Free Patricia Hagan by Loves Wine Page B

reined his horse about and rode away.
    She watched him go, then returned to her net, working furiously. Danger? She could handle that. She had a gun and knew how to use it. She would not be frightened away from her home. To hell with Scott Colter. To hell with anyone and anything that stood in her way.
    She lifted her face to the warm, gentle wind blowing in from the Mississippi River. She’d made Grandpa a promise, and she would keep it. She would live here in peace.
    Besides, she reminded herself, there was nowhere else for her to go.
     
    Scott rode on to Vicksburg, lost in thought. Would the devils ever leave him? Even before the war, before the treacherous Marlena, he’d harbored a deep, gut-wrenching suspicion of all women. Thanks to his mother.
    Kate Colter had been beautiful, with coal-black hair and sultry brown eyes. Even as a boy, Scott had been all too aware of the way men in their small village on the Texas Gulf coast looked at her. His father had worshiped her. She could do no wrong. Ben Colter put Kate on a pedestal and knelt at her feet.
    A bitter smile twisted Scott’s lips as he thought about the expression “crazy about” someone. His father had been crazy about his mother, all right—to the point where he really went crazy, when he caught her in bed with Wendell Polter. He had blown both of them to hell, then killed himself.
    Scott had walked in on the carnage.
    For a time, he’d been in a stupor, lost to the world around him. When his sister died suddenly from a fever, the local do-gooders wanted to send him to an orphanage and close the book on what they, by then, considered the trashy Colter family. Scott had run away.
    The next fifteen years had been spent drifting, working at any job he could find to keep from starving, stealing when he had to. If the war hadn’t come along, he’d probably have wound up in jail. But being a soldier had given him purpose, for the first time. Climbing up the ranks to officer had been his salvation. For the first time in so long he couldn’t remember, Scott was at peace with himself.
    Then Marlena Renfroe had burst into his life with the force of an exploding Parrott gun. Damn, she was beautiful. Tight, firm buttocks aching to be squeezed. Big, firm breasts yearning to be sucked and fondled. Hair the color of corn silk and eyes like fiery diamonds. She’d taught him ways to enjoy their bodies he’d never dreamed of and drove him crazy while she was doing it.
    Yes, hell, he’d fallen in love with the bitch, started thinking about settling down, a home, family . Marlena, making the rounds of the Federal camps as a singer, pretended he’d awakened the same longings within her, and so they made plans to get married.
    He sucked in his breath and let it out slowly. Goddamn, would he ever forget finding out the truth about her? They’d made love that night, in his tent, and it had been the best ever. She’d enjoyed it so much he’d had to press his hand over her lips to keep her shrieks from waking the whole damn camp. Then they’d fallen asleep, and he’d awakened to find her gone. Worried, he went to look for her.
    She had gone to meet a Reb scout in the woods.
    There hadn’t been time for anger. He was an officer and soldier first, a fool in love second.
    He had slashed the throat of the scout, not using his gun for fear of alerting any Reb troops nearby. Then he’d clipped Marlena with his fist to get her out of the way, throwing her over his shoulder and returning to arouse his men. A good thing, for there had indeed been Rebs waiting nearby.
    When the skirmish was over, he’d dispatched someone to take Marlena to a Federal prison. He hadn’t seen her again, had admitted to himself sometime later that he’d been afraid to, afraid he might go berserk like his father and kill her.
    Maybe she was still in prison. He didn’t know. He’d learned a lesson. Never again would he allow a woman to have such a hold on him.
    Then along came Holly. And there