The Lawman's Bride (Harlequin Historical Series)

by Cheryl St. John

  “How nice for you. I’m thinking of setting up an office here. I’ve found one or two investors.”

  “Well, you are in the business of multiplying money, and this is an excellent place to do so. You’re looking well.”

  “Thank you. Please, you must meet some friends of mine. Frank, meet Mrs. Saxton. Frank Wick here.”

  The man pushed back his chair and stood. “Pleasure, Mrs. Saxton.”

  “You may call me Elizabeth. Any friend of Mr. Morgan’s is a first-name friend of mine.”

  With a smile, Frank showed his true pleasure over that comment.

  “This is Rudy Jacobson, Max Cline, and over here John. Never caught your last name, John.”

  The man nodded to Sophie. “Just call me J.J., ma’am.”

  Garrett turned to acquire an empty chair from another table. “Do sit in and be my good luck this evening.”

  “That’s not fair,” Frank interrupted. “Mrs. Saxton should sit by me.”

  “You’ve been winning all night, you hardly need her,” Garrett objected good naturedly.

  Sophie detested this role, but she was in it come hell or high water now. “I’ll sit between you two gentlemen,” she said with a laugh. “And the winner may take me to breakfast tomorrow morning.”

  Garrett feigned a look of jealousy that he quickly hid.

  She settled onto the chair, and Frank parked again, his attention momentarily riveted by her display of cleavage when she sat forward to smooth the wrinkles from the skirt beneath her. She deliberately jiggled herself into a more comfortable position.

  As usual, Garrett had done his work well. Frank Wick had an eye for the ladies. And, because she knew Garrett so well, she also knew Frank had a bank account as big as his appetite. It was a given that he had a respectable wife and a batch of little Wicks at home.

  “What are you playing?” she asked.

  “Texas hold ’em,” Frank replied. “Little game us ranchers like to play.”

  “You have a ranch?” she asked, wide-eyed. “With cows?”

  “Decent spread,” he replied. “I run a couple thousand head.”

  “I’m impressed. Do you ride a horse around your ranch and everything?”

  He grinned. “I do.”

  She strategically placed a hand at her breast and sighed. “There’s something breathtaking about a handsome man astride a horse.”

  Frank Wick was a shoe-in. He puffed his chest out and reached into his vest pocket to withdraw a cigar. Sophie didn’t let herself watch Frank light it and puff importantly. She’d have been tempted to yank it out of his hand. How ungentlemanly that he hadn’t offered her one. “What did your husband do?” J.J. asked.

  “Boring bank work,” she replied. “He owned the Seattle Merchant Bank and a couple of others. He was a dear man. A good husband, even though he never rode a horse. City slicker I guess you men would’ve called him.”

  “Come now, Elizabeth,” Garrett said lightheartedly. “That boring bank business is what afforded you the lifestyle you enjoy today.”

  She laughed. “I said it was boring, I never said it wasn’t wise…or profitable. And my Herbert was a very generous man.”

  “Would you care for a drink?” Frank asked.

  “Why, yes, a glass of sherry would be delightful, thank you.” And fork over one of those cigars while you’re at it.

  Sophie wanted to check her watch. This couldn’t be over soon enough. But she was in character now, and the wheels of deception were moving smoothly. Two hours, she assured herself. Two hours, give or take a few minutes, and this whole chapter of her life would have come to an end.

  Old resentment rose up inside her, the conviction that men like this deserved to be deceived because they were pigs. She corrected her thinking this time. No one deserved to be deceived, and this man was being lured by his own weakness. Everyone had weakness, and she had no room to stand in judgment, especially since she goaded them on. She’d changed her thinking, changed her goals, changed her life.

  What was left of it anyway.

  An hour dragged by. She sipped her sherry while Frank downed several snifters of brandy and finished two cigars.

  He was still plenty coherent, plenty aware of her, but his judgment was now conveniently impaired.

  She worked her chair closer to his.

  “You and Morgan,” he said in a low voice. “You, uh, you have strings?”

