The Outlaw And The Runaway

He didn’t want to be an outlaw...

Can this shy runaway redeem him?

When Celia’s father is implicated in a robbery, she can’t stay and suffer the wrath of the townsfolk. Her refuge is brooding Roy Hagan—he’s tough enough to protect her. But life with an outlaw is no place for a sheltered young woman like her. Unless Roy can change—and prove that beneath his steely exterior lurks a heart of gold...

“Exciting, emotional and sensual.”

—RT Book Reviews on From Runaway to Pregnant Bride

“Readers will enjoy the robust characters, the authentic setting and the fast pace of this tale.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Bride Lottery

Before becoming a novelist TATIANA MARCH tried various occupations—including being a chambermaid and an accountant. Now she loves writing Western historical romance. In the course of her research Tatiana has been detained by the US border guards, had a skirmish with the Mexican army, and stumbled upon a rattlesnake. This has not diminished her determination to create authentic settings for her stories.

Also by Tatiana March

The Virgin’s Debt

Submit to the Warrior

Surrender to the Knight

The Drifter’s Bride

The Fairfax Brides miniseries

His Mail-Order Bride

The Bride Lottery

From Runaway to Pregnant Bride

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Outlaw and the Runaway

Tatiana March

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07370-7

THE OUTLAW AND THE RUNAWAY

© 2018 Tatiana March

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

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

Epilogue

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Arizona Territory, 1882

Rock Springs was no different from other Western towns Roy Hagan had seen. Perhaps the single thoroughfare was shabbier than most, the signs over the stores a little more faded. The bank stood at the northern end, just before the boardwalk started. A square building of adobe brick, it had three tall windows that glinted in the midday sun, however the frosted glass prevented prying eyes from seeing inside.

Roy rode past the bank, reined his buckskin to a halt outside the mercantile and dismounted. The two men with him, Zeke Davies and Joe Saldana, also got off their horses.

After tying their mounts to the hitching rail, all three men stepped up to the boardwalk, boots thudding in an unhurried cadence. Saldana wore Mexican spurs with big rowels that made an arrogant jangle as he walked. All three wore their hats pulled low and long dusters that covered their gun belts.

“You stay here,” Roy ordered, talking in a guarded voice that carried no more than a whisper. “Roll a smoke, light up. Keep your eyes on the street. Count the number of people you see—men, women, children. Pay extra attention to anyone who goes into the bank.”

The other two nodded. Neither of them spoke.

“I’ll check out the store,” Roy went on. “Then I’ll come back outside and we’ll sit down over there.” He gestured at a timber bench near the saloon entrance. “I’ll go into the saloon, buy three glasses of beer and bring them out. For an hour, we laugh and joke while we survey the town. We don’t get drunk. We don’t get into arguments. If anyone approaches us, we’ll be friendly and polite. Is that clear?”

His associates nodded again. Saldana was tall and thin, with a droopy mustache and a long, pointed chin. Davies was compact and muscular, with a square face that gave him the belligerent air of a bulldog. Roy hardly knew either of the pair. All but one of his former associates had been shot to pieces while robbing a train in New Mexico a few months ago. Roy and the only other survivor, Dale Hunter, had taken refuge in the maze of canyons between Utah and Arizona, where they had drifted into joining the Red Bluff Gang.

Most of the outlaws in the gang had a bounty on their head and only left their remote hideout to do a job. Roy had no wanted poster out on him, for despite his distinctive looks he’d never been identified in the course of a robbery. The lack of notoriety served him well, for it allowed him to ride from town to town, scouting out potential targets.

Alert and tense, Roy cast another glance along the somnolent street. A stray dog lay panting in the shade of the water trough by the hitching rail. A tall man in a leather apron had stepped out of the barbershop and stood on the boardwalk, drinking coffee from a china mug. Somewhere in the distance, a woman’s voice was calling for a child to come inside and eat.

Satisfied everything remained peaceful, Roy turned around and strode in through the open doorway of the mercantile. As he stepped up to the counter, he kept his hands pressed against the unbuttoned edges of his duster to stop the garment from flaring wide and exposing his pair of Smith & Wesson revolvers.

Inside the store, homely scents—coffee, peppermint, lamp oil—tugged at some distant corners of his memory. Roy crushed the sudden yearning for a normal, peaceful life. He would enjoy the few moments he could glimpse into that long-forgotten world and discard any pointless dreams of making it his again.

