Darling Annie

by Raine Cantrell

  Darling Annie

  Raine Cantrell

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1004

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1994 by Theresa DiBenedetto

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com.

  First Diversion Books edition October 2013

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-157-7

  Also by Raine Cantrell

  The Homecoming

  Wildflower

  Silver Mist

  Western Winds

  Desert Sunrise

  Calico

  Tarnished Hearts

  Whisper My Name

  To my editor, Jennifer Enderlin, for all the right reasons, this one is for you.

  Chapter 1

  He was only a man, Annie Muldoon reminded herself. One of those mysterious, sinful creatures that were the bane of any woman who considered herself sensible and independent.

  There was no logical reason for her knees to be knocking together. She was not a young, simpering ninny, even if Mr. Kellian York had the looks to make her behave like one. But as she repeated this admonishment to herself, Annie wiped her damp palms against the cotton wrapper she had hurriedly flung over her nightgown when shouts of fire erupted hours ago.

  She did have the excuse that Loving, Texas, had never seen his like before. Leanly built, he had a dangerous air about him. Peering between the lace curtains of her bedroom windows, she stared down the street and saw Kellian York fling a last bucket of water on the smoldering ruin of the Silken Aces.

  And good riddance! But her joy was short-lived. She frowned with fierce concentration. He flung his head back and was looking directly toward her boardinghouse.

  He couldn’t be … he wouldn’t dare…

  “York, this here’s a hangin’ offense. Ain’t I right, boys?”

  Kellian York did not answer Denley Wallace, who owned the biggest ranch to the west of Loving. His gaze raked the smoldering ruin that was all he had left of his unwanted inheritance from his brother, Kyle. He ignored the angry mutterings of the crowd around him and took his gunbelt from his Chinese houseman, Chang Li. Kell knew who was responsible for the fire that had destroyed the Silken Aces. He considered letting the lynch mob talk carry the men around him into action against the witch who had caused this.

  But if the fire was reduced to smoldering, his plans for Annie Muldoon were not.

  Plans that included a long, slow, exacting revenge for the hell she had put him through in the forty-eight hours he’d spent in Loving. Well, he amended in his thoughts, she had at least been directly involved in all of his hell, if not physically present.

  He wiped the grimy sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. Kell hated being dirty. Almost as much as he hated being broke. He reeked of smoke, but a glance showed that Li had the strongbox tucked under his arm.

  Muted colors chased the gray from the sky. Angry mutterings changed to ugly. Kell couldn’t stop them. He couldn’t blame them. These men and others were going to be denied their pleasures because of the fire.

  That was a sin.

  Not the pleasures themselves that spinster Muldoon and her gaggle of do-gooders preached against.

  “You gonna do something about this, Kell?”

  He should have known that Laine would be the first of the doves to demand an answer. Kell settled his gunbelt lower on his hips and faced his brother’s lover. Whiskey-warm eyes and a body that had a man thinking of mussed sheets and hot sex made Laine one of the highest-paid daughters of joy in the county. But he didn’t forget how vocal Laine had been about the dirty low-down trick his brother Kyle had played by not leaving her the Silken Aces. She was the one who had suggested using the upstairs rooms. She had found the doves for him.

  But Kyle was dead and Kell took exception to her thinking. He was the one the trick had been played upon.

  His gaze skimmed the other doves. Ruby and Charity, both chestnut-headed twenty-year-olds, stood off to one side being consoled by three cowhands. Their hair color and ages were the only things alike about them. Charity was short, plump, and still managed to keep a wide-eyed innocence despite her five years’ work. Ruby, willow slender, returned a hard, brittle stare from eyes that had seen it all and didn’t hide it.

  Daisy, with long-fingered hands that could make a deck of cards play out five winning hands time and again, huddled with Blossom, the youngest of the doves, and Cammy, whose mournful voice sent a man to the bottle. The three of them stood barefoot in the churned mud of the street.

  All the doves were as bedraggled a lot of females as he had ever set his smoke-stung eyes upon. And in his years of drifting he had seen plenty. He owed each one of them a debt for fighting the fire alongside the men to prevent its spreading to the other wooden buildings in town. From the bundles each one clutched, he surmised they had been able to save their scant possessions.

  “Well, Kell, what are you gonna do?” Laine repeated. She heard her question echoed by the others.

  Kell glanced from face to face. He met the scowl of Pockets, the piano player. Pockets wasn’t grinning around the stubby end of the habitual cigar he chewed.

  They were waiting for his answer. Kell cursed his dead brother under his breath. They were all his responsibilities now, and his first order was to find them housing. Six daughters of joy (even if right now they looked anything but), Pockets, Bronc the barkeep, Chang Li, and himself.

  A loser’s hand. Cutting his losses and moving on was ingrained after years of drifting. But he owed Kyle. For Kell it was an unconscionable burden for a man who prided himself on being free of encumbrances. And liking it just fine that way.

