The Innocent and the Outlaw (Outlaws of the Wild West)

by Harper St. George

  The madam raised a well-shaped eyebrow and continued. “I assure you all that you will be quite satisfied if you choose to consider bidding, but if no one else—”

  “How do we know he can put up that sort of cash?” another man demanded, his face red with anger.

  To this Jameson laughed, a bitter sound that raked down her spine. “You know that I can, Connors. Perhaps our good banker, Westlake here, can reassure you, unless you’d rather I come do that myself.”

  An older man rose to his feet then, his face alight and his cheeks rosy with the drama playing out before him, seeming eager to be included. “I can vouch for Mr. Jameson, as I can for each of your bids.”

  A shiver ran through her at how easily he was willing to part with fifty thousand dollars. How wealthy was this man and what was an outlaw doing with that sort of money? Did everyone here know that he was an outlaw? Did Glory know? If she screamed it out, would they help her?

  “Well, then,” Glory interjected, “let us continue.” She motioned to the auctioneer and he stepped forward. Emmaline stared at her, trying to decide if the woman was betraying her by seeming to take his side, but then the auctioneer began to talk.

  With his dark hair slicked back with pomade and his evening suit, the auctioneer could have been a wealthy financier. He was a slight man to have such a strong voice. It boomed out in a deep baritone as he smiled to the crowd, thanked Glory, then proceeded to ask if anyone intended to outbid Mr. Jameson. No one spoke or moved and she finally brought herself to look back at the man who had haunted her for the past week.

  His gaze was livid, the green so intense as their eyes clashed that her heart jumped to her throat. He was furious. Blood rushed loudly in her ears so that she barely heard the auctioneer announce the closing of the bidding. “No.” The word came out a bit stronger this time, but she repeated it louder until every eye in the room turned to her. “I don’t accept his bid.”

  Clearly at a loss, the madam’s mouth fell open in an O before she regained her composure enough to say, “But, my dear, it’s...” Her voice trailed off when Emmaline interrupted her.

  “You assured me that I wouldn’t have to accept a bidder I didn’t want.”

  “Of course you don’t. But why wouldn’t you...?” Seeming unable to complete a thought, Glory looked back to Jameson. Even Emmaline had to admit he was the most handsome of the three who’d been vying for her. But they hadn’t planned to send her back to her stepfather. He did.

  The auctioneer smiled up at her, a salesman’s smile trying to convince her to just go along with things. “We’ve already closed the auction, dear. Not to mention, it’s fifty thousand dollars. You won’t get a better offer than that.” Laughing boldly, he swept her body with a glance and she wasn’t sure if he found her lacking or simply ridiculous for thinking to refuse.

  Impulsively, she looked at Jameson again and he smiled, though it was more of a sneer, just revealing a slash of white. Every instinct she possessed urged her to run until she finally did. Her bare feet hit the soft, pale gold rug spread beneath the divan and she jumped down and ran out the door near the stage, back the way she had come into the tiny hallway that led to the servants’ staircase and her bedroom. Away from the man hunting her, the same man who owned her for the night.

  Chapter Ten

  The instinct to follow her had driven Hunter forward through the men in the room, but the gunmen at Glory’s side drew their guns to halt his progress. “Dammit, if she gets away—”

  “She won’t go anywhere. I’ll go talk to her.” Holding both her hands up, Glory turned her attention to the manservant and said, “Please show these men to a suite of rooms and have supper and baths sent up to them.”

  “Glory...” Hunter’s warning filled the parlor.

  She was already rushing to follow Emmaline out the back door of the room. “I said I’ll talk to her, Hunter! Just go clean yourselves up and I’ll come find you. If you come after her, you’ll only make her even more upset.”

  He’d talk to her himself and he opened his mouth to tell her that, when Zane stepped forward, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll go with her, brother.” And he walked around him to follow the madam through the back doorway, the familiar gunmen standing down when Zane nodded to them in greeting and gave them a grin, showing that he had no guns on his hips.

