Wild Roses by Hannah Howell Page B

very improper lovemaking. Then, with a few cutting words, he had turned her into a block of ice, a cold, furious woman who was doing a very good job of pretending that he did not even exist.
    The moment they cleared the edge of town, Ella spurred her horse into a full gallop and Harrigan cursed as he did the same. It was not going to be easy to catch her. Her little mare was as swift as their horses and Ella had the lead. Harrigan soon realized that they could ride their horses to death if something did not change. The only way he could think of to bring about that change was to scare Ella into stopping.
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    Ella screeched with surprise when she heard a shot. A bullet hit the ground in front of her and her horse faltered slightly. She looked behind her and was stunned to see Harrigan aiming a rifle at her. Since he and George had stopped chasing her, she reined her horse to a halt and turned to look at them.
    â€œHarold won’t pay you for a corpse,” she yelled, unable to believe that Harrigan was trying to shoot her.
    â€œAccording to you, dead is just how he wants you,” Harrigan called back.
    That caused Ella a start, but she quickly shook aside a sudden attack of unthinking fear. Harrigan did not believe her tale of deceit and attempted murder. He was still sure that Harold was just trying to get his errant niece to come back to the family nest. And, no matter how furious she was with him, she simply could not believe Harrigan would hurt her, at least not physically. That left her wondering just what he was shooting at. She started to turn her horse, intending to go on her way, when he fired another shot. This one came very close to her increasingly nervous mare’s hooves.
    â€œStop that!” she demanded. “You’re scaring her.”
    â€œYou’re being particularly slow-witted this morning. I would have thought you’d have guessed my plan by now.”
    â€œWell, let’s just accept that I haven’t yet realized what depths you will sink to for your blood money and that you’ll have to tell me what your grand plan is.”
    He found it a little amusing that he preferred her insults to her cold silence. “You see, I began to realize that we could keep this race going until our horses dropped, you never getting away and me never catching you. So, I came up with a solution to this rapidly moving stand-off.”
    â€œAnd I’m not going to like it one little bit, am I?”
    â€œNope. You stop running or I will shoot your horse.” Harrigan prayed she would believe his threat, no matter how insulting that would be, or that she at least had enough doubts about him that she would not want to gamble with the life of her mare.
    Ella gaped at him, not wanting to believe him, yet not sure she could trust her own judgment. Although she had been sure that he would have no qualms about seducing her, she had never thought that he could speak to her so cruelly. That miscalculation now left her unsure. Louise and all the young men at the ranch would never think of shooting a horse except under the most dire of circumstances, but Harrigan was from the city. He could well be capable of such a thing.
    She considered the matter for only a moment longer as she patted the mare on the neck then began to slowly ride toward Harrigan. Polly was a good little mare and Ella could not bring herself to gamble the horse’s life on the hope that Harrigan’s threat was a toothless one.
    Surrender was not as hard as it might have been, either. She knew she had had little chance of escape, that she had not had enough of a lead to elude him. The chase probably would have ended with their horses’ exhaustion and no winner. In fact, Harrigan would have won in the end, she thought sullenly. Without a horse, she would have had to run and she was very sure that she could never have outrun the man. When he reached out and took her reins, she cursed him, ignoring his