Love of a Bounty (Sequal to Unexpected Romance but can stand alone)

Chapter Eight

"Wake up ,Tom. The days a wasting." Richard's deep voice woke Tessa from her dreams of him. She had dreamt of lying in his arms and what that kiss would have felt like. Though she could only imagine seeing as how she had never kissed a man.

Tessa opened her eyes and saw that he already had camp cleaned up and both horses saddled. She looked up at the sky and saw that it was only a couple hours past dawn.

"What the hell are you in such a hurry for this morning?" she asked as she sat up and rubbed her face. Richard shrugged.

"No point sitting around. We got miles to cover before dark." he said. Truth be told he wanted to get to the next town as quickly as possible and if they traveled hard that could be tomorrow evening. He didn't' know how much longer he could make himself wait to hold her again and he knew the next time he held her he would make love to her and he wanted that to be after he'd had a bath and had a real bed to lay her down on.

Tessa went about putting all her hair back up in the pins and stuffing it inside her hat. She stood up and walked over to her mare. Richard was already sitting on Horse. She saw the mountain lion pelt on the back of his saddle.

"Should get a good twenty-five dollars for it." Richard said when he saw her looking at it. She nodded but couldn't stop herself from shivering. She had come two seconds away from losing her life to that creature just the night before.

888

They made camp that night and Tessa began to think that maybe she'd been wrong to think for a second that she and Richard Helms could have a future. He hadn't said a word to her about their near kiss the night before and his silence had caused Tessa's pride to kick in and so she hadn't mentioned it either. She did not want to put her heart on the line only to have him stomp it into the ground.

"Afraid it's jerky and some more stale biscuits tonight Tom." Richard said tossing some to her.

"Better than nothing." Tessa said taking a bite. Richard raised his brow at her.

"You know that for a fact?" he asked. She nodded.

"Most nights before I met you nothing is exactly what I had for supper. When I saw you, I had just had to use my final bullet to shoot my horse after she broke her leg."

"I still can't believe you got the drop on me." Richard said. "And then tricked me with an unloaded gun."

"It's funny looking back now isn't it? I mean I never figured I'd see you again after that. Or if I did see you I figured I'd end up dead. Why didn't you just shoot me when you found me in that town?"

"I don't usually just shoot people for the hell of it." Richard replied.

"Yea but I did steal your horse so you would have had every right to." she reminded him. He shook his head.

"No, that's a hanging offense and there weren't no big trees around." he said. After he finished his jerky he laid back on his bedroll.

"Let's get some sleep. Tomorrow night hopefully we'll be sleeping under a roof." he said and covered his face with his hat. Tessa watched him for several long minutes feeling disappointed and hurt. She had been wrong about him. She just needed to focus on the job at hand. Kill Trigger, get the bounty and go home and forget about any fantasies that included Richard Helms and his blue eyes and strong arms.

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They rode into the town of Greenlake a few hours before dark the next day.

"Go get us a room at the hotel." Richard said handing her some money. "I'll take care of the horses and head to the saloon and see what I can find out. You go ahead and get you a bath and wash the trail dirt off of ya." he added. He knew how badly she had been wanting to wash her hair the last two days.