The Drifter

by Lisa Plumley

  He smiled. His thumb pushed higher on her wrist, flicking past the tidy row of faux pearl buttons to caress the base of her palm. At his touch, her fingers flexed helplessly, as though yearning to capture his hand in hers, and a wholly inappropriate—but immensely pleasurable—shiver coursed from her palm to her shoe tips. She couldn’t help wondering what the sensation might have been like if she had forgotten her gloves. Delightful, most likely.

  No. Thoughts like that were entirely unlike her. Undoubtedly, they owed themselves to his unsuitable influence. Frowning, Julia fought the urge to wrest her hand from her captor’s grasp. It wouldn’t do to engage a man like this on his own terms. She’d have to be craftier than that.

  She summoned a placid expression. “You certainly seem observant, sir, for a man who has misplaced his bed.”

  Meaningfully, she looked at the grass beneath them. Then at the thick tree trunk that still pillowed his head. Against the rough bark, his shoulder-length brown hair spilled in disarray. Wavy strands of it were lifted in the breeze, wafting about in the space between his hat brim and long duster coat. It lent him the appearance of a mountain man, especially when combined with his squarish, stubble-covered jaw. But he smelled finer than any mountain man Julia had ever encountered.

  And smiled more silkily than any of them had, as well.

  “Are you volunteering to help me find it?” he asked. “Or are you offering your services to make this bed more comfortable?”

  “Certainly not!” Her scandalized gaze followed his as he outlined a roughly person-shaped area in the tufted grass beside him. “What kind of wo—”

  “Either way, I accept,” he interrupted. “’Tis the nicest proposition I’ve had all day. ’Course, it is still early yet….”

  The rogue had the gall to waggle his eyebrows in a wickedly suggestive fashion. At her!

  “And,” he went on while she gawked at him, “I think we ought to at least know each other’s names before we go any further. Don’t you agree?”

  “I—I—” I’m stammering. Dear Lord, that had never happened before! “I already know your name, Mr. Corley.”

  Given the cost to her composure already, Julia couldn’t help but embroider the truth a bit. She lifted her chin, and added, “I know a great deal about you, in fact. I know that you’re a bounty hunter. That you’re considered trustworthy and honest. And that you happen to be between, ahhh, assignments at the moment. That’s why I’m here.”

  The look of surprise that crossed his face told her that, despite whatever else may have gone wrong this morning, she had at least identified him correctly. That was good. On the other hand, Julia thought as his fingers fastened idly on her topmost glove button and began working it through the buttonhole—setting off an array of pleasurable sensations in her hand and wrist—it was also possible she’d underestimated the man.

  Not to mention her own reaction to him.

  She wrestled her thoughts back on track, doing her best to ignore the pleasant feeling of having her hand cradled in his. Had she underestimated him? And what did that do to her plan? After all, what did she know about bounty hunters? About men, in general, as opposed to in theory? Perhaps the gossip she’d gleaned about Graham Corley had lulled her into a grievously overblown sense of complacency.

  He looked up. His eyes were the same shade of blue as the depths of a mountain lake, and equally unnavigable. By strength of will alone, Julia held his gaze. It wouldn’t do to appear cowed by a man like this one. Especially not with so much at stake.

  He raised his eyebrows. “My reputation precedes me?”

  “Nothing so glorious as that. I asked about you in town. As it happens, we don’t get many visitors in Avalanche, so you’re quite the talk of the community.”

  “Hmmm.” He seemed contemplative, then grinned anew. “You can believe about half of what you’ve heard.”

  She couldn’t resist the obvious inquiry. “And the other half?”

  “Exaggeration. Gossip. Scandal.”

  A tremor raced through her. She hadn’t heard he was scandalous, although the man certainly looked it. Beneath all the grit and long hair and those poorly mended clothes and—she wrinkled her nose—those atrocious liquor fumes, he was probably quite attractive.

  In a roguish, low-brow fashion that didn’t appeal to her at all, of course.

  On the other hand, given his renewed grin, it was entirely likely Graham Corley was simply jesting with her. It was impossible to tell, Julia realized with frustration.