  “He’d like to think so,” she replied in the same conspiratory tone he’d used. “I choose my friends as I see fit, however.” She slanted him a flirtatious glance. “And you look like a very good fit to me.”

  He couldn’t keep his eyes from the neckline of her dress, and after a while she had a struggle keeping his hand away from her thigh under the table.

  Garrett was letting him win. J.J. won a few hands, but all in all, it was Frank hauling the dollars across the table. He was feeling on top of the world, Sophie thought, showing off for her, feeling important and in no pain.

  Another hour passed. She excused herself to use the outhouse behind the gaming hall and glanced past the path lit by gas lamps, wondering if Clay’s men were watching her. On her return, she checked her watch, then tucked it back into her garter. It was time.

  “I’m feeling rather tired,” she told the men several minutes later. “I had a long trip. I believe I’ll head back to my hotel. Perhaps we’ll see each other again?”

  She looked at Frank deliberately.

  “Where are you staying?” Garrett asked as a prompt.

  “At the Enterprise Hotel. It seems quite sufficient so far.”

  “Well, Elizabeth, you shouldn’t walk all alone,” Frank said right on cue. He turned over his cards and swept his money from the table into his pocket. “I’m out for the night.”

  “I’ll feel safe with you walking me home,” she told him, and linked her arm through his.

  Garrett exchanged a look with Rudy, but shuffled the cards without comment.

  Now Frank Wick was thinking she’d chosen him over the dapper Monte Morgan, and his ego was full to bursting as planned.

  She’d worked this routine a hundred times, she could do it again. She didn’t have to sleep with the man. He only had to think she was going to.

  They exited the hall and she kept her arm tucked through the crook of his. It was safer that way. He wasn’t free to touch her, and she was in the position of control.

  She didn’t look to either side or check behind her, but she sensed Clay’s man following. Perhaps Clay himself? She wasn’t afraid of the man beside her. Frank wasn’t the criminal here. She was.

  “I didn’t ask if you wanted to take along somethin’ to drink,” he said, his words slow and deliberate.

  “I have a bottle of brandy in my room,” she answered smoothly. “Would you like to come up?”

  “I would indeed.”

  Ten minutes seemed like hours. The risk was always in the mark sobering up from the walk and the fresh air, but she didn’t sense that Frank had walked off much of his brandy.

  He seemed reluctant to approach the front door of the hotel. “I—um—wouldn’t want to tarnish your good reputation,” he said.

  He couldn’t care less about her reputation; he was concerned about someone recognizing him.

  But she played along. “Why don’t you walk around to the back door? I’ll make sure no one is paying any attention, and then I’ll open it for you.” She steeled herself to flatten her hand over the front of his shirt and look up at him suggestively.

  “I’d feel better ’bout that,” he said with a loose nod.

  He reached for her, but she slipped away and walked toward the front entrance.

  Chapter Twenty

  The man who worked the night shift was dozing in the leather chair behind the counter as she passed. His soft snores followed her along the hallway and through the dark dining room until she reached the kitchen. She eased back the bolt and opened the door.

  Frank must have been leaning
against it, because he lost his balance and fell inward. She caught him with both hands on his chest, helped him steady himself and relocked the door.

  “The night clerk is sleeping,” she told him. “But we’ll bypass the front desk anyway.”

  Frank kept up and climbed the back stairs behind her.

  She glanced at the dark space under the door next to hers, found her key, and unlocked her door. The rest shouldn’t take longer than ten minutes, she thought, the quiver of nervous anticipation sharpening her wits. She lit one lamp, but left the curtains parted.

  She opened the brandy and splashed generous portions into two white hotel coffee cups.

  “To new friends,” she said, raising her cup to Frank’s.

  “New friends.” He swallowed deep, then glanced around, taking note of the dressing gown on the screen. Sophie filled his cup again.

  He was probably Garrett’s age, maybe not yet forty. Lines had formed at the corner of each eye from working in the sun. He was average height, his waist not thick. His wife probably truly loved him. His children were no doubt handsome. His family attended school and church and activities right here in this town. What would happen once Garrett was caught and the story of what had taken place here got around?

