Free When The Heart Beckons by Jill Gregory

disgust.

Chapter 6
    A nnabel’s heart
hammered against her rib cage. For a moment she could do nothing
but stare helplessly into the icy depths of those black eyes. Then
panic kicked in and she began to wriggle.
    “Hold still,” Steele commanded.
    “L-let me go.”
    “When I’m good and ready.”
    “Who is she, Roy?” the woman asked. She
stood beside a small table, pouring whiskey from a crystal decanter
into a tall glass. As Annabel peered past Steele’s grim face in the
hopes that the woman would help her, she was dismayed to see that
far from looking troubled by Annabel’s predicament, the woman
looked merely amused.
    “That’s what I’m going to find out.” The
unyielding determination in his voice chilled Annabel even more
than the hard expression on his face. Her heart sank farther at the
gunslinger’s next words.
    “You’d better get out of here, Lily. It
won’t be a pretty sight.”
    “Just don’t shoot her in my bedroom, Steele,
that’s all I ask,” the woman sighed, strolling past the
velvet-canopied brass bed, drink in hand. “The last time you shot
someone in here, it took me half a day to scrub the blood out of
the carpet.”
    Steele swung Annabel away from the door as
the tall woman approached. “Honey,” Lily said, her tone not
entirely unsympathetic as she studied the young woman held
helplessly in the gunslinger’s unbreakable grip, “whoever you are,
you got on the wrong side of the wrong man. Let it be a lesson to
you.”
    Then she was gone, the door clicking
ominously shut behind her.
    Annabel stared into Steele’s glacial eyes
and managed to blurt out three words.
    “I can explain.”
    He backed her against the wall beside the
gold-curtained window. “Then do it.”
    “Let go of me first.”
    “You’re not in a position to negotiate
anything, lady.”
    “T-true. But you’re scaring me half to death
and I can explain things much better if you let me go.”
    His eyes narrowed, but he released her. He
moved back one step, and folded his arms across his chest. Annabel
moistened her lips. Even with this slight distance between them,
she felt trapped, overwhelmed. There was no way to escape. Roy
Steele was too big, too strong. He could grab her again anytime he
chose and they both knew it.
    She peered past his broad shoulder at the
door, wishing she could somehow dash out, flee down the hall, and
disappear. Let Roy Steele comb every hotel in Eagle Gulch in search
of her. She’d have a chance to outwit him then, and in a pinch
Annabel would stake her wits and brains against those of any man,
even this one, with his shrewdly intelligent eyes and knowing
sneer.
    “Don’t try it,” he warned, and she realized
he had seen her glance and guessed her thoughts.
    “Actually, Mr. Steele, I’m glad to have this
opportunity to talk to you,” Annabel countered, looking up at him
as steadily as she could.
    “I’ll just bet you are.”
    “A gentleman doesn’t question a lady’s
word.” She licked her lips.
    “I never claimed to be a gentleman, and I
sure as hell wonder if you’re much of a lady.”
    Indignation rocked her, but she controlled
herself with an effort. This was hardly the time to defend her
dignity. She had to extricate herself from this, and fast. “May I
sit down?” she asked coolly.
    “No.
Talk.
”
    The sharp impatience with which he bit out
these words made Annabel decide she’d better plunge ahead without
irritating him any further.
    “I’ve been wishing to engage your services,”
she said, trying to sound crisp and professional. “You are a
gunfighter, are you not?”
    “You’ve been following me all over the place
for the past two days, lady, so you tell me.”
    “Yes, well ... I wish to engage your
services.”
    “To do what?”
    “To protect me. There’s a man who wants to
kill me.”
    “Doesn’t surprise me.”
    Annabel’s eyes flashed with the raw heat of
summer lightning. “I am willing to pay good money for protection.
That is,