Midnight Lover

by Barbara Bretton

"I'll thank you to keep your comments to yourself, sir. Thus far you and your fellow townspeople have displayed a most unfriendly attitude toward new arrivals."

  He lit one of his fat cigars and she watched, momentarily fascinated, as the tip glowed red in the gathering darkness.

  "New arrivals? That another way of saying 'old maid'?"

  Her hand itched to slap him but she sensed she had pushed Reardon as far as he would allow. She would punish him with her legendary sharp tongue instead. "'Old maid' is a term created by men who believe the goal of all women is to subjugate themselves to the male of the species."

  A slow smile spread across his face. "'Spinster' sound better, Car-o-line?"

  "I will not dignify that with a response."

  He turned toward the McGuigan and Wilder girls. "You gals admit you came here draggin' your rope for a husband. Why can't this one come clean? Ain't nothin' wrong with admitting she needs a man."

  Margaret McGuigan stepped forward. "Miss Caroline isn't looking for a husband. We knowed that right from the start. She said it was her father who—"

  "Come along," said Caroline briskly as light began to appear behind the windows of the Crazy Arrow. One thing she did not need was a discussion of her father's shortcomings, both marital and financial. "It grows late and I am certain you are all as fatigued as I."

  She motioned for her traveling companions to precede her.

  "You need a man, Car-o-line," Reardon whispered as she finally swept past him.

  "Perhaps," she said, head held high. "What a shame there isn't one to be found."

  Once again that lightning quick hand of his encircled her wrist with iron. "Mark my words: All the spinsters in the world won't be enough protection if I want you out of there."

  "Go to the devil, Mr. Reardon," she said, jerking her hand away from him. "I'm certain you'll be most welcome among your own kind."

  He was still laughing when the door to the Crazy Arrow closed behind her.

  * * *

  "Relax, Jesse." Jade's silky black hair drifted over his chest and shoulders as she leaned over him a few hours later. "You're coiled tighter than a rattlesnake."

  Jesse settled back against the fancy brass headboard in Jade's velvet suite and closed his eyes as her fingers traced a delicate pattern on his belly. Another time would have found him a more willing partner to her expert manipulations; tonight, however, he had other things on his mind.

  He'd laughed at Caroline Bennett's words but despite his laughter the sting of her words lingered. What she needed was a man to tell her who was boss, a man who'd drive those high-falutin' notions out of her pretty head and turn her into a more normal kind of gal who had marrying on her mind.

  Not that he wanted any part of marrying, mind you, but that kind of gal he could understand. Women wanted what a man could provide; they wanted a house and a passel of brats with runny noses and a man who'd be as faithful as the winter was long.

  The trappings were different but he knew one thing was certain as the dawn: he and Caroline Bennett were cut from the same cloth, two loners turned out to grass to make their way through life the best they could. She was no featherbrained petticoat dreaming about her rosebushes; she was smart and beautiful and determined to claim what was rightfully hers and it was up to him to make certain she didn't get it. Damn it, Silver Spur was changing fast enough—last thing they needed was to have it turn into a sewing circle.

  "Jesse?" Jade's breath was hot and moist against his chest. "I got me a good idea to pass the time..."

  "Once ain't enough for you, Jade? You're getting greedy these days, girl."

  "For you," she whispered. "Nobody else."

  Something settled down in the middle of his gut and he placed his hands on her shoulders and pushed her away. "You know it ain't that way between us, honey. Save the sweet talk for your payin' customers."

  Her dark eyes flashed for a moment and he half-expected to feel the sting of her palm against his cheek; but, Jade merely smiled and settled down against his chest and continued to tease him with her fingers and mouth while he tried his damnedest to forget the way Caroline Bennett had felt in his arms.

  * * *

  Caroline groaned and turned over, kicking the light blanket onto the floor. Despite the pleasant breeze drifting through the windows of her bedroom, her body seemed possessed of a heat that began deep inside and radiated outward, making it impossible to sleep.

  What on earth had she been thinking when she abandoned Boston and all that was familiar for this unknown, uncivilized place? For twenty-three years she had been witness to her father's parade of follies—what had possessed her to believe that his venture into saloon-keeping would be any more successful?

