An Unlikely Lady (12 page)

He clutched the rag he'd used to polish his saddle tightly in his hand and brushed past her to reach for a bridle on the wall. “What are you doing out here?”

“I came to ask your opinion. I can't decide which outfit to wear tonight. What do you think? Soft and alluring?” She paused a moment, then flipped the red and black lace dress she'd worn his first night in town in front of her,
and pulled the wreath from her hair. The pale mass tumbled down her shoulders and back. “Or bold and brazen?”

Was she trying to kill him?

Every memory he'd retained of that night ambushed him in vivid detail; the lush curve of her body, the heat of her skin, the sultry promise in her eyes and in her smile. Sensations he'd fought to ignore this past week blazed through his system like wildfire, searing through his chest, his loins.

Damn, he wished he could remember being with her.

“It wouldn't matter if you went out there in sackcloth and ashes,” he said gruffly, turning away before she noticed his arousal. “You'll have that audience so wowed, they won't know what hit them.”

“You're no help.” She chuckled.

It grew quiet then, with nothing but the occasional stomp of a hoof against packed ground, a twitter of sparrows nesting in the rafters, and the dim bark of orders from inside the saloon to break the silence.

Jesse knew it was too much to hope that she would leave him to suffer in peace.

“That's a fine looking animal.”

He glanced over his shoulder as she sashayed toward Gemini.

“Have you had him long?”

Jesse tore his eyes away from the fluid swing of her hips and cleared his throat. “Since he was a colt.”

“I'll bet he cost you a pretty penny.”

“He was a gift.”

“You must be quite talented.”

Jesse's hands froze on the bridle. Realizing she'd thrown his remark back in his face, he turned to her in shock. Her impish grin told him she'd done it on purpose. “I'm not changing my mind, Honesty.”

“Why, Jesse? You're leaving tomorrow anyway. And I won't be any trouble, I promise.”

“Look,” Jesse sighed. “In a few hours, you'll have a whole bevy of protectors to choose from. I guarantee that you'll be able to convince one of them to help you.”

“But I don't want one of them. I don't even know them.”

“You don't know me, either,” he reminded her.

“I know you're honest and reliable and decent. And I know that I would never come to any harm with you. I don't have that confidence in anyone else.”

The faith she placed in him weighed on his shoulders like medieval armor.
Honest. Reliable. Decent.
Hell, he was even better at his job than he thought.

Jesse raked his fingers through his hair, as frustrated with the burden she put on him as
his own desire to be the man she professed him to be. “Honesty, I admire your ambition to track down your brother, but if you ask me, you'd be a whole lot better off staying here with Rose and hiring a professional to find him.”

“You mean, like a detective?”

“Why not?” Though it galled him to encourage her to remain in the lifestyle Rose provided, he sure as hell couldn't cave in to her request, no matter how tempting it seemed. “I'm sure there are some who specialize in finding people.”

For a moment he could have sworn he'd seen panic flash across her face, but it disappeared so quickly that he wondered if his suspicious nature was running amuck. She gave a flippant wave of her hand. “You're right. I don't know why I didn't think of it before. So, which is it?” She lifted the dress in front of her again. “The red or the pink?”

Jesse frowned. He might have accepted the abrupt change of subject if the blinding smile she gave him reached her eyes. “What's wrong, Honesty?”

“What makes you think anything is wrong?”

“Your hands are shaking.”

She dropped her gaze. “I'm a little nervous about tonight, I suppose. Sometimes the audiences get a bit rambunctious.”

Again, a logical answer. “You've got nothing
to be nervous about,” he countered gruffly. “I'll be right there.”

“You will?”

“I have to be. I'm the piano man, remember?”

Her crestfallen expression snaked around his heart. He tipped her chin in the air and stared into worried brown eyes. “I'll be right there. I give you my word.”

She closed the distance separating them with two swift steps and wrapped her arms around his neck in a bruising grip, not seeming to care that her fine costumes were being crushed between their bodies.

Jesse closed his eyes and let her hold on, but he didn't embrace her back. God knew he wanted to, though.

