“I’ll escort you to—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head.
“He can’t protect you and I’m not leaving you out here basically alone to fend off some arrow-shooting asswipe.”
She narrowed her eyes on him and gave him a confused look. “Sometimes I can barely understand your speech. But I can take care of myself.”
She watched his gaze cool on her like frost on sapphires. “That’s good to know,” he said. “But if I don’t escort you, you’ll be coming home with me.”
“Fine!” she said through clenched teeth. The man was insufferable. “You may escort us.” She stepped around him and mounted her horse. “Come, Preston, Investigator Pendridge will escort us to your home. There is no use in arguing. You can direct your formal complaints to my father when you are well. Now, say no more lest he shoot you again.”
She had to shut Preston up. Who knew what he would say! Between him and the detective, she was up to her thighs in mud. She had to keep them from killing each other. Why should she care if Preston killed the investigator? He always seemed either melancholy or detached. Dark and dangerous, or barely giving his attention. She’d stopped Preston from shooting him, only to have him shoot Preston.
She came to the horrifying conclusion that it was her fault Preston had been shot!
“Wait!” the investigator called out. “Where are we heading?”
“Sutton,” Charlotte told him, not missing Preston’s angry stare.
“I can’t go.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“Pity,” Preston drawled out.
“Someone is waiting for me to return.”
Charlotte actually felt her hackles rise. A woman? Did he just remember someone he loved waiting at his home for him? Did he meet someone since yesterday morning? What was he like to this girl? How did he—
“Oh?” she asked as lightly as she could. Why was she even entertaining thoughts of him with someone else, and why did those thoughts hurt a little? No.
“You will have to bid him farewell,” he said, his eyes simmering beyond a veil of indifference.
“I cannot,” she insisted softly. “Will you truly shame and humiliate me by dragging me back to my father?”
He looked as if she had just kicked him in the guts. He even ran his hand over his flat belly and groaned a little.
“Please,” she pleaded. “Just tell my father you lost me.”
He was quiet for a moment, looking as if a hundred different things were going through his head. Finally, he nodded. “Okay. Go then.”
Go? She wanted to kiss him! No. No. She laughed at herself. She didn’t truly want to kiss him. Did she?
Why was he letting her go? Did he not think her as important as this other woman he had to get back to?
“Come on then, Charlotte,” Preston urged, pulling her along.
“Thank you,” she said with an appreciative nod to Michael, then followed Preston toward Sutton.
The moment they were alone, Preston turned on her. “You were drooling over a man who shot me, Charlotte!”
“I was not drooling, Preston. Do I not always tell you that the best way to catch flies is with honey?”
“He is no fly. He is not like the others who swarm about you.”
Aye, she had noticed it also.
“He will be nothing but an ant when I’m finished with him,” Preston wore on. “An ant I will smash with the heel of my boot.”
