Page 118 of The Scot Beds His Wife

Her cry of pain still sliced through Gavin’s fury and wrath to nick at his heart.

The control on his rage slipped, and he took a threatening step forward.

“Get your hands off me, Boyd,” she spat, squirming in his one-armed grip.

Rat face made a startling noise. “If you’re lucky, this bullet won’t punch right through this Irish fuck and hit the old lady… You usually lucky, mister?”

The words caused Gavin uncharacteristic hesitation.

Nay. Fate and fortune had deserted him before he’d even been born. He’d a decidedly unlucky life. Unlucky in fealty. Unlucky in paternity.

Unlucky in love.

At Bradley’s threat, Gavin’s wife had gone limp in Boyd’s hold.

The variable outcomes of this situation refused to process through one pulsing fact scratching at his rapidly unraveling humanity.

She wasn’t denying her lie. These men weren’t treating her like some woman who’d gotten in a lucky shot defending her life during a train robbery. At first, when she’d cried out that the child within her belonged to a dead man, he’d thought the worst of this Bennett.

Not of her.

Rape, possibly, for which he would take vengeance upon the entire Masters bloodline. Or dare he hope that she was lying to the man with the gun trained at her head? Using her wits to remain safe?

Look at me,he silently begged.Let me see the truth in your eyes.

She didn’t.

Boyd’s thick elbow tightened below her chin, and her fingers instinctively grasped at his arm. “Once you hear what I have to say, I think you’ll let us walk out of here and take this lyin’ bitch with us.”

He could think again. “Ye will keep a civil tongue in yer head when you speak about my wife.”

“That’s the fuckin’ thing, aint it? Sheain’teven your wife.” Boyd sneered. “And seeing as how she murdered her last husband,my brother,in cold blood only two months ago, you’ll be mighty glad of that.”

“Her… husband.” Gavin enunciated each syllable as though inspecting a word he’d never heard before.

“That’s not true!” she cried.

Hope flared in Gavin for an awful moment, but Boyd shot it before it had a chance to take flight.

“Ain’t it?” Boyd said through his teeth, tightening hisgrip on her neck. “One lie comes out of your mouth, girl, and triggers start gettin’ pulled, regardless of the consequences.”

“Why would I believe the words ye forced out of a hostage woman?” Gavin changed tactics. “Ye’re wanted men. Bandits. Thieves. Yer story means nothing to me.”

Instead of panicking, or searching for another angle, a slow, victorious smile spread over Boyd’s face. “Darlin’,” he said against the tendrils of dark hair at her temple. “Reach into my pocket, would you? Don’t pull out the biggest thing you find, but the folded piece of paper. That’s it.”

The revulsion on her face as she reached behind her and complied with his suggestion shot pure murder through Gavin’s very skin and sinew. Had his mother not been in front of a bullet, he’d have emptied his barrel into the man’s head right then and there.

Extracting a folded paper, she stared at it like it was a snake threatening to bite her.

“Go on.” Boyd motioned with his pistol. “Don’t keep everyone waitin’.”

Trembling fingers opened what had been folded and unfolded time and time again, if the wear in the creases were aught to go by.

Even the deep groves of the substantial parchment couldn’t hide her unmistakable likeness. The small, angular jaw. The pert nose smattered with freckles. The wide, shrewd eyes. In the rendering those eyes were more malicious than mischievous. The tilt of her full lips pursed in a hard, deviant way in an expression he couldn’t imagine on her actual mouth.

The wordWANTEDbannered over the thick waves of hair he so loved to tangle his fingers into. A proclamation of her guilt.

The words beneath her picture that drove several daggers into him.