The Bad Luck Wedding Dress (11 page)

But rage had its claws in Trace, too. He had no call to speak to her that way, but the picture of Jenny Fortune, dressed like a working girl in a bordello bedroom, brought to mind another woman, another room. Another man.

He couldn’t think straight when he was thinking about them. He could only feel, and those feelings were mean.

Trace loosened his grip and she pulled away, this time fleeing clear across the room. From there she faced him, arms folded, and head held proud.

God, she was beautiful.

Just like Constance.

His wife. The whore.

It is bad luck to bum the wood of a tree that has been struck by lightning.

CHAPTER 7

JENNY WANTED TO SCREAM. When he first appeared in the doorway, she thought she’d die of embarrassment. But then his gaze had swept over her, blatant and hot, and she’d known a heady sense of power new to her experience. He’d stolen the feeling with his words and rough touch, and now all she felt was anger.

Just who did he think he was, coming in here and acting this way? What business of his was it where she went or what she did? The arrogant, domineering, overbearing cad. Let him think the worst of her, she didn’t care.

With a sugary drawl, she repeated his question. “What am I doing here? You said it yourself, McBride. I’ve come to sell my wares, of course. What do you think? Am I worth the coin?”

He reacted with sudden and total stillness, but for the fire burning in his eyes.

Jenny licked her lips. For the first time in her life, she knew the meaning of the phrase “living dangerously.” Her heart pounded so hard she was sure he heard it, maybe even saw it. He was, after all, staring intently at that general area of her chest.

The goading words she’d hurled didn’t seem as clever now as they had just a few moments ago. She wasn’t afraid of him, not exactly. It was just that the Trace McBride standing before her shared little resemblance with Mr. Throw-Fish.

He gave her a slow, sweeping look. “Ah, such a question. Are you worth the coin?”

Jenny’s skin burned beneath his scrutiny. “Not me,” she hastened to say, taking a step backward. “I meant my dress. I need rent money. I need new customers, and the society ladies are afraid. This is a sample, you see.”

He nodded and stepped forward. “Oh, yes, it’s definitely a sample.”

A strange combination of apprehension and desire flooded Jenny’s limbs, weakening her knees and adding weight to her feet. His gaze never left her, not even when he interrupted his advance to move a ladder-back chair in his path. A few feet away, he abruptly stopped. “You make a beautiful courtesan, Jenny Fortune.”

She couldn’t breathe. “It’s the dress,” she croaked.

He arched a brow. “Is it?”

Folding his arms, he walked around her in a circle, coming so close at times she could feel the brush of his body against hers.

“The dress is only the wrapping paper for the package. And your package …” He gave a soft, appreciative whistle. “I imagine a man would consider it Christmas every night.”

A whimper escaped her lips.

His look was knowing. “You like that, hmm? You like the power? To know you can make a man ache. To know you can make him want. Want, even though he knows he shouldn’t.”

She shook her head. The words and his manner had a hard edge that made her uneasy. When he moved to close the gap between them, she backed away. For every forward step of his, she retreated an equal distance. Soon she felt the ridges of flocked wallpaper against her bare shoulders.

He laid his palms flat against the wall, effectively trapping her between his outstretched arms.

Jenny swallowed hard. “You said hands off.”

His smile was slow, predatory. “I don’t intend to use my hands, Jenny. Don’t need to. Every good whore knows that.”

Emerald eyes drilled her, making promises, making accusations. And then he bent his mouth to hers.

She’d anticipated anger in his kiss. Instead, he gave her gentleness. His lips brushed hers like the softest satin, the lightest silk. Jenny’s eyes drifted shut as the liquid sensation returned. Her limbs grew heavy—pliant—as he increased the pressure of his mouth on hers. Her lips parted with a moan and he swallowed the sound, then ventured inside with his tongue. Stroking the slick sides of her cheeks and the rough surface of her tongue, he offered her a taste of whiskey and of the forbidden.

He made her forget everything but the need to feel his hands upon her. The need to touch him in return.

Lifting one arm, she tentatively brushed his shirtfront. He made a sound low in his throat, then escalated the intensity of the kiss. Now came the heat. The passion. He pushed his body hard against her, and Jenny felt the unmistakable evidence of his desire.

Oh, Trace
. A thought hovered in the back of her mind, a vague shadow she couldn’t grasp in the heat of the moment. Her fingers slipped upward, tracing his jaw in a gentle caress.

