An Unlikely Lady (3 page)

She turned from Rose and headed for the stairs. He was just a man, after all, she told herself, with a man's strengths as well as his weaknesses. And if he wanted more than a good scrubbing . . . well, she hadn't spent a lifetime with the greatest con man in the West without tucking a few tricks in her pockets.

C
alling the ramshackle structure a stable was being generous, Jesse thought, leading Gemini across the yard behind the saloon. The gaps between the boards were big enough to fit a fist through, the tin roof bore rust holes the size of pie tins, and termites had chewed their way through several rafters. But if it kept the elements off the animals, Jess supposed he had no call to complain.

He guided Gemini into an empty stall next to one holding the sorriest excuse for a mule he'd ever had the misfortune to view. His nose curled as a stiff wind stirred up an unpleasant odor. “I hope that's you stinking to high heaven,” Jesse told the mule. But he knew good and well where the odor came from—endless
days of sweating under the hot sun and interminable nights of sleeping wherever his body landed.

No wonder his hostess had been so insistent on that bath. It was a wonder she'd even allowed him through her doors.

He took his time tending to Gemini—bathing the wound, bandaging his leg, then brushing him down; doing his best to apologize for pushing him so hard lately and causing the injury. But even if the horse hadn't needed the extra attention, Jess would have used it as an excuse to get himself under control.

What had come over him back there? So Scarlet's girl was a looker. She wasn't the first pretty woman he'd met in his travels, and he doubted she'd be the last. And the last thing he had time for was a blonde-haired, brown-eyed temptress distracting him.

Then, with a grimace, he realized that until Gem's leg healed, all he
had
was time. Too much of it.

“What kind of trouble have you landed me into this time, huh, Gem?”

The horse looked at him with soulful eyes, then turned back to the bucket of oats Jess had filled for him. With a sigh, Jess gathered the strips of cloth and tin of ointment he'd used to doctor the wound, and stuffed them back in his packs.

Once he had Gem groomed and settled, he grabbed his saddlebags, returned to the saloon, and mounted the steps to the room he'd been assigned. The accommodations weren't much to boast about. Plain walls, an iron bedstead and side table, two chairs tucked under a small round supper table, and a claw-footed wardrobe that smelled faintly of cedar. The red calico screen in the corner probably hid a commode and wash stand, if past lodgings were anything to go by. He'd slept in worse places, though. It came with the territory.

Jesse set the saddlebags on a chair near the door, then sat on the bed; the ropes strained and screeched in protest to his one-hundred-seventy-pound frame. The spread was a bit frayed, but at least he didn't have fleas jumping at him from out of the mattress or questionable stains on the sheets.

After discarding his duster, he pulled off his Justins, draped his gun belt around the foot-post, and topped it with his hat. The few shots of whiskey he'd consumed had his head pleasantly buzzing. As promised, a tin tub sat in the center of the room, waiting for water. Once it showed up, he planned on indulging in the first good soaking he'd had in weeks and a full night's sleep. Then, once Gem's leg healed, he'd resume his search for “Deuce” McGuire.

A floorboard squeaked under his stockinged
feet as he wandered to the window overlooking the deserted street below. It still amazed him that the case had been open for sixteen years! Just as amazing was that it had taken so long to call in professionals and expect them to close it.

Hell.

Jesse leaned against the window frame and wondered for the hundredth time what had possessed him to accept this assignment? A kidnaping didn't run to his usual tastes. Cattle rustling, train robberies, stagecoach heists, and horse thieving . . . now, those were the cases he fed on.

Had
fed on, he corrected himself. After twelve years, he was just fed up. He wouldn't even have accepted this assignment if he could have avoided it. But with a majority of the agents tied up with the McCormick strike and the Denver Branch just getting on its feet, Bill McParland had thought Jess the most experienced man to take over such an important and highly confidential job. The West was his domain, after all, and discretion his middle name. What was a fellow supposed to do when the man who saved his life asked for a favor?

