The Loner Read online

  Logan branded her with his mouth, pouring every bit of talent and technique he'd developed over the years into the act.

  He tempted them both by lingering over her lips, ravishing her with his teeth, his tongue. He wanted her boneless and aching and aware of all he had to offer.

  When his control stuttered, he knew it was time to pull back. He nipped her bottom lip as he lifted his head away, then spoke in a deep-throated, gravelly tone. "You are the most intoxicating woman, Caroline. You make me lose my wits. We are going to be so good together."

  "That's manipulation."

  "No, darlin'. That's seduction, and you're as guilty of it as I am." He touched her soft cheek and smiled into those sea-blue eyes. "Maybe I really am the Luckiest Man in Texas...."

  GERALYN

  DAWSON's

  "Bad Luck" books are irresistible!

  Romantic Times BOOKreviews loves the Bad Luck Brides...

  "The Bad Luck Brides series has been a rare treat. Dawson brings it to a perfect conclusion with a humorous yet poignant climax that does not disappoint."

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Her Outlaw

  "Everything you love about the Bad Luck series is beautifully rolled into Kat and Jake's love story: madness, mayhem, humor, adventure, passion, steamy love scenes and the ties that bind a family together. Dawson touches the heart...and leaves you eager for the next installment."

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Her Scoundrel

  "Dawson... dishes up plenty of adventure, sexual tension, love and laughter, poignancy and even a tear or two. You'll be gloriously satisfied with the return of the McBrides!"

  —Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Her Bodyguard

  Praise for The Bad Luck Wedding Night...

  "Wonderful! Delightful! Entertaining!"

  —Romance Reviews Today

  and The Bad Luck Wedding Cake...

  "A delicious gourmet delight!

  A seven-course reading experience."

  —Affaire de Coeur

  and of course, The Bad Luck Wedding Dress

  "Utterly charming—one of the most appealing books

  I've read. I loved it!"

  —Patricia Potter, author of Beloved Impostor

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Also by

  GERALYN DAWSON

  Her Outlaw

  Her Scoundrel

  Her Bodyguard

  Never Say Never

  Give Him the Slip

  My Long Tall Texas Heartthrob

  My Big Old Texas Heartache

  The Pink Magnolia Club

  The Bad Luck Wedding Night

  Sizzle All Day

  Simmer All Night

  The Kissing Stars

  The Bad Luck Wedding Cake

  The Wedding Ransom

  The Wedding Raffle

  The Bad Luck Wedding Dress

  Tempting Morality

  Capture the Night

  The Texan's Bride

  For my sister, Mary Lou Jarrell. Thanks for "getting" my deadlines and for always being there to listen to me vent.

  PROLOGUE

  East Texas, 1871

  He had a rocking horse named Racer.

  On the front porch of his family's dogtrot cabin deep in the Piney Woods, he and Racer would ride, ride, ride. He wore his prized red cowboy boots emblazoned with a white Lone Star, a gift from his mama and papa for his fifth birthday two months ago. His brothers Alex and Sam had tanned the leather of the vest he wore, and his sister, Sarah, sewed it up in just his size. Nana Grey had sniffled a little when she gave him his white felt hat with its bright red string tie, but Nana cried at everything so that didn't much bother him. The tin sheriff's badge pinned to his vest was supposed to have been a present from Baby Joe—but he knew it really came from his parents. Baby Joe couldn't actually buy presents because he was only two.

  He had a pistol, too. It was the prettiest thing. Papa had carved it out of a single hunk of oak and he'd stained it a golden brown and burned an L for Logan on the grip. It might be made all of wood, but in his hands it shot deadeye straight.

  Today he and Racer followed a dusty trail chasing outlaws who had just robbed a stagecoach of its strongbox. Faster and faster he rode. "We're gaining on them, Racer. Keep going. We're gaining on them!"

