The Trailrider's Fortune

by Shannah Biondine

  By the time Sparkle lay sated and still in his arms, she was too dreamy to care that she was once again in bed with Rafe Conley in a saloon. She closed her eyes, telling herself the ornate panel crib was actually a fancy hotel room in Paris. She ignored the rattling wagons and ribald shouts from below on Front Street and sighed against Rafe's shoulder.

  He slid a hand to her hip and released his own deep sound of contentment. "Feels so damned good to hold you. Get some rest. About to make a right hefty chunk of cash these next few days. You'll be flush again, I promise."

  Her arm slid over his torso, stirring Rafe differently than her touch had before. This wasn't sexual, but he longed for it, probably more than he'd longed to release his pent-up passions. "I'm so glad you came after me," she mumbled. "Glad we…belong…together."

  Rafe shifted and discovered her eyes had drifted shut. Her breath rose and fell softly. She was wiped out, he thought with a satisfied grin. Truth to tell, he was tuckered out, too. But instead of closing his own eyes and joining her in blessed sleep, he peered straight up. It took a moment to focus and make out their shapes against the white sheets through the darkness. He'd put the sconces out and had to strain to see in the mirror. But he wanted, needed to know. He couldn't trust the messages from his damaged nerves.

  He saw their reflections. Saw Sparkle. Stared in amazement. For once he didn't question or deny, just accepted.

  The woman he loved was wrapped around him, fast asleep, with her fingers over his heart.

  CHAPTER 11

  "Let me see if I understand this." Sparkle's calm voice belied her anxiety. Dressed in the blue gingham dress she'd taken from Al's trunk, she was seated in a chair in the rear of the Dodge City Emporium, watching Rafe try on boots. "You want me to tell fortunes at the Bold Adventuress, because my doing that would help you entice a certain man into town."

  "Yep."

  Rafe shook his head and reached past the nervous young salesclerk. "Too tight." Another pair of mule-ears came down from the display shelf.

  "This man likes unusual women," Sparkle persisted. As the clerk ducked into a curtained alcove, she said what she'd avoided before. "And I'm supposed to be remarkable indeed, with divination being the mildest of my 'talents'?"

  "The more unusual and talented, the better," Rafe confirmed.

  "You mentioned a new outfit. What did you have in mind, some gaudy charm bracelet and my flowered shawl? I don't see anything particularly exotic or fantastic here." The emporium stocked few ready-made garments. Sparkle couldn't detect anything among the calicos and finished cotton skirts anyone might consider provocative. It seemed the good women of Dodge made a point of dowdiness, probably to differentiate themselves from the larger population of fallen women in town.

  Rafe settled on a pair of square-toes and paid the clerk. "I know just where to find what we need." He steered Sparkle back out through the Emporium's door.

  "Just a minute," she asserted, refusing to take another step along the boardwalk. "This role you want me to play…Does it have anything to do with the fact you specifically requested the panel crib? Not for our comfort, as I first thought, was it? Because of your job. And buying me some fancy dress, insisting we couldn't leave until your business here's finished…I have the oddest sensation I'm not going to like what's behind this. What have you dragged me into, Rafe?"

  He didn't flinch. "You said you wouldn't help with Hoffman, and I know you don't like what I do. But this time's different. You need money, and I need you as my partner."

  "You have partners. Sam and that fellow Driscoll."

  "Yeah, and they'll be workin' along with us on the set up. But the man I'm lookin for has got a real penchant for whores. You lure him up to our room, and—"

  "You'll be waiting behind the panel," she finished, growing angrier by the minute. "Which is supposed to make me feel perfectly secure, despite the fact I'm the one who'll be having her clothes ripped off by some outlaw. No, absolutely not. I'm not helping you, Rafe. I want no part of what you do. I've had a taste of outlaw hospitality, remember? I didn't like it. Get some real whore at the Adventuress to play fortune teller. Tolover must have a harem."

  "There's a thousand in it."

  "A thousand—for one night's work?" She gaped at him, horrified. "After last night, us together like that…You actually want me to let some stranger climb in bed with me? How could you?"

  "Like hell," he growled, gripping her arm fiercely. "Pay attention. I said lure him into the room. He ain't gettin' in bed, and neither are you. Just get him into the panel crib and get him to take off his gunbelt. You disarm him. I take him out. Done. You're a thousand dollars richer."

