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  Preacher Sizeloff spoke of living together in love and peace. Every soul in the land office had known Matt for years. Which one of them believed that Singing Trigger Suede had suddenly given his heart to the pretty newcomer to Dodge? He’d better act like a man smitten if he wanted to escape that noose.

  When the reverend spoke about forsaking all others, Matt gulped. This was so permanent, so final, but what choice did he have but to turn his head and grin down at his bride as though that’s just what he had been dreaming of, cleaving only to his wife?

  Mrs. Sizeloff asked him to swear it before God and all these witnesses.

  “I, Matthew Jonathan Suede, take you—” Who? Ma’am?

  He was vowing to honor and cherish a woman whose name he didn’t even know! Panic tripped his heart. The marshal would never believe he hadn’t just met her a few moments ago in the livery.

  His bride smiled brilliantly—it almost made him forget to breathe. She dabbed at her eye with a grimy white glove.

  “Matt, honey,” she said. “Aren’t we a pair? My mama always said, Emma Parker, you’re too emotional by half. The only time you can’t get out a word is when you’re about to weep. Oh, Matt…I…I…”

  All of a sudden Emma Parker hid her face in her hands and sobbed.

  Matt lifted her chin and tried to peer past her fingers. He brushed her hands aside. Real tears rolled down her face, leaving dirty streaks from the dust on her gloves.

  “It’s all right, Emma darlin’.” He stroked her cheeks to dry and clean them. “I do take you to be my wedded wife.”

  “I take you, too, Matt, to love and obey.” Didn’t her eyes look blue and sincere? He nearly believed her.

  “Well, then…” Mrs. Sizeloff sighed and looked fondly upon them, hugged up tight together. She must believe it, as well. “I now pronounce you man and wife. Matt, you and your wife will need to come by the church and sign the marriage license, but for now, you may kiss the bride.”

  This was something he could do convincingly. Those pink lips had been setting off poetry in his mind ever since he’d first seen them, not an hour ago.

  For an instant hesitation flashed in Emma’s eyes, but he had to make this look good or those fools standing around with horse laughs breaking out on their faces would string him up.

  He touched the curls at Emma Parker’s temple while he dipped his head low. His bride had hair that felt like dove’s feathers. Would she let him touch it again after this show was over?

  Emma closed her eyes and puckered her mouth. He pressed his lips on the rosy, tense circle. He should probably pull away, let it end chaste and sweet, but a man didn’t get married every day.

  His blood began a slow swell, throbbing in his heart and lower. He pressed the kiss deeper and traced the crease of her mouth with his tongue.

  Emma’s lips parted in what must have been surprise. She tipped her head backward, opened her eyes and gazed at him. Did ever eyes shine so blue with bewilderment and delight?

  This time, when he lowered his mouth, her lips opened without any coaxing. Damned if he could make himself lift his wind-worn mouth from her dewy one.

  He might have gone on and on, and her going right along with him, if the marshal and the rest hadn’t started to hoot and holler.

  Ending that kiss forced a groan clear to parts unseen. His wife’s mouth had done unholy things to his body, or maybe not unholy, after all, since they were now wed.

  He looked at her face and, judging by the flush that crept from under her lace collar, she felt a call to the marriage bed as strongly as he did.

  Before they set foot down that trail, he’d have to tell her that they couldn’t cleave to one another as Mrs. Sizeloff had bound them to do.

  There were things about him that she didn’t know. Things wives had a right to know before the “I do’s.” Not the least of which was that a killer with revenge on his mind was getting out of prison.

  Come summer’s end, Angus Hawker would be a threat to everyone that Matt held dear.

  * * *

  Emma frowned at Matthew Jonathan Suede, sitting beside her on the wagon bench as if he were king of the prairie. He drove her rented team, holding the reins loose in his fingers while they rattled off toward the sunset and her new home. Apparently the man misunderstood the nature of their marriage.

  Right after he’d filed her claim, she’d thanked him and bid him goodbye. She’d fairly skipped toward the livery and her new life, only to hear his boots thumping down the boardwalk after her. She’d offered him the ten dollars she had been willing to give the drunk, but he’d looked at her as though she had become suddenly feebleminded.

