The Confidential Life of Eugenia Cooper (21 page)

Don’t look at him.

She did.

Swayed by his half-closed eyes, Gennie felt her strength ebb. Perhaps just for a moment she might enjoy the attention. Enjoy a bit of harmless flirtation. Enjoy the night air and the…

The plan.

“Mr. Beck, please—”

“All right. I will.” He grinned and pressed his palm against her back to move her deeper into his arms.

“Mr. Beck, really,” she whispered, though she angled her face toward him.

“Miss Cooper,” he said, his voice a ragged breath against her cheek, “really.”

And beneath all the stars in the Denver sky, the silver baron traced his thumb across her lower lip, then followed its path with a kiss that curled her toes. And then another.

Reeling, Gennie pressed her palms against Daniel’s chest in a careful balance between keeping propriety and losing control. Her fingers curled around a handful of Daniel’s shirt and held on tight.

A door slammed somewhere in the vast distance outside their embrace.

“Miss Cooper,” he whispered against her ear. “You should know I don’t make a habit of this sort of behavior.”

“A pity, for you’re quite good at it,” she said, scandalizing herself with the delicious boldness of her wit.

“Is that so?” His attention darted past her, and he stiffened. “Buttercup?” He nearly dropped her in his haste to part ways.

Gennie straightened her hair as she followed his gaze. “Charlotte?”

“Papa, why are you kissing my governess?” The girl stepped between them to point at her father and then back at Gennie. “You
said
you were going to fire her.”

“Fire her?” The man who’d only just kissed her within an inch of insanity stared at Gennie as if she’d grown a second nose. “But I…your
governess
?” Daniel shook his head, looking as though he’d just been struck by a carriage. “Who are you?”

Still reeling from the kiss, Gennie latched on to the first words that registered in her addled mind. “You were going to fire me?” she demanded, letting indignation carry her past the whirl of emotions. “If anyone needs to be relieved of duty, sir, it should be you. Fire me, indeed.” She straightened her backbone, ignored her quaking insides, and stormed toward the house.

She got three steps away before turning to stride back into the circle of his arms. This time she kissed him. Soundly.

“What was that for?” he called when she once again headed for the door.

“Something to remember me by, Mr. Beck,” She glanced over her shoulder to give him a look she hoped punctuated her statement… “You’ve just lost not only a governess but likely the only woman you didn’t sweep off her feet.”

A lie, but she’d be over him by morning.

Her father said bats kept mosquitoes at bay. Mama, however, likened them to rodents with wings. Mae was a firm believer in the latter.

Wings whipped overhead and horrid squeals mimicked the sound of the devil and his throng as they emerged in a cloud so thick a person couldn’t see if there were hundreds or thousands of the evil creatures. Never one to shy from a fight, Mae found her rifle and swung it around her head.

Lucky decided to escape and fight another day. She forgot, however, to let Mae in on the plan.

Things began to move slowly, as if the world continued to turn but the spot where Daniel stood whirled in the opposite direction. Charlotte’s crying ceased when Gennie Cooper—or Miss McTaggart, or whoever she was—stalked inside and up the stairs.

“Enough of this, Buttercup,” he said in a poor attempt to placate the child.

“But you were
kissing
her, Papa.” She placed her hands on either side of his face and forced his attention away from the open door.
“Kissing
her.”

Daniel sighed. “It appears I was.”

“Appears?” She turned to walk away in much the same manner as her governess, and Daniel followed, dazed. By the time she reached the stairs, Charlotte had added the occasional loud sigh to her performance.
At the top step, she whirled to face him. “Traitor!” she shouted before storming into the nursery and slamming the door.

“Daniel, what in tarnation’s gotten into the womenfolk around here?” Elias called as he trudged out of the kitchen. “I made a full pot of coffee, and there’s nobody here but you and me to drink it. Was that a door I heard slamming?”

“Two of them, actually.”

“Two? You mean you aggravated Miss Finch too? I thought that one was so slap-fool in love with you, she’d never find a heart for irritation where you’re concerned.”

Daniel sunk onto the sofa and stretched his legs in front of him. “No, she left before I could affect her. My charm was only used to send Charlotte and Miss Cooper into a tizzy.”

Elias joined him and helped himself to a cup of coffee. “Who’s Miss Cooper?”

“Ah, now that’s quite a story.”

His old friend lifted the cup in salute. “Leave it to Daniel Beck to take a perfectly quiet evening and make a story out of it. What’s happened this time?”

“It’s simple, really,” Daniel said as he settled deeper into the cushions. “Our Miss McTaggart is not Miss McTaggart at all. She’s Miss Cooper. Eugenia Cooper. Named after Napoleon III’s wife.”

Elias lifted a shaggy brow. “Go on.”

“I’m not altogether clear how it happened, but it appears you went to the train station to fetch a governess and came home with a blue-eyed blonde looking for a Wild West adventure.”

The old soldier set down his coffee mug and started a chuckle that soon blossomed into a full-blown belly laugh. “Tell the truth, Daniel. Given the choice, don’t you think I picked the right one?”

