Wild Is My Heart Read Online Free Page A

Whatever possessed her to pull a dangerous and foolhardy stunt like that?”
    “You’ll have to ask Senorita Sam,” Sanchez insisted staunchly, clamping his mouth shut. “It’s not for me to say.” Fiercely loyal, Sanchez refused to say a word against the young woman he had known since her birth. There were even things Senorita Sam didn’t know about herself. Things he had promised Senor Howard he would never divulge. “What do you intend to do with her?”
    “As soon as she’s recovered—if she recovers,” Colt added ominously—“I intend to learn the identity of her pardner and recover the gold. They’ll both be turned over to the sheriff in Karlsburg.”
    “No, Senor Colt, I beg you. Not that. Senorita Sam could be sent to prison. Or worse, if Sheriff Bauer has his way. He is one mean hombre.”
    “She should have thought of that before she tried anythin’ so reckless.” Colt scowled, wondering what the old Mexican had meant by his last remark about Sheriff Bauer. “What made her do such a thing?”
    Sanchez knew exactly why Sam robbed the stage but held firm to his resolve to divulge nothing to this fierce Texas devil. “I am an old man, Senor, and the years have taught me to mind my own business.”
    Snorting in disgust, Colt replied, “You’re doin’ Sam no favor by remainin’ mute. No matter. One way or another I will have the truth—and the gold. I’m hungry, Sanchez, rustle me up some grub.”
    Twenty-four hours later Samantha returned to the world of the living. Surprisingly, her wound remained infection-free, and, though still gravely ill, she had not suffered extensively from fever.
    Huge violet eyes reacted slowly to the relentless stab of sunlight upon weighted lids, and with difficulty Sam clawed her way through layers of suffocating cotton into stark reality. She blinked repeatedly until the mist before her eyes cleared and a rather startling image came into focus.
    Lounging against the doorframe, hands laced across his flat, buckskin-clad stomach, one long leg crossed in front of the other, a tall, slim man stood looking directly at her. His thick hair was sun-streaked tawny gold. His nose was straight and bold, his mouth full and sensual. In one lazy motion he pushed himself away from the door, gliding to her bedside with catlike grace and a hip-rolling stride. At close range his golden brown eyes appeared liquid and shiny. For some reason this intriguing stranger looked vaguely familiar. Was he a friend of Will’s? And what was he doing in her bedroom? Had he named himself the devil, Sam wouldn’t have been shocked, for an aura of something dark and mysterious surrounded him.
    A sudden untoward movement sent shards of agonizing pain knifing across her upper body. She struggled to sit up, unaware that her motions caused the sheet to drop around her waist, baring breasts the color of rich cream tipped with dusty coral.
    “Hellfire and damnation, I hurt,” Sam moaned, tears springing to those incredible violet eyes. Colt felt as if he could lose himself in their mysterious velvet depths forever. “What happened? Who are you?”
    “Don’t you remember?” Colt asked cautiously. No answer, just a wide, innocent stare that completely unnerved him. “Lay back, you’ve been wounded.” With gentleness rare in a man of his calling, he pressed her back against the pillow. “You’re a mighty sick gal and damn lucky to be alive.”
    Glancing down to locate the cause of her terrible pain, Sam gasped in mortification to find herself naked from the waist up except for a bandage covering her upper chest. Groping clumsily beneath the sheet, she discovered her entire body was likewise unclothed. A deep red traveled slowly up her neck to the roots of her hair. “What have you done to me? Where is Will?” She pulled the sheet up to rest beneath her chin.
    “Who is Will?” Colt asked with deceptive calm.
    “Will is…” Suddenly Sam’s eyes flew open and her mouth clamped