you...”
“No.”
She didn’t even blink. “I know of you, señor. In Tejas you were a Ranger. I know such a man seeks to protect.”
“The answer is still No.”
She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “I ask you to protect Miss Caroline.”
“She needs a bodyguard, señora. I’m a sheriff now, not a Ranger. I don’t ‘protect’ anymore.”
“Your mother would not believe. Your mother would be proud.”
Hawk sat back and studied the woman across from him. Yeah, he’d have done almost anything to make his mother proud. But not this. This cut too close to the bone.
“Miss Caroline know you’re here?”
“Oh, no, señor. She would not like.”
“Then why—”
“Because I promise Miss Caroline’s mother to keep her safe.” Her keen black eyes held his. “This I cannot do alone. But you can do. Your madre would want you to do this.”
Hawk paused, then tossed back the rest of his whiskey. “Sandy,” he yelled.
“Yeah?” his deputy called from the jail cells.
“I’m riding out tomorrow morning.”
Sandy ambled into his office. “Where ya goin’, Sheriff?”
“Gillette Springs. Keep the peace here till I get back.” He gulped down the last of his whiskey and rose.
“Now, Señora Sobrano, let’s go on over to the hotel and make a plan.”
* * *
“Are you out of your mind, Sheriff?” Caroline clutched her blue silk robe about her and shot Fernanda a look of fury.
“Nope, just cautious.”
She advanced on him and poked her forefinger into his chest. “Well, let me tell you something, Sheriff. Caution is not going to win the vote for women.”
“Neither is getting yourself killed, Miss MacFarlane. Whoever shot at you tonight is probably still in the vicinity.”
“So?”
“So I don’t figure he’s going to give up.”
“I have traveled all over the West, from Colorado to Utah to Texas and now to Oregon. Yes, there are those who try to stop me, but I will not give up.”
“You don’t have to give up. You just have to be sensible.” He tossed the package he’d brought from the mercantile onto the bed. Fernanda pounced on it.
Caroline sent her a quelling look, but she was too absorbed in undoing the wrapping to notice. “What does ‘sensible’ mean, then, Sheriff?”
“Sensible means that I travel with you.”
“Oh, no you will not. I do not travel with men.”
“You will this time,” he said. “I’m taking you to Gillette Springs.”
Fernanda held up the clothes he’d brought with obvious delight. Jeans, boys’ shirts—one red, one blue—and boots and hats. Dreadful hats, like cowboys wore.
“I will not wear those garments!” Caroline announced.
“Yes, you will,” he countered. His voice sounded rusty, as if he didn’t talk much. Which was probably true, considering his manners.
“Si, we will wear them,” Fernanda chirruped. She held up the red-checked shirt. “This one for me.”
The man called Hawk nodded. “Now, listen up, ladies. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
At eight o’clock sharp the stagecoach to Gillette Springs rattled up to the Smoke River Hotel and clattered to a stop in a cloud of dust. The driver climbed down and clomped up the steps and through the doorway, emerging a few moments later with a lady’s travel trunk over one shoulder. He lashed it on top, then ostentatiously tramped around to lean in the window.
“That all, miss?”
With a nod, he climbed back up into the driver’s seat and cracked the whip. “Giddap,” he yelled, and the contraption, empty of passengers, rattled off down the street.
From the second floor window of the hotel, Hawk stood next to Caroline MacFarlane, watching the dust dissipate in the morning air. He’d stopped the stage driver outside town and explained the ruse he planned; he knew Caroline didn’t agree with his idea. Agree, his father’s suspenders! Getting her to even look at the boy’s duds he’d bought had taken a stern lecture in his best military give-’em-hell voice and a flood of tears and pleading from Señora Sobrano. Miss MacFarlane was fighting him every step of the way.
“I’m going on over to the livery stable to bring the horses,” he announced.
“Horses! Excuse me, Mr. Rivera, but I expected, well, another conveyance to transport us. Surely you cannot expect us to ride horses to Gillette Springs?”
“I do. You do ride, don’t you, miss?”
“Well of course I ride,” she retorted. “Every well-bred lady in Boston learns how to ride. What a ridiculous question.”
“Señora Sobrano?”
Fernanda’s smooth olive-skinned face lit up. “Si,” she said with obvious relish. “I ride since I was a girl in Mexico.”
“Then get dressed, both of you. Meet me at the back kitchen door in twenty minutes. Whoever’s tracking you expects you to be on that stage. So, you won’t be on the stage.”
Caroline glowered at him as if he was the devil himself wearing spurs and a badge. She was a helluva lot more attractive without the scowl. He wondered how the even-tempered Fernanda Sobrano had hooked up with her? More than that, how did the older woman put up with this spoiled Boston beauty?
Hawk left them to get ready and went to get the horses. He saddled Red, his black gelding, then picked out two gentle mares for the women and had them saddled, as well.
But when he arrived at the back kitchen door, he got a shock.
Señora Sobrano had turned herself into a reasonable approximation of a somewhat-overweight adolescent boy in jeans and shirt and a pair of store-bought boots. But Caroline MacFarlane wouldn’t fool a blind man. Her jeans curved enticingly over a nicely rounded bottom, the blue-striped shirt outlined her breasts in no uncertain terms and curly tendrils of dark hair peeked from under the small black Stetson he’d picked out for her.
Hawk groaned aloud.
“What is the matter, Mr. Rivera?” Boston lady’s voice was crisp enough to fry bacon and those blue eyes of hers snapped with anger. Goddamn but she was one beautiful hunk of female when she was mad.
“Nothing,” he muttered. “Let’s mount up.” He laced his fingers together for Fernanda, then boosted Caroline up with a splayed hand on her behind.
Big mistake. The bottom part of her anatomy was warm and soft and so female it made his groin swell. God, he didn’t need this.
Once mounted, she sat the gray mare so stiff and straight she looked like a ramrod had been shoved up inside her shirt. He tried not to look at her breasts.
“Thought you said you knew how to ride.”
“I do know how to ride, but not like this. I ride sidesaddle.”
Hawk groaned again. It figured. Not only that, she looked too elegant. Too starched, somehow.
“Get down,” he ordered.