Improper Gentlemen by Mia Marlowe, Diane Whiteside, Maggie Robinson

like rats seeking their burrows.
    “I won’t pay you a nickel.” Not for the privilege of nearly being kidnapped and raped.
    His expression turned ugly and cold as a gallows. “Are you telling me you welsh on a debt?”
    Shopkeepers now slammed shutters into place. A few men, including Simmons, moved onto the boardwalk steps leading onto the street where they could see better.
    “Johnson, you know those are fighting words. Why are you trying to pick a duel with a woman?” Justin’s rich drawl held all the civilized memories of a long-dead world.
    “Because she’s a cheat and a coward. Any man who protects her—”
    “Johnson, we’ve been saddle-partners too long for me to listen to this nonsense.”
    “Talbot, for Christ’s sake . . .”
    “Miss Moreland and I are heading for the telegraph office, after which you’re welcome to join us for coffee. You have been, and will always be my friend—not my enemy. Good day.” Justin ostentatiously turned his back on the town’s mayor and started walking again.
    Charlotte tagged unhappily along behind him. Fine words from Justin, but what if Johnson placed money ahead of friendship? Somebody would have to take action.
    “Why, you son of a bitch—”
    Charlotte jumped at Justin’s back and knocked him aside.
    BAM!
    The bullet blasted across her arm as if a fiery train had hit her and she fell down, skidding into a water trough.
    BAM! BAM! Oh, dear Lord, Johnson was still shooting.
    BOOM! Justin fired his Colt over her head.
    A man screamed and somebody was running toward them.
    Charlotte cautiously lifted her head. Her sleeve was scorched. Crimson started to blur its edges.
    “Darling!” Justin dropped to his knees beside her. “Are you all right?”
    “I think the bullet grazed my arm.”
    He started to examine it. His dark eyes met hers for a moment. “You saved my life.”
    “Of course.”
    Justin shook his head and compressed his lips even tighter. He was very white.
    “Where’s Johnson?” she asked.
    “Dead. His last shot went wild and took out Simmons.”
    “They can share the same grave,” she muttered.
    Justin choked in unwilling laughter, then lifted her up. “Can you stand? We need to bandage this.”
    “Yes, of course.” Her feet wobbled underneath her but everything was easier with his arm around her.
    “Charlotte?” Another man forced his way through the ever increasing crowd.
    The well-remembered voice made her head come up from Justin’s shoulder. They turned back from the Hair Trigger Palace to face the newcomer.
    “Charlotte, my dear?” Her filthy, bedraggled father swung down off his exhausted horse and leaped onto the boardwalk. Behind him, two sage mountain men in fringed leathers and buffalo skins folded their hands on their saddle horns and grinned proudly. He couldn’t have arrived with more unusual attire and companions if Elijah’s chariot of fire had deposited him. He’d lowered himself to perform this hunt on his own, rather than send Pinkerton’s agents.
    The shock was enough to deaden even her arm’s increasing anguish.
    “Father,” Charlotte acknowledged cautiously. If he was about to demand she return to the same prison as before, overseen by her stepmother . . . “How did you get here?”
    “My friends brought me to Wolf Laurel. I was afraid you’d slip through my fingers again so we rode through the night.” He’d lost weight and his clothing was made for mining country, not Boston.
    “Through the storm—for me?” She couldn’t imagine how he’d traveled without his private railway car. “How did you find me?”
    “A Denver gunsmith told me you’d come to Wolf Laurel.” The Moreland patriarch cast a suspicious eye at Justin. “He warned me to hurry because he wasn’t sure you’d stick around long.”
    “He loves you,” whispered Justin in her ear.
    “I came alone, since I’m now a divorced man.”
    She gaped at her father. The head of the Moreland family divorced? That scandal would