Teresa Medeiros (31 page)

Billy and Esmerelda arrived in Calamity just after eleven o’clock the next night with Billy driving the wagon, Esmerelda asleep in the back, and Sadie wearing the bonnet. The stolen treasury gold had been deposited in a vault at the Eulalie First National Bank to await the arrival of Elliot Courtney and his deputies. Courtney had vowed to see Winstead brought to justice. As soon as he could find him, that is. It seemed the good marshal had up and vanished right after Black Bart’s disastrous raid on the Eulalie bank. That news had Billy searching every shadow and keeping his hand poised near his pistol.

But it didn’t account for the tension that had been coiling tighter in his gut with each revolution of the wagon’s wheels. A tension that had nothing to do with Winstead and everything to do with the woman curled up in the bed of the wagon.

“Whoa, girl,” he called out softly, drawing the mule to a halt in front of the livery stable. He noticed with a flicker of curiosity that a lamp still burned in Drew’s office.

The streets of Calamity slumbered beneath an overripe peach of a moon. A faint ripple of music and laughter drifted out from the saloon. The lighted windows of Miss Mellie’s beckoned him home.

Home
, Billy thought, closing his eyes briefly. A place where pleasure changed hands as carelessly as money, neither bringing lasting satisfaction. His jaw hardened. Maybe that was the most a man like him could ever expect.

He swung around to study his sleeping cargo. With the rosy petals of her lips slightly parted and her gloved hands folded beneath her cheek like a pair of angel’s wings, she looked so sweet, so vulnerable.…

Billy reached back and gave her bottom a sharp swat.

“Ow!” Esmerelda sprang up, rubbing the offended territory.

Billy suspected she would have lit into him, but good, if she hadn’t been distracted by the sight of Sadie. The bags beneath the basset hounds soulful eyes made her look just like old Granny Shively on a good day.

Esmerelda pointed. “May I be so bold as to inquire why that dog is wearing my bonnet?”

Billy shrugged. “The desert nights are chilly. Her ears looked cold.”

“And mine didn’t?”

He swept her a calculating glance. “Not any colder than the rest of you.”

Grinding out an inarticulate sound, Esmerelda scrambled over the side of the buckboard, nearly falling when it turned out her foot had also been asleep. Still muttering beneath her breath, she hopped up and down, massaging it through her boot.

Billy struck a match and lit a cigar, watching her performance with detached amusement. She tried to drag her trunk out of the wagon, but the awkward angle made it nearly impossible.

After it tumbled back into the bed for the third time, she arched an eyebrow in his direction. “Would you mind …?”

“Oh, but I’m afraid I would, Duchess.” He puffed out a smoke ring that would have done his ma proud. “I’ve been dismissed, you see. I no longer work for you.”

She breathed a theatrical sigh. “If I’d have known you were going to be so contrary, I’d have asked Jasper to escort me.”

Billy snorted. “He’d have had those fancy drawers of yours around your ankles before you got out of sight of the house.”

Her startled gaze searched his face. When she didn’t find any trace of amusement there, she ducked her head back into the wagon bed, cheeks aflame. After several false starts, she managed to wrestle both trunk and violin case to the ground.

Still panting with exertion, she jerked her jacket straight and adjusted her bustle with both hands. Billy cocked an eyebrow. It wasn’t the lace collar buttoned primly to her chin or even the unspoken challenge of the tiny row of buttons edging her sleeves that made his loins surge with heat.

It was those ridiculous gloves.

Billy wanted to peel them off with his teeth. To tenderly nip the tip of each finger until she cried out for the kind of mercy only he could provide.

It was somehow fitting that she woke him from his dangerous daydream by jerking them past her wrists, as if to deny him even a glimpse of her creamy flesh.

She tucked the violin case under her arm and hefted the trunk by its handle, staggering slightly. “Thank you ever so much for all your assistance, Mr. Darling. I should have been utterly bereft without you.” She delivered this scathing speech gazing just past him instead of at him.

