Deborah Camp (4 page)

“I’m not!”

He jutted his chin at her. “Prove it.”

She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. “You don’t want to marry me. You don’t even know me anymore.”

“Dellie, put your cards on the table or fold. What’s it going to be?”

She frowned. “I don’t know what those gambling terms mean, but I know a challenge when I hear it.”

“I’m not challenging you. I’m just waiting to see what you’re made of, whether your word is as good as gold or as worthless as Confederate currency.”

Adele pushed back her shoulders and faced him. “I assure you, my word is solid gold.”

A smirk worked its way up through him to find his mouth. “So how does tomorrow morning strike you? Think you can lasso a preacher to marry us?”

“Yes.” She sized him up, her green eyes flashing. “I expect I can fashion you into a decent human being. You’ve lost your way, obviously, but I believe I’m just the woman to herd you back onto the right path.”

“Is that so?” Reno asked, resentment rising in him like a fist. He ached to tell her that he could buy and sell her ten times over, but held his tongue because he suspected she had decided to wed him only to change him. She was, after all, her mother’s daughter. Victoria Bishop had been one hell of a woman; she never saw an injustice she didn’t try to put right or a lost cause she didn’t join. “Aren’t I the lucky bastard.”

She gasped at the ugly word. “Watch your tongue, Reno Gold. You are in the company of a lady!”

He grinned, glad to have ruffled her feathers. “Pardon me all to hell and back, Dellie.” Chuckling, he
removed his pocket watch and checked the time. “Guess I’ll stay in a hotel tonight and be back here bright and early to collect my bride.” He winked and she blushed. “Say eight o’clock?”

“Make it nine. We can marry between the breakfast and dinner rush.”

“You expect to work tomorrow?”

She gave a definite nod. “And I expect the same of you. I won’t allow any freeloaders around me.”

He gritted his teeth to keep from speaking his mind and pivoted sharply away from her.

Locating his belongings piled by the restaurant door, he gathered them up and stepped outside into the velvety night. He realized he was sweating and felt sick. And why not? he mocked himself. He’d just demanded that a woman make an honest man of him!

With a soft groan he struck out for the inconstant lights of town and tried not to think too hard about tomorrow or listen to the voice in his pounding head that was calling him one vile name after another.

Inside, Adele slumped in the chair and stared blindly at the flicking flame in the oil lamp.

“Well, I’ve gone and lost my mind,” she said to the room at large. “And very possibly ruined my life.”

She didn’t blink for a long spell, and when she did, a fat tear rolled down her cheek. The first of many.

“Y
ou may kiss the bride.”

Everything went very still inside Adele when the preacher intoned those words, then her nerves fluttered through her like a flock of startled birds. Beside her Reno turned and placed a hand on her shoulder. She trembled and looked up into his face.

His face. She had dreamed of this face and had imagined how it would have changed over the years. Actually the changes were subtle yet telling. His eyes, dark blue and glinting with deep-seated mischief, had acquired crow’s feet at the corners. His jaw had squared with maturity, his dimples had deepened; his whiskers had darkened and become more plentiful, the evidence of them faintly shading the lower half of his face.

As a boy he’d been tall and gangly. As a man he was tall and lean, graceful and powerfully built. His mouth was quite beautiful, the most beautiful mouth she’d ever seen on a man, with its full lower lip and wavy upper one.

He’d changed his hair. It used to be too long and sometimes shaggy; now it was shorter and straight, sometimes falling in a sweep across his forehead until he pushed it brusquely back into place.

And the way he looked at her was altogether different. Back in Lawrence he had hardly made eye contact with her, his gaze darting away any time she tried to engage it. Now he looked boldly into her eyes and held her hands in his. She noticed that his lashes were thick and sooty and that one brow arched sardonically.

“Mrs. Reno Gold, so glad to make your acquaintance,” he said, and his voice was the same as old, husky and soft, so that it always seemed he was whispering.

His lips touched hers, cool and light, like a snowflake. She knew a moment’s madness when she wanted to fling her arms around him, open to him, and press her beating heart against his. Shocked, she moved backward with a jerk and touched her fingertips to her stinging lips. He smiled at her reaction, as if he had read her thoughts, had tracked the restlessness of her soul.

