Deborah Camp (27 page)

“He’s already measured me for a coffin.” Offering his hand, Reno gave her a wink. “Put ‘er there. What’s your real name?”

She smiled, shy, her lashes fluttering. “You’re awful interested in people’s real names. Ain’t Little Nugget good enough for you?”

“That’s not the name your mama wrote in the Bible the day you were born.”

“No. She wrote ‘Cassie Mae Little.’ But I don’t want any drinkers and gamblers calling me by my given name. I save it for people who mean something to me.”

Reno nodded, finding her endearing. “Would you get mad if I called you Miss Little?”

“I guess that’ll be okay.”

He could tell she liked the sound of it. “Then at the Lucky Strike you’ll be Miss Little. I think it’s time folks around here started showing you some respect.”

“Respect you got to earn.” She slipped her hand into his.

“You have, Miss Little.” He smiled at her, touched to see the pink blush spread across her piquant features as he squeezed her hand and sealed their deal. “You have.”

“You’ve made an impression on Little Nugget,” Reno said when Adele joined him in her quarters later that night.

“That’s good.” Adele moved listlessly into the bedroom, hardly comprehending what he’d said. She fumbled for the buttons at the back of her dress. Her muscles burned. “I’m tired. I never saw so many contrary people in all my born days. Everybody was in a bad mood today and nobody wanted anything we had to offer. If I told them we had beans, they wanted stew. If I said we’d just taken an apple pie out of the oven, they curled their lips and said they had their mouths set for peach.”

Reno joined her in the bedroom. “Lie down there, Mrs. Gold, and let me tend to your aches and pains.”

Glancing at him, she shook her head. “Not now, Reno. I’m too weary.” She sat on the edge of the bed and removed her shoes. “I certainly don’t feel amorous.”

“I’m not talking about that. Lie back here and quit putting your thoughts into my mouth.” He gripped her by the shoulders and pulled her back onto the bed.

Seeing the determination stamped on his features, she shifted and rested her head on the feather pillow.

Reno cradled one of her feet in his hands and massaged the sole gently. Adele was surprised at how good it felt and immediately surrendered to his touch.

Closing her eyes, she let herself go, sighing with relief as his hands moved up to her ankle and leg.

His hands were bathed in magic. Gentle and strong and lightly calloused, those hands could manipulate her in ways that made her blush just to think about them. Warmth infused her breasts and fluttered in her stomach. Recognizing the embryonic sensations of passion, she strove to temper them.

“You saw Little Nugget today?” she asked, seizing on something to occupy her mind besides her body and the touch of his.

“Yes. She asked me for a job.”

Adele opened her eyes, surprised. “She wants to work here? That’s wonderful!”

“Not here. At my place.”

“Your …” Disappointment crashed into her. She shut her eyes again. “Oh.”

“I told her I wasn’t going to sell any flesh in my place, and she said that’s why she wanted to work for me.”

“I do wish she would show more gumption.”

“Have you ever heard of compromise, Dellie?”

She gritted her teeth. “I live it every day.”

“No, you don’t. You’re one of the most exacting, intolerant, unforgiving people I’ve ever met.”

His words stung like an angry wasp. “If I was those things, you wouldn’t be sitting on my bed, rubbing my feet. I certainly compromised when I decided to let you stay here.”

“You didn’t let me do anything,” he said, his voice level, but his hands not so gentle anymore. “I decided to stick around and make you see the error of your ways.”

“The error of my—?” She coughed and sputtered until her eyes watered. Jerking her foot from his grasp, she sat up in bed. “What did you tell Little Nugget?”

“That she could work for me, if that’s what she wants.”

She folded her arms against her breasts. “You should have told her to aim higher. I would have.”

“She’s doing what’s right for
her
. The whole world isn’t going to march to your tune. You better get used to that. Back in Kansas you were more loving, more tolerant. What happened to make you expect people to think and act to suit you? Hell, you’re worse than the King of England!”

“If you disapprove of me, why do you stay? Why not pack up and leave?”

His gaze was steady and unnerving. “Is that what you want?”