  Sophie had never let herself think about the blackmailed men left behind to explain their financial losses to their families and the community.

  “They can afford it. They deserve it,” had been Garrett’s philosophy. Sophie simply hadn’t wanted to question—to have to feel guilty. To face her part in tearing apart lives.

  She filled his cup again. He’d made himself at home on the end of the bed.

  He was playing right into her hand, but she resented his forwardness anyway. She’d always felt that way. Detested the men who were so willing to be led to destruction.

  “Goodness, it’s warm up here tonight. Maybe you’d like to take off your jacket.”

  He smiled a lecherous smile. “Would be cooler, now, wouldn’t it? Are you too warm, Elizabeth?”

  She gave him a fetching smile. “I have something cooler I can slip into. Would you mind unbuttoning my dress?”

  “Nah.”

  She held up her “hair,” careful not to dislodge the blond wig. Frank fumbled with the row of buttons, finally ripping a couple off in his clumsy haste. “Sorry ’bout that. I’ll get you a new dress if you’d like.”

  “You would? I love gifts.” She moved away to step behind the screen. “Go ahead and make yourself comfortable.”

  She peeked around the side and mentally readied herself. “We could just skip these awkward steps if you’d like.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at her.

  “The male body doesn’t offend me. Go ahead and get yourself ready and get into bed.”

  She didn’t wait for his expression. She removed the dress, making sure to toss it over the screen where he could see it, and pulled her wrapper on over her undergarments. She listened, waiting for the sounds that told her he was incriminating himself item by discarded item.

  When she heard the bedsprings, she breezed out from behind the screen. He was propped on the pillows, his chest naked above the sheets. It was plain he wore a shirt out of doors, because his chest was white against his face and neck.

  “I’ll open the window to give us some air,” she said, and slid it open.

  She turned out the lamp and walked to the end of the bed.

  “I have a little secret to share with you,” she told him in a coy tone. “Since we’re going to be such good friends and all.”

  “You can tell me anythin’, little lady.”

  “Well, truth is I wanted one of your cigars all evening. It would have been improper to ask in public, but since we’re alone, would you have another you could share?”

  His eager expression faltered. Taking time for a smoke wasn’t what he’d had in mind. “In my jacket pocket. Down there somewhere. Help yourself.”

  “I’ll have to turn the light back on.”

  That was Garrett’s final signal. He’d be crossing the street now.

  She found a cigar and a match tin. “Do you want one?”

  He shook his head. “Couldn’t that wait until—Couldn’t that wait?”

  “Are you in a hurry, Frank?” She puffed on the cigar. Her heart chugged a little faster, knowing the marshal’s men were ready to spring. Not knowing how Frank was going to react. Thinking of Garrett’s reaction when he knew he’d been set up. The wisdom of this plan suddenly seemed in question.

  She took off her wrapper, and Frank’s expression fell.

  She managed a dry laugh. “You didn’t think I wasn’t going to let you watch, now did you?”

  She suggestively untied the strings that held the front of the corset together, and dealt with the fact that the lawmen were going to barge in and see her in her drawers.

  The cigars Clay had given her were better than Frank’s. “Sorry about this, Frank.”

  He blinked. “What?”

  She drew back the sheet and got on the bed. “Nothing personal.”

  “Lady, this is pretty personal.”

  “Let’s do away with the sheet,” she suggested. Timing was everything.

  Frank had that sheet off in record time. He reached for her, and she raised the cigar away. “I’d better set this down.”

  She turned and he grabbed her from behind.

  Sophie was attuned to the sound of the door opening, though it took Frank’s brain a minute longer. He was groping for her breasts when she turned directly toward the door as though in shock. “What’s this? How dare you!”

  Rudy Jacobson was Garrett’s witness of choice, a man who probably had a bone to pick and was loving catching the other man at something unscrupulous. Rudy’s eyes widened at the sight of a naked Frank and Sophie in her beribboned corset and drawers. Garrett was right behind him, having pushed Rudy in first.

