Page 15 of The Copper Heir (The Gilded West #1)

She shrugged, not daring to mention her sisters.

She and the girls had been alone when her mother had died, Ship hadn’t come back until weeks later.

She’d asked to leave then, to take the girls with her and go back to Victoria House knowing that Glory, the brothel’s madam, would help her find respectable work with her connections.

Through the madam’s regular letters to Emmaline’s mother, she knew that while she ran a functioning brothel, women in trouble went to her all the time in search of aid.

Sometimes they decided to become prostitutes, sometimes they simply stayed for a brief sanctuary and a train ticket out of town.

Ship had refused to even consider it, telling her that she could be a whore if she wanted, but she wouldn’t take his girls.

After that, he hadn’t delivered any more letters from Glory.

She couldn’t blame him for not wanting to part with his children, even though she knew their best chance at a good life was to be away from him.

She’d resigned herself then to life with Ship for a little longer.

Just until she could figure out a way to get the three of them away safely.

But that opportunity had never presented itself and here they were in danger. She couldn’t wait anymore. She had to get them to safety, even if it meant doing something unspeakable.

“Where would I go? I don’t have binoculars edged in gold.

” That wasn’t completely true. Though she didn’t have money, once a man had asked her to leave with him, a widower who had worked at the stable in town for a few months before moving farther west. He’d become a regular at the saloon and one night, slightly drunk and missing his wife, he’d kissed her.

It had been pleasant and repeated on other nights as well, but when he’d suggested that she leave with him, she’d gently refused because she couldn’t leave her sisters.

Besides, leaving with him would’ve been unfair, because she’d only be using his affection to take her away from Whiskey Hollow.

“No, I suppose you don’t.” Suitably chastened, he looked back out over the valley.

“How is it that you do? You’re an outlaw like Ship. How is it you’re so successful? I always thought outlaws barely got by on the money they steal.”

“Some do. We earn a decent living.”

“No, there’s more,” she prodded. “I could believe that from Reyes or even the giant—”

“The giant?” He laughed and whipped his head back around to look at her.

“The big one,” she explained and raised her hand to the low ceiling of their little hideaway. “He dresses fine, but there’s something else, something underneath, a lack of refinement.”

“You’re good, Emmy. I was educated back East.” He wasn’t laughing anymore, but he still smiled at her. It was the brief half-smile that she was coming to crave from him.

“Then why did you leave that world and become an outlaw?”

He shrugged. “There’s more to life than binoculars edged in gold. My brother needed me. I had to help him.”

She studied him closely, trying her best to see what lurked behind those words.

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask more, to find out all there was to know about him, but she knew that he wouldn’t answer.

The situation they found themselves in wouldn’t allow him to answer.

Why was she so willing to forget that with him?

She looked away from his mesmerizing face and drew in a breath.

“I suppose that includes stealing people who don’t belong to you. ”

Instead of letting it drop, he touched her chin, his fingertips making her pulse race as he tilted her face back to him.

His eyes were heavy and intense as they pierced hers.

“I want you to understand that I never wanted to take you. I promise that when this is over I’ll take you back home if that’s where you want to go. In the meantime, I’ll keep you safe.”

As if fate was giving him a chance to prove true to his words, a bullet ricocheted off the boulder beside them, spraying them with bits of rock.

The explosion of the gunshot seemed to fill the entire valley below them.

Before she could react, he grabbed her and rolled with her in his arms, his larger body taking the brunt of the fall before coming to rest on top of her, his arms cradled around her head as another shot tried to find its way into their sanctuary.

Waiting just long enough to make sure that a third shot wouldn’t attempt to find them, he rose up to his knees, just to sprawl back down on her as another bullet attempted and failed to find them. “Goddammit!”

Her eyes stared up into his when he rose to his elbows above her to double-check that she was fine. “Are you hit?” she asked.

“No.” He should have been watching for the bastard tracking them, not letting his captivating charge distract him. If he didn’t get his head on straight he wouldn’t get them out of this alive, much less return her home. “You’re not hurt?”

“No.”

Now that the shooting had stopped, he moved to his knees, his body continuing to shield hers as he leaned forward to take a peek through the narrow gap between the boulders.

The view was obscured, but he could make out the shadow of a man just below the tree line, his body partially hidden by a ridge of rock nearer the bottom of the slope.

Hunter wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot, but neither would he.

The rocks would protect them as long as they stayed low.