She pressed her lips together to keep herself from telling him that what she wanted was for him to love her enough to turn his back on his life of gambling and drinking and chasing women. If he worked in that saloon, she couldn’t imagine how their union could survive. And she wanted it to survive more than anything she’d ever wanted in her life.

Before he’d staggered off that train, she had resigned herself to a single existence, telling herself that it was best. She was too independent to be strapped to a man. Being alone was hard, but it was what she had known most of her life. Better that than to marry and be widowed, as her mother and Sally had been. She’d seen the acute loneliness in her mother’s eyes,
a loneliness that came to those who had treasured a love only to lose it.

But win her heart he had, and now she was Reno’s wife in more than name. Her heart and her body were his.

And there was the matter of Taylor Terrapin. He would not allow another saloon to have any success in Whistle Stop. Reno would end up dead. A shiver raced up her spine, and she covered her face with her hands to shut out the horrible visions. She’d be a widow. Her constant nightmare.

“What’s wrong?” Reno asked. “What are you hiding from? I asked a simple question: Do you want me to leave?”

“I want you to use the sense God gave you,” she said, letting her hands slip away from her face and fall heavily into her lap. “You can’t have anything more to do with that saloon, Reno.”

He shook his head, looking bullish. “Dellie, don’t talk to me like that. I’m warning you.”

“And I’m warning you.” She wrung her hands, wishing for words to convey her tumultuous feelings. But words were inadequate, flimsy wisps of sound, and could not bear the weight of her fears. In his eyes she had seen heaven, but just now she’d glimpsed hell and she knew she was losing him.

“You don’t own me. You don’t own anyone, although you’d dearly love that,” he said.

“How can you say that when you know how hard I fight for every person’s freedom?”

“You want them to be free only if they obey you and agree with your view of the world.”

She set her jaw, refusing to cave in and reveal her
pain to him. She might lose him, but she would not allow him to take her pride as part of his spoils.

“You aren’t like your mother. She let people live their lives without judging them. You’re the judge and jury of everyone, Dellie. I hadn’t even stepped off the train before you’d decided I was low and common and in need of your firm hand.”

“Was I wrong?” she asked, recalling that day and his state of inebriation.

His smile chilled her. “Absolutely, and it is truly pathetic that you still can’t see how wrong you were and are about me.”

Adele felt her lips tremble and knew she was close to breaking in front of him, so she strove to shore up her defenses. “If anyone is pathetic, it’s you. I’m offering you a good life, but you’re throwing it aside because you can’t stay away from the gaming tables.”

“I don’t give a damn about the gaming tables.” He made a sharp, chopping motion with his hand. “I care about holding my head up high and not cowering to the likes of Terrapin. If you weren’t so determined to see me as a failure, you’d understand that.”

“And if you cared anything for me you would understand that I can’t hold
my
head up in this town if my husband runs a saloon, when he could be making a decent living here.”

“This is your restaurant to manage and you don’t need me here.”

“That’s true.”

She didn’t think how that would sound until it was out and the damage was done. Reno narrowed his eyes and bunched his hands into fists. She felt him take her words all wrong. She had meant that she
didn’t need him, but she wanted him around. She liked having him around. The words clogged in her throat, choking her.

“Well, at least we agree on something.” His eyes softened for a second, tearing at her heart, and then he turned on his heel and marched out.

She didn’t see him again until the next morning, when he returned to collect his things. If he noticed that her eyes were swollen from crying all night or that her color was chalky white or that she didn’t speak to him because her voice was hoarse from her wrenching sobs, he didn’t let on.

After he had left, she retired to her bed and cried some more. Around midnight Sally came into her room. Without a word she held out her arms to Adele, and without hesitation Adele accepted the embrace of an old, complicated, and inexhaustible friendship.

“T
he word around town is that he’s moved into the rooms above the saloon,” Mrs. McDonald said. She looked across the table, full of potatoes and peelings, at Adele. “The Lucky Strike opens tonight. You going?”

Adele shook her head and continued to slice the potatoes, concentrating fiercely on them in an attempt to control her bubbling emotions. It had been two days since Reno had moved out, and every time she heard his name it was like reopening a wound.

