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blacksmith—Will
Chatham. That young fellow bought Will dinner one night—they sat
right over there, yessir, they did. Will’s livery is down at the
end of Main Street, if you ...”
    But the big man had already muttered a low
“Thanks,” and turned quickly away, wheeling right into Annabel with
such force that she was knocked backward. With lightning-like
reflexes his arms shot out and gripped her, preventing her from
falling.
    “Where in hell did you come from?” he
demanded, scowling in irritation.
    Caught off guard and distracted by the
overwhelming strength of those massive corded arms, Annabel blurted
out the first words that sprang to mind. “From St. Louis,” she
blathered, and immediately felt absurd.
    A vivid blush heated her cheeks. To cover
her error, she added with an acid tang, “A city where gentlemen
take care to avoid crashing into ladies with whom they are not
acquainted.”
    But the handsome giant was not crushed by
her setdown in the least. He had the audacity to grin, a mocking,
distinctly unpleasant grin that set Annabel’s teeth on edge. “Do
they crash into ladies with whom they
are
acquainted,
ma’am?” he asked with the soft menacing purr of a tiger, and as he
spoke, Annabel felt his fingers tighten like rawhide bonds around
her flesh.
    She opened her mouth to reply indignantly,
but for a moment no words came out for it was dawning upon her that
she was caught in the grip of the most intimidating-looking man she
had ever seen, a man as strapping as Hercules, and as rude as a
bear, a man clearly not about to release her until he was good and
ready.
    Fear and fascination tingled through her.
Some of the investigators at the Stevenson Agency were hard-looking
characters, men with toughness and experience who knew how to track
down and apprehend dangerous criminals, but in terms of danger,
none of them could compare to the aura of deadly menace that
emanated from the man before her.
    Hercules would be a fitting name for him,
she decided. Yet for all his brawny muscularity, she had noted a
litheness as well as strength in his movements. He was undeniably,
magnetically attractive, if one liked dangerous men, which Annabel
assured herself thankfully that she did not. Those unrelenting
black eyes of his made her shiver. And it was
not
a
comfortable feeling, not in the least.
    He must be a gunslinger or a bounty
hunter
, she thought, staring up at him in dazed silence.
Beneath his hat, his features were rugged and stern. A hard mouth,
an aggressively jutting jaw that suggested both tenaciousness and
strength, a straight, no-nonsense nose. Perhaps most significantly,
there was the keen, glinting intelligence in his eyes, an
intelligence which would make him a formidable adversary. All the
harsh planes and angles on his face somehow combined into a
compellingly handsome countenance, but his was a rough, deadly
beauty, formidable as a boulder carved of granite.
    Handsome or not, dangerous or not, she could
hardly stand here like a ninny and allow him to imprison her like
this. Since it didn’t appear that the intimidated clerk was going
to come to her aid, she had better extricate herself.
    “Kindly let me go,” she requested in the
coolest, haughtiest tone she could muster. “I am certain you have
much better things to do with your time than to engage in
nonsensical conversation, and so, sir, do I.”
    His mouth twisted into a cold smile so
derisive it could only be interpreted as a sneer. “Damned right
about that, lady.” He released her, gave one mocking doff of his
hat, and strode past. The next moment he was gone through the door
without a backward glance, letting it slam insultingly behind
him.
    “Who was that man?”
    The clerk’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his
scrawny throat as he leaned toward her, his narrow string tie
dangling against his limp white shirt and jacket. “That was Roy
Steele, ma’am. The gunfighter. You don’t want to get in his way.
He’s on someone’s