with sweat. And long after he felt her muscles begin quivering with exhaustion, she refused to give it up. Finally, though, utter exhaustion claimed its victory, and she went limp beneath him, her surrender followed by an ear-piercing shriek that startled him so, he damned near turned loose of her.
    The cry made his blood run cold, reverberating in the air and cutting clear through him. It was laced with pain that went too deep for tears, and as it trailed away into silence, she screamed again, and then again, each burst of sound weaker than the last, until the cries gave way to gut-wrenching sobs.
    Race moved the gun beyond her reach, then caught her wrists in the grip of one hand, gathered her close, and sat up.