Give My All to Jessie (Third in Outlaw Series)

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Jessie couldn't seem to shake her bad mood. When the first raindrop plopped onto the brim of her hat, she let out an angry hiss and jumped from her horse.

"Is this punishment, God? I'm sure Langley's not as helpless as he looks!"

She stomped her boot and rifled through the sack on the mule to find her duster coat. She slipped into it just as a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky and thunder rumbled with so much force, it seemed to cause the air itself to shake.

Of course this caused her already uncontrollable horse to spook and the beast took off into the wood, pulling the mule along with it. Jessie shouted for them both to come back but it was pointless and they soon disappeared.

She looked up at the sky and let out a string of curses that would have made even a seasoned outlaw blush and kicked at a rock only to have her foot slip in the mud and send her crashing onto her back.

Instead of trying to get up just now, Jessie simply lay there in the mud and let the rain beat down on her. A part of her wished she could simply sink into the mud and get lost there. She was a coward. Jessie Burke had never run from a single thing in her entire life. But just one near kiss and a few skips of her heart and she had taken off as fast as she could from Langley.

Jessie didn't like to admit it, and probably wouldn't out loud, but he had touched something deep inside of her. The fear that he would let her down, or she would let him down, had sent her legs in a quick rush to get away from him.

Truth was, Jessie had never seen an example of what a healthy and stable relationship of any kind looked like. Her ma and pa had fought constantly. Her ma had always been bringing men into the house and locking herself up in the bedroom with them for a few coins. It had taken Jessie a while to realize what those grunts and groans behind closed doors meant—but she had learned.

Her pa had simply gotten drunk and pretended not to notice that anything was happening except when someone in town happen to mention his wife's infidelities. At those times, he would attack whoever had dared say something and then go home and smack his wife around awhile too. Jessie would hide under her bed or in the barn during their fights and after one truly bad one, Jessie's mama had simply up and left.

Jessie's pa hadn't wanted to stay in that house without his wife and so he'd packed up his nine year old daughter and left home. He had taught Jessie not to care, not to trust and to never stay in one place too long. She'd learned how to lie, cheat and steal. She'd mastered wielding a gun, a knife and a whip. He had taught he well how to run a con and get exactly what she wanted while remaining out of trouble with lawmen.

Jessie had loved that man. She had worshipped the ground he had walked on.

Then three years ago they met Benjamin Gray. That man had ruined everything. Suddenly her father wanted to run bigger tricks. He wasn't satisfied with small time cons any longer. He began doing things that could truly end up with him in trouble. When Jessie had voiced her concern and tried to talk her father into going back to rigging poker games in backwater saloons, he had laughed at her.

With Benjamin Gray at his side, he'd lost what little use he'd had for his daughter.

But still Jessie had stuck around because he had been all she'd had. Then her mistrust of Benjamin Gray had been proven correct. He had talked her pa into tricking a banker out of five-thousand dollars. Then he had killed her pa and taken off with his share of the money.

Jessie's pa had hurt her bad but she was still determined to hunt down his killer. She was going to avenge her father's death and get back that twenty-five hundred dollars that the bastard had stolen from her pa.