*
She held her breath, praying she wouldn’t have to go to the Calhouns’ alone, knowing she would if she must. She simply had to go to that party. She was so close to finishing things. Each year she seemed less a part of one world, but no more a part of the other. She wanted her identity back. She wanted an end to dusty trails, rifle reports, and the acrid scent of gunpowder. She wanted an end to leaving empty classrooms, coming home to an empty house and an empty life.
“Is that a threat?” Jim asked coldly.
His question stunned her. “What?”
“You’re supposed to be pretty good with a pistol and more than a little ruthless. I’m asking you point-blank: Are you threatening me?” A tic had replaced his dimple, and his face had gone still and tense, his eyes and mouth, hard.
What did he think she was capable of doing?
The answer was obvious: anything. And why shouldn’t he?
Once again, she’d made the same mistake. For a short hour, she’d tricked herself into believing she was simply a woman enjoying the company of a gentleman. But Jim wasn’t her beau and she wasn’t his lady, and he, at least, hadn’t mistaken their dinner for anything more than the act of feeding the body. She was pathetic.
She stood up, her vision swimming in the sudden sting of tears. She refused to shed them. “I’m not going to answer that, Mr. Coyne. I’m going back to the boarding house now. You can stay here or come along to ensure I don’t lay a trap for you.” Her attempted mockery failed, sounded brittle.
Before he could answer, she picked up her crutch and moved away, whacking her cast into the spring- loaded door and stepping out into the cold night air, leaving Jim and might-have-beens behind.
Outside, the main street teemed with lurid sound and motion. Men staggered and tripped on the boardwalk, hollered from the alleys, and raced their horses down the center of town. Bright, garish light spilled from the open doors of saloons, mingling with the jangling of an off-key player piano and the cacophony of drunken singers. This was her world. Or, at least, Lil’s.
Taking a deep breath, Gilly started the long, awkward walk back to the boardinghouse. Jim Coyne thought she could be violent. Good. That’s what she wanted people to think. That’s what had kept her safe: the perception that she was capable of any violence. But it did hurt, deep inside where she thought she’d killed every romantic notion. She’d thought for a short, wonderful hour that he saw her, Gilly, that in a deep instinctive way he knew her, knew she couldn’t hurt anyone.
She lifted her chin. She’d known what she was giving up a half decade earlier when she started this. But five years ago she’d been young, idealistic, ardent. Now . . . she saw her life racing away from her. And it was just too darn late to do anything about it except finish what she’d begun.
She was just passing the doors of one of the seedier saloons when a trio of boys sauntered out, blocking her way. She tried to get by them, but the shortest one—an ugly little tobacco chaw of a man—spied her and let out a little whoop. The blonde by his side gaped in wonderment.
“Boy, howdy! Lookee here, Tommy. A new soiled dove done flied into the coop!”
“Sorry, boys,” she said tiredly. “You’re mistaken. I’m not a dove. I’m a pigeon.”
“Huh?” the squat boy said. “What she mean?”
She shook her head. “Just my attempt at humor, kid.”
The word “kid” didn’t seem to fit well with the ugly little troll. His face split in a sneer, and he swaggered within a few inches of Gilly. She recoiled from his whiskey-soaked breath. “Honey doll, the way you look you don’t have to do nuthin’ with that mouth of yours but—”
“Nuh-uh. Don’t say it, Tommy,” a soft voice behind her advised. Jim.
He moved in front of her, cutting off the young men’s access, smiling pleasantly. “Don’t even think it, Tommy.”
Tommy snorted. “Think what, Pops? About this long-legged piece of high-priced tail opening up those lips and taking my—”
The troll keeled over, landing with a soft thud at Gilly’s feet. Gilly blinked and looked up. Jim was shaking his right hand.
“Did you . . . did you just hit him?”
“Well, he didn’t fall over by himself, darlin’,” Jim answered sarcastically. He looked down at the motionless form. Tommy’s two companions took up positions on either side of him, staring down too. “Ah, shit—excuse my language—he’s even younger than I thought.” He sounded honestly upset.
