Notorious in the West

by Lisa Plumley

  Chapter Eight

  When the knock at his hotel room door finally came two days after he’d made Olivia Mouton leave, Griffin knew for certain it was her. Returned to him. Contritely returned, he instructed his imagination to believe as he stomped to the door, ready to open it and unceremoniously toss her on her backside one more time.

  Instead, Griffin was nearly smacked in the face as Palmer Grant pushed open the door and strode inside, fully fired up.

  “You’re costing yourself a fortune by staying here, Griffin.” He shoved shut the door behind him, sealing off any possibility that a “chambermaid” might be lurking outside with a feather duster and a smile. He brandished a handful of telegraph messages. “Your business managers are losing their minds.”

  “They’d already done that. They partnered with me.”

  A sigh. “You know that’s not what I mean.” After tossing down the telegraph messages, Palmer flopped onto an upholstered chair. He rubbed his free hand over his face. He gave Griffin’s hotel room a curious look. “Hmm. It’s dark in here again.”

  “I like it this way.” Feeling doubly morose now that he knew Olivia had not come back to beg forgiveness, Griffin tipped back some whiskey. “I’m comfortable in the dark. It’s a polite gesture. It keeps women and children from having to look at me.”

  It didn’t have the same shielding effect on his longtime friend. Griffin didn’t like the astute squint Palmer gave him.

  “Aha. ‘Women,’ eh? This is about her. I wondered when it would come to this.” With the amused forbearance of a saint—or a particularly addle-headed child—Palmer got up.

  He went to the window. He flung open the drapes.

  It was as if the pernicious ghost of Olivia Mouton had come to haunt Griffin during daylight hours…the way she did when he tried to sleep, whispering sweet things and smelling of roses.

  Sometimes he wished he could sleep all the time.

  “Argh.” Scowling, Griffin covered his eyes with his arm. “Not you, too. You damn traitor. Leave. Now.” He pointed to the door with his whiskey bottle. “Just get out.”

  “Fine.” Palmer stood. “But I’m taking this with me.”

  He snatched Griffin’s bottle of Old Orchard. It was a cheap brand, but it had stood by him ably. He didn’t want to lose it.

  Unfortunately, he was too tipsy to prevent its loss. He had to settle for glaring at Palmer as his associate tucked it securely beneath his arm in an unwitting imitation of Olivia.

  “Without this,” Palmer said, “maybe you’ll get back to business.” He glanced at the pile of telegraph messages. “Some of those need replies. You’re endangering your livelihood.”

  Griffin didn’t care. He didn’t care if his money ran out or his businesses ran aground. Success had never brought him the happiness he’d sought. Success hadn’t even brought him Mary.

  Granted, he hadn’t seen much of Mary during the interval between his tenement beginnings and his successful life. He’d been busy working and striving and sacrificing. Still, during those hard times, he’d counted on Mary being there for him. She’d been an emblem of true success to him. Sometimes distant, sometimes busy, but always representing love and kindness and the warmhearted family Griffin had wanted and had been denied.

  You thought I would actually marry you? Oh, Griffin…

  Her rejection had been gentle on its surface, but no less unbearable for him to receive. Over the years, imagining his eventual proposal and Mary’s delighted acceptance had gotten Griffin through some difficult times. When she’d refused him instead, she’d kicked a hole in his heart. There weren’t enough fond words and Irish stew in the world to mend it.

  She’d claimed that she thought of him as a brother. She’d insisted that he’d been gone for too long. She’d said that she’d found another, more devoutly Catholic man whom her parents approved of…and Griffin had realized too late that he could only have as much as the world could be forced to relinquish to him.

  True love was—both then and now—not included.

  Maybe true love was wholly illusory.

  Success should have improved his life. Instead, it had brought him here, Griffin reminded himself grumpily, where Olivia Mouton lived with her smiles and her softness and her saucy way of pretending to know how to sweep. Success had made him vulnerable to her pretenses. It had made him believe—temporarily, at least—that she liked him…when he knew only too well she was trying to wrest control of The Lorndorff from him. He wasn’t a gullible child. He didn’t usually behave like one. He’d known from the start that Olivia had to have had another reason for seeing him. Why else would she have come to him every day?