Just when he thought he'd lose his self-control, she pulled back and kissed his cheek. “Thanks, Jesse.”

As she picked up her skirts and hurried back to the saloon, Jess touched his fingers to his cheek. It was a damn good thing he was leaving tomorrow, because if he had to spend one day more in her company, he feared he'd might do something really stupid.

Like fall for the devious minx.

Despite her efforts to banish their conversation from her mind, it stayed with Honesty
throughout the afternoon and into the evening as she dressed for her performance.
Hire a detective.
A reasonable solution if not for one minor fact: Detectives had been hunting her father off and on for as long as she could remember. Deuce had once confessed they were after him due to a con gone awry years ago, but he'd never revealed the details. It must have been serious, though, or else he wouldn't have feared them. She hoped that they would learn of his death and drop their search. Unfortunately, she feared the opposite—that if they learned of his death, they'd redirect their hunt to her. She had, after all, been part of his schemes . . .

“Honesty, are you ready? We've got a crowd down there clamorin' to hear the ‘Sweetest Songbird in the West.'”

“I'll be down in a sec,” Honesty called to Rose through the closed door.

With brittle precision, she set the brush on the vanity, then stood and smoothed her skirt. She'd chosen the pink gown, for the way it had made Jesse's eyes light up, and for the roses that promoted the saloon. Then she adjusted the wreath in her hair and left her room.

Conversational murmurs from the crowd mingled with a rising layer of cigar haze. Rose had recruited Sarah Wentworth's help for the evening and the two wound their way around
tables and chairs, serving drinks and exchanging banter, while Joe and Jake manned the bar and the gaming table.

Hollow dread curled in Honesty's stomach. The last time she'd sung before an audience her world had crumbled, and anticipation of all hell breaking loose again had her palms growing damp and her tongue swelling.

She managed to hang onto her fragile composure by forcing herself to concentrate on placing one slipper in front of the other instead of thinking of the men watching her descend the stairs. Curiosity had drawn a good majority of them from the Black Garter, and the stagecoach passengers—a dozen men and two women—were scattered about the room. The ladies sat close to the door and looked to be related. The younger of the two stared in wide-eyed fascination at Honesty while the elder one glared at her with undisguised disapproval. Honesty would have bet her white silk garters that if there had been any other place in town to bed down, the woman would have braved a wall of fire to get there. The picture might have made her laugh if she hadn't been so darned petrified.

Then she heard Jesse whispering her name like a caress. He stood at the piano, lighting up the room with his presence, an angel in disguise, an answer to a prayer.

Their gazes met and held for endless seconds. Awareness of him sped through her every nerve ending: the way his borrowed black coat hugged his broad shoulders, the contrast of his white shirt against his tanned complexion, the aura of confidence he wore with the same ease as the gun belt around his waist. She sank into the warmth of his blue-green eyes, drawing strength.

Then he winked.

The heavy coat of anxiety she'd been wearing slithered off her shoulders, and she gave him a wobbly smile of thanks. While he took a seat on the bench, she climbed the stairs to the stage, then waited for her cue.

Miraculously, the audience disappeared. Honesty sang to him and him alone, songs they'd practiced so many times that she often found herself humming them in her sleep. Saucy numbers, jocular ditties, bittersweet ballads.

Though she was dimly aware of the claps and whistles around her, the world had narrowed down to the two of them.

Then Jess keyed in on the first sweet notes of “Greensleeves,” and Honesty's voice carried to every lonely heart in the saloon. By the time the last sweet note faded to silence, warm tears tracked down her cold cheeks.

Even Jesse's eyes looked suspiciously shiny.

And Honesty had never felt closer to another human being in her life.

A movement to her left broke the spell as a man got up from his seat and instantly went to Rose. After a brief conversation she took his hand with a compassionate smile and led him upstairs to the rooms above. The exchange didn't go unnoticed by the elder lady; she clapped her hand over the younger girl's eyes, then ushered her out of the saloon with an imperious tilt of her nose.

