An Outlaw's Christmas by Linda Lael Miller Page A

I’m a gentleman, so I’ll comply with your request.”
    “Good,” Piper said, not moving.
    Sawyer seemed to be reading again, but Piper didn’t trust appearances. Nor was she convinced that he was a gentleman.
    “Go ahead and take the bedroom,” he said. “I’ll sleep out here.”

CHAPTER 5
    “D o n’t besilly,” Piper immediately countered, still clutching her clothes against her bosom. Her nightgown was warm enough, but her bare feet felt icy against the planks, where she seemed to be rooted. “You’re in no condition to sleep on a hard floor.”
    Sawyer, remaining at her desk with a book open in front of him, smiled and carefully kept his gaze averted. Or so she hoped—desperately.
    “Neither are you, I’ll wager,” he said dryly. “Anyhow, I saw a mouse run through here a few minutes ago. Bold little critter, too—scampered right through the middle of the room.”
    Piper shuddered, and not just from the cold. She had a horror of things that crawled, slithered or scurried, though she’d kept that information to herself in case any of the rambunctious boys in her class got ideas about scaring Teacher with a garter snake or any other objectionable creature.
    “What kind of name is Piper, anyhow?” Sawyer asked, turning the pages of the book so rapidly that he couldn’t possibly be reading from them.
    “What kind of name is Sawyer?” she countered, edging toward the stove. If she’d stayed put, she was convinced the soles of her feet would attach themselves to the icy floor. And where, at this precise moment, was that mouse he’d mentioned seeing?
    He chuckled. “I’m named after a great-uncle on my mother’s side of the family,” he confessed. His lashes were long, she noticed, the same shade of toasty gold as his hair. “My folks—Kade and Mandy McKettrick—had three girls before me, so I reckon they were prepared to call me Mary Ellen.”
    In spite of herself, Piper laughed. She was warmer now, standing so near the stove, but no less embarrassed to be wearing nothing but a nightgown. Oddly, the sensation was not completely unpleasant. “You have three sisters?”
    Sawyer nodded. “How about you? Do you have sisters or brothers?”
    “I’m an only child,” Piper said. And an orphan, added a voice in her mind. “Dara Rose and I were raised together, though, so we’re as close as sisters.”
    “That’s good,” Sawyer responded. He cleared his throat. “Aren’t you cold?” he asked.
    Piper was cold, though the proximity of the stove helped a little. Suddenly, no matter what the shameful implications, she realized she couldn’t bear the idea of sleeping on the floor again. “Do you promise to conduct yourself like a gentleman if I agree to spend the night in the spare bed?” she asked, horrified to hear herself uttering such a thing.
    Sawyer lifted his good arm, palm out, as if swearing an oath in a court of law. “You have my word,” he said.
    Piper started for the bedroom doorway, giving him as wide a berth as she could in such a small, cramped space. “Wait until I say it’s all right before you come in,” she said.
    Suppressing a grin, he nodded his agreement.
    And Piper dashed past him, into the room that had been hers and hers alone, until night before last. Using sheets and blankets provided by Dara Rose, along with the bed itself and the lovely supper she and Sawyer had shared that evening, Piper quickly made up a cozy nest. Then, driven by the continuing cold and the shock of her own brazen boldness, she scrambled under the covers and lay there shivering until she’d adjusted to the chill of the sheets.
    “I’m—ready,” she sang out, after a long time.
    She saw the light from the lanterns, the one she’d used in the cloakroom and the one Sawyer had been reading by, blink out. He appeared in the doorway, a shadow etched against the darkness, and Piper’s heart began to pound so that she dared not speak, lest her voice tremble and betray the nervous