  Cas said, his voice low, “We’ve already given them enough to talk about.” He nodded toward the spectators staring at them in rapt attention. “We have her. She can’t escape. Now, let’s go upstairs. I could use a decent meal and a bath.”

  No one in Helena except Glory suspected he was anything more than a wealthy man’s son. He wanted to keep it that way, so he reluctantly followed the manservant and Cas back to the foyer where they were led to their rooms.

  * * *

  An hour later with his belly full of a meal of ham and potatoes, the beard scraped from his face by the hand of a pretty woman, and the water cooling in his tub, his patience was running dangerously low. He knew Zane wouldn’t let her escape, but he was anxious to see her. He kept imagining Emmy sitting on that stage, her deep blue eyes as wide as saucers with fear, chin proudly raised as she stared out into the darkness. It infuriated him anew every time he thought of Glory throwing such an innocent to those animals. He couldn’t believe that the proud woman he knew Emmy to be would allow it. They both must be mad.

  Staring down the redheaded woman who had busted into his room minutes ago, he told her as much. She hadn’t so much as flinched to find him in the bath as she informed him that he wasn’t taking Emmaline out of the brothel. He hadn’t told her yet that the woman was their hostage, preferring to keep that information to himself if he could. It seemed Emmy hadn’t told her either.

  Choosing not to respond to his taunt, she raised her chin instead. “She doesn’t want to spend the night with you and I won’t have her forced to do anything she doesn’t want to do. That’s not how I run my business. You know that.” Glory folded her hands before her, clearly nervous. It was one of her tells.

  He gritted his teeth, biting his words out. “This isn’t about your business. It’s about mine. I played by your rules and that isn’t working for me, so now we play by mine.” Gripping the edges of the tub, he sat up straighter and the soapy water sloshed dangerously close to the edge, nearly spilling out over the porcelain rim.

  “I won’t let you take her out of here against her will. That wasn’t what the auction was about.”

  “What the hell was the auction about? She came to you for safety and you helped plan her slaughter.” The memory of her small body revealed in that robe, those men practically panting to get their hands on her, was enough to make him see red.

  “No,” she clarified, fixing him with a harsh stare. “I was helping her secure her future.”

  “You’d better start explaining real fast what that means.”

  Pursing her lips as if she was debating on refusing, she finally sighed and began to pace the length of the small bathing room attached to his room. Her heels clicked on the slate tile. “She was born here, Hunter, in this brothel. Her mother worked here. I’m sure you understand what that means.”

  “Her father was a client of her mother’s?”

  “Yes. I think Charlotte, her mother, knew who he was, but he’d been gone years before I got here. She always referred to him as her miner who’d got away. Anyway, I came here only a few months before Charlotte married and they left.” She paused then and gave him a knowing look. “I trust you know who Ship Campbell is?”

  “Of course.” Hunter gave a half nod in acknowledgment. Campbell was fairly well-known as a criminal in the region. He wouldn’t be known in the finer parlors and ballrooms, but a place like this would know all about men like him.

  “Emmaline was a young girl then, like a younger sister to me. When Charlotte
married Campbell they left and I never thought to see Emmaline again. But then she showed up here asking for help, saying that she needed to get her sisters away from Campbell. She had this plan of selling herself for a night and taking the money and running. I offered to give her money, Hunter, but I could only spare enough to get her to San Francisco. She wasn’t willing to risk placing them in danger and I don’t blame her. She wants to offer them security so they won’t have to deal with the life she has.”

  Her sisters. Emmy was going to be so angry with him when she found out about them. Shaking his head, he leveled a glare on the madam. “That doesn’t excuse anything. Do you know what those men were thinking? What any one of those bastards would have done to her?”

  Raising a brow, she gave him an empty laugh. “I do know, yes.”

  “Her fear was that she’d become a whore. She comes to you for help and you turn her into one?”

