Jade's Dragon

by Maren Smith

  It was still raining. A steady plinking struck the windows, light and fragile compared to the heavier patter beating against the shingle roof. Both were overshadowed by the loud run of water streaming off a nearby corner and falling into puddles two stories below. She was too sleepy and comfortable to get up and check, but by now that puddle probably made up the entire width of the alley between her and the liquor store next door.

  It was Friday, Chin thought. Madame Jewel would need to be extra careful not to dip her skirt hem, wading through that swamp on her way to the bank. She might ought to wait a day, give the rain time to stop and the ground a chance to soak up the excess water, before making her usual deposits. Chin was half-tempted to say something over breakfast but she already knew, when it came to Madame Jewel and certain routines, saying something rarely did any good. She hadn’t worked the Red Petticoat as long as gems like Opal or Dottie, but the four months she had worked were plenty long enough to know Madame Jewel did so love her routines.

  But no… that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t the routines that she loved; it was the relationship those routines gave her with her girls that she loved. When it came to the gems’ weekly deposits, no matter what, she always made those deposits on time. Without exception. Including the very next Friday after the bandit Joaquin Murrieta and his outlaws robbed the city bank. While everyone else was contemplating the wisdom of burying their wealth in pots around their yards, Jewel put on her most madamely dress, propped her white-lace parasol on her shoulder, and strolled into the bank like it was any other Friday. She’d done it not because she wanted to guard their hard-earned money, but because she was guarding something much more valuable: The trust of her gems. That was what Jewel loved. In a profession where trust never came blind or easy, she loved being able to connect with her girls. She loved being the kind of woman that they could turn to, no matter what the problem. Madame Jewel would do anything for her gems, and everybody knew it.

  Even Chin. Except that she hadn’t turned to Madame Jewel for help, had she?

  That was when Chin remembered where she was. She was in the dragon’s bedroom and, in specific, in his bed. The eldest Drake’s bed. Cullen. That was why her bedroom had two windows now instead of one and a view of wet prairie grass and empty cattle corrals instead of bare plank-wood siding. That was why her dressing table was gone and a plain box of a clothes chest stood in its place. That was why the only fripperies atop it consisted of a wash bowl and pitcher, and men’s necessities. A razor, mixing bowl and brush, and a tin of shaving compound rested neatly to one side atop an old but clean lace doily. A well-used razor strop hung on a nail beside a small oval mirror. It was positioned so high on the wall she wouldn’t be able to see her forehead in it.

  Rising out of her nest of quilt and pillows, Chin propped herself up on her elbow and took full stock of the near-empty bedroom. It was grim and void of personality, as much as the eldest Drake himself. And yet, he had saved her life, springing from the darkness like Da-Yu, the river god, to wrest her from the flood.

  And then he’d spanked her, thinking her nothing more than a spoiled and uncooperative child. Child, of all things!

  Mouth tight and unsmiling, Chin rose to sit, but halfway up her bottom made contact with the goose-tick mattress and she froze, hissing as she reached back to explore all the still tender places. Last night, she’d tucked herself into this bed with a blazing inferno under her cotton shift. The fire might be gone now, but that wounded throbbing had returned, a pale echo of last night’s pain, but still very much felt. She winced as she rubbed.

  Oh, that man knew how to spank. Not that Chin was any kind of connoisseur in such matters, but one didn’t work her profession among the gwailo for long without collecting at least one deviant. And of course there was Gabe, who nursed a very particular methodology when it came to keeping both Jewel and her gems walking in line behind him. Not many Red Petticoat girls could boast of never finding themselves on the wrong side of Gabe’s dedication to discipline and order. Chin had landed there three times during her turn as “Jade”—two by hand and one by hairbrush. Gabe wielded one truly wicked hairbrush, but even those “morning after” effects paled in comparison to Cullen’s belt.

