The Lawman (The Willow Creek Series #1) (2 page)

She landed astraddle his hips, the blood from his nose splattered the front of her dress, ran across his cheek and down over his bearded chin. Sitting up and resting her hands on his chest, Abigail could only stare. That’s when she saw it. The shiny silver badge on the front of his vest, the word
Marshal
engraved into it. “Oh no,” she breathed out shakily. “What have I done?”

* * * *

Morgan felt a weight on his chest and opened his eyes. A woman sat on top of him, her wide, blue eyes staring down at him with shock and a hint of fear. The sight of her breasts so close to his face let him ignore that little fact and concentrate instead on the woman herself. The front of her dress was covered in what looked like blood, a few dots of red sprinkled across her cheeks, and her blonde locks tumbled loose from the pins holding it back and left curls to dangle around her face. A glance down the length of his body confirmed what he thought. She was sitting on him, straddling his hips, and the warmth of her pressed so intimately against his groin spread within seconds of the realization.

He moaned and enjoyed the fact he had a warm female on top of him. She wasn’t the one he’d come to see but taking another glance at her face, he had to admit she was a pretty little thing. He grinned up at her and relaxed his body, taking in the weight of her. “I usually prefer a bit of privacy and a warm bed but if you have some yearning for people to watch, I might be willing… long as it’s one of your female friends doing the watching.”

She gasped and scrambled off of him, climbing to her feet while her face splotched red as she blushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble.”

Morgan stared up at her, confused by what she said, when the ruckus going on around him finally registered. It was then the pain thumping through his face penetrated his foggy brain. He turned to look around the saloon and seeing the fights reminded him of someone hitting him the moment he walked through the door.

The Diamond Back Saloon was nearly destroyed from what he could see. Only a few tables remained standing, the chairs were scattered from one end of the room to the other and broken glass shined up from the sawdust floor like small diamonds. The only person who seemed unaffected was the piano player who continued to ping out notes as if nothing were happening.

He sat up, a groan escaping as the throbbing in his head increased. He spotted Vernon Wilkes, the bartender, and yelled out to him. “Vernon, what the hell is going on?”

The bartender turned to him and got a beefy fist to the side of his head for the trouble. Morgan let out a curse and crawled to his feet and staggered twice before regaining his balance. When the room stopped spinning, he crossed the space and grabbed the man currently beating the living daylights out of Vernon and tossed him into a group of four more men, all neck deep in their own fights before helping Vernon to his feet. “What started this?” The bartender grimaced, spit out a mouthful of blood before turning to look toward the door. Morgan followed his gaze. The woman was still there, her frightened eyes wide as she took in the scene.

“That’s what started it,” Vernon bit out, pointing to her with a bloody hand. “She aint got no business in here, marshal.”

Morgan leveled her with a questioning look. “Stay right there. I’ll deal with you in a minute.” Turning back to the barroom, he watched the melee for a few minutes while deciding what to do. With the girls upstairs, grabbing his gun and shooting a few rounds into the ceiling to get the men’s attention wasn’t possible. Breaking them up by hand was the only course of action he knew of. And the most painful. He sighed and straightened his shoulders. “This is going to hurt like hell,” he mumbled to himself before throwing himself into the fray.

For the second time that day, someone punched him in the face. He’d be barely recognizable by tomorrow, he figured. The pain already throbbed and his left eye felt a little funny. Swelling shut, he figured. Morgan shouted a curse and swung back, grimacing at the loud cracking pop he heard as the man’s nose broke and blood spilled down over his grizzled chin. Two more came at him, grabbing him around the middle and slamming him into the only remaining upright table. They crashed to the floor and it took long seconds for his lungs to refill with air. Crawling to his feet, he grabbed the first man he saw and slung him into the wall. “Stay right there or I’ll throw you under the jail!” To his surprise, the man did just that.

It took longer than it should have to get the men to calm down. By the time the last one had found somewhere to sit and cool off, Miss Angelina herself had come downstairs to tend to the wounds of those needing a woman’s gentle touch. She instructed her girls to take care of the men and before the dust had settled, more than half the barroom was headed to the second floor to have some soft, willing woman help soothe their wounded pride.

