Meriel leveled the barrel and her hands shook with fury.
“Woman, hand me that gun right now,” Wade ordered.
“You’ve been coming in here looking at that naked harlot,” she said. “Drinking and gambling and God only knows what all else.”
“Hand me the gun,” he said again.
Instead she squeezed the trigger.
Lily’s ears rang with the silence that followed.
A click followed by nothing.
Meriel stared at the gun in her hand as though it had just betrayed her. With impotent rage, she threw it as hard and as far as she could toward the painting.
It hit the mirror instead. Lily’s fifteen-hundred-dollar pride and joy shattered in a burst of flying glass, littering the floor and the bar, breaking glassware and toppling bottles of liquor. It was a deafening sound, and a potent smell rose from the bottles that chugged whiskey and rye onto the floor.
Meriel stared at the scene, her expression as shocked as anyone else’s. She wrapped her arms around herself and pressed her forearms into her stomach as though her belly ached.
“Is anybody hurt?”
The voice came from the doorway. Heads turned to find the sheriff just inside the saloon.
Miners and townspeople looked at each other and shook their heads. Nate walked through the crowd of now-silent women, past Meriel to the bar. “You okay, old man?”
From the end of the bar, Old Jess nodded.
Lily realized what might have happened if Jess had still been standing back there when the glass splintered in all directions. Angry now, she walked forward and looked at the devastation behind her bar. Looked at the pieces of mirror and the spreading pool of alcohol on the floor.
The painting still hung in its spot, untouched.
She turned to Meriel. “You missed.”
The woman started to lunge forward, but her husband grabbed her and held her with both arms pinned to her sides.
“Someone want to give me an account of what just happened?”
A dozen voices fought to be heard, but Nate held up a hand and asked for one person’s story at a time.
“That how it happened?” he asked Lily. “They came in here yelling. Mrs. Reed grabbed a gun and threw it at the mirror.”
“That’s it,” she replied.
“You want to press charges?”
“Damn straight! Can’t let my place get busted up and not press charges.” She looked at Wade. “Sorry. Don’t take it personal.”
His expression blanched. “Aw, hell, Lily.”
“You can’t arrest her,” Blythe objected. “She’s the leader of the Women’s Temperance Prayer League!”
“She’ll have plenty of time to pray, I reckon,” Nate replied. “So will the lot of you. Will a few of you gentlemen please help me escort the ladies to the jail? We’ll discuss bail in the morning.”
“Don’t touch me,” Blythe said to the miner who came up beside her. “I can walk there on my own.”
“Fine. Walk along beside just in case she gets lost on the way,” Nate said to the man.
The women were escorted from the dance hall, leaving the customers and employees to stand and give each other long looks of speculation and regret.
“Let’s get the place cleaned up,” Lily said. “Jess, you and Saul round up some crates and a wheelbarrow. Molly, get the mop and pail, will you?” She stepped carefully behind the bar to grab several unopened bottles of whiskey and set them on the cherrywood bar. “Drinks are on the house for helpin’ with the cleanup. I want everyone wearing a pair of gloves. We don’t want to give Doc any business tonight.”
“I was wonderin’ there for a while,” Doc said, and a few chuckles lightened the mood.
Lily stared at the wall where a splinter of mirror remained. Only part of her face was reflected in the jagged slice. She refused to see this as a symbol or a premonition of any sort; she was far too practical for that. But it was a discouragement all the same. The mirror had been a sign of her achievements, a visual affirmation of how far she’d come. She’d always looked into it with pride and seen an independent, hardworking woman who wasn’t ashamed of her life.
She looked down at the hundreds of reflecting shards on the bar, the shelves and the floor. Nothing had changed. She’d been determined that it wouldn’t. In fact, her triumphs over the women’s cause had been the catalyst for this.
“Sorry about this.” Charlotte plucked her Colt from the wreckage and gave Lily a sheepish look.
“Not your fault.”
“My gun.”
“Could have been a lot worse. Someone could have been shot.”
“I never keep a bullet in the first chamber,” she said. “My way of not shootin’ my own foot off. Seen a fella do that once.”
Lily nodded.
Charlotte holstered her gun.
The cleanup took hours, but everyone was of like mind that they didn’t want to see the mess again in the morning.
“Where are you staying tonight?” Lily asked Charlotte sometime before closing.
“I’ll camp outside town.”
“I’d be glad to give you a bed for the night if you’d let me use your horse for an hour or so.”
“Fine trade in my opinion. He’s the black with the turquoise bridle. Sam’s his name. Talk nice to him. His feelin’s get hurt easy.”
“Use the room in the northeast corner upstairs. It’s not big, but the bed is comfortable. And long.” She grinned. “Come on, I’ll unlock the door. You’ll have to come down and stable your horse when I’m done, though. Reed doesn’t do business with me.”
Charlotte gave her a curious look at that comment, but agreed without hesitation.
Lily rode past Reed’s livery atop Charlotte’s black. All she had to do was ride on out and she’d be at her place. She’d be in that cool water. Swimming. Forgetting the day. But she couldn’t do it. Not just yet.
