Read An Outlaw's Christmas for Free Online

so bad.
    “Do you have a name?” he asked.
    She bristled, and he guessed at the color of her eyes—dark blue, maybe, or brown. It was hard to tell, in the glare of that lantern she was holding. “Of course I do,” she replied primly. “Do you?”
    Sawyer gave a raw chuckle at that. She was an impertinent little dickens, he thought, probably able to hold her own in an argument. “Sawyer McKettrick,” he conceded, with a slight nod of his head. “I’m Clay’s cousin, here to take over as town marshal.”
    “Well,” she said, remaining in the doorway, “you’re off to a wonderful start, aren’t you?”
    He chuckled again, though it took more energy than he felt he could spare. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I reckon I am.”
    “Piper St. James,” she said then, without laying any groundwork beforehand.
    “What?”
    “You asked for my name.” A pause, during which she raised the lantern a little higher, saw that he was bare-chested, and quickly lowered it again. “You can call me ‘Miss James.’”
    “Thanks for that, anyhow,” he said, enjoying the exchange, however feeble it was on his end. “Thanks for looking after my horse, too, and, unless I miss my guess, saving my life.”
    Miss St. James’s spine lengthened; she must have been all of five foot two, and probably weighed less than his saddlebags. “I couldn’t just leave you lying out there in the snow,” she said, with a sort of puckish modesty.
    From her tone, Sawyer concluded that she’d considered doing just that, though, fortunately for him, her conscience must have overruled the idea.
    “You’d have had to step over me every time you went out,” he teased, “and that would have been awkward.”
    He thought she smiled then, though he couldn’t be sure because the light fell forward from the lantern and left her mostly in shadow.
    “What is this place?” he asked presently, when she didn’t speak.
    “You’re in the Blue River schoolhouse,” Miss St. James informed him. “I teach here.”
    “I see,” Sawyer said, wearying, though he was almost as much in the dark, literally and figuratively, as before he’d asked the question. “Was Clay here?” he threw out. “Or did I imagine that part?”
    “He was here,” Miss St. James confirmed. “He’s gone home now—his wife is expecting a baby soon, and he didn’t like leaving her alone—but he’ll be back as soon as the weather allows.”
    Sawyer was quiet for a while, gathering scraps of strength, trying to breathe his way past a sudden swell of pain. “You don’t have to be scared of me,” he told her, after a long time.
    “I’m not,” she lied, still cautious. Still keeping her distance.
    “I reckon I can’t blame you,” Sawyer said, closing his eyes to regain his equilibrium. The pain rose to a new crescendo, and the room had begun to pitch and sway.
    “The laudanum is there on the nightstand,” she informed him helpfully, evidently seeing more than he’d wanted her to. “And the chamber pot is under the bed.”
    He felt his lips twitch. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.
    “You’re certain you don’t want something to eat?”
    “Maybe later,” he managed to reply.
    He thought she’d go away then, but she hesitated. “You were asking for someone named Josie,” she said. “Perhaps when the weather is better, we could send word to her, that you’ve been hurt, I mean.”
    Sawyer opened his eyes again, swiftly enough to set the little room to spinning again. “That won’t be necessary,” he bit out, but he felt a certain bitter amusement imagining what would happen if word of his misfortune were to reach her. Josie was his last employer’s very fetching wife, and she’d made it clear that she wanted more from Sawyer than protection and cordial conversation. He’d had the same problem before, with other wives of men he worked for, along with their sisters and daughters in some instances, and he’d always managed to sidestep any