Deborah Camp (15 page)

“He gives you no leeway?”

“Yes, Mr. Harvey leaves the business pretty much to me. He trusts me.”

“Okay. Sally is your friend, not just a waitress. You talk to her. You tell her that you’re releasing her from her contract, but that you don’t want her telling the other women about it. Let the others think that you signed Sally to a shorter contract, seeing as how you two are girlhood friends. They’ll understand. You keep a civil tongue in your head. Then, when Sally needs someone to talk to, she can still come to you.”

She bowed her head, defeated. “You’re right. I know you’re right. If she marries that man, she’ll need my friendship more than ever.”

“There you go.” He patted her hands resting in her lap. “And there’s an outside chance she might change her mind and not marry him. Of course, he could decide not to marry her, but I don’t look for that to
happen. I figure they both see this marriage as a good thing, a fine trade-off. Sally will be the belle of the ball again and Terrapin will gain more respectability in town through the marriage.” He chuckled. “She sure isn’t going to listen to your advice on who to marry. Sally doesn’t think much of your choice of husband.”

“She knows I never really meant to marry you.”

“Oh?” He cocked a brow. “And what did you mean to do with me once I arrived?”

“Well, I hadn’t thought that far at the time. I didn’t expect you to agree to come, and when you did, I suppose I thought I would make you see that this was an experiment, a lesson to the bull-headed men of Whistle Stop. I didn’t think you’d want to marry me.”

“That
was
the deal, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, yes.” She sighed, clearly agitated. “Placing that advertisement was impulsive of me. I didn’t expect to find a husband and I surely didn’t expect to hear from anyone I knew! I was dumbstruck when I got that letter from you.”

“But you answered it and sent me train fare.”

She wound a lock of her ebony hair around her finger. “I thought … that is, I wanted to see you.” Her eyes found his; stars seemed to have gathered in them. “I was curious as to why you wrote me, why you had reached out to me. I wondered what had become of you.”

“And I got off the train and fell in a drunken heap at your feet.” He stood and peeled away his shirt, needing some means to expend some of the frustration coiled in his muscles.

“Are you overly fond of alcohol?”

He smiled crookedly at her. “Maybe I’m overly fond of you, Dellie. Maybe I was so damned nervous over seeing you again that I drank too much and made a fool of myself.”

Her color heightened. “Is that true? Is that what happened?”

Sorely tempted to confess, he turned away from her instead, unwilling to give her more leverage when she already had so much. Besides, she was sitting on his bed, and that brought to mind enticements that made his loins burn. She’d come to him this evening for advice, a good sign that the ice was thawing from around her heart. He didn’t want to take advantage of her lowered defenses. Facing her again, he settled his hands on his belt buckle, figuring she’d bolt and run when she realized he was getting ready to strip for bed. She stared at his hands and didn’t move.

“Guess I’ll turn in,” he said.

“It’s early,” she noted. “Won’t you be going out to play poker or flirt with Little Nugget?”

He grinned. “The poker games have been closed to me and Little Nugget isn’t my type of woman.”

“She isn’t?”

“She’s too young. I like my women in their prime.”

“And what is prime to you?” She folded her arms at her waist. Moonlight bathed half her face.

“Dellie, do I need to tell you that I think you’re prime womanhood? Of course, you could use a little seasoning, but that’s nothing I can’t handle.”

She turned her face away from him, hiding it in shadow. “Seasoning? I dare not ask you to explain that.” Whipping her gaze back to his, she squinted cannily. “Why are the poker games closed to you?”

“Terrapin decreed it.”

“Are you in debt to him?”

“Hell, no.” He unbuckled his belt. Still she didn’t move. “For some reason he just doesn’t like me. Breaks my heart.”

She smiled and then laughed, her starry eyes gleaming, her teeth flashing. Reno’s manhood stiffened. God, she was pretty! And she was in his bed.

Suddenly she sprang from the cot and was across the room before he could blink.

“Good night, Reno,” she said, and closed the door to her bedroom behind her.

Reno stared at the door and wanted to kick it in, but he walked off his burst of frustration and drove his fingers through his hair in silent agony.