  Unfortunately, much as it galled her, her inability to decide even that much about him wasn’t a surprise. After all, she’d always been better at deciphering arithmetic problems or philosophy questions than at deciphering people. Why should things be any different with a stranger like him?

  “Are you scandalous?” she felt driven to ask. “Because if you are, I don’t think—”

  “Yes, ma’am. I am.” A dangerous-looking grin accompanied his words, making them seem indisputably true. “Scandalous as all get-out.”

  His reply was immediate. So immediate, in fact, that it was enough to make her instantly suspicious. She peered at him through the dancing shade of the fluttering cottonwood leaves, at his casual posture and deliberately provocative demeanor, and could arrive at only one conclusion.

  “You’re trying to scare me away.” Julia tilted her head, estimating the rightness of her guess. When his lips tightened, she knew she’d deduced correctly. Satisfied that she hadn’t lost her wits completely, she smiled right back at him. “It won’t work.”

  “It’s already worked,” the bounty hunter countered. “I can feel your hand trembling.”

  It was true. As though his words had ordered it, her fingers quivered within his grasp. The tips of her gloves rubbed faintly over his big callused hand, proving him aggravatingly correct, and her hand grew warmer.

  Not that she intended to address the subject with him.

  “No, Mr. Corley, I assure you that I—”

  “It’s all right.” He stroked her palm once more, then released her. “It’s not every day a lady like yourself has dealings with a man like me.”

  Dealings? Despite his placid expression—intended, no doubt to reassure her—Julia felt panic set in. Did he already know about the proposal she had in mind?

  At the thought, humiliation washed through her. Gossip ran both ways, of course. Mr. Corley might have heard about her in the same fashion that she’d made it her business to learn about him. Wagging tongues abounded in Avalanche. Even among the marriageable men who were most acquainted with Julia’s…unusual situation.

  Unfortunately, those same men were stubbornly unwilling to help her with that situation. In general, they seemed to find the notion about as appealing as, well…using a cottonwood tree for a pillow. Which brought her right back to Mr. Corley.

  And her proposition.

  In preparation for broaching the topic, Julia gave him a vigorous smile. Just then, Isabel rushed to their side.

  “I went for the sheriff!” she cried, panting and pointing toward the middle of Main Street, where the road leading to the municipal buildings jutted into the center of town. “He ought to be here right quick.”

  “Thank you ever so much, Isabel,” Julia said, glancing upward from her position atop the grass. She tried to appear as though she were comfortable there, and not as though the brute had hauled her there forcefully. After all, she did have a reputation to uphold. “If you would be so kind as to tell him not to bother coming—”

  “Not to come?” Her friend surveyed the bounty hunter with a suspicious look, then turned to Julia with a befuddled expression. “Why ever not? ’Specially now that he’s awake.”

  “Because I intend to chat a bit longer with him. About the subject we discussed—” as her closest friend, Isabel knew all about Julia’s plans, “—and so far, things are coming along quite nicely, too.” She gave the man beside her an overly sunny smile. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Corley?”

/>   No decent man would purposely embarrass a lady, especially in front of others. It was one of the main tenets she espoused in the dime novel etiquette books she’d become known for writing while away in the East. Bounty hunter or not, Julia was gambling Mr. Corley would maintain that gentlemanly ideal, as well.

  He narrowed his eyes at her, briefly, then gazed up at Isabel with a nonchalant expression. “Right enough not to go involving the sheriff, I’d say.”

  Evidently, Graham Corley possessed a buried chivalrous streak. That, or he wanted to avoid dealing with the law any more than his profession required.

  It was a sobering thought. But one Julia couldn’t allow to deter her. The man beside her might well be her last chance for getting out of Avalanche in time. She had to do what she could to persuade him into accepting her plan.

  “See?” she said, making shooing motions toward Isabel. “Please go tell the sheriff not to bother coming over.”

  “Are you sure?” Isabel asked.