Behind the store counter, the elderly clerk climbed down from the ladder he’d used to stack bolts of calico on the higher shelves. He jumped down the last step, turned toward Roy and greeted him with a polite nod. “Good afternoon, sir. How can I help you?”

Alert and nimble despite his advanced years, the clerk appeared prosperous. His white shirt was pristine, his sparse hair neatly combed, the lenses of his steel wire spectacles sparkling. A man who took pride in himself and his profession. Roy felt another stab of regret, accompanied by some vague emotion that might have been shame.

“Matches,” he said. “In a waterproof tin.”

“Certainly, sir.”

While the clerk bustled about, taking a small metal box from a drawer and filling it with wooden phosphorus matches, Roy felt a prickle at the back of his neck. Slowly, he shifted on his feet. His right hand eased to the pistol hidden beneath his duster, while his left hand went to the brim of his hat, making the twisting motion appear natural as he turned sideways to survey the store.

Between the aisles of merchandise, a young woman had paused in her task of sweeping the floor, and now she stood still, fingers clasped around the long handle of the broom. Medium height, middle twenties, she wore a faded green dress that revealed a full figure with feminine curves. Her hair was light brown, with a touch of gold where it had been exposed to the sun. From the few strands that fluttered free from her upsweep, Roy could tell her hair would pull into a riot of curls if left unconfined.

He tugged at the brim of his hat. “Ma’am.”

Still and silent, the girl stared at him from the corner of her eye, not facing him squarely. Roy’s posture stiffened. He was used to women staring at him, but there was something different in this girl’s perusal.

Usually, women stared at him with a mix of pity and curiosity, wondering what damage he might be hiding beneath the black patch that covered his left eye. Some studied him with undisguised feminine interest, drawn by the thick waves of golden hair and the vivid blue of his single eye, fascinated by the contrast they made with the air of danger that surrounded him, hinting at his outlaw status, even while his pair of guns remained out of sight.

A fallen angel, a saloon girl had once called him.

But he could detect no pity in this girl’s expression, and neither did he sense the invitation some women conveyed through their bold inspection. She was contemplating him with a hopeful, earnest look, as if in him she might have recognized a missing relation, or perhaps some long-lost friend.

But it could not be.

Roy knew it couldn’t. He had no family, and no friends, except perhaps Dale Hunter. Could he have met her before? It was uncommon for a sporting girl to reform, but even that possibility Roy was able to rule out, for he could remember each one of the few women he had ever followed into an upstairs room.

Silently cursing in his mind, Roy returned his attention to the elderly store clerk and paid for his tin of matches. It might be a problem about the girl. Someone who had stared at him with such intensity might remember his features, could furnish a lawman with a description.

Too bad, Roy thought as he strolled back out to the boardwalk, however it was bound to happen one day. He couldn’t expect to remain unknown forever—not since he had joined the Red Bluff Gang and was forced to take an active part in the raids. Earlier, before his former outfit got wiped out, his role had been limited to training horses for the robbers, but now both he and Dale Hunter had sunk one notch deeper into the outlaw life.

* * *

During the week that followed, twice more Roy rode into town and stopped at the mercantile. The first time the girl was nowhere to be seen, but from behind the aisles Roy could hear the rustle of skirts and the soft clatter of feminine footsteps.

A few moments later, while he was loitering outside on the boardwalk with his associates, Roy noticed the girl staring at him through the big plate glass window of the mercantile. Again, she kept her face averted, slanting a sideways look at him.

Roy couldn’t figure out what bothered him about the girl so much. It was not just the allure of a pretty female with the kind of figure that could send a man’s blood boiling in his veins. Neither was it the danger she posed, in terms of recognizing him.

It was those strange looks she was sending him.

As if they knew each other.

As if they had something in common.

The second time Roy returned to the store, the elderly clerk was alone, with no other customers to overhear the conversation. Roy bought a bag of Arbuckle’s roasted coffee beans. As he dug in his pocket for coins, he spoke in a casual tone.

“The girl who works here, she your daughter?”

The clerk snapped to attention. “Celia Courtwood?”

“The girl with light brown hair.”

“That’s Miss Courtwood,” the clerk replied. “No kin to me. I employ her a few hours a week to tidy up the shelves.” The old man took down his glasses and pretended to polish them with a cloth he tugged out of his breast pocket. Intent on the task, he spoke with a mixture of embarrassment and eagerness. “She needs a husband, in case you might be interested. Her pa is poorly. Between you and me, I think that’s why they came out West. Hoped it would be easier for her to find a husband out here.”

