Desperate (13 page)
It would be a while before Zach was found, though she knew he’d be located before daylight and the night was warm enough he wouldn’t be in any danger. Only the danger of shame and mortification and she’d suffered that plenty.
For a moment, her conscience pricked. He’d said he was going to ask her to marry him. Maybe she was acting in haste. Maybe she should have given him a chance to explain. But maybe the bastard was just like every other man in this town and thought less of her because she wore pants.
“This is the end of the road, fiancé,” she said sarcastically, trying to cover the pain. “I’m sure you’ll soon be found, but your pride might be a little dinged. Tied up, unshucked, and wet in the middle of Main Street. Kind of like how I feel when men say ugly things about these pants I wear. Or they say her ass looks really nice in those trousers. ‘I don’t want a woman who can out shoot, out rope, or out smart me.’ If you wanted a stupid, simple-minded dress-wearing woman, then we were never meant to be together.”
Untying the rope from her horse, her heart in her throat, she called, “Goodbye, sheriff.”
Zach started banging against the tub, but Meg spurred the horse and rode away.
As she left, her heart squeezed painfully, and tears blurred her vision. She would not cry. She would not cry. Any man who didn’t love her for who she was and accept her the way she was didn’t deserve her.
Life had made her tough. Life continued to show her she couldn’t be meek or mild or weak. Meg had to be strong for her sisters. And now she knew the answer to her decision.
*
Meg walked into the house. Annabelle and Ruby sat at the table. They glanced up at her, and she shook her head. The words refused to come out; her pride still smarted, and her heart felt beaten up.
“Bastard,” Ruby said.
“Scalawag. Are there no good men left?” Annabelle asked.
“I don’t think we’ll be seeing any more of Zach,” Meg replied, her heart shattering in a thousand pieces inside her chest. After what she’d done to him, he would never forgive her and yet he’d hurt her, as well.
“What happened?” Annabelle asked.
“Let’s just say he’s too tied up at the moment to marry me.”
“Meg McKenzie, what in the hell did you do?” Ruby asked, her blue eyes shining with laughter. “And everyone wonders where I get my wild side.”
Meg didn’t feel good about leaving Zach naked on Main Street and had even considered returning and untying him, but she feared the consequences.
“I overhead Zach making fun of me wearing pants with the other men in town,” the admission was humiliating, and Meg’s chest ached from the need to cry, but she refused. She would not cry.
Her sisters rose and came over to her. They each hugged her. “I’m so sorry.”
Meg had to fight to keep tears from falling.
Ruby held on to her, clasping her against her small frame. “You’re beautiful, Meg, and any man who can’t see that shouldn’t be with my sister.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s missing.” Annabelle took a step back from her sister. “He didn’t deserve you.”
“Thanks, but there’s nothing like overhearing a bunch of men talking about how your ass fits nicely in a pair of trousers.” Meg shook her head. With a sigh, she sat down at the table and the others followed.
They were back to square one. This time they had twelve months to earn enough money to save the farm. But how would they make that next balloon payment?
“What are we going to do now?” Ruby asked.
Meg rubbed her hand across her face, her heart wishing so badly for Papa. She longed for his guidance. “I paid the loan on the farm, so we’re good for now, but that’s not going to keep us fed. Next year we’ll have the same problem.”
Annabelle smiled that knowing way of hers Meg knew meant she had an idea. “I think I have a solution.” Jumping up from the table, she went into her room. A few minutes later, she returned with a stack of wanted posters and laid them on the table. “I think we have to do what Papa did. I think we have to become bounty hunters.”
“But we’re women,” Ruby said, glancing down at the men. “These guys aren’t exactly attending church every Sunday. How will we find them?”
“We do what Deke said he and Papa did. We learn where they’re from. Where their family lives. We search them out. Just one of these will pay more than what we earned at our fine jobs that got us nowhere,” Annabelle said.
“We could get hurt. Papa died chasing a criminal. We could be shot or captured or even worse,” Meg said. “We could die.”
“We could die plowing,” Ruby said.
“Or we could pay off the farm,” Annabelle said softly. “Never have to worry about losing it again.”
Ruby’s eyes widened, and her face glowed with excitement. “And think of the adventures we’ll have. Trapping outlaws and turning them in to the sheriff.”
“They’re not going to go willingly,” Meg reminded Ruby.
Ruby smiled, her blue eyes dancing with excitement. “No, but I think we’re strong women who can hold our own against any man.”
“We can outshoot most men,” Meg said, thinking of what the town men had said about her today in the bathhouse. “Even if we just go for the sly dogs, we could earn a better living than what we’ve been doing.” Who was she kidding? She’d been thinking about this for weeks. She’d been considering and reconsidering if this was a viable option for them to chew over. But did she want to risk her sister’s lives?
“Once we paid off the bank note, all we’d have to do is raise enough cattle to keep us fed,” Annabelle, the logical one of the three said softly.
An uneasy silence fell between the women.
“What about our stock? The garden?” Meg’s main concern was the farm. After everything they’d gone through, she wasn’t ready to lose their farm. “Who’s going to take care of the farm?”
“Either one of us stays here alone, or we sell the livestock, or we hire someone to look after them while we’re gone,” Annabelle said. “I could stay here or we can hire someone. But we must never hunt alone. We’re a team. We do this together.”
Meg contemplated her options. This very thought had swirled around in her mind for days. Their father had made a decent living as a bounty hunter. Why couldn’t they? Why couldn’t they catch criminals and turn them in?
Why couldn’t they pay off the mortgage and put some money in savings and then come back with the dream of farming full time? Maybe they’d find husbands or men they liked while doing this, and maybe they’d get injured and have to quit or maybe they’d make more money than they dreamed of because men were blind to a pretty girl. While Ruby flirted, Meg would be slapping the cuffs on them.