  The Crazy Arrow was a sad excuse for a saloon, a failure in a town fueled by whiskey and rum. Her entire stock of liquor rested forlornly atop her dresser and she hadn't the capital to replenish her supply. She had hoped a search of the basement would turn up some hidden resources, but all she'd discovered was a broken step that nearly sent her tumbling down the dark and narrow staircase.

  Her stomach rumbled and she held a feather pillow against her middle to quiet its demands. No money. No whiskey. No food. Owner of a building desperately in need of repairs with only a young maid and six husband-hunting girls for company. She was exactly as Jesse Reardon had described her: a pathetic spinster of twenty-three with no prospects of any kind.

  Had she a whit of the sense she'd been born with, she would resign herself to the fact that in six days she would be on her way back where she belonged, back to Thomas Wentworth Addison II and the life she'd never wanted.

  She wondered if that would bring a smile to Jesse Reardon's face.

  * * *

  "You let us down, Jesse," Luke Foster said the next morning as the men behind him nodded in assent. "When you let that gal set up house in the Crazy Arrow, you undermined everything the League's been tryin' to do." Why in hell had he let them into his office at the King of Hearts Saloon? His night with Jade had left him bushed and hung over and the last thing he needed was this group of hell bent for trouble prospectors giving him a hard time.

  "What would you have me do, Luke, have her sleepin' in the street for a week?"

  "Ain't nothin' much to me one way or the other," Luke said. "I just can't see why you let her take what belongs to you."

  The memory of Aaron Bennett's face as he took that bullet flickered across Jesse's memory.

  "Saloon can't run without whiskey or customers. She'll know before the week's out that it can't work."

  Three Toe Taylor stepped forward. "It just don't look right, Jesse. We up and swore not to let any more of them spinsters into town and now you got a passel of 'em holed up in the Crazy Arrow."

  "He's right," said Sam Markham, to Jesse's amazement. "If the most powerful man in town's gonna give in to a woman's tears, what hope is there for the rest of us?"

  Jesse leaned back in his chair and touched a hell stick to one of his big fat cigars. The smell of sulphur and tobacco tickled his nostrils. A stinking paper-collar stiff of Single Twist tobacco was good enough for most men but not for Jesse Reardon and he knew damned well every man in the room was praying he'd take pity and spread his stash of cigars around.

  Power was in letting them keep on wanting.

  He exhaled a plume of fragrant smoke then flicked an ash into his silver ashtray. There was nothing like puffing on a Spanish cigar to give a man time to consider his options and, at the moment, it appeared he didn't have more than one. He didn't rightly give a damn about the Single Men's Protection League but he did care about his position in Silver Spur and there was only one way to protect it.

  "You gents remember that slick-heeled Easterner what was here a few months back?" He rested his feet atop his mahogany desk and lazily met their eyes. "Citified fellow, long on ideas and short on cash."

  "Bennett," said Luke Foster. "Used to own the Crazy Arrow."

  Jesse nodded. "He was her pa."

>   The men of Silver Spur were a hotheaded lot who'd shoot their own brothers for holding back an ace but a streak of sentimentality wide as the Mississippi ran through each of them when it came to talk of parents.

  Three Toe looked down at his boots. "Should've stayed with her ma," he said, half-heartedly. "Purty gal like that got no business comin' to a place like this."

  "She ain't got a ma," Jesse said, reckoning it must be true for he'd never heard mention of a Mrs. Bennett. "She's an orphan." Even if it weren't, no one in the room was about to argue with him.

  The men fell silent, their distrust of old maids battling their soft-hearted concern for orphans, mothers, and puppy dogs. Jesse leaned forward, cigar in hand, and fixed them all with a stern look.

  "Seems to me the least we can do is give the filly a place to set until the stage comes back on Friday. Crazy Arrow's been shuttered since her pa died—it ain't like I offered her a room at the King of Hearts."

  The men buzzed with outrage. The King of Hearts was sacred, same as Jade's Golden Dragon, one of the few places in a town hellbent on domestication where a man could be a man. Jesse'd played the odds that they'd give up the barber shop and their bedrolls quicker than they'd give up a first rate bucket of blood or a houseful of calico queens and he'd come up aces high.

