Trail of Kisses by Merry Farmer

at all if you march back looking like that,” she
said.
    “ It doesn’t matter what I look
like, I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”
    “ Interesting choice of
words.”
    The sauce in her tone had him twisting to
frown at her. She was watching him intently.
    “ What are you looking at?” he
demanded.
    “ Your derriere,” she answered with
enough wickedness in her eyes to take down a coyote and half the
prairie with it.
    Every inch of him was hot in a heartbeat. His
groin tightened, screaming at him to pick up exactly where they’d
left off in the river.
    A moment later and he was furious.
    He swayed closer to her. “You are not going to
distract me from doing what I have to do by….”
    “ By what?” she challenged
him.
    He clenched his jaw, body warring with his
mind, desire battling responsibility. The only reasonable thing he
could do was turn away from her, drop his boots, and start getting
dressed. He did it with a sigh.
    “ I am going to put an end to
this,” he said. “I am going to find whoever is threatening you and
bring them to justice.”
    The pinched look that touched her face and
then vanished was all he needed to know she wasn’t completely blind
to the threat, even when she said, “You’re just wasting your time.”
She turned away from him and marched back to the river. “Ben, do
you need help with the laundry?”
    “ Why, I’d—”
    “ No, you’re coming with me,” Cade
insisted before Ben could answer.
    He fastened his pants and shrugged into his
shirt, then stormed back to hook his arm around hers and force her
to change directions.
    She huffed in frustration. “You are no
gentleman.”
    “ I think we’ve already established
that,” he said.
    Lynne was willing to go with him as far as the
sea of wagons parked beside the fort. Callie and John had made it
back from the stream by then as well, and Lynne jumped at the
chance to get away from Cade and help with the wedding. Cade
grudgingly let her go. He trusted her friends to not try to kill
her when his back was turned. Barely. Aside from that, he needed a
little bit of distance to think through his next moves.
    He needed new boots, for one. Whoever had
slashed his to pieces knew their way around a knife. First the
photograph of Judge Tremaine, now this. A knife was no match for
firepower, though.
    “ What do you have for sale in
terms of firearms?” he asked the eager cashier behind the counter
at the supply depot as he plunked down not one, but two new pairs
of boots and a box of soap.
    “ Rifle or revolver?” the man
asked, all smiles.
    Cade paused to consider, he had a rifle, and
it wasn’t likely he would need to confront a would-be assassin at a
distance. “What kind of revolvers do you have?”
    The cashier turned to a wall of shelves behind
him and took out a heavy tray. He balanced it carefully and brought
it to the counter.
    “ Stock is low with the war on back
East,” he said. “It’s hard to get resupplied this far away from the
conflict, even with the threat of Indians. But I’ve got a couple of
Colts and this very interesting Cooper Pocket Revolver.”
    Cade picked up the Cooper and turned it over.
It was small and light with a five ball cylinder. It was the kind
of thing that could be kept concealed if it needed to be. Just what
he was looking for.
    “ I’ll take the Cooper,” he said,
setting the gun down and reaching for his wallet. George Tremaine
had given him a budget for just this sort of thing, but he had a
reasonable amount of his own money too. “You know what, I’ll take
one of the Colt revolvers as well. You can never be too
careful.”
    The cashier’s brow flew up, whether from
surprise that Cade would spend that much money or that he was
arming himself with so much power, he didn’t know and didn’t care.
He purchased the two guns and ammunition and tucked them into his
belt to show he meant business.
    He ran into Pete Evans on the way out of the
supply depot.
    “ Mr. Evans,