He was plumb crazy for her, and she was immune to his condition and his charms. Here he was pacing like a penned-up bull in sniffing distance of a heifer, and she was blithely preparing for bed with no thought of him.

She’d responded to his kisses, but he had misjudged her response. She didn’t want him.

She wanted him.

On the other side of the bedroom door Adele stood before a full-length mirror and examined her flushed face and crimson throat. A deep trembling seized her.

Who was she? Did she really know herself? What had happened just now between her and Reno?

Her heartbeats boomed in her ears and a warm ache pulsed between her thighs. Smoothing a palm down her midsection, she felt her face heat up again as she
glanced almost fearfully at the bedroom door. She wanted him.

More precisely, she had wanted to see him disrobe.

Adele covered her hot face with her hands, mortified by her admission. When he’d taken off his shirt, she should have left the room, but she had pretended not to notice that he stood before her in his red knit undershirt, black chest-hair curling over the top of it. Sitting on his bed, she had watched his lean fingers unbuckle his belt and she had wanted to stay right where she was and wait for his trousers to drop.

She groaned into her hands. Maybe she was more lonely for a man’s touch than she cared to admit. After all, she hadn’t exactly fought him off when he’d kissed her. Oh, she’d fumed and scolded him, but she had wanted every kiss he’d given her.

After her mother’s death Adele had thrown herself into finding meaningful work. That hadn’t stopped men from approaching her, of course, but she had rarely encouraged them. She’d wanted to be a businesswoman, to make her own way in a man’s world, just as her mother had done.

But her mother’s life had not always been like that, Adele reminded herself. When her mother had been Adele’s age, she was already married to Lowell Bishop and a few months away from giving birth to her only child. Victoria had been madly in love with Lowell Bishop, as she had often told Adele.

“When he died, part of me went with him,” her mother had stated. “If I hadn’t already had you, I think I would have curled up and faded away like a shadow, for that’s how I felt, like a shadow of the woman I had been with Lowell at my side. But I
wanted a good life for you and I couldn’t give that to you by hiding and crying and feeling sorry for myself.”

Adele could barely remember her father and she could recall nothing of her mother’s relationship with him. But she had only to remember the expression of devotion on her mother’s face when she’d talked about Lowell to know how rich, how passionate that love had been for Victoria.

Reno could never love her like that.

She could never love him.

Reno threw himself on the cot and stared morosely out the window at the stars, stars that had been in her eyes. Starry-eyed, but not for him.

Sally was out there somewhere with Terrapin, and he’d bet a saddlebag full of gold that they weren’t admiring the heavens. They were doing what he would dearly love to be doing with his wife.

His wife. He chuckled silently, his chest heaving, almost hurting. She’d never be his wife. She thought of him as a brother.

No, that wasn’t true. She had kissed him back. He had that to cling to, at least. She had raked her fingers through his hair and had opened her lips to him more than once. She had responded, but that didn’t mean she wanted him.

He’d bet another saddlebag full of gold that she was in bed now, fretting about Sally and not wasting one thought on him. Out of sight, out of mind. He was squandering his time with her. He should get out of the marriage, set her free and be on his way.

Dreams were for dunces. He couldn’t live on
dreams. And he certainly couldn’t make the ache in his groin go away by dreaming of Adele. No. Dreams of her only made it worse.

She’d probably dream of him again tonight.

Adele whirled from the mirror and flung herself on her bed. Night after night her dreams were full of Reno Gold, each more agonizingly wonderful than the last. Sometimes he was a knight in armor on a powerful steed. Sometimes he was a riverboat gambler. Always he was handsome and dashing and seeking her favor.

If only he possessed more ambition, she’d feel better about these dreams and these feelings she wrestled with during every waking hour. How could she be so attracted to a man who had so little self-esteem? A man of pride would have already found himself a job, instead of doing what his wife made him do. A man of self-worth would have already made something of himself, instead of coming to her penniless and aimless.

Surely he had an abundance of charm and certainly he knew how to make a woman’s head swim, but none of that would sustain a real marriage or support a strong relationship. She could not commit herself to a man of so little means and so few scruples.