  The front door opened and Sarah stepped outside. She wore a traveling dress because the family was going to Louisiana to attend a wedding. She looked real pretty, but he didn't say so out loud. He was mad at her. At breakfast this morning, Papa had agreed it was time to get Sarah her very own pony.

  "So where are you going, cowboy?"

  He snarled at her. "Black Shadow Canyon. And there ain't no girls allowed."

  "Oh, really?"

  "Yeah. It's where the Apache live and outlaws go to hide."

  "I see." Her lips twitched. "Hmm.. .that sounds like a scary place. Guess I'm glad I'm not allowed. So why are you going to Black Shadow Canyon? Are you an outlaw?"

  "No, dummy." He stopped rocking long enough to point to his hat. "I have a white hat. I'm a lawman going to catch the villains and make 'em pay for their evil deeds."

  His mother's voice sounded from the kitchen window. "You use that ugly word toward your sister again and you won't be able to sit down long enough to ride Racer. You'll have to wait until tomorrow to go kill villains, son. It's time to come in and change your clothes. Papa and the boys are almost through patching the fence, so we'll be leaving soon."

  "Aw, Ma—"

  "Don't 'Aw, Ma' me, young man. Rein in Racer right now."

  "Yes'um."

  Half an hour later, the entire family loaded up in the wagon and rode out. The road was muddy from all the rain they'd had in the past couple of days and the going slow. Papa drove the wagon with Nana sitting next to him. Sarah and Mama occupied the seats behind Papa with Mama holding the baby in her lap. His brothers sat in back with him playing cards. Mama, Nana and Sarah fretted on about getting to town in time enough to repair their hair before the wedding.

  He couldn't see how it was broken, but he didn't care enough to ask because he was busy watching the trees for trouble. There were outlaws out there—he could tell. He had that black and dark and heavy feeling that let him know ahead of time that something bad was about to happen. He'd felt it right before his grandfather died. He'd felt it when Alex broke his leg. Every time he tried to tell his parents about it, but they never believed him—not even after the bad things happened. Papa called it coincidence and ruffled his hair.

  So instead of trying to warn them, he pulled his pistol out of his pocket and watched the trees hard. It was silly to hold the pistol since it was really a toy, but having a gun in his hand made him feel better.

  He was scared.

  Time passed. The darkness grew stronger. Someone or something was out there. He knew it.

  Finally, he had to try. "Papa? Something is wrong. I think you'd better stop."

  "You sick, boy?" his father asked as his mother turned a worried look in his direction.

  "Don't be throwing up on me, squirt," Sam said.

  "I'm not sick. But I'm having my feeling..."

  His mother's expression eased. "Oh, sweetheart. I know we've been trav
eling a long time, and you need to get down and run around, but we're running late. We don't have time to stop. Hear that thunder in the distance? We need to beat the storm to town." Addressing the other boys, she added, "Y'all keep your little brother occupied."

  "But that's not it, Mama. I really do know that something bad is gonna happen."

  No one listened and the feeling grew and grew and grew. His chest hurt and he wanted to cry and he had to blink away tears so that he could watch the trees for the outlaws. Maybe if he saw them soon enough, Papa would be able to shoot them first. Papa was a really, really good shot.

  He stared at the forest, his gaze shifting from side to side to side. So intent was he on seeing the threat emerge from the trees that he didn't spot the one rising from beneath.

  It happened in an instant. One minute the wagon was fording a shallow offshoot of Brushy Creek, and the next it was floating. Being swept away.

  "Flash flood," called his father above the awful, horrible sound of rushing water. "Hang on, everyone. Dear God, hang on!"

  The wagon spun, then began to tip. The women screamed.

  He held his wooden pistol in a death grip and stood up tall in the back of the wagon. "I tried to tell you, Daddy. I tried to tell you."

  He wet his pants right before he went flying. Something snagged his shirt. "Hold on, son," his father called.

  He watched his father jump toward him into the rushing water, then something hit his head. After that, he knew no more.