  “What have we here?” Garrett asked, coming to stand at the foot of the bed. “Mr. Jacobsen, did you have any idea what you were going to behold this night?”

  Frank had to roll over the other side of the bed to grab for the sheet. “What the hell is this, Morgan? Get your ass out of this room or our deal is off.”

  “Oh, perhaps our dealings have only just begun.” A sly grin tilted his lips.

  Sophie stood and reached for her wrapper.

  “Stay right there, Elizabeth,” Garrett said to her. “I’ll deal with you later.”

  She settled back on the mattress like a docile paramour.

  “You’ve got a lot of nerve comin’ in here like this,” Frank said to the two men. “What the hell are you thinkin’?”

  “I’m thinking we’d better send Rudy away now. I’ll come to the Silver Spike shortly,” Garrett told the man. “After I’ve had a word with Frank and I send Elizabeth packing.”

  “Yeah. Okay.” Rudy backed out through the doorway. Sophie wondered how far he’d make it before a lawman detained him.

  Garrett reached to take the cigar from Sophie’s fingers and clamped it between his teeth. “Get dressed.”

  She stood.

  “Margaret would be very disappointed if she knew what you’d been up to this evening,” Garrett said to the other man. “What do you think she’d do if she knew you’d been caught in your altogether in a beautiful woman’s hotel room?”

  “How do you know about Margaret? And how would she find out?”

  “I know everything I need to know. And she’d find out when Rudy and I went to your home to do the right thing and let her know that her husband is a fornicating bastard.”

  “You wouldn’t.” A nervous sheen of sweat glistened on Frank’s face and chest. “Why would you?”

  “I would if I didn’t have motivation not to.”

  “You that sore of a loser, Morgan?”

  “You’re the loser, I’m afraid. Don’t feel bad, though. There are only a handful of men alive who can resist Elizabeth’s charms.”

 
Frank looked from Garrett to Sophie. She shrugged. It all became perfectly clear in that clarifying moment, and his befuddled expression turned thunderous. “You son of a bitch! You set this whole thing up!” He turned a glare on Sophie then, and she looked away before he could call her names.

  “Don’t worry, we’re going to work something out,” Garrett told him. “You’ve just transferred all those funds from cattle sales.”

  “My investment money, you wanted it all along.”

  Where was Clay? Surely they’d heard enough by now. He was here, wasn’t he?

  Frank turned his fury toward Sophie. “You tramp! You set me up. You no good whorin’ bitch!”

  He lunged toward her, and Garrett jumped out of his way. Frank reached her as she turned to run. He grabbed for her and came away with a fistful of blond hair. His momentary shock gave Sophie time to move away to a safer distance. Where was Clay?

  Garrett drew his pearl-handled gun and aimed it at Frank. “Don’t make it any more difficult on yourself than it needs to be. Let’s discuss money and leave her out of it.”

  This was going all wrong. Garrett had never pulled his gun on the mark before! Sophie’s heart pounded at this unplanned development. She’d been eager for Clay to arrive, now she prayed he didn’t.

  Frank threw the wig toward Sophie as the voice split the air.

  “Hands in the air, Garrett.”

  Clay was here.

  He stood with his .45 directed at Garrett’s back. “Drop the gun. Your game is over.”

  After a mere second of shock, Garrett cast Sophie a hateful scowl.

  She cringed under the magnitude of his fury and sensed desperation take over his instincts. Slowly, he turned the barrel of his revolver so that it pointed to her chest. “Go ahead. Let’s see who can shoot first, shall we?”

  Marshal Vidlak and Deputy Owen Sanders flanked Clay inside the doorway, all three with weapons drawn.

  Clay glanced from Garrett to Sophie and back again. A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Three to one is pretty good odds in my favor,” he said, his voice a soul-deep reassurance.

  Garrett turned slowly without changing the direction his pistol was aimed until he faced the three lawmen. “You’re probably right.”