by Caroline Lee
There’d been a Christmas tree in the parlor of La Maison des Chats then, as he recalled.
But trying to Christmasify a saloon, just because a bunch of women were rolling into town? Preposterous!
Draven took another sip of the fiery drink as he contemplated the way Seamus was standing on a chair to hang a garland over a window up front. This whole thing was the reverend’s idea, so it made sense that Hammond was standing over there in the middle of the room supervising.
A few months back, all of these men—and plenty more, including Draven—had stood in this room, listening to the good reverend explain the scheme. Noelle was dying, everyone knew that. The mines were drying up, and the miners were leaving in droves. And while the mayor of the town thought finding more gold was going to save it, the preacher had other plans.
Somehow, Hammond had gotten it into his head that the railroad would build a spur through Noelle, if they could convince the railroad directors that the town was growing. So he’d figured the way to convince them of that was to have a bunch of the men get married. Part of his speech that day in the Golden Nugget Saloon—where Sunday services were held these days—was about civilization and the future of the town. And then he’d dropped the cannonball of his idea right in the middle of them.
Mail-order brides.
He sent off for some women, like they were merchandise in a catalog. Only twelve were coming, but Draven figured that was plenty, seeing how the men in town had fallen over themselves to make their brides welcome. Noelle couldn’t afford the chaos more than a dozen women would cause.
Those dozen women had already caused more than a few fights. The men had drawn straws to see who was getting married, and as sheriff, it fell to Draven to pick up the pieces. Some knocked heads and cooled heels in his jail cell had mostly calmed things down, but tensions were still high.
Apparently some men’s brains turned to mush at the thought of marrying, judging from the number of damn-fool things he’d seen over the last few months.
Like a Christmas tree in the saloon, for godsakes.
Even now, men he’d known—and in many cases respected—for months were acting like Woody’s three chickens, rushing around to get the place ready for a bunch of women they didn’t even know. Like they were going to impress their brides or something. Hell, the tree didn’t even have any trimmings on it.
Guess that buffoon Horatio hadn’t been able to talk Liam into donating some baubles from his store after all.
Hooking his thumb into his custom-tooled leather gun belt, he ignored the flash of gold on the smallest finger of his left hand, and rested his hip against the bar once more. “You sure you don’t want to be over there with the rest of ‘em?” He gestured with the last of his whiskey. “Getting the place ready for your bride?”
“Don’t make me hit you, Draven,” Storm growled, not even looking up. “Not on Christmas Eve.”
“Didn’t think you cared about the date,” Draven needled the man.
“I don’t. But things are about to get busy in this town, and it’d probably be better if the sheriff isn’t unconscious.”
Draven chuckled at the other man’s dry threat. They’d never had to brawl—Storm normally kept to himself out on his ranch, ever since the mine began to fail—but it wasn’t hard to imagine the half-breed’s fist knocking a man unconscious.
I mean, not me. But someone.
It had been a long time since anyone had hit Draven hard enough to make him stay down. It had been a long time since anyone had even stood up to him, and not just because he was the sort-of sheriff for this small town.
No. It had started long before that…
He’d been a bounty hunter for years, using the skills Pa had taught him to track criminals instead of game. He’d been damn good at it too, feared from Arizona to Wyoming. Hell, there’d even been a few times when his quarry had just plain given up, hearing Draven was after him.
Yeah, he’d been a good bounty hunter…until a bullet had laid him up in Noelle, and he’d been talked into becoming the sheriff by the determined—and generous—mayor, Charlie Hardt. Of course, that hadn’t stopped him from taking down a few bounties—his bank accounts were still growing—but he didn’t travel as much these days.
Didn’t need to, not with his reputation…and his looks.
Many men would’ve been scared of him even without that reputation. He’d been fifteen when he lost his eye to that grizzly, and in the almost two decades since then, the scars had pulled his face into a permanent grimace.
It took a brave man to stand up to Draven; to look into his one eye and down the barrel of one of his two custom Prince revolvers.
