Emma flashed Matt Suede what she hoped was a seductive smile. She leaned into his hug and became distracted by the playful dusting of freckles frolicking over his nose and across his cheeks.
Matt bent his head, whispering in for a kiss.
Emma pressed two fingers to his lips, preventing what promised to be a fascinating experience.
“Matt, honey, you did promise me a proper wedding. I don’t think we should keep the preacher waiting.”
Matt’s arm stiffened. His fingers cramped about her middle. There was a very good chance that he had quit breathing.
The Marshal let out a deep-bellied laugh that startled poor Pearl and made her whinny. “Looks like you been caught after all, Suede.”
About the Author
While in the third grade, CAROL ARENS had a teacher who noted that she ought to spend less time daydreaming and looking out of the window and more time on her sums. Today, Carol spends as little time on sums as possible. Daydreaming about plots and characters is still far more interesting to her.
As a young girl, she read books by the dozen. She dreamed that one day she would write a book of her own. A few years later Carol set her sights on a new dream. She wanted to be the mother of four children. She was blessed with a son, then three daughters. While raising them she never forgot her goal of becoming a writer. When her last child went to high school she purchased a big old clunky word processor and began to type out a story.
She joined Romance Writers of America, where she met generous authors who taught her the craft of writing a romance novel. With the knowledge she gained she sold her first book and saw her life-long dream come true.
Carol lives with her real-life hero and husband Rick in Southern California, where she was born and raised. She feels blessed to be doing what she loves, with all her children and a growing number of perfect and delightful grandchildren living only a few miles from her front door.
When she is not writing, reading or playing with her grandchildren, Carol loves making trips to the local nursery. She delights in scanning the rows of flowers, envisaging which pretty plants will best brighten her garden.
She enjoys hearing from readers, and invites you to contact her at [email protected]
AUTHOR NOTE
I have always been fascinated by the stories and the people of the Old West. Homesteaders in particular were a resilient lot, who worked hard to build their homes and raise their families. My great-grandmother was one of them. She left behind the special gift of her memoirs.
She echoes through the pages of RENEGADE MOST WANTED. You will find her in both our heroine Emma and her friend Rachael. Like Emma, my great-grandmother was a homesteader, and sold patent medicine for the relief of ‘female complaints’. Like Rachael, she was a preacher.
I am thrilled to bring you Emma Parker and her outlaw cowboy Matt Suede. Come along with them while they wrench their love, their family and their home from the stubborn Kansas prairie.
I hope you enjoy reading this story as much as I have enjoyed writing it.
You may contact me at [email protected]
Warm wishes!
Renegade Most Wanted
Carol Arens
With love to my husband, Rick.
Cheers to thirty-six years!
Chapter One
Dodge City, Kansas, 1881
Land sakes! What did a woman have to do to get a husband in this cowboy-thick town—dance naked on the back of a steer?
Emma Parker licked a film of dust from her lips to make them look moist and alluring, but it was no use. She had been perched upon the bench outside the land office for so long that the wind, a perverse thing that spared no regard for a woman’s appearance, had spun her into a mound of bedraggled frippery.
No wonder the men passing by paid her no mind. July sunshine burned down like a blister to complete the ruination of her gown. Damp pink taffeta clung to her throat while a hank of droopy lace sagged against her bosom. Truly, what had ever made her think to spend a years’ worth of egg money on the ineffective garment?
A drip of perspiration trickled between her breasts, not unlike the disturbing sensation of a spider skittering over her skin. Mercy, for a dime she’d take a plunge into the Arkansas River flowing south of town, new dress be hanged.
There might have been a cooler, less dirt-ridden part of town to seek a spouse, but the men here kept up a constant coming and going. Not a moment passed that one didn’t come out of the mercantile or go into the saloon. This ought to have been as easy as plucking peaches from a tree.
To bolster her spirits, Emma touched her breast where a letter from a former employer was folded between her skin and the lace of her shift. She no longer needed to see the letter in order to read it. Every word was memorized, burned into her heart, giving life to her dreams.
“‘Dear Emma,’“ she recited in a whisper. “‘We find that we must move on in haste. Our wonderful homestead, a pure piece of paradise, will be free for the taking. We know how you yearn for a home of your own. Time is not on your side, dear. Catch the first train to Dodge before some other lucky soul files on it. May your future return to you all the joy and kindness that you have shown to our children over the years. Please do come quickly. Edna Harkins.’“
So far she had been lucky. The former Harkins place had not been filed on. It was destined to be hers, even if she had to flirt with every last bachelor in Dodge to get it.
Emma watched a prospective groom rumble down the earthen street in his wagon. Her loveliest smile earned no more than a raised hat when he rolled past. Drat if the jingle of his harness didn’t sound as if it was laughing at her.
This rough splintered bench should have been the perfect spot to catch a man. She couldn’t imagine what she was doing wrong. Weren’t the men of the west desperate for helpful mates? She’d always heard that was true, but her efforts at appearing irresistible seemed to be falling flat.
She’d bet a pretty penny that the man in the wagon would have no trouble at all filing a claim. His gender alone would make it a simple thing.
Pinpricks of irritation plucked at her patience. She wouldn’t even need a husband if the politicians who had passed the Homestead Act had been more open-minded about the rules. Even the clerk in the land office acted as if he had written them himself, the way he stuck to the very letter of the law.
Earlier this morning she had explained until her voice had grown hoarse that she was an orphan and no one knew her true age.
“The law says you’ve got to be twenty-one or head of a household. Even if guessing were allowed, you don’t look to be more than twenty.” The clerk scratched the lower of his double chins and wagged his finger at her. “Besides, I don’t see what a pretty little thing like you is going to do with all that land. No sir, it doesn’t seem safe or proper.”
And when had her life ever been safe or proper? The homestead was the one thing that would give her that. On her own land she’d put down deep roots where life’s whims couldn’t blow her about.
“As you’ll recall,” Emma had said, gathering her patience, “I do have—”
“Don’t tell me again that