  Why else would she have allowed him to touch her? To hope?

  It sure as hell wasn’t because she loved cleaning. Olivia might have been eager, but her grasp of cleaning was dubious, at best. And although she looked very fetching while making a bed…

  “Am I wasting my time, Griffin?” Palmer blurted. “It’s been more than a week now. How long do you intend to wallow here?”

  “As long as it takes. Longer. Forever, if necessary.”

  A commiserating look. “Would it change your mind to know you’ve had a letter from Mary? It came in this morning’s mail.”

  “I don’t want it.” Griffin crossed his arms. “Return it.”

  “But you’ve known her since you were fourteen years old!” Palmer protested. “She deserves more than silence from you.”

  “Truly?” Griffin fixed him with a measuring look. “What makes you believe that? Was it her disloyalty? Her pretended devotion? Her willingness to deceive me for almost a decade?”

  At Griffin’s near roar of questions, Palmer shifted uncomfortably. But he held his ground. “If you want to sulk, go ahead. If you want me to keep running this damn rusticated hotel while you brood up here, I will. But don’t speak ill of Mary.”

  Griffin lowered his voice. “Is that a threat?”

  “It’s what’s necessary.” Palmer lifted his chin. “For you.”

  “You don’t know what’s necessary for me.” For a while, Griffin had thought Olivia was necessary for him. Obviously, he and Palmer were both terrible at this game. Realizing that, Griffin sighed. “Neither do I.”

  At his grudging admission, his friend went silent.

  But someone else did not. When Griffin hadn’t been paying attention, he realized too late, Olivia Mouton truly had arrived. As usual, she didn’t intend to be silent in the least.

  “I know what’s necessary for you,” she said from her place in the opened doorway. With conviction and sass, she strode in. “I’ve worked it out, and I know exactly what to do. If you’re smart, you’ll let me show you, before it’s too late.”

  *

  Too late. Her ominous tone didn’t daunt Griffin. At least that was what he told himself. But when he looked at her—when he caught a whiff of her dizzying scent, saw her lively, beautiful face and felt his whole body yearn to be next to hers—he knew he was lost.

  Olivia Mouton affected him. Whether he wanted that to be true or not, it was a fact as incontrovertible as the headache that came from imbibing or the ache that came from needing.

  Not that he intended to reveal as much to her. Not again.

  He still burned from the way she’d looked at him—from the way she’d reacted when he’d held her hand and asked her to call him Griffin. At first, Olivia had appeared as moved as he had been. Then, suddenly, she’d only appeared…stricken.

  Undoubtedly because she’d realized she was touching The Beast. She was allowing The Beast to get closer and closer…

  He’d wanted to get closer still, Griffin knew. He couldn’t forget the subtle tremor that had passed through Olivia when he’d covered her hand with his. He’d felt it, too. Far less subtly. For him, it had been as though the earth had shifted…and left him groundless.

  Hoping to get his feet squarely under him now, Griffin gave a stiff gesture of introduction. “Palmer, you’ve met Miss O
livia Mouton. Olivia, I believe you’ve also met my associate—”

  “We’re acquainted,” his friend said with an inexplicably gleeful grin. He shoved the whiskey bottle at Griffin. “You might need this. Later.” He tipped his hat at Olivia. “Miss Mouton, I’m sorry, but I have a prior appointment. Goodbye.”

  With that, Griffin’s cowardly friend scampered from his suite. The door closed behind him, leaving Griffin and Olivia alone. He glanced at her…and wanted to touch her again.

  Willfully, he clenched his fist instead. She could not make him want her just by being there. She couldn’t. He refused.

  And yet something in her demeanor gave him senseless hope. After all, he’d already learned not to underestimate her.

  Did she know what was necessary for him? he wondered. Did she know how desperately he wanted a way out of the darkness?

  As though answering his unvoiced questions, Olivia came farther into his suite. She looked composed and intelligent and utterly desirable because of it. Her beauty moved him far less than her attitude did. He could not resist her irrepressible confidence—her assuredness that he was not beyond hope after all. Mere prettiness could never have been as seductive.