Moving back into his original position over her, he opened his mouth to reassure her, but the words hung in his throat.

Beautiful wasn’t the word that would’ve come to mind when he’d first seen her.

That word was reserved for the debutantes with their practiced smiles and perfect coiffures.

Arresting had been more appropriate for her.

She was pretty, but there was something about her that made you look twice just to make sure the glint you saw in her eye hadn’t been imagined.

She was real in a way that no other woman had been for him.

Looking at her disheveled hair and her wide, blue eyes as she lay beneath him, he couldn’t help but imagine how it might be if she was lying beneath him for an entirely different reason. They were in the middle of a shoot-out and he still wanted her. Apparently his depravity knew no bounds.

Wrenching his gaze away from her, he nodded to the bedroll and moved off of her. “Stay down and move back to the bedroll. That’ll keep you far enough away from the possible range of gunfire.”

“Is it Ship? Please don’t hurt him if it is.”

“I can’t get a good look, but he’ll poke his head out soon enough.

” He didn’t wait for her to obey him before reaching for the binoculars and pulling them from their case.

Moving as close to the entrance of the cavern as he could without exposing himself, he held them up and waited.

He didn’t need to wait long. The man was obviously impatient to complete a task that had already taken more time than he wanted, so he popped up above the ridge to take another shot.

Hunter didn’t even flinch, knowing the bullet wouldn’t find him.

The shooter had pushed his hat back on his forehead to aim his shot, revealing a face that Hunter was sure he’d never seen before.

Greasy brown hair streaked with gray and a grizzled face that could have belonged to any one of the men who might want him dead.

“I don’t recognize him.” Shifting on his knees, he looked back at her over his shoulder and reached out a hand. “Come take a look. Do you know all of Campbell’s men?”

She nodded. “There are a few who shift in and out of his gang, like O’Brien, but most of them have been riding with him for years.”

He made sure to keep himself between her and the outside of the cavern when she joined him and passed the binoculars to her.

“He’s there, just at that ridge.” His hand automatically went to rest at the small of her back and he had to force himself to not breathe her in, no matter that she still inexplicably smelled like flowers.

They stayed like that for a few minutes waiting for their adversary to make another move.

When he finally rose up, this time to get a better look without taking a shot, she lowered the lenses and passed them back.

“I’m not sure.”

This was getting out of hand. They’d had her for less than twenty-four hours and already she’d been shot at by two different men. When Cas and Zane arrived later they’d have to have a serious discussion about what to do with her. “Move back to the bedroll.”

He brought the binoculars back up just in time to see the muzzle of the gun glinting in the afternoon sun and ducked instinctively just as the next shot fired, the blast echoing against the rock of the mountain.

Dropping the binoculars, he pulled one of the guns from the holster he’d shed earlier and propped against the boulder.

Then he moved forward as far as he could without exposing his shoulder to the shooter and took aim at the spot the man would appear when he tried to shoot again.

Over the next several minutes Hunter got off a few shots, but none of the bullets found the narrow swath of the faded blue shirt his target would occasionally reveal and gouged craters in the rock the coward hid behind, instead.

He forced a deep, slow breath, counting the beats of his heart as he waited for the man to show himself again.

He was rewarded a short while later when the barrel of the revolver came over the edge of the rock followed quickly by a flash of blue.

Hunter fired and the barrel disappeared behind the rock only to come back up a moment later. He’d missed.

A bead of sweat rolled down his neck as he took advantage of the break and opened the chamber on his Colt to reload.

He’d been in shoot-outs before and knew that patience was the only way to win, but he’d never had to worry about an innocent’s safety before.

It gnawed at him that he was the reason she was in danger.

Another shot fired, the dust from where the bullet grazed the rock spraying over his shoulder as he finished loading the gun.

“You okay?” He spared a glance in her direction to see her nodding, her wide-eyed gaze fastened to the shooter’s hiding place.

Smothering a curse, he took aim and waited for the son of a bitch to reappear.

Six shots later he sat back on his heels, cursing again as he reloaded. He had bullets left, but at this rate they’d run out before Cas and Zane got to them. Movement from behind him caught his eyes, but he didn’t bother to look at her and just yelled back, “Stay down!”

He pushed in two more bullets before a shot rang out, so close that it left his ears ringing, too close to have been from the man trying to kill them. As he pulled his Colt up to fire at whoever had shot, his gaze landed on the girl holding his spare gun.