Desert Dreams Read Online Free

and jerked away, eliciting a round of laughter from
the hard-edged men who surrounded her. She clutched her wrapper around her. A
menacing silence fell over the group. She scanned the circle of a faces, all
leering down at her with similar expressions.
    How could she have been so foolish? She'd run out into the
street clad only in a thin nightgown and robe. A man had been shot and would
probably bleed to death while the men who had gathered to gawk stood by and did
nothing.
    "Hell, ain't no doctor gonna treat no Mex !" a bleary-eyed
man said, eliciting a round of laughter from the others.
    "You should be ashamed of yourselves!" Anne
scolded, playing for time. "This man is a human being!"
    The man closest to her turned his head to the side and spat a
brown stream of tobacco juice that landed in the dust close to her foot.
"Maybe he is and maybe he ain't ."
    " Por favor, I must tell
you—"
    The wounded man broke off, his face contorting as pain
gripped his body.
    Her gaze fell on the gun strapped to the fallen man's waist.
Did she have time to grab it before anyone realized what she intended and moved
to stop her? Did she dare? Did she dare not?
    * * * * *
    Rafe Montalvo came awake with a violent start as the door to
his room flew open and banged against the wall. Jose stood in the doorway, his
body haloed by the light from the corridor.
    Swearing under his breath, Rafe groaned and fell back on the
bed. He hadn't even thought to go for his gun. The reflexes that had kept him
alive for the past five years had failed him. One mistake like that could cost
a man his life, especially a man who chased trouble the way he did.
    "It's Luis!" Jose cried before Rafe could gather
his wits. "He's been shot!"
    Rafe sat up slowly this time and threw the covers off with a
scowl. He paused and ran a hand through his hair, struggling to clear his
sleepy mind. Running through the facts as he knew them helped him focus. Luis
Demas held the secret to a fortune in gold, gold that could flush El Alacran out into the open.
    "Is he dead?" Rafe asked quietly, feeling the best
chance he'd had in five years to flush El Alacran out
slip through his fingers.
    "I don't know, but you've got to come with me! He's down
on the street in front of the hotel. If he is alive, you've got to try and make him talk. If he's dying, maybe he'll tell you
about the gold. He won't talk to me, me and Luis go
way back. Hurry, amigo !"
    Rafe stood and pulled his pants on quickly, then sat on the
edge of the bed to jerk his boots on. Shoving his arms into his shirtsleeves,
he stalked past Jose, grabbing his gun belt from the coat rack on the way out
the door.
    Jose was right. He had to get to the street before the bandit
died. He shook off the grogginess that clung to him, ignoring pulsing headache
that nearly blinded him, thanks to the rotgut he’d drunk earlier, and the smell
of sex that clung to him.
    A full moon cast freakish shadows on the street where men
shifted in a taut, uneasy circle. The hairs on the back of Rafe's neck stood on end as he approached.
    The air throbbed with tension like the silent excitement
before a hanging or a dogfight.
    Instinctively, Rafe's fingers
tested the strap on his holster. Blood pounded in his veins and tingled in his
fingertips as his body prepared for a confrontation.
    He shouldered his way through the crowd to find himself
face-to-face with the young woman he'd seen on the street that day. The men had
completely forgotten the injured man on the ground and were ogling her.
    She looked as if she'd been in bed. Pale hair had worked its
way free of the braid that hung down her back to her waist, framing her face in
disarray. Her thin nightgown and wrapper didn't conceal her body as well as she
probably thought it did.
    He clenched his fists at his sides, trying to think, to curb
the irrational anger and fear that roiled inside his chest.
    Christ, what was she doing out here this time of night? And
how the hell was he going to get her and