curriculum. But after Miss Euphonia Haven’s palpitations subsided, the woman had sniffed indignantly and had informed Honey in no uncertain terms that the study of higher mathematics and finance was unsuitable for young ladies. So Honey had packed her trunks and taken the first train home. Unsuitable! She’d show them unsuitable!
This was her rightful place. Honey shifted in the big leather chair, aware of the way the back and seat had been molded by her father’s solid frame and how the leather on the arms had been nearly worn away by his sleeves. She was, after all, his eldest child. Didn’t she deserve the opportunity to be his heir? Surely she could convince him.
If not, perhaps her mother could. Tiny Kate Logan had gone toe-to-toe with her strapping husband more than a few times over the years on her daughter’s behalf. Honey smiled wistfully now, remembering the last time her mother had come to her rescue by engaging her father in an all-out bidding war for a supper basket he was determined to keep from any and all of his daughter’s young suitors. Although her mother had won, Honey hadn’t enjoyed the fruits of the supper basket or the victory all that much. The beau in question had turned out to be little more than a fawning fool. The first of many.
On the other hand, her mother might not help. Not long after that bidding war and giving birth to her fifth child, Kate Logan had announced her unconditional withdrawal from the fray.
“I’m tired of being in the middle all the time,” her mother had said. “You look like him, you think like him, and sometimes you’re even more bullheaded. You two Logans can butt heads for a while without me between you. I swear, Honey, you and your daddy have just plain worn me down.” True to her word, Kate had even abstained from the battle over finishing school, leaving Honey to lose it on her own.
But she wasn’t going to lose anymore. She was here, her fanny planted firmly in Race Logan’s big chair, and here she was going to stay.
Holy hellfire! Couldn’t anybody see that she was bright and eager and willing to work hard to prove herself? Didn’t anybody understand that she needed to prove she could be a trustworthy human being?
Apparently not, Honey thought glumly. She was just going to have to show them. And that was why she had come directly to the bank after getting off the train. She planned to be here—in the bank—working—when her father returned from his noon meal. She was going to show him what a valuable asset his daughter was—how diligent she could be—how trustworthy and, dammit, just how responsible.
Yanking open the bottom desk drawer, intending to stow her gloves there, Honey found herself gawking instead.
“What in the world...?” she murmured at the sight of chains and an odd metal contraption, which she lifted, cautiously, by one end. Wrist cuffs! How odd. Now why would her father have a pair of wrist cuffs in his desk drawer?
Curious, she fit the circlet of steel around her wrist and stared at it while a shiver rippled the length of her spine. What a horrible, ugly thing it was. A bracelet for a desperado. Jewelry for a thief.
A sharp rap sounded on the door just then. Honey jerked upright, and the cuff clicked closed.
“Miss Honey,” Kenneth Crane called through the door. “I must speak with you. Now.”
“I’ll be right out.” Honey tugged at the steel bracelet. Damn! All she needed now was for Kenneth to see what a fool thing she’d done. He’d promptly tell her father, and then she’d be lucky if Race Logan didn’t clamp the other half of the wrist cuffs to a doddering old dueña, a chaperon who would never let Honey out of her sight. Or worse, to his own thick wrist.
She tried unsuccessfully to slide the steel over her hand.
“Miss Honey,” the teller called again, rapping once more for emphasis.
“Just one confounded minute, Kenneth.”
Honey could hear his footsteps retreating to his post behind the teller’s window as she glared at the shackle on her right wrist. If looks alone could melt steel, the metal would have dissolved right then. But it didn’t. She was stuck and she knew it. Like a rat in a trap.
As she rose from the swivel chair, the empty cuff clanked against the desk. “Damnation!” she muttered. She’d just have to keep her hand behind her back until she could find somebody with a hacksaw to get her out of this fool thing. Maybe she could bribe her brother, Zack, to... No. Zack could keep a secret about as well as a parrot, and nothing would delight him more than seeing his trouble-prone sister cuffed like a common thief. She’d just have to seek elsewhere for help. In the meantime, though, she was going to carry on with her plan to be right here, hard at work, when her father returned from lunch.
The lobby was still empty, thank heaven, when she sidled up behind Kenneth, her right hand concealed in the pocket of her skirt, her lips forcing a cheerful grin.
“I’ll help you count those greenbacks, Kenneth.”
The elderly teller spun around at the sound of her voice. He threw up his hands helplessly, and suddenly greenbacks were everywhere—sliding off the counter, slithering along the floor, settling under Honey’s skirts.
Oh, for heaven’s sake, she thought. The man was as skittish as a colt in a storm. He had just tossed about a thousand dollars like a handful of confetti, but if her father walked in now, Honey knew very well just who would get the blame.
“Get a grip on yourself, Kenneth,” she snapped, crooking her knees and lowering herself to the floor to gather as much currency as she could one-handed.
The aged teller seemed to melt beside her. “You...you’re not supposed to be here, Miss Honey. Please. Nobody else is supposed to be...”
Boot heels clomped on the opposite side of the counter, followed by the distinct sound of iron clearing leather. And then a deep, whiskey-rich drawl.
“The name’s Summerfield.”
What little color remained in Kenneth Crane’s face drained away. His Adam’s apple somersaulted in his throat as he mumbled something unintelligible, then crumpled into a dead faint on the floor beside Honey’s knees.
* * *
“Gideon Summerfield?” she exclaimed.
Gideon contemplated the pretty face that had bobbed up from behind the counter like a windflower after a warm spring rain. The blue-green eyes that bloomed big and round with surprise. The moist petaled lips that forgot to close completely after speech. The dark tendrils of hair that framed her face, then spilled over her shoulders and couldn’t quite conceal a breathless, ample bosom.
After five years in prison, the sight of a female—pretty or otherwise—windflower or weed—was enough to snap every nerve in his body. And the sight of this particular female jolted him like white-hot lightning. For a dizzying second, he didn’t know where he was...or why.
“The Gideon Summerfield?” The blue-green eyes blinked and the petaled lips quivered.
He wrenched himself from the empty-headed bewilderment. For crissake! If he wasn’t careful, Gideon thought, he’d be on his way back to Jefferson City in leg irons and steel bracelets. No woman in the world was worth that.
“That’s right, sweetheart. And now that you know who, let’s move on to why.” He leaned against the counter, edging the barrel of his pistol between the brass
