Her Sheriff Bodyguard

“Caroline.” He scarcely recognized his own voice.

Barely aware of what he was doing, he deliberately turned her to face him, bent his head, and caught her mouth under his.

He didn’t know how long he moved over her lips, but he did know he never wanted to stop. She was sweet beyond belief, and soft. And female. So female he ached all over.

“Don’t you ever, ever do that again!” she shouted, pulling away.

He could see her body shaking; the ruffles down the front of her shirtwaist trembled.

He stared at her. Her eyes blazed into his and without thinking he reached for her arm.

“Stay away,” she warned. “Just stay away from me.”

What the—? He stepped back but couldn’t stop looking at her. He’d never misjudged a woman this badly since he was a green boy of fourteen.

Author Note

Women in the Old West struggled to be treated as equals, to own property in their own names and to exercise their right to vote—things we take for granted in today’s America.

This story reminds us that such rights had to be fought for.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

LYNNA BANNING combines her lifelong love of history and literature in a satisfying career as a writer. Born in Oregon, she graduated from Scripps College and embarked on a career as an editor and technical writer, and later as a high school English teacher. She enjoys hearing from her readers. You may write to her directly at PO Box 324, Felton, CA 95018, USA, email her at carowoolston@att.net or visit Lynna’s website at lynnabanning.net.

In memory of my mother, Mary Banning Yarnes,

and my grandmother, Leora Boessen Banning,

both of whom quietly lived lives that

enhanced the inherent rights of women.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Author Note

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

I, Fernanda Elena Maria Sobrano, am tell you this thing from my heart, how I find this man, Hawk Rivera, and ask for his help. My lady she not know what I do, but you will understand when I tell what happen.

Chapter One

“Sheriff, you can’t miss this.”

Hawk Rivera tilted his head so he could see the pudgy overeager face of the mayor from beneath the broad brim of his well-worn gray Stetson. “Like hell I can’t.”

“But everybody in town’ll be there!”

Hawk winced. All the more reason he should stay away. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the townspeople of Smoke River, just that he didn’t like them in bunches. “Mingling,” his mother had called it. He hated mingling. Made the back of his neck crawl like two dozen spiders had been dropped down his shirt collar. Mayor O’Grady cleared his throat. “She came in on the afternoon train. Fine-looking woman.”

Hawk shifted his boots to a new spot on his paper-littered desk. “Save your breath, Harve. Not interested.”

“Looks kinda feisty, too.”

“Still not interested.”

Harvey O’Grady smacked his now-empty whiskey glass down on top of a Wanted poster. “Not interested in a pretty woman? Somethin’ wrong with you, Sheriff.”

Hawk snorted. “Nuthin’ wrong with me another shot of whiskey and a little peace and quiet can’t fix. Leave me alone, Harve.” He tipped his chair farther back toward the dirty wall of the jail. “Leave the whiskey.”

“Aw, hell. A little excitement’d do ya good. Sure as God made little green leprechauns, yer gettin’ morose as a randy coyote.”

“Drop it, Harve.” Pointedly he looked at the door. “See you tomorrow.”

His office door slammed and Hawk reached for his whiskey, drained the glass, then refilled it from the flask the mayor had left. Night was too damn pretty to spoil it with politics.

Down the street somewhere he heard what sounded like chanting. “Oregon women better take note, Wyoming women have got the vote!”

He snorted. Bad poem. Bad idea. If Oregon women were smart they’d leave the thinking to their menfolk and tend to the business of making love and babies. Like they did in Texas.

But that’s why you left, isn’t it? Love and a baby?

He gritted his teeth so hard his jaw cracked. He grabbed for his whiskey and shut his eyes.

* * *

Caroline MacFarlane leaned out the second floor window of her hotel room and pointed. “Just look, Fernanda. The ladies have made signboards!”

Below her in the street a dozen women marched holding up hand-lettered placards.

LADIES UNITE.

WOMEN ARE PEOPLE TOO.

VOTES FOR WOMEN!

