Midnight Lover (15 page)

How quickly it had all changed. From the moment she had first seen Jesse Reardon, she'd been filled with emotions so tempestuous, so dangerous, so terrifying, that for one wild moment she'd had the urge to toss everything aside and flee to the safety of her old life in Boston.

She had already sustained a gunshot wound and lived to tell the tale. A stubborn glow of exhilaration filled her soul as she realized that Thomas Addison would probably have run after that stagecoach this afternoon, pleading to be allowed on board, pride be damned!

Silver Spur wasn't Boston; that much was clear. How difficult it had been to try to explain this new world in the letter she wrote to Thomas Addison that first day in town. Even then she'd understood that the old rules of behavior didn't hold here. In Nevada men talked with their Winchesters and Colts. Was it any wonder a stray bullet had found its mark in her? It was an accident and accidents happened all the time in a town as wild and free as this one.

Just look at the string of odd episodes that had occurred this past week: The shooting; the neatly sawed-off step in the cellar of the Crazy Arrow; the rock that had sailed through the front window moments after she'd passed by.

An odd prickle of dread crept up her spine, causing the hairs at the nape of her neck to stand on end. Maybe that hadn't been a stray bullet after all. Maybe someone knew exactly what he was doing when he aimed and fired his gun.

"Ridiculous!" she said aloud in her dark and lonely bedroom. Her imagination was surely running riot. Who on earth could possibly want her dead? She'd been in town just one week; certainly that was not sufficient time to make a deadly enemy.

And then Jesse Reardon's image came into her mind. Jesse Reardon with the magic hands and silver-tongued promises that made her face burn even as she lay in her maidenly bed in the saloon she had wrested away from him.

Only Jesse Reardon stood to profit if she died.

And dying of pleasure didn't count.

#

In Boston that afternoon, Thomas Addison watched as his employer, Neville Pearson Lord, leaned back in his chair and laced his aristocratic fingers in front of his aristocratic face.

"Have you nothing to say for yourself, Thomas?" Lord asked in a voice rich with the sound of the right side of the Charles River. "No explanation for this unfortunate behavior?"

Thomas met the man's eyes and wished he could fabricate a story believable enough to assuage Lord's concern but he could not. Being caught tipping a flask of whiskey to one's lips during business hours was not something he could easily explain—nor did he care to try.

"I am most distracted of late," he offered, shifting position uneasily. "My mind, I am afraid, has been elsewhere."

"This is a financial institution, Thomas, not a repository for broken hearts or dipsomaniacs. Unless you find some way to keep your amatory problems from affecting your performance here at the Mercantile, I will be forced to take harsher action." Lord paused, his watery blue eyes intent upon Thomas who was trying his best to appear concerned. "Your mother would be most shocked were I to terminate your employment, would she not?"

Thomas cleared his throat. "Yes, sir, she would be shocked indeed." But not as shocked as she would be were I to tell her about your dalliances with Mrs. Fitzgerald from Brookline. Emily Addison had recovered from her ill-fated romance with Aaron Bennett and had embarked once again on the matrimonial merry-go-round. Thomas's own broken heart, however, was not proving so easily mended.

Lord's stern countenance softened as he rose from behind his enormous oak desk and rested a fatherly hand on Thomas's shoulder. "If you'd take a bit of advice from a veteran of the war between men and women, I'd advise you to take a long walk through the Common and toss that flask into the pond, then come back to work with a clear head and new dedication to the tasks at hand. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, sir, you do indeed."

"I expect to see you at your desk at precisely two p.m. Am I understood?"

"Quite."

Thomas mustered up his best subservient smile then, shaking his mentor's hand, he removed himself from both Lord's sanctum sanctorum and the bank itself before any of the curious clerks in the outer office could blurt out any impertinent questions.

