Free Runaway by Heather Graham

three hundred is fitting for a wife.”
    “Wives shouldn’t be bought!” she whispered.
    “No, they shouldn’t,” he agreed grimly.
    His gaze was on her once again. “But I do need one. And you do need somewhere to go.”
    It was settled, so it seemed. His hand was around hers again, firm, compelling. She pulled back just a little. “McKenzie,” she murmured, calling him by the only name she knew, “you know that the man back there wasn’t alone.”
    “I know.”
    “Then—”
    “I’ll be watching.”
    They kept walking. Tara heard the lap of the Mississippi to their far left, drifting along in a slow motion. A ship’s bell clanged somewhere out on the water.
    McKenzie walked along easily enough. There were still shadows all around them. Shadows that moved. Shadows that frightened her in the night.
    A cry escaped her. One of those shadows came leaping out from behind a trellis.
    McKenzie suddenly thrust her behind him, spinning around.
    “Let the girl go or you’re a dead man!” the shadow demanded. He was no longer a shadow. He was flesh and blood. He wasn’t quite as tall as McKenzie, but he was huskier. And he was brandishing a knife.
    “No,” McKenzie said simply. He hadn’t even pulled a weapon.
    “This ain’t your fight!” the fellow warned him.
    “She’s with me!” McKenzie insisted. “Anyone will tell you. She’s three hundred dollars on the gaming table. And I don’t turn that kind of money over to anyone.”
    “You can damned well give me the girl, or I’ll take her!”
    McKenzie stood still.
    “Do something!” Tara cried, terrified that he would underestimate an opponent.
    She never would. She knew better.
    But McKenzie hadn’t underestimated the man. When the hulk lunged, McKenzie sidestepped him. Quick as a flash he spun, both fists coming down on the big man’s neck.
    Like his companion before him he fell very quietly and lay there without moving.
    He looked up at Tara. “Did I do enough?” he asked wryly.
    “Yes, quite enough!” she murmured back.
    McKenzie stared at her. “Will there be more?” he asked. He sounded slightly aggravated.
    She moistened her lips. “I don’t know, I never know!” she cried out. She inhaled, still shaking. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Jesu, if he should ever learn the truth about her.
    “Let’s go, then,” he said. That edge of dark, contemptuous anger was in his voice again. She shivered suddenly, remembering the naked man in the darkness, the lithe way that he moved, like a panther in the night.
    “I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” she gasped out. “I can’t go with you. Because I never know—”
    “Ah, but we’re going down to the Seminoles and alligators!”he told her pleasantly, reaching for her hand again. “No one will dare follow you there!”
    “But—?”
    “We’ve made a bargain,” he reminded her harshly, swinging her around suddenly so that her back was against the brick wall of a warehouse. His hands pinned her there on either side of her head. She could scarcely breathe. He fascinated her. Made her tremble.
    And once again, made her afraid. She’d seen evidence of all she had imagined about him from one look in those ebony eyes. He could be merciful.
    He could be ruthless.
    “Do you wish to renege on our agreement?”
    What did she have to lose?
    She met his gaze with her chin high and shook her head in a silent no.
    “Frightened?” he queried with the amused arch of a brow.
    Damn him. She hadn’t been beaten yet. And he wasn’t going to get the best of her either!
    “Bring on your alligators and savages,” she said sweetly. “Heaven knows,” she murmured, “they can’t be worse than some of my relations!”
    He laughed. “Some of them will
be
your relations!” he told her.
    “What?”
    He waved a dismissive hand in the air. “You won’t have to worry unduly about either reptiles or Indians,” he promised, then added softly, “But you will have to worry about me!”
    “What do you