“Goddamn you, Constance,” he murmured against her mouth.

Jenny stiffened, his words acting like a pail of ice water on molten emotions, and Trace went still. She tasted his fury just before he wrenched his head away.

He backed up, his harsh breaths echoing in the unnatural silence. He stared at her from eyes that hinted of untold agonies until, with a blink, they shuttered, and his expression smoothed into an unreadable mask. “I beg your pardon. Now, get dressed. We’re leaving.”

Jenny’s heart seemed to lodge in her throat. What had just happened here? Who was Constance? His wife? Had Trace been kissing her and thinking of a ghost?

Insulted at the thought, Jenny lifted her hand and wiped her mouth. “I beg your pardon? That’s all you have to say? And what do you mean ‘get dressed’? I am dressed.”

“Not enough. Not to go out in public.” He went to stand beside the window where he pushed aside the filmy red curtains and stared outside.

She folded her arms and waited for him to explain. Before long, it became obvious she waited in vain. “I’m not going anywhere, McBride,” she goaded. “I’m not through with my business.”

His manner cold as the winter prairie, he glanced around the room and asked, “Where’s the dress you wore down here?”

“I wore this!”

He gave a disgusted shake of his head. “You wore that outfit on a public street? What’s the matter, Dressmaker. Isn’t it enough to have one person stalking you? You want a herd of trail-dusty cowboys after you?”

Wonderful. As if she didn’t feel bad enough already, he had to go and bring up Big Jack Bailey. “I have a cloak,” she snapped.

“Get it on then. I’m taking you home.”

“No, you’re not.” She didn’t want to go back to her cottage. Not yet. Knowing someone had been there and had gone through her things gave her the shudders. She’d stay at the hotel again tonight even if it did mean squandering the coin. “I won’t go home.”

“You’re sure as hell not staying here.”

“Who do you think you are to tell me what I will or will not do?”

He drew a deep breath in an obvious effort to hold his temper. “My daughters care about you, Miss Fortune. They’d be devastated should any harm befall you. After the incident last night, and the one you instigated this morning at the Tivoli, I don’t like the idea of your wandering around Hell’s Half Acre alone. No telling what trouble you’d be setting yourself up for. I cannot go home and face my girls until I know you’re safely away from here.”

His speech took the wind right out of her sails. He was considering his daughters’ feelings. How could she argue with that?

Still, she wasn’t ready to go home. “You may escort me to my shop, Mr. McBride. I need to work. I was given two dress orders before your untimely arrival.”

He shrugged. “The shop then. That’s better for me, anyway. Blackstone Academy began classes today, and I want to be home when the girls arrive. It’s Katrina’s first day, after all. So, is that all right with you, your highness?”

She gave him an evil glare and snapped, “That’s fine.”

“Fine,” he repeated, marching toward the door.

The working girls at Miss Rachel’s Social Emporium didn’t think it was so fine. They met Jenny with dress orders in hand as she descended the stairs. Trace grumbled incessantly for the next hour and a half as measurements were taken and money exchanged, but he ignored each of Jenny’s requests for him to leave, even when school dismissal time came and went.

When they finally left the Acre, he spent the entire trip to the shop asking Jenny questions about the Baileys. Had she noticed Big Jack hanging around since the notes and such started? What about the sisters, any of them giving her grief?

“The Bailey daughters all moved away following their weddings. I think Mary Rose is in Louisiana, the others somewhere in south Texas.”

He continued to grill her, and Jenny sighed in relief when she finally saw the Fortune’s Design placard. She’d had about all she could stand of Trace McBride for one day. “Tell me, McBride,” she said as he took the shop key from her hand. “Have you always been this domineering, or is it a recent development?”

“Sarcasm doesn’t become you.” He turned the lock and pushed open the door. “Stay here while I check the shop.”

She followed him right inside. “I am not your responsibility, you know. I’ve been taking care of myself for quite some time.”

“I told you to stay outside.”

She shrugged. “That was a sure way to get me to come on in.”

“Contrary as a mule,” he declared, sweeping back the curtain of the fitting room.

“You don’t need to do this, McBride.”

He stopped and gave her a measured look. “Things were troubling enough before the stunt you pulled this morning.” He paused, then almost against his will added, “I’m worried about you.”

