The Bounty Hunter

by Cheryl St. John

  He probably knew to the penny how much he had invested, but she could see the wheels turning in his head as he calculated how much he could get. He named a figure.

  Lily didn’t have that much ready money, not after rebuilding the livery, and she would never use the savings that cushioned the Shady Lady from hard times.

  “What can I do?”

  “Do you have any property to put up against bank notes?”

  “I won’t put up the Shady Lady. I have too many people depending on it.”

  He shrugged. “What about the other lots you own?”

  “I could use those.”

  “Of course, they’re not worth much without buildings on them.”

  “I have some jewelry that was Antoinette’s.”

  “That might take care of part of it.”

  She thought about the rest of her holdings, and something occurred to her. “I have the deed to a mine.”

  “Indeed.”

  “The Queen of Hearts. It was—my father’s.” It bore the whole of her worth to her father. It was what he’d traded her for a share in.

  “It has sentimental value, then?” Amos asked.

  It had a whole lot of bad memories tied to it, and she didn’t know why she hadn’t gotten rid of it before, except for the fact that she owned free and clear what her father had so badly wanted. “It’s a good piece of land.”

  “You can sign an interest-bearing note,” Amos suggested. “Are you sure you want to do this? If for any reason you can’t pay the installments, the collateral and the property will default back to me.”

  “One lot, the jewelry and the mine deed,” she said. “Three things, three separate bank notes. That way I could only default on one at a time, not all at once.”

  “You make a hard bargain,” he told her. “Bring the jewelry and the deeds in this afternoon so I can have a look at them. Once you sign, I’ll hold the deeds. You can hold the jewelry.”

  Lily stood and shook his hand across the desktop.

  “By the way, what are you going to do with the building?”

  “Run a hotel,” she replied. “When do I get the keys?”

  THAT NIGHT LILY SHARED suggestions for Celeste and Mitch’s wedding and asked Celeste for her ideas. “I really don’t have any idea how to go about a wedding,” Celeste told her.

  “Neither do I,” Lily confided. “But I know of someone I can ask.” She could send a letter to Catherine Douglas. The woman would know the proper order and form for a ceremony. Lily wanted something other than just a quick pronouncement by a judge for her friend.

  She sat at the end of the bar with her stationery and an ink pen and wrote a letter requesting help and suggestions, then asked Big Saul to deliver it to Catherine in the morning. It wouldn’t do for him to show up at the Douglas home while Amos was there.

  “HOW IN SAM HILL did you manage that?” Nate asked the next morning.

  After the deeds and jewelry met Amos’s satisfaction and Lily had signed the bank notes and received the keys, her first stop had been the sheriff’s office.

  “I put a few things up as collateral and signed bank notes.”

  “Not your dance hall,” he said, his expression one of alarm.

  “Of course not. I’m going to go over there now and see what needs to be done to make a few rooms livable. And then we’ll work on shaping it into a hotel. I need you to go find the Waldrop woman and tell her she has a job if she wants it. How’s your knee?”

  “It’s black and blue, but I’ll survive. Lily, she has five children.”

  “It’s a big place. I’m sure there’s room for them.”

  “Woman, what are you doing?”

  “I’m expanding my interests.”

  “Not everybody is your responsibility. You can’t take care of the whole damn world.”

  “No, but I can take care of those in my little corner of it.”

  “I would have gone in with you on this,” he told her. “We could have been partners and you wouldn’t have had to owe Douglas.”

  “I don’t think we could be partners,” she answered.

  “I can get along.”

  “It wouldn’t have been a wise decision for you.”

  “Why not? No, wait. Is this another because-I’m-Lily-Divine reason?”

  “Are you going to see Mrs. Waldrop or not? I can probably find her on my own.”

  “I’ll go.”

  “Thank you.” She spun on her heel and walked out of the jail house.

  Half an hour later, Lily and her entourage stepped into the building with considerable curiosity and excitement. Lily had watched the structure being built years back, of course, but once the walls were up and the doors and windows in, she’d never seen the inside.

  The front door opened into a grand room with a tile floor and a dark-walnut counter that divided an office area from the foyer.

  There was a dining room with a tin ceiling, crown moldings and glass chandeliers. Lily pictured it filled with tables set with white cloths and people bustling about, carrying trays and pitchers to paying customers.

  The kitchen was three times the size of the one at the Shady Lady. Mollie and Helena made appreciative comments about the stoves and ovens. There was no icebox, and the amount of dishes, cookware and supplies needed staggered Lily’s thinking for a moment. What had she been imagining? That the place would come fully stocked and furnished and ready to open? Hardly.

  There was a suite of rooms on the main floor, as well as a parlor and storage rooms. On the second and third floors were two bathing chambers and eighteen bedrooms, six of them with adjoining dressing rooms.

  Not a single bed, mattress, sheet, curtain or any other stick of furnishing was to be seen, of course.

  Lily thought about the three bank notes she’d signed, the huge scale of this project and the overwhelming cost of getting it underway, and she experienced her first stabs of doubt.