  “It’s been too long since you were here.” He gave a halfhearted wave at the mantelpiece. “The dust is piling up.”

  He’d been unwilling to admit another, less maddening chambermaid. Olivia obviously knew that already, because her smile proved that he’d done it again. He’d underestimated her.

  Damn it. She didn’t believe his feigned nonchalance at all.

  Typically, she had the grace not to belabor the issue, but instead got straight to her reason for coming.

  “I can help you, Griffin.” She examined the remnants of his latest descent into the darkness—an empty whiskey bottle, shredded but unsmoked cigarillos, abandoned meals on trays that had been brought by Palmer Grant and summarily ignored. “Believe me. I can. But before I do, I want something from you.”

  Her echo of his earlier words wasn’t lost on him. It made him remember the encounter they’d shared—and the awful way it had ended, too. But in that moment, Griffin didn’t care if Olivia had jerked away in revulsion at the sight of him two days ago. He didn’t care if she’d misled him into friendliness and then lost her nerve.

  All he cared about, in that moment, was that she was there.

  Why couldn’t he stop being so vulnerable? Griffin wondered irately. He’d done it when he’d first held her hand. He was doing it again now. He’d been a fool to begin trusting her. He was about to be a fool all over again. He just couldn’t help it.

  “Yes?” His voice croaked out, belying the fact that—just then—he would have given her anything. “What do you want?”

  “Well, eventually,” Olivia began confidently, “I want to discuss philosophy with you. I’ve finished your book, and I’m very curious to know your opinions on Bentham’s theories of utilitarianism and Rousseau’s thoughts on direct democracy.”

  He blinked…and fell a little in love with her on the spot.

  Damn it. Why could he not resist her, even a smidgeon?

  “I’ll consider it,” he hedged. “But that’s eventually,” he recalled her specifying a moment ago. “And first…?”

  “First…” Olivia stopped near his place at the bed. She eyed its unkempt sheets as though remembering the first time she’d caught him in it. Her innocent, wide-eyed reaction to his under-the-bedclothes nudity had been memorable, to say the least. She drew in a breath. “I want to know why you can sweep so well.”

  *

  At her precisely voiced question, Griffin hesitated.

  Then, to his still-tipsy surprise, he told Olivia everything. He omitted not a single detail. Rats, hunger pains, abuse from his mother, abandonment by his father… They were all in his past, so he told Olivia about them. He recounted them as though they’d happened to another boy, in another life, and he didn’t feel much of anything at all while he did it.

  He wasn’t that boy anymore. He’d locked that door.

  As a man, Griffin placed Olivia on the settee. As a man, he set down his whiskey and then took his place beside her. As a man, he disclosed the bareness of his life growing up in that Boston tenement. He did so without flinching, without bawling and without lapsing into needless sentimentality. He did so unsparingly. If Olivia grew hushed and wide-eyed and eventually—confusingly—teary eyed beside him, Griffin scarcely noticed.

  He was performing a recitation. It was the only way.

  Matter-of-factness saved him. It saved him from feeling. It saved him from acknowledging…everything. It had been difficult—surpassingly difficult—to survive those years. Not that such delineation mattered. After all, now was difficult, too.

  When he’d nearly finished, Griffin became aware again of the dimness of the room, the nearness of Olivia and the rasp in his voice that he still couldn’t shake. He’d never revealed so much to anyone before. He had never wanted to. At some point, he saw, Olivia had taken his hand. She squeezed his fingers.

  Her touch looked like a blessing. But it felt like pity.

  Unreasonably distraught over that sympathetic gesture, Griffin stared down at their joined hands. He wanted to believe Olivia’s touch meant more. But he knew damn well that he could not.

  “So that is how I learned to sweep,” he concluded. He gave her hand a final squeeze, then pulled away. “It’s a shame your upbringing didn’t leave you with any such useful skills.”

  His joke failed to meet its mark. Olivia merely gazed at him with tears in her eyes. She glanced downward, appeared to realize that he’d withdrawn his hand then shook her head.

