Free Reese by Lori Handeland Page A

"Can't you control your men?"
    "They aren't mine."
    "Of course they are. You're their leader."
    "Only because"—his lips quirked in a wry half-smile—"one of the things I do best is manage. Not to mention that they're too lazy to lead."
    Mary frowned. "That doesn't say much for their loyalty."
    "Oh, they're loyal. It's one of the few things they have left."
    "You'll have to do something about them walking around shooting off guns to get their way."
    "But it works so well."
    She rolled her eyes. Children with temper tantrums. Men with guns. "I'm sure it does, but such behavior is inappropriate."
    "Tell them that."
    "All right." She started toward the hotel but stopped when he reached for her. Even though his rough fingers only grazed her forearm, she felt his touch all over.
    "Everyone else in town walks around us as if they're afraid we'll kill them for breathing. But you aren't afraid at all, are you?" His voice held the same wonder as when he'd said her hair smelled like rain.
    She tried to see into his eyes, shadowed by the brim of his ever-present black hat, but she couldn't. "Should I be?"
    "Hell, yes!" He dropped his hand from her arm, turned, and took a few steps down the boardwalk as if he couldn't stand to be near her.
    "What good is being afraid? I'm alone in this world. No one's going to back me up, keep me safe, make my life into what I wish for it to be but me."
    A deep breath raised, then lowered those broad shoulders. Still he didn't turn around. "And what do you wish for when you wish?"
    That was easy. "A safe home. A job to keep me from going hungry or being bored. Friends."
    "No husband? No children?"
    "Look at me, Reese." He turned around but moved no closer. "Do I seem like marriage material to you?"
    His gaze wandered from her head to her toes. When his eyes returned to hers, an odd glow had sprung up in their depths. "For the right man."
    Mary was not the kind of woman who would drive a man mad with hunger, but still, when Reese stared at her with those strange green eyes, she felt as if she could be. Silly old maid.
    Straightening her already ramrod-straight spine, she sniffed. "Perhaps. But I know better than to believe in miracles and to depend on anyone else but me."
    He gave a slow nod, as if he agreed with her, then sauntered back and held out his arm. "You're a very interesting woman, Mary McKendrick."
    "Interesting?" She took his arm; it was only polite, even though touching him made parts of her she'd never known she had quiver. "That's a new one."
    "And far too trusting. You shouldn't trust me."
    "No?" They walked along, side by side, and Mary's skirt twisted back and forth about her ankles, then danced across the toe of his boot "What kind of man tells a woman straight out not to trust him? A trustworthy one, I'd imagine."
    "You don't know anything about men."
    "True enough. I never saw a man, beyond a priest, until I was sixteen."
    She felt him glance at her, but she kept peering straight ahead. "You're kidding."
    "I doubt I'd kid about something like that."
    He stopped in front of the church, glanced at the steeple then removed his arm from her grasp. "You shouldn't be allowed near me or the others."
    She laughed, and his gaze dropped sharply from the steeple to her face. "Who's going to stop me?" When his eyes narrowed, she waved away his annoyance. "You came here to help us. You didn't have to. I'd say that makes you trustworthy."
    "Maybe we came here to rape and pillage. You told me in Dallas that there was no one in Rock Creek who could stop El Diablo. That means there's no one to stop us, either—if we're of a mind."
    "Men like you would hardly rape and pillage."
    "Don't be so sure."
    She tilted her head and considered Reese. He was such a strange, yet fascinating combination of rough and gentle, outlaw and honest man she wasn't sure what to do with him—as if she'd know what to do with any man.
    "To be honest," she said, "when I saw you and the others riding in yesterday, I was