  She would not touch the savings that protected the Shady Lady. That was her first priority, always. Right now what she had available to spend was the money coming into the dance hall one day at a time. It added up, certainly, but not fast enough to get this place running anytime soon.

  “Are we going to start cleaning today?” Mollie asked.

  Lily looked at the dust-streaked and rain-spattered windows of the room she stood in. Here and there on the bare wood floors were traces of plaster and sawdust the builders had left behind. Eighteen bedrooms and the downstairs would take some elbow grease, so they might as well get started.

  “We are. Some of us will go get buckets and rags, while others stay and get the windows opened. We’ll sweep first and then clean the windows and floors.”

  “This is beautiful woodwork,” Thomas commented. “But it all needs to be oiled and polished.”

  “That will be your task,” she told him with a grin. “There’s a ladder in the shed. Somebody has to run the saloon this afternoon. Jess and a couple of the girls can handle that without us until suppertime.”

  Everyone set about their assigned tasks, and Lily was standing behind the desk in the foyer, thinking about ordering ledger books, when the door opened and Nate entered.

  On his heels was a petite woman and a small crowd of children.

  “Lily, this is Mrs. Waldrop.”

  The woman came forward with a baby on her hip. “I’m Naomi. This is little Ben. I guess you’ve met Boone. My girls are Rachel, Prudence and Mary. Thank you for the job, Miss Divine. You can’t know what a godsend this is.”

  “Call me Lily. It’s going to be hard work, don’t think it won’t. There’s room for you back here.” She gestured and led the way to the rear of the building. “We’ve only just seen all this for the first time. The girls have gone to get cleaning supplies.”

  Lily glanced around, realizing there were no beds or anything for this family to stay here.

  “We have pallets in our wagon,” Naomi told her as if she’d been thinking the same thing.

&nb
sp; Nate had followed and stood back from the women as they made plans for the sleeping arrangements.

  “We’ll clean our own rooms,” Naomi said. “And then we’ll bring our things in.”

  Mollie and Helena returned, and Lily made introductions. Helena took the baby and held him. He looked at her shyly but didn’t object.

  Nate showed Lily the laundry chutes he’d discovered while browsing the upstairs rooms. “The bedding falls right down into the big room behind the kitchen. You’ll need wash tubs and wringers. I could string some clothesline out back.”

  Overwhelmed, Lily simply nodded and opened the nearest window. They were alone in the room.

  “You all right?” he asked her.

  “What have I done?” She turned and stared at him.

  “When I asked that, you said you were expanding your interests.”

  “I never do impulsive things, especially not with my money. I always plan and save and invest.”

  “Well, you invested.”

  Panic was rising inside her, and she pressed her palms over her heart as though she could keep it still. “With money I didn’t have!”

  “A little over an hour ago, you didn’t have a qualm.”

  “There are five children involved now.”

  “I mentioned that, and you said it was a big place.”

  She put a hand to her head. “Stop telling me what I said.” With an outstretched arm, she gestured to the empty room. “Look at this. An entire empty building—no rugs or beds, no sheets or dishes, not a lick of furniture or a crumb of food.”

  “That’s what empty means.”

  Letting the doubts assail her, Lily raised her gaze to Nate’s. “I don’t have anything left to risk.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “What?”

  “Our friendship.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said we couldn’t be partners. But there’s no good reason for that. I have money to invest. You have this place. I could pay for the furnishings and supplies and get a percent of profit.”

  “You have money like that?”

  “Men’s lives don’t come cheap,” he told her. “But living on the hunt does. I made a lot of money over the past fifteen years and spent very little. It’s there. It’s yours if you want it.”

  Lily moved back to the window and studied the street below. Rosemary and Celeste were walking along the boardwalk where two women in calico dresses and bonnets turned to look at their backs.

  “What would Mayor Gibbs think about you investing in one of my projects?”

  “Does it matter? My personal life isn’t under his authority.”

  She turned to meet his gaze. “What would Evangeline think?”

  His mouth drew into a line. “Why are you bringing her into this?”

  “It’s a fact that interacting with me would be a strike against you, plain and simple. Those temperance women are here to stay. They may have been subdued for the time being, but I have no doubt they’ll gather reinforcements eventually and come back stronger than ever.

  “I’ll never be seen as a respectable business owner, not even if I pay for the hotel and run a first-class establishment. Buying into my project could hurt your standing in some people’s eyes.”

  “Evangeline’s, you mean?”

  She nodded. “Among others.”

  “You know what? I could say we won’t tell them, but that stinks of cowardice to me. If I was ashamed to make the offer, I wouldn’t have done it. I’m not ashamed. I’m not ashamed to call you my friend and I wouldn’t be ashamed to call you my business partner. Anyone who doesn’t like it doesn’t know me and, frankly, doesn’t hold my respect.”

  Lily’s emotions were already running a little close to the surface. She attributed that to Celeste’s announcement and this overwhelming task she’d taken on, and she swallowed any sense of gratification his words unleashed to remember the stand she’d already taken for Evangeline’s sake.