With their free hands, the ladies gripped their straw bonnets, which the hot afternoon breeze threatened to dislodge. Caroline’s eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, Mama would have been so proud.”

Fernanda shifted her bulk beside her. “Your mama, mi corazón, work too hard.”

True. Her mother had never minded the dust, or the heat, or the rough manners of little towns like this one, out in the middle of nowhere. Evangeline MacFarlane had lived for The Cause. Caroline was doing her best to follow in her sainted mother’s footsteps.

Fernanda touched her arm. “You must eat something before people come.”

“Afterward,” Caroline breathed. “I am far too excited to eat just now.”

“Humph,” Fernanda sniffed. “Soon you look like scrawny chicken. Now you put on speaking dress.”

Reluctantly Caroline let her companion draw her away from the window, lace her up in the whalebone corset that made it hard to breathe between sentences and smooth out the sleeves on her severely cut dark blue bombazine. She must look every inch a lady tonight; winning over an audience of ranchers and townspeople and their wives must be handled with decorum as well as rousing words.

With a final tug at her starched petticoats she donned her favorite speech-making hat, a bonnet with an iridescent green-and-blue pheasant feather drooping stylishly over one eye. She flashed Fernanda a smile and turned toward the door.

“Let us go forth and conquer!”

* * *

Even from inside his office, Hawk could hear the noise rumbling from the town hall behind the barbershop. A twinge of unease crawled up the back of his neck. He hadn’t heard such a commotion since the lynching the new judge, Jericho Silver, had narrowly averted. That, he recalled grimly, had ended up in a near riot.

He was glad Jericho had been elected district judge. That had meant Smoke River had needed a new sheriff. And he’d sure as hell needed to get out of Texas.

He liked Smoke River. The town was flanked by mountains that shaded into purple in the distance, golden wheat fields, and endless grassy expanses where mottled brown cows grazed. Like Butte City, only smaller. Tree-lined streets. Nice houses. Even the main street looked well-kept.

His deputy cracked open the door and peered across the street. “They’re gettin’ kinda riled up, Sheriff.”

“Let ’em. Words never hurt anybody.”

“I dunno,” Sandy said. He pulled his blond head back inside the jail and shut the door. “All the men are lined up on one side and the women are on the other. Haven’t stopped yellin’ at each other for the last half hour.”

Hawk thunked his boots onto the dirty plank floor. “All right, I’ll go have a look. You stay here and keep a cell open in case some damn fool troublemaker needs cooling off.”

He straightened his hat, checked his Colt and swung out the door onto the board sidewalk. Raucous catcalls drifted from across the street and he quickened his pace.

Inside the stifling hall overwrought women waved placards while the men taunted. Hawk frowned. All this uproar over a simple little speech? For a moment he considered tramping back across to the jail and letting them fight it out, but then he caught sight of a trim female figure in a dark blue dress and an interesting-looking hat and he changed his mind.

She had dark hair pulled into a neat-looking twist at the nape of her neck. He couldn’t see her eyes, but the tilt of her chin looked determined enough to stop a cattle stampede. She ploughed her way up the aisle between the two warring factions like an implacable ship on choppy seas and took her place behind the improvised lectern, two stacked apple crates at the far end of the room.

She stood there for a good four minutes while the ladies yelled and carried on and the men shouted. At last she raised both arms and quiet descended.

The sudden silence felt odd. Tension boiled in the room, and when the woman dropped her arms and opened her lips, Hawk’s instincts signaled trouble.

“Ladies,” she began. “And gentlemen.” She put subtle emphasis on the word. “We are about to change history.”

The women cheered. The glowering men sat with their arms clamped across their bellies.

“We must take our future into our own hands. We must...”

Something about her low, melodious voice curled around his gut like smoke on a hot summer night. The women hung on every word, their faces rapt, while the men roared their disapproval and heckled when she stopped to draw breath.

“Go back to Boston, girlie!”

“Our women don’t want the vote.”

“Oh, yes we do!” a woman screeched. She leaped to her feet and pounded the tip of her parasol on the wooden floor.

