Harlequin Historical May 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Notorious in the West\Yield to the Highlander\Return of the Viking Warrior (6 page)

Then she studied his room with an alarming intensity, picked up his two bottles of whiskey, scooped up his beloved cigarillos into her apron and marched away from him.

At the last instant, she grabbed his philosophy book, too.

“Whoa! Stop!” Griffin called groggily from his bed, blinking at her audacity. “You can't take that. It's mine.”

She lifted her chin. “This entire hotel was mine—mine and my father's. Then you came and took it away from us. I think you should find out how
you
like losing something for a change.”

This could not be happening. “I already have. I've lost—”

Mary. My chance at a future. Goodness,
he wanted to say.

He couldn't. Not then. Not to her or to anyone.

“—more than you know,” Griffin settled on saying. Inadequately. “I've lost more than you'll ever know.”

“Yes. I'm sure it's devastating to lose a gilded statue or a fancy pile of silver cutlery or whatever it is you big-city types cherish.” Her unimpressed face swam in his vision. With evident relish, she gave his favorite book a possessive tap on its leather-bound spine. “The fact remains, I'm borrowing this.”

Olivia wheeled around crisply. She sashayed to the door, then paused. “I'll be back later to bring you breakfast.”

“Don't bother,” Griffin grumbled. “I don't want it.”

“I'm bringing it anyway. I've agreed to do a job.”

“I'll have you dismissed.” He clutched his sheets, unable to pursue her because of his partial state of undress. “I will!”

“If you do, you'll never see me again.” She gave him a thoughtful, unswerving look. “Is that really what you want?”

Griffin stared at her. Then at the ceiling. He frowned.

His silence spoke volumes. His “chambermaid” knew it.

“Hmm. I didn't think so.” Gaily, she waved. “Bye for now!”

The door closed, leaving Griffin alone in blindingly bright silence. Grumpily, he leaned over. He withdrew the last of his whiskey and cigars from his hiding place beneath the bed frame. He uncapped the liquor, took a swig, then frowned at the door. He wished his consternation could pierce its painted wood and wind up affecting its true target. He wished he'd foreseen this.

It seemed Miss Olivia Mouton had discovered the concept of leverage. She'd used it to win this round between them.

If you do, you'll never see me again. Is that really what you want?

What was wrong with him? He hadn't been able to say yes.

Perhaps he
had
underestimated Olivia Mouton, Griffin realized to his amazement. Perhaps he
had
misunderstood her. But he didn't intend to make the same mistakes twice. He hadn't become The Tycoon Terror by behaving like a nitwit—a nitwit who liked coffee, roses and ladies who inexplicably smelled like both. Next time, Griffin pledged to himself,
he
would win.

* * *

In the hotel hallway, Olivia collapsed against the wall opposite Griffin Turner's private suite, feeling a well-earned hysteria burble inside her. She clutched his bottles of liquor in the crook of one arm and his leather-bound book in the other. She stared down at her apron pockets, brimful of cigarillos.

Helplessly, she felt a giggle burst from her.

“You are insane!” Annie announced. She'd been waiting in the hallway, loyally standing nearby in case Olivia felt her well-being or virtue were threatened. “Are those his things?”

“Yes.” Olivia nodded. “I took them. The whiskey and cigars he doesn't need. Without them, he'll be much more amenable.” Her gaze sharpened as she remembered her early days in Morrow Creek. Then, The Lorndorff had been a threadbare tent hotel frequented by rough men with rough habits. She'd learned to manage them. “Without them, I think I can convince him to see reason.”

Annie shook her head. “It'll take more than a bout of teetotalism to make a man like The Boston Beast see reason.”

“Don't call him that! Or those other nicknames, either.”

Annie gave her a bewildered look. “Olivia, the man stole your father's hotel! I mean, I know he owned a part share—”

“We shouldn't stoop to that base level, that's all,” Olivia argued. “Name-calling is beneath us. All right?”

“All right. But I still say he deserves it.”

“If you treat him as though he deserves it, he'll continue to behave in ways that deserve it. Don't you see?”

Her friend frowned. “No. This sounds like some of that scientific gobbledygook you used to spout when we were younger.”