But then—he reflected as he took another sip of the whiskey—it took a brave man to lay his future on the line for the sake of this town, and marry some woman he’d never met. Some harpy who showed up out of nowhere, determined to run his life…
Draven reached out and nudged Storm’s chair with the toe of his boot. “You really didn’t know you had a bride showing up tonight?”
“How could I?” The other man sighed, still glaring at the bottle. “Grandpa didn’t say anything to me about drawing a straw for me or writing to a bride for me, or planning my future for me. Nothing.”
It was Draven’s turn to grunt—half-amused, half-commiserating. “I were you, I’d be really pissed off.”
Storm didn’t respond; just reached for the bottle to top off his glass.
Commotion at the door drew Draven’s attention. He kicked Storm’s chair again. “Knock that off! Here they come.”
Sure enough, the men in the saloon hurried to finish their Christmas preparations, then stood in front of the tree as a group of women pushed in. Most of them were young and pretty, although there was one old enough to marry Ol’ Gus. Good Lord, one of them had a baby, although it looked as if she was trying real hard to hide it.
And was that a goose? Or was he gunna have to have a talk with Woody about letting his livestock into the bar again?
They were women who looked as if they’d just come up the side of a mountain on mules in the middle of a snowstorm, and weren’t too happy about it. Draven snorted, unable to blame them.
“Which one do you think is yours?” he asked his sometimes-friend.
Storm hadn’t looked up. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”
Fair enough.
Draven finished his whiskey as he watched Reverend Hammond get chewed out by one of the ladies who looked to be in charge. Then there was some altercation between Mayor Hardt and a pretty little blonde, followed by some tittering from the women. The good preacher seemed calm and capable, right up until the mayor started to choke him.
Hmmm. Draven rolled the glass between his fingers. Wonder if I should do something about that?
He was all for personal liberty, but not if it meant having a dead preacher in his saloon. Still, the two men were best friends, so maybe he oughta just sit tight and see what happened…
Sure enough, Hammond and Hardt worked things out by themselves. Draven didn’t care what the disagreement had been about, and didn’t care why the womenfolk were looking so worried all of a sudden. Didn’t have anything to do with him, after all.
And then, it seemed like it did.
Reverend Hammond cocked a finger at him, and Draven sighed.
He’d better not ask me to arrest Charlie.
The mayor was the one who paid the sheriff’s salary, and Draven’s first loyalty should probably be to the man who not only ran the town, but owned the largest mine. It wasn’t like he’d ever taken an oath of office to uphold the law or anything. Just sauntered into the jail Hardt had built, and started glaring troublemakers into keeping the peace.
But he’d heard enough of the reverend’s conversation with Seamus to know Charlie Hardt wasn’t Hammond’s worry right now. Nope, he had bigger worries. Twelve of them, and they were all wearing very pretty expressions of terror, curiosity, exhaustion, and anger. And they all needed somepl
ace fancy to stay.
His empty glass went down on the bar beside Storm’s, and Draven sauntered over to the group. “Yes, Reverend?”
Hammond’s sigh sounded weary. Well, the man had just been choked near to death. “Sheriff, I have a job for you, and it isn’t going to be pleasant…”
Which is how Draven found himself standing in the parlor of La Maison des Chats, trying to explain to Madame Bonheur why she had to leave her whorehouse, which just happened to be the fanciest place in town.
“How dare you!” the stately harridan shrieked, her face going red. “How dare you think you can just kick me out of my own house, just because some prissy-faced little flowers stumbled into town!”
“Now, Madame…” Draven lifted his hands placating. “It’s not like you didn’t know they were coming. It’s been all over town for months, and everyone knew they were due in tonight.”
“I didn’t know they were going to move in here!”
She hurled the glass she’d been holding at Draven’s head, but he hadn’t survived so many gunfights for nothing. His reflexes were sharp and lightning-quick; he snatched the glass out of the air.