“That’s nearly two hundred pounds of ‘boy,’ Jim,” she said. “And based on my admittedly short acquaintance with him, I’d guess he’s been hit before. Often.”
“I don’t hit kids.”
“You’re gonna be sorry, m-mister,” the blond youth stuttered, bending down and hoisting Tommy up under the arms. “Real sorry.”
His other companion grabbed Tommy’s feet and they started staggering sideways, muttering threats and imprecations until they found a saloon and disappeared inside, leaving Gilly and Jim alone.
“Thank you,” Gilly said.
*
The light from the saloon window bathed her face with a buttery soft sheen and gilded her pale hair. Jim took a deep breath and made his hands stay at his side. They’d go back to the boardinghouse now. She’d let her hair down and gaze at him out of eyes the color of Creole coffee. She’d be feminine and vulnerable. Or worse, she’d speak intelligently and knowledgeably on any number of seemingly inconsequential matters, but with a flavor of experience that struck a note of accord with him.
He didn’t want to be in accord with a criminal.
She was a story, a way out of here, and nothing else. Yet, when he’d asked her if she was threatening him and he’d seen the color bleed from her face as though he’d struck her, he’d felt ashamed, as though he’d backhanded a smiling child. Ashamed that he’d thought poorly of a self-confessed bandit. What a joke. She was probably laughing up her crooked sleeve at him. For God’s sake, the woman came with a wanted poster, not a letter of introduction!
He looked up at the night sky, silently begging for direction. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so frustrated, so confused.
Confused? She was a woman. What had he expected? But she wasn’t like other women. There was a sense of purpose, a tempered quality of strength and regret, and yet an approachable gentleness about her. He felt comfortable with her, instinctively gauging the subtle shifts of her agile mind, anticipating her smile ... ah, hell! “I’ll take you back to the boardinghouse. Then I have to come back to town. I have some business to attend to.”
“Of course.”
She was quiet during the short walk home, making good time in spite of the crutch. It was getting late and the house was dark except for the flickering lantern lighting their window above. Not their window, Jim told himself. There was no their. Silently, Jim held open the front door, looking askance when she didn’t enter. She stood, eyes lowered, head bowed.
“I’ve never killed anyone in my life,” she finally said in a low, earnest voice. “I shot a man once. I hit him in the leg. I spent the next hour with my head over a basin, getting sick to my stomach. I have a reputation, and it’s kept me and a lot of people from getting hurt. I’d appreciate it if you’d just leave that little bit of news out of your story. But I wanted you to know.”
“Gilly, I never thought—” He stopped himself. He didn’t know what the hell he thought.
“It’s all right,” she murmured, slipping by him into the house, the darkness masking her expression but unable to mask the hurt in her voice. He felt like a bully.
She might not be a killer, but before this charade was done he suspected she’d make him bleed. The despair and valiance with which she accepted his doubt made him want to comfort her. And more. Much more. He entered the house behind her, stopping at the bottom of the stairs.
He stepped near enough to feel the slight heat rise off her skin like an aura, to almost taste the flavor of her soft lips. Their eyes met. He didn
’t know a damn thing about her. She was more of a mystery than any he’d ever encountered in a career where mysteries were an everyday occurrence. He’d never wanted the answer to a puzzle more in his life.
He raised his arms and she walked into his embrace. No, he told himself sternly, she walked into an offer to be carried up the stairs. He lifted her easily, handed her the crutch, and started up.
It was exquisite torture. With each step her breasts bounced gently against him. Each movement translated into the push and drag of her body against his. Each breath she took stirred the air on his throat.
He made the landing and didn’t want to put her down. As soon as he realized it, he made himself do it, made himself step away and touch his finger to the brim of his hat.
“Ma’am, if you would just set my toothbrush and the wash ewer in the sitting room, I’d be obliged.”
Her dark eyes did not waver from his. She nodded.
