Rush of Love (2 page)

Her father left her and her mother to seek additional wealth in the ‘fields of gold’ of the Klondike. All he found was snow that swept him down a mountainside to his death. Her mother died a short time later, of what Opal guessed was a broken heart. She’d never love anyone that completely. After twenty years of what she’d though was a marriage of love, the lure from the North won out. Her father left on an Inland Passage liner in the middle of the night without a note. She wouldn’t take a chance; her heart would stay right where it needed to be, in her ribcage.

“I’ll have dinner with you, but nothing more.”

“Why Miss Grey, I am a complete gentleman. That is all I ask of you.” He took her hand. “Good God. Your fingers are like ice.”

“I forgot my gloves at the bank. I’m not going to go back there for all the tea in China… at least until Monday.”

He laughed and took the bouquet, laying it on a corner block. He clasped her hands, raised them to his mouth, and blew warm air against her knuckles. The warmth of Samuel’s hands seeped through her cold fingers all the way to the bone. Opal had to restrain herself not to sigh in pleasure.

He looked up through dark lashes. Samuel made her weak in the knees, and he knew it. She could smell the lye from the soap he’d scrummed his body with, along with an underlying smell of lime? She couldn’t pinpoint the citrus smell… her nose just told her it was good.

Samuel dropped her hands and offered his arm. She took it, but stopped. “My flowers.”

He grinned. “Leave them. I’ll buy you a new bunch after dinner.”

Opal picked them up. Samuel smiled as she clutched the flowers and his arm.

Opal was embarrassed to offer her choice of restaurants, but Samuel was the one who said ‘money was no object’. They’d dined at a new place in town,
the Merchant Café
. She’d had succulent salmon and Samuel ate a steak that nearly covered his plate. Now, they laughed and strolled arm in arm along a nearly vacant street, after he’d insisted he walk her home.

She found Samuel intelligent and well-spoken. A pleasant surprise compared to most miners who crossed her path. The two of them spoke of politics, and current events. He also had a wide knowledge of literature, her favorite subject.

They heard quick footsteps as two men came up behind them. One moved to her left, one to Samuel’s right. They stopped and blocked their path. Samuel clenched her arm tighter.

“What we got here? Just the man we’re looking for.” When the first man smiled, she saw half his front teeth were stubs. The stench of his breath carried the distance.
Beer and rotten teeth.

“Let us pass. We have no issues with you,” Samuel’s voice sounded dark and dangerous.

“Maybe we have an ‘issue’ with you.” The second man stepped closer. Samuel dropped his hold on Opal’s arm and moved her protectively behind him.

The man lunged, and Samuel took a swing. His fist connected, but he was outnumbered and outweighed by the thugs. They grabbed his arms and twisted them behind him. The larger man punched Samuel once in the face, and once in his stomach. A groan of pain escaped his lips.

Samuel attempted to yell through a mouth of blood, “Run, Opal! Get out of here.” Another blow connected.
 

If she ran, they would kill him. They probably would anyway, possibly her too, but she had to do something. She leapt on the back of the largest man and began to pound the sides of his head.

“Whore!
Get off me!” the man bellowed, as he threw her. Opal hit the brick wall with a crack. Seconds passed before she realized the ‘crack’ came from her head. In an out of body experience, she reached up to feel the back of her neck. Her hand came away in blood.

Blackness edged her vision, as she slid down the wall. Her flowers were trampled in mud.

The last thing she heard was fists pummeling Samuel, as he cried her name.

Chapter 3

      
Sam fought to open his eyes. The high-pitched shrill of a police whistle pierced his throbbing brain like shards of glass. The metallic smells of blood blended with the odd sweetness of vanilla. When his mother made his favorite oatmeal cookies, she’d used vanilla.

“Samuel! Can you hear me? Help me sit him up,” he heard Opal’s frantic cry.

His arms were tugged. The pain was sharp and unrelenting.

“We need to get him to my boarding house. It’s just over there, and then
get
the doctor.”

Sam drifted in and out of consciousness. He had been on his feet, stumbling, pulled along. Hadn’t he? Now he was on a bed. Voices.
One?
Two men? One must be a doctor. The man spoke like one as he prodded his bruised body. Sam gulped down nausea from the pain.

“Nothing’s broken. He may have internal injuries and a possible concussion. Someone will need to keep a close eye on him. If there are any changes or if he’s taken by fever, you need to come fetch me. Do you understand?” The doctor’s tone was rude and demeaning.

Just because she was a woman, she understood. Opal was one of the smartest women Sam ever came across. He wanted to tell the doctor not to speak to her that way, but his lip was swollen. Even his teeth hurt.

 
“Here’s Laudanum for the pain. It will probably put him out for a few days, but that’s good. Do you have money to pay me?”

When she didn’t answer, there was the click of the door and then it was quiet. He faded once again into oblivion.

