Longarm 242: Red-light (11 page)

She spooned up some of the broth and leaned toward him, saying, “Open wide.” Longarm took the spoon in his mouth and swallowed the hot broth, and as he did so, he noticed that Angie was holding her own mouth open slightly, and her tongue darted out to lick over her lips. She was breathing a little harder, too, he realized as she continued to feed him. Obviously, it didn't take a whole hell of a lot to get her all hot and bothered. Right about now, Longarm could say the same thing about himself.

All in all, it was a mighty interesting meal, but Longarm was still too weak to do anything about it. He ate as much of the broth as he could and then lay back down again, letting the strength from the broth seep into him. He felt himself growing drowsy again and didn't fight the sensation. The last thing he was aware of was Angie bending over him and pressing her lips to his forehead. “Sleep well, Custis,” she whispered.

 

Longarm tried not to lose all track of time. The curtains had been closed when Angie was in the room with him, and he had assumed it was night again. They were still closed when he awoke, but he saw strips of brightness around them that told him it was day once more.

He was aware of something else—a pressing need in his bladder. He lay there for a moment, trying to ignore it, but that was impossible. With a groan, he pushed the covers back and started to swing his legs out of bed.

“Here now! What do you think you're doing?” a woman's voice asked him sharply.

Longarm froze. He was uncovered, and his manhood was standing up straight and tall, not from arousal but from the need to relieve himself. Whatever the reason, it was enough to draw the attention of the woman who was standing up from a chair on the other side of the room.

Coolly, she appraised his shaft, then shifted her gaze to his face as if she wasn't overly impressed. “You shouldn't be getting out of bed,” she said. “If you need something, I'll get it for you.”

She was a brunette, slender in a simple gray dress. Longarm put her age somewhere between Nola Sutton and Angie. She was pretty, too. Not as elegantly lovely as Nola or as earthily attractive as Angie, but definitely pretty in a dark, intense way. Under other circumstances, Longarm was sure he would have appreciated her looks even more, but right now he had other things on his mind.

“Chamber pot,” he grated out.

The woman nodded. “I'll fetch it for you.” She went to the end of the bed and bent down to pick up a porcelain pot with a handle on it. She carried it around to Longarm.

He practically grabbed it out of her hands. “Much obliged,” he said. When she didn't go anywhere, he added, “That's all. I reckon you can go now, ma'am.”

She shook her head and said, “I don't think so. I don't want you falling and injuring yourself again, Mr. Parker. Nola would never forgive me.”

Longarm thought there was a slight accent to her words, but he didn't take the time to ponder the question of where she was from. “Ma'am,” he said through gritted teeth, “if you'll just step out of the room ...”

“I'll turn my back and go over there,” she said, pointing to the far side of the room.

Longarm hesitated, then nodded in agreement. A little embarrassment was one thing; having his bladder blow up was another.

When he was finished, he leaned over and put the chamber pot back under the bed himself, knowing that if he didn't, the brunette would do so. Bending hurt his side, but it wasn't anything he couldn't stand. He sat back in the bed and pulled the covers over himself again. “Much obliged,” he repeated.

The brunette turned. “I'm called Rafaela,” she said. “If there's anything you need ...”

Longarm was hungry again, but this time he wanted more than broth. “I reckon I could do with some solid food,” he said.

Rafaela nodded. “All right. The cook should have something left over from breakfast. I'll see what I can find—but only if you promise to stay in bed.”

“Yes, ma'am. I' m feeling a mite stronger than I was, but I don't reckon I'm up to dancing a jig just yet.”

Rafaela smiled faintly and turned toward the door. She paused and looked back at him. “Just one more thing, Mr. Parker,” she said. “Don't call me ma'am. I'm a whore, not a schoolteacher.”

The undertone of bitterness in her voice took him by surprise. Angie certainly hadn't seemed bothered by what she did for a living. Rafaela was obviously different, though.

Longarm shook his head and said, “I can't help it, ma'am. My ma raised me to respect women no matter what. I'm too old to be breaking any habits now, Miss Rafaela.”

She caught her breath, and Longarm thought he saw a flash of something in her eyes, maybe a chink in the cool facade she put up. But then she said, “I don't suppose it matters, does it?”

Before he could answer, she was gone.

 

When the door opened a few minutes later, he expected to see Rafaela coming back with his food. Instead, yet another young woman brought the tray into the room. She smiled at Longarm, seemingly totally unmindful of the fact that she wore only a thin shift that clearly outlined her small breasts and long, sensuous legs. Straight hair the color of midnight hung far down her back, almost to the curve of her hips. She was Chinese, and her face possessed a doll-like prettiness. She was definitely flesh and blood, though, and so was Longarm. He became all too aware of that as his eyes lingered on the dark, erect nipples thrusting out against the gauzy material of the shift.

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “How many of you gals
are
there?”

She looked confused by the question, and he wondered how much English she spoke, if any. She could speak the lingo at least a little, he discovered, because she said, “I am called Mickey. Rafaela say to bring you this food.”

The tray in her hands contained a plate filled with steak, potatoes, gravy, and biscuits. Longarm practically snatched it out of her hands as she brought it over to the bed. He didn't know what looked better to him right now—the food or the woman. He was glad he didn't have to decide between them.

He dug in with the knife and fork on the tray as Mickey went over to a chair and primly sat down. “I wait, take back tray,” she said.

“That'll be fine,” Longarm told her. He kept eating.