“Siddown and shut up,” a male voice yelled.

To her credit the speaker waited for the tumult to die down before continuing. But she did continue. Hawk rolled his eyes at the inflammatory stuff she was saying, but he had to admit she had courage. A smart person would edge on out the back door.

“Gentlemen,” she called, after a particularly ugly outburst of catcalls. “Gentlemen, let me ask you a question.”

“Save it, honey!” someone yelled from the back of the room.

“No, I will not ‘save it,’ sir. Hear me out. Did you know that here in Oregon a married woman cannot—?”

“Sure we know all about that, lady. Keeps our women right where we want ’em.”

“And where is that, sir?”

“Underneath a man with her legs spread, where else?”

The men guffawed while screams of outrage erupted from the women, and the shouting match resumed.

Hawk heaved a tired sigh. Enough was enough. He didn’t favor women’s right to vote, but he did support law and order. He strode forward down the aisle separating the warring parties, counting on his presence and the revolver he wore on his hip to calm things down. Deliberately he moved toward the woman behind the apple crates and the noise of the crowd dropped.

He drew close enough to her to note that she had very, very rosy lips, and then suddenly a gun went off somewhere behind him. A bullet thunked into one of the crates.

Hawk dove forward and threw himself on top of her, toppling her to the floor under him. A second shot whined past his head.

Pandemonium erupted. Women screamed, men yelled and somewhere outside a dog began to bark.

“Don’t move,” he ordered the woman pinned beneath him. “Lie still.”

Her body twitched, but she said nothing.

He heard the dog yelp and go quiet. Gradually the noise inside the meeting hall faded to an uneasy buzz, and he rolled off her and onto his feet, revolver drawn.

A sea of stunned faces stared back at him.

“She okay?” a male voice asked.

“I—I am quite well, thank you,” the woman spoke at his back. He heard a rustle of petticoats and he guessed she was getting to her feet. He kept his weapon trained on the crowd, but no one moved or spoke.

He holstered his sidearm. “Meeting’s over, folks. Go on home unless you want to spend the night in jail.”

The hall emptied like a beer keg on Saturday night and Hawk turned to the woman. Damn suffragettes. Stirred up trouble everywhere they went.

Her fancy hat was mashed flat and her hair was straggling out of her bun. A plump Mexican woman darted from the crowd and began brushing the dust off the now-rumpled dark blue dress.

“Stop, Fernanda,” the woman urged, batting at her hands. “We will take care of this later.”

“I’ll see you to your hotel, ma’am.”

She trained the bluest eyes he’d ever seen on him and did not smile. “Thank you, Sheriff, but that will not be necessary. I am perfectly capable of walking.”

“Might be capable all right, but unless you’re carrying a pistol in your skirt pocket, you’re not armed. Come on.”

He grasped her elbow. She wrenched free, but he grabbed her arm again and moved her toward the entrance. The Mexican woman followed them out the door and down the street to the hotel.

“What’s her room number, Ed?” he growled as he marched her past the front desk.

The balding desk clerk gulped. “Two-ten. Top of the—”

“Right.” He snagged the key from the rack, guided both women up the stairs, and shooed them into the safety of their room. “Throw the bolt,” he ordered.

Then he tipped his hat and stalked back down the staircase. Before he returned to the jail he scouted the town from the livery stable at one end to the church at the other, nosed around the saloon and spent the better part of an hour studying fresh hoofprints in the road.

Nothing. Whoever had fired those shots was long gone.

Or the bastard was still in town. It was then he began to taste fear in the back of his throat. Someone was gunning for her.

Chapter Two

Before Hawk could pour himself another shot of whiskey, the jail door banged open and the Mexican woman barreled into his office. Her long braid of black hair was sliced with silver and her large dark eyes snapped with impatience.

“Ah, señor, I am glad to have find you.”

Hawk removed his boots from his desk, planted them on the floor and stood up. “You found me, all right, señora. Question is why?” He motioned for her to take the straight-back chair beside his desk.