  She grabbed his hand back. She held it tight between both of hers, a fierce light brightening her eyes. “No wonder,” she said with a shake of her head. “No wonder you hide away! Griffin…” Olivia broke off, probing his gaze with hers. “You’re lonely.”

  “No. You’re wrong.” He shook his head. Bluster and fury and hard-drinking isolation would keep him secure. He should never have abandoned them. “Until now, I’ve rarely been alone. Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know what I’ve accomplished?”

  She was undeterred by his rough tone. “I told you before—all I care about is who you are now. You, Griffin, are lonely.”

  Lonely. That simple word barely began to describe the emptiness he felt. It was insufficient to mark the solitude inside him. It could not contain his deep yearning for more.

  Griffin felt that yearning claw at him now, with needy fingers and a heart that wanted more. He fought back brutally.

  “You are lonely,” he accused, “with your small-town life and your ‘family’ of hotel workers and your apathetic father.”

  But Olivia refused to be dissuaded. “Another time, we’ll talk about my father,” she said, sliding nearer on the settee and taking his other hand. Her skirts rustled, marking her femininity and her closeness alike. “For now,” she went on, still holding his hands, “I only want you to know that I’m sorry for all you went through.” She inhaled deeply, keeping her gaze fixed on him. “You deserved better. You deserve better now. You deserve more than a fickle woman who’d break your heart—” for he’d told her about Mary “—and a father who’d use you for his own gains—” because Griffin’s father had, indeed, taken advantage of Griffin’s early ambitions for his own purposes at first “—and a mother who would be so cruel to you. You deserve better. Everyone does!”

  Warily, Griffin regarded her. “Ah. This is pity, then,” he judged. “You would treat anyone in my place this way.”

  “Anyone?” Olivia raised her eyebrows, then gave a lilting laugh. Meaningfully, she raised their twined hands. “No, not anyone,” she specified. “But if this demonstration of my feelings is not apparent enough for you, please let me clarify.”

  “There’s no need. I understand everything.”

  Another laugh. “Of course you do. All the same, allow me.”

  Astoundingly, Olivia rele
ased his hands. She lifted one of her hands to his jaw, then mimicked her gesture on the opposite side. With his face duly framed in her affectionate grasp, Griffin froze. No one touched his face. Not his mother, not his father, not the few loose women he’d known as a grown man.

  Not even Mary had touched him this way, it occurred to him. Theirs had not been an overly passionate relationship. Perhaps he had been like a brother to her, he mused. Perhaps he’d nurtured an adolescent infatuation for too long, prompted partly by fondness for her close-knit household. Certainly, Griffin had never felt for Mary one-tenth of what he now felt for Olivia.

  “Don’t.” Desperately, he closed his eyes, trying not to savor the light and caring touch of her palms against his face—trying not to imprison it in his memory forever after. He opened his eyes. He stared at her. “You don’t want to touch me.”

  Griffin clung to that belief like a drowning man. He needed to. What was the alternative? To believe that Olivia wanted him?

  Yes, he recalled her saying. I was alarmed by you at first.

  She was the only person who’d ever admitted her initial wariness about his appearance. Now she was the only woman who’d ever touched his face willingly. That had to mean something.

  Perhaps, the cynical side of him suggested, it meant that Olivia Mouton really, determinedly wanted The Lorndorff back.

  But then she delivered him a mind-scramblingly playful look, stroked his jaw with her fingers and shook her head.

  “You can’t tell me what I want, Mr. Turner.”

  “Griffin,” he managed, mesmerized by her nearness. “It’s—”

  “Griffin,” Olivia repeated, her gaze warm and wonderful as she looked at him. Clearly, she was bewitched somehow. She caressed his cheeks, then brushed her thumbs over his beard stubble. “I do want to touch you. See? I’m doing it right now.”

  He couldn’t help seeing. He couldn’t help feeling. But that didn’t mean…

  “I’m going to go right on doing it,” Olivia said in a low voice as she brought her pretty face closer to his, “because I find that your big, angular jawline provides a very convenient means to steady myself while I prepare to do this.”