She supposed it could be much worse. He could have taken advantage of her while she was drunk.
She pressed at her throbbing temples.
“Feelin’ that whiskey?” he asked.
She nodded.
“They say the best thing is hair o’ the dog, but in your case, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”
Catalina shuddered. She did not want to eat dog hair. Besides, it was not the first time she’d been drunk. Once she had something normal to eat, she’d be fine.
“Who were those men?” she asked. Her voice came out on a croak.
“Just a local rancher and his lapdog,” he said.
She frowned. She hadn’t heard a dog. “What did they want?”
“It was a case of mistaken identity and a misunderstandin’. I think they were lookin’ for Chase. Lots o’ folks mistake me for my brother. We’re twins.”
“Twins?”
“Yep, identical. At least that’s what they say. But I can tell us apart. So can he.” He gave her a wink.
She couldn’t help but grin at his absurd logic.
“There’s that beautiful smile,” he said.
Of course, that made her smile even more.
He was not such bad company, she decided. In fact, a part of her wished he could stay. They could have someone bring them breakfast in bed, and they could spend a leisurely morning, chatting over coffee.
But he must have places to go, and she had things to do.
“Do you know the time?” she asked.
He pulled the pocket watch out of the vest he’d dropped on the floor. “Quarter past eight.”
“Ahime!” She had to get to work. She started to spring from the bed, but was suddenly self-conscious about her lack of attire.
“I’ll go first,” he offered, “and leave you to your ablutions.”
He pulled on his trousers and a clean white shirt from his satchel, slipped on his vest, shoved his feet into his boots, strapped on his gun, and slung his duster over one shoulder.
“This place serve breakfast?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Would you like me to bring you some?” he asked.
For one dreamy moment, she absolutely did want him to bring her breakfast. In Italy, the maid always brought her a cappuccino and a cornetto. But she was no longer in Italy. She had to fend for herself. Not only that, but it was usually her job to serve coffee and biscuits to the ladies of The Parlor upstairs.
Still, it was a kind gesture. “Thank you, but no. I must begin my work.”
“All right, pretty lady. Thank you kindly for the company.” He grabbed his hat off of the rack. He hesitated at the door. “Promise me you’ll think about another line o’ work. Not all men are as gentlemanly as me. A fine woman like you deserves a better life.”
Her heart softened at his words. But before she could thank him, he slipped out the door to go down to breakfast.
She hurried into her petticoat and laced up her boots. Then she looked in the mirror. Her hair was a mess. Seizing her hairbrush, she untangled it as best she could, then wound it into a loose bun on top of her head. She splashed water on her face from the basin. Then she slipped her dress on carefully over her head and topped it with a fresh apron.
She glanced at the bed. It should be made before she left the room. As she smoothed the sheets and fluffed the pillows, she couldn’t help but notice that his side of the mattress was still warm. She held his pillow up to her face. It smelled like him. She couldn’t say how. He didn’t wear perfume like her brothers. But there was some masculine scent, like leather and vanilla and sweet smoke, lingering on the linen.
She hugged the pillow to her breast. His words haunted her. You deserve a better life. She’d had a better life in Italy, at least when one measured life in wealth and comfort.
And it seemed mad to her that she’d just earned twenty dollars for enjoying a man’s company when she was about to scrub and toil all day today for a mere dollar.
But perhaps Drew was right. Perhaps she should not work in such a place.
She tossed the pillow back onto the bed. Then, straightening her shoulders, she went into the hall.
There was the usual flurry of morning activity as the gentlemen callers began to leave the ladies’ rooms. But there was a knot of prostitutes at one end of the hall, scowling and whispering behind their hands, glancing up at her.
She sighed. She should be used to their hatred by now. But it was still annoying.
“Is it true?” Anne asked, rushing up and grabbing her elbow.
“What?”
“Did you have a gentleman caller last night?”
Catalina frowned. Anne was right. Rumors flew more swiftly than swifts around The Parlor. “It was not like that.”
Emily sidled up beside her, her eyes dancing. “Like what? What did I miss?”
Anne replied, “Catalina had her first gentleman caller.”
Emily’s smile froze on her face.
Anne continued. “Are you all right, Catalina? Did he hurt you? I swear to god, if he hurt you—”
“He did not hurt me.”
Anne and Emily exchanged baffled glances.
Emily cleared her throat. “Have you ever…was this your first…what exactly…”
Anne wasted no words. “Were you a virgin?”
Catalina’s eyes went round. “Of course. How can you ask me such a thing?”
“And you’re sure he didn’t hurt you?” Anne asked. “You can tell me, Catalina. He didn’t make you do anything…untoward?”
“No. He just wanted to sleep.”
Emily cocked her head. “Sleep?”
Anne looked both ways for eavesdroppers and whispered, “Because I heard he offered you twenty dollars. Nobody—”
“Twenty dollars!” Emily exclaimed, silencing everyone in The Parlor.
Catalina closed her eyes, completely humiliated.
“That’s right, girls,” Miss Hattie announced as she came ambling down the hallway. “You better keep on your toes, or our sweet Miss Catalina will steal all your regulars.”