Jesse didn't miss the exchange, either. He turned to Honesty, pinning her with a gaze so hot and accusing that her heart jumped into her windpipe. The ferocity in his eyes and the disapproving line of his mouth made her feel low and dirty and cheap.

A touch at her elbow drew her gaze to a flannel-shirted man in his late forties. With a stiff smile, she took him by the hand, and, as Rose had done, led her customer upstairs.

Jesse lost count of how long he spent at the piano with a bottle of whiskey for company, but it was long enough to make fuzz grow on his brain and turn his muscles into jelly.

He knew he shouldn't be drinking himself into oblivion, but it was the only thing he could do to blot his mind of the sight of Honesty heading upstairs with yet another lovesick
customer. Having Honesty all to himself the last few days, he'd almost been able to forget how she made a living.

Tonight had been a cutting reminder.

One after another, he'd watched through increasingly bleary eyes as men came stumbling down the stairs. Most of 'em would still be buttoning their shirts and carrying their boots in their hands. And all of 'em, every damned, stinking, thievin' one of 'em, would be wearin' a shit-eating grin.

Thick loathing pooled in Jesse's gut to join the excessive amount of liquor he'd consumed. He took another deep swallow of whiskey to wash it away. It didn't help. The thought of her lying in one of those beds, her amber hair spread across the ivory sheets, her mouth parted in ecstasy as hands cupped her breasts, had printed itself in his mind so deeply and so permanently that he could have painted the son-of-a-bitch.

Not just any hands, though.

His hands.

Jesse pounded the keys with a heavy fist. Joe glanced up from behind the bar, and the broom in Jake's grip stopped its motion. Everyone else had either left, fallen asleep at one of the tables, or found a bed upstairs to catch a few winks before the stage left the next morning.

Jesse ignored the lot of 'em and downed the
last bit in his glass, then slammed it atop the piano and grabbed the bottle, only to find it empty, too.

Why
the hell couldn't he remember being with her? Had he been as incredible as she'd claimed, or had he been just one of the many besotted fools who'd paid for the privilege of her body and her praise?

The thought made him scowl. At least the other men she'd taken to her bed would remember the hour spent with her, all soft and sinuous one minute, hot and wild the next. And it wasn't friggin' fair. When he rode away from here tomorrow he wouldn't even have the memory of the night to carry with him.

Well, damn it, there was only one way to fix that. She owed him. He'd paid for her, by God; the least she could do was see to it that it had been worth it.

The room spun as he got to his feet, colors blurring into one big blob as he stumbled toward the stairs. Several chairs and a table jumped into his path and tripped up his feet. He kept his gaze trained on the steps that would lead him to his sweet firebrand's arms.

Just as Jesse reached the banister, laughter at the door brought him to a halt. He let out a mild curse under his breath, partly at the interruption, partly at the identity of the latecomers entering the saloon.

Roscoe Treat was the taller and dimmer of the two, with a huge black nose and the yellow remnants of a pair of black eyes, and he wore a bulky buffalo-hide coat as if he'd just walked in from a blizzard instead of a mild June summer night.

His brother Robert, older, shorter, and ten times neater, sported a pinstriped coat and matching creased trousers. A pearl-handled pistol was strapped to his hip; both men were walking loads of trouble.

What the hell were they doing in Last Hope? Last time he'd seen them, they'd been breaking rock down in an Arizona penitentiary.

“Evenin', fellas,” Joe called.

“The sign on the hill says ‘Sweetest Songbird in the West,' “Roscoe bellowed. “I don't see no ‘songbird.'”

“Performance is over for the night. But if you're lookin' for other entertainment, take a seat and one of the ladies will be down shortly.”

Jesse ground his teeth together. He didn't want to think of either the mule-skinner or the dandy laying hands to Honesty—or even Rose, for that matter. But mostly Honesty. She was his tonight.

Roscoe looked none too happy at being asked to wait, but a nudge from his brother prompted him toward a table. “Forget it, Roscoe. Don't you remember the last time you
let your pecker rule your brain? You're lucky McGuire stopped at breaking your nose.”