Free Anita Mills by Dangerous

again.
    “Probably not. As your friend pointed out, Verena’s not exactly common.”
    “No. I only knew one other, anyway—and she was the aunt I was named for. Verena Summers was her name.”
    “Well, it’s got me beat,” he admitted. Leaning back, he unwrapped the tortillas again. “Here, you’d better get something on your stomach before we leave out.”
    The grease had already congealed on them. “I couldn’t—I just couldn’t. They didn’t even smell good when they were cooking.”
    Taking out his watch, he flicked the case open, then decided, “All right, we’ve still got about eight minutes. You wait here, and I’ll fight the crowd to see what else they’ve got.”
    “You didn’t look while you were there?”
    “No. When I heard ’em asking about you, I just grabbed these off the counter when the cook wasn’t looking.”
    “You didn’t even pay for them?” she asked incredulously. “You stole food?”
    “I threw down a quarter.” His gaze dropped to the greasy rag and the offending tortillas. “Even free, they wouldn’t be much of a bargain.” Rolling up the rag, he stood up and dropped his right arm, sliding the narrow knife from beneath his sleeve. “Here, this’ll work even better than a hatpin.”
    She looked first at the knife, then back to the food in his hand. “I’ve changed my mind, Mr. McCready—I’ll eat those.”
    “You want my gun? I guess I could leave it with you.”
    “No.” Her gaze went to his face for a moment. “I don’t want you to go anywhere right now.”
    Favoring her with a look of long suffering, he sighed, then dropped back into his seat. “You know you’re damned hard to please, don’t you? If there were a school where females just learned the art of contrariness, you’d have graduated from it with high marks,” he complained. “And the same way about lying.”
    “I haven’t lied to you, Mr. McCready,” she protested.
    “No?”
    “Well, not really, anyway.”
    “Is there a Mr. Howard?”
    “I’m sure there must be—somewhere. I mean, Howard is a fairly common name, after all.”
    “But you don’t really have a husband.”
    “No.”
    “What about the rest of it?”
    “The rest of what? Really, sir, but—”
    “What else are you lying about?” he cut in curtly.
    “Nothing. And I wouldn’t have claimed to be married, but I was hoping to avoid unwanted attention,” she explained defensively.
    “Like that fellow that just left?” he gibed.
    “Like you, Mr. McCready—and like those awful cowboys.” Daring to meet the skeptical look in those dark eyes, she declared evenly, “Everything else I’ve told you is the truth.”
    “That’s pretty hard to swallow, you know.”
    “And what about you?” she countered. “Let’s turn the table, Mr. McCready. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, isn’t it? All right, then—why are you making my business your business? What are you hiding from me?”
    “Nothing much,” he lied.
    “Is there a Mrs. McCready?”
    “Lots of ’em.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “My father had four brothers, all of whom married and produced mostly sons. And those sons—”
    “You can spare me the litany,” she cut in. “I was asking about you.”
    “No.” Leaning back, he regarded her lazily for a moment, then asked, “Why? Were you thinking of applying for the position?”
    “No, of course not!” she snapped.
    “Anything else bothering you? About me, I mean.”
    “I’ m not a prying person, Mr. McCready.”
    “Oh, I don’t know—that struck me as a pretty personal question.”
    “You asked it of me first, didn’t you? What difference did it make to you?”
    “None, I guess. But a man sees a pretty female traveling all by herself, and—”
    “And he gets notions,” she said, finishing his sentence for him.
    “I’d rather call it curiosity, Miss Howard.”
    “And I’d rather call it what it is.”
    “All right, then have it your way. Here”—handing her