  Fortunately for her, she wasn’t staying here. All she had to do was get up, get dressed and get out. Then she would never have to see either Drake again. Except, perhaps, long enough to ask permission to recover her precious belongings… If they could be recovered. Considering the swift-running flood she’d lost them in, her family’s heirlooms might be buried in the mud two feet from where she’d dropped them or halfway to Mexico by now. Her great grandmother’s dancing dress. Her mother’s hat and hair combs, her face paints. And of course, the jade dragon the emperor had given her grandfather in recognition of his strategic abilities as Great Commander during the White Lotus Rebellion.

  Oh, the jade dragon. Chin blinked hard to keep back the tears. She couldn’t lose that. She couldn’t lose any of it! Not when they were all she had.

  That got Chin moving. She had to get her family’s heirlooms back. Today, if possible, and then she had to get out of here. Because the longer she delayed, the better Quan Ji’s chances of catching up with her again. He’d found her once. She had no doubt that he could—and would—find her again.

  Casting the quilt aside, she scrambled out of bed. Between the height of the mattress and the shortness of her legs, her drop to the floor was more than a foot. After that, she paid better attention to how quietly she moved as she gathered her clothes. Having spent the night hanging over the foot rail, her dress was still damp and still quite filthy, but her options were few. Her only change of clothes was wrapped around everything else she’d lost. Plus, now she had no horse. Or shoes. She couldn’t remember if she’d dropped them before or after that giant wall of water had swept into her, but it didn’t matter. While perfect for work at the Red Petticoat, those had been her mother’s best silk slippers. They wouldn’t last half a mile’s walk across a wild prairie. With them or without, how was she to walk all the way to San Francisco from here?

  As if she even knew where here was.

  Maybe she could borrow a horse. If she could find her bundle, she’d have the money to pay the Drake brothers. If not, she’d have to go all the way back to Culpepper Cove and the bank where, as soon as it was open, Jewel would be depositing all her earnings from this past week. It wouldn’t be a lot, but it would be better than nothing at all. Unless Quan Ji was still there, in which case, Culpepper was the last place she wanted to be.

  Her chest knotted, tightening harder and faster than Nettie cinching her into one of those wasp-waisted cancan corsets. Just the thought of running into Quan Ji was making it hard for her to breathe. She’d gotten away pretty easily last night. What chance did she have of that ever happening again?

  She shivered, already feeling those dead black eyes of his locking on her the way they had last night. No, if he caught up with her again, she would not get away easily at all. She had to get as much distance between her and Ji as possible, and she had to do it now while the weather was still too horrible for traveling.

  She didn’t have time to ask the Drakes for help and couldn’t afford it if they told her no. She was going to have to steal another horse.

  Jaw stubbornly set, Chin looked to the window and the barn beyond the empty cattle corrals. The sun was already up, not that she could see it behind the dark of the drizzling clouds. She couldn’t tell what time it was, but if the Drake brothers weren’t awake yet, they would be soon. She had to hurry.

  Painstakingly aware of each creaking floorboard, Chin washed up as best she could via the pitcher and basin. The top of her head barely came up as high as the lowest curve of that mirror. She had to arch onto tiptoes before she could be sure she didn’t have streaks of dirt on her face. For some reason, each time she arched up to steal another peek, she found herself staring at the strap hanging on the wall beside it instead. A strange prickling kept crawling
up the backs of her thighs and across the tender flesh of her bottom. Something that was only natural, she supposed, considering the thrashing Cullen had delivered last night. She supposed she didn’t have to worry about that, though, if she got caught today. Horse thieving wasn’t a spanking offense. At best it was one that could get her shot, and at worst, hanged.

  While last night’s bucket bath had washed off the worst of the mud, as meticulous as she had tried to be, she still found flecks of dirt and leaves stuck in her hair, behind and in her ears, and all up into the hairline on the back of her neck. Her fingernails were a tragedy. Lined with black, every one of those well-manicured tips were split and torn. She could already hear Nettie tsking and clucking: “Child, you ain’t going to sexy-kitten scratch-up no man’s back with those talons. You’re going to claw him half to pieces!”