  To her dismay, he’d followed her into the livery. The name she’d called him was probably uncalled for, but really, he’d tied poor blind Pearl and his own horse behind the wagon, then tossed her onto the plank seat as though she were no more than a stick of straw! He’d then climbed aboard, taken control of the driving and remained silent for the best part of an hour.

  Silence was best. She took pleasure in watching the prairie grass roll past. She found joy in simply listening to the birds sing to the parting day. Way off in the west the sun slipped toward the long horizon like a ball of orange fire.

  What a wide, wonderful land! Mercy, she didn’t think she could breathe and smell and hear enough of it. If she lived on her little spot of paradise for a hundred years it wouldn’t be long enough.

  Evidently Mr. Suede couldn’t resist the evening’s beauty any more than she could. His shoulders went soft and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. His eyes, gazing out at the big empty land, became a mirror for the golden grass stretching out forever.

  Then, with the birds chirruping out their last and the crickets just tuning up, Matt Suede began to sing.

  He had a clear, low voice that shot straight to a person’s heart. With the harness creaking and the horses’ hooves keeping time, he sang a story about a man who got caught up in a stampede and died saving the life of his boss’s daughter.

  The soul-deep melody echoing over the twilight prairie was enough to make Emma want to weep…and forgive him. A cow, so far off that she couldn’t see it, bawled out long and low, as though it, too, had been touched by the teary tale.

  Emma shook herself. Mr. Suede was a bank robber. The roof of it, Mr. Suede’s ghostly apparel, lay hidden beneath the extra corset stored in her trunk.

  But mercy be! How could such a heavenly sound come out of a criminal? And there was that kiss! Surely she wouldn’t have felt like a hot noodle under the lips of a villain. To be fair, he had acted gallantly when he’d shooed away the drunk she’d been about to marry. Thinking back on it, she realized the man might have been a problem.

  At the very instant he quit singing, the sun passed below the horizon. Behind them a fat full moon swelled into the sky to light the dusk.

  “I’m sorry I called you that name back at the livery.” Her voice sounded like pebbles grinding together compared to the notes that had come from Matt Suede’s throat. “It’s just that I expected you to go on your way. I never meant that you really had to be my husband.”

  “Well, now, ma’am, I accept your apology.” Matt clicked to the rented team when one of the horses decided to stop and munch on a tuft of grass. “And I thank you for saving my neck, but that was a real preacher and that marriage certificate does make us legally bound.”

  Emma’s heart took a dive. What if her husband leaned more to thievery than gallantry? If a body wanted to look at things strictly legally, whose name was on that claim?

  Emma Laurel Parker…Suede, to be sure, but before hers was Matthew Jonathan Suede. She might be no better off than she had been sitting on the bench in front of the land office.

  “I never meant for us to be bound, Mr. Suede. I only needed a husband so that I could file on my land and…well, to be honest, I knew you couldn’t turn me down. But now I don’t hold you to it. You’re free to take your horse and ride off.”

  Emma
gazed sidelong at him. He had slipped the hat back from his head. It hung down his back from a pair of strings that pulled across a red bandanna tied around his neck. His shoulder-length hair was a shade more golden than the rich soil they rolled over. Moon glow cast shifting light over him, gilding those golden-brown waves in shadow and sparkle.

  If a woman did want to take on the care of a husband, Matt Suede would be a fine one to look at over the years. But the last thing Emma wanted was someone to take care of. In her new life, the only one wanting something from her would be her, and naturally, Pearl.

  “You are a free man, Mr. Suede. I’ll do just fine on my own.”

  “I see a pair of problems with your logic, ma’am. First problem is, I’m only a free man so long as the marshal believes that I didn’t just meet you in the livery.”

  That’s something she should have considered when she’d hitched her star to an outlaw cowboy.

  “Looks like you’ve got yourself a loving husband for the time being.”

  “What’s the other problem with my logic?”