  Nate looked her in the eye. “You work so hard at being defiant and carving out your own pattern in life,” he said, “but when it comes right down to it, you’re the one who doesn’t think you’re as good as other people. I know what that red dress means now, don’t think I don’t. It’s your fortress between you and the rest of society. It might not be made up of much material and it might show an abundance of your assets, but it’s like one of those suits of armor you see in history books and museums. It keeps you from letting anyone close, so you won’t be hurt.”

  His words opened too many wounds and revealed more of Lily than any dress ever could. The fact that he saw right into her soul and scraped those truths from inside her protective shell was more than she wanted to admit. She turned toward the window so he couldn’t see the effect he was having on her.

  “I’m not aimin’ to hurt you, Lily. Think on it. You don’t have to say right now. The offer isn’t going away. I told Boone last night that there’s no shame in needing a little help now and then. No shame in needing another person. You might want to remember that.”

  Lily couldn’t answer. She didn’t want him to expose anything more.

  The receding sound of his boot heels echoing in the room and the hallway told her she was alone.

  Lily was so stunned and confused she felt as though she was walking through a nightmare. No one had ever spoken to her like that before. No one else’s words would have touched her the same way, in any case.

  She went downstairs and told Thomas that she was going home to change and would be back shortly. As she walked along the boardwalk, the things Nate had said resounded in her head.

  Blythe was rearranging a display in the window of the mercantile and glanced up. Lily saw her own reflection in the glass, as well as Blythe’s haughty expression. Having to fight for every shred of dignity hurt. Knowing that people always thought the worst of her twisted a knife in her heart. Pretending not to care, she’d even fooled herself.

  Lily Divine would have waved and smiled at Blythe and marched past as though she owned the street. Today’s Lily turned away from the scornful look and walked toward home.

  She cared about her standing in the community. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have gone to such great lengths to prove herself. She cared what people thought about her and her girls. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have taken pains to teach them they were as good as anybody.

  Caring had served her well. Hiding it had done one better.

  Needing someone had always been the most degrading point she could imagine slipping to. But each of her girls had needed her once. Mollie, Helena, Rosemary and Celeste had needed homes and jobs and security. They’d thrived and grown, and now any one of them could make it on her own without Lily. Violet still needed her, but one day she’d be ready to move on as well.

  There were the Waldrop children. She had great expectations for them.

  Lily had needed someone once. Antoinette had been there for her then. What about Nate? Had he ever needed anyone?

  Maybe needing another person’s help wasn’t such a shameful thing. Wasn’t a sign of helplessness or weakness. It was simply proof of being human.

  In her room Lily changed into a skirt and shirtwaist for cleaning. She paused to study the red dress hanging on her wardrobe door. Mollie had just cleaned and pressed it. Nate had likened it to a suit of armor.

  She shook her head at the comparison. The dress did make her feel defiant and lent her confidence. Was it truly as scandalous as the women in town seemed to think? Or did it threaten them in a way she’d yet to understand? Did they see her as a threat?

  Of course they did. But she couldn’t see any way to change that. And—being honest with herself—she didn’t know if she wanted to change that right now.

  Lily placed the dress in her armoire and closed the doors.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BY SUPPERTIME they had the bottom floor clean, and the Waldrops had taken care of the suite of rooms they would occupy. Lily asked Naomi, He
lena, Mollie and a few others to gather at the building after they’d eaten.

  She outlined a few plans for getting the hotel up and running, and they made lists of things they would need.

  “Are you okay like this for a few nights?” Lily asked Naomi. “We do have rooms at the Shady Lady.”

  “We’ll be fine here. It’s not cold, and we have our own things.”

  “All right. I’m going to make arrangements for the supplies, then. Hopefully, we can buy some of the furniture and items locally. A lot will have to be ordered.”

  Lily walked to the jail and sheriff’s office and found the door locked. She peeked in the front window. She hadn’t seen Nate on Main Street, but he could be anywhere. She checked the restaurants to see if he was eating a late supper.

  Suzanna Callahan came out on the boardwalk to stand beside her. “Could be he went home for his supper. He hasn’t been in, and he does that sometimes.”

  Lily thanked her and stood at the corner of the block in indecision. She could wait until she saw him sometime that evening, but they wouldn’t have an opportunity to speak alone. Or she could shrug off her hesitation and go to his house.

  It was an impressive structure from the outside. Lily admired the two-story home with its red shutters and wide, shaded front porch.

  On the front door was a knob to turn that rang a bell on the inside.

  The door opened. Nate looked at her through the screen with surprise, then held it open. “Come in.”

  Lily stepped inside and glanced around. “You need some more furniture.”

  The side of his mouth quirked up. “Maybe something with tusks?”

  She shrugged. “Were you eating?”

  “I was done. Washing dishes, actually.”

  She noted then that his sleeves were rolled back and the dark hair on his forearms was wet. “I’ll help you finish and we can talk. You’ll probably need to get back to work.”

  “I take a few hours here and there. But come on back.”

  He led the way to the kitchen, where he handed her a towel and buried his hands in a pan of suds.

  He rinsed a few plates in a basin of clear water and stood them beside the pail.