“This is a sham,” Adele stated, then turned quickly away when she noticed that Pastor Simons had heard her and was looking at her with concern. “I mean … Oh, never mind. Thank you, Pastor. I do appreciate you marrying us on such short notice.”

“Why, I’m pleased to do it, Sister Adele, but you sure have stirred up a hornet’s nest with this marriage of yours.” Pastor Simons craned his neck to see out onto the sunlit porch steps of the small chapel. Disgruntled voices floated in from outside. “Some of the
men don’t think too kindly of you sending off for a husband when any number of them would have been all too willing to wed you.”

“Yes, I know.” She clutched the bouquet of wildflowers Reno had presented to her when he’d collected her at the depot restaurant. “And they could marry the available women in this town as well.”

“Not many of those,” the pastor noted.

“Oh?” Adele arched a brow. “From what I understand, the saloons are full of them.”

“Well, yes, but those women are sinners, Sister Adele!” The pastor’s eyes grew large behind the thick lenses of his glasses.

“So are the men who pay for their pleasures, Pastor Simons. You should know that.”

Reno gripped Adele firmly by the elbow and ushered her toward the door. “I’m sure the preacher doesn’t have time for a sermon this morning, Dellie.” He pressed a shiny coin into the man’s hand. “Much obliged.”

Pastor Simons glanced at the coin and smiled. “Bless you, Mr. Gold. I trust you will be a member of our congregation, beginning this Sunday.”

Reno gave a wink. “I’ll be honeymooning this Sunday, I reckon.”

Adele felt her face flame. She twisted out of Reno’s grasp and headed swiftly for the arched doorway, her shoes tapping smartly on the plank floor.

The first face she saw outside belonged to Yancy Stummer. He jeered at her, then flapped a hand in sheer disgust. Beside him Willie Halderon skulked, his lower lip pushed out and his eyes small and moist.

“I woulda married ya,” Willie muttered. “Didn’t
hafta join up with that there drunken coyote.”

Adele tried to ignore them as she positioned her bonnet over her black hair and tied a big bow under her chin. What was done was done, she told herself, and it was too late to wallow in regrets.

Of course, deep down she knew she had married Reno not to prove anything so much as to appease the call of her own womanhood. Reno Gold had meant something to her back when she was a girl, and now that she was a woman, she had a better understanding of those feelings. When she was in his presence she felt sublimely feminine and supremely attractive. If Reno could make her feel such wondrous things, then she owed it to him to make him realize his true magnificence. He needed someone to love him, and she felt certain she could do that—quite easily, if he proved to be an enthusiastic student.

Her mother would have been proud of her for having the fortitude to carry through with the wedding and help Reno reach his potential. Besides, her mother had always liked Reno.

“That young Reno is like a sunrise,” her mother had once said of him. “Colorful and chock-full of possibilities.”

Smiling to herself, Adele slipped on her gloves and turned a deaf ear to the angry voices both inside and out that were telling her that her marriage was wrong.

Reno savored the shape of Adele’s body against the sunlight pouring through the doorway. God, she was a beauty in her dress of pale yellow, fitted close to her small waist and flaring at her hips. He loved the set of her shoulders, so proud, so dignified.

And she was his wife.

A bolt of alarm shot through him. Any man would be pleased to stand beside Adele Bishop and marry her, but he felt rotten for not telling her the whole truth concerning his prospects in life. Of course, if he had told her, she wouldn’t have married him. She was on some kind of crazy mission to save him from himself, and he didn’t want to ruin her picnic by raining on it.

Oh, no. He’d let her think he was a ne’er-do-well. Once they were reacquainted, he’d pick his time and reveal that she had not married a pauper, down on his luck and in need of a savior. He fervently hoped she would be justly chagrined when she realized she had misjudged him. If any lesson was to be learned here, she was the one who needed to learn it. He stood slightly to the left and behind her for a few moments, watching her smooth her gray gloves over her hands. He could see a mysterious smile teasing the corners of her mouth. Running the tip of his tongue lightly over his lips, he hoped he could still taste her, but he couldn’t. The kiss had been too brief. Ah, well, there would be plenty of time to remedy that …

A series of cracks split the air. Adele let out a startled cry. Acting on pure instinct, Reno grabbed her arm and pulled her behind him, shielding her from what he knew to be gunfire.