“I’m in,” Meg said.
“I’m in,” Ruby said.
“I’m in,” Annabelle replied. “And here is our first job.”
Meg got up and poured them each a small sip of the whiskey her father had kept on hand for special occasions. She gave each woman a glass. They raised it up. “To new beginnings where the men are dangerous, the trail is dusty, and the women are deserving. To the bounty hunter sisters—Lipstick and Lead.”
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading
Desperate.
I hope you enjoyed the lead off story for my brand new western historical romance series,
Lipstick and Lead
. The next three books are each sister’s story, starting with Meg.
Deadly
will be out the end of July.
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Desperate.
For a list of my other romances and a sneak preview of
Deadly
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Yours in Drama, Divas, Bad Boys and Romance
Sylvia McDaniel
Deadly
Chapter One
Meg McKenzie stood in yet another hotel room, in another dusty frontier town, on the hunt for yet another wayward criminal. She pulled her Baby Dragoon revolver from her holster, spun the cylinder, and checked to make sure a bullet graced every chamber. With a gentle tug she checked the leather case
,
and then slid the weapon back into the holster, just a fingertip away.
“The McKenzie sisters are about to strike again,” her sister Ruby said, as she slid her own gun into the hidden sheath-like case neatly tucked beneath her petticoats. Her saloon dress dipped low in the front to the edge of her breasts, the straps completely off her shoulder. She flipped her blonde hair back and checked her image one last time in the mirror. “How many men have we brought to justice?”
“At least twelve. Seems we’ve spent more time on the road than we have at home,” Meg said, homesickness surging through her like an open wound.
In the last year, they had learned the bounty hunter trade and continued their father’s legacy. With his death, the girls had been forced to find work in order to save the farm and in a desperate moment had chosen their current path. Meg and Ruby chased wanted criminals, whereas Annabelle ran the business side of their bounty hunting and maintained their family farm. At least until they returned and could join their sister once again. They never intended to make this their lifelong occupation. Just long enough to pay off the mortgage on the farm.
“Just as well, with Sheriff Zach still coming out to the house looking for you.”
“Zach Gillespie wants a quiet, retiring woman who wears a dress and has tea parties. Do I look like that kind of woman?” Meg shook her head, her heartache was nearly healed, though she could never look at Zach again without smiling and remembering him tied up naked.
Ruby laughed. “No, but you could be if you wanted.”
Meg glanced out the window. The glow of the setting sun cast a shadow, but she could still see the dress shop down the street. After she’d spoken to this no name town sheriff, she’d spent time gazing and fingering the available dresses and the patterns of the latest fashions in the little shop. Inside these pants, a woman longed to emerge and live like a lady, not the rough, bounty hunter facade of the life she lived now.
“I’ll never change for any man. As soon as we pay off the farm, then I’m going to begin my life and do things the way I want to,” Meg vowed. She had dreams, she had plans, and soon, it would be her time.
Beneath her men’s clothes was a woman waiting to burst out of the confines of these pants and shirt, but circumstances required she dress like a man. But the girly-girl had a hidden vice. Her own little secret pleasure…a rouge pot. Just a tiny bit of color to her lips helped her remember she was a girl. A girl who had all the same desires as every other woman.
As the sun continued its descent, cloaking the street in darkness, she knew it would soon be time to carry out their plan.
“Your weapon’s ready?” Meg asked one last time. She worried about Ruby and hated leaving her alone with any outlaw for any period.
“Yes,” Ruby said. “And you’ll be in there with me?”
“Until you give me the signal.”
“Remind me how much this guy’s worth?”
“Five hundred dollars.” This could be their last bounty find if things worked out like Meg planned.
Ruby smiled and walked over to the window. “Papa would be so proud of us.”
Meg shook her head, knowing their Papa would have been furious at the chances they were taking. “Maybe secretly, but he’d tell us we should have taken jobs in town. He’d have been more concerned about our safety than how we were paying off the farm.”
Ruby turned, her mouth twisted with displeasure. “I will never become a maid again. Never. This last year has been exciting, and criminals are too stupid to realize a pretty woman is going to pull a gun on them.”
Meg nodded. In the last year, Ruby had changed and matured. She’d gone from a love-crazed girl to being driven to catch as many low-life criminals as they could. She enjoyed the chase, the thrill. “Annabelle said we need four hundred dollars more, and the farm will be mortgage free.”
“Old man Clark will fall out of his chair when you pay off the note.”
She smiled. “Annabelle said he wasn’t too friendly when she took in the payment on the note this year. He had plans on repossessing the farm. Too bad.”
“I miss Annabelle,” Ruby said with a wistful whine in her voice.
“Yeah, me too. But someone had to take care of the farm, and she’s good at the bookkeeping.”
Meg glanced out the hotel room window and watched as men entered the saloon across the street, the doors swinging wide. Now was when her nerves had her stomach rolling, her heart racing, and fear choking her throat. What if something happened to Ruby? How could she live with herself?
“The drinking has begun,” Meg said quietly, listening to the music spilling out into the street.
“And will soon end for Simon Trudeau,” Ruby said laughing, her eyes shining with excitement. There was no fear in her eyes, only excited anticipation, only reckless adventure.
“The horses are saddled and ready to go. Give me your satchel and I’ll secure it on your horse. I can’t go in with you, or they’ll make the connection between us.” Meg stared at her youngest sister, fear sitting like a pit in the bottom of her stomach. “You’re all set? Your weapons are ready?”
Ruby shrugged. “My knife is in my boot. My gun is in my holster.” She smiled. “And my charm is ready to ensnare this poor bastard.”
