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  “Does it answer your outlaw friend’s questions?”

  At that Cole almost laughed out loud. Instead, he buried his face in her neck. “Do you think you can pretend you like me?”

  “Haven’t I already proven that I’m a great actress?” she said, making Cole move away from her neck. He wasn’t sure, but he thought she had just said something terrible to him.

  “Put your head back and get some sleep. Give that devious little mind of yours a rest. We’ll probably stop for a few hours before daylight, but try to sleep before then.”

  She snuggled back against him, but she didn’t go to sleep. Instead, she felt his strong chest against her back, one arm encircling her, the other pressed against her side so that the palm of his hand was against her ribs. His chin was near her forehead, and she could feel his breath in the cool night air. Rubbing against her small thighs were his larger ones, hard from years in a saddle, muscular from commanding wayward horses to his will.

  Dorie knew she should be terrified at what was happening. She knew she should be worried and frightened, shaking even. But the truth was, part of her didn’t care what happened tomorrow. All she could think of was now. The last few days had been the best of her life. All her life she had lived by logic. She had planned everything down to the finest detail. She had studied her father as if he were a textbook for a course she had to pass, and she’d taught herself how to deal with him. She learned his schedule, his philosophy of life—“get all that you can”—and his habits. Using her brain, she had adapted to him.

  She had found Cole Hunter through logic. She had chosen him based on things she’d heard and read, and especially based on her need for a man to do a particular job.

  But Dorie had learned that while her father acted in a predictable manner, other people didn’t. Cole Hunter hadn’t done anything the way she’d thought he would. When she’d presented him with her marriage proposal he became angry, but Dorie had expected that: she always made men angry. What she hadn’t expected was his growing softness toward her.

  And she was coming to like that softness. She liked the way he sometimes looked at her. Oddly enough, what seemed to please him the most was what had made her father the most angry: her impertinent remarks. Her father had hated it when Dorie said or did anything clever, something he hadn’t thought of himself. Her father needed to believe that all women were stupid—then he felt justified in every petty, despicable thing he did to either of his daughters.

  Closing her eyes, she leaned her full weight back against Cole, and he seemed to close around her, protecting her, keeping her safe from all harm.

  Chapter Eight

  Let me have her.”

  Dorie came awake slowly, aware that the horse had stopped and Cole was pushing her into an upright position. Standing to her left, his arms eagerly upraised, was one of the dreadful men who rode with the outlaw who was trying to kill her husband. Since she wasn’t fully awake, Dorie hadn’t had time to remember the story she’d told the men; she had temporarily forgotten that she’d said she hated Cole Hunter. She reacted instinctively to the sight of the awful man holding up his arms for her: she turned and wrapped her arms around Cole’s neck and held on tight.

  Winotka Ford was not brilliant, but he was smart enough to know a problem when he saw one. He didn’t like being played for a fool. Leaning on his saddle horn, he glared at Cole in the moonlight. “What’s goin’ on?” he said in a low, threatening voice.

  Cole tried to act as though nothing unusual had happened. “I’ve had hours to talk to her.” When Ford still glared at him, Cole shrugged. “Maybe you have trouble attracting women, but give me three hours alone with a woman and I can talk her into anything.” With that, he dismounted and reached up with his good arm to help Dorie down.

  It was a full minute before Ford and his men understood what Cole had said. What else could they do but agree with him? Which man was going to step forward and admit that he was unable to talk a woman into anything? The men had demanded and threatened, blackmailed and given orders, but none of them had ever tried words of endearment. They had never used words that would make a woman voluntarily put her arms around their necks and relax her body against theirs.

  Cole wished he could carry Dorie away from these gaping, suspicious men, but with one arm useless, he couldn’t. And he missed the power his gun on his hip gave him; he missed the strength it gave him in protecting her. The only weapons he could rely on now were his size, his reputation, and his ability to freeze men with a look.

  Only a couple of hours remained before dawn, and Ford had decreed that the horses needed a rest, so they were to bed down for a while. Trying to establish some independence, Cole put his saddle as far away from the others as he dared. He didn’t want them to think he’d be so stupid as to try to escape while the others slept. Of course he would have tried if he hadn’t had Dorie with him, but he would not do anything that might endanger her life.

  One of the men made a campfire, put a coffee pot over the fire, and fried some bacon. When Dorie came back from a few minutes’ privacy among the trees, he handed her a steaming cup of coffee so vile she coughed and spat it out.

  “Drink it. It’ll warm you,” he said softly, his big body shielding her from the view of the others squatting around the campfire. So far Ford and his men hadn’t had much time to think about what had happened, but maybe now they would. Ford had planned to kill Cole Hunter, a notorious gunslinger, knowing that he would never be prosecuted. All Ford had to do was say it was a fair fight, produce a few witnesses, and he’d be free. Cole’s past would keep people from thinking it was anything but a fight, fair or otherwise. But instead of murdering a man, Ford now had to deal with two hostages. Never mind that Cole was the first one to kidnap her; he was her husband. If anything happened to her, it would be Ford who got into trouble. So all he had to say about it was that she’d better be worth the trouble he was putting himself to.

  “Drink that coffee and eat this,” Cole said, holding out a piece of tough bacon.

  Dutifully, Dorie tried to chew the bacon and drink the coffee. It wasn’t that she wasn’t hungry, it was just that the food tasted like old shoe leather and water out of a rusty can. However, it was hot and Cole wanted her to eat, so eat she did.

  Cole looked at her, a smudge of dirt on her cheek, standing in the moonlight wearing a nightgown that had once been pristine but was now ragged and filthy, and he had an attack of guilty conscience. He had gotten her into this. If she’d never met him she’d be safe now, not in danger of dying at any moment. Looking at her, he made a vow that even if he died trying, he was going to get her out of this.

  Ford set a man on guard, partly to keep an eye on Cole and partly to watch for bounty hunters who might want the rewards on the outlaws’ heads. The rest of the men stretched out on blankets and were asleep in seconds.

  Cole motioned to Dorie to take the bed he’d made for her, giving her all the comfort he could provide in the outdoors. But Dorie refused to lie down on the relative comfort of the blankets while he tried to sleep on the bare ground a few inches away. “I won’t take the only bed,” she whispered to him. The man on guard was unabashedly watching the two of them, and something about the way his eyes glittered even in the darkness made Dorie’s skin crawl.

  “You need to get some sleep,” Cole said, exasperated.

  “You’ll freeze without a blanket. The fire is ten feet away.”

  “I’m used to sleeping outdoors,” he snapped back at her.

  “Then that’s all the more reason why you should have the blankets and the saddle for your pillow. I’m used to a feather bed and clean white sheets. Now you should have the better place to sleep.”

  He was beginning to realize that she was so stubborn that they might be there all night arguing and he wanted to get as much sleep as possible. Heaven only knew what the next few days had in store for them.

  “All right, then,” he said, meaning to settle the matter, “we’ll just have