Read Drew (The Cowboys) for Free Online

thief in the country, but she was without a doubt the most attractive. Her face wouldn’t stop trains, but her body could empty them. That was something else he had to remember. She had to wear clothes that would take advantage of her spectacular figure.
    Just the thought of her body clothed in a revealing outfit caused his body to harden. He’d have to watch that. She didn’t look the type to be amused by a man’s physical response to her attractions. Neither would it do him any good to let his libido overpower his brain. He didn’t think that was a possibility—he’d had too much experience controlling himself over the years—but even a brief lapse in control with this woman might be fatal.
    Still, he couldn’t discount the possibility that a romance might be the best way to allay her suspicions and enable him to enter her inner circle. Female outlaws weren’t much different from other women. Even when they knew their lovers couldn’t be trusted, they tended to tell them everything they knew. He doubted Drew could be gotten around that easily, but it was something to keep in mind.
    But pretending to be romantically interested in Drew bothered him. He knew he had to stop the robberies, that he had to do whatever was necessary to catch the thieves, but his conscience rebelled at pretending to love Drew when he didn’t. He didn’t know why that should bother him. He’d never felt guilty about lying to a crook before. Maybe it was because he felt she might be capable of real love.
    She acted as cold as a sleet storm with him, but he had the feeling a hot fire burned somewhere deep inside her. Women weren’t like men in that respect. If a man seemed cold and hard, that was pretty much what he was like. He usually wasn’t anything worth redeeming. You might as well shoot him and save everybody a lot of trouble.
    He’d met women who seemed cold and hard on the surface. But no matter what kind of front they tried to put up, they always had a soft inside. It didn’t mean they wouldn’t fill you full of holes if you did something they didn’t like. It just meant they’d be sorry afterwards.
    Men changed loyalties easily. Women usually remained faithful for life.
    Cole found himself feeling a little uneasy about that. Drew might be a thief and a crook—if so, she didn’t deserve the same consideration he would give another woman—but he didn’t want to engage her feelings. He wanted any possible relationship to remain on the purely physical level. That would probably suit her just as well.
    He turned over in his narrow bunk. The occasional screech of the wheels as they rounded a curve went through him like a knife. He’d have to learn to sleep better if he wanted to be able to shoot well enough to push Drew to her limits.
    He wondered how she was sleeping. He’d hoped they’d be in the same car, but he hadn’t been surprised when they’d put him in with the cowboys and some of the crew. Their snoring was enough to wake even a sound sleeper.
    Drew didn’t look as though she ever had trouble sleeping. There was a freshness about her, a luminescence about her skin that made her seem young and virginal. She probably depended on that in her robberies. No red-blooded American male would suspect her of being a thief. The people in the banks, trains, and steamboats she robbed were probably too stunned to do anything but stare in disbelief until they’d been stripped of their gold and Drew’s gang had escaped without firing a shot.
    If he had been one of the victims, he too would have been left standing with his mouth open, especially if she did something clever like shoot the cigar out of his mouth, or a pen off its stand on the desk. The robber always did something like that. The official opinion was that she did it to keep her victims so stunned, they wouldn’t offer any opposition when she made her get-away. That fitted, in perfectly with Cole’s opinion of women. They might be capable of committing almost