She’d been a little less enthusiastic about seeing Martin again, but that was because something inside her had shifted and she knew now that she could never marry him. She wanted more from life than a sense of security. Although, she was forced to admit at the moment, after dealing with the likes of Lord Wilton and Captain Walker, the idea of a bland sameness to her days held a certain appeal.
But instead of being home, she was trapped in some godforsaken corner of the West, wrapped in the arms of a man who smelled like cow’s breath and mistook her for some saloon songbird or worse. On top of that she was bouncing up and down on a horse with a gait that jarred her teeth. She had a hunch this wasn’t the twentieth century, either.
There was also some evidence to suggest that her captor was part of a gang of thieves intent on robbing a stagecoach. She found it ironic and a little sad that she almost wished they were aiming to rob a convenience store. Those were the kind of thieves she understood. She’d never even seen a stagecoach in person before, except in a Western museum once, and she had a hunch that wasn’t the one they were after. Nor did it seem likely that she’d stumbled onto the set of some wild Western movie. Surely a director would have stopped the action the moment a stranger appeared in the middle of a scene, especially since she clearly didn’t know her part.
Up ahead, as the cloud of dust kicked up by the horses settled, she could see the overturned stagecoach, its passengers clambering out to face the two gun-toting robbers. There were two men, one frail and elderly and clearly shaken, the other middle-aged and obviously terrified, but trying to console the hysterical, panic-stricken woman who was more than likely his wife.
Disgusted by the scene before her, Abigail twisted in the saddle and glared belligerently at the man whose arm was looped tightly around her waist. Though he wasn’t taking part in the debacle up ahead at the moment, he was clearly in it up to his evil eyeballs.
“Coward.” She spit the word in his face.
“I wouldn’t go calling names, missy,” he retorted. “You ain’t exactly in the best position right now.”
“What are you going to do to me?” she challenged, unable to curb her tongue, even though it was likely to get her into even deeper trouble. “Shoot me? Rape me? That would certainly show how tough you are, wouldn’t it? Taking on old men and innocent women certainly qualifies you for a medal of honor, doesn’t it? You make me sick.”
To her astonishment, he regarded her with a certain amount of approval. “Damn, but you have a mouth on you. Nothing like a little gumption to make a man’s blood run hot. Only one way I ever knew to silence a woman,” he said, yanking off his bandanna and pressing a punishing kiss against her lips. She very nearly gagged.
Sickened by his touch, Abigail didn’t even hesitate. She bit him. While he yelped, she struggled free, tumbling from the horse, but landing on her feet. One ankle buckled on impact. The pain was excruciating, but she ignored it. If there was no one around to save her, then she would just have to save herself. Wasn’t that the way it had always been? Self-reliant Abigail, with no one to depend on but herself.
Martin would have been completely at a loss in this fix. He might be brilliant at tax law, but he was definitely not a man of action.
Riley could have helped, but she didn’t want his brand of help. He would have sailed in and solved the problem in the blink of an eye without hesitating for even an instant to see if she had the matter in hand.
She supposed there was something a little contradictory in wanting independence and wanting a man to rely on in a particularly tight jam. Maybe all she really needed him for was inspiration. It was true that every time she thought of Riley, she felt a little stronger, a little bolder. Just imagining how he would deal with a situation helped. It was odd how vivid her images of him had grown. Perhaps she was closer to her old life than she had realized.
She was about to call on her imagination to conjure up another vision of Riley’s ingenuity when a quiet, oddly familiar voice spoke somewhere behind her.
“I’ll take those guns,” he said, his tone lethal. “Toss them over here, nice and easy, Higgins.”
Higgins? The name had a strangely familiar ring to it, the kind that made goose bumps rise on her skin. The man holding Abby stiffened.
Whoever had spoken had approached so silently that Abigail and the others hadn’t heard so much as a sound. She shifted slightly to gaze into glittering green eyes that reminded her of someone...someone she knew...someone she had come to love...someone she could trust.
Riley. The name came to her like a remembered prayer.
“Riley,” she said, drawing a startled look from this seemingly unperturbable man who had sorted out good guys from bad in the blink of an eye and had the whole messy situation under control.
“Riley,” she repeated with more certainty.
He kept his gun trained on the robbers, but doffed his Stetson to Abby. “At your service, ma’am.”
The drawl was exaggerated, but the spark of amusement in those bold eyes was familiar and very dear. Reassuring. Abby studied the man’s face, admiring the strong, shadowed jaw, the tiny web of laugh lines around his eyes. She could grow old happily looking into a face like that.
There was, however, a hint of arrogance about him that worried her. He looked as if he found nothing surprising about coming across her in a near-disastrous situation. In fact, he looked as if he knew her rather well.
