“Thank heavens,” Sam said, relieved. Remembering the dress, and the work he had to do, he turned away.
“I’m so touched that you care,” Millie’s voice said bitingly. “And it’s such a relief that you didn’t have to go to the trouble of getting wet just to fish me out.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” Sam agreed, smiling as he heard more splashing and sputtering behind him. He spread the yellow dress out across the bank and began to walk across it in a shambling shuffle.
The girl released a strangled cry. “What are you doing!”
“Mussing your dress. It’s too clean.”
“Too clean?” she exclaimed. “It’s never been so filthy!” He bent down and flipped the dress onto its other side, and Millie groaned in dismay as he repeated the process. “Until now...”
“This way we’ll be a better match,” Sam told her.
“Just what I’ve always dreamed of,” she said scathingly, “to look like I belong to the criminal class.”
Sam finished with a little jig before stepping off the dress. “There,” he said with satisfaction as he inspected the now dingier garment. “You won’t attract as much attention now. It’s hard to tell whether this is yellow or beige, I’ll wager.”
When his commentary was met with silence, Sam turned quickly. But Millie hadn’t disappeared—she was standing very still in the water, her expression pained. And angry. Very, very angry.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
Her mouth clamped shut. Then she mumbled, “Nothing.”
“You can come out now,” he told her, holding out a hand. “Here, I’ll help you.”
“Don’t you dare touch me!” she cried ferociously. “You, you — dress-musser!”
Sam smiled. “You wound me.” Kneeling at the very edge of the bank, he grabbed her by the arms and lifted her bodily out of the water and onto dry land. Millie managed to get him at least half as wet as she was in the process.
He handed her the dress, which did nothing to soothe her. She looked at the garment in seething silence. “I loved this dress,” she said at last.
Sam shrugged. “It’s just clothing.”
“That’s all you know!” she retorted, her eyes flashing. “That dress was my very favorite. I sewed it myself — it took me months!”
Months? Sam wasn’t sure about these things, but he doubted it took most women months to finish a dress. Especially women like Millie Lively, who had all the leisure the world had to offer.
But maybe he just didn’t know what he was talking about. Needle and thread were tedious tools he’d always tried his damnedest to avoid using. “I suppose being called a dress-musser is better than being called a murderer.”
“You are a murderer,” she said, scrambling away from him up the bank as fast as she could. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten those two deputies!” She began drying herself with the petticoat she’d put aside. “I’ll bet hundreds of people are going to be combing the area for you today.”
“We’ll be ahead of them.”
“Not for long. Word of my disappearance will get out, and then you’ll be in big trouble.”
Sam found it difficult to concentrate on the prospect of being hunted at the moment. Instead, his eyes kept glancing in amazement at Millie, whose shape was silhouetted against the lightening sky. The girl might appear to be mere skin and bone while buried under her mounds of clothes, but when those same clothes were wet and clingy, the womanly curves they revealed were definitely...eye-catching.
He remembered, back at the pear tree, thinking the legs poking out from it were mighty appealing. But that had been before he was faced with the spoiled princess that went with them. Most of the time she seemed more girl than woman. It would be hard to think of her that way now....
He looked away, feeling his face redden. His throat was suddenly dry, and he cleared it uncomfortably.
“What’s the matter?” Millie asked. “Are you sick?”
Ironically, anger over her dress seemed to have knocked the bashfulness clear out of her head, so that she stomped around, heedless of his gaping, as she whacked her dress against the trunk of a tree, hoping to flog some of the dirt off. Sam wished she’d go ahead and put the damn thing back on, already.
“No, I’m not sick,” he answered, getting to his feet. “We just need to push on.”
“You’re the one who’s wasted our time this morning,” Millie lectured him primly as her fists rested on her curvaceous hips. “You can’t blame me.”
No, he couldn’t. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t gotten that fool notion about Millie’s dress into his head, he could have gone on thinking about her as a... well, a troublesome hostage. A burden to be shed. But now he was going to be hard-pressed to look at her again without thinking of her as she appeared now, that camisole sticking to her collarbone and cleavage, her petticoats outlining her tiny waist, her hips and her shapely legs.
Damn. He trained his eyes away, on the spot where they’d left the horses. “All right. It’s my fault. Now hurry up and get your clothes on.”
She shot him an exasperated look. “First you want them off, now you want them on! And all the while you keep pointing that gun at met — How do you expect me to act efficiently under these circumstances?”
Patience, Sam told himself, turning away as he listened to her fuss over the scads of little buttons she had to contend with. The rippling pond mocked him now. If only there were time, he could use a therapeutic dunk in that cold water himself.
Tom McMillan, Chariton’s sheriff for going on twenty years, was well-known for being a man of few words, so when the few he chose to tell his hastily gathered but handpicked posse were shoot to kill, Horace Lively was sure the sheriff meant them.
Poor Millicent, his little princess, all alone with that brutal outlaw. And her so unused to the rough conditions she was probably being exposed to! How would she survive?
He swallowed, fighting back a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that had been there ever since the sheriff had come around with Millie’s bonnet, asking a lot of questions. But, of course, he’d begun to anticipate the worst when Millie wasn’t home for dinner that afternoon. Oh, he never should have quarreled with her! If only he could be sure she had survived thus far. He was an old man, had been through four years of battle during the War between the States, but he’d never faced anything so frightening as the prospect of losing his dear daughter.
He just had to stay calm, keep himself together, as he had been doing. Now if only he could convince Lloyd Boyd to comport himself in the same dignified way. Millie’s fiancé had completely fallen apart when he discovered she was missing. Even now he was fondling the little redbird on Millie’s bonnet, which he held in a white-knuckled grip.
“Shoot to kill?” Lloyd wailed, jumping up from where he was sitting on the wooden sidewalk in front of the sheriff’s office. He looked beseechingly from Horace to the sheriff and then back again. “With Millicent nearby?”
“The sheriff knows what he’s doing, son,” Horace tried to explain. If only he could be certain of his own words.
Sheriff Tom continued instructing his men. “Now you all heard Ed and Toby’s story. Sam Winter is a shifty, brutal character, just like that brother of his, and apparently he’s a lot stronger than he looks. Any man who could overtake two lawmen on horseback while his hands are cuffed would have to be.” He eyed his red-faced deputies sternly.
The sheriff thought the incident of the