Nan Ryan (28 page)

She pushed back her chair and rose. “May the prisoner please retire to her cell?” she asked hatefully, looking at Lew.

Lew slowly chewed a mouthful of food, swallowed, wiped his lips with a brilliant red napkin, and said, “What do you think, Cherry? Mollie in the guest room, me in your bed?” As he spoke, he looked only at Mollie.

“Why, sure,” Cherry said, rising. She seductively smoothed the tight-fitting scarlet dress over her generous hips, picked up a coal-oil lamp, and motioned for Mollie to follow her. “You look mighty tired, honey,” she said as she ushered Mollie into a small, neat bedroom. She placed the lamp on a bedside table. “And your face, it’s all sunburned. Why don’t I get you some nice cream for—”

“I have my own,” Mollie said sharply.

Cherry shrugged and turned back the bed covers. “Honey, all you need is sleep to put you right as rain. You’ll feel better tomorrow. Good night.” She smiled, turned, and left the room.

Mollie was angry and frustrated, but she also was so weary she could hardly hold her eyes open. She undressed quickly, blew out the lamp, and got into the soft, clean bed that, mercifully, was not red but snowy white. Too exhausted to even think about escape, Mollie was asleep the minute her head hit the pillow.

Much later she awoke with a start. Unsure where she was, she sat up and looked anxiously around. Somewhere in the house a clock struck three. It all came back. Prescott. Cherry. The red rooms. She heard faint laughter and turned her head to listen.

It was Lew. He was laughing again. Or still. She wasn’t sure which. Since his reunion with Cherry he had laughed more than in all the time she had known him. She wondered just what Cherry was saying—or doing—that so amused him at three in the morning. Mollie got out of bed, tiptoed across the darkened room, and eased the door open.

“… and remember when Clint came in and found us?” It was Cherry’s husky voice.

“Jesus, do I!” came Lew’s laughing reply.

Mollie stepped out into the hall and inched her way toward Cherry’s bedroom. The bedroom door stood open wide. Guiltily, Mollie peeked inside. The room was empty. Relieved, Mollie exhaled. She moved on to the sitting room and found it equally empty. But a rectangle of light shone from the open dining room door and through it came loud feminine laughter and the sound of water splashing.

Unable to stop herself, Mollie inched her way closer. She stopped a few feet shy of the open door. Concealed in darkness, she cautiously peered inside. And almost choked. Biting back a gasp of horror, she took in the whole shocking scene in an instant.

The supper dishes were still on the red-clothed dining table. And there was something else on the sturdy table as well. The long zinc tub she had bathed in earlier was, of all places, on top of the table. And in the tub was Lew Taylor, his broad bare shoulders and brown knees sticking up out of rich white suds. In his mouth was a lighted cigar and in his soapy right hand a bottle of whiskey.

That wasn’t the worst of it.

On her knees atop the table and directly beside the tub, a laughing Cherry, garbed in a feather-trimmed crimson dressing gown open to her waist, was merrily scrubbing Lew’s back with a long-handled red brush.

It was sickening to watch.

But Mollie couldn’t turn away. It was just too ludicrous to be believed. A grown man was sitting in a tub that had been lifted up atop the dining table while a scantily clad woman laughingly bathed him. Was this the way lovers behaved? Would it be enjoyable to do what they were doing?

Disgusted with them and with herself, Mollie felt her face flush. She turned to leave just as Cherry, moving the brush to Lew’s soapy chest, said, “Lew, honey, that sunburned bandit’s a real beauty. You been sleeping with her on the trail?”

He was quick to answer. “Hell, Cherry, I’m not that hard up.”

Cherry giggled. “Lew, don’t say that around me unless you mean it.”

“Say what?”

“Hard and up in the same sentence, honey.”

They both howled with laughter and Mollie clenched her fists, wishing to high heaven she could drown them both in the bath water. When they’d quieted, Lew took another long pull on the whiskey bottle and started reminiscing again. “Remember the night Clint and I rode our horses into the Shy Violet Saloon?”