She didn’t know what to say. She simply couldn’t mesh the reality of the Trace McBride now conducting a thorough search of the premises, with the Trace McBride who’d kissed her nearly senseless and treated her so meanly in one of Miss Rachel’s bedrooms a short time ago.

Taking the order list from her handbag, she crossed to the worktable where she sat and opened her permanent record. She rummaged around for a pencil, then commenced recording the information she’d gathered from her newest clients. She did her best to ignore McBride, but when he finished his search and propped a hip atop her table, obviously waiting for something, she laid down her pencil and looked up. “What is it?”

“Aren’t you frightened at all?”

“Of you?” she scoffed.

He scowled. “I’m talking about Bailey.”

“Oh. I see.” She paused, then said, “I’m not really frightened. Nervous might be a more accurate word. Big Jack is as full of superstition as an egg is of chick, but I doubt he’s the type to do physical harm.”

“The man hanged a paint-soaked dummy on your front porch and left dead roses in your bed! You don’t think that’s a warning?”

Jenny’s smile was rueful. “He says he knows nothing about it.”

“And you believe that lie?”

“No. Well, maybe I believe that there’s more to it than I previously thought. I may be wrong, but I believe the mess last night was an attempt to protect against danger, not a threat of it. I think he was trying to get rid of my ‘bad luck.’”

“What gives you that idea?”

“Something he said. He told me to do all these different things to change my luck.”

Trace picked up her pencil and rapped it against the table. He shook his head. “I don’t know. That might be some risky thinking on your part. Sometimes men with strange ideas like Bailey’s are the most dangerous. You need to be careful.”

“Oh, I’ll be careful,” Jenny replied. “In fact, I intend to stay at the Cosmopolitan again tonight and give my cottage a little more time to air out.” With a grim smile, she added, “I noted a certain sense of … viciousness in the atmosphere last night.”

He snorted. “I smelled a rodent.”

Jenny fiddled with a button on her cloak, searching for the right words to make the point she believed he needed to hear. “There is something you should understand about me, Mr. McBride. I take after my father in that I am tenacious about something I want. I want Fortune’s Design, and I refuse to allow Big Jack Bailey to take it away from me with either rumors or threats. I appreciate your concern, but I am determined to carry on as if nothing happened. Because, in truth, nothing of consequence has occurred. I won’t be bullied.” She sharpened her stare and added, “By anyone.”

One side of his mouth lifted in a crooked grin. “You talk a good game, I’ll grant you that. Foolish, but a good game.”

“I mean it,” she snapped right back. “Now, I have work to do, and you’d best go on upstairs and see to the girls. Who is staying with them after school?”

His grin faded, and was replaced by a grimace. “The housekeeper of the week is a woman named Wilson. I expect she might last till Friday if I’m lucky.”

He pushed off the table and sauntered toward the front of the shop. “I’ll keep an eye on things as best I can, whether you want me to or not.”

“Why?” she asked, throwing out her hands in frustration. “Surely you don’t still expect I’ll accept your job offer.”

He shrugged but didn’t really answer. “Guess I’m right tenacious myself.”

It wasn’t enough. She couldn’t say why, she just knew it wasn’t enough. “That’s no answer, Trace McBride.”

At the door, he hesitated. “I’ll do it for my girls. Everything I do, I do for my girls.”

Jenny’s question came low and soft and without forethought. “Is that why you acted the way you did at Miss Rachel’s? The kiss? Was that for the girls, too?”

Her words seemed to echo through the shop. She held her breath. Her heart pounded as if her entire fate rested on his reply.

Trace stood frozen, his back to her, his hand gripping the doorknob. Abruptly, he turned. Mockery lengthened his drawl as he said, “Hell, no, Miss Fortune. I learned a lesson a few years back and I’ll never forget it. Any time I kiss a woman, I do it for me. All for me. Take it as a warning.”

With that, he left her shop.

TRACE STEERED clear of the dressmaker for the next few days, relying on the attentions of others to reassure him Jack Bailey had been leaving her alone. Every time he remembered what had transpired between the two of them in Rachel Warden’s bedroom, he wanted to kick himself. He’d been a real bastard. The lady had gotten to him and he’d hit back—quick and fierce and mean.

But truthfully.

He could salve his conscience with that. Any woman who thought to dangle her lure in his direction needed to know he’d steal the bait and dodge the hook. Jenny Fortune had definitely been dangling.

And he’d come closer to being hooked than he had in years. Six years, to be exact.