  “Positive.” She didn’t want the entire town knowing what she was up to. “Besides, I feel certain Mr. Corley and I are about to come to an understanding. It’s quite likely our business would be concluded before the sheriff even got here.”

  “All right.” Reluctantly, and with promises to meet Julia later at Bennett’s Apothecary and Soda Fountain Emporium, Isabel headed back down Main Street.

  Alone with Mr. Corley, Julia felt her resolve waver. She took in his rough-hewn appearance and curiously intent expression, and nearly ran right after Isabel. Then she reminded herself that her future was at stake, and gathered her courage.

  Beside her, the bounty hunter crossed his arms over his middle. He watched Isabel retreat around the corner near Miss Verna’s mercantile. The moment she disappeared from view, he fixed Julia with a look that made her doubt the wisdom of her whole plan. “Despite what you told your friend,” he said, “we don’t have business to conclude.”

  “Now, Mr. Corley, let’s not be hasty. I believe I—”

  “We—don’t—have—business. Of any kind.”

  It was the same tone of voice he might have used to address a simpleton. For a moment, all she could do was stare at him, agape. No one in Avalanche had ever spoken to her that way.

  “Period,” he added, frowning as though he feared she hadn’t understood even his most plainly spoken refusal. “Understand?”

  A smile began somewhere inside her and spread outward. “Oh, I understand you perfectly.” I understand you haven’t heard about me already.

  If he had, he’d never have addressed her that way, as though she were utterly lacking in reason. That meant she still had a good chance of accomplishing her goal. Immeasurably cheered, Julia linked her hands atop her skirts.

  His gaze dropped to her clasped hands. His frown deepened. “I don’t think you do. Whatever business you have, it will have to be with someone else. I’m not for hire.”

  “Of course you are!” That was the whole point of being a bounty hunter, wasn’t it? “And there is no one else. I’m afraid, Mr. Corley, that my choices are narrowed down to…you.”

  After her father’s ultimatum nearly a month ago, Julia had begun to despair of ever finding someone in time. Most particularly, someone who fulfilled all the stringent requirements Asa Bennett had laid down to his only daughter. Now, this man was her best and only chance.

  “No,” her chosen man said flatly. He slouched against the cottonwood tree, yanked down his hat, and from beneath its dark brim, added, “Nice talking to you, ma’am.”

  Clearly, his tone implied a dismissal. Spoken as it was in that deep, mountain-man’s voice of his, it nearly tempted Julia to accept it. Then she thought of living all the rest of her days in Avalanche, surrounded by people…well, people who didn’t understand her and didn’t give a fig if they ever did, and she just couldn’t do it.

  “But you don’t even know what I want!” she said.

  “Don’t care.”

  “You must care.”

  With a subtle shift of his hand, he tipped up his hat partway. He squinted at her from beneath its brim. “Why?”

  “Be-because you’re a good man, that’s why. And, of course, because I’m a lady who needs your help.”

  His lips quirked. His blue-eyed gaze traveled from her folded hands to her skirts and upward to her bodice, then swept to her new bonnet. At the sight of it, he almost seemed to grimace, which made no sense whatsoever.

  “If that’s your idea of a proposition,” he said, “I can see why you haven’t found someone else to help you.”

  “I resent your implication, sir!”

  “I resent being hoisted out of a perfectly good sleep for a lot of idiotic chatter about something you can’t even explain properly.” Mr. Corley changed the cross of his arms, thrust his chin into his duster coat collar, and pulled down his hat again.

  My, he was a grouchy one. Julia hadn’t expected that about him. Applying the principles she’d used time and again with her father, she waited. And waited some more. Eventually, as she’d expected, the bounty hunter came around.

  His growl of displeasure foretold it. “What in blazes makes you think I’m a good man, anyhow?” he demanded.

  She suppressed a smile. Men could be so predictable, especially to a lady who knew how to handle them properly. It seemed Graham Corley wasn’t so different, after all.

  “Any man who devotes his days to bringing in outlaws must be a good man,” Julia explained. “Don’t you see? I absolutely refuse to believe otherwise. Now, about my proposal—”

  “No.”

