Hostage Heart by Lindsay McKenna

on his narrow hips. His eyes focused intensely upon her. They were the eyes of a coyote. All her senses shrilled in warning, but she refused to react to the twisted smile on his full mouth. He chewed on a toothpick like a cow chewing on its cud, his arms across his chest. Silence built to a brittle crescendo as they locked stares.
    Bo Shanks eased from his position, spitting out the toothpick on the highly waxed tile floor. He grinned as he walked with the ease of a predator who knew he was master of his territory. As he approached Lark, his smile reflected barely veiled insolence.
    “Roarke Gallagher’s breed daughter, eh?” he said in a soft, sinister voice. “Well, what do ya know…”
    Lark stood her ground. She was as tall as the gunfighter and refused to look away from his amber eyes. Her heart beat hard in her breast as his scalding gaze traveled upward from her booted feet, lingered hotly at the apex of her thighs, then moved on to where her breasts were thrust against the shirt she wore, the soft cotton emphasizing their fullness. Finally his gaze swept up her neck to her face. Her nostrils flared as she registered his sour, unwashed smell. His sandy hair was parted to one side and slicked down with grease, emphasizing the long lines of his face. He was in his early twenties, yet his face looked unduly aged due to bouts of hard drinking. Lark doubted the lines in his face had come from an honest day’s labor. Everyone knew Shanks was Jud Cameron’s hired gun even though he was supposed to work as a drover on the banker’s ranch.
    “What’s it been, Lark? Two years since I last saw ya?” He grinned, his uneven teeth exposed as if in a snarl. “You’ve changed,” he added with more than passing interest.
    “And you haven’t, Shanks.” Her voice vibrated with hatred. “Now let me pass. I have business with Mr. Cameron.”
    “And if I don’t, breed?”
    Lark remembered with humiliating clarity how Shanks had once grabbed her in Abe’s store and mauled her playfully, unmercifully. His long, skinny hands had roved across her breasts and she had frozen in shock and pain. Then, gathering, her wits, she had fought back. The proof of her attack, four long scars, lay like dull pink slashes along Shanks’s left cheek where she had raked him. As he had backed off, he’d sworn he’d have her someday—his way. At the time she had been too young to realize what he meant by his threat. Now she understood completely.
    Lark checked her anger, feeling all eyes upon her. Automatically she placed the palm of her left hand over the butt of the knife that rested in the scabbard. “I’m taking care of my father’s banking business now. Let me pass, Shanks,” she said in low tones.
    Shanks snickered and took a step back. “Yeah, I heard yore old man took a bullet in the back. Ya oughta be careful that yore not next.” He threw a look at the nervous young teller. “Willy, tell Mr. Cameron he’s got a visitor. A Miss Gallagher,” he emphasized, grinning.
    Jud Cameron had just raised his shot glass full of mellow sipping whiskey in a toast to Colonel Parker Morgan, commanding officer of Fort Whipple, when the knock interrupted him. With a scowl, he ordered, “Come in.” Damn, he didn’t want to be disturbed, and Shanks knew that. What the hell was going on?
    “Willy doffed the green visor he wore over his eyes. “Sir, Mr. Shanks says to tell you a Miss Gallagher is here to talk business with you.”
    Morgan shot a wry glance at Cameron. “That Apache half-breed daughter of Roarke Gallagher’s?”
    Jud smiled as he rose, tossing the whiskey down his throat. It burned pleasantly all the way down. “The late Roarke Gallagher.” He turned back to his clerk. “Take her to my other office, Willy. I’ll be there in a minute.”
    “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
    Jud waited until the door closed before speaking. “This is the beginning of the end for the Gallagher Ranch,” he announced. “And don’t say I