she was pouring on the charm, wasn’t she? If Gideon had to listen to much more of this sticky sweetness he’d have a toothache. And Glenn had an idiotically happy expression on his face that made him look about twelve.
“No trouble, ma’am. Shame on Gid for not offering you food until now.”
“Please call me Lori,” she insisted, casting him another dimpled smile.
Glenn bowed from the saddle, looking as charming and rakish as Gideon had ever seen him. “Lori it is. Where do you hail from?”
Gideon thought he was going to be sick. Nonetheless, he remained silent while Lori filled Glenn in on her life story. The cynic in Gideon wondered how much truth there was to it. He tried to pretend he wasn’t listening and didn’t give a damn, but he was curious about her.
“My father was a lieutenant colonel in the army and we moved from one post to another for years. I was eleven when I lost my mother and younger brother to a diphtheria epidemic. Papa said he couldn’t be around military posts without the memories of Mama breaking his heart. He acquired a special trader’s license and we opened a trading post in the Osage Nation. When the number of travelers increased and the stage company wanted to provide service in the Pawnee Nation to the south we staked the river to provide ferry service.”
She smiled at Glenn again and ignored Gideon as if he were invisible. “What about you and your family, Glenn?”
“Our father was a French trapper,” he replied. “Our mother was full-blood Osage. I was twelve when someone killed our father and stole his furs while he was on his way to Rendezvous.”
“I’m sorry,” Lori commiserated. “It’s difficult to lose a loved one.”
“Yes, it is,” Glenn murmured. “Out of loneliness and desperation, my mother remarried two years later.”
“Unfortunately, the abusive bastard played the role of the attentive suitor convincingly…until he got what he wanted. A place to stay and rapport with our people so he could cheat us all,” Gideon added bitterly.
“I’m sorry about that, too,” Lori murmured.
“He was the one who was sorry,” Glenn remarked. “He shoved our mother during one of his mean drunks. When she hit her head and collapsed, he left her to die. Gideon went after him. He’d been working with the Osage Police to support our family and he tracked down our stepfather. The fool tried to shoot Gideon out of the saddle.”
Lori glanced curiously at Gideon. “Were you injured?”
He nodded. “I took a gunshot in the thigh.”
“But he put our stepfather down and the bastard didn’t get up again,” Glenn said grimly. “Gideon became brother, mother and father to Galen and me after that.”
Lori wondered if Gideon’s abusive stepfather was the first fatality of his job as a law enforcement officer. But she didn’t ask. Both men lapsed into silence for several minutes after telling the grim tale.
When she glanced at Glenn, he was staring at her with masculine appreciation. Even if his cynical older brother didn’t trust her, Glenn seemed willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Too bad he wasn’t a marshal who’d listen to her story and agree to open an investigation.
“What do you do these days, Glenn?” she inquired as she resettled herself more comfortably in the saddle.
“I help Galen with the horses and other livestock. I do most of the field work while he’s on police duty on the reservation.” He glanced quickly at Gideon then looked away. “I want to serve with the Osage Police like Galen, and like Gideon did before Judge Parker recruited him to be a Deputy U.S. Marshal.”
“So why haven’t you?” she questioned.
He hitched his thumb toward Gideon. “Because my big brother says having two brothers being shot at on a daily basis is enough. But it turns out I’m as good a shot as Gid, not that it matters to him.”
Gideon barked a laugh. “Not even on your good day, kid. When you can hit a target, backward and blindfolded, we’ll talk.”
Glenn’s broad chest puffed up like an offended toad’s. “I’m twenty-six years old, damn it… Excuse my language, Lori. I can do whatever I want, if I want. You aren’t my boss anymore.”
While Glenn and Gideon exchanged teasing taunts, Lori smiled to herself. She missed having a brother. For years, it had been only Lori and her father, working together to establish the trading post to feed, supply and transport travelers.
After hearing about Gideon’s dealings with his scheming, abusive stepfather, she understood why he was wary of believing strangers’ stories. She knew he felt the burden of responsibility to care for and protect his family. She wondered how it would feel to have him protect her rather than distrust her motives and spew his cynicism at her.
Come to think of it, why had he brought her along when he could’ve foisted her off on his fellow marshals and be done with her? That’s what she’d expected, but he’d surprised her.
She couldn’t help but ask him about it.
He shifted awkwardly on the striking Pinto-and-Appaloosa stallion. For a moment, she didn’t think he planned to answer. He didn’t bother to do her the courtesy of glancing in her direction when he finally spoke.
“You’re my prisoner and I’m collecting my bounty money.”
The comment cut her to the core. She told herself she suspected as much. It wasn’t because he didn’t trust the other marshals to keep her captive. It wasn’t because he thought she might come to harm while caged with known outlaws who might maul her or molest her during the trek to Fort Smith.
No, it was about the money he’d collect when he delivered her to trial.
“At least you’re honest,” she mumbled.
“One of us should be.”
Lori gnashed her teeth. “I’m really beginning to dislike you intensely, Marshal Fox.”
“It’s not my duty to win friends, Miz Russell.”
“Good thing. You’d fail miserably. You have the charm and disposition of a rattlesnake.”
Glenn chuckled at the unflattering exchange. “Too bad Galen isn’t here to enjoy this. Very few people dare to talk back to my big brother.”
She figured the only reason Gideon allowed her to get away with it was because he didn’t want to shoot her or strangle her while his youngest brother was an eyewitness.
Chapter Four
“Ah, home at last,” Gideon declared three hours later.
Lori stared into the lush valley, admiring the rock-and-timber home butted up against the north hillside to block off cold winter winds. The ranch boasted one of the most panoramic settings she’d seen for miles. A spring-fed creek meandered through the meadow to flow into the nearby river. It passed close to the two-story home and oversize barn similar to the one at Burgess Ranch and Stage