There was a reason for that, Olivia knew. She'd already formulated a hypothesis about Griffin Turner. She'd already developed a theory about how she could persuade him to return management of the hotel to its rightful place: her father.

“It is,” Olivia agreed as she and Annie walked together down the hallway. “Using scientific methods, I intend to conduct a systematic observation of Griffin Turner. I plan to measure and evaluate his responses to my actions, to experiment as much as is necessary with those actions, and then to test my existing hypothesis and modify it as necessary to obtain results.”

“Oh. Is
that
all?” Annie laughed, grabbing the handrail as they descended the stairs. “Same old Olivia.” She gave a playful wink. “And here we'd all become convinced that you preferred lithography modeling to conducting scientific experiments.”

Realizing she'd said too much, Olivia stopped her friend partway down the staircase. “Please don't tell my father any of this,” she begged. “I know he won't approve of my getting involved this way. But I believe this is my best chance at succeeding.”

“Your best chance at succeeding?” Laughing, Annie gestured at her. “
You
are your own best chance at succeeding. You don't need a scientific plan, Olivia. You are beautiful! Use that.”

But Olivia knew better. “Mr. Turner is oblivious to my looks,” she argued. “No, more than that—he's openly hostile to them. He actually had the nerve to call
me
‘empty-headed.'”

“What?
You?
” Annie shook her head. “That's ridiculous.”

“He said I had nothing more on my mind than posing prettily and being paid handsomely for it.”
Drat those remedy bottles!

“He deserves to be hog-tied just for that remark,” her best friend observed steadfastly. “He
has
underestimated you.”

“He is not the first one to do so,” Olivia admitted as she continued downstairs, hugging her contraband liquor and book to her chest. “But if I have anything to say about it, he might be the last. I intend to use his arrogance to my advantage.”

Annie sighed. “I still think you should bat your eyelashes or helplessly drop a handkerchief. All men love being chivalrous. They're born to rescue and protect us.”

But Olivia had her doubts. “Griffin Turner isn't like all men. He's...”
Headstrong. Annoying. Confounding.
“Intriguing.”

Just the thought of him left her feeling somehow excited and anticipatory and giddy. When she'd brazened her way into his room earlier, she hadn't expected to find him still abed. But she had. And she'd found him partially unclothed, too. Not that she'd purposely looked! But she hadn't been able to help glimpsing his broad, bare shoulders above the bedclothes. Reflecting on the incident now, Olivia felt 95 percent certain that Griffin Turner had been wearing nothing but underdrawers.

“He's scary, is what he is!” Annie disagreed. “He's huge and hairy. He's full of big muscles and bad temper. He has long, crazy hair like no self-respecting gentlemen should have, and he sounds so
mean.
I know it was rude of me to gawk at his nose, but honestly...you've seen it!”

“I know I have,” Olivia agreed, “but it's his eyes that capture my attention more. They're so...” Hesitating, she searched for a suitably apt adjective—one that would describe the tug of emotion she felt when she looked into Griffin Turner's soulful blue eyes. If not for the anguish she'd glimpsed there, she might have believed he was beyond hope altogether. “So...”

“So utterly overshadowed by his enormous nose?” Annie offered impishly. She gave Olivia a poke. “A person would think you've gone spoony on the big bully or something.”

Had she? She
was
feeling unaccountably charitable toward him, given everything he'd done. And there was the matter of her irrepressible curiosity about him and his book-reading habits....

Nonsense.
“Of course I haven't gone spoony over him!”

“Are you sure? You did look a little strange when you emerged from his suite this morning. Sort of...dreamy.”

“I did?” Alarmed, Olivia glanced at her friend...only to realize that Annie was teasing her. Again. “Oh, stop it! You know all I'm doing is trying to make Mr. Turner change his mind about taking over the hotel. I have to think kindly of him. Everyone knows you get more flies with honey than vinegar.”

Annie's gaze dipped to her apron's pockets—bulging with contraband cigarillos—then rose to her whiskey-and-book-filled arms. “And what do you get with pilfered goods like those?”

“Attention,” Olivia returned firmly. “And, when I'm finished, a victory, too. Because as soon as I make Mr. Turner see how things really are here in Morrow Creek—as soon as I make him love the town, the hotel and the people as much as I do—he'll be as sweet as spun sugar and perfectly malleable.”