“Thank you.” He made himself turn, made himself take the long flight of steps down and out of the house, feeling her gaze on his back the entire time. With a firm stride he made the corner of the street. Once in the shadows, he bent over, bracing his hands on his thighs. “I need a drink.” He looked back.
The light was on in the upper room. He could see her, a lithe silhouette against the drawn curtain. She was brushing her hair. Each time she lifted her hand her breast rose, its ripe contours silhouetted against the glow of the globe lamp.
He’d return to that room later tonight, and he’d look at that cheap door and know that was all that separated them. All night. Every night. For a couple of weeks. Every morning he’d wake to the scent of her, the husky timbre of her voice, the sight of her. And, damn it all to hell, it was a good, practical business arrangement. She was getting a chance to heal up, and he was getting a ticket out of here. He glanced up again. Long, languid strokes of the brush.
“I really need a drink.”
“Too bad, old man, ’cause I got a different plan fer you,” Tommy said, and then the other two jumped him.
Chapter Five
Gilly woke up to the sound of a masculine groan. Apparently, Jim’s business last night had been with a liquor bottle. There was ample evidence that her Mr. Coyne was a hard-drinking Irishman. Not that he was her Mr. Coyne, she thought sadly, or her anything but a means to an end. The groan turned into a hiss of pain.
Worriedly, Gilly opened the door and peeked out. He wasn’t sprawled in the disreputable heap she’d expected. He was sitting on the edge of the fainting couch, his back to her, pulling on a clean white shirt. He’d gotten one arm through a sleeve and was cautiously working on the other. The livid bruise marking the thick cap of muscle on top of his shoulders seemed to be giving him trouble. He lifted his arm, got it just high enough to slip in, and gave a muted groan.
“What happened to you?” Gilly asked.
His head snapped around, and she could see a slight discoloration on his chin. Then his lovely pasque flower-blue eyes narrowed and he jerked the shirt the rest of the way on, turning his back to do so.
A modest man. Who’d have imagined such a species existed? The thought made her smile.
“Chrissake, Gilly, get something on!”
He’d called her Gilly. Her smile broadened. She ignored his order, sashaying into the room as his hands made deft work of his shirt buttons. “I already have. I’m wearing what is commonly referred to as a ‘morning gown.’ Where’d you get those bruises?”
His mobile lips scrunched in disgust. “Tommy and his pals were waiting for me when I got back to the main street last night. They’ll be okay,” he assured her, although why he would think she cared about the welfare of Tommy and his nasty “pals” was an utter mystery. “I didn’t hurt them. Much. Course, if their da had used a nice stout rod when the need arose, I doubt they’d be causing so much trouble now.”
“Your dad use that stout rod much, Mr. Coyne?”
He grinned, that utterly charming Gaelic lopsided grin that crinkled the corners of his North Sea eyes and made that unnerving dimple appear. “When the need arose.”
“Did it arise much?”
He shrugged and stood up. The movement made him grimace and he set his hands on his hips, arcing into the ache, working out the kinks. He looked sore and poorly used, she thought, a sense of empathy following her summation.
“I have some salve,” she offered. “I always carry it in my saddlebag. A Cheyenne tracker gave it to me.”
He turned his gorgeous eyes on her again, a touch of pity softening their brilliance. “I bet you need it, what with the life you lead. You must get pretty beat up out there on the range, huh?” He finished buttoning his shirt.
“Oh, it’s not for me! My gelding is getting up there in years, and sometimes after a long day if I don’t rub him down he’s just no good for—”
“I am not old,” he broke in through clenched teeth. “I am not a gelding, and I don’t need any of your liniment, lady.”
So, they were back to “lady.”
“I was just trying to help.”
“The only thing I want from you is your story.” He snatched his black silk tie off the table and crouched down so he could look in the little fish-eye mirror hung near the door. Deftly, he flipped the ends into a neat knot. That done, he picked up his brush and attacked his rich, glossy curls, sheer force making them lie flat. As soon as he turned from the mirror they sprang to life. She tried not to smile, and he eyed her suspiciously.
