you.” Frankie laughed and then ducked all the way under the water.
A second later, Matt felt a strong little hand grab one of his ankles. He tried to set himself, but he was too late. Frankie pulled hard on his leg, making his foot slip on the muddy bottom of the creek. With a startled yell, Matt went over backward, landing in the creek with a huge splash.
He came up a moment later, sputtering and trying to shake the water and wet hair out of his eyes. He heard Frankie laughing, and when he could see again, he glared at her as she hunkered about ten feet away with the water up to her chin.
“You’re all wet, Bodine.”
“So are you.”
“Yeah, but it was my idea.” She paused. “How many times have you been skinny-dipping with a girl?”
“None when the girl was as troublesome as you.”
She laughed again and splashed water at him. “If that’s the way you feel about me, I reckon I’ll just have to live up to it.”
“Dang it!” Matt tried to duck the water, but got another faceful of creek. He lunged at her, but she twisted away with a lithe grace that kept her just out of his reach.
He was just judging her speed, though, and when he made a second try to grab her, this time he moved faster. The lightning-quick reflexes that made him respected across the West as a gun-handler allowed him to anticipate her reaction, and as she leaped, he was there first, closing a hand around her arm. Frankie cried out in surprise.
They both fell, sending up another big splash, and when they came out of the water this time, they were in each other’s arms, mouths pressed together in an urgent kiss.
After a moment, Matt took his lips away from Frankie’s and said in a husky voice, “I’ll tell you one more time… you don’t have to do this.”
“And I’ll tell you one more time, Bodine…the hell I don’t!”
After that, neither of them wasted time or energy talking for a while.
Later, they stretched out on the bank in the sun, which had risen high enough now that its rays were getting pretty warm. The light felt good on Matt’s skin.
After lying beside him for a while, Frankie turned and propped herself up on an elbow so she could look at him. “How long do you think it’ll be before Cimarron Kane makes another move against us?” she asked.
Matt shook his head. “I reckon you’d know that better than I would. I never even heard of the hombre until yesterday.”
“I don’t think he’ll wait too long,” Frankie answered her own question. “Once he makes up his mind, he doesn’t waste any time going after what he wants, and what he’s got his heart set on now is taking over the liquor business around here.”
“Is there really that much money in it?”
Frankie’s forehead creased in a frown. “Are you joshing me, Bodine? If those special marshals put everybody else out of business, and if Kane can run us out or kill us, then anybody in this whole end of the state who wants a drink of whiskey will have to pay his price. He can charge Ike Loomis through the nose for the stuff, and Ike will have to pay. Same thing is true of anybody else who wants to sell it, and Kane can always cut out the middleman and peddle it directly to folks, too. If it takes a few years for the legislature to wise up and realize what a foolish thing they’ve done, Kane can make a small fortune in that time.”
“But if we can stop him, you and your family will make that small fortune,” Matt mused.
“That’s right.”
“You’d be able to pay that visit to San Francisco and then go back to the Smoky Mountains as a rich woman, like you wanted.”
Frankie smiled. “Yeah.”
“So I reckon it’s worth it to you to get Kane out of the way, whatever it takes.”
“Sure, I—” Frankie stopped short and frowned at him again. “What do you mean by that, Bodine? You still think that what we did a while ago was a…a
Matt sat up. “I’d like to think it wasn’t, but—”
Frankie came upright suddenly, and her open hand flashed toward Matt’s face. She was a strong young woman, and she was mad. It would have been a vicious slap if it had landed.
But Matt’s hand moved too fast for the eye to follow and caught her wrist, freezing the blow in midair. Frankie strained against his grip but couldn’t budge it.
She bared her teeth and said in a quiet, furious voice, “You son of a bitch. I never saw a more suspicious bastard in my life.”
“Women have tricked me before. I don’t intend to let it happen again.”
“That’s not all that’s never gonna happen again. Let go of me!”
Matt released her wrist. She didn’t try to slap him again. Instead, she turned her back to him, scrambled to her feet, and started toward the bush where she had left her clothes earlier.
Matt stood up, too. “Listen, Frankie, I had to be sure—”
“Well, now you are, or at least you damned well should be,” she said without turning around to look at him as she jerked her denim trousers on.
“Come on, there’s a lot of money involved here. You admitted that yourself. You might have thought that it was