Throaty laughter from Cherry, then: “And you ordered buckets of beer for the beasts and Clint shot down the chandelier when the barkeep refused to serve ’em!”

Shaking her head in disgust, Mollie slipped silently away. Back in bed she lay awake thinking about what she had heard and seen. There was no doubt in her mind that the playful pair would soon stumble into Cherry’s red bedroom and make love. She told herself she didn’t care that Lew Taylor would hold and kiss and do all the things to Cherry that he had done to her. And more. It didn’t matter. Not at all. They deserved each other. They were two of a kind.

She only wished that she were not too bone-tired to slip away while the amorous, asinine pair were caught up in their indecent fun. She promised herself she would escape before leaving Prescott. It was going to be easier than she had thought. Much easier. If the foolish couple had that much fun in the dining room she could well imagine how lost in each other they’d be once they retired to Cherry’s red bedroom.

The thought made Mollie see red.

The next time Mollie awakened, bright sunlight
streamed in the small bedroom’s east windows. She got out of bed and looked for her discarded pants and shirt. They were nowhere to be found.

Making a face, she picked up the robe that had been tossed across the foot of the bed. Bright red. Rolling her eyes heavenward, Mollie slipped her arms into the sleeves of the gaudy red wrapper and tied the sash tightly.

She pushed sleep-tousled hair from her eyes. Her hair was badly tangled and needed brushing, but she had learned that it irritated Lew when she refused to brush her hair, so she didn’t touch it. She had even considered, on a couple of occasions, cutting it short the way she’d worn it in her renegade days. But she couldn’t quite bring herself to do something that drastic.

Holding the red robe’s lapels together, Mollie quietly tiptoed by Cherry’s big red bedroom. The door was open a crack. She glanced inside. It was very dim in the large red room; the heavy red curtains were closed. Mollie squinted toward the scarlet-hung four-poster. She saw a dark head on the red satin pillow before she turned away, not wanting to see more. If she continued to look, she was certain she’d see a flaming red head beside the dark one. And she would know that beneath the rumpled scarlet sheets bare brown muscular limbs were entwined with soft white ones.

Mollie fought the distaste threatening to choke her. She reminded herself that this was exactly what she wanted. It was her chance. With the shameless pair hung over and exhausted from lovemaking, they would sleep the sleep of the dead. And while they were passed out in their drunken stupor, she could—as soon as she could find her damned pants—flee.

Mollie returned to the guest room and again searched frantically for clothes. Any clothes. There were none. She shook her head in frustration. She didn’t dare risk going into Cherry’s room to take something of hers.

Mollie hurried into the red sitting room and looked around. A red fringed scarf draped over the grand Plano was a possibility. She remembered the red tablecloth and sailed into the dining room. She skidded to a stop in the doorway. The red damask tablecloth was gone, and so was the zinc tub. The long mahogany table was polished to a high gleam and smelled faintly of lemon seed oil.

But in her mind’s eye Mollie could still clearly see the tub atop the table with a naked Lew in it, laughing and frolicking with the red-robed Cherry.

“Animals,” she muttered under her breath, then turned her head quickly as she caught the scent of freshly brewed coffee.

Following the aroma, she pushed open the swinging door between the dining room and kitchen.

“Well, good morning,” said a smiling, cheerful Cherry. “What can I fix you for breakfast?”

Mollie stared at the beaming, full-figured woman who wore a fresh, cool summer dress of red-and-white striped cotton.

“I’m not hungry. If I could just have my clothes—”

“Sure you’re hungry. Why, you hardly touched your supper last night.” Cherry wiped her hands on her red organdy apron and poured Mollie a cup of hot coffee. “I washed your clothes and hung them out. In this heat, they’ll be dry in an hour.”

Bested, Mollie nodded and dropped down onto a straight-backed chair. Cherry turned back to the cook stove, saying, “I’ll whip you up some of my special scrambled eggs. My Clint always said there were two things I was the best in the world at and one of them was scrambling eggs.” She laughed merrily at her own joke, then began talking fondly of her late husband who had, one long-ago night, come with his best friends, Lew and Dan Nighthorse, to the Albuquerque bordello where she entertained gentlemen callers.