  The sun rose and formed a halo around the neat two-story frame house at the opposite end of the street. Kell stared. The Muldoon Cozy Rest boardinghouse had rooms, hot water, and food. Lots of empty rooms, since the railroad had passed over the town to build its line east.

  “Kell?” Laine ventured to ask once more, touching his rigid, muscled forearm.

  Kell didn’t answer. He shook off her hand and took his proffered flat-crowned black hat from Li. With a purposeful stride he started down the middle of the street. Li herded the doves in line behind him, his voice softly promising hot baths, food, and rest. Cowhands and townsmen alike trailed along.

  “Gonna stop an’ get a new rope, York?” someone called out as they marched passed Herman Lockwood’s mercantile.

  Kell shook his head. “Hangin’s too good and way too fast for that starched string of bones daring to call herself a woman.”

  Way too good and way too easy, he repeated to himself. He wanted to see Muldoon reduced to her knees, learning about humility and true charity all the way down. The creature had no compassion, no tolerance for anyone who did not conform to her rigid standard of behavior.

  He wasn’t a man to advocate using violence against women. He was tempted to, sorely tempted, but he wouldn’t do it even if he had just cause. Women, to his way of thinking, were one of the Lord’s given pleasures to man. He couldn’t hang a woman, but he wasn’t about to let her get away with this.

  Kell strode up the three wide steps leading to the front porch of the boardinghouse. He set himself to kick in the door, since he ha
d been forbidden to enter its sacrosanct walls.

  “Always open,” Pockets warned from behind.

  Kell shoved the door open with a bang, striving to hold on to his temper. Two overstuffed chairs were in the corner, and the counter, with its neat pigeonhole board behind it, was empty of the dragon he had first encountered. The small lobby offered no clue that anyone was around, but he knew better.

  “Muldoon!” he bellowed, heading straight across the polished hardwood floor to the stairs. He knew which front room belonged to her. He had seen her up there when he had arrived on the stage, peeking out of her window like a timid mouse. She’d still been up there watching when he left after being refused a room by that old harridan aunt of hers.

  But she wasn’t going to have a chance to refuse him again.

  Once before he had walked away. Just once he had given in to the urge to settle down and buy himself a saloon. He had even considered getting married. But when a traveling preacher whipped up a frenzy against the sins of drinking and gambling, a group of overzealous women wrecked his business and stole his money box. Never again, he swore.

  “Muldoon!” he shouted again, taking the steps three at a time easily with his long legs. His boots hit the wood with the force of his anger, which threatened to explode.

  Never again was any woman going to dictate to him. He didn’t believe drinking, gambling, and bedding a willing woman were sinful. They weren’t even vices. Only a dried-up prune of a spinster like Muldoon would think about denying a man an honest card game, some cheap, warm whiskey, and the same kind of woman.

  And Annie Muldoon, the ringleader of the prim, starched, corset contingent, not only spoke out about denying a man his pleasures, she had destroyed them.

  The upstairs hallway was narrow and dark. But the right front comer held the room he wanted. Kell stood before the door, huffing and puffing. He didn’t bother to knock, he yanked and twisted the doorknob. He was not surprised to find it locked, but he gave it one last angry twist. Stepping back, he braced himself against the wall.

  “Open the damned door, Muldoon!” he yelled. “Open it or I’ll kick it open.” Kell positioned himself to do just that.

  Three was about as high as he could control himself to count. Not a sound reached him. Despite his exhaustion, every gambler’s instinct told him she was cowering inside.

  The stout door resisted his first try to the shouted count of one from everyone in the hall. Kell shot a look at Li, for even he had joined in. With his second kick, accompanied by more yelled encouragement, the wood splintered. The door flew open with a crash on Kell’s third attempt.

  Cheers erupted.

  Kell lurched forward, then stopped.

  There was a blasted horse pistol aimed at him

  His fists braced him in the doorframe, blocking the view of those crowding and pushing him from behind.

  With disbelief, he registered the fact that the nightgown-clad woman, trembling so badly that the old pistol she aimed wavered between the juncture of his thighs and his belly, was not Annie Muldoon.

  But she was as good to look at as having an ace high flush dealt to him after a losing streak at the poker table.

  “Where’s Muldoon?” he demanded.

  Annie was too frightened to realize that he didn’t immediately recognize her. His grimy, overwhelmingly male presence in her virginal room, where no man had ever been, was enough of a shock for her to deal with. She watched his wintry sage-green eyes search every corner before returning to pin her in place. Kellian York looked dangerous. Fury poured from his body and invaded her room. He took a step toward her and Annie forced herself to raise the pistol. She wasn’t sure if it was legal to shoot a man who trespassed into her room. But she’d worry about that later. Right now, she could barely press her knees together to keep standing there and not reveal how frightened she was of him.

  Kell tipped his hat back. Softly then, so as not to alarm her, he called to Li. “Privacy.” He didn’t wait to see if his houseman accomplished his order, he knew it would be done in a matter of minutes. Kell stepped further into the room and closed the door behind him. He ignored the rusty little squeak of protest.