Mrs. McDonald shrugged. “I’ll stop in. It’s the least I can do. He’s been nothing but good to me.”

“Did he ask you to work for him?”

“No. He knows I’m happy where I am.”

“I wonder how Terrapin is taking all of this. Sally says he hasn’t talked to her about it.”

Mrs. McDonald chewed on her lower lip and worry pinched the skin between her eyes. “Taylor don’t talk to women about business and he don’t share his thoughts with strangers neither. Whatever he’s planning, we won’t hear about it until it’s too late. We should all watch our backs.”

Adele released a shaky breath. “You’re afraid, aren’t you?”

“Sure. Anybody who knows Taylor is afraid. I try not to even pass him on the street if I can help it. I know he’s plotting my death.”

“Mrs. McDonald!” Adele stared at her, terror striking her heart when she saw that the woman was completely serious. “You think he’ll try something like that?”

“I wouldn’t be the first person he’s killed or tried to kill.”

Adele shivered. “Then don’t go shopping or anywhere else unless someone is with you.”

“I can take care of myself.” The woman conjured up a smile with some difficulty. “Don’t worry about me.”

“But I do worry.”

Mrs. McDonald removed her apron and laid it aside. “You should be thinking about your own troubles. Is Mr. Reno going to move back here ever?”

“I don’t know.”

“See? You’ve got enough in your own life to keep you busy. I’ll see you in the morning. Sleep well.”

“
Yes
, same to you, Mrs. McDonald.”

Alone in the kitchen Adele sighed with weariness. She felt heartsick and had ever since she’d learned that Reno was opening a saloon almost directly across the street from the Black Knight. Sally found it hilarious and never missed a chance to tease her about how they would both end up being wives of saloon keepers.

Pushing herself up from the table, she grabbed a bucket and took it outside, where she dumped its contents
into the slop barrel out by the chicken coop.

Leaning against a fence post, she thought of Sally and marveled at how her friend had changed. But then, they’d all changed. Even her.

She remembered Reno telling her of the girl she’d been in Lawrence. He had said she’d been open-minded, an eternal optimist, with a loving, trusting heart. Well, yes. That was normal for a young girl barely out of childhood. The world had not yet shown her its ugly face.

But that wasn’t true, a stern inner voice insisted. She liked to think of her childhood as carefree, an endless string of flawless days. Actually she had been a lonely child, except for the four years she’d spent at her aunt’s home in Kansas. Home. Such a lovely word, and one she hadn’t been able to know personally until she’d arrived in Lawrence.

Her dear aunt had opened her home to them and there Adele had first had a sense of belonging to a place. When her father had died, her mother had moved from town to town, from job to job. Adele had gone to so many schools that she’d lost count. Her penchant and desire for knowledge had been her salvation, or she surely would have failed in her studies, being uprooted every few months and then dropped into another new classroom.

Her mind, ever nimble and valiant, had added color and glamour to her days of wandering. Others, those lucky ones who stayed in one place and were able to drive their taproots deep, envied her travels. And she let them. She never told them how she yearned for a mother who was not too busy to make a home for her and a father who was alive and well and a good provider.
She let the envious think that her life was full of surprises instead of jolts, sophistication instead of insecurity.

Only her mother had sensed the dark clouds behind her sunny disposition, and so they had roosted in Kansas for a few years to give Adele a chance at lasting friendships and perhaps a betrothed. Her friendship with Sally had been forged, but although she had received a marriage proposal from Winston, she had declined it. Her mother had been greatly relieved.

“There is someone more suited to you out there, Dellie,” her mother had assured her. “Winston would have tried, bless him, but he would have been incapable of making you truly happy.”

Her aunt’s death and then her mother’s demise six months later had been cruel blows. She had been unprepared to be alone in the world and had felt as if her legs had been knocked out from under her. Acting on fear, she had scrambled to find a job, rejecting offers to continue in her mother’s line of work for fear that she would never call a place home. When the restaurant had been offered, she had seized on it. Even the fact that it was in a territory and not a state had not deterred her. She was determined to stay put, no matter where, no matter what.