Then she turned and started down the street toward the hotel, wobbling beneath the weight of the trunk.

Billy’s mouth fell open.

She was actually going to do it.

She was actually going to flounce right out of his life as if she’d never laid in his arms, wracked by tremors of pleasure. As if she’d never offered up her lips for a delicious openmouthed kiss. As if she’d never marched into that saloon and taken his heart into her custody.

Billy Darling had finally met an adversary he couldn’t cuss, shoot, or toss into jail. It was that realization that brought his simmering temper to a boil.

He was a Darling, after all.

Maybe it was high time he started acting like one.

He bounded out of the wagon, landing smack-dab in the middle of the street. He took a long draw off the cigar, then flicked the glowing stub into the night. His fingers instinctively flexed over his gunbelt, as if preparing for a shoot-out to the death.

“Miss Fine?” he called out.

Esmerelda stopped walking, but didn’t turn around.

“Take off your gloves.”

He was actually going to do it.

He was actually going to let her just walk right out of his life without swearing at her, shooting her in the back, or threatening to have her thrown into jail.

Esmerelda briefly considered dropping the trunk on her toes. But she was afraid she might break them.

“Miss Fine?”

Miss Fine
. Not
honey
, or
sweetheart
, or even
Duchess
.

Despite Billy’s cool tone, Esmerelda’s heart surged with relief at the thought that he was going to finally beg her forgiveness for letting Bartholomew go. Perhaps once he did, she would be able to put aside her own wounded pride and tell him she was sorry for all the mean things she had said to him. He would surely forgive her once she explained that she hadn’t had a lot of experience with apologizing, since she was rarely wrong.

“Take off your gloves.”

Esmerelda dropped both the trunk and the violin case, narrowly missing her toes. She slowly turned, her relief fading when she saw the stranger standing in the middle of the street.

His arms weren’t outstretched in welcome, but hung loosely at his sides. Despite the casual posture, the tension in his lean, graceful fingers was unmistakable. His lips were faintly pursed, as if poised to blow on the barrel of a smoking pistol.

She realized that he wasn’t a stranger at all. He was the man from the Wanted poster she’d kept tucked beneath her pillow all those long, lonely weeks. She had both hated and feared him, yet he’d still managed to saunter his way into her dreams night after night—hot, feverish dreams that had made her moan in her sleep and kick away the covers.

He was Billy Darling, part legend and all man, wanted by the law and, in her most secret heart, by her as well. He’d been dangerous when she’d wanted him, but now that she loved him, he might very well prove deadly.

He hooked his thumbs in his gunbelt, his stance so nonchalant and free of threat that Esmerelda thought he just might draw his gun and shoot her. He had her in his sights
all right, but the devastating charm of his smile warned her that he had a much more diabolical fate in mind.

“Pardon?” she croaked.

“I was only suggesting that you might wish to remove your gloves. You can leave them on if you like.” His smile took on a wicked slant as he confided, “I have heard tell of cowboys who
never
take off their hats.”

Esmerelda drifted toward him, unable to resist the hypnotic allure of that smile. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

Billy’s grin faded, leaving his jaw as stern as she’d ever seen it. “What I am saying, Miss Fine, is that the time has come for you and me to settle up. I’m not running a charitable institution here. We had a deal.” He jerked a thumb toward the wagon. “Sadie here was a witness to it.”

Stirred by the sound of her name, Sadie let out a damning “Woof.”

Esmerelda’s heart was beginning to skip every other beat. “I haven’t forgotten our deal,” she insisted, although, in fact, she had. “Why, as soon as my grandfather arrives—”

“Ah, the duke!” Billy drawled. “That noble chap who’s supposed to come swooping out of the clouds in his fancy carriage drawn by six white unicorns, toss me a handful of diamonds and rubies, and sweep you, his beloved granddaughter, into his arms.”

Esmerelda glared at him. His sarcastic description was just a shade too close to some of her more ridiculous girlhood fantasies. “I’m almost certain he doesn’t own any unicorns.”

