Cowboy to the Max

There had been something more to her. A deep, reserved, quiet kind of beauty that had triggered his lust but also his admiration. She wasn’t like the other girls he’d known in high school, snotty and materialistic, women who’d looked down on him as the trailer-trash troublemaker.

No, Sadie had looked at him as if she saw something good in him. As if she saw beneath his hard surface to the man he wanted to be.

He cleared his throat, the memory of having her in his bed returning to taunt him. He had loved her with his mouth and hands and body once and brought her to ecstasy. In fact, she had screamed with pleasure.

And he had moaned her name as he’d come inside her.

He balled his hands into fists. She was the last woman he’d made love to before his freedom had been ripped away. And even though he’d hated her for not stepping forward to clear him, as he’d lain on that brick-hard cot every night in prison he’d fantasized about making love to her again.

Only now his touch made her cringe with horror.

She wrapped her arms around herself, jerking her nightshirt tightly to her, then glanced at the table where her derringer lay. “You broke in?”

Frustration slammed into Carter. But the image of that scar flashed in his mind, and he knew Sadie deserved to be skeptical.

Dammit. He had to be patient. And he had to protect her.

“Because you were screaming,” Carter said, intentionally lowering his voice. “I thought the guy who shot at us had broken in.” He gestured toward the sheers. “Maybe through the window.”

Her gaze darted to the window then back to him, her big, dark eyes searching his face as if she was trying to decide whether to trust him. Whether to believe him.

He suddenly wanted that trust more than anything he’d wanted in a long time.

Almost as much as he wanted his damn freedom.

He shifted and leaned against the doorjamb. But he’d waited five long years to clear his name. And nothing was going to stop him from doing so.

Even Sadie Whitefeather.

SADIE SHRANK BACK against the headboard, needing more distance between her and Carter.

Her heart was pounding so loudly she could hear it roaring in her ears.

Having Carter in the bedroom close enough to touch her, close enough to breathe in his masculine scent, felt too intimate for comfort, and it reminded her that she hadn’t been with a man in five years.

And he had been practically naked. God, the man was sexy. But that sex appeal scared her now, too.

Carter might have spent those years in a cell, but in some ways she’d locked herself in a self-imposed prison of her own. She’d been afraid to get close to anyone, had avoided men, especially physical relationships, and had hidden herself away, as if staying invisible and holding on to her secret could keep her alive and assuage her guilt.

But she hadn’t really been living. No, she’d grieved for her mother, berated herself for her lack of courage, tormented herself with images of the beatings and abuse Carter suffered in prison, and spent each day running in fear.

“I’m sorry,” Sadie said again. “I…thought the nightmares were over, but—”

“But my escape brought them back,” Carter said in a self-deprecating tone.

“It’s not your fault,” Sadie admitted. Suddenly weary, she buried her head in her hands. “You’ve been locked up for a crime you didn’t commit, and I’ve been running from city to city, hiding, trying to lose myself, trying to forget.”

“But you couldn’t forget,” he said bluntly.

She shook her head, tears burning the backs of her eyelids. Tears she refused to let fall. She didn’t deserve his sympathy. “No matter where I moved, the truth—and that man—followed me.”

Carter cleared his throat. “Where did you go?”

The last few years of running replayed through her mind. She’d hated the hiding, the lying, the not being able to trust or make friends. “After my mother died, I moved to Houston for a while. Then Dallas. Then Austin. Each time I thought I might be able to escape the bad dreams. The guilt…” Her voice cracked, and she looked up at him with her heart in her eyes. “The guilt over what I did to you.”