An Outlaw's Christmas by Linda Lael Miller Page B

excitement she felt.
    Sawyer moved through the room, with only a slant of moonlight to see by, and, with an effort Piper could hear from beneath her blankets, took off his clothes. She heard the springs creak as he sat down on the other bed.
    “Good night, Miss St. James,” he said, with a smile in his voice. “And sleep well.”
    Piper didn’t answer. She was hoping he’d think she was already asleep.
    Closing her eyes, she pretended as hard as she could.
    * * *
    L YING THERE IN the darkness, Sawyer cupped his right hand behind his head and smiled up at the ceiling, recalling the delicious look of surprise on Piper St. James’s very pretty face a little while before, when she came bursting out of the cloakroom in her nightdress and found him reading at her desk. Her mouth had been blue with cold at the time, and he’d wanted to wrap her up in a blanket—or better yet, his arms—to warm her.
    Given her schoolmarm-skittishness, he reckoned that would have been about the worst thing he could do, but knowing that didn’t stop him from imagining the way she’d fit against him, curvy and soft against his own hard lines and angles.
    The sensual image tightened his groin painfully, a reaction he wasn’t going to be able to do a damn thing about and therefore had better ignore as best he could. Sawyer set his back teeth, so great was the effort it took to change the course of his thoughts. Altering the path of a river probably would have been easier, he soon concluded.
    He willed himself to relax, one muscle group at a time, starting with the part of his anatomy in the most need of quieting, and when he’d finished, still taut and achy in too many places, he resorted to counting in his head, by odd numbers. After a while, as the imagined digits mounted to astronomical totals, he found he could breathe normally again. Some people prayed, and some people counted sheep, but Sawyer always took refuge in arithmetic.
    He closed his eyes, hoping to sleep.
    It was no use, though. He was too aware of Piper, lying close by, in her spinsterish nightgown, with her glowing, just-bathed skin, and her dark hair clinging to her cheeks and forehead in moist tendrils. The scent of her was like perfume, faintly flowery, subtle.
    “Mr. McKettrick?” Her voice was tentative. Soft. “Are you awake?”
    He smiled again, having suspected she was playing possum. She’d called him by his given name once or twice that day, but now that they were both bedded down in the same room, “Mr. McKettrick” probably seemed a more prudent way to address him. “I’m awake,” he confirmed.
    He heard her draw in a breath. “I was just wondering if—well, if you think the man who shot you might come back?”
    Bless her prim little heart, she was scared.
    “Not likely,” Sawyer said.
    “Why not?”
    “Because he probably thinks he’s already killed me. Anyway, Blue River is small and a stranger would stand out.”
    “That didn’t stop him before,” she reasoned. “He just rode right up and shot you, bold as you please.”
    Sawyer grinned harder. His shoulder hurt, and he was lying a few feet from a woman he wanted and couldn’t have, but he was enjoying this exchange. Maybe, he speculated, Miss Piper St. James was scared enough to leave her bed and share his.
    “Yep,” he said. “That’s what happened.”
    “Suppose he didn’t leave Blue River at all? Because of the storm, I mean. He could be holed up around here somewhere, couldn’t he? Just waiting for his chance to strike again?”
    “Maybe,” Sawyer allowed, relishing her concern. If it hadn’t meant Piper and her charges could be caught in the crossfire, he might have welcomed such a confrontation, since he’d be able to return the favor and put a bullet in the bastard, thereby evening the score. “It’s not likely, though.”
    “What makes you so sure?”
    “I’ve had some experience with these things,” he replied.
    “ That isn’t much comfort,” Piper said. “Are