  “Darlin’, there’s no need to hold that weapon on me. All I want from you is to know where that spit-starched prune of a spinster is.”

  Annie couldn’t swallow, much less answer him. Shock doubled and redoubled. He didn’t know who she was! She managed to motion him back with the gun. Call her spit-starched and a prune, would he? Is that what he thought, after she had made gallons of coffee and supplied her fried apple dumplings to all the men fighting the fire? The ungrateful lout! Her rounded chin hitched up and she steadied the pistol in her hands.

  She had been horrified and bewildered by the fire that destroyed his place. She knew she didn’t set it and was certain her small group of women would never resort to violence of any kind.

  “Well? Just tell me where she is. Nothing between hell and heaven is gonna protect her from me.” Kell scowled at her. He was tired, he wasn’t thinking straight, but he didn’t think he had seen this woman around in the past two days.

  With a rough shake of his head, he became sure of it. He would have noticed and remembered her hair if nothing else. Bright as new copper sprinkled with exotic spices, two braids fell below her hips. Eyes, wide and dark, so heavily fringed with long lashes it was a wonder she could keep them open, were locked on his. And that mouth. It was downright indecent. A sugar-soft mouth with a lush bottom lip that was scored by the edge of her teeth. A deep, unholy suspicion began to form.

  “This is Muldoon’s room, isn’t it?”

  His question earned him the cocking of the pistol. Kell ignored it. If she had meant to use the damned old thing, she would have fired it by now. He took a step closer, then another.

  “S-stop right t-there. You’d b-better leave.”

  “Jus’ answer me, darlin’ an’ I will.” He wanted the wary look in her eyes gone. Those pretty white teeth digging into her lip were chasing the heat of his temper and quickly replacing it with heat of another kind.

  Her wrapper wasn’t closed tight enough. He could see the pristine white ruffles of her nightgown, which nearly matched the leaching color of her skin. She wasn’t tall; her head would barely reach his chin. He glanced down. Her bare toes curled into the worn carpet. There was something vulnerable about a woman’s bare feet. Or maybe, he amended, it was just hers.

  His forceful presence alarmed Annie, but the way his snapping green eyes were watching her now sent a deeper, more dangerous warning through her.

  At twenty-eight, Annie was resigned to her spinster state after having been abandoned at the altar ten years ago. She had grown up in Loving with her widowed mother and Aunt Hortense, but no one, not ever, had looked her over like a feast set before them. She cleared her throat and tried once more to get him to leave. Nothing came out but another squeaky sort of a sound.

  There were scuffling noises in the hallway, but Kell didn’t turn around. He knew Li would handle it. No one, but no one, would be allowed in here until he opened the door. Li excelled at protecting his back and ensuring his privacy. And right now Kell had other things on his mind. Things like stalking this snippy little female who wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t lower the pistol, and wouldn’t stop staring at him as if the devil himself had come to call.

  “Muldoon’s not getting away with what she did. She’ll pay and pay for destroying my property.” He glared at her, waited for a reaction, then snorted with disgust. “First she denied me a room. Then decent food. Those damn women of hers stopped every customer with their preaching. Lord spare us all from good women. And then there’s the wagonload of whiskey that went astray. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? Just tell me where she is and I’m out of here.”

  “G-go.”

  “No way.”

  Annie backed away from him. She knew everyone was aware of her soft spot when someone was in ne
ed. She didn’t know how to say no. The fault had shanghaied her into being the ringleader of the town’s women. They had banded together to close the saloon once Kyle York won it and brought those women in to sell their favors—a condition no decent woman could allow. But this man’s need to have revenge for imagined and real slights was not going to touch her. Not when she was his intended victim.

  Kellian York, with his thick, sun-streaked brown hair, slightly crooked nose, and mouth that did funny things to her insides was not going to touch her.

  Kell was losing it. “She set a fire, damn you! Tell me where she is.”

  Annie turned and found herself about to be cornered between the bed and the wall. A man like Kellian York would crush her without a thought. He blamed her for the fire that had burned down that cursed brothel of his. She was innocent, but he was in no mood to listen. She prayed nightly for his home-wrecking establishment to be closed. But never would she countenance endangering lives by setting a fire.

  She was the one in danger of being consumed by the wolf in her room. He had her cornered like a lamb in a pen.

  Annie shot a look at him over her shoulder. Before he could lunge and grab hold of her, she scrambled up onto the bed.

  Wrong move. The soft feather tick sank beneath her weight and threw her off balance.

  Kell was on her faster than a flea on a hound. He flattened her beneath him before she could right herself.

  Then he froze.

  Chapter 2

  First Kell became aware of the pistol she still held. It was pressed between them, with its thick butt end nestled below her breasts and its barrel aligned with his most vulnerable male part.

  His throat worked, and he finally swallowed the lump that rose. He held his breath for a few seconds, then release it, very slowly, careful not to alarm her by any sudden moves. But he was thankful that she didn’t know he was afraid to take another deep breath and find his voice level changed to a soprano’s high.