  Sparkle hesitated while he awaited her decision. Blackmail wasn't so amusing on the receiving end of the proposition, she discovered. At length she sighed and nodded. He led her to a dressmaker's shop on a side street. The racks were filled with satin, taffeta, velvet, and organza gowns. Brass wall hooks displayed frilly bonnets, feather boas, and all manner of garish necklaces and trinkets.

  It was the last place a gunslinger would frequent.

  "You're a source of constant surprises today, Raford." The use of his full given name should have been clue enough, but she made certain her mouth and eyes evinced her displeasure. "I suppose you'll get me a costume free here, like the room at the saloon. Just what did you do for this business owner, nab a bootlegger pilfering corsets from the back room?"

  He looked perplexed. "My sister…Bought her a…forget what you call it. Some womanly thing, like a shirt with buttons." He gestured on himself and managed to look like a circus baboon.

  "A Basque?" Sparkle offered, fighting a smile. She relished his embarrassed flush.

  His shoulders jerked. "Might be. And some hair ribbons for Christmas. Before I headed back to the ranch last winter. Ain't got credit here. I'll buy you whatever you like."

  The proprietress arrived in time to overhear the operative words. Her smile was instantly brilliant. All for show, like her merchandise. "Well, in that case, madam will want to look at—" She took in Sparkle's faded blue gingham and torn stockings and seemed to grapple with herself to refrain from saying everything. "My newest evening gowns and corsets."

  Rafe followed the dressmaker to a long rack of dresses. "We need somethin' real flashy. Got one to match her eyes? I'm partial to the color of my wife's eyes."

  "I don't wonder," the woman answered, patting her spill of plump ebony sausage curls. "Yes. I know just the dress."

  She disappeared into the back and re-emerged displaying a long gown of pale cream silk. The hemline shimmered with several inches of intricate beadwork, iridescent wonders of various sizes, all in shades of turquoise and teal.

  The dress was fabulous. Sparkle hated it on sight.

  "We'll take it," Rafe announced.

  "Darling, I haven't tried it on yet," Sparkle countered.

  The dressmaker gathered up underthings, silk stockings, and a turquoise silk shawl. "Come right back here."

  Sparkle appeared a few moments later to pirouette for Rafe. She looked like a first-rate trollop. "We'll take what she's got on and these, too," he stated, handing the shop owner a pair of rhinestone earbobs. The woman was only too pleased to wrap everything up when Rafe produced a wad of folded bills.

  Samson Parker was waiting at the bar when they returned to the saloon. Rafe brought him up to the panel crib and discussed the plan in detail. Parker and Driscoll had tracked their quarry from Colorado into Kansas. He was holed up somewhere on the outskirts of town, and had been for at least three weeks. Knowing his penchant for saloons and whores, it stood to reason he'd be making an appearance on Front Street sooner or later. Sooner, once word got out about Sparkle LaFleur's debut.

  "There's one problem with the plan," she mused. "I don't have a tarot deck. I left my good deck back at the Scarlet Lady, and those idiots lost or stole my bag with the spare when they drugged me."

  Rafe nodded and left the room. Sam looked at Sparkle, his warm, al
most-black eyes kind. "My friend Conley's heart is glad, for you are with him. This is good for my spirit, too. You belong at his side, Conley's woman."

  Sparkle knew her cheeks were beet red. It was hard not to think of herself beneath Rafe rather than beside him. "Thank you, Samson. It' nice to see you again."

  Rafe was back already. "Hey, Tolover's gettin' us a tarot deck."

  "He can get tarot cards just like that?" Sparkle asked dubiously, snapping her fingers.

  Rafe grinned. "Everett G. Tolover can get most anything just like that. He knows some old spinster who has a deck of tarot cards."

  It was good shuffling them again, Sparkle reflected as she perched atop a stool in the gaming parlor dressed in her finery. Rafe was playing poker; Sam was at a faro table near the swinging doors. Tolover's attitude toward Indians was liberal, unlike Frazer's. There were at least two other men in the Bold Adventuress at that moment who might have been half-breeds, and Sparkle noticed an Indian dressed in buckskins had been at a poker table the whole day. She'd seen him when she returned from the shopping trip.

