“That’s right.”
“They were sending you to jail for that?” she asked.
He nodded curtly. “For two years.”
That seemed a bit severe to Millie, but the law was the law. “If everyone aided criminals,” she said, “we’d never be able to catch them.”
“What if some of these so-called criminals are actually innocent?” he asked challengingly.
“But your brother was guilty. A jury convicted him.”
“You think juries are always right, Miss...what did you say your name was?”
“Lively,” she told him. “Millicent Lively.”
“Don’t you think people are capable of making mistakes, Miss Lively? After all —” His words were cut off, and for a moment, Millie wondered if perhaps he wasn’t choking. He sat with his mouth open, the strangest expression on his face. “Your name is Lively?”
She nodded. “Yes, that’s what I said.”
“Your father...” Sam swallowed. “He’s not Horace Lively, by any chance, is he? Colonel Horace P. Lively?”
Her face lit up. “That’s Daddy!”
“Oh, God.” The man swallowed slowly. “This is fine. Just fine!” he said, his voice rising petulantly.
“I told you all along he was important.”
The man’s searing gray eyes glistened in the darkness, fastening on her with growing anger. “Why didn’t you just say it flat out? ‘My father is Colonel Horace P. Lively.’ I thought maybe he just owned a big store. You didn’t tell me he was a man with a statewide reputation. A war hero!”
She smirked in satisfaction. “Well, now you know.”
He picked up a rock and tossed it into the darkness. The sound of it hitting a tree echoed back to them. “Now is too late,” Sam said. “If I’d known, I could have left you there. Even if you had a big mouth and would have blabbered lies all over the place and told the authorities where I’d ridden off. At least I wouldn’t be charged with kidnapping Old Lightfooted Lively’s daughter!”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s just what I’ve been telling you all along,” she insisted. “If you only would have listened!”
He sighed in despair. Good, Millie thought. Let him worry for a while! “This is a helluva fix I’m in,” he muttered.
“Why don’t you let me go now?” she suggested. “You’ve seen me ride. You know I can get back to Chariton all right. And I’ll tell Daddy that you were a perfect gentleman and released me as soon as you knew who I was.”
“I’m in too deep now,” he said. “I’ve got to think of a way to get rid of you.”
“You mean —” Instinctively, she touched her neck, as if the ominous words had choked the breath out of her.
“Don’t worry,” he snapped. “Believe it or not, I’m more concerned about someone else’s liberty than yours.”
“A murderer’s, you mean.”
“My brother is innocent,” Sam said, his voice suddenly more menacing than she’d ever heard it. “I won’t have you talk against him.”
She was silent for a moment, watching him. She could just make out his intent expression in the darkness. Finally, she gathered the courage to ask, “What are you going to do with me? Leave me here, tied up?”
“I’ll have to think about it,” Sam said. “I’ll have to decide in the morning.”
Millie frowned. Morning. She couldn’t believe it would ever come. It seemed a lifetime of darkness away.
“Get some shut-eye,” Sam instructed her. He sat back down where he’d been, then stretched himself out to his full length across the ground. “More than likely, tomorrow will be harder than today.”
Harder? After a day with no food or rest? Millie had no idea how she was supposed to sleep propped up and bound to an oak tree, but that didn’t appear to concern Mr. Sam Winter. “This is no bed of roses, you know,” she said tightly.
He looked over at her, frowning. He then stood, picked up one of the horse blankets and spread it across her feet and outstretched legs. “That’ll have to do, Princess. Sorry I couldn’t provide better accommodations.”
Her lips turned down, and she watched with envy as he stretched out across the grass again. Oh, well. At least she was alive. For someone taken hostage by a cold-blooded killer, a man who’d murdered two lawmen, that was quite a bit to be thankful for. But what would morning bring?
She sank against the rough bark and closed her eyes. She was tired. And sore! Good rider though she was, she’d never ridden so vigorously for so long before. She’d never needed to — until Sam Winter pointed a gun at her.
Odd, she thought, yawning sleepily. He must be an awfully insightful criminal. “Sam?”
There was a short pause before he answered her. “Yeah?”
It was a deep voice. Soft, husky. Again, she would have liked it, had it belonged to another man. A nice man. “How did you know my nickname?”
“Huh?”
“The one my daddy calls me by,” she clarified, her voice tired and heavy.
“What’s that?”
“Princess.”
His deep-throated chuckle was the only reply Millie received before she drifted off to sleep.
Chapter Two
Even before he opened his eyes, Sam could feel something beating down on him. Not the sun; he could tell by the cool, damp air against his skin that it wasn’t yet light. But something equal to the sun’s intensity. He allowed himself to take a tentative peek — and was immediately confronted by a pair of angry brown eyes peering at him through the waning darkness.
His hostage’s arms were crossed over her chest. “I smell like a horse!” she snapped in an imperious tone Sam wasn’t as yet prepared to contend with. Not at this hour, at least.
He closed his eyes again. In his dreams, Salina’s murder had never happened. He’d been back at his farm, confronting nothing more than another early fall day of harvesting the fruits of his labors. Honest work. Work that made a man feel satisfied with himself at the end of the day. Unlike kidnapping.
He forced himself to sit upright and face the day ahead of him. At least it was still well before dawn. They could cover a lot of miles today, which they needed to do now that he had decided where to deposit Miss Lively. Well after she dozed off, Sam had lain awake, considering his options. One thing he definitely didn’t have time for was keeping a girl with dancing dark eyes and enticing lips with him. He’d spent too much time already remembering how slender her waist was, how delicate she felt on his lap. How pretty she was...
And what a rich, powerful daddy she had. An angry daddy, too, once he discovered what had happened to his little princess.
Finally, he’d concluded that the best place for Millie would be with one of his father’s old friends, Gus Beaver. Gus and his wife, Louise, lived on a remote farm and would make certain Miss Lively stayed put, with her mouth shut, until Sam was able to free Jesse. Going to Gus’s wouldn’t take him too much out of his way,