With a sigh of resignation, she turned the horse’s head and rode back along the darkened street toward the jail.
It was after midnight. Would the sheriff still be in there? Light showed from behind the windows that bracketed the door.
She slid from the horse, tethered it to the rail and stepped onto the wood platform that served as a porch. The door was unlocked, so she walked inside.
The sheriff was sitting at his desk, his head in his hands. The other two chairs were occupied by Wade and Howard. Dinah Sadler’s husband and a couple other men sat on the floor along the wall opposite the cells. The iron cages were occupied by the six women who’d stormed into Lily’s dance hall that evening. Half of them were lying on cots, the other half sitting, but they all roused themselves to look at her as she entered.
Nate looked up, too.
Lily walked directly to his desk. “Let them go.”
“What?” He stood and frowned at her.
“Let the women go. I’m not going to press charges.”
“You’re perfectly within your rights. They broke the law.”
“I expect restitution. If I have the Reeds’ word that they’ll pay for the damages, I don’t want Meriel to face any charges.”
Wade got up from where he sat. “You have my word, Lily. Give me the list of damages and I’ll pay. It might take me a while, but I’m good for it. I’ll help you, too, if there’s work to be done.”
“Most of the work is done,” she said. “I’ll have to order glasses, whiskey to replace what was lost and—a mirror.”
“Came from Philadelphia, didn’t it?” Wade asked. “Me’n Howard was just talkin’ about that. We remembered when it came on the railcar, all packed and padded, and we all stood in the Shady Lady and admired it.”
Lily nodded.
“Sorry about your mirror, Lily,” he added.
“You didn’t break it. You can help hang the new one.”
An awkward silence stretched, and one by one heads turned until everyone was looking at Meriel.
She looked pretty dignified for a
jailbird, Lily thought. Her hair wasn’t mussed, and her dress was tidy. But she’d obviously been crying, because her eyes were puffy and her nose was red.
She inched her chin up a tad. “Is an apology required by your offer to not press charges?”
Lily didn’t hesitate. “Nope. You can’t expect somebody to do something they don’t feel. It was wrong what you did, but you can probably still justify it in that Lily-hatin’ head of yours. I’m just not going to return the bad feelings. Pay up and we’re even.”
“We’ll pay up,” Wade assured her.
Meriel didn’t say any more.
“There isn’t going to be any more Women’s Temperance Prayer League,” Howard told her. “The whole thing got out of hand.”
At his announcement, Lily looked at the men. “I feel bad about that. It isn’t right for men to decree what their wives do and don’t do. Everyone’s entitled to work for something they truly believe in.”
The women looked at her with raised eyebrows, then at each other.
“I have some pretty strong beliefs of my own,” Lily said. She turned back to the sheriff. “Let them go.”
He took the keys and walked toward the cells.
“Thank you, Lily,” Wade said.
She nodded once and left to mount the horse and ride out of town.
LILY DIDN’T TAKE quite as much pleasure as usual from her ride or from the cool stream that night. Tonight she felt as if the fight had gone out of her, and she didn’t like the feeling. She didn’t feel quite whole without that battle light inside her.
She’d brought her shampoo paste, and she lathered her hair and tossed the tube up onto the bank. She dunked repeatedly to rinse, and ran her fingers through her tresses to get out the tangles.
“Why’d you do it?”
Startled, she turned toward the voice.
Her heart eased back into an easy pace. She lowered herself so her breasts were covered by the water. The sheriff had followed her. Or guessed her whereabouts.
“She’s not a criminal, she’s a woman threatened about her security.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Wade does spend a lot of evenings in the saloon.”
“She spends a lot of evenin’s with the Intolerants. What’s he supposed to do?”
“I can’t believe I’m defending her to you.”
“Me, neither. You hit your head on a rock in that water?”
“The water’s perfect. You getting in?”
“Wouldn’t waste the ride.” He unfastened his holster and lowered it to the ground, then he sat on the bank and removed his boots. He stood and his shirt came off next.
The kiss they’d shared had changed all her thoughts toward this man—narrowed them in a direction that was new and frightening.
Lily turned aside as he finished undressing and splashed his way into the stream. He groaned with pleasure. “This feels good.”
He stood a good twenty feet away from her, but she could see the muscles in his chest and shoulders defined in the moonlight.
“You’re always surprising me, Lily.”
“How’s that, Sheriff?”
“You turn my thinkin’ on end.”
“Because of Meriel?”
“You could have made her sweat it out in that jail until Judge Adams came. She could have paid fines besides paying for the damages. She pulled a gun on you.”
“Not on me. On the painting of me.”
“It could have been worse.”
“I don’t think she meant to hurt anybody.”
“Lily, you’re excusing what she did.”
“Sheriff, that’s my prerogative.”
He dipped down in the water and came up a minute later.
“I don’t think she’ll do anything like that again,” she added.
He swam to where she was and stood beside her. Somewhere deep inside, had she been hoping he’d follow her? Had she come here with deliberate intent?
His warm gaze started her blood singing. “Not many people would have done what you did.”
“Probably not.”
“You like surprising people, don’t you?”