“You rotten devil!” a man screamed, clutching his chest as he stumbled backward out of a saloon directly across the street from the white church.

Another man, gun in hand, strode out of the saloon and aimed his firearm carefully, deliberately. “I told you I don’t like coffee drinkers in a saloon. It ain’t
natural.” The gun shot fire again, discharging a bullet that plowed through the wounded man’s heart and killed him before he hit the dust.

Reno shook his head, baffled by the killer’s lack of humanity. The gunman holstered his Colt .45, turned slowly, and sauntered back into the saloon. Reno looked up at the gold lettering:
BLACK KNIGHT SALOON
. Feeling Adele trembling behind him, he pivoted to face her.

“Are you all right?”

She drew in a quick breath. “I suppose. Is that man … should I run for the doctor?”

“He’s dead,” Reno assured her. “The man who shot him, was that the saloon owner?”

“No. Taylor Terrapin owns that despicable place.”

“Terrapin.” Reno glanced up thoughtfully. “That name sounds familiar. I might have met him somewhere before.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, seeing as how you seem to love what he sells—rotgut whiskey and the road to ruin.”

He studied her and bit back a denial. If she was so damned determined to make him a rotter, maybe he should oblige her. Might be fun. Tearing his gaze from her stern countenance—she sure didn’t look like a happy bride!—he noticed that the dead man had been left in the street.

“Shouldn’t someone collect the body?”

“Someone will,” she assured him. “Terrapin will send for the undertaker.”

“Sounds like you’re used to this kind of gunplay.”

“Happens all the time in Whistle Stop,” she told him, her tone heavy with resignation.

“Where’s the sheriff?”

She wrinkled her nose and bobbed her chin at the saloon. “In there, upstairs probably. Most nights he sleeps with one of Terrapin’s two-drink whores.”

“Two drink …?” He shook his head. “Haven’t heard that one before.”

“Two drinks and you own them for the evening,” she translated, one slim brow lifting in cool disdain. “Since our sheriff is in bed, so to speak, with the criminals, we decent folks don’t expect much from him.”

“Charming town you’ve picked to live in, Dellie.” He grinned, trying to engage her good humor. She moved down the church steps without cracking a smile. “Dellie, my dear, you’d better look more pleasant. This is your wedding day and you have a lesson to teach these folks, remember?” He nodded at a scrawny, snaggle-toothed man. “Say there, partner. Can I do something for you?”

“You ain’t got no pride,” the man said. “What’s wrong with you, marrying some uppity gal who sent you a train ticket? You don’t look like a man who has to go beggin’.”

“Shut up, Yancy,” Adele snapped, hooking her hands around Reno’s bicep. “This is none of your business. Come along, Reno. We mustn’t tarry. Dinner customers will be arriving on the next train soon.”

“Yeah, hop to there, boy,” Yancy said with a juicy chuckle. “She done bought and paid for ya and she’s ready to get some work outta ya.”

Reno wanted very much to yank the rest of the crooked, yellow teeth from Yancy’s white gums, but he allowed Adele to pull him away. There had been enough violence on their wedding day, and he figured
he would have another chance to set this grinning jackal to rights.

Making his way along the street with his bride at his side, Reno had a chance to get a good look at his new home. He could have used a stiff drink.

Whistle Stop reminded him of Deadwood in the Dakotas, lawless and in need of a fair, firm hand. The boxy buildings were unpainted, except for two: the grand saloon, painted black with gold lettering, and beside it, a bright-red building with gold lettering—the
RED QUEEN GAMING HALL
. They looked like two painted-up whores in a roomful of Quakers. Traffic choked the wide street, which was deeply rutted and muddy in places. Few women lingered on the boardwalks. Men dominated this town, and women had little or no say in how things were run.

A whipcord-thin man dressed in black strode from the saloon with authority, stepped over the dead man in the street, and moved briskly toward Adele and Reno. The silver ends of his string tie bounced in the breeze, and he squinted beneath the brim of his hat as he raised a hand. Reno noticed that people scurried out of his way and tried not to snag his attention.

This is a dangerous animal
, Reno thought, figuring him to be Taylor Terrapin.