  She had another customer. She'd already given a dozen readings, and it wasn't yet ten o'clock. A barker on the porch made certain the menfolk along Front Street heard about the saloon's newest addition,. Sparkle wasn't only a novelty as a fortune teller, she was also the only female on public display. Tolover's customers weren't missing a chance to ogle a fancy woman for free.

  Rafe caught her eye as she was laughing with a customer and purposely gave her a disagreeable frown. Sparkle suppressed the urge to poke her tongue out in response. Rafe told her to pretend he was just another drifter. She wasn't to call him by name or acknowledge him. He wasn't supposed to know her. But he watched her constantly during the long evening.

  The outlaw never showed.

  When Sparkle reached the panel crib at two in the morning, Rafe was fully dressed and standing at the windows. Sparkle cleared her throat. "Mr. Tolover thinks it may take another night or two for word about me to draw your man."

  Rafe turned, barely glancing her way. "Reckon I should check on how Snatch is gettin' by, maybe have a few words with Sam and a drink with Tolover. No need to wait up."

  She began the arduous and irksome process of stripping off her finery, layer by irritating layer. He might at least have offered to help before rushing off, she thought with dismay. His manner struck her as peculiar, but she'd never been around him while he was working. Maybe he was always to intense while he tracked someone. All the more reason to dislike his profession. At the Scarlet Lady he'd been eager to be alone with her, grinning, laid back. Just now, he'd left without a hint of a smile or even kissing her.

  "Fine," she said aloud. "Let him go kiss his damned horse."

  She crawled into the big bed, too aware of being alone in a rotten hellhole of a town. Dodge City. Despicable. Where else would a whore who weighed almost four hundred pounds have a steady stream of visitors? Where else would the bardog stand proudly before such a lurid mural? Dodge was one step shy of the Barbary Coast, which in turn was one small foothold shy of Hades itself. A woman working saloons in Dodge City was definitely on the decline.

  Sparkle wasn't about to linger here for days on end, not even for a thousand dollars. She'd give Rafe two more days, then she had to get home. Majesta knew to write Sparkle care of the Scarlet Lady if there was ever a problem with Jace, but what would Majesta think if the letter came back? If no one knew what had become of Sparkle LaFleur after her disappearance that day?

  Rafe didn't seem to understand about her situation. She'd tried to tell him her brother depended on her. And poor Jace. She'd given another man the gift she'd saved so long for him. Would he understand and forgive her that? He was the most generous, patient soul Sparkle had ever known. He might understand she'd become trapped in her own lie and succumbed to Rafe's charisma. But he'd never forgive this—posing as a doxy, deliberately luring an outlaw into a trap that could well mean his death.

  She tossed and turned, fuming to discover she had such difficulty falling asleep without Rafe beside her. How long did it take to have a drink and check on a horse? How long had it taken to her to become this pathetic, wanton woman? Mooning over a scarred gun for hire, who obviously preferred drinking with his chums or patting his horse's rump to caressing hers. To hell with the outlaw and the money. Tomorrow she'd either kill Rafe or head for the train depot.

  * * *

  She opened her eyes and struggled to sit up. The sheets were tangled around her lower legs. Daylight streamed through a crack in the thick curtains. Morning. Beside her was a big empty space and an abandoned pillow.

  "Damn that man! I'll kill him," she reaffirmed, gnashing her teeth as she worked her toes through the tangled bedclothes to the floor. "Leaving me here alone all night. Probably found himself a skinnier Alice."

  "Like hell."

  She gasped and spun to her right. Her heart caught in her throat. Rafe was seated in the Victorian chair, wearing a crisp white shirt, fresh denims, and his new boots. He'd obviously just visited a barber. "You cut your hair," she noted.

  "You talk to yourself." A booted ankle crossed over to rest atop his opposite knee. "How were you figurin' on murderin' me?" he asked in a conversational tone. "With your little pig sticker, or you got a notion to try firin' my peacemaker? It's on the bedside table there."

  She felt her cheeks flame. "I'm sorry. I didn't hear you come back last night. If it was last night."

  His grin nearly split his face in half. "Oh, it was. Locomotive could've pulled through here and you wouldn't have heard it. Wasn't gone but a couple hours. Came back and you were dead asleep. By the way, you snore, darlin'."

  "I do not!"