Caroline's note was burning a hole inside his breast pocket but he withstood the urge to read it again until he reached the Commons. Settling beneath a spreading oak near the pond, he allowed himself the painful pleasure of unfolding the delicate blue letter paper and letting her scent of violets in the spring enfold him in an agony of remembered bliss. The honeyed blond of her hair...the delicate curve of her cheek...her eyes blue as the skies overhead...breasts round and full and so delectably, temptingly ripe—

Groaning, he closed his eyes and willed his body to return to a more normal state. What kind of man was he to let the woman of his dreams trek off to some godforsaken western hellhole of a town with only a backward Irish maid for company? He should have forbidden such outrageous behavior; called upon family loyalties and honor and the unspoken last wish of her father that the Bennett and Addison families merge.

Damnation! What he should have done was taken her the way he'd longed to take her from the first second he'd seen her standing in his mother's drawing room, all fire beneath the ice, saying how she had every intention of joining Aaron in Silver Spur the moment he sent for her.

No other man would have turned away from the open invitation in her eyes that day on the staircase in his mother's home. Oh, she'd voiced the normal maidenly concerns—"...it's not right, Thomas...I wish it could be different, Thomas..."—but they were nothing but a female smokescreen, a cover, for the same pounding, elemental lust burning through his veins. What he should have done was carry her off to his room and rip off her skirts and prove to her beyond all shadow of doubt that he was the man who could make her happy.

Now it was too late.

He looked at the note written in her elegant, unmistakable hand and felt the ugly poison of regret flood his entire being.

The opportunities are endless, she had written from St. Louis on her way west, and I have only just begun to explore the avenues of endeavor open to me...

A vision, hot and quick, of Caroline lying naked beneath some sweating, heaving, cowboy rose unbidden in his mind and for the first time in his life Thomas Addison wondered if he were capable of murder.

#

Two weekly stages came and went and still Caroline Reardon remained in Silver Spur. Reardon, however, made no mention of her leaving and Caroline welcomed the temporary cessation of hostilities between them. She dared not wonder if his change of heart were permanent but she intended to enjoy it for however long it lasted.

It was Monday morning of her fourth week in town. Caroline had spent a restless, uncomfortable night, drifting between sleep and wakefulness while her mind raced wildly along paths better left untraveled. But as the sun rose over the eastern sky, she found her fears disappearing with the darkness until only the bandage on her shoulder remained as mute testimony that all in Silver Spur was not as it should be.

She dressed carefully in a slate grey skirt and ivory shirtwaist whose puffed sleeves were full enough to allow for her bandaged shoulder. The slight stiffness made it difficult to dress her hair so she merely brushed it and tied it back with a ribbon as best she could, letting the blonde waves tumble down her back. Unfortunately there was nothing she could do about the deep circles under her eyes and she hoped Abby would have the good sense to refrain from another discussion of her foolish decision to stay in Silver Spur.

Once downstairs in the kitchen, Caroline discovered that Abby had ideas of her own. She and the girls were clad in worn cotton frocks, their heads covered in frilly caps meant to protect their hair. Water heated on the wood-burning stove and the smell of lye soap filled the air. "What on earth—?" She stood in the doorway, her mouth agape. The kitchen had obviously been shamefully neglected for a long time, and since they had no cooking utensils and took their meals at Aunt Sally's, Caroline had chosen to concentrate her efforts on the public rooms.

Abby put down her wash rag and, wiping her hands on the sides of her brown skirt, turned to face Caroline. "'Twas many a cup of tea we brewed last night after you went up to bed, miss, tryin' to figure out a way to keep the Crazy Arrow and we be thinkin' we have the answer for you. We think—"

"Door was open," said a low-pitched female voice from behind Caroline. "Hope you don't mind me bargin' in on you."

Caroline spun around, expecting to see one of the prospectors' wives, and found herself looking at the notorious madam of the Golden Dragon. "No, of course we don't mind," she said, reflexively smoothing back her hair and wishing she'd chosen a more flattering costume to wear that morning. "I am Caroline Bennett."