Daniel lifted his mug and shook his head. “It all sounds good in theory, but the reality of it is another matter.”

“You can’t kiss a theory” Elias said as he rose and removed the mug from Daniel’s hand. “And, yes, I admit to spying on you just a bit, but if I don’t, who’ll be around to rescue you when the need arises?”

“You could’ve rescued me before I kissed the woman I came home to fire.”

“Well, now, that is a story, my boy.” Another chuckle, this time shaking the tray until the mugs slid to one side. “How does it end?”

“I wish I knew, Elias.” Daniel laced his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “I honestly wish I knew.”

Gennie undressed and fell onto the bed without bothering to turn on the lights. As she rolled onto her side, something crackled beneath her. She reached over and lit the bedside lamp and found a paper-wrapped package marked Fisher’s Dry Goods.

“Where did this come from?”

She made short work of the string binding the parcel, tossing it aside and unfolding the paper to reveal a buckskin jacket and a pair of boots. Her heart sank even as she smiled.

She lifted the boots first and held them to the light. Chocolate brown leather stitched in white with toes as pointed as her Turkish slippers, they looked to be just her size. She set them aside and reached for the jacket. Somehow, it appeared the sender had found it in her size as well.

When she pulled the jacket toward her, a book fell to the floor with a thud.
Mae Winslow, Woman of the West.
The most current volume.

Then she spied the slip of paper wedged between the pages.

She pulled out the folded note and opened it.
To Blue Eyes. Here’s hoping I can play some part in your Wild West adventure.
It was signed
DB.

Her fingers let the paper fall, and it made two circles before landing somewhere beneath the bed. “DB,” she said, “for Daniel Beck. Oh, I’m so stupid. Why did I ever think it was the least bit appropriate to flirt with him?”

She’d created quite the mess, something she might have avoided had she listened to Mama’s words of warning. Flirting with the same man you criticize for being a horrible father was one thing, but kissing him? And then another thought occurred to her: she’d kissed not one, but two men since deciding to leave home.

What sort of hussy was she becoming?

Gennie leaned back against the quilt, the jacket spread across her. Inhaling the scent of leather, she reached to put out the light. Tomorrow she would march downstairs and offer her formal notice as well as return the gifts. Likely Mr. Beck no longer wished her to have them, anyway. Surely by then Hester would have responded by wiring the funds and maybe even written a note in support of her adventure. Perhaps she’d bring Hester back a buckskin jacket and a pair of boots.

As for the grand plan to forge a marriage between Anna Finch and Daniel Beck, she’d have to do some serious thinking as to whether Miss Finch was better off not becoming Charlotte’s new stepmother, though it would break the dear woman’s heart to hear it.

“Well, that is your fault, Daniel Beck,” she said as she allowed her eyes to slide shut. “If you weren’t such an awful man, there would be no need for any of this.”

That statement did nothing to stop her racing thoughts. Daniel Beck could not possibly be as awful as she’d once assumed. How could he be, when she’d not only allowed him to kiss her but also shamelessly enjoyed it?

That, she decided as sleep overtook her, was the worst part of all.

She dreamed of cowboys and Indians, of Anna Finch and the scarecrow clerk at the Windsor. But most of all, she dreamed of Chandler and Daniel.

They met on a field and marched off fifty paces, then turned as if to shoot. Instead of pistols, they carried old-fashioned muskets, and rather than merely fire at each other, they each hopped onto racing stallions and bounded across the field like players in a Wild West show. Then came Anna, the crack shot who aimed her six-shooters at the apple atop the head of the clerk from the Windsor Hotel.

Gennie stood in the center of the field, holding a much younger Charlotte Beck in her arms. Chandler and Daniel made circles around her, shooting at each other and missing over her head. Anna rode sidesaddle, the apple between her teeth.

Abruptly everything changed, and all three stopped to stare at Gennie and Charlotte. Slowly, as if God Himself had slowed life to a fraction of its normal speed, each of them took aim.

And then they all fired at once.

Gennie awoke in a sweat and realized the buckskin jacket still lay atop her. She threw it off and rose, despite the fact the sun was nothing more than the beginnings of an orange glow in the eastern sky. A bath and a freshly borrowed dress in a cornflower blue did little to calm her jangled nerves.

It wasn’t the dream, however, that continued to replay itself in her mind. It was the kiss.

Daniel Beck’s kiss.

Her fumbling fingers managed to force her hair into some semblance of decency, but Gennie found herself unable to look into the eyes of the woman in the mirror. She’d behaved shamefully, and she’d done so right out in full view of anyone passing down the street.

Despite her good intentions, the plan to match Anna Finch with Charlotte’s father would have to be carried out by someone else. There was nothing left to do but quit. That is, if she had a job to leave.

She walked down the back stairs, her head held high. The sounds of Elias and Tova’s genial bantering ceased when she opened the kitchen door and stepped into the bacon-scented room. Neither Charlotte nor her father were in attendance. Likely, Gennie realized, they took their breakfast in the formal dining room.