Read Online Heaven with a Gun by Connie Brockway - Free Book Online Page A

stretching endlessly away. “I’m an average shot at best,” she said slowly. “Maybe a spot below average. What I am is fast. Very fast.”
    “Then how did you get a reputation for being a crack shot?”
    “All right.” She turned around, leaning on her elbows against the rails, as though she’d come to a decision and was relieved at having chosen it. “I’ll tell you. On one of my first robberies I was cornered in a saloon by a couple of kids who’d lit out after me with their daddy’s gun. They were scared. Almost as scared as I was. Heck, they caught me mostly by accident.
    “So there we were. Two boys looking to save face and me looking to save my life. No one else in the saloon had a gun. Just me and these two kids. Now, behind the bar were shelves lined with liquor bottles. I figured I had one chance at bluffing my way out of there alive, so I said, ‘Before you start something you can’t finish, men, I want you to see this.’ They stopped, more from surprise than anything else. I don’t suppose anyone had called them ‘men’ before.” She smiled, an utterly self-deprecating smile that charmed him more than any bravado could have, and he wondered if she knew and had gauged its effect.
    “Yes?”
    “So with one hand I started pointing up at the shelves and saying, ‘See that bottle? The one with the bright label— Boom ! Quicker than I’ve ever drawn before, I fired off a shot.
    “Glass shattered. Liquor sprayed all over the place. I holstered my gun and, praying harder than a nun with her rosary, I looked those two kids square in the face and said, ‘Well, you don’t see it anymore, do you?’
    “It took maybe five seconds before the bartender, bless his nearsighted little hide, exclaimed, ‘I never seen anythin’ like that! She done hit that bottle square, boys! Save your lives and put up your guns!’
    “The boys put up their guns. I don’t know who was more relieved. And that’s how I got my reputation. I pulled that stunt twice more, always making sure I was in a town with strict gun ordinances, at bars without too many customers, and always making sure that those customers who were there were surrounded by a whole lot of empty glasses . Voila! I’m a sure shot.”
    He stared at her. One of her dark, elegant brows rose as if daring him to refute her. “I don’t know what to believe about you.”
    The smile drained from her face, leaving it vulnerable. “That’s a problem, isn’t it?” She took a deep breath and straightened up. “Let’s go back inside, shall we?”
    *
    Though they stayed for only another forty minutes, it seemed like hours to Gilly. She’d told things to Jim Coyne she’d never told anyone else, but still he wanted more. Even though she realized that each fact she gave him could lead straight back to her real identity, she hadn’t been able to stop herself. Heaven help her, she wanted to tell him everything.
    She had no reason to trust him. He’d said himself that a good story was the most important thing to him. What she’d planned as a nice, even trade-off—a fistful of highly improbable exploits for the use of his name and room—had turned into something else. For the first time in years, she was thinking of the future with a sense of longing, saw something she wanted for herself, and that was Jim Coyne. And that wasn’t good.
    She was courting heartbreak. In a few weeks, when he found out the truth about her, he’d never want to lay eyes on her again. She should be able to accept that.
    But she hadn’t expected to meet anyone like Jim. Funny that the very things that would ultimately keep them from having a future together—his outrage at injustice, his disregard for personal consequences in exposing that truth—were the very things that drew her to him.
    But there were other qualities that drew her too. Worldly without being weary, knowing without being jaded. Big, strong, a little worn around the edges, with a sardonic, self-effacing wit