Free Just Once by Jill Marie Landis Page B

choices on the street this time of day.”
    “May I ask where you got these?” She extended her foot as casually as if he slipped shoes on them every morning.
    “You don’t want to know. Believe me.” Her foot with its delicate high arch was smaller than his hand. He fitted the shoe over the bulky stocking and tapped the heel in place, but not without noticing her well-turned ankle and shapely calf. She shifted her bottom on the hard floor and gave him a blushing, grateful smile as she lifted her other foot.
    Her innocence gave his tired heart a jolt. The room seemed to shrink to the space around them. So bright, so trusting, she appeared even more the angel in the foul room. Her skin was warm against his hands.
    Hunter cursed and hurried his task. Realizing he was not as immune to her charms as he thought, he vowed to keep his distance from her on the trail. Female companionship wasn’t something he needed or wanted in his life. Amelia had taught him as much. He was a self-avowed loner, determined to leave Sandy Shoals and explore the far reaches of the frontier as soon as he delivered Luther’s money and told everyone good-bye.
    The girl was staring up at him with her big blue eyes. He shoved her shoe on and let go of her as if she were a hot rock. Reaching around her, he picked up the black felt hat that had been wrapped inside the other clothing and began to pound his fist inside the crown, trying to shape it, but it still looked like a lump of coal. He shrugged and jammed it on her head until her face was almost hidden.
    She immediately shoved the hat back and tilted it at a rakish angle. Hunter reached out, grabbed the overwide brim and pulled it back down until it was low on her brow, hiding all but the lower half of her face.
    “Leave it there or you’re on your own,” he warned.
    She frowned again and wrinkled her nose but didn’t touch the hat. “No coat?”
    “I left it with the other supplies and the horses at a stable a few blocks away.”
    She glanced around the room, then jumped as another loud crash thundered outside the door. Hunter scooped up her gown, paused when her white petticoat fell out of the silk folds, and then balled up the gown and undergarment and rolled them both inside her green wool cape.
    “Here.” He handed her the clothing. “Hang on to this and stay close behind me. I’m going to open the door and then we’re going to cross the room without attracting any more attention than we have to. If we’re lucky, we can sneak out while everyone is concentrating on the brawl.” The sound of glass shattering against the wall in the barroom emphasized his point.
    Hunter checked his knife and then picked up his long rifle, certain he would rather be crossing the raging Mississippi during a flood than wading through the Rotgut bar with St. Theresa in tow.
    “If you’ve got any particular person you’d like to pray to just now, you’d best do it,” he said over his shoulder. She immediately started mumbling a hushed prayer. He threw the latch and swung the door open, just enough to catch a glimpse of the free-for-all that was going on in the bar.
    Three pairs of rivermen were engaged in a favorite pastime—hand-to-hand knife fighting. A whore clung to the back of the nearest combatant like an opossum baby riding its mother. The woman was shrieking at the top of her lungs, using curses Hunter had never even heard before as she alternately hit the man with a bottle and pulled out handfuls of hair.
    It was definitely no place for a would-be nun.
    He felt Jemma’s hand tug the hem of his coat and glanced back at her.
    “Just thought I’d hold on,” she whispered. He saw that she was clutching a fistful of the fringe that dangled from his jacket. “Not that I’m scared, mind you. It was far more perilous trying to escape the twenty mounted Berbers who had trailed me to the oasis, but—”
    “Eyes down,” he snapped, effectively shutting her up before he started across the bar.