  He chuckled and rubbed his stomach. She crossed to the washstand, determined to ignore him. She began washing her face quickly, scrunching her features and groping blindly for a towel. Intent on the burning pain of soap suddenly in her left eye, she was oblivious to the water trickling from her arms or that a droplet had coursed down one breast.

  "Here, let me get that," came a husky whisper directly in front of her. So close, she started at the sound. She hadn't heard his boots on the flooring. She wasn't sure she liked the idea of Rafe sneaking up on her that way, or as he had last night.

  She opened both eyes to find him kneeling, the tip of his tongue almost touching a droplet poised to fall from her stiffening right nipple. As they both watched, the nipple stood out, brazenly begging. Rafe's hands cupped her buttocks and pulled Sparkle closer. She thought she'd faint when his tongue finally swirled over the hot point of her breast, aching with need. Her head dropped back and she whispered his name.

  "Damn, you're so pert and tasty, Sparkle," he whispered, tongue laving from the nipple all along the underside of her breast to her ribcage. "Just got to kiss you. Sorry I didn't wake you up last night. Thought about it. Drank half a bottle of bourbon when I came up here, lyin' beside you. Couldn't get to sleep for an hour thinkin' about kissin' these beauties."

  She moaned as his fingers gouged into her buttocks—lifting, encouraging her to open herself as he pulled her pelvis even closer. His tongue probed her navel and trailed lower. She whimpered, pushing at his shoulders. She tried to back away as he neared her feminine curls. "Rafe, this is unseemly. Please don't."

  He wouldn't release her. "It's natural, darlin'. Don't fight it."

  She watched him draw her forward, closer and closer to his smooth, freshly shaven jaw and chin. She gasped at the contact when his tongue finally brushed her most intimate place. His lips followed, beginning a slow suction. Sparkle's breasts instantly went on the warpath, jealous creatures that they were. She grabbed the empty towel bar on the washstand as a fiery battle heated up between her upper torso and lower hemispheres. All of her wanted Rafe. Now.

  He buried his face and attacked her like a ripe watermelon. He mumbled words of encouragement as she ground her hips against his chin. He lapped and slowly sucked at the gush of feminine moisture, driving her
into a frenzy. Her breasts ached, screamed for his soft, masterful mouth and those callused fingers. Ached, needing him, but there was only so much of Rafe to go around. Just then he was busy elsewhere…

  "Rafe, please! Stop this. I can't stand it."

  He rose and drew her with him to the bed. "Sorry, but I'm just startin', honey. You don't know what you taste like. Heaven, I swear." His hands moved at last to cup her swollen breasts as he bent to kiss her mouth again. She detected an unfamiliar saltiness on his tongue. Herself? Truly, she'd gone straight to Hell.

  His clean clothes were soon lying in a forgotten heap on the floor. Rafe stretched out on his side. Sparkle lay beside him, savoring the smell of the barber's soap on his skin. She started to wrap her arms around Rafe's neck, but he stopped her.

  "Want to go at somethin' else first. Other way round." He twirled his index finger in mid-air.

  Sparkle blinked. He repeated the gesture. "There's still plenty left to teach you, darlin'. Reckon you'll want all the love lessons before you kill me. I would. Lie back this way."

  "Rafe, I promise I won't try to murder you. Just kiss me and—"

  "I'll kiss you senseless, and I promise you'll thank me later. Come on, now." He pressed her shoulders back, twisting her around so her head was near his hips on the mattress. "Dawnin' on you how it works?"

  Something was beginning to, Sparkle realized with utter dismay. She must have had a prurient mind all along, for Rafe wasn't having much trouble getting her imagination going. Still, she was certain he couldn't mean what he seemed to be implying. He couldn't be suggesting that.

  She glanced at his face with an unspoken question in her eyes. He nodded and slowly licked his lips.

  Oh, God! Both their mouths pleasuring at the same time?

  "Rafe, what you want must be a sin to Moses," she gasped.

  "Moses can have any sins he wants, mine or anybody else's," Rafe scoffed good naturedly. "Learned a long time ago never to argue with whores about what feels good." He bent to kiss the button of pink flesh peeping through her dark curls, letting his tongue flick over the stiff nub. Sparkle nearly came off the mattress at the jolt of sheer ecstasy. "And it does feel good, huh?"