That seemed to infuriate the woman who ran the whorehouse. “They were supposed to get married! Married and moved in with their happy husbands, so they can annoy them enough to seek solace in the arms of my girls! That’s the only reason I didn’t take my girls and leave after I found out about Hammond’s damn-fool scheme!”
Draven just shrugged; he couldn’t argue with that logic.
“But now they show up, and they don’t want to get married? That’s what you’re telling me?” Her voice rose, shriller and shriller. “So they need someplace fancy to stay?”
She yelled a cussword Draven had never heard from a woman, and whirled to grab an ornate vase from the fireplace’s mantel. She flung it at Draven, who grabbed it before it slammed into his head.
“Listen, lady. The order comes from the mayor. He owns this place, and I’m just doing him a favor by delivering the message.”
“Oh, a favor,” she sneered. “A favor! We’ll see about that!” She was already reaching for the matching vase on the mantel. “We’ll see who owns this place when I’m through with Mayor Hardt!”
Draven was getting a headache where his scars pulled at his temple. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Only that he thinks he’s so high-and-mighty, running this town. But I’m going to have the last laugh! My girls—here and all over town—do more for the men of this town than he does, now that his little mine’s all tuckered out.” She snorted cruelly. “Don’t worry, honey,” she said in a sing-song voice, “it happens to all men sometimes.”
He scowled. He couldn’t imagine Hardt giving the Madame any business, but what went on between them was none of his, and it seemed like she was intent on sharing too much. The headache was moving up behind his missing eye. Thump-thump-thump.
So he blamed the pain for not fully thinking things through when he nodded at the irate woman and said, “Betsey, your French accent is slipping.”
She shrieked again—his years of hunting bounties had meant he’d seen through her charade as soon as he’d arrived—and hurled the second vase at his head.
He had a split-second to make a decision, and knowing how valuable the vases were, he made it. The glass dropped from his left hand onto the toe of his boot just in time to snatch the vase from the air and cradle it to his chest with the first one.
But when another glass and a china plate followed—she was grabbing them off the table behind her and flinging them at him—he had nothing to do but dodge. Both of them slammed into the door jamb behind his head as he ducked to one side.
Now his head really hurt.
The glass had already rolled off the toe of his boot, and he placed both vases down carefully on the floor before he rose to his full height.
“Enough!” he roared, the blood pumping in his head making his empty eye socket pound. “Cease, woman!”
Madame Bonheur froze, another plate cocked back, ready to throw. He knew he’d scared her—he knew he was damn scary—but she didn’t drop the makeshift weapon fast enough for his liking.
In a single fluid motion, between one heartbeat and the next, he’d pulled the big Prince revolver from his left hip and pointed it at her chest. “I said,” he repeated, quieter and deadlier, “Cease.”
They stood in that tableau a few seconds longer than comfortable, and Draven hoped she’d believe his bluff. He wasn’t going to shoot a woman to make her leave her own home, but he wasn’t going to let her attack him, either. And Charlie was right; Madame had other properties she could move her girls into for a few nights while Reverend Hammond tried to straighten out the holy hell of a mess he’d made with those naive mail-order brides.
Finally, Betsey—or Madame Bonheur, as she styled herself with her fake accent and fancy manners—lowered her arm and the piece of china. “Fine,” she hissed, lifting her chin. “We’ll go. Just across the street, to the saloon. My girls will continue to work, and we’ll have the men of this town begging to be let in, soon enough.” She placed the plate on the table and smoothed a wrinkle in the front of her dress. “And don’t think you’ll be getting an invitation any time soon, Sheriff.”
Head held high, she marched out of the room in a swirl of fancy fabric.
“Hell,” Draven muttered under his breath as he re-holstered his weapon. He should’ve known this would land him in hot water. What was he going to do, if he was banned from La Maison des Chats?