  Chin tried to clean up. Though not a vain woman, the last thing she wanted was to attract too much attention while traveling. But she could only clean up so much. No matter what she did now, she was going to raise the eyebrows of the first people she ran into. Well, raised eyebrows were fine so long as she didn’t raise suspicions.

  She ran her fingers through her hair and only belatedly noticed the hairbrush lying on the dresser behind the shaving compound. She stopped just short of reaching for it, her fingertips unwilling to touch the handle. There was something so very intimate about using a man’s hairbrush. The last thing she wanted was to be intimate with Cullen, particularly when she was about to steal his horse. She looked fine, she abruptly decided. She was only wasting time at this point, and she didn’t have enough of it as it was.

  Crawling headfirst into her damp dress, Chin put herself to rights as quickly and as quietly as she could, but any hope she had of stealing a horse before the Drake brothers awoke vanished the instant she eased the loft hatch up on its squeaky hinges and the wafting aroma of fresh coffee rose up to fill the bedroom. Someone was already awake. As if to reinforce that realization, booted footsteps clumped across the kitchen floor, heading straight for the bottom of the loft’s ladder. Far from prepared, she almost slammed the hatch shut again. But then Cullen’s unsmiling face popped into view just below her and her chance to escape today was gone.

  They stared at one another. Unlike last night, he didn’t seem angry so much as guarded against the potential of an attack. That he would be just as leery of her as she was of him surprised her and she hesitated. It was Cullen who extended the first offer of peace.

  “I’m making breakfast,” he said. “You hungry?”

  The last time she’d sat at his table, she’d gotten spanked. The last thing she wanted to do now was linger there over bread and coffee.

  Chin started to shake her head, but her stomach, already clenched from the strain of fraying nerves, chose that inopportune moment to rumble. Loudly. Because they were staring silently at one another, it was a sound that carried easily all the way to the bottom of the ladder.

  Cullen didn’t smile exactly, but a corner of his mouth did quirk. He beckoned. “Come on down. It ain’t grand—”

  “You can say that again,” Garrett called from some unseen section of the kitchen. “He’s a horrible cook.”

  “—but it’s filling,” Cullen doggedly finished. Without waiting for her, he turned and tromped back across the lower room toward the cook stove. A brief scramble of heavy feet ended with something getting thrown.

  “Ow!” Garrett yelped with a laugh.

  Trapped, with more reservations than she had options, Chin looked about the tiny bedroom loft. She should have gone out a window. Too late now. Gathering her skirts, Chin cautiously descended the ladder. She was just stepping off the final rung when, seated at the kitchen table, Garrett let out a whistle.

  “Whoa,” he said. “You do not clean up well.”

  Cullen whipped around from the stove and snapped his brother in the back of the head with a dish towel, sending his worn hat flying. “Shut your mouth. What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “Hey!” Ducking under the table after his tumbling hat, Garrett sat up again. He glared at Cullen, brushing off the brim and readjusting all the dents and curves until they were once more to his liking. “I’m only making an observation.”

  Chin’s hand was to her hair before she could stop it. Heat flooded her face, but she only hiked her chin higher. “Next time I’m about to get swept up in a flood, I’ll be sure to set a brush and change of clothes aside for later.”

  “Aw, now.” Garrett came up out of his chair like he’d been catapulted out, catching her arm before she could flee back up into the loft. “I didn’t mean nothing by it. Only that, while we might be a little shy on dresses, I’m pretty sure we can scrounge you up something to wear long enough to clean what you do have.”

  Panic stabbed straight up through the middle of her. “I’m not staying that long.”

  “Well, you’re not leaving,” Cullen said, pulling dishes down off the two shelves that constituted the kitchen part of their small cabin. “Not in this storm, anyway.” Bringing bowl and fork back to the table, he set them down next to the bowl of eggs already waiting for him there. “Gar, see if you can find her some britches. Won’t be decent, but who’s out here to care, right?”