Everyone but him, that is.

Morgan didn’t think there was a spot of flesh on his body that didn’t ache. Blood leaked from cuts too numerous to count, his lip was split and his left eye was definitely swelling shut. He turned and looked back toward the bar, the woman who ran into him upon entering the saloon still standing where he told her to. She was against the wall, her bag clutched in her hands tight enough to cause her knuckles to shine white from across the room. When she lifted her head and looked at him, giving him a smile that said everything in the world was perfect, his hellish week caught up with him in a flash.

All he’d wanted since getting back into town was to wash the dust from his throat with the strongest rot-gut whiskey Vernon could offer him and have a tumble with one of the little ladies upstairs. What he got instead was her. The blonde he’d found straddling his lap when he woke up from a fist-induced sleep. He stared at her as she looked around the room. She was pretty but now that she was standing, he could see how small she actually was. A little scrawny for his tastes. He liked his women plump with big breasts and eager appetites for sinful pleasures. The diminutive blonde, who shouldn’t have been inside the saloon to begin with according to Vernon, looked tame as a kitten. Too bad, he thought. He would have willingly took his frustrations out between her thighs but if Vernon said she didn’t belong here, then he believed him.

Crossing the room to where she stood, he stopped inches in front of her. “Who are you?” She didn’t answer. Instead, she stared up at him with those large blue eyes of hers, her jaw held at an arrogant angle. Morgan waited and braced his hands on his hips. And then waited some more. “Well?” he asked, irritated at her silence. “I don’t have all day. Spit it out.”

He saw her throat work as she swallowed. “Abigail. Abigail… uh, Thornton.”

“Well, Abigail Thornton, would you like to explain to me what the hell you’re doing in the saloon?”

She stared at his chest and Morgan followed her gaze. His badge was crooked. When she said, “This has all been a terrible misunderstanding,” he looked back up.

“Is that what you’d call this?” Morgan turned to look at the now destroyed saloon behind him. He crossed his arms over his chest when he turned back to face her, studying her as she stood there unmoving. Her dress wasn’t very revealing but the fabric was a deep green wool with fancy lace trimming around the neck and cuffs. He didn’t know much about women’s fashion but that dress was unlike any he’d seen around Willow Creek. It was too fancy by half. He’d never seen her before either and he knew the stagecoach had come into town. He’d seen it sitting by the station on his way from the jail. She was a newcomer and trouble if he’d ever seen it.

“I would,” she said, her chin lifting a small fraction. “The bartender can tell you that.”

Morgan glanced at Vernon, who had stepped behind the bar and was currently trying to clear the broken glass off the top of it. “Is she right?”

Vernon snorted and gave the woman a sneer. “This is why women aren’t allowed in here, marshal, and you know it! They aint nothing but trouble. I told her she couldn’t be in here but did she listen?”

His head was throbbing now and Morgan wanted nothing more than to take to his bed and sleep for a week, with or without the comfort of a willing body next to him. He looked at Abigail again, leaning his head to one side. She was wafer thin but that little dress clung to shapely curves even he couldn’t help but notice. Her breasts were full, if not a bit on the small side, but they were high and quite perky. Her hair was falling down around her face and it softened her look a bit and made her appear to be innocent. Almost. His irritation grew the longer she stood there unmoving. She was looking at anything but him and he wasn’t getting anywhere questioning her. What was she doing here? Since she seemed uneager to tell, he figured she was just down on her luck and looking for work. Why else would a woman come into a saloon? His reason for coming inside latched onto that little morsel. “Are you a whore?” he asked, a small part of him hoping she was.

She gasped, her face turning blood red before splotches broke out across her neck. “I most certainly am not!”

“Are you looking to be one?”

Her lips turned bloodless as she pinched them together. The fire in her eyes caused one corner of his mouth to tilt up and her chest heaved as her breaths were huffed out.
Definitely not a whore
.

“I am a lady,” she said, indignant.

Morgan raised one eyebrow. “A lady in a saloon?”

“I was looking for the stagecoach driver if you must know.”

“Well, I asked you ten minutes ago what the hell you were doing in here. Why didn’t you just say so?”

She pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a long sigh. “May I go now?”

“No.”

Her head snapped up, those pretty blue eyes widening again. “Why ever not?”

“Well, let’s see.” Morgan lifted a hand and scratched the week’s worth of beard that had grown in while he was on the trail. “There’s the issue of you being inside the bar, for one. The sign outside clearly says, you can’t come in here. There’s also the matter of the fight, the damage to the saloon and let’s not forget the damage done to me.” He pointed to his still throbbing face for emphasis.

“Fine.” She turned toward Vernon and smiled prettily. “Mr. Vernon, I’m very sorry about your establishment. I’ll not come inside again.” When she turned to him, the smile disappeared. “As for you, Marshal, I’m sorry for your trouble.”

The woman had the nerve to turn on her heel and stroll out of the saloon with the regal air of a queen. Morgan snorted a laugh at her audacity before following her outside. She was crossing the street and he had to run to catch up with her. “Where do you think you’re going?”

She stopped, turned to look at him and blew out a long breath. “Away from the saloon. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Not exactly.” A wagon forced them out of the road and Abigail Thornton dismissed him again as if he wasn’t even standing there. She walked toward the stagecoach station, her booted feet clicking against the wooden sidewalk in rapid little taps. He followed her and grabbed her arm so she couldn’t walk away again. “We’re not through, Mrs. Thornton.”

“It’s Miss,” she said, that little chin of hers lifting again. “And please unhand me.”

He would have laughed the entire mess off if her high-handed demand hadn’t been laced with total contempt. The look in her eyes scalded him to the bone. He knew he looked like hell. He’d been riding the countryside in pursuit of an outlaw for the past week. He probably stank to high heaven, his beard was scraggly and itched like the dickens and his clothes would have to be burned. Not to mention the damage done to his face after that bar brawl
she
started. Well, according to Vernon, she did. He’d yet to hear the entire story. Regardless, that still didn’t give her the right to treat him like a no-good saddle bum. He was the marshal, damn it, and she’d treat him with the respect he deserved.

Staring down at her, every ache, cut and bruise throbbing and pulsing, he knew
she
was the reason for it. The ache in his long neglected groin was her fault too. The blood pumping through his veins heated at the defiant look in her eyes and the thought of what to do with her was suddenly clear. “
Miss
Thornton, you have no idea how happy it makes me to tell you that you’re under arrest.”

She gasped and jumped back from him, her arm jerking from his grasp. “Under arrest? What for?”

Her outrage soothed some of his aches and Morgan gave her a smug smile before answering her. “We’ll start with disturbing the peace and add entering a gentleman’s establishment, damage to personal property and careless endangerment of a federal marshal. That should be enough to keep you out of trouble for quite a while. Or at least until the circuit judge gets back into town.”

The look on her face would have caused him to laugh if it wouldn’t have hurt so damn much. Even a tiny smile hurt. It pulled the edges of his busted lip but he managed a cruel imitation of one just to annoy her.

She straightened her spine, tilted her chin up a notch and exploded. “That is absurd! You can’t arrest me for things I had no control over.”

Morgan grinned through the pain. “I assure you, I can, Miss Thornton, and I am. Let’s go.” When he grabbed her arm again and tried to walk her back down the street, she dug in her heels, her free arm latching on to his where he gripped her wrist and tried to shake him off.

“Let me go. This is all a mistake. You can’t do this!”

“I won’t, I don’t care, and I am.”

She let out an ear-piercing shriek and struggled like a wild cat before raising her free hand, balling her fingers into a fist and punching at his shoulder. Morgan’s abused muscles screamed in agony as she fought him and it took all the control he had not to lash out in return. “Do you want resisting arrest to be added to your list of crimes, Miss Thornton?”

Her eyes widened. “I haven’t committed any crime. Now unhand me this instant.”

The humor in the situation diminished. Her screams were drawing attention and the local gossips were already hovered around Jenkins Mercantile, hands over their mouths as they gaped at him. He could only imagine what the story would be by the time the whole town found out. Glaring at the people gawking at him, he grabbed Abigail around the waist and tossed her over his shoulder, gritting his teeth through the pain the act caused, before turning and starting for the jail.