  "Now I understand no clear-thinkin' fellow would cotton to the notion of a gal settin' foot in the King of Hearts. Something like that could cause all manner of trouble." His shoulders rose and fell in a huge shrug. "So I let her stay in her pa's old saloon. Seemed the decent thing to do at the time, her being orphaned and all."

  The fact that the orphan involved was blonde and beautiful and a score or so years past diapers and mush didn't matter to anyone there and Jesse held back a grin of triumph as he took another long puff on his cigar.

  "Guess there ain't much call to get all riled up," said his pal Sam Markham.

  "Guess not," said Luke Foster. "Jest steer clear of the Crazy Arrow and the orphan gal."

  "That's all you have to do," said Jesse. "Steer clear of the Crazy Arrow until Friday and the spinsters will be on their way back home." Rising from his chair, he flipped the lid on his humidor and let the smell of fine Spanish tobacco fill the air. "Cigars, anyone?"

  One thing Jesse Reardon knew how to do was take his triumphs like a man.

  * * *

  For the next three days Caroline stuck close to the Crazy Arrow and far away from Jesse Reardon. Not that Reardon was making it his business to keep tabs on her but she figured keeping out of sight to be her best defense. She and Abby and the other girls spent their time polishing and cleaning the wooden frame building from basement to attic until it fairly glistened with soap and water and wax. Abby thought her crazy for investing so much time and energy in resurrecting something only to abandon it at week's end, but Caroline set her jaw in a stubborn line and continued polishing the brass chandelier in the gaming room.

  Abby and the girls made their way to Aunt Sally's each morning and evening for meals that proved only slightly more appetizing than the tincan beans they'd had their first night in town. Desperate to make her money last as long as possible, Caroline stayed home, rationing out her food money into impossibly tiny increments so Abby could bring back a portion of the day's special in a pink china bowl they'd uncovered in the kitchen.

  Despite the fact she'd never lived under such dreadful conditions, Caroline found herself growing attached to the Crazy Arrow and her companions. There was something unexpectedly splendid about making her own decisions, sharing the day's work with other women, carving out a place for them where none had ever existed. Freedom such as this would be impossible in Boston.

  If the fit of life alongside the Charles River had been difficult before, she couldn't imagine how she would ever manage it now that she had had a taste of a different way of living.

  But what choice had she? The men in this lawless, godless town would never accept a female saloonkeeper who wasn't willing to provide services like those provided across the street at the Golden Dragon. The rock that had come crashing through her front window her first morning in town had been proof enough of that.

  There had to be a way but at the moment she feared she would be halfway to Boston by the time she discovered what that way was.

  * * *

  On Caroline's sixth day in Silver Spur, the answer to her prayers appeared at her bedroom door in the form of Jenny Wilder.

  "We've been talkin', Miss Caroline," Jenny said, sitting down on the edge of the huge feather bed next to Caroline, "and we all want to thank you for takin' us in."

  Caroline shrugged her shoulders. "No thanks are necessary, Jenny. How could I leave you to fend for yourselves? The least I could do was offer you shelter while I'm here."

  Jenny reached into the deep pocket of her gingham apron and withdrew five dollars in paper money. "Take this," the girl said, pushing the money into Caroline's hand. "Sarah found out the goin' rate at the Last Stop."

  "I couldn't—"

  "You got to, Miss Caroline. My ma brung me up never to accept charity no matter how kindly it's meant."

  Caroline inclined her head in thanks. "I understand, Jenny, and I appreciate this gesture. The Last Stop's loss was my gain."

  "We don't know what we're going to do when you and Abby head back east," Jenny said, tossing her ginger-colored braid over her bony shoulder. "Don't look as if these men are as all-fired matrimony-bound as we were told."

  "You intend to stay?" Caroline asked in amazement. "Dear God, Jenny, they won't even allow you girls shelter. What on earth will you do?"

  "We don't know," Jenny said bluntly. "Sarah's thinkin' of moving up to Virginia City but I still got hopes the men will come 'round and lose this marryin' fear."

