Cowboy to the Max

If she didn’t, he’d show her firsthand the hard lessons he’d learned in prison, where she had sent him.

SADIE WHITEFEATHER SHIVERED at the news photo of Carter Flagstone as the story of his prison escape and criminal record flashed across the TV screen perched on the wall above the bar.

His dark brown hair was shaggy now, his face unshaven, rough with stubble, his eyes tormented, his strong, stubborn jaw set in anger.

He looked hardened, scarred and lethal.

All deadly to a woman whose dreams of making love to him still taunted her.

Not that he would want her in his bed again.

No, he’d probably kill her.

“Flagstone is considered armed and dangerous,” the reporter said. “Police have orders to shoot to kill. If you have any information regarding his whereabouts, please contact the police.”

Her fingers itched to make that call. But she didn’t know where he was.

Only that he was most likely coming for her.

Of course she couldn’t blame him.

What she had done…was wrong.

She sucked in a sharp breath, then rubbed her finger over the prayer beads around her neck. Her mother’s people had taught her that all life was sacred. That all things on the earth were alive and connected. That all things alive should be respected.

But she had been a party to a murder and sent an innocent man to prison for it.

Shame clawed at her, but she fought it, struggling with her emotions and reminding herself of the circumstances.

She had had no choice.

The sound of the bell over the doorway tinkled, barely discernible over the wail of the country music floating through the Sawdust Saloon. But her senses were well-honed to detect the sound, knowing it might alert her to trouble.

A cloudy haze of smoke made it difficult to make out the new patron as he entered. He was big, so tall that his hat nearly touched the doorway. And he had shoulders like a linebacker.

He hooked his fingers in his belt loops, standing stock still, his stance intimidating as he scanned the room. Shadows hovered around him, and the scent of danger radiated from him like bad whiskey.

She froze, her heart drumming as she studied his features. Carter?

Or the evil monster she’d been running from for five years?

She hated to be paranoid, but life had come at her hard the night she’d met Carter.

He wasn’t the only one with scars.

She had her own to prove it.

Her finger automatically brushed the deep, puckered X carved into her chest, now well hidden by her shirt, and traced a line over it. For a moment, she couldn’t move as she waited to see the man’s face in the doorway. He was imposing like Carter and her attacker. Muscular. Big-boned. Large hands.

His boots pounded the wood, crushing the peanut shells on the floor as he moved into the light, and her breath whooshed out in relief.

Even in the dim lighting, she could see he had dark-blond hair.

Carter had thick brown hair, so dark it was almost black.

Her attacker—a shaved head, and he’d smelled like sweat and tobacco.

A group of the men in the back room playing pool shouted, toasting with beer mugs, and two men to her right gave her a flirtatious grin and waved at her to join them.

Sadie inwardly cringed, but remembered she needed this job, and threw up a finger gesturing that she would be right there.

“Your order’s up!” the bartender yelled to Sadie.

Amber Celton, blond, boobs falling out of the cheap lacy top of her waitress uniform, and a woman who would screw any man in pants, sashayed up beside her and gestured toward the TV screen. “Man, I don’t care if that cowboy is armed and dangerous. He could tie me in his bed anytime.”

Sadie wiped her hands on her apron and reached for the tray of beer she needed to deliver. Carter had been seductive, all right.

All that thick, scraggly hair. Those deep whiskey-colored eyes that looked tormented, like they were hunting for trouble. That crooked nose that looked as if it had been broken and needed kissing.

And his mouth…thick lips that scowled one minute as if he was the devil himself, then twitched up into a lazy grin that had made her weak in the knees.

And Lord, those big, strong, wide hands. What he could do with those hands was sinful. Downright lethal.

He had destroyed her for wanting another man as a lover.

And her attacker, the one who’d held her down, nearly suffocated her and cut her, he had destroyed her trust in men in general.

“If I were you, I’d stay away from him.” Sadie hoisted the beer-laden tray with her right hand, juggling it as she added a basket of peanuts. “Five years in a maximum security prison…you don’t know what they did to him inside.” Horror stories of beatings and prison rapes tormented her.

“Yeah, but that means five years without conjugal visits,” Amber said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “I bet he’s ready for a woman.”

A streak of jealousy pinched Sadie’s gut at the thought of Amber taking Carter to bed. Guilt followed that she had helped put him in that godforsaken jail. That five years of his life had been stolen from him when if she’d only told the truth, he wouldn’t have been convicted.

Yes. And you would have been dead and so would your mother.

“Hey, sugar, we’re thirsty,” one of the men yelled.

“And I’m hungry,” his buddy shouted, as he reached out a hairy hand to pull her to him. “Hungry for you.”

Sadie forced a polite smile as she sidestepped his grip, desperately trying to control a nasty retort that would not only cost her a tip but her job. Five years of working in low-rent restaurants and divey bars just to make ends meet and take care of her mother had taken its toll on her body and shattered her fantasies.

But her mother was gone now, God rest her soul.

Unfortunately so were her dreams of becoming a doctor.

She was broke, alone, and she’d been looking over her shoulder so long that she was half-afraid of her own shadow.

But she had enough sense to know that she was still in danger. Maybe even more so now.