Page 119 of The Scot Beds His Wife

Train Robbery. A slice to his guts, ripping them open to spill on the stones.

Kidnapping. A puncture to his lungs, dragging the breath from his chest with such force he thought his ribs might crack.

Murder.His heart of ice shattered. Again.

“SamanthaMasters.” He woodenly read the name aloud and slowly from beneath the damning list of charges, and finally.Finally.She met his gaze. The irony was, he wished she hadn’t.

“Sam.” He whispered her name.

“If you don’t trust bandits,” Boyd drawled. “You shouldn’t have married one.”

CHAPTERTWENTY-SIX

Samantha had always considered herself a strong woman. She had, indeed, shot her no-good husband just over two months ago, run away to a foreign country, and not only had she survived, she’d forged a life here. She’d thought she was sturdy. Resilient. Capable. If killing the father of her child hadn’t broken her, nothing could.

How wrong she’d been.

Gavin stared at the wanted poster she still somehow brandished in front of her chest, but he’d long since ceased to see it. His was a blind gaze. One of a man who’d effectively retreated inside of himself.

But only for a moment.

He returned someone different when he blinked back up at her. His features were cold, unforgiving, and utterly bleak. She saw in him the thing he most feared. The same demon she’d sensed lurking in Liam Mackenzie.

The one they’d inherited from their father.

That demon regarded her from a masculine face more beautiful than that of an angel’s. A face that, in spite ofherself, she’d come to worship and covet as so many women had before her.

She hadn’t fallen for him, she realized. Not like she had for Bennett, with the desperate need to escape a life of drudgery and oppression thrusting her into the arms of the first exciting man who’d offered her something more.

She’d stolen into love with Gavin St. James in small, imperceptible shifts of the cosmos.

Demons and all.

He was everything, she realized. He’dbecomeeverything to her. Her reason for waking so early, for working so hard, for upholding a lie. Somehow, she’d gone from doing whatever it took to keep Erradale from him, to doing whatever she could to give him what he wanted.

And the happiness he deserved.

From the moment he’d reached for her in the woods, when he’d kissed her against that tree. When he’d watched in boyish wonder with her as a new life entered the world. She’d seen in him not the man he was, but the one he tried his utmost to become.

Now, her deception had turned him into someone else. Someone ultimately and utterly dangerous.

“Deny it.” His words were more dare than command. They both knew it.

“I can explain,” she whispered.

“Are ye Samantha Masters?” His lips barely moved. The low register of his voice scarcely reached her over everyone’s heavy, expectant breaths.

“No one was supposed to get hurt, and then the shooting started and I couldn’t let—”

“Are. Ye. Samantha Masters?”

Whatever fire had thus far fueled her inner strength flickered, sputtered, and died. Extinguished by the pure frost in his voice.

The smoke tasted acrid as she exhaled. “Yes.”

All the wildness drained from his eyes. Even the fury deserted him. Leaving nothing but a churning, empty darkness.

Samantha knew she wasn’t the only one to sense it.