“You are Señor Anderson Rivera, are you not? The one they call Hawk?”

“Yeah, I’m sometimes called that. Who are you?”

“I am Fernanda Elena Maria Sobrano. From Tejas. I knew your mother.”

Hawk narrowed his eyes. “What part of Texas?”

“Butte City. Your mother was Marguerite Anderson, no? You look much like her, señor. Your eyes. Green, like hers.”

Hawk could count on the fingers of one hand the times he’d thought of his mother in the past twelve years. He topped up his drink, then lifted the bottle toward the woman. “Whiskey?”

At her nod, he pulled a clean shot glass from his desk drawer and filled it.

“Salud!” She took a small sip. Hawk lifted his own glass and downed a hefty gulp.

“Salud. Señora Sobrano, what—?”

“We need your help, Miss MacFarlane and I.” She sipped again.

“What for?”

“Is dangerous, this speaking. You see what happen tonight, no?”

“I saw it. I stopped it. What more do you want?”

Señora Sobrano tapped one finger against her glass. “Someone shoot at her last week, also, in the city of Salt Lake. But she do not give up, Señor Hawk. Tomorrow after tomorrow, Miss Caroline, she make speech in Gillette Springs.”

“Not my problem, señora. They’ve got a sheriff up there, name of Davis. Good man.”

“Is not a sheriff we need, I think. I think this someone follows us to kill Miss Caroline.”

“You mean someone is stalking her? Because she’s making speeches?”

“Si.”

“Then maybe she should stop making speeches.”

The woman gave him a long, considering look. “Miss Caroline, she will not stop. She cannot.”

“Then she’s not as smart as she looks.”

“Is not a matter of smart, Señor Hawk. Is a matter of pride. Her mother makes speeches before her, but she die from the lungs in Tejas. In Butte City. Miss Caroline say is her duty to continue.”

“Stubborn, too,” Hawk observed drily.

“Sí. But even when someone shoots at her, she does not give up. So now I ask you...”

“No.”

She didn’t even blink. “I know of you, señor. In Tejas you were a Ranger. I know such a man seeks to protect.”

“The answer is still No.”

She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “I ask you to protect Miss Caroline.”

“She needs a bodyguard, señora. I’m a sheriff now, not a Ranger. I don’t ‘protect’ anymore.”

“Your mother would not believe. Your mother would be proud.”

Hawk sat back and studied the woman across from him. Yeah, he’d have done almost anything to make his mother proud. But not this. This cut too close to the bone.

“Miss Caroline know you’re here?”

“Oh, no, señor. She would not like.”

“Then why—”

“Because I promise Miss Caroline’s mother to keep her safe.” Her keen black eyes held his. “This I cannot do alone. But you can do. Your madre would want you to do this.”

Hawk paused, then tossed back the rest of his whiskey. “Sandy,” he yelled.

“Yeah?” his deputy called from the jail cells.

“I’m riding out tomorrow morning.”

Sandy ambled into his office. “Where ya goin’, Sheriff?”

“Gillette Springs. Keep the peace here till I get back.” He gulped down the last of his whiskey and rose.

“Now, Señora Sobrano, let’s go on over to the hotel and make a plan.”

* * *

“Are you out of your mind, Sheriff?” Caroline clutched her blue silk robe about her and shot Fernanda a look of fury.

“Nope, just cautious.”

She advanced on him and poked her forefinger into his chest. “Well, let me tell you something, Sheriff. Caution is not going to win the vote for women.”

“Neither is getting yourself killed, Miss MacFarlane. Whoever shot at you tonight is probably still in the vicinity.”

“So?”

“So I don’t figure he’s going to give up.”

“I have traveled all over the West, from Colorado to Utah to Texas and now to Oregon. Yes, there are those who try to stop me, but I will not give up.”

“You don’t have to give up. You just have to be sensible.” He tossed the package he’d brought from the mercantile onto the bed. Fernanda pounced on it.

