Three Men and a Bounty by Gigi Moore Page B

cain’t…”
    Now he owned a successful saloon and led the life of a law-abiding citizen. He’d settled down and couldn’t remember what it was like to yearn for somebody so much it turned him inside out the way Josiah had. He couldn’t remember what it had been like to be out on the road for weeks and months at a time, tracking a quarry—that is when he wasn’t quarry himself—with no one to answer to but himself. Back then, he hadn’t cared about or valued anything or anyone more complex than his next bounty or his next meal, so he hadn’t feared losing anything.
    He did now. He feared losing everything he had amassed during and because of his cavalier days. He cared about losing something he hadn’t even gained yet, but it was something he wanted almost as much as he wanted to go back and change what had happened to his father.
    “Troy, tell me what’s wrong.” Josie put a gentle hand on his arm and waited.
    “There’s nothing wrong.” He patted Josie’s hand and gently removed it from his arm before heading for his room. He hoped she took his cue and didn’t follow.
    When he made it to his room unharassed, Troy closed and locked the door, just to be on the safe side. Fully dressed, he collapsed on the bed and unwillingly revisited his discussion with Josie.
    There was nothing wrong at all except that he was having second thoughts about his life and his place in the world.
    For most of his existence since his parents’ deaths, all he’d wanted was a place to belong, a place where no one judged him or Three Men and a Bounty
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    looked at him as if he were a menace or a pervert. He’d thought he found this at Wolf Creek, but now he wondered.
    What would happen to everything he’d built if he got involved with Chris or James or both? And who was to say that either man would willingly risk their own standing to be with him? Would either of them think the risk they took to be with each other worth the same risk it took to be with him?
    He supposed he wouldn’t know anything unless he outright asked them. The worse that could happen was either man would say no.
    What if they didn’t? Could he be with them without being honest about his beast? Would his beast allow him to have a normal relationship without letting its existence be known?
    It hadn’t so far, but then he had never been involved with anyone beyond the time it took him to find his release. He had never been in a relationship beyond the superficial. He had never found anyone that made him think about forever. The thought of revealing himself to two men he wasn’t about to kill, but two men that he wanted to make love to instead, sent a shiver of pure terror through him that he had never imagined before.
    He’d thought he’d experienced the most paralyzing fear of his life when he’d had to confront Jack with his desire to leave the gang more than a decade ago. He’d done everything he could not to reveal his animal. Jack, however, had forced his hand. To this day, he remembered the look of shock on the older man’s face, the look of horror when Troy had finally shifted and stood before Jack, growling and baring his long canines. Jack let him leave. He’d had no choice, but he hadn’t allowed Troy’s defection without a fight. Troy bore the bullet wounds to prove it.
    He’d licked his injuries, literally, and survived to see another day.
    He’d moved on.
    Had he not been so eager to bury his past and forget the old miner, Josiah Maynard, he never would have fallen in with the Baird gang.
    Troy had been blinded by pain and the loss of what could have been.

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    Gigi Moore
    And Jack had come along at just the right time, preying on Troy’s loneliness and pain like the predator he was.
    Troy understood all that now, but back then, no one could tell him that Jack didn’t like him just for him, that Jack had less-than-honorable intentions.
    He didn’t want to be that man to Chris and knew that if he forced himself into the middle of