Despite his hunger, his eyes kept straying over to her. In her own way, she was as attractive as Nola and Angie and Rafaela, and just as different as each of them, too. Even dressed as provocatively as she was, there was an innocence about her, a quality that was almost childlike, although she was definitely not a child.

Fate had a damned peculiar sense of humor, he thought. Here he was being attended to by all manner of beautiful women, and although he had responded physically to all of them, there wasn't a thing he could do about it right now. His strength might be coming back, and the bullet hole in his side might be healing, but he would still have to recover quite a bit before he could properly bed any woman again, let alone beauties like his four nursemaids.

And to be honest, none of the four ladies had even expressed an interest in crawling into bed with him except for Angie, he reminded himself.

He was just mopping up the last of the gravy with the final bite of biscuit when the door opened and Nola Sutton came into the room. She was wearing a green dress that was provocative without being brazen. She smiled and said, “Hello, Mr. Parker. How are you feeling?”

Longarm swallowed the last bite and said honestly, “A whole heap better. I could do with a pot of coffee, though.”

Nola nodded. “I'll see that one is brought up.” She turned her head and spoke to the Chinese girl. “Mickey, take Mr. Parker's tray downstairs and then bring him some coffee.”

Mickey stood. “Yes, Miss Nola.” She kept her eyes downcast.

Nola put her hand under Mickey's chin and gently tipped her head up so that the young woman had no choice but to look at her. “You're not in China any longer,” Nola reminded her. “You may work for me, but you're not a slave, Mickey.”

Mickey smiled. “I will try to remember.”

When Mickey was gone, Longarm commented to Nola, “That's, ah, an unusual gal.”

“Not so unusual,” said Nola. “She came over here as a child with the rest of her family. Her father and brothers helped build the Central Pacific Railroad. There wasn't enough money to feed everyone in the family, though, so when Mickey was seven, her father sold her.”

Longarm's jaw tightened. “That's a hell of a thing to do.”

“I agree. That's why I bought her from the man who owned her when he came through here a while back.”

“You bought her,” repeated Longarm.

“It was the only way to get her away from him. Just another business transaction, as far as he was concerned.” For a moment, a faraway look appeared on Nola's face. “But it wasn't just business any longer when Mickey told me some of the things he'd done to her. A couple of the men who work for me caught up to the son of a bitch between here and Virginia City and brought him back. I explained to him why he was going to die before I—”

She stopped short and took a deep breath, then went on. “But I shouldn't be telling these things to a lawman, should I? Even though you're a federal man, and murder is a state crime.”

Longarm tensed, and his mind flashed back to the night he had blundered into Nola's office with a bullet hole in his side. He remembered her saying something then about him being a marshal. Obviously, she had found his badge and bona fides.

“Who else knows?” he asked grimly.

“That you're a lawman?” Nola shook her head. “Only me. I didn't tell any of the girls. And only Rafaela, Angie, Mickey, and the cook know you're up here. I've asked them not to say anything to anyone, and I can trust them.”

“You're sure about that?”

“Certain. I'd trust any of them with my life.”

“That's just what you're doing,” said Longarm, “by hiding me out from Mallory.”

“I told you before, I'm not frightened of Mallory—” That was when a gun went off downstairs.

Longarm and Nola both stiffened in surprise. He sat up straighter in the bed while she turned toward the door. “Wait a minute,” Longarm said sharply as he prepared to throw the covers back and swing his legs out of bed. “I'll help—”

Nola thrust a hand toward him, palm out. “You stay right there!” she ordered. “Whatever's going on down there, I'll handle it. You don't have to worry about me.”

There had been only the single gunshot, but Longarm didn't know whether that was good or bad. He wanted to get out of the bed and go see what was happening, but he knew Nola was right. He was still in no shape for trouble, and besides, he didn't even know where his pants were.

He would have looked a sight, showing up at the top of the stairs naked as a jaybird except for the bandage around his midsection. People might have stopped what they were doing just to gawk at him, though, he thought dryly.

“Go on,” he said to Nola. “I'll be right here if you need me. Just be careful.”

“I always am,” she told him. “That's how I've stayed alive.”

He could believe that. No woman ran a place like the Silver Slipper without being able to take care of herself.

Nola slipped her hand into the cleverly concealed pocket of her dress as she left the room and started along the balcony toward the stairs. Her pistol was there, loaded and ready to use. As she approached the top of the broad staircase, she heard loud, angry voices coming from below.

She paused at the head of the stairs and looked down at the big main room of the Silver Slipper spread out below her. It was brightly lit by gas chandeliers, the only such fixtures in Galena City. Like the huge mirrors behind the long mahogany bar, the bar itself, the gaming tables covered with green baize, the embossed wallpaper, and all the other ornate furnishings, the chandeliers had cost her a pretty penny. It was a fact of the saloon business, though, that customers tended to spend more when a place looked like the owner didn't really need the money. Illusion was what really mattered the most.

Just like the most important thing about being a whore was making the customer believe that he was different from all the other men who had shared your bed ...

Nola put that thought out of her head and concentrated on the matter at hand. She saw a knot of men at the far end of the bar, near the front windows. Half a dozen of them wore silk vests and sleeve garters over spotless white shirts, and she identified them as her bartenders. They were surrounding four men in range clothes. One of the cowboys was bareheaded and was rubbing his jaw as if he had just been punched. That was probably what had happened, Nola decided, because his hat was on the floor at his feet where it would have fallen when it was knocked off his head.