This time when Sam woke, he rolled to one side and propped his hand behind his neck. Opal sat slumped in the only chair in the room. He looked around. Of course she was in the chair, he was in her bed. The room was stark and bare with faded, peeling wallpaper. The smell of bacon wafted up from the kitchen below making his sore mouth water. Tattered drapes blew inward from a split pane on the window.
 

He reached out and touched her arm. She awoke with a start, her eyes wide. She seemed like she wasn’t sure where she was for a moment.
Disoriented.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

There was a tired sag in her shoulders. The movement in her hand was slow as she brushed a hair from her face. “I’m so glad you are awake. How do you feel?”

“Like I was run out of town on a rail…under the train.”

“If you hadn’t offered to walk me back here, you may not have been hurt.”

“And leave you alone? They would have attacked you.” He remembered her jumping the man. This woman had fire deep within.

Opal bit her lip. “I’ve been thinking of what one of the men said, ‘Just the man we’re looking for’. Do you have…” she paused, “enemies in town?”

“I don’t know anyone other than you. Wait. No.” Sam struggled to sit up. “Where’s my coat?”

It was hanging over the chair, the lapel still stained with blood. She handed it to him and he parted the wool, stuffing his hand in the inner breast pocket. “Hell-fire! They must have followed me figuring I had the money.” He sank back on the pillow.

“They took all twenty thousand dollars?”

Sam stared at the empty pocket. “Not all of it, but a good bit. A small amount is back at the hotel in the safe. Why did I have so much on me? That was plain stupid.” His stomach lurched. “I’m going to be sick.” Opal jumped up with a pan as he leaned over the side of the bed. A dry heave shook his body.

Her hand smoothed hair off his sweat drenched forehead. “I’m just happy you weren’t injured worse. It was just money.”

“Just money?” Didn’t she understand?

She sat on the edge of the bed and held the white enamel pan. That was when he saw the blood. She’d washed it off her face but it was still caked on the side of her head. A crimson stripe in front of her ear. He touched her. “You’re hurt.”
 

She shook her head and started to stand. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back down. Sam lifted a long brown curl. He could see the cut in her scalp. “Did the doctor look at this?”

“I just took a little knock on the head. I’m fine.” She offered him a spoon of liquid. He nearly gagged on the bitterness. “It’s for the pain. You’ll feel better with sleep.”

Sam didn’t argue. He was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open. His injuries, mixed with the laudanum, drained his strength. He slid down on the bed and closed his eyes against the world.

A clink of porcelain and the sound of water being poured into the wash basin brought him out of a deep sleep. He blinked and tried to clear his eyes. Opal’s slender back arched forward as she ran water over her head to wash her hair. Sun steamed in through the window lighting auburn streaks in her wet hair. They were after him and she’d been hurt, he thought, tight-jawed. He should have protected her.

Her eyes met his and her cheeks turned crimson. “I didn’t know you were awake.”

“I was watching you. You’re beautiful.” That was the god’s truth.

Her cheeks turned a deeper pink as she squeezed the water from the strands of her hair.

“How long was I asleep?’

“Many hours.”

“What day is it?”

“Tuesday. You’ve been in and out of sleep for over three days.”

“Tuesday?” He sat up and the sheet fell from his bare chest.

 
“I had to take your shirt off to address your wounds. I was able to get most of the blood out of your shirt. It’s drying.” Opal tipped her head to the dressing screen in the corner of the room. When she looked back, her gaze traveled over his chest before it dropped away. “I had a friend bring up some soup. Do you think you can eat?”

When he nodded, she took the bowl and sat on the edge of the bed. When she lifted the spoon to feed him, he shook his head.

“I can feed myself,” Sam grumbled and took the bowl from her. His throat was parched, and the lukewarm broth tasted like heaven. He swirled the side of the spoon through the soup. “I know it’s hard for you to understand why earlier I was so upset.”

“Of course you were upset,” Opal said. “It was a lot of money.”

“It’s more than that. My brother, Theo, and I were orphaned. My parents were killed when they tried to cross a flooded river. Somehow we survived. Theo had to stay behind with our aunt and uncle in Missouri. It’s not a good situation, and they barely have money to take him on and feed him. There was no room for me. I jumped a boxcar and came west. In that time, I swore I would never feel hunger or fear like that again.”

“My parents both died a few years back.”

“Accident?”

“My father went to Alaska. He abandoned me and my mother to ‘find gold.’

“I take it he didn’t.”

“He died in an avalanche. My mother passed a short time later from fever and I went to work at the bank.”

“How could he leave the two of you behind?”

Opal looked at him, her eyes a deep green and clear like a spring morning in a forest. “All men are taken by the fever for this gold.”

He stood slowly with a groan and moved towards her. Sam cupped her face. “Not all men leave. That’s not right when you have a family.”