Jess rubbed his shoulder and continued staring out the window at the shades of black and red being thrown across town by the setting sun. Damn, he wished he had more than the scanty information he'd been given. Duncan
McGuire, commonly known as “Deuce,” was wanted for the abduction of the daughters of San Francisco shipping magnate Anton Jervais.

“But as often happens in cases like this,” Bill McParland had informed him two months earlier, “he fled with the ransom money without ever returning the girls.”

With the pitifully thin file lying open on the desk before him, Jesse scanned the items his superintendent had collected—the profile sheet William Pinkerton had developed several years back for each subject the agency pursued, a couple of newspaper articles, a sketch of McGuire and another of two flaxen-haired, cherub-faced little girls. “What happened to them?” he'd asked, though he wasn't sure he really wanted to know.

Bill's silence and averted face bespoke the worst. “Both of them drowned in San Francisco Bay.”

In spite of the emotional detachment Jesse tried to maintain as a Pinkerton Operative, his heart gave a tug.

“Whether McGuire committed the actual murders is still in question. He was a notorious con artist with a penchant for get-rich-quick schemes, but he wasn't a killer.” Bill tapped the file. “The uncle, on the other hand, was a desperate man. According to reports, Phillipe Jervais had been in financial trouble for years. I
suspect he never intended on them being returned. Not only would the ransom take care of his financial woes, but their permanent disposal would ensure that his son inherited the Jervais fortune.”

“And all this is coming to light sixteen years after the fact?”

“Local authorities worked on the case for a couple of years without a single lead. Phillipe Jervais covered his tracks well. He died last year, though, and some incriminating evidence was found among his personal belongings: directions to the ransom drop-off point, written in Phillipe's hand to his hireling, Deuce McGuire, so a solid link between him and the abductions could be established. Anton Jervais found it and contacted us.”

“So what are my orders?”

“Find McGuire. Obtain a confession. Bring him back to San Francisco to stand trial.”

Simple enough, Jesse had thought at the time. Now he wasn't so sure. After two months, he was no closer to finding McGuire than the day he'd started his search. The man moved around more than a Cheyenne hunter. A few days here, a few days there. Hell, Jess had had more luck tracking a raindrop through a downpour.

He'd thought he'd finally gotten a break down in Durango when McGuire had hightailed it north after shooting a man. According
to witnesses, the unfortunate victim had shown an interest in a pretty dance hall girl McGuire fancied. McGuire ambushed the man in a back alley, then fled the scene with the woman. Jesse managed to track them as far as Silverton, where, the trail went colder than a Montana winter. He'd covered every nook and cranny between Durango and Leadville without a single trace of the fellow or his companion.

Well, he'd root McGuire out of whatever hole he'd crawled into—eventually. Jesse hadn't earned his reputation without cause. And once he wrangled a confession out of the worm, he'd take him back to San Francisco as ordered. Then he was done with the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Sure, Bill had promised him his pick of future assignments. But the prospect of jumping into another ruse just didn't fill him with the same sense of anticipation it used to. A man could spend only so many years being shot at and beat up and left to rot in places unfit for the human race . . .

Jess pushed back the incident chewing at his memory. Yeah, the sooner he located McGuire and turned him over to the authorities, the sooner he could turn in his resignation and decide what he'd do with the rest of his life.

Unfortunately, “sooner” was taking its own sweet time getting here.

“If I were a Scotsman, where would I be?”

A rap on the door broke into his musings. Jesse crossed the room, cracked open the door, and found Scarlet's girl standing in the hallway balancing a stack of towels and soap in one hand and a yoke of water buckets across her neck.

As before, the sight of her commanded his full and immediate notice. Even with a yoke weighing down upon her shoulders, she carried herself with a regalness that made him want to touch her and keep his distance at the same time.

“Are you going to make me stand out here all day or are you going to let me in?”

Jess jerked himself to awareness and stepped away from the doorway with a grimace of self-disgust. What was it about this girl that just the sight of her had the ability to chase all conscious thought from his head? He hadn't felt so tongue-tied and muddle-minded around a female since Christina Flowers had proudly displayed her blossoming wares to him in her daddy's barn the spring of his thirteenth year.