“All of ’em were young and lusty and lookin’ for a good time,” she said, reminiscing.

“And you gave them
all
a good time?” Mollie felt sick.

Cracking eggs into a pottery bowl, Cherry laughed. “I didn’t want to play favorites, but Lew being the handsomest of the three, I naturally—”

“Took him first,” Mollie cut in.

“No, let me finish.” Cherry brought the bowl of eggs to the table and sat down. Beating briskly, she said, “They flipped a twenty-dollar gold piece, and Clint Sellers won.” She burst out laughing and added, “He won a lot more. He won my heart. And he fell for me too. Denounced his family, gave up a big inheritance for me.”

Not knowing what to say, Mollie said, “He must have loved you very much.”

“Almost as much as I loved him,” Cherry said, then sighed. “Five years ago my Clint was shot dead by a man who showed up in Prescott, a customer from the old days. Clint never was one to let anybody insult his wife.” She rose, went back to the stove.

“Wasn’t Clint jealous of Lew?” Mollie asked.

“There was not a jealous bone in Clint’s body,” came a low, deep voice from the doorway.

Both women looked around. Lew stood there leaning a muscular shoulder against the door frame. He was shirtless and shoeless and his dark hair was disheveled, his heavy-lidded eyes bloodshot. But the beard was gone—shaved off sometime during the night, Mollie assumed. His handsome face, all shadowed hollows and sculpted planes, wore a distinct look of displeasure.

“No, there really wasn’t,” Cherry agreed with him. Then she walked straight to Lew, spread her hands on his bare chest, and said, “But he sure as hell should have been jealous.” Over her shoulder to Mollie, “I’ve always been crazy about this good-looking scamp.”

Lew gently pushed Cherry away and came to the table. His cold blue eyes slid over Mollie as he sat down.

Cherry hurried to pour his coffee. “Mollie, why don’t you slice some fresh honeydew while I cook the eggs.”

“All right,” Mollie said, eager to put some distance between herself and the scowling, bare-chested man at the table.

His head aching from too much whiskey, Lew silently drank his coffee and tried to keep his eyes off Mollie. Without success. His narrowed gaze followed her as she moved about the kitchen, seemingly oblivious to his presence.

“Set this in the window, Mollie,” Cherry said.

Lew’s half-shut eyes were riveted to Mollie as she crossed the room, stopped, leaned over and set the freshly baked cherry pie on the sill. She then turned around, yawned and stretched.

Lew stared.

She looked exceptionally cute standing there, backlit by the morning sun, her golden hair igniting in the light. The ridiculous red robe she wore was too large. It drooped off her slender shoulders and hid her bare feet. She looked like a child. Young and sweet. Warm and sleepy. And innocent.

And that irritated the hell out of Lew. Where were her pants and boots? He wanted them back on her so she’d look like what she was—a lawless bandit. A hard woman who had held up stages and trains and banks and then celebrated the heists by sharing the Texas Kid’s bed.

Mollie became aware of Lew’s disapproving looks. Feeling suddenly self-conscious, she tugged her robe’s sash tighter and pulled the lapels together. Then she quickly reminded herself that he was the one who had been drunk and naked and behaving disgracefully. So she dropped her hands away, lifted her chin, and met his gaze, defiance flashing in her violet eyes.

“Lewton, damn you, answer me!” Cherry’s good-natured scolding finally got his attention.

“I’m sorry. What did you say, honey?”

Cherry shook her head. “Have you gone deaf as a stone?”

“She asked three times what you want for breakfast,” Mollie coolly informed him, starting to smile.

“Coffee’s fine,” he muttered. “Nothing more.”

“All right, but you know that you’re on your own for the rest of the day,” said Cherry, bringing Mollie’s plate to the table. “Sit down here, Mollie, and eat your eggs while they’re hot.”

Lew remained uncommunicative throughout the meal. Cherry chattered gaily. Mollie listened politely. After the dishes had been cleared away, Cherry took off her red apron. “Time for my beauty sleep,” she announced, stifling a yawn. “I’ll see you two later.” And she disappeared.