  Caroline chuckled and looked down at the money in her hands. "How often I wished my father would acquire this marrying fear. There seems to be no middle ground in life, does there, Jenny? A man either keeps taking wife after wife to his bosom in search of the perfect spouse or he turns tail and runs each time a woman mentions matrimony."

  Jenny's serious face lit with understanding. "Is that why you feel the way you do about taking the vows, Miss Caroline?"

  "One reason among many. Truth to tell, Jenny, I doubt if there's many a man who would willingly take on a woman as set in my ways as I am."

  "I seen the way men look at you, Miss Caroline. I doubt you'd have yourself a lick of trouble findin' a willing man."

  "Willing and worthy are two different things. Usually those attributes are not found in the same man."

  "I gotta admit you don't always make total sense to me, Miss Caroline, but I sure wish you and Abby were stayin' on a little longer."

  Caroline sighed and patted Jenny's hand. She and Jenny were but four years apart in age, yet Caroline felt as if a lifetime of experience separated them. Unlike Caroline, Jenny had been raised in a household complete with a mother and a father, sisters and brothers, and a menagerie of dogs and cats all vying for love and attention. No matter what happened in Jenny Wilder's western adventure, a soft bed and warm food would always await her at home in Kansas and that's where Caroline was different from the rest of the women in Silver Spur. No soft bed and warm food awaited her for she had no home, no family, no one to care if she lived or died.

  "I'm going to miss you and the girls, Jenny," said Caroline, tucking the money into the drawer of her nightstand and rising. "I do believe this has been the most interesting week of my life."

  Jenny stood up and smoothed the front of her plain apron. "They're going to be real sorry I couldn't convince you to stay."

  Caroline linked her arm through Jenny's. "It isn't your fault. How can I stay here when I have no means of supporting myself? I had believed this to be a thriving saloon but you can see the folly of that." She sighed as they headed down the stairs. "Why, in another two weeks I shall have completely run out of funds to pay Abby's wages."

  "The other girls'll be mighty disappointed," Jen
ny repeated. "They were lookin' forward to living here at the Crazy Arrow until their weddings took place."

  "I wish it could be otherwise, Jenny, but I could never make do with but six boarders and an establishment this size. Why, I—"

  "Six boarders?" Jenny laughed. "There's more'n six waitin' to live here at the Arrow, Miss Caroline."

  "More than six?" Caroline stopped dead in her tracks on the second floor landing. "Explain yourself."

  "We been talkin' to a lot of gals like us down at Aunt Sally's and they'd sell their petticoats to live in a nice clean safe place like the Crazy Arrow."

  Caroline was quiet for a moment then, "How many girls, Jenny?"

  "Twelve countin' the hash slinger."

  "Twelve girls plus our seven?"

  "Twenty countin' you, Miss Caroline."

  "Oh, my!" At two dollars per night, the possibilities were breathtaking but so were the pitfalls. "It could never work," she mused as they continued down the stairs to the main floor. "I haven't the linens or the mattresses for so many and Lord only knows how we would keep us all in hot water and soap. I would have to charge more than they do at the Last Stop."

  "That wouldn't be unreasonable if you provided meals, Miss Caroline. I can speak for all of us when I say the food at Aunt Sally's ain't all it could be."

  Once again Caroline was stopped in her tracks by the blunt truth of Jenny's statement. "Do you mean cook for everyone?"

  "You can cook, can't you, Miss Caroline?"

  "Well, of course I can," Caroline said. "I can make a fine split pea soup and a palatable veal stew but cook for so many? I doubt I even have the necessary pots and pans and dishes and—"

  "We have our bridal ware with us."

  "I draw the line at using your things, Jenny."

  "Don't seem like there's any other way, does it?"

  "I suppose there's always a bank loan to consider."

  Jenny gasped. "The bank loan money to a woman?"

  Caroline glared at the girl. "Is that too impossible a notion to even consider, Jenny?"

  "Seems they won't even rent a room to a woman in Silver Spur, Miss Caroline. Somehow I can't imagine what they'd say if you were to ask for money."