Read Beautiful Bandit (Lone Star Legends) for Free Online Page B

Dinah—had given her a terrible pounding. The swelling would go down, and the bruises would fade, but the jagged cut on her jaw would probably leave a scar. And that wasn’t counting the scars that had been left in her head and on her heart.
    The mere thought of someone bigger and stronger laying hands on her made the hair stand up on his neck, made him want to inflict twice the damage on the hide of that two-legged swine. “Well,” he said through clenched teeth, “if he manhandled you this way while he was only your beau, think what he’d have done if he were your husband. Some men believe saying ‘I do’ makes a woman their property, like furniture or livestock.”
    She emitted a tiny groan. “He wasn’t my beau, either. At least, not then.”
    Well, that got his mind to whirling! “So, then….” Josh thumbed his Stetson to the back of his head. “What sort of work did you do back in San Antone?”
    She sat so stiff and straight, it looked like somebody had strapped her to a board. “I know what you’re thinking,” she snapped, “but you’re wrong!”
    “What am I thinking?” His question prompted her to lift her chin another notch. He watched as she pressed a palm to her chest and then blinked and huffed and wiggled her shoulders, the way his sisters did when they were feeling flustered.
    “I’ll have you know that my grandmother taught me to play the piano. She taught me to sing, too. And it came in right handy after my mama died, because—”
    “You were—you were a dance hall girl?” Josh didn’t know what surprised him more, his reaction to that last bit of information or the quiet laughter his question provoked. He took a lot of pride in the notion that he’d conducted a long and careful study of his mother and sisters and probably knew more about women than most other men. But something told him if he lived to be a hundred, he wouldn’t figure this woman out!
    “No, I wasn’t a dance hall girl. My clothing and my pay weren’t nearly that glamorous.” She punctuated the admission with a wistful sigh. “I plunked the keys of a beat-up piano and sang for my supper. That’s all.”
    Josh sighed, too, but his was a sigh of relief. While he’d never been one to frequent saloons, he knew as well as any cowboy that dancing ladies usually did a whole lot more than just dance. And he didn’t want to think of Dinah doing that, no matter what circumstance might have driven her to such work.
    “My cousins and I do our fair share of crooning out on the trail. Keeps the cows calm. The horses, too.” Dare he put her to this test? “Ever heard of a hymn called ‘I Need Thee Every Hour’?”
    “Heard of it! Why, as a little girl, I used to sing it in church all the time—solo, I’ll have you know!” Dinah took a swig from her canteen, then cleared her throat and launched into the first verse of the hymn.
    Josh had heard the tired, old saying, “She sings like an angel,” but until that moment, he hadn’t believed it could be true. Now, as the pure, clear notes lilted from her lips, he smiled.
    Then, with no warning whatever, Dinah stopped, and the peace that had settled over him whipped away, just as quickly as that gust of wind that had stolen her hat. “Why’d you stop?” Josh was flabbergasted at the tremor in his voice.
    “Because,” she answered, “I thought you were going to sing with me!”
    She laughed—an entirely different kind of music to his ears—and Josh wanted to bring their horses to a halt and dismount so he could haul her out of that saddle and wrap her in his arms.
    Instead, Josh removed his Stetson and ran a hand through his hair. While he debated whether to say, “Maybe another time,” or “Throat’s too parched,” a deafening thunderclap sounded overhead.
    “Gracious! That likely sliced two years off the end of my life!” Dinah exclaimed.
    Chuckling, Josh said, “Well, I hear tell those last two are the roughest years on a body anyway.”
    A