“With a plan like that, he'll be unwilling to leave,” Annie disagreed, raising her eyebrow. “Have you thought of that?”

Olivia brushed off her concerns. “Pishposh. He's a big-city industrialist with a money clip where his heart should be. No quantity of cleverly kindled appreciation for small-town life will make Mr. Turner give up on all his success. I'm not that influential.” She gave her friend a shrewd look. “After all, he can't very well manage his other businesses from here, can he?”

“I suppose not.” Annie eyed the stairwell, as though her gaze could reach upstairs to Mr. Turner's suite. “But I wouldn't put it past that slick Palmer Grant to give it a try somehow.”

Chapter Seven

I
n Griffin's hotel suite, Palmer Grant plunked down his latest offering with all the tiresome
joie de vivre
he usually exhibited. “There! Your personal telegraph apparatus, fresh from your private train car.” He aimed his head toward the curtained windows, undoubtedly indicating the mode of transport he'd used to follow Griffin straight from Boston to the Arizona Territory. “Which is parked safely on an unused length of track at the rail depot, waiting for you to come to your senses. Until then—”

“I'm not coming to my senses,” Griffin argued, hugging his whiskey bottle. “I'm staying here. Indefinitely. You weren't supposed to follow me. No one was supposed to follow me.”

He'd imagined, in his unhappy, drunken haze, that no one would even notice he'd gone. He should have known better.

“Not follow you?” Palmer flashed a tremendous grin, busying himself at the desk. “Of course I couldn't do that. You didn't think I'd let you run off alone, did you? We're friends!”

At that, Griffin could do no more than grumble. Despite Palmer's inexplicable joviality, they
were
friends, and had been for quite some time now. They'd worked together at the job Griffin had taken after he'd climbed the ladder at the glass factory. They'd learned. They'd conquered. And still they'd remained on good terms. Griffin couldn't explain it, but he was grateful for it. Not that he'd admit as much to Palmer.

The exasperating knuck would only gloat about it if he did.

“Now. With this, you'll be able to conduct business mostly as usual, even while you're far away from Boston.” With a flourish, Palmer arranged the telegraph device more squarely on the desk. “Once the telegraph line is connected from the local station to the hotel, that is. I've already requested that.”

“I didn't ask you to do any of this,” Griffin pointed out from his position slung sloppily across his suite's settee. He puffed at his Mexican cigarillo. “I don't care about business anymore. I don't care about any of it. It means nothing to me.”

“You will care,” Palmer assured him breezily, now arranging paper and an inkwell and ledgers on the desk. “Eventually, you will. You always do.” He clasped his hands together, surveying his work. His gaze roved to the pair of steamer trunks at the foot of Griffin's bed. “You're welcome for the additions to your wardrobe and personal effects, by the way. I'm happy to help.”

“Thank you.” Griffin squinted through his cigarillo smoke, feeling appreciative, despite himself, for those fresh clothes. “You can go back to Boston now. Give yourself a pay bonus, too.”

“I already did. There are advantages to being trusted with access to your fat bank account.” Palmer put out a blotting pad. “But I'm not leaving this one-saloon town without you.”

“Hmm. I hope you like living in my train car, then.”

“I do.” Nonchalantly, Palmer studied the hotel suite. “It's more luxurious than this, actually. Why are you staying here?”

“It was available.”

“So are dozens of rooms in your Beacon Hill mansion. Not to mention the other fine properties you own.” A meaning-laden pause. “Such as that ramshackle town house on Tremont Street?”

As usual, Griffin ignored Palmer's hint. No one except him needed to know that that “ramshackle” town house was one of the first things Griffin had bought when he'd become successful. Originally, he'd given it to his mother. She'd moved to finer Back Bay accommodations once he'd been able to afford those.

“I like knowing I have places to live, wherever I am.”

I like knowing I'll never be homeless.

The lessons of his impoverished youth died hard. That was why Griffin had included a stipulation in his agreement with Henry Mouton that the Western hotelier always keep a suite available for him at The Lorndorff, even if he never used it.

He'd never expected to use it. Not like this.

“I like knowing I can compel you to travel across the country in pursuit of me,” Griffin joked drily. “That's all.”