But she could lust for him, and lust for him she did.

Ah, the lust, the lust, the goddamned lust!

Reno sat up in bed, his skin slick with sweat, his breathing shallow, his mind roiling with carnal images of Dellie.

Her midnight hair streaming over his chest, tickling
his loins. Those hands, those beautiful hands of hers, skimming over his ribs, gripping his hips. Lips pulling at his. Tongue laving him. Legs tangling with his. Pelvis grinding against his. Breasts rubbing him. Nipples firming under the massage of his tongue.

He sprang up from the cot and stared at the bedroom door. He couldn’t stand it, could not tolerate one more second of this agony!

This agony! Adele wailed silently, staring at the shadows writhing on the ceiling.

What was that? She sat up, thinking she’d heard something at her door. Reno? Was he moving about in the parlor? Had something disturbed his sleep?

Straining to hear any other noises, she was disappointed by the quiet inside and the chirping of crickets outside. Must have been her imagination. Or wishful thinking?

She lay back in the bed. It felt like a prison of solitude. Cold. Lonely. Barren.

Barren? How odd that she should think that.

Another sound, faint but close by, made her sit up again, eyes straining to see the door handle. Was it turning? Should she call out to Reno? She placed her fingertips to her lips to keep herself from doing just that, from inviting him into her room, into her bed. Why, she’d be no better than a trollop!

No, that’s not true
, she argued with herself. He was her husband. She had every right …

Every right …

Switching off her thoughts, she rose from the bed and moved like a sleepwalker to the door. The handle was cool on her palm. She shoved it down and
opened the door slowly, fully expecting to find Reno right on the other side.

The parlor was dark, but moonlight illuminated his narrow bed. His
empty
narrow bed.

“Reno?” She searched the room, frantic, wide-eyed. Her heart sank, its wings clipped.

He was gone.

T
he next morning Sally was making coffee when Adele came into the restaurant. The place smelled of the freshly made brew and the mouthwatering aroma of yeast rolls that drifted in from the kitchen. Sally afforded Adele a rapid glance and then turned her back on her.

“I wasn’t sure you’d work today,” Adele said, checking the wall clock. In ten minutes she’d have to open the door and let in the first of the breakfast crowd. People were already milling outside, coming early for a meal before they boarded the train or went to their businesses in town.

“According to you, I have no choice. I must work, no matter how much I loathe it.”

“Loathe it?” Adele laughed lightly. “Really, Sally, don’t be so melodramatic.”

“I’m not. I hate to work.” She pushed aside the coffee urn and dried her hands on her apron. “This is not what I was meant to do. I always wanted a husband and children, not tables to wait on and strangers to please. I detest this life I’ve had forced on me.”

Adele flinched, taking Sally’s denouncement personally. “No one forced you to come here, Sally. I wrote and asked if you’d like to work here and you jumped at the chance.”

“To leave Kansas, yes, but I did not jump at the chance to plunge my hands into hot water day after day until they became rough and red. Nor did I jump at the chance to carry heavy trays of food to table after table and sweep floors until my back aches. I suppose you must gain something from this, Dellie, but not me. I don’t want to work here one minute longer than I must.”

“I make a decent living here, Sally, the same thing I offered you.”

“I am marrying him, Dellie, and there is nothing you can do about it. I’ll work here, if I must, until my time is up and then I’m leaving to become his wife.”

Adele slumped against the front counter. “I wish you’d reconsider, Sally. Marriage is not always the answer for a woman, you know. You and Winston—”

“Win is dead and I’m not.” Sally faced Adele, her eyes as hard as diamonds. “Don’t preach to me about marriage. Not when you married that mongrel.”

Adele’s anger flamed and every charitable thought disintegrated to ash. “Mongrel? Terrapin is a mongrel.”

“He happens to be a rich and powerful man, who loves me very much and wants the best of everything for me.”

“Forgive me, Sally, but it seems to me that you are selling your soul to the Devil.”

“And you’ll forgive me if I tell you to stay out of my personal business. If you are determined to keep
me here with that employment contract, then we are just a boss and her worker.”