Angel in My Arms (9 page)

He sighed. There was no use going over and over in his head the ways
his father had wronged him. That was all in the past and nothing could
change that past. So,
what now?

The business man in him tried to analyze his situation. In half a
day's time he'd fallen in love with a whore. Just what he needed in his
life, another whore. And he was penniless. He had nothing but the
clothes on his back, his toiletries, and two spare shirts. He had less
than twenty dollars in greenbacks and nowhere to go.

His plan had been to sell the house, take what money his father had
left him, and start a new life. He had wanted to go back to California,
but not to San Francisco. There was a pretty little valley in northern
California he'd visited with Amber. He wanted to buy some land there
and start a winery. She had laughed at his dream and Fox had let the
subject drop, but he'd never forgotten that valley. At night he dreamed
of it. But he hadn't had the courage to leave his business, the house,
Amber, and buy the land when he still had the money. In those days all
he could think of was the amount of cash in his bank account. He'd
wanted to be rich. He'd wanted John to be proud of him.

Now he had nothing. Nothing but some worthless land claims. Hell, he didn't even have that.

Fox stared up at the striped green wallpaper. All he had was
half a.
land claim. First he'd had a liar and a cheat for a business partner, now he had a whore.

He rose and walked to the window, thinking of the woman downstairs.
How could he have been so foolish? With all his experience, how could
he have fallen so fast? He should have known that his father couldn't
have actually been friends with a decent woman.

But there had been no indication of what Celeste was. No war paint
of red rouge, no revealing clothing. More importantly, she didn't carry
herself like a whore. Celeste walked with her head held high, a
self-confidence in her stride. He had never known a whore who was so
educated and well mannered.

Amber made a good appearance, but inside her fancy clothes, beneath
the jewels, she had been just another San Francisco dockside strumpet.

Fox pulled back the curtain and stared outside. The sky was gray;
the horizon was gray. Though he knew there were mountains just beyond
the town, they were invisible in the gray sheet of rain. The water ran
in rivers on each side of the muddy street below. Only the crown of the
dirt road stood above the water.

A black hearse with frosted glass sides rolled by, the horses
struggling in the mud as a sheet of dirty water sprayed the frosted
glass of the vehicle. No doubt, it was bound for Sal's place to pick up
the dead girl.

"So what now?" Fox said aloud. He tapped on the window with his
knuckles. The glass was cold and damp with condensation. He let the
curtain fall.

The first thing he needed to do was to apologize to Celeste. He
shouldn't have spoken to her that way, treated her that way. He
shouldn't have taken her declaration so personally. She'd not become a
whore to hurt him. She'd not lured him into her house and into her
arms. He'd entered her home and her arms of his own free will. He was
the jackass who had asked her to many him without realizing she was
just another woman out to get what she could from a man, like every
other blessed whore he'd ever known. Fox knew he'd acted irrationally.
It was just that he had been so disappointed to discover what she was…
what she had been to his father. He was hurt and disappointed that
again his hopes had been shattered by a woman who would never have the
capacity to love him.

He didn't know why he was so surprised. His father had spent his
whole life moving from one whore to another. Like father… like son, he
mused grimly.

Fox paced the floor. Silently, he cursed James Monroe, his business
partner. The man had been brother to his mistress, Amber. He and James
had gotten along well; they drank together, played cards together,
whored together in the early days. Eventually they had made a great
deal of money in the commodities together. Then the cheating bastard
had stolen every penny from him and fled to Europe.

Fox had had to sell his town houses in San Francisco and New York
City and empty his own personal bank account to pay off Jamie's debts.
Because their company had borne the name Monroe & MacPhearson,
Jamie's debts had become Fox's. Fox knew now that this had been Jamie's
plan all along. Most likely Amber had been in on it as well.

He thought of Amber, but pushed her image from his mind. He didn't
want to remember the thick dark hair falling over her face, or the
chill of her skin in death. If he thought about the regrets, the
could-haves, the should-haves, he'd drive himself mad.