“I just like making my own decisions. If they surprise people…” She shrugged.
“The men talked about the mirror as though it meant something special to you.”
“I’ll be ordering a new one tomorrow. It will have even more meaning.”
“Tell me how.”
“It’ll be proof that no one can take away what I’ve worked for.”
“Always lookin’ at the shiny side of the penny, aren’t you?”
“I just don’t waste time feeling sorry for myself.”
“Or seeking revenge.”
“What’s the point?”
He got a strange look on his face. “Satisfaction. Justice.”
“Is everything black-and-white to you? Right or wrong? Some things just are.”
“I’m a lawman. I get paid to separate right from wrong.”
“What if the rules get changed?”
He reached up and slicked water from his hair, and the sight of his muscled biceps made Lily feel like her feet were slipping on the smooth stones of the stream-bed, though she stood perfectly still. Each time her reaction to this man came so unexpectedly and with such energy, she frightened herself.
“You once told me you’d been married,” he said.
She regretted revealing that information. “Yes.”
“And that your husband got what he deserved.”
“Yes,” she said again.
“Is he dead?”
The sheriff was standing too close now. She didn’t want him to see too much. “What does it matter to you?”
“I’m just curious. Thinking of you as a widow seems so…unfitting. How did he die?”
Thinking of the man, her throat felt as though someone had both fists around her neck. “He beat someone. They stabbed him.”
“Self-defense?”
She nodded. “I don’t much like to talk about it. It was a terrible time in my life.”
The sheriff tipped his head back to gaze at the sky. “I understand.”
He was so close, she could have reached out and touched his throat where water ran in a trickle…or his chest, which looked smooth and solid.
He lowered his gaze to the distant bank. “I had a wife once.”
His words stopped her meandering thoughts. She riveted her attention on his next words.
“I didn’t always hunt men. I had a regular job in a foundry. A little house. A wife.” With what appeared to be a breath dredged from his soul, his chest expanded. “A child,” he said on a hoarse exhalation.
Lily’s heart stopped. Don’t say any more. Don’t tell me! I can’t hear this.
“In fifteen years, I’ve never said those words.”
Her insides were quaking like the ground beneath a stampede. Against her better judgment, she opened her mouth and asked on a terrified whisper, “What happened to them?”
“Sarah took our son to visit her parents. Coming back, their stage was attacked and robbed. They were murdered.”
Her name had been Sarah. Lily pictured the young, beautiful woman and her child. In her mind Sarah looked like Evangeline Gibbs, with blond hair and a fresh innocence. She pictured the sheriff as a young man, filled with love for his family, hopes for their future…and all that ending in a violent, senseless crime of greed.
“My son would be nearly a man.”
She heard years of silent pain in that statement.
“What was his name?”
“Jonathon.”
Lily’s chest ached now. “That’s a good name.”
He brought his hands up out of the water and looked at them. “Those were the first men I ever killed.”
“You tracked them down?”
“It took almost a year. And when it was done I didn’t feel anything. Not satisfaction. Not relief. Just nothing. By then my life had changed. The house
I’d built was on land that belonged to my wife’s family, so I gave it to her brother and moved on. I’d discovered I was good at finding wanted men, so that’s what I did.”
The water felt suddenly chilly and Lily’s limbs trembled.
“You’re crying.”
She raised her fingers to find tears on her cheek.
He wrapped his arms around her and she pressed against his warm slick body, the water lapping against her back. Their naked bodies touched from breasts to thighs, a silky erotic sensation—warm skin, cool water…unthreatening. Incredible.
No one had ever touched her in tenderness before—no one except this man. Before Nathaniel Harding, no one had ever held her or kissed her or made her feel as though she was a desirable woman. Their first kiss had shown her a whole new world, one she’d never anticipated. It had changed the way she looked at him, the way she thought about him. And the way she thought about herself.
He bracketed her face between large, strong hands and wiped at her tears with his thumbs. “Don’t cry for me.”
He couldn’t know how many of the tears were for both of them. For pain they shared.
He lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers. The salt of her tears combined with the heady taste of this man.
She shouldn’t be here. She was inviting trouble. But she couldn’t let go, wouldn’t miss the mind-drugging experience for anything.
Lily wrapped her arms around his back and held him tightly, drawing every last measure of pleasure from the contact. His tongue sought hers and she allowed him entry and enjoyed the dance of heat and mounting anticipation.
Lily’s fiery kisses were more potent than whiskey, warming Nate and going straight to his head—as well as every other part of his body.
She was trembling in his arms and he feared she was cold, so he urged her toward the bank without releasing her. He found where she’d dropped the toweling and quickly used the length of cotton to dry her, brusquely rubbing the curvaceous contours of her body with only the flimsy material between her skin and his hands. He pressed kisses across her collarbone and along her shoulder, then knelt to dry her hips and legs, pausing in discovery to kiss the indentation at her waist and the sleek curve of her hip.
She was more beautiful than the painting above the bar. More beautiful than anything he’d known or imagined, long and slim and full-breasted, and the sight and feel of her set him on fire.
The Bounty Hunter Page 15