  “Do you know what it’s like to want nothing more than to take control of your own life, but have no means with which to do it?” she shot back. “Do you know what it’s like to have your future decided by someone who doesn’t care what happens to you? No, you don’t, because you have—” She paused to take a deep breath and control her voice, which had been rising steadily.

  “Because I have money?” he finished for her.

  “Among other things, yes.” She gestured to his nether regions, hidden beneath the soapy water, implying the fact that he was male was an advantage in itself. “You’ve always had privilege, stability. It’s not that way for the rest of us, especially if you’re a woman, and sometimes we have to make difficult choices.”

  “This was the wrong choice, Glory. You knew she rode in on my horse. You sent me a damned telegram. You could have had the decency to wait for me to get here.” His fingers clenched into the porcelain and he paused to keep his temper in check.

  “I could have, but she seemed afraid. She wouldn’t talk about you or what had happened, and there was the very real evidence that she was running from you. Look.” Holding up her hand to stop whatever he planned to say, she took another calming breath. “I’m not asking what happened or why she had your horse. I’m only asking that you leave her alone. Whatever happened between you two, she doesn’t seem interested in renewing the acquaintance. I will not allow you to leave here with her.”

  “You can’t stop me. She’s mine.” Dammit, he kept saying that. He didn’t mean it like those words implied, but he kept saying them and they kept sounding right. Some long-buried part of him wanted to keep her safe. It was the same part of him that wanted her to run to him for comfort, the part that despised that he had abducted her and would one day be forced to hand her over to someone else.

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. She’s not yours. She doesn’t belong to anyone!”

  “I paid for her.” The words ripped out of his chest before he could call them back and he rose to his feet in the tub.

  “The hell you did!” Emmy burst into the bathing chamber still wearing the robe she’d been wearing on that stage, though the mask was gone. Her cheeks were flushed with anger and he followed that pink all the way down to the low V of the robe’s neck where it ended deep between the soft mounds of her breasts. His mouth went dry as he imagined filling his hands with them and he even had to clench his hands into tight fists to keep himself from reaching out to her. She wasn’t his to touch, he reminded himself. But that didn’t stop all the blood in his body from rushing down to his groin.

  The fact that he was naked brought her up short and her eyes widened in shock. She must not have realized she was storming into his bathing chamber. As she took him in he couldn’t help but push his chest out a little more as he stood still for her scrutiny. Her gaze jumped back up sharply when she got down to what he was sure was a very noticeable erection, but she didn’t appear frightened. The pupils of her eyes were dilated, making the blue seem darker, but most telling was the way she parted her lips to take in a long, ragged breath. The sound moved through him, making a fresh pulse of desire lengthen him even more.

  Glory was the first of them to come to her senses. “Jesus, Hunter!” But instead of continuing, she shook her head and pushed her charge toward the door. “Come on, Emmaline, you don’t have to talk to him.”

  * * *

  Emmaline didn’t resist as Glory pushed her back into the bedroom and closed the door of the bathing chamber behind them. She couldn’t have resisted had the woman pushed her all the way across the room to the low fire smoldering in the fireplace and shoved her inside. The image of his gloriously nude body was too busy burning itself into her memory.

  It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen shirtless men before. Ship didn’t exactly run a very strict household and when his men helped work the farm they often did it without a shirt. But, dear Lord, none of those men had ever looked like the outlaw. None of them could compare to his wide shoulders and sculptured chest. Though she’d never seen any of their more manly parts, she suspected that none of them could compare to the shaft of perfect masculinity she had just seen. As she’d watched, it had grown, doubling...no, tripling in size as it stood proudly reaching for his navel.

  “Did you hear me?” Emmaline shook her head, trying to get him out of it as she focused on the madam who was staring at her with tender concern. “You don’t have to talk to him. You don’t even have to see him again.”

