While she stood there, all smiles and cheery disposition, he stepped up beside her and bent his head to ask confidentially, “Who in the hell are you?”
“Evangeline Raven, of course. Really, J.D., you’ve been calling me Eva for weeks. Last night you swore I was the love of your life.”
“Ha, curse of my life is more like it,” he said and grunted. “Last night you interrupted a perfectly good drunk. And here you are this morning to ruin a perfectly good hangover. Be warned that you’re going to regret this little charade of yours, I guaran-damn-tee it, Eva.”
He wheeled around to tuck his Winchester rifle beside his saddle and she followed after him. Flashing an impudent grin, she said, “I told you that you hadn’t seen the last of me. You were warned, darling.”
“I thought you were a man-hater.”
“Can you think of a better way to get even with a man than to pretend to marry one of the worst offenders?” she countered in a syrupy tone.
“What the hell—?” came a startled voice from overhead.
Raven looked over the top of Eva’s auburn head when the stage driver’s gravelly voice boomed above him. From his elevated perch, the grizzled driver, whose bushy hair, long beard and mustache concealed most of his wrinkled features, stared at him in bewilderment.
“You’re married?” the driver croaked like a bullfrog. “To her? You must have more charm than I thought.”
Raven inclined his head to take a better look at the driver. He recognized George Knott, the man he had interviewed after a stagecoach holdup the previous year.
“He has oodles of charm,” Eva defended as she laid her hand on Raven’s forearm. “I’m honored to be his wife.”
Raven noticed the speculative glances coming his way again. This new respectability in white society beat anything he’d ever seen. One attractive female in calico, who testified to his charm and claimed to be his new bride, and wham! Suddenly he wasn’t the dangerous bastard everyone thought he was. He was considered almost human.
Eva tapped his hand, then lifted her full skirts so he could assist her into the coach. He took his cue. However, he gave her a bit more of a boost than she needed. She yelped when she nearly sprawled facedown on the other passengers’ feet. He noted that she reacted quickly and that she was agile enough to catch her balance. She eased a hip onto the seat and settled in for the ride. Raven expected her to glare daggers at him for the spiteful stunt but she grinned sportingly.
“How clumsy of me.” She tucked her skirts beneath her legs then scooted sideways to pat the empty space beside her.
Raven wedged into the space between Eva and the window. In the close quarters, it was impossible to rail at her without being overheard by the other four passengers. Presently, he was too irritated to keep his voice to a whisper so he held his tongue. He did what he always did during the rare occasion when he was forced to travel by stagecoach. He pulled his hat low on his head, crossed his arms and caught a catnap.
Unfortunately, visions of his impish bride kept intruding into his dreams and jolting him awake. And sure enough, she was still cuddled up beside him, smiling triumphantly at him.
He sighed inwardly, aware that he had lost control of the situation the instant she appeared in the stage depot to shock him speechless. He decided to give her high marks for ingenuity and let her enjoy her crazed charade for the first leg of the journey. But that was as far as this pretend marriage went.
Biding his time, he closed his eyes to nurse his headache and vowed to get even with Eva Whoever-she-was for trying to outsmart him.
Chapter Three
An hour into the overland journey Eva was still feeling exceptionally pleased with her ingenious scheme to attach herself to the stubborn bounty hunter. Of course, she wasn’t so smug to think that just because she had stunned and outmaneuvered Raven that he would take the assignment to avenge Lydia’s humiliation. She figured she had some fast talking to do before that happened.
However, he hadn’t shouted her from the depot, denouncing her claim. It was a start. Either she had caught him completely off guard while he was hung over or he hadn’t wanted to make a scene in public. Maybe it was a little of both. Whatever the case, he had kept his trap shut and they were sharing the same stagecoach that was headed south.
Eva glanced discreetly at Raven. She knew he wasn’t sleeping at the moment. He was like a lounging panther, intently aware of his surroundings, ready to pounce at the first sign of danger. Beneath those long thick black lashes, she could see a slash of golden green.
Although she knew he wasn’t going to let her completely off the hook for duping him, she enjoyed her reprieve and played her new role to the hilt. She even spun the simple gold band on her finger—the one that had belonged to her departed mother—calling the other passengers’ attention to the ring that implied marriage.
She smiled cordially at the woman across from her, who looked to be a few years older. The thin brunette with the sad smile also wore a wedding band.
“Are you meeting your husband, ma’am?” Eva asked.
The brunette nodded. “He’s an officer at the army post near Canyon Springs. I’m returning from a visit with my family in St. Louis.”
Within five minutes, Eva knew her fellow travelers by name. Clara Morton had left her seven-year-old son with his maternal grandparents for a month. Delbert Barnes, the effeminate little bookkeeper, wore thick, wire-rimmed spectacles. He had a bald spot on the crown of his head and a cleft in his chin. He was on his way to Pueblo to begin his new job as an accountant with a coal smeltering company.
The other two men looked like gamblers, judging by their frock coats, brocade vests, snappy black hats and expensive pocket watches that dangled from gold fobs. Eva reminded herself that gamblers were a nickel a dozen in the area. They frequented saloons that catered to miners. One look at the rings on Frank Albers’s and Irving Jarmon’s fingers suggested their hapless opponents at gaming tables had lost their bets and paid their debts by surrendering their jewelry.
Irving Jarmon had a long, horselike face and large horselike front teeth. His tuft of hair reminded Eva of a horse’s mane. Frank Albers was average height and slim build. His blond head seemed too large for his thin-bladed shoulders.
Frank Albers and Irving Jarmon—if those were their real names—claimed they were headed to Mineral Wells, before venturing to the mining towns in Devil’s Triangle. According to reports, visitations to the numerous bawdy houses, gaming halls and saloons were the order of the day in Mineral Wells.
She wondered if that’s where she’d find Gordon Carter—con man, shyster and God knew what else. She suspected he planned to lay low in the isolated mining camps before reappearing in society to fleece another young, unsuspecting heiress.
“Stage stop ahead. We’ll exchange horses,” George Knott called down from his perch.
Eva stirred on the bench seat, eager for a reprieve from the jostling ride that left her posterior numb and cut off the circulation in her arms, which were jammed between Raven’s broad shoulders and Frank’s narrow ones.
The instant the coach rolled to a stop, a plume of dust rose around it. Like a great cat surging to its feet, Raven exited then pivoted to clamp his hands around Eva’s waist. The instant he touched her, strange fissions of heat rippled through her body. Stunned, she glanced into his hypnotic eyes as he slowly, deliberately lowered her to the ground.
Eva cleared her throat. “Thank you, dear.”
“Anything for you, my sweet,” he purred. “We’ll partake of a cool refreshing drink and enjoy a private moment alone.”
Eva wasn’t sure she wanted to be alone with him just yet. He might strangle her and toss her behind a tree as a snack for wolves, mountain lions and such.