Fox stared at the closed bedroom door. He didn't want to be alone
right now. As angry as he was with Celeste for deceiving him, he wanted
to be with her. To see her green eyes dance with amusement, to hear her
laugh and speak his name. The thought that his father had slept with
the same woman he was so attracted to felt very strange. For the first
time he wondered which disturbed him more—that she was a whore, or that
she had been his father's private whore. Or was it the fact that John
had obviously cared more for her than for his own son. John had been
old enough to be her father. Fox told himself he shouldn't care. She
was just a whore. And his father was dead.

Now he had more to worry about than a woman who had lied to him by
omission. He shouldn't have expected anything from his father. He
shouldn't have counted on an easy way out. He'd been on his own for a
long time. No one could solve his problems but him.

He walked toward the door, needing to see Celeste again, to talk to
her and either confirm or refute his initial impressions of her. He
needed to know that desperation hadn't made him into a blind fool. The
truth was he just needed human comfort.

Fox found Celeste still in the kitchen. She was making something in a bowl, stirring furiously with a wooden spoon.

She didn't turn to face him as he entered the room.

The dog woke and lifted his head. When he saw that it was Fox, he relaxed again.

"You leaving?" Celeste asked. Her tone was neutral, neither warm nor
cold. Fox walked to the coal stove that had been stoked and radiated a
comforting heat. He put the teakettle on to boil. "I'll buy the house
from you, the worthless land." He didn't know why he'd said that. He
had no money. He doubted anyone would loan him any either. And what was
he going to do with a house in godforsaken Carrington, Colorado? Maybe
he wanted it because it was his father's. Maybe he just wanted it
because John had given it to Celeste.

"If the land your father staked is worthless, why do you want it?"

"It might not be completely worthless." He gave a noncommittal
shrug. "Might be able to get some type of ore that's salvageable."

She dumped the bowl upside down on the wooden worktable. Bread
dough. She pushed up her sleeves with floured hands and began to knead
the dough, releasing a yeasty scent into the air. The woman was
domestic for a whore.

"I don't want to sell the house." She paused. "Or the land."

He reached into the cupboard for a teacup. He pulled down two,
wondering if his father was the one with the good taste in fine china,
or if Celeste or one of his other whores had helped him pick out the
pattern. "You'd be foolish not to take money offered."
What money?
he thought. "What are you going to do with the worthless claims?"

Her response came in a split second that seemed to surprise her as much as it surprised him. "Mine them."

Fox chuckled. "Mine them?" He set the teacups on the table and went back for the teapot and loose tea. "You? How?"

It was her turn to shrug. "How does everyone else mine? Pick a good
spot and dig. John was certain there was gold in that area; he said he
just hadn't found the placer yet."

"From what I heard on the train, this area has been mined out. I seriously doubt there's any gold here."

She flipped the dough on the table with capable hands and punched it
down. "We'll just see about that, won't we?" She looked at him over her
shoulder for the first time since he'd entered the kitchen. "Of course,
I could buy
you
out." She lifted an eyebrow. Her green eyes were more hazel now. Stormy.

"Buy me out?" He gave a little laugh.
Take the money and run,
a small voice inside his head encouraged. "Why would I want to do that?"

"If it's worthless, Mr. MacPhearson, it would be an excellent deal for a wise, wealthy businessman like yourself."

"Look, Celeste, you slept with my father. We're sharing an
inheritance and presently a house. I think we're on a first-name basis
here."

She nodded. "All right,
Fox.
If the land is worthless, why not sell it to me?"

Why not?
he thought. He filled the teapot with hot water
from the kettle, taking his time to respond. "I'd like to have a look
at the land first." She looked out the window. "Once the rain stops.
It'll be a day or two, I suspect."

Fox didn't know why he was stalling. If she'd give him money for his
half of the claims, he could take it and return to California. He could
be done with reminders of John and visions of a red-haired beauty who
had been his father's mistress. But, of course, she couldn't pay him
enough to get his vineyard started. And somehow the idea of getting on
a train and returning to California was not very appealing. The ride
here had been lonely. He'd had enough of loneliness to last a lifetime.