  “I can’t quite figure out what a pretty little thing like you is going to do with a hundred and sixty acres of stubborn prairie sod. You don’t look like any farmer I ever saw.”

  “I’ll admit I look small, but I’m tough. If I had a mind to bust up sod, I would.” Emma sat up taller, even though the lurching wagon made her rock back and forth as stiffly as a metronome. “As it happens, I intend to simply live on the land, just let it be mine.”

  “Back at the land office, you seemed to be set on that particular piece of ground. What is it about the old Harkins place that makes you want it so bad? Have you even seen the homestead?”

  “Not with my own eyes—I was in such a hurry to file that I didn’t make it out here. But I know just what it looks like. You see, I used to be employed by the Harkins family, doing chores and acting as nanny for their daughter, Louise Rose, until they moved west.” Emma relaxed her posture. Talking about her heart’s home made her just plain wistful inside.

  “I used to get letters from Mrs. Harkins. Lands, how she loved her beautiful wood-framed house. It was like a palace compared to her neighbors’ dugouts and soddies. She says the yard is full of flowers and a creek runs close by. She planted a hundred trees, which have got to have three or four seasons’ growth on them by now.

  “There’s a well in the yard, and a barn for Pearl. It broke Mrs. Harkins’s heart to quit the claim, but Louise Rose was a wild one. To think of the nights I stayed up watching to see that she didn’t sneak out her window to take up with some low ’count!

  “Anyway, Mrs. Harkins wrote to say they had to move on. No doubt it had to do with Louise Rose, but the prime spot they were leaving behind was free for the taking if I could get here in time to be the first to claim it. So here I am, Mr. Suede, bound for paradise.”

  “Hell in a basket, ma’am. Hell in a basket.” Matt Suede sighed deeply, then didn’t say another word for the rest of the trip.

  * * *

  From a quarter mile off, Matt saw the very thing he knew to be true. The Harkins place was no better than any other struggling homestead. Maybe it was worse, having been abandoned. There was no trace of a fine wood house gleaming in the moonlight, no barn, no half-grown trees, no trace of Emma Parker’s dream.

  Any second now he would have to tell her that they had passed over the boundaries of her land. He’d rather have a steer stomp on his foot than see the high spirits making her strain forward in the seat turn to slump-shouldered sorrow.

  How did a man find the words to break a person’s dream? Especially the person who had so recently saved his neck from a noose.

  “Whoa!” he called to the team. Emma Parker looked up at him with moonlight caught in the glow of her eyes. “We’re here, ma’am. This is the old Harkins place.”

  Emma climbed over the side of the wagon before he had a chance to help her down. She walked about thirty yards, then turned and glanced all about. She hadn’t taken the time to change out of her fancy gown before they’d headed out of town, so now, standing out in the moonlight, she looked like an angel who’d lost her wings and was searching high and low for them.

  “I think you’ve brought me to the wrong place, Mr. Suede.”

  Matt jumped off the wagon. His footfalls crunching over the dirt echoed across the prairie. Somewhere, not too far off, a cow bellowed and another, farther out, answered.

  “This is what you filed on. It’s the old Harkins place.”

  “But this can’t be it.” He’d come up close enough to hear the swallowed sob in her throat. “Where’s my house? Where’s Pearl’s barn?”

  “There’ll be a dugout around here, most likely. Was your Mrs. Harkins prone to tall tales? Well, even if she wasn’t, the house wouldn’t have lasted the month. Out here, lumber is like gold. Mrs. Harkins’s house is scattered all over the county by now.”

  “Mercy, I don’t even see a single tree.” Emma made a full turn, looking far and wide over her land. “Do you suppose my neighbors took them, too?”

  How was he to tell her that her nearest neighbor was probably a two-hour ride back to town? Pendragon’s crew had taken up so many homesteads circling Dodge that Matt was surprised this one had been overlooked.

  A sudden gust of wind snatched Emma’s skirt. The satin snapped and twisted. Out over the plains, dust began to stir. Cowboys would be herding their beeves toward the shelter of gullies and shallow hills. In another ten minutes a man wouldn’t be able to see his own boots.