“I’m a drifter,” Roy pointed out. “I have no use for a wife.”

“Every man has at least one use for a wife.” The clerk took the silver dollar Roy handed out and made change, ill at ease, but something—the urge to help the girl, Roy suspected—kept him talking. “She’s a lady, Miss Courtwood, mark my words. Don’t let the people in town tell you any different. They’re just a bunch of narrow-minded fools.”

Puzzled, Roy picked up his purchase and walked out of the store. He had to fight the temptation to find out more, to discover what circumstances could give rise to such bold hints and veiled comments about the girl’s reputation in the community. However, it wouldn’t do to ask too many questions, attract unnecessary attention.

And yet, as Roy stood on the boardwalk, pretending to be engaged in conversation with his associates while they surveyed the bank, the old man’s comments kept turning over in his mind. Why would a pretty girl like Miss Courtwood struggle to find a husband? And what could the townsfolk possibly have against her? Most of all, what could be the reason why she kept stealing those secretive, somehow hopeful looks at him?

* * *

Her heart racing, her face flushed with excitement, Celia hurried home to the small frame house along a dusty side street. He’d come back again, that man with a patch over his left eye. She’d assumed he was just passing through, but perhaps he was planning to settle in the area, and she’d have a chance to get to know him.

Even as the prospect formed in her thoughts, Celia knew it to be a false hope. The man bore the stamp of lawlessness, guns concealed beneath his long duster, his single eye sweeping his surroundings with the alert tension of a hunted animal. Deep down, Celia had an inkling why he’d come into town, but she refused to accept the idea.

Unconsciously, she lifted a hand to the scar on her cheek. Despite his disability, the young man seemed so confident, so—so whole. How did he do it? How did he find the inner strength to ignore the curious stares, to shrug off the pitying glances? She longed to learn his secret, to discover the key that might allow her to tell everyone in town to go to hell, which was where they deserved to be.

Letting the heels of her half boots ring out her anger at the citizens of Rock Springs, Celia clattered up the porch steps and let herself in. The front door opened directly to a parlor furnished with sagging armchairs and crammed bookcases they had purchased with the house. The books had turned out to be a treasure trove, one of the few things that gave her pleasure in this place that had wrecked her hopes.

In the kitchen, Celia stirred the embers in the big cast-iron stove and got a meal started, oatmeal gruel with tinned milk. The bland fare was one of the few things her father could eat without retching, the tumor in his belly having ruined his appetite.

By the time Papa came home, Celia had the table set, with a posy of wildflowers decorating the center. Long walks in the desert were another source of pleasure, something that allowed her to leave her worries behind for a few hours at a time.

As Celia watched her father shuffle into the kitchen and take his seat, a shaft of despair pierced her carefully maintained shield of courage. All his vitality was gone, leaving a thin husk of a man, with sparse brown curls and ashen skin. For as long as she could remember, sickness had been part of her life, first seeing her frail mother succumb to one ailment after another, and now witnessing her father slowly fade away.

But even in his weakened state, Papa managed an encouraging smile at her. “Celia girl, are you all set for the church social on Sunday?”

Celia curled her nervous fingers into the cotton apron she wore to protect her threadbare gown. “Papa, it’s no use...”

“Make your fried chicken,” her father prompted. “Nobody makes it better.”

The reproach in his tone caused Celia’s sense of helplessness to flare into frustration, and she spoke more sharply than she had intended. “Papa, at a box lunch, men don’t pay to eat. They pay to court a girl.”

“You’ve got to keep trying, Celia girl.”

There was such anguish in her father’s eyes, such fear for her future in his manner, it added to Celia’s list of woes. She wanted to tell him their only solution was to go away—to leave Rock Springs and move into some other town—but no business would employ a man in her father’s state of health. The bank manager was only keeping him on because dismissing a dying man might be seen as a callous act that could cost him the goodwill of his customers.

Moreover, Celia knew Papa lacked the strength for a new start. He loved the house, the books, the quiet town and the few friends who had yet to desert him on her account. Ever since Papa had learned his days were numbered, he’d been looking for a place to die in peace, and she could not wrench him away from what he had found in Rock Springs.