It was the worst thing she could have said. Most of the ladies hated Catalina already. Now they would be even more envious.
She heard cat-eyed Amanda mutter under her breath, “She musta done somethin’ real nasty for that kind o’ cash.”
The ladies around her agreed.
“Don’t pay ’em any mind,” Emily told her. “They’re just jealous.”
Anne asked shyly, “Did you do somethin’ nasty?”
“No!” she hissed. Then, fed up with the lot of them, she squared her shoulders, picked up her skirts, and went downstairs to start the day’s work.
Sitting at breakfast with the other men in the salon, Drew had gone quiet. He stared down at his coffee. He hadn’t meant to embarrass Cat. But he was sure she was embarrassed. He could tell by the way she stomped down the stairs and took off for the kitchen with a scowl.
Did everyone know how much he’d paid for her? If they didn’t before, they did now. Why had the madam spilled the beans?
The men beside him started talking. And pretty quickly, he learned what Miss Hattie was up to.
The man with the long-handled mustache shook his head. “Twenty dollars. What man in his right mind pays a hooker in this cow town twenty dollars? I mean, she’s a pretty thing, sure, but…” He rubbed his whiskers. “For that much gold, she must do somethin’ awful special.”
Drew tensed his jaw.
The man across from him puffed on his cigar. “Maybe she’s one o’ them Frenchies. Or maybe she lets you do her in the caboose.”
Drew took the last swig of coffee, grinding the grounds between his teeth.
The mustached man said, “For twenty dollars, she’d have to spit-shine my nuts and swallow my wad.”
“Maybe she does.” The cigar man let out a raunchy chuckle.
“Damn!” The man stroked his mustache in speculation. “You think so?”
; “Do you mind?” Drew finally bit out.
The two men glared at him and then exchanged an annoyed look.
The man shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth. “What’s got your chaps in a bunch?”
“Nothin’. It just ain’t proper conversation.”
“Proper conversation?” The cigar man laughed. “You know we’re in a brothel, right?”
“Hey,” the mustached man said. “You’re him, ain’t you? You’re the one who paid the twenty dollars.”
There was no point in denying it. “That’s right.”
“Holy shit.” The man took the cigar out of his mouth and leaned forward in confidence. “So what’d she do for you? Was she worth it?”
“Nothin’.” Drew set his coffee cup on the table. “And every penny.”
“Nothin’? What do you mean, nothin’?” asked the mustached man.
“I just paid to be in the room with her.” He added, “You want any more than that, it’ll cost you fifty.” Somehow, the lie just rolled off his tongue like butter.
“Fifty!” boomed the cigar man.
“In fact,” Drew added, “she won’t even let you leave the lights on unless you give her a hundred.”
“What?”
“Jiminy Christmas.”
That was an out-and-out fabrication. But Drew couldn’t stand the idea of either of these foul-mouthed sons of bitches going up to Cat’s room.
In fact, he didn’t want anyone going up to Cat’s room.
It wasn’t like he was sweet on her or anything. He just didn’t think she should have her virginity taken from her by a random stranger.
How he was going to prevent that, he didn’t know. But for the time being, he’d stay in the salon and try to shoo away any interested parties.
It was just as well. He didn’t really have anywhere to go. He had to wait for Chase to return from whatever misadventure he’d had. Besides, there was a storm brewing outside. He didn’t much feel like getting soaked. He hoped his brother had the sense to get out of the rain.
Eventually, he asked the madam for a poker deck and started up a game of five-card draw.
Even after three hours, the gossip in The Parlor persisted. And like a flaming carriage hooked up to a runaway horse, it spread to the entire town. Men kept coming out of the rain and into the salon, wondering where the twenty-dollar fancy woman was.
The madam wasn’t quite as ruthless as Drew had first thought. She didn’t mean to sell off Catalina to the highest bidder. But she was clever. Whenever the men would ask after the twenty-dollar hooker, she told them Catalina was all booked up, but they could have one of the other girls for just ten dollars. Drew was pretty sure the prevailing rate in a town like Paradise was no more than two or three dollars. Miss Hattie was making a killing on her fishing scheme, using Cat as bait.
But he didn’t expect she’d protect Catalina all day. As soon as Cat finished her chores, Drew was sure the madam would find a gentleman caller for her to entertain for the evening.
That thought left a sour taste in his mouth.
In fact, it affected his poker playing.
He’d lost the last three hands. If he didn’t start paying more attention to the game, he’d end up broke, with no place to sleep for the night.
He didn’t see Catalina all day, but it didn’t surprise him that she’d lie low for a while. He hoped she’d take his advice to heart and change her mind about joining the ranks of Miss Hattie’s sporting girls.
Of course, the fact that he’d paid so much for her last night didn’t help matters. She might have gotten the notion this was an easy way to make a quick fortune.
He knew otherwise. The ladies who worked in the trade were sometimes mistreated by drunks, ended up in the family way, and were put out to pasture when they lost their looks.
What the hell! Had he just thrown away three of a kind?
He watched as the man across from him happily scraped Drew’s money into his pile.