  “Darlin’.” Already Matt had to raise his voice to be heard over the moan of the wind. “Unhitch Thunder and Pearl. Take them over to that rise and see if you can find the dugout. Call out if there’s still a door on it.”

  Matt took the canvas cover off the wagon without looking at it. He kept his gaze on the blur of Emma’s gown. For now he could see it, but in a minute or two she could blow all the way back to Dodge and he wouldn’t know it.

  “I found it!” Luckily her voice blew right at him. “There’s no door!”

  He hadn’t expected a door. “Go inside, yell if there’s enough room for the other horses!” He wasn’t sure if she heard his voice, but the half-obscured glow of her gown vanished, telling him that she had gone inside.

  Matt leaped up on the wagon, praying that his bride was a sensible sort and had brought along a few tools.

  “There’s room and more, Mr. Suede.”

  Emma’s voice came from the rear wheel of the wagon.

  “Hell, ma’am, what are you doing out here? You should have stayed put, where it was safe.”

  “You don’t expect me to stay inside while my goods blow to kingdom come?”

  “That’s just what I expect.” Matt hopped down from the wagon. “Here, take hold of my arm and don’t let go.”

  Matt gripped the team’s reins and with the wagon in tow, made slow progress toward the dugout tucked into the hillside.

  Praise be that the trip from town hadn’t taken a few minutes longer. The last thing he needed was to be caught out in a sandstorm with a defenseless woman who fancied herself capable of living in the wild with a blind horse as her protector.

  * * *

  Emma had taken only a few steps, with her skirts tangling about her shins, before she started to cough. She’d never known a wind that could steal the breath right out of a body. Sand and grit stung her face, forcing her to close her eyes. Thank goodness Mr. Suede had a strong arm to clutch onto.

  “Stand still a minute, darlin’.” A cloth smelling like dust and hardworking male came across her face. She felt Matt Suede’s fingers at the back of her head, tying a knot in it.

  She took a deep, sand-free breath, with her new husband leading the way toward the dugout. She couldn’t see, but she felt safer beside this big, solid man.

  Matt let go of the horses and led her inside. She took the bandanna from her face and shook it out. Even with her eyes uncovered, she couldn’t see Pearl or Thunder at the far end
of the cavelike home.

  With no door on the dugout, the wind whipped inside, swirling and moaning off the walls.

  “Mr. Suede, are you in here?” No answer. What could have happened to him? “Mr. Suede?”

  “I’ll be along.” His words came out coughed more than spoken. “Stay inside.”

  Emma heard the jingling of a harness just beyond the opening to the soddie. She took four dust-blinded steps outside before she ran smack into his vest.

  “Hell, woman, I thought I told you to stay inside.”

  “You’ll need this.” Emma felt for his face. Her fingers touched his unshaven cheek. She tied the bandanna around it. “And you can’t tell me what to do.”

  Leather snapped, metal jingled and Matt Suede pulled her and the rented team into the dugout.

  He yanked the bandanna off his face. If she stared hard, she could make out his features in the dark. He didn’t look pleased.

  “Didn’t you vow before God and Mrs. Sizeloff to obey your husband?”

  “You are not my husband, not really.”

  “Do I have to frame that marriage license and hang it on the wall?”

  The wind slapped Matt Suede’s shirtsleeves against his arms. It whirled the dirt on the floor, making it dance about his boots.

  “Did you bring any tools or lamps in the wagon?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m not a half-wit.”

  He gave her a long stare through the gloom.

  “If you tell me where they are I’ll tack the canvas over the doorway. We’ll be able to light a lamp.”

  “You won’t be able to get to them. They’re in the bottom crate toward the front.”

  He yanked the bandanna over his nose and turned to go out. She caught his arm.

  “Please stay inside—we’ll get by until the wind lets up.”

  “It could turn bitter cold.”

  “I’ve been cold before. It never lasts.”

  Emma felt her way to a corner of the room. The wind was quiet here, but he had been right about the cold. The temperature seemed to be dropping by the second. She sat down in the dirt and drew her knees up to her chest.