Read The Western Dare (Harlequin Heartwarming) for Free Online Page A

leisurely shower and a big breakfast.
    What seemed like nano-seconds later, the sound of car doors slamming jarred Camp from a pleasant dream. Where he lived—the outskirts of town, almost in the country—nights were so quiet he almost always slept solidly until the alarm went off. Rolling toward the wall, he pulled the pillow over his head. Then someone banged insistently on his door.
    “Wrong room,” he yelled. Some fool must have stayed too long at Sammy’s Bar and as a result, misread the room numbers.
    “Campbell? Is that you? Open up!” At Emily Benton’s voice he jackknifed to a sitting position, then leaped out of bed. Heart hammering, Camp yanked the door open the length of the chain. It vibrated out of his hand and slammed in his face. Cautiously he opened it again. “What’s wrong? Was Maizie right? Are you quitting?” His sleepy eyes failed to register full daylight.
    “Me? The others bet that you’d run off during the night. Maizie sent me to check. It’s five-thirty. She’s fit to be tied.”
    “ What? Come in.” The chain jingled, then clanked against the door. “Wait,” he said in a muffled voice. “I’m not decent.” Snatching his watch from the table, Camp shook it, only to discover that it’d stopped shortly after midnight. He dug in his bag, dragged out a clean pair of jeans and jumped into them. Socks, boots and a pullover shirt followed. Wadding his dirty clothes into the bag, he raced across the room and threw open the door. “My watch stopped. The battery must have died. You’re saying everyone’s already hitched their wagons?”
    “Everyone except you. Maizie’s...annoyed. The wagons are probably strung the length of Broadway by now.”
    Camp’s angry sigh was muffled by the growl of his stomach. “I’m starved,” he said. “I skipped lunch and dinner yesterday.” He rubbed his jaw. “I haven’t shaved and my teeth feel scuzzy.”
    “Well, it’s too late now. You’ll have to get something out of your stores.”
    “You’re kidding?” His steps slowed. “Beans, rice, flour, coffee—those are Maizie’s idea of stores.”
    Emily failed to cloak a look of pity. “Sounds like good pioneer fare to me. Isn’t that the object of this trek? To simulate what happened in 1821?”
    Because she’d spoken the truth, Camp shut his mouth and accepted his fate. Except that Emily had been wrong on one count. Maizie hadn’t gone ahead. She’d waited to chew him out.
    Pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and finger, Camp endured her verbal flogging. This he could definitely do without.
    Amid a rousing send-off by townsfolk and a marching band from Santa Fe Trail High School out of Overbrook, Kansas, Camp’s four horses decided to act up.
    Maizie’s son, Robert, and his boy, Jared, occupants of the final wagon, helped subdue Camp’s nervous team. If Robert Boone had looked less like his mother, or had been built less like a linebacker, Camp would have tried bribing him into going after coffee and a couple of Egg McMuffins. Or he would have if Mark Benton hadn’t kept leaning around the canvas-covered bows of Emily’s wagon, leering at him.
    By the time they pulled out, a full hour late, Camp was ready to strangle the kid. And just where was the boy’s mother during all of this? The starchy woman who’d jerked Camp out of bed at an unholy hour, acting as if he was a no-good slacker.
    Emily Benton had absolutely no control over those brats. Camp recalled her saying in the interview that she wanted to remove them from the harmful influence of overindulgent grandparents. He’d sympathized and silently applauded her. Now he discovered that she herself was turning a blind eye to the antics of her little darlings.
    If he had children... But why even get into that? A family was out of the question when you didn’t have a wife. The only woman he’d asked to fill that bill had dumped him. After she’d accepted his ring, Greta decided she didn’t want to spend