Authors: Delynn Royer

Always (38 page)

BOOK: Always

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Would he really leave the Elena Rose ranch to Nicholas and Daisy? Probably not. But he had to make damn sure Rachel thought he would—even if she hated him for it.

Silently, for he knew his scheming sister-in-law still watched him, he said a prayer and raised his gaze to the ceiling.
Elena Rose, I know you wouldn’t approve of the clumsy way I’m going about it, but the pot’s already on the flame. Now we’ll have to wait and see how the stew turns out.

Red Panther Hotel, Fort Worth

Lacey Holloway, saloon waitress and fallen angel, pulled a rumpled bed sheet over her plump breasts and rolled onto her side. She propped up her curly blond head with one hand and sighed the sleepy, languid sigh of a sated woman as she watched Cal Delaney, naked and splendid, sit up next to her and reach for a cheroot from the battered night table.

He struck a match and lit his smoke with what Lacey considered very fine grace. This was no surprise. As far as Lacey was concerned, Cal did most everything with thoroughly practiced skill—
everything
—and now, as he climbed out of bed to retrieve his boots and clothing from the floor, Lacey couldn’t suppress a grin as she admired the square line of his jaw and the tousled, sandy blond hair that brushed the nape of his neck. He needed a shave, but that didn’t take away from his appeal. In fact, Lacey thought it added to it. She was tickled as all get out that for the last two nights—ever since he’d blown into town—he had chosen her to keep his bed warm.

As he climbed into his denims, Lacey allowed her gaze to meander one last time over long legs and lean muscle. Why, if it weren’t for the scars—half a dozen or more—the man would be downright jo-fired perfect. When he turned his back to cross the room to a dresser, her attention settled curiously on two in particular, a pair of nasty-looking slashes that gleamed an angry pink against sun-bronzed skin. Though the wounds themselves had healed, those scars were still tender and new. She suspected they had one humdinger of a story to tell.

“What’s your hurry, honey?” she asked. “The sun’s barely up.”

“It’s nine o’clock, Lacey.”

“Ain’t that what I said?”

Cal didn’t respond as he searched through the contents of his saddlebag for his last clean shirt. His mind had already moved on to other things, most particularly on his dwindling finances. It seemed ironic that now, when for the first time in his life he was ready to set down roots and stake a claim, he was the least able to do so financially. His wages as a cowpuncher didn’t add up to much more than chicken feed.

He pulled out a shirt and, along with it, an empty Colt .44 Peacemaker that clattered out onto the dresser top. He picked it up, intending to shove it back into the bag, but then he paused, lingering. The grip still fit his hand as if he had been born to it. The sight had been filed down to facilitate a clean, quick draw. The trigger notch had likewise been filed away so that, once drawn and in the right hands, its rapid-firing ability was unmatched, even by the more modern double-action pieces. In Cal’s experienced hands, the weapon was capable of getting off all six shots in less than two seconds.

He ran his thumb over the surface of the ivory grip and felt an unwelcome wave of nostalgia. This, the civilian model, he had worn on his right hip for so long it had become a part of him. Its partner, a long-barreled Cavalry model, had ridden comfortably well on his left.

When he looked up from the revolver to stare out the grimy window of the hotel, he didn’t see the dusty thoroughfare one story below or the few early morning stragglers who now roamed along its length. The image he saw mirrored back at him in the glass wasn’t even his own. It was the face of a sneering young cowboy. It had been over a month now, but the memory still stuck with him like the bad taste that follows a long night of downing rotgut whiskey.

“Hey Delaney! Ya think you’re somthin’ special? Why’nt ya show us what ya got? Ya ain’t so fast as they say, are ya?”

The over-exuberant cowpoke had baited Cal earlier that evening, but, seeing that his young antagonist was on the shy side of sixteen, Cal had ignored him. This had enraged the boy all the more. He’d stumbled out of the saloon after Cal, shooting his mouth off like a hotheaded fool.

Dodge City had an ordinance against carrying weapons. It wasn’t only because of Cal’s reputation among the lawless that he couldn’t afford to abide by that ordinance; it was because of the increasing frequency of senseless confrontations like this one. It was common knowledge that Wild Bill Hickok had been shot in the back of the head while playing an innocent game of poker. These days, Cal opted to pay a small fine for breaking the ordinance rather than end up like Wild Bill.

The fandango houses were in full swing and tinny piano music drifted on the night air. The kid stood with his thin legs planted before the flapping batwing doors of the saloon. He was lucky Cal was an even-tempered man. There were many who would have killed him with much less provocation. Cal, however, was simply looking for a good night’s sleep. He wished the boy would pass out or listen to his friends and shut the hell up.

Very deliberately, Cal turned and walked away.

“Don’t you walk away from me, ya yella skunk! You turn your back and I’ll put a bullet in it! I can take you or any two like you! Whyn’t ya fight? Whyn’t ya fight?”

Bad shooting, even among some of the West’s most notorious gunfighters, was common, and this quarrelsome greenhorn was no exception. His first shot, brazenly fired when Cal’s back was still turned…
missed
.

Cal stopped.

When he turned back, it was to see that the kid had stepped off the boardwalk in front of the saloon, utterly ignorant of the fact that his silhouette now made a perfect target against the ghostly lamp glow that came from within. And Cal Delaney never missed a bull’s-eye.

When the kid moved to get off a second shot, Cal drew and fired.

At thirty paces, he took his opponent in the knee, forcing him down in the street, but even that didn’t dampen the youth’s bravado. When the boy raised his revolver a third time, Cal fired again, shattering the kid’s wrist and putting an end to the ill-balanced confrontation.

It had also ended Cal’s career. When he shed his gun belt that night, it was for the last time. He didn’t have the stomach for it anymore.

A bothered sigh from the girl brought him back to the present. “You sure you gotta be going so soon, Cal? You don’t have to meet your boss for another hour.”

Cal stamped out his smoke in an ashtray and shoved the Colt back into his saddlebag. “Just enough time to grab me a hot bath and a shave.”

“Or just enough time to grab yourself a little bit of something
else
if you have a mind to, huh?” She giggled. “Catch!”

Cal turned just in time to snatch from mid-air the item she’d tossed at him. It was a sheath.

“Stop fooling around,” he said, but he felt his dark mood lift at the sporting girl’s bawdy sense of humor. He had to suppress a smile as he tossed it back. “Save it for later.” He fished some paper bills from his pocket and offered them to her. “That good with you?”

Lacey plucked the bills from his fingers. “More than good, honey.”

He crossed to the door and paused, his hand on the door latch. “Be gone when I get back, okay?”

Lacey’s smile faltered, but only a little. “Sure, Cal, but see you tonight... right?”

He didn’t look back as he stepped into the squalid hallway. “Sure, Lacey, See you tonight.”

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