When the preacher had asked him to do this job, he’d known Draven didn’t want to kick the whores out. Hell, Draven liked the whores better than he liked the reverend. But when Hammond had evoked Charlie Hardt’s name—the one who paid Draven’s salary—he’d gotten his way.
Time was, I wouldn’t care what some mayor thought of me.
Before he’d taken this sheriff position, he’d been free to follow his own path, to pursue his own jobs. Of course, he’d also been free to starve, to nearly bleed to death from that gunshot wound, and to spend his evenings freezing, wrapped up in some lonely buffalo robe rather than in a whore’s arms.
Yeah, he missed his old life sometimes, but there were some things about his new life that couldn’t be beat.
But if Madame remained pissed at him indefinitely, he might have to leave Noelle. No way he could live in this town, knowing he couldn’t see—
A noise at one of the side doors had him whirling around, his hand on the grip of his revolver. But as soon as he saw who it was, he relaxed. All of him relaxed, in fact. She had the ability to do that to him. Make him feel like all was right in the world.
Pearl.
She was petite, and blonde, and demure like a real lady would be. Even now, she stood politely in the doorway, a small broom clasped in her hands and her blue-eyed gaze on the floor, as if waiting to be invited in.
“Hello, Sheriff.”
Everything about her voice made him hard and soft all at once. Soft because she was the one woman he looked forward to seeing most in this town, and hard, because…well, because that was her job.
He cleared his throat. “Hello, Pearl.”
When she looked up and met his gaze, he nodded slightly, silently inviting her to join him. He’d always invite her to join him, no matter the circumstances.
Shoot, she was the reason he cared so much about Mayor Hardt’s paydays. Draven would pay just about anything to spend a night in her arms. His head was suddenly hurting a hell of a lot less, just being able to look at her.
She smiled softly at him as she stepped into the room. She always had a special smile for him, so different from the way the other whores looked at him. Their eyes landed on his scars, his eye socket, and it turned their own smiles into a sort of horrified grimace. Pearl, on the other hand, didn’t seem to notice or care about his appearance.
And as much as he’d told himself those scars didn’t bother him, it sure felt nice to have a
woman who didn’t care.
“I heard what you said to Madame, Sheriff.”
She scooted past him to kneel by the shards of glass that used to be a plate and a cup, and Draven swore he could feel her warmth as she did so. Quickly, he dropped to a crouch beside her, helping her toss the larger pieces into the dustbin.
He wanted to keep the conversation going. “And I’m real sorry about it, Miss Pearl. The mayor said those brides need a place to go, and your place is the nicest in town…”
She glanced up at him long enough to smile shyly again. “It’s the only place in town worthy of them, I would think. Here, they’ll have real beds.”
Beds that already get lots of use. But he didn’t say it, because Pearl might be a whore, but she was…
She was more.
He cleared his throat. “Still, I’m sorry to make you leave your home.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged, focusing on sweeping the glass into a pile. “I actually thought I might ask Madame if…”
She trailed off, and her hands stilled. Hesitantly, Draven touched her hand. “If what?”
When she shrugged again, he pulled his fingers away. He probably shouldn’t be touching her like that, not without… Well, not without an invitation and money exchanged.
But her pale blue eyes lifted to his, and she swallowed. “I thought about what it’s like to be new to a strange town, and to be scared. And I thought about the women who’ve been kind to me over the years, and I thought…” she trailed off, but only long enough to take a deep breath, which pushed her chest against her dress in all sorts of interesting ways. “I thought I might stay with them for tonight. To help them become more comfortable with Noelle and their new lives.”
A fierce protectiveness wrapped itself around Draven’s chest, and he had to make an effort not to touch her again. Instead, he sat back on his heels, and nodded. “And you won’t have to work, either. It’s Christmas Eve, after all.”
He knew he’d said the wrong thing when her cheeks flushed pink and she dropped her chin once more. He cursed under his breath, which only served to make her flinch and shy away. And when he shifted his weight, she stood abruptly, the dust broom falling to the floor beside the pile of shards.