“You want breakfast first, or do you want to start in on the interview right away?”
“We can start to work right now if you’d like, Mr. Coyne.”
“Not with you in that outfit, we can’t.” He made a disparaging gesture at her dressing gown, and to her chagrin she felt herself blush. Which was ridiculous. Her gown was demure in the extreme. The light muslin could hardly be said to cling. It dropped in soft folds to cover her feet. Besides, it was one of the few things she’d bought at that secondhand store that fit. Her real wardrobe was hardly suited to the role of adventuress she’d thought to be playing. Still, she didn’t want to provoke him.
She emerged fifteen minutes later in a simple lilac- colored dress, only the deep keyhole neckline in the uncomfortably tight bodice worthy of comment. Jim didn’t comment.
“Let’s try a different tack today, shall we?” he said.
She nodded agreeably.
“Let’s discuss opinions, not facts.”
“Fine. What would you like to know?”
“Why do you do these things? What makes a pretty young woman become a common hoodlum, robbing people at the point of a gun rather than earning a living? Why do you risk physical harm to pursue such an infamous occupation? Money? Thrills? Are you simply crazy, or do you have reasons for your antisocial behavior?”
She squirmed on her seat. “That’s putting it rather baldly.”
He raked his hand through his hair, sending the last of the obedient waves into open riot.
“Is something wrong?”.
“Look,” he said, “I’ve interviewed plenty of criminals: labor bosses, union heads, gang leaders. I ask a question, and they respond with either a threat or an answer. But in all the years I’ve been doing this—and yeah, that’s a lot of years—not one of them has ever complained that I didn’t phrase a question delicately enough.”
She gazed wide-eyed at him, and he gave a sound of exasperation. “I’m new at interviewing bandits with delicate sensibilities, but just spot me a few errors and I’m sure somehow we’ll muddle through.”
“Why are you here then?”
“Huh?”
“If you’re normally interviewing gang and labor bosses, what are you doing in Far Enough, Texas, interviewing me?”
He plucked his paper and pencil from the table. “I’m asking the questions.”
“Sorry.”
He threw up his hands, capitulating to the hurt in her voice. “I was exiled here, okay? I wrote an article about a palm-oilin
g deal between a city councilman and a sewage contractor. It was a deal that made two men rich and left an entire section of the city— albeit a poor section—with a substandard sewage system.
“And they exiled you for that? That’s just not fair!” she said incredulously, her ire—and her fanny—rising at such an injustice. He pushed her back down in her chair.
“Calm down, Gilly,” he said with a hint of amusement. “I didn’t get sent here for exposing wrongs. Papers love exposing wrongs. In fact, if we can’t find wrong, we’re encouraged to invent it. No. I got sent here for getting my paper sued for libel.”
“Oh.”
“Satisfied?” His blue eyes danced.
“I was just curious.”
“As am I. Now, Miss ... it is Miss, isn’t it?”
“It’s Miss.”
“You’ve never even been close to getting married?”
“Yes.”
He held up both hands, waggling his fingers invitingly. “Could you elaborate?”
“I was engaged once.”
“Yeah? What happened? Is he why you started rob—on your life of crime?”
“Oh, no. He was a fine, honest man. That was the problem. I just couldn’t see explaining my, er, career choice to him. He was very ethical.”
“Ethical men. God love ’em,” Jim muttered with such commiseration that she concluded a few had interfered in his past. “Why didn’t you just quit thieving?”
She was telling too much. Her desire to tell him the truth, to have another person know her, to discover if he’d recoil, sneer, or even accept what she was, fought with her need for safety. Not her own but her family’s. The latter impulse won.
“He was poor. Poor as dirt,” she said.
Jim immediately noted the change in her tone. A savvy, hard note had entered it. She’s put on the Lightning Lil mask, he thought.
“Poor and honest,” she continued flippantly. “Salt of the earth. A saint among men, but with no earthly possessions to call his own.”
Heaven with a Gun Page 4
