Read Katy Run Away for Free Online Page B

watching it!” Katy jerked stiffly off his chest, wrestling briefly to get out of his loosening embrace and wiggling around on her knees to face him. “After a lifetime on a ranch and three months at the Abilene, believe me, I’ve got one hell of a vocabulary that I could be using!”
    “Look.” Cal tried visibly to let the secondary quarrel go and focus in on the main one. “All I meant was, I can see how a woman with a ranch larger than some east coast states, with all that help looking to her for the sakes of their livelihoods and trying to raise a fourteen year old daughter to boot, might not want to suddenly have to do it all alone. That’s all I’m saying, and hopefully I’m saying it in a way that isn’t going to start another argument.”
    In no mood to be allayed, regardless of how much sense he was making, Katy struggled to her feet. “That just shows how stupid you are. You don’t understand anything!”
    Cal watched her go, his arms slightly spread in a helpless shrug of frustration and confusion.
    Finding someplace else to sit all the way across the fire from him, Katy hugged her arms around herself and tried to keep warm on her own. She didn’t even care if she froze all night. At this point, she’d rather be cold than held by someone like him.
     
    * * * * *
     
    The sun was a glow of pink and yellow on the horizon and the fire was little more than a char of blackened coals and thin reeds of smoke when Katy gradually awoke. It had been a very long night, most of which she’d spent curled in a tight ball, shivering. Sleep had been forever in coming, but as cold as she remembered being once the sun had gone down, right now, she felt pretty comfortable.
    A low rattling snore vibrated around her, followed by an exhaling breath that puffed back out across the top of her hair. Katy opened her eyes, blinking in confusion at the buttons and shirt collar and the long scruffy neck, studded with dark whiskers, just inches from her nose. It took her a moment to remember where she was, why she was sleeping outside on the rocky ground, and with whom. It was another heartbeat longer before she remembered she was supposed to be angry, but it wasn’t until she felt a warm slither of movement on the inner slope of her left thigh that she came abruptly awake enough to ball up her fist and hit Cal.
    Her knuckles cracked against his shoulder, but she knocked his arm off from around her waist and sent the rest of him sprawling over onto his back. He came up snarling, “What the hell’s wrong with you?!”
    She fell onto her back too, and her temper wasn’t much sweeter when she scrambled to sit upright. “You get your—” The word ‘hands’ died on her lips when she heard the hissing rattle emanating from under her skirts. “Snake,” she said, the shocking calm of her voice in no way an accurate reflection of any other part of her. “There’s a snake between my legs.”
    The anger vanished from him face. “What?”
    “My apologies. I thought it was yours.”
    “Don’t move.” Cal scrambled to his feet. Now he stood there, half standing, half squatting, staring at her lap. “Is it inside your dress or under?”
    “In,” she specified, fighting not to shudder. She could feel it moving, butting its smooth nose against the underside of one knee as it slithered up off the ground, coiling its cool, scaly body on top of her warm thigh. “It’s definitely in.”
    Cal lowered to one knee, reaching for the hem of her skirt. “Don’t move,” he said again.
    “I’m not moving,” Katy said through clenched teeth. She held herself completely frozen, cringing inward with every rattling hiss as Cal lifted the hem of her skirt high, folding the volumes of dusty cloth back up around her hips until he had exposed the snake. It coiled tighter on her thighs, focused on Cal, the tip of its vibrating tail warning him of its intent to strike unless it was left alone. “Kill it.”
    “Don’t. Move.” Cal