  “I’ll have you know, I’m about to come into a great deal of money.” If I accomplish this scheme, she reminded herself. “I can pay you quite well.”

  “I don’t need your money.”

  Exasperated with talking to his hat brim, Julia snatched the battered headwear and whisked it from his head. “What do you need, then?”

  He sat up, seemingly oblivious to his missing hat. Without it, he seemed both younger and more like a stranger than before. Nervously, she turned the hat brim around in her hands, waiting for his reply, then realized she was fidgeting and lowered it to her lap instead.

  Miss Julia’s Behavior Book, volume two: A lady must never allow her person to be beyond her absolute control. Strict self-discipline must prevail at all times.

  “What do I need?” His grin vanished. “Well, ma’am, I’ll need to think about that for a minute.”

  For an instant, Mr. Corley closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the message she glimpsed in them was enough to make Julia go still with shock.

  I need you.

  Spellbound, she stared back at him. Her thoughts whirled. Surely she was mistaken. Surely he didn’t mean…

  “I need to get out of this damned town,” he said aloud. And then he grabbed his hat, pushed to his feet, and strode toward Main Street.

  Chapter Three

  “I knew this harebrained plan of yours would never work,” Isabel said, dunking her cleaning cloth into a wash bucket and wringing it out over the soapy water. She shook her head, then went back to work wiping down the marble countertop at Bennett’s Apothecary and Soda Fountain Emporium. “Especially with a man like that.”

  “Yes, well…he was an unlikely candidate,” Julia agreed. “I’ll grant you that much.”

  She glanced toward the rear of the quiet, just-opened shop, making sure her father was still engrossed in the pharmaceuticals he was preparing. It wouldn’t do for him to overhear her conversation with Isabel. He didn’t know about her plan. With luck, he never would.

  He would only approve the results of it.

  To her relief, she spied his gray-haired head as he stepped behind a pyramid of brown-bottled Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, then emerged at his worktable. With a frown of concentration, Asa Bennett moved his mortar and pestle to its center, then sprinkled in a quantity of grayish powder. As usual, he seemed engrossed in the task at hand.

  “But
time is running out,” Julia told Isabel, feeling a familiar sense of desperation tighten her middle. “I got another letter from that bigheaded Lucinda Druiry in yesterday’s post. She seems to think the position at Beadle’s Magazine is hers for the taking. And she’s not above bragging about it, either.”

  Frowning, she scrubbed at the soda fountain’s silver-plated brass fittings, taking special care with the syrup faucets and draught arm. That done, she rubbed her polishing cloth over the central carbonated water urn, hoping its cold surface would lend her a bit of much-needed clearheadedness.

  At her side, Isabel quit wiping, leaving a thin layer of water and soapsuds shimmering atop the counter in the late-morning sunlight. Slapping down her cloth, she put her hands on her calico-clad waist. “That position at Beadle’s Magazine is rightfully yours! What business does she have to—”

  “I wish it were rightfully mine,” Julia interrupted gently. Surely, she was depending on the income she would earn as the periodical’s resident etiquette columnist to finance her new life in the city. “But it’s not. And it never will be, if I can’t even get out of Avalanche in time to secure an interview with the editor at Beadle’s.”

  Beneath her busy fingers, the marble urn gleamed. Sunlight from the apothecary’s expensive twin windows danced over its surface. Pausing in her work, Julia smiled over the impressive results. Thinking of Lucinda, her fellow alumna from Vassar College, always put a special vigor in her cleaning.

  “And you say that bounty hunter just up and left you,” Isabel asked, resuming her wiping, “without so much as a ‘how do you do?’”

  “Oh, he gave me a ‘how do you do.’” If she could call it that. Just the recollection of the way Graham Corley had looked at her in that magical moment before he’d walked away was enough to leave her breathless.

  I need you.

  Of course, maybe her breathlessness owed itself more to the exertion of preparing the soda fountain for its first customers of the day, Julia reasoned, than it did to Mr. Corley’s inexplicably intimate parting look. Yes, that was almost certainly it.