  Bodies were still being recovered from the Sabine River a week after the horrific flash flood that had decimated parts of East Texas. No one knew exactly how many people had lost their lives in the event, though estimates numbered in the dozens.

  Ten days following the flood, a traveler spied a bruised and bedraggled boy sitting on a fallen log, constantly rocking back and forth, a wooden pistol clutched in his hand.

  Try as he might, the traveler couldn't get the boy to speak more than two words. "Run, Racer, run. Run, Racer, run."

  Aware of recent events in the region and mindful of the state of the boy's clothing, he surmised the youngster had survived the flood. In a hurry to continue his travels, but unwilling to leave the boy all alone in the middle of the woods, the man lifted him onto his horse and took him with him. They traveled for two days before reaching the home of old friends, the Jenningses, who had recently decided to open their home to orphans. Not once in all that time had he been able to coax a word out of the boy.

  The traveler explained to his friends how he'd found the boy and his suspicions regarding the flood. Mrs. Jennings recognized emotional trauma when she saw it, and she promised her old friend that the boy would find a safe haven with them until his identity, and hopefully some family, could be discovered.

  Her husband said, "That's a fine-looking pistol you have there, son. What's that on the grip?"

  Without turning loose of it, the boy showed him. "Hmm, an L. Does your name begin with an L?"

  When the boy didn't respond, Mrs. Jennings smiled kindly and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "He's alive. He's relatively uninjured. He's here safe and sound with people who are ready to care for him, ready to love him. I think that L might just stand for Lucky."

  Her husband nodded. "Lucky. I like it. C'mon, Lucky, let's go raid my Nellie's cookie jar, shall we?"

  Three months passed and though he never spoke, Lucky made friends with the other boys who'd come to live with Reverend and Nellie Jennings. One Saturday morning as Nellie made piecrusts, Lucky walked into her kitchen and said, "I had a rocking horse named Racer."

  CHAPTER ONE

  Twenty-eight years later

  Fort Worth, Texas

  "They say he's lucky," whispered a barrel-bellied man. "The luckiest man in Texas."

  "If he's so lucky then how come he's caught in the middle of a bank robbery?" questioned a fellow sporting a red handlebar mustache.

  "Because he's here and he can save us and probably earn a big reward for it. That's why!"

  Logan Grey ignored the nervous murmurs and frightened whispers circulating behind him and concentrated on the matter at hand. Three gunmen. Seven potential hostages.

  And he'd left his six-gun at the gunsmith's for repair.

  Lucky, hell.

  It was the same old story. Although he'd been known as Lucky Logan Grey for damn near his whole life, Logan knew that the only luck he truly possessed was bad luck. The trick to keeping it from rearing its ugly head was to keep folks thinking the opposite—that he was the luckiest man in Texas.

  What a crock. Take this incident today. How lucky was it that he'd decided to put business before pleasure this morning? Choosing to look up the bank president and discuss his investment in a promising East Texas oil field before dropping by Ella Jameson's Sporting House to end his dry spell had put him in the middle of this mess. He'd been three weeks without a woman, and the lack of relief was making him twitchy. He could be heating up the sheets with Ella right now, but no. Logan had no sooner walked through the bank's front door when he sensed trouble. It was a talent of his, a gift that came in handy for a man chock-full of bad luck, so he paid close attention to it. This time, however, he'd been a few steps slow. He'd just turned around to exit the bank when all hell broke loose in the lobby.

  Five minutes ago, three men stalked into the bank brandishing guns and shouting demands. They'd shot the security guard dead, then forced the head teller to lock the doors and display the lunch notice. After herding everyone but the head teller into a group on the left side of the room, they'd handed the banker a bag and told him to fill it with cash from the teller windows.

  "Hurry up!" demanded the outlaw leader, a lanky, bearded fellow missing his front teeth. He vaguely reminded Logan of Colorado Clem, a mean-assed bastard who'd died a few years back after being shot in a dispute over a faro game. Logan wondered if Clem had a brother.