Caroline sent her a quelling look, but she was too absorbed in undoing the wrapping to notice. “What does ‘sensible’ mean, then, Sheriff?”

“Sensible means that I travel with you.”

“Oh, no you will not. I do not travel with men.”

“You will this time,” he said. “I’m taking you to Gillette Springs.”

Fernanda held up the clothes he’d brought with obvious delight. Jeans, boys’ shirts—one red, one blue—and boots and hats. Dreadful hats, like cowboys wore.

“I will not wear those garments!” Caroline announced.

“Yes, you will,” he countered. His voice sounded rusty, as if he didn’t talk much. Which was probably true, considering his manners.

“Si, we will wear them,” Fernanda chirruped. She held up the red-checked shirt. “This one for me.”

The man called Hawk nodded. “Now, listen up, ladies. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

Chapter Three

At eight o’clock sharp the stagecoach to Gillette Springs rattled up to the Smoke River Hotel and clattered to a stop in a cloud of dust. The driver climbed down and clomped up the steps and through the doorway, emerging a few moments later with a lady’s travel trunk over one shoulder. He lashed it on top, then ostentatiously tramped around to lean in the window.

“That all, miss?”

With a nod, he climbed back up into the driver’s seat and cracked the whip. “Giddap,” he yelled, and the contraption, empty of passengers, rattled off down the street.

From the second floor window of the hotel, Hawk stood next to Caroline MacFarlane, watching the dust dissipate in the morning air. He’d stopped the stage driver outside town and explained the ruse he planned; he knew Caroline didn’t agree with his idea. Agree, his father’s suspenders! Getting her to even look at the boy’s duds he’d bought had taken a stern lecture in his best military give-’em-hell voice and a flood of tears and pleading from Señora Sobrano. Miss MacFarlane was fighting him every step of the way.

“I’m going on over to the livery stable to bring the horses,” he announced.

“Horses! Excuse me, Mr. Rivera, but I expected, well, another conveyance to transport us. Surely you cannot expect us to ride horses to Gillette Springs?”

“I do. You do ride, don’t you, miss?”

“Well of course I ride,” she retorted. “Every well-bred lady in Boston learns how to ride. What a ridiculous question.”

“Señora Sobrano?”

Fernanda’s smooth olive-skinned face lit up. “Si,” she said with obvious relish. “I ride since I was a girl in Mexico.”

“Then get dressed, both of you. Meet me at the back kitchen door in twenty minutes. Whoever’s tracking you expects you to be on that stage. So, you won’t be on the stage.”

Caroline glowered at him as if he was the devil himself wearing spurs and a badge. She was a helluva lot more attractive without the scowl. He wondered how the even-tempered Fernanda Sobrano had hooked up with her? More than that, how did the older woman put up with this spoiled Boston beauty?

Hawk left them to get ready and went to get the horses. He saddled Red, his black gelding, then picked out two gentle mares for the women and had them saddled, as well.

But when he arrived at the back kitchen door, he got a shock.

Señora Sobrano had turned herself into a reasonable approximation of a somewhat-overweight adolescent boy in jeans and shirt and a pair of store-bought boots. But Caroline MacFarlane wouldn’t fool a blind man. Her jeans curved enticingly over a nicely rounded bottom, the blue-striped shirt outlined her breasts in no uncertain terms and curly tendrils of dark hair peeked from under the small black Stetson he’d picked out for her.

Hawk groaned aloud.

“What is the matter, Mr. Rivera?” Boston lady’s voice was crisp enough to fry bacon and those blue eyes of hers snapped with anger. Goddamn but she was one beautiful hunk of female when she was mad.

“Nothing,” he muttered. “Let’s mount up.” He laced his fingers together for Fernanda, then boosted Caroline up with a splayed hand on her behind.

Big mistake. The bottom part of her anatomy was warm and soft and so female it made his groin swell. God, he didn’t need this.

Once mounted, she sat the gray mare so stiff and straight she looked like a ramrod had been shoved up inside her shirt. He tried not to look at her breasts.