The black-haired woman nodded. "Call me Jade," she said, then looked pointedly at Abby and the other girls then back at Caroline. "You got any place where we can talk private?"

"Of course," said Caroline. Struggling to compose herself—and ignore the curious looks from the others—she led the woman into the sparsely furnished room that had served as her father's office.

She felt horribly self-conscious as she took her seat behind the scarred oak desk. Jade was dressed in a gown of palest gold that made her look as delicate and finely-made as a piece of porcelain. Her beauty was so exotic, so mesmerizing, that Caroline felt raw-boned and homely in the woman's presence, a feeling that was quickly dispelled by Jade's wild west language.

"I don't have time to waste," the tiny beauty said as she settled gracefully in a chair across from Caroline. "This is a tough town, Miss Bennett, and I'm here to tell you you ain't gonna get money from any bank, no how." She leaned forward and her silky black hair drifted across one delicate shoulder. "These men ain't like your eastern dandies. The only business women they'll accept is a woman who does most of her business on red satin sheets."

Caroline, who was intimately acquainted with those red satin sheets, knew her cheeks were as crimson as the ones that bore Jesse Reardon's monogram. "And what is the purpose of this warning?" she asked, struggling to retain her composure.

Jade smiled, exposing tiny perfect teeth. "I'll make a deal with you, Miss Bennett. Why should the men be the only ones to band together? We women should band together, too, and fight them at their own game. Together we have two of the most important businesses in town."

Caroline blushed even redder. She was well aware of the importance of Jade's business to the men of Silver Spur, but the Crazy Arrow? From the layers of dust that covered everything, it was doubtful that a handful of men had even noticed it was no longer in business.

"There are other saloons in town," she said, watching the other woman carefully. "Why should the Crazy Arrow be so important?"

"Oh, honey, I don't mean the Crazy Arrow! Everybody knows it ain't worth a plug nickel. I'm talkin' about your daddy's mine."

Mine? What mine?

"What does the mine have to do with anything?" Caroline asked, praying Jade wouldn't realize she didn't know what in blazes she was talking about.

"Jesse." Jade gathered her embroidered silk shawl and reticule and stood up. "Now don't you go believin' any of the sweet talk you hear from that fast-talkin' devil. What he wants from a woman he gets from me for a price. What he wants from you—well, what he wants is your daddy's mine."

Aaron Bennett had owned a mine? That was preposterous! He had died with little more to his name than the clothes on his back and the sadly neglected Crazy Arrow. Certainly if he'd owned a mine, his financial picture would have been substantially rosier. Jade, however, quickly explained that the mine was worthless. "Everyone in Silver Spur knows it ain't worth a damn, but you're sittin' on a fortune in land."

"Land?" asked Caroline, clearly skeptical. "I am quite unfamiliar with the way of life out here, but land was the one thing I believed available in great abundance. Why would the property surrounding a worthless mine be of any value?"

The Oriental beauty's laugh ricocheted off the walls of the tiny office. "Gal, you got yourself a lot of learnin' to do if you're gonna make a go of it in Silver Spur! The railroad's set to come through there not too long from now and when it does, that land'll go sky high."

Caroline leaned forward eagerly. "And Reardon knows all about this?"

"Honey, Jesse Reardon may be a charmin' devil when he sets his mind to it, but at heart he's as connivin' as the rest of 'em. He won the Rayburn mine the day your daddy took that bullet."

"The same day Reardon claims he won the Crazy Arrow?"

"Honey, Jesse don't claim he won the Crazy Arrow, he did win the Crazy Arrow."

"I beg to differ with you, Miss Jade, but I have the deed to the saloon."

"Deeds don't mean nothin' at all 'round here."

Caroline slumped back in her seat in exasperation. "But a winning poker hand does?"

Jade's perfectly-formed mouth curved with a smile. "Now you get the picture, honey. It all depends who's lookin' at it."