When Scarlet's girl—Honesty—set the buckets down beside the tub, Jesse belatedly realized that the least he could have done was to relieve her of her burden, but he seemed incapable of doing more than staring at her like a simpleton.

As she laid the towels on the bed, then poured the buckets into the tub, he leaned
against the window frame with his arms folded across his chest. “Honesty. An unusual name.”

“My father was an unusual man.” She swiped a stray curl from her cheek. Steam billowed around her face and put a sheen on her flushed skin. “Do you plan on bathing with your clothes on?”

Ah, a forbidden subject, he thought, recognizing the diversionary tactic. He could respect that. He didn't much care to discuss his father, either.

He pushed away from the wall and unfastened first one cuff, then the other. “So how'd a pretty girl like you wind up in a godforsaken place like this?”

“They don't call it Last Hope for nothing.”

Jesse peered quizzically at her from under half-masted lashes. He would have pursued that remark, but again she steered the subject from herself.

“You might want to test the water before you get in,” she said, gesturing toward the tub.

After scooping his hand through the water and finding the temperature to his satisfaction, he finished unfastening his shirt and tossed it carelessly on one of the chairs.

“Good cow feathers, what happened to you?”

Jesse didn't have to look at the weblike pattern above his heart to know what she referred to. “I had a fight with a Winchester and lost.”
He unbuttoned his trousers and she whipped away to face the wall. Jess quirked his brow at her peculiar reaction. Hell, she acted as if she'd never seen a man undress before.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, busying herself with the items on the bed.

“Only when I breathe.”

“You're lucky you're able to do that. An inch lower and you'd be dead.”

“That was the plan.” He shucked his pants, then lowered himself into the steaming water with a sigh. The tub was almost too small to hold him; Jess had to fold his knees to his chest just to fit. “You can turn around now.”

She peered over her shoulder, as if checking to see if it was safe, before lifting her chin and approaching to kneel behind him. He heard her lathering her hands, and a spicy scent mingled with the vapor rising up from the water. He nearly melted when her soap-slick palms glided across his upper back.

“You're a long way from Texas, cowboy.”

“Is it that obvious?” Jesse asked, knowing full well that it was. Though he hadn't been in the Lone Star state for several years, he'd discovered that the affected dialect seemed to open more doors for him than any other. Few seemed willing to question a Texan, especially one in the Stetson and spurs of a cowboy's trade.

“I recognize the accent.” She slid the rag
across his shoulders, back and forth, her touch light and heavenly. “So what brings you to Last Hope?”

“Just passing through.”

“Unless I miss my guess, you do that often.”

She must take fishing lessons from Rose. “Often enough.”

“Are you a miner?”

“Not hardly.”

“An outlaw?”

“No.”

“A gambler?”

That made him smile. “Only when it suits my purposes.” He wondered where she was heading with the conversation. Most sporting girls cared only how loud the jingle was in a man's pocket. “Are you always this nosy?”

“Only when it suits my purposes.”

The sideways grin she gave him struck Jesse as so pure and innocent that a moment passed before he remembered that purity and innocence were hardly words that belonged in the same context as her profession.

“Close your eyes so I can wet your hair.”

He did as she bade, and as warm water tumbled over his head, a groan of pleasure rumbled up his throat. Damn, but that felt good. The scouring of her fingers against his scalp felt even better.

Jess leaned back as far as his spine would
bend and allowed himself to enjoy the full extent of her ministrations. Lilac perfume and a woodsy scent he recognized as patchouli thickened around him as fingernails gently scored his scalp from brow to nape. Her hands circled his neck, then ran across his shoulders and down his chest, taking extra care around the puckered scar.

Oh, to hell with the meal—this bath was heaven itself.

When he opened his eyes, he was treated to the delicious sight of Honesty's breasts trying to push their way out of their tight confines. She had beautiful breasts, what he could see of them. Full. Firm. Flawless.
Yep, definitely heaven,
he thought with a smile.