“Fine. Be guarded, if you want to,” Palmer said. “I'm used to it. You don't scare me.” He eyed the telegraph machine, the ledgers and then Griffin, in turn. Briskly, he rubbed his hands together. “Now, then. What would you like to work on first?”

“More drinking.”

“You've already done that. Shouldn't you diversify?”

Griffin scoffed. He ground out his cigarillo, his patience with Palmer's good-naturedness wearing thin. “If you don't like it,” he said, waving toward the door, “leave me alone.”

To his surprise, Palmer looked at the door, then at him and then he did exactly that. He left Griffin alone. In his darkened suite. With the accoutrements of his unsatisfying success left behind to mock him in his wake.

* * *

With the challenge of Griffin Turner in it, Olivia's life quickly took on a new rhythm. It began much earlier, for one thing, owing to the need to bring him breakfast each day as his assigned chambermaid—a position she'd certainly never expected to fill for more than a single day or two. It held much more uncertainty, for another, on account of the fact that she could never quite predict what she'd find when she opened his suite's door and stepped inside. And it required a great deal more tact and resourcefulness from her than turning down the umpteen marriage proposals she had received. Because—for one thing—Olivia could not risk showing him any weakness. She believed Griffin Turner would pounce on weakness. She believed he—with his mournful eyes and gruff rejoinders and quick, unsettlingly keen mind—would take advantage of any opening she gave him and exploit it.

Undoubtedly, that was how he'd succeeded in life so far.

At least that was what the desk clerk and the bellman and Annie kept telling her. That was what her father kept telling her, when he wasn't grumbling in the hotel corridors or moping at Jack Murphy's saloon or apologizing to Olivia for partnering with The Boston Beast in the first place. But Olivia wasn't interested in Griffin Turner's past. She was interested in affecting his future. She was interested in reaching the kind, complicated man she felt certain lingered inside him, hidden away behind dark hats and shadowy rooms and biting words.

She knew she could change his mind. It was the greatest challenge to her intellect so far. She was determined to win.

So her days fell into a routine of arriving at Griffin Turner's suite, flinging back the window curtains and beginning a day of trying to discern exactly what made him tick. If he'd been a mantelpiece clock, she'd have taken him apart to learn his mechanisms. If he'd been a book, she'd have read him from front to back and memorized all she could. If he'd been a stray dog, she'd have fed him, petted him and tamed him. But he was a man.

He was more of a man than any man she'd ever encountered.

So instead of doing all those things, Olivia settled for getting to know him. She did that while attempting, sometimes comically, to impersonate someone she decidedly wasn't: a skilled chambermaid who knew how to leave a hotel suite spotless.

Notionally, Olivia knew how to clean. Of course she did. But ever since her father had received his investment money to expand The Lorndorff—from Griffin Turner, as it turned out—he'd preferred that Olivia spend her time on more cultured pursuits. He'd preferred that she leave the cleaning to the hotel staff and devote her time to becoming more genteel.

Not being overly fond of scrubbing, Olivia had agreed.

But now, for the first time ever, she regretted taking the easy road all those years ago. Because as Olivia flounced around Mr. Turner's room each day, ineffectually dusting and sweeping and wrestling with the linens to make up the bed, she knew full well that Griffin Turner rightly suspected she was a fraud.

“You missed a spot,” he pointed out not long after she'd begun tending to him, lounging—as he was fond of doing—in a sprawled, masculine heap on the settee. “See? Right there.”

Olivia peered at the smudge he'd indicated—a mere dust speck on the otherwise tidy hearth rug. Easily, she dismissed it. “You'll never notice. It's always so gloomy in here anyway.”

“I just did notice.”

“You're probably drunk. You'll forget we discussed it.”

“I'm sober.” He didn't move, but his husky voice sounded fractionally more alert than was typical. That was heartening. “I'm woefully sober. You stole my whiskey, remember?”

“I didn't take your secret cache.” Olivia nodded toward the bedstead, beneath which she knew he stashed liquor and cigars. “If I may offer a hint? When trying to hide your belongings from a chambermaid, it's usually best not to secrete them under the mattress. Not when she'll have to lift it to make the bed.”

His mouth quirked. “Is that what you're calling it?”

“Of course!” She huffed as she went on cleaning the rug, laboriously straightening each of its tassels. “What else?”