Celia sighed in resignation and straightened her spine. She’d not been to a church social since she fell out of grace with the town, but how bad could it be? So far, their only weapon against her had been rejection and ugly whispers. Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me, she reminded herself—a gem of wisdom gleaned from one of the old issues of the Christian Recorder she’d found in the bookcase.

“I’ll try, Papa,” Celia promised, and made an effort to sound positive. “I’ll make my fried chicken, and I’ll wear my blue dress and put rouge over my scar.”

* * *

Camped by a creek a mile outside town, Roy Hagan stood beneath the morning sun and dictated a message to Zeke Davies, to be delivered to Lom Curtis, the leader of the outlaw gang. It would be too risky to put the information in writing, in case Davies caught the attention of a lawman and the note was discovered.

“We’ll need six men,” Roy repeated, drilling in the information. “Three in the bank and three outside. We’ll hit at noon. The ranchers come into town in the morning, the miners in the evening for the saloon. Midday is the quietest, and the bank does not close for lunch.”

Bulldog features furrowed in concentration, Davies memorized the details. After a week of constant companionship, Roy had learned to know his associates. Davies was slow-witted and liked to follow orders, grateful that some other man had done the thinking.

“Saldana and I will ride over to Prescott and wait there,” Roy went on. “Tell Curtis to telegraph me at the Western Union office there, to let us know when he plans to arrive.”

Lom Curtis, the leader of the Red Bluff Gang, had an inside contact, someone who would let him know when Wells Fargo was due to collect the gold the miners in the region deposited at the bank. The gang would time their raid just before the next collection, when the amount of gold in the bank’s vault would be at its greatest.

Davies rehearsed the message a few more times, got on his sorrel and trotted off. Roy kept an eye on the man until the trail took him out of sight behind a rise. Then he turned to Saldana. The lanky Mexican was crouching beside the dying campfire, trimming his droopy mustache and admiring the result in the small mirror he carried in his vest pocket.

“We’ll ride into town,” Roy told him. “I want to see how many people come to the Sunday service. It’ll give us an idea of how big a posse they might be able to put together.”

Saldana gave his reflection one final perusal and put the mirror away. Roy had learned that the tall, lithe outlaw came from a good family in Tucson. After a secret tryst with a judge’s daughter, trumped-up charges of rape had forced Saldana to choose between the hangman’s rope and a life on the wrong side of the law. To Roy’s surprise, Saldana showed no bitterness and had not been cured of his womanizing ways.

They broke camp, carefully sweeping the ground and burying the coals to hide the signs of their stay before getting on their horses. Roy rode a buckskin, a color that blended in with the desert scenery. Saldana put vanity before safety and rode a gleaming black stallion, useful for a night raid but easy to spot during a daylight getaway.

In town, a collection of buggies and carts and saddle horses stood outside the small, unpainted lumber church. Roy signaled to Saldana and they drew their mounts to a halt. People were streaming out of the church and congregating on a flat piece of ground where a few women were already bustling around a pair of trestle tables laden with food and stacked with baskets decorated with ribbons and bows.

“It’s a church social,” Saldana said, an eager glint in his dark eyes. He smoothed the ends of his mustache. “There’ll be women. Dancing.”

“No,” Roy told him. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Even more dangerous to keep away,” Saldana countered. “Men ride a hundred miles for a church social. It will look suspicious if we turn away.”

Saldana was right, Roy had to concede. To reassure the town about their presence, they had put out a rumor that they’d been employed as security guards for a freight line out of Denver and were now drifting south, enjoying their leisure time until their money ran out. Those kinds of men—honest men—would feel entitled to take part in the festivities.

While Roy mulled over the dilemma, his attention fell on a girl in a blue dress. It was a different dress, and she wore a wide-brimmed bonnet to match, but no dress could hide those feminine curves, and no bonnet could confine that riot of curls.

Celia Courtwood. Her image had filled his thoughts at night, while he lay awake listening to the ripple of the creek by the camp. Why this particular female had stuck in his mind like a burr might stick to the shaggy winter coat of a horse, Roy could not figure out. He tried to tell himself it was the danger she posed, in terms of recognizing him, but he knew it to be a lie.

Watching the girl through his uncovered blue eye, Roy fought the conflicting impulses to ride away as fast as he could and to stay, to seek an opportunity to talk to her.

“All right,” he finally said with a glance at Saldana. “But don’t draw attention to yourself. Keep your guns hidden.”