  "You need to move faster, banker," warned the outlaw. "My trigger finger's gettin' itchy."

  Behind the teller's cage, the manager stuffed money into a bag with shaking hands as a bead of sweat dribbled down his temple. The scent of blood tainted the air, and to Logan's right, a child began to cry.

  Within moments, the cries rose to wails and the mother's attempts to soothe her child grew frantic when another gunman took a threatening step toward her, saying, "Shut him up or I'll do it for you."

  Logan took advantage of the distraction to scan the room in search of a weapon, any weapon. The level of tension inside the bank had escalated. Things were fixin' to turn ugly. His gaze settled on a brass paperweight shaped like an eagle sitting atop a desk about five strides away. A good throw could take out one of the gunmen. Wasn't enough, though.

  Dammit, he needed his gun.

  He'd have to take a weapon away from one of the bandits. Which one? Not ole Gap Tooth, the leader. One of the others. Logan's gaze shifted between the other two thieves. He'd take the one by the door. He looked to be the most fidgety, probably the one who'd lose control and start shooting first.

  "Here you are, sir," said the trembling head teller as he attempted to hand over the money bag.

  "That ain't all," scoffed Gap Tooth. He leveled his gun at the banker's head. "Open the safe."

  "But I don't know the combination! Only the president knows it, and he's at the rotary club meeting this morning."

  See, that proved Logan's point. He'd made the stop here for nothing. Lucky my ass.

  The outlaw boss grabbed the manager by the necktie and said, "I reckon you'd better figure it out, then, huh?"

  Logan sidled toward the twitchy outlaw. Judging by the look in the leader's eyes, Logan knew he needed to act fast. He took another surreptitious step toward his prey when a woman's voice broke the nervous silence saying, "Oh, darling, I'm so afraid!"

  Then a female rushed toward him and burrowed her face against his chest.

  What the hell? Logan's arms reflexively wrapped around her and despite his surprise, he registered a
number of facts in an instant. She was tall for a woman and not too young, maybe a couple years or so younger than he. Her breasts were full and soft. She smelled like lavender. Her hair was the color of a West Texas sunset, gold streaked with strands of red that glistened even in the muted light of the bank.

  And her hands were fiddling with his belt.

  In another reflexive reaction, his body stirred. Well, it had been three weeks.

  Then something cold pressed the skin of his belly. Metal. Rounded.

  A gun barrel.

  Well now. Logan stifled a smile. Things were looking up. Playing along, he replied, "Don't be afraid, my love. I'll protect you."

  She nodded against his chest, then stepped back, leaving a gun stuck in the waist of his britches and concealed with the tail of his shirt, which she'd pulled free. He had a quick glimpse of violet eyes filled with courage and encouragement before trouble erupted back by the safe.

  "That's all?" shouted Gap Tooth. "How can a goddamned bank have a damned near empty safe? What, is this place run by a bunch of outlaws?"

  He took aim at the round globe of a lamp and pulled the trigger. Glass shattered. The child's screams resumed, and this time a couple of adults hollered along with him. "Shut up!" cried Gap Tooth. "Shut your trap or I'm gonna kill somebody."

  Seeing the villain's gaze fix upon the crying child, Logan stepped forward and said the first thing that popped into his brain. "There's another safe."

  Gap Tooth turned away from the child and pinned his black stare on Logan. "What?"

  His mind raced as he concocted on the fly. He needed to separate the killer from that child, and fast. "It's hidden, but I know where it is."

  "Who the hell are you?"

  "A friend of Dair MacRae. I trust you've heard of the Bad Luck Treasure?"

  Now he had the outlaw's undivided attention. The villain lowered his gun and took a step toward Logan. "All them jewels that was written up in the newspapers?"

  "Jewels and gold, too. A fortune ten times over and it's right here in Haltorn Bank. You let these people go and I'll show you where it is."