The Sheriff
There are no laws when it comes to love.Kate Quinn arrives in Fortune, California, with little but a deed to a run-down Victorian mansion and a claim to an abandoned gold mine. But a beautiful woman on her own in a town of lonely, lusty miners also brings trouble.Sheriff Travis McLoud has enough to handle in Fortune, where fast fists and faster guns keep the peace, without the stubbornly independent Miss Kate to look after. But when a dapper, sweet-talking stranger shows a suspicious interest in Kate, Travis feels it's his duty to protect her.With her days spent searching for the glimmer of gold, Kate has no interest in the sheriff and his unnecessary warnings. But she can't prevent him from invading her dreams and showing her that a rough-around-the-edges lawman just might have more to offer than a well-heeled gentleman–including a heart of gold.
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“You know how to use that thing?”
Kate VanNam swallowed hard as she raised the revolver. “Certainly,” she lied. “I’m an excellent—”
Before Kate could finish her sentence, Sheriff Travis McCloud had taken the gun away from her and then pulled her up against him. “Never aim a weapon unless you mean to fire it. You hear me?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Damn it to hell, I knew it.”
“Knew what?” she asked, intensely aware that his slim hips and long legs were pressed flush against hers. She could feel the heat radiating from him, making her own body warm.
“That you’d be trouble. You are trouble. You’ll cause trouble. For yourself. For me.”
“That’s a lot of trouble, Sheriff.”
“Too much trouble,” he said, releasing her before he placed the revolver on the sofa bed. “Why don’t you pack up and leave before somebody gets hurt?”
“I am staying in Fortune, and if you don’t like it I’d suggest you stay out of my sight.”
Both annoyed and amused by Kate’s determination, Travis raised his hands in surrender. “Fine, Miss VanNam, but if I catch you anywhere near a saloon or out on the streets after dark, you’re going to jail.”
“Fair enough, Sheriff,” Kate said. “And if I catch you anywhere near this house after dark, I’ll be forced to shoot you.”
Also by NAN RYAN
DUCHESS FOR A DAY
CHIEFTAIN
NAUGHTY MARIETTA
THE SCANDALOUS MISS HOWARD
THE SEDUCTION OF ELLEN
THE COUNTESS MISBEHAVES
WANTING YOU
For my fellow classmates with whom I graduated dear old Bryson High on that warm Texas night all those summers ago.
Fannie Ainsworth
Rollins Bilby
Vernon Crager
John Denning
Joe Gillespie
Jerry Graybill
Shirley Harrison
Joyce King
LaRue Matlock
Imogene McNear
Bobby Mitchell
Glenda Odom
Delores Shook
Dorothy Sims
Malvin Teague
Betty Lou Wells
Colleen Wolfe
Contents
Prologue
In a candlelit hotel room on San Francisco’s rowdy Barbary Coast, a handsome man lay on his back upon the bed.
He was naked.
So was the woman astride him.
The pair were making hot, eager love.
They had been at each other from the minute they rushed into the room, locked the door and hurriedly began stripping off their clothes.
Now the lusty pair moved together in a frenzied mating. The voluptuous woman’s heavy breasts bounced and swayed with her rapid movements. She gripped the man’s ribs and murmured his name repeatedly.
A blue officer’s campaign cap bobbed atop the woman’s head. A captain’s uniform was draped over a bedpost.
And atop the bureau, a pair of golden spurs gleamed on freshly polished black boots.
In minutes, the pair climaxed.
Immediately after the loving, the man anxiously asked, “Did he die?”
“Yes,” the woman replied breathlessly, doffing the campaign hat and brushing back her long dark hair to reveal a blue trinity tattoo on the side of her neck.
He nodded. “Did you get the assay?”
“Yes, I did,” she confirmed.
“Did the doctor or nurse see you?”
“No one saw me,” she assured and leaned down to kiss his doubts away. On the Embarcadero below, drunken miners shouted and fired their guns in the air.
One
Boston, Massachusetts
March 1855
A cold winter afternoon, in a sparsely furnished room in Boston’s South End, twenty-two-year-old Kate VanNam read to her elderly, hard-of-hearing uncle. Nelson VanNam was a gentle, caring, life-long bachelor, who had raised Kate and her older brother, Gregory, after their parents had perished in a fire at sea a dozen years earlier.
For a short time, he had been a successful and prosperous businessman who had provided well for his niece and nephew. But in 1849, an unexpected reversal of fortune had changed all that. The once prominent VanNams had fallen on hard times. The grand Chestnut Street mansion in Beacon Hill had been lost, along with the VanNam fortune.
When the fortune disappeared, so did Gregory VanNam. The senior VanNam was now in failing health and eternally grateful to his sweet-natured niece for selflessly tending him.
On this bitter January day, the two sat as close to the fire in the grate as was safe, blankets draped over their knees. As Kate read to her uncle—shouted, actually—she heard a loud knock on the door.
Kate lowered her well-worn copy of the Dickens novel Oliver Twist, and gave her uncle a questioning look. He shrugged his thin shoulders. Kate laid the book aside.
“I’ll see who it is. Stay right where you are,” she said to her uncle.