  Decent? Chin almost recoiled at the word. Had he never been to the Red Petticoat on the nights when she worked? Chin startled all over again as she looked down at herself. Her dress, albeit dirty and missing a few buttons, had been the most respectable one she’d owned. Getting caught up in that flood had torn it up some. Both sleeves had rips and the lace was completely gone from around the neck hem, but even so, nothing in the design screamed “whore.” If neither Garrett nor Cullen frequented the Red Petticoat, then it was possible they had no idea she was a lady of ill-repute.

  “You’re also welcome to use my hairbrush,” Cullen added, gesturing upstairs before picking out a handful of eggs. He palmed four; his hands were so huge. She couldn’t have balanced two without dropping or breaking one.

  She forced her gaze back to his, the heat in her cheeks scalding hotter. She had no idea why the size of his hands was even worth noticing. “Thank you, but I think I’ll wait until I have my own things back again.”

  Cracking two eggs at once, Cullen looked at her before dumping them into his bowl. A slow leap of muscle bunched along the chiseled line of his jaw.

  Garrett snorted first. “Chinny girl, your luggage is buried under at least a foot of mud, tree limbs, uprooted cacti, pissed off snakes and God only knows what else. You are never going to find your sh—stuff,” Garrett caught and censured himself, glancing once at Cullen before adding, “Sorry, sweetheart. Your things are gone.”

  Cullen’s response wasn’t much gentler and delivered without the softening effects of a smile. “If you’re still sore about last night, that’s one thing. But refusing to accept a man’s hospitality just to spite him is hardly a grownup way to behave.” His cool grey eyes locked with hers. “Little girl.”

  “I am not a little girl,” Chin said stiffly. She stiffened even more before defensively adding, “And I am not sore!”

  The corners of his mouth twitched again. “I wasn’t referring to your sit-upon, though it wouldn’t bother me if you were tender. You pulled a knife on me.” He pointed at her with the last two eggs before cracking them into his bowl. “You’re lucky I didn’t put you straight back over my knee once I realized how old you really are. An unruly kid’s one thing, but when a woman misbehaves, she deserves—and can take—a great deal more than the few paltry licks I gave you.”

  She looked at his hands again and that scorching heat began to travel out of her face, down through her chest and into her stomach, then lower still. It became a pulse of an unwelcome fire, one she’d felt before—in her bed at the Red Petticoat, whenever she got careless enough with a customer to feel something, even if only physically. It didn’t happen very often. Experience was a hard taskmaster and all of her experiences had taught her that life was cut sho
rt when care was forgotten.

  Swallowing back the heady pulse, she willed herself not to feel it. It didn’t work, but she liked to pretend. It gave her something to do other than just stand there, humiliated by the tingling need to rub her bottom like the child he had named her. “And when a man misbehaves?”

  Whisking the eggs with his fork, Cullen shook his head once. “Real men don’t misbehave.”

  She snorted.

  Cullen glanced up, the dark lines of his eyebrows arching. “All right,” he allowed. “The men in this household don’t.”

  “Ha!” She folded her arms across her chest, resenting him for saying so. Resenting having to be here. Resenting like hell the continuing patter of the rain that kept her trapped less than a few hours ride from a man who was so discontented by his father’s attempts to destroy everything she’d ever had that he’d actually followed her all the way to America just to finish the job. Tasting bitter, all those resentments came bubbling up together, making her careless with what she said. “Says the man with the cut on his neck!”

  Cullen stopped whisking.

  Clearing his throat, Garrett pushed out of his chair. He avoided looking at either of them. “I reckon someone ought to go see to the horses.” Touching his hat brim, he edged past her on the way to the front door.

  Lingering humiliation nipped at her back. Refusing to be defenseless, Chin stood stiffly and at her fullest height, refusing to let the darkness of Cullen’s frown cow her.

  Waiting until they were alone, Cullen said, “You really must be sore.” Eggs beaten, he carried the bowl back to the cast iron stove and hunkered down to add more wood and prod the flames hotter. “I understand being mad. I do. Just remember, I warned you three times and gave you every chance to avoid the whuppin’ you got. Be angry if you want, but you’ve only yourself to blame. I hope you like your eggs scrambled. That’s about how I know to cook ‘em.”