“Then there’s only one problem.” Billy took a step toward her, but she forced herself to stand her ground, her nose quivering like a cornered rabbit’s. “I don’t see him anywhere around here. Do you?”

Stalling for time, Esmerelda looked frantically around. A cheery light flickered in the window of the sheriff’s office, but the street was deserted. “Nor do I see my brother,” she reminded him.

Billy shrugged. “I hired on to find him, not keep him.”

She couldn’t argue with that. Billy might have given Bartholomew the means and encouragement to go, but in the end, her brother had left of his own accord.

Drawing in an unsteady breath, she tilted her head to study him. He might look every inch the notorious gunslinger, but beneath that rugged exterior, he was still
her
Billy. The man who had stood off his own brothers at gunpoint to protect her. The man who had tried to convince her that she hadn’t murdered her parents with a single willful act. The man who had pleasured her without a thought for his own satisfaction, then tucked her into his bed as tenderly as a child.

Flooded by a tide of belated remorse, she clutched his arm. “Oh, Billy, I said some terrible things back at the ranch. I don’t blame you for being angry.”

“Mr. Darling,” he corrected, gently removing her hand from his sleeve. At her disbelieving look, he winked and whispered, “Until we get this matter settled, sweetheart, it might be best to keep our association formal.”

Her mouth and hand were still hanging open when his face recovered its grave demeanor. “Serving in your employ, Miss Fine, has turned out to be a far more costly endeavor than I anticipated. I lost the reward Winstead promised me, and until the scalawag is apprehended, I’ll have to spend every minute of every day and night looking over my shoulder. If Elliot Courtney can’t convince the judge to grant me amnesty for returning the treasury gold, I may even have to hightail it to Mexico for a while. The way I see it, I at least deserve to be compensated for
all my trouble.” His expression softened as he reached to cup her cheek in his palm, much as he had that day in his attic room. “After all, you are a woman of your word.”

Esmerelda might have forgotten their bargain, but she hadn’t forgotten what a consummate poker player Billy was rumored to be. He was obviously intent on playing for high stakes, and it was in that spirit of risk that she decided to take her biggest gamble.

“You’re absolutely right,
Mr
. Darling,” she said softly, allowing every ounce of regard she felt for him to shine from her eyes. “I would never dream of cheating you of what is rightfully yours. Especially not when I promised you”—she twined one hand around his nape and drew him down until their breath mingled and her lips were flush against his—“payment … in … full.”

In the instant before he called her bluff, she was rewarded by a brief flicker of surprise in his eyes. Then he was ravishing her mouth in a kiss so sweet, so impossibly tender, it might have been their very first. He wrapped his arms around her, lifting her clean off her feet so that all the swells and hollows of their bodies meshed in perfect accord. By the time he lowered her, Esmerelda was dizzy with delight and flushed with triumph.

Sighing in utter rapture, she rested her cheek against his chest and waited for him to murmur all those tender promises she’d been longing to hear.

He grabbed her by the hand and began to march down the street.

“Wait a minute! Where are we going?” Esmerelda had to trot to keep up with his long strides. She cast a frantic glance over her shoulder. Sadie yawned beneath the drooping brim of the bonnet before turning around three times and settling down on the buckboard seat for a nap. “My trunk! My clothes!”

“You won’t be needing them tonight.”

That resolute prediction sent a shivery pulse of anticipation down Esmerelda’s spine. Too late, she remembered the hazards of showing her cards too soon. Billy might not cheat, but he never stayed in the game unless he was sure he held the winning hand. She had little time to repent her mistake, for without warning, the door of the brothel loomed out of the darkness before them.

When the door of Miss Mellie’s Boardinghouse for Young Ladies of Good Reputation burst open, Horace Stumpelmeyer, the town banker, sprang to his feet, dumping the corset-clad young lady he’d paid for the privilege of cuddling on his lap to the Oriental rug.