Hot and Bothered
Page 27
Since the woman was reading even now, Kat suspected she hadn’t heard her call to clear the place earlier.
“Ma’am,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s closing time.”
The woman glanced up from her reader like Kat had yanked her out of another world. “Oh. I’m sorry. I was lost in this book.”
“Don’t tell me—Cherry Red, right?” Kat gestured toward Cherry’s painting above the bar. “Most people come here to look at her picture after they’ve read it, not while they’re in the midst.”
That was another reason Kat couldn’t be too pissed at Rochelle—the book had been great for business after it became widely known that Cherry’s portrait was in the Rough & Tumble.
The woman’s face had a glow to it, and Kat wondered if it was just from the e-reader. She just seemed happy on the inside, with tanned, glowing skin and a clearly good life.
“Don’t mind me. I’ll get out of your hair,” she said, standing. She was tall and slender, just as a showgirl like Liz Hughes would be, and Kat hoped she grew up that way someday.
Hah. Good luck with that.
“It was a pleasure to be here,” the woman said. And as she started to leave, she paused. “A blast from the past, actually.”
She smiled again as Kat thanked her for coming by, then went to the courtyard, eager to get out of here and to her bed. She pretty much put the woman out of her mind as she cleaned, only hesitating when she saw a glimmer out of the corner of her eye and bent down to the fire pit to discover a cigarette lighter wedged in the stones underneath it.
Huh, she thought. Funny how she hadn’t found this before now. It was the Bettie Page lighter that used to belong to Cash Campbell, who’d passed it on to Ben Hughes, who’d passed it onto Gideon before Rochelle had lost it.
Kat shrugged, stuffed it into her back pocket, and continued her sweeping. But now that she’d been interrupted, she couldn’t concentrate on cleaning so much. That silver-haired woman’s face kept coming back to her.
Why did she seem so familiar?
When Kat realized the answer, she dropped her broom. No way.
She rushed into the saloon, looking around, finding that the woman definitely wasn’t here anymore. Then she stared up at the picture of Cherry Chastain.
She glanced right back at the table where the woman had sat all night, a pleased smile on her face while she read.
Had it been?
Could it have been?
But hadn’t Rochelle only been taking fictional liberties when she’d supposed Cherry had escaped that fire?
Mind swimming, Kat moved closer to the portrait: Cherry, with her red hair, her sex-siren smile, her leather getup.
Cherry, then and now . . . ?
Breaking into her own smile, Kat nodded to the old girl, then went back to cleaning, a flicker of hope painting her on the inside, telling her that maybe everyone did have a happy ending after all.
Crystal Green is a RITA nominated romantic fiction author. She is the author of Down and Dirty, Rough and Tumble, and the Vampire Babylon urban fantasy series writing as Chris Marie Green.
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