"All right. I can wait a day or two." He pulled back her chair. "Tea is served."

She glanced at him over her shoulder again. "I suppose you'll want to stay here in my house?"

He was hoping she'd offer, so that he wouldn't have to ask. "If you'd be so kind."

"You're John's son," she said simply. "I'd not turn you out."

Fox felt shame for the tone of voice he'd used with her. She was more a lady than he would ever be a gentleman.

"Celeste, let's call a truce," he said quietly. "Come have tea and let me apologize for my earlier behavior."

She dropped a clean linen towel over the mound of bread dough, and
turned toward him. She had covered her dress in a white ruffle kitchen
apron. It was feminine and very becoming. He smiled as she crossed the
room toward him, her dog at her heels.

"All right, Fox." She took the seat he offered. "I'm ready for those
apologies." She looked up at him and smiled sweetly. "And will you
please pass the cream?"

"You told him you were going to what?" Sally's pretty eyes widened.

"Shhh," Celeste hushed through a mouthful of straight pins. "Turn around and keep your voice down. He's upstairs."

Sally turned on the small wooden stool she stood on in the middle of
Celeste's cozy kitchen, as Celeste pinned up a new gown Sally would
wear on Big Nose Kate's stage.

"You told him
what
?" Sally repeated.

"I told him I intended"—she pulled a pin from her mouth and slipped
it through the jersey fabric—"to mine the land John left me."

Silky Sally burst into a fit of girlish giggles. "Why, that's the
silliest thing I done ever heard, Celeste. You can't dig for gold!"

"Why can't she?" Rosy, in her mid-forties and Kate's oldest girl, took a bite of fresh bread covered with blackberry jam.

Rosy was large, with melon breasts and a sagging stomach, but she
was one of the most popular women at Kate's. Rosy always said it was
because some men didn't really want sex, they just wanted to rest their
cheek on a mother's breast.

"Celeste's a smart girl," Rosy continued. "She could mine that land
just as well as John MacPhearson could, probably better, because she
don't nip at the bottle."

Sally giggled in retort and covered her mouth with a delicate hand.
"Really, Rosy. Can you see our Celeste dressed in a man's breeches with
a pick ax over her shoulder, traipsin' about the mountains?"

Rosy eyed Celeste. "Reckon I could."

"You're not serious, are you?" Sally turned her attention back to Celeste. "You're not really going to become a miner?"

Celeste slipped another pin into the hem of the dress. "Entirely
serious. I didn't realize that's what I was thinking until Fox asked
me."

"Fox is it, already?" Rosy gave a wink. Her eyes were made up heavily with arcs of blue face paint.

Celeste ignored Rosy's insinuation. "John and I talked about that
land. He said he thought there was gold there, riches beyond his
dreams; he just hadn't gotten lucky enough to strike the vein."

"Johnny was a miner his whole life, Celeste." Sally turned back. "What makes you think you can find gold when he couldn't?"

Celeste plucked the last few pins from her mouth and stabbed them
into a pin cushion on the table. "I don't know," she said softly.
"Desperation?"

"Desperate? You ain't desperate, woman." Sally gave her a playful
push. "When you set your mind to it, you can make more money in one
night than me and Rosy put together, and you know it."

Celeste offered her hand to help Sally off the stool. "I can't do this forever, Sally. I can't dance and bed men."

"Sure you can't do it forever. Once you get to be a woman of Rosy's
age," she glanced at Rosy, laughing so Rosy knew she was teasing, "you
got to start thinkin' about savin' for your own place, but you,
Celeste, hell you got another twenty years left in that pretty tail of
yours."

Celeste spun Sally around and began to undo the long row of buttons down her friend's back. "You
know
why I can't stay here," she said meaningfully. "You always knew I didn't intend to do this for the rest of my life."

"I hate to tell you this, sweet pie, but that's what we all say."
Rosy bit into a second piece of bread and jam. "You think we was all
little girls who used to think that we wanted to be tarts when we grew
up?"