He had to concentrate. It didn’t look like Chase was coming back any time soon, so Drew might have to fend for himself. It was time to stop daydreaming about that pretty Italian lady and start winning his room for the night.
Chapter 11
“Shut up!” Sheriff Jasper Brown snapped at Harvey as they rode away from the Hupa village. He was trying to think, and his son’s yammering wasn’t helping.
At first, they’d gotten nothing out of the Injuns. He wasn’t surprised. He expected they stuck together like flies on a bloody carcass.
But then he glimpsed the white woman. At least, he thought she was white. She was decked out in the same deerskin and beads as the rest of the squaws. But there were strands of blonde hair among the gray, and she had light-colored eyes.
When he asked the chiefs about her, they claimed her name was Mati and that she and her husband, Sakote, had come to them years ago from the Konkow people.
He’d never seen an Injun with pale eyes and fair hair. So he interrogated her.
It turned out if she had been white, she’d been taken by Injuns so long ago she could hardly remember how to speak English. She answered him in broken sentences with her husband glowering on. She must have been damaged in more ways than one. The pitiful woman couldn’t seem to remember anything about her folks or where she’d come from.
Jasper shook his head. If a daughter of his had been kidnapped by Injuns, he’d hope she’d have the sense to kill herself.
He asked to see the woman’s children. She brought them out. They ranged from fully-grown young squaws to boys who still clung to her skirts. None of them were the poker player.
But now that the sheriff had time to think, he realized the woman just might have an older son who no longer lived in Hupa.
The chiefs had said her husband was originally a member of the Konkow tribe. Most of the natives of that area had been rounded up and marched to Round Valley twenty years ago. If the gambling half-breed knew the law was on his tail and needed to hide out somewhere, his father’s reservation was a likely place to go.
It was a good week’s ride to Round Valley. It was an even longer trip for the half-breed, traveling on foot. Jasper might be able to catch his quarry before he ever got there. He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and picked up the pace.
“Come on, boys,” he said. “We’re headin’ south.”
Catalina had finally convinced Anne and Emily that she hadn’t had relations with Drew Hawk. But persuading them wasn’t easy, especially once they got a look at him. They couldn’t believe a man so young and handsome and virile wouldn’t be interested in sex.
She said he’d been interested, but promised he wouldn’t touch her.
They arched their brows at her, telling her without words what they thought of men’s promises.
After her humiliation this morning, she avoided the salon. She didn’t want men staring at her as if she were a two-headed calf. But she couldn’t go outdoors. It was raining heavily. So instead, she spent most of the day working in her room.
Jenny, who’d spilled wine one too many times, was relieved of her duties by Miss Hattie. But since the girl was desperate for work, she pleaded with the madam to let her stay on. She planned to try her luck at entertaining gentlemen like the rest of the ladies.
So Catalina was tasked with altering Jenny’s yellow silk dress to make it more revealing, more enticing.
Though the work was slow without a sewing machine, it kept her engaged. She salvaged some violet ribbon from one of Miss Hattie’s old frocks. This she tacked onto the inside and outside of Jenny’s dress in two places so the ruffles could be gathered up and tied in front to reveal her knees. Then she lowered the neckline, sewing a rose crafted of more violet ribbon at the spot between her breasts. She cut off the sleeves at the shoulder and used the extra fabric to make a double flounce, which she attached as a bustle to the back of the dress. Then she sewed the buttons from the sleeves in a cluster onto the last piece of violet ribbon that Jenny could
tie around her neck as a choker.
By the time she was done, most of the daylight was gone. But she was happy with the results. Jenny would be the prettiest of the painted ladies.
Someone knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
It was Emily. “He’s still here. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Who?”
“Your gentleman caller.”
A silly rush of joy flooded her veins. Drew was still here? Then she frowned. “He’s not my gentleman caller.”
“What if he asks for you again tonight?”
Again, her foolish heart leaped at the thought. “He will not.”
“Why else would he still be here?”
“He will go with Mary or Amanda or…or you.”
“Me?”
Even as she said it, the thought crushed Catalina.
It shouldn’t. It wasn’t as if Mr. Hawk belonged to her. Why would he ask for her again when he’d had no satisfaction from her last night?
Emily shook her head. “Naw, I think he wants you again.”
She found herself hoping Emily was right. It would break her heart to see him go upstairs with one of the other girls.
And yet she knew that was ridiculous. She hadn’t known Drew long enough to give him her heart in the first place.
“What if he offers you another twenty dollars?” Emily asked, her eyes gleaming.
“He will not.” She smirked. She doubted he had another twenty dollars. And if he did, he certainly wouldn’t waste it. He hadn’t gotten his money’s worth last night, and he knew it.
“Well, what else is he gonna spend his winnin’s on?”
“His winnings?”
“He’s been playing five-card draw for the last several hours. Last time I looked, he was up seventeen dollars.”
Another knock came on the door.
“Come in,” both of them called.
It was Anne. “He’s still down there.”
Emily said, “She knows. I told her.”
“Did you tell her he was winnin’?”
Native Hawk (California Legends Book 3) Page 8