  No, she didn’t have to do either of those things. Glory had just spent the past hour with her in her room, reassuring her that she did not have to follow through with the night ahead. When she’d left, Emmaline had felt much calmer, much more rational, than when she’d run from the stage. The outlaw might have found her, but that didn’t mean she would be his hostage again. They were in civilization now and the men in that room had seemed to know him. They called him Jameson and she was betting everything on the fact that they didn’t know he was an outlaw. The entire territory had been lobbying for statehood, with Helena the capital of that new state, and it wouldn’t look good to outwardly harbor an outlaw in their midst. So, while her screams in the brothel might go unheard, on the streets of Helena the good men of the town couldn’t allow them to go unchecked. He couldn’t take her out of the house without exposing to everyone in town what he was doing.

  She was safe and the reminder fanned the dampened sparks of her anger until they flamed back to life. He had some nerve barging into her auction and bidding. He had some nerve thinking he had any rights to her. She had come here to his room to tell him just what she thought of him and, come hell or high water, she was telling him and then their brief acquaintance would be at an end for good.

  “I know. I want to talk to him.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea.” Glancing at the bedroom door and then the bathing chamber door, Glory lowered her voice and closed the gap between them. “Unless you do want to honor the auction. Fifty thousand dollars is enough money that you wouldn’t have to work again. You could even get the girls an education. I won’t take commission. It’s all yours. And I can make sure he allows you to leave in the morning.” She paused, her green eyes holding Emmaline’s and her voice lowering to a whisper. “This wouldn’t be a bad option, if it’s what you want. He’s an ass in many ways, but he wouldn’t treat you harshly.”

  Sucking in yet another shuddering breath, she nodded. That argument had been turning itself over in her mind throughout the past hour. It would be a simple solution to her problem. Spend a night with him and leave the next morning with her fifty thousand dollars. It was so much money she’d have plenty of time to get the three of them settled somewhere. Ginny could go to some fancy finishing school for girls where she might have a chance at a respectable marriage one day and Rose could have toys, real dolls with real hair. It all could be so simple.

  The only problem was that it made her worse than a whore. It seemed an absurd problem given that sh
e had been the one auctioning herself off to the highest bidder. Yes, she had intended to spend the night with one of those men, but she had never intended to enjoy it. She’d anticipated sacrificing herself for a good that was so much greater than herself, not reveling in the act which was just what she would do if the man was him.

  Revel. That’s exactly what she had done with his decadent kisses back at the cavern. Reveled in each and every taste of his tongue as it stroked hers. That’s exactly what she had done the moment her gaze had settled on his body, bare as the day God had made him. Reveled in not just the sight of him, but in the way her body had come alive at the sight of him. The way her nipples had beaded and a spot deep between her thighs had begun to thrum in anticipation.

  “No, I can’t do that.” I would enjoy it too much. She couldn’t admit to that out loud so, instead, she said, “There is too much between us for that to ever work out smoothly. I’d rather just return the bank draft.” It was there in her room, waiting on top of the old and scarred bureau. The auctioneer had tapped on her door soon after Glory had arrived and handed it to the madam without a word. Glory hadn’t mentioned it either, just set it on the bureau. And it had stayed there throughout their conversation, staring at them with his bold signature across the bottom.

  “No,” she said again, taking a fortifying breath and squaring her shoulders. “I just want to talk to him and—”

  “Leave us, Glory. I promise not to eat her alive.” His deep voice cut in before she could finish.

  They both turned toward the now-open door of the bathing chamber. He stood there between the dark wood door and the frame draped in nothing but a towel riding low across his hips, leaving the broad, well-developed planes of his chest bared to them. There wasn’t a muscle she couldn’t see in his torso, as it narrowed from wide shoulders to the tantalizing ridges of muscle crossing his stomach, a path of dark blond hair disappearing beneath the sanctuary of the plush, white towel. She dared not allow her gaze to linger there, remembering all too well what it hid.