“Making the sheets crooked. They were sideways last night.”

“You can always do it yourself. I won't tell anyone.”

“Yes, but then you won't come here anymore.”

At his vaguely aggrieved tone, Olivia leaned on her broom. She gazed at him, with his strong-looking body carelessly slung atop the settee's upholstery, his hat pulled down to shadow his face and his elegant clothes worn as casually as homespun togs, and knew his complaining to be progress, of a sort.

The first day she'd come, Griffin had refused to leave his bed. By that afternoon, he'd stubbornly reclosed all the draperies she'd opened and uncorked his covert whiskey stash. He'd swallowed much of it. Over the next few days, he'd sulked around, put his grubby boots on her freshly dusted tables and smoked copiously. He'd refused to eat. He'd refused to bathe. He'd rejected outright her initial attempts to request that he return the hotel to her father. In fact, he'd even had the gall to suggest that her “meek” father didn't want the hotel back.

Then he'd taken to his bed. With his boots on.

In light of all that, finding him out of bed today had been almost miraculous. Learning further from the bellmen that he'd ordered a bath had been downright extraordinary. Even if he
was
lounging as lazily as a cat in his freshly changed clothes.

“Sometimes I think you'd prefer if I didn't come anymore,” she said. “Sometimes I think you really
would
rather be alone.”

Silence. Beneath his hat brim, his jawline hardened. It was a miracle that a few emergent beard hairs didn't pop right out.

When he spoke, though, his tone was light. “Maybe I would rather be alone,” he agreed. He raised his head a fraction. “Or maybe pestering you has given me something to live for.”

Oh.
Poor Mr. Turner.
Until now, he'd seemed more brooding than melancholy, Olivia couldn't help thinking. But overwhelming unhappiness could explain his apathy regarding...well, everything. Conversing. Becoming abstemious. Behaving with a modicum of manners. Experiencing daylight. His avowed downheartedness wasn't something she could discount. Not if she wanted to reach him, to influence him and—if she was honest—to help him.

“Surely you have a great deal to live for,” she argued, striving to keep her tone as light as his. She didn't want to ruin this fragile accord between them...or scare him into not confiding in her. “After all,” she teased with a glance to his hiding place, “there are always whiskey and cigarillos to think of!”

“Yes.” His shuttered gaze followed her as she went back to work sweeping. “There are always those. I forgot for a minute.”

Something in his voice, so husky and deep, made her feel breathless. Confused by it—confused by her own burgeoning wishes to help him find something to live for, if he honestly lacked it—Olivia operated her broom with more vigor.
Sweep, sweep...

The settee's cushions creaked. Griffin stood.

His hand clamped on her broom handle, just above her fist.

Olivia jumped in surprise. His shoulder nudged hers as he came to stand more firmly beside her, close enough to transfer his bodily warmth to hers—close enough to envelop her with the heat and assurance and absolute strength he always exuded.

How did a man come to emanate such heat? Such...intensity?

Wonderingly, Olivia glanced up. Way up, into his face. Looking at him—even in three-quarter profile as she was—still startled her. He didn't allow it often. Usually he minded his hat's position more carefully than this. But now she could see that although Mr. Turner had not yet found the impetus to give his stubbled jawline a shave, he
had
decided to club his hair. It lay bundled against his neck, native fashion, tied with a strip of black leather and seeming...not quite as civil as he intended it to. As a concession to polite society, it was...

More successful as a means to emphasize his wildness.

She almost
liked
his wildness, Olivia thought crazily. It was liberating. It was fascinating. It was unlike anyone else.

So was his strength. Griffin Turner exuded fortitude as readily as he exuded a stony, combative attitude. Just then, though, his attitude seemed more distressed than aggressive.

Evidently, he'd felt her jerk away in surprise, because he shifted subtly. “I didn't mean to scare you. I'm sorry.”

At his gruff apology, Olivia blinked. She stared at his hand, holding the broom very close to hers, feeling...transfixed. Feeling, she realized belatedly, very much the way she imagined the men who ogled her and tipped their hats to her and proposed to her within moments of their meeting did when she stood near.

Just then, she would have liked a proposal from him.

Instead... “You're dragging the broom,” he informed her.