Teresa Medeiros (11 page)

A ghost of a smile flickered across the marshal’s face. “I should warn you that our Black Bart has demonstrated quite a flair for the dramatic. No blowing up the safe in the dark of night for him. He prefers to thunder in at high noon with fire in his eyes and guns blazing.” Winstead leaned closer, challenge glittering in his eyes. “So, Mr. Darling … will you be there when he does?”

Billy crumpled the sketch of Bartholomew Fine in his fist without realizing it. “Oh, I’ll be there. You can count on it.”

When Winstead had taken his precious satchel and gone, Drew blew out a low, shaky whistle. “Well, William, my lad, I guess I can go tear up that Wanted notice that bears such an unflattering likeness to you.”

“I wouldn’t be too hasty about that.”

Drew frowned, more disturbed by his friend’s acceptance of such an unsavory job than he cared to let on. “But didn’t you just agree to—”

“Did I?” Billy blinked at him, his eyes as artless as a child’s. “I never took Winstead’s hand. I only took his money.”

Drew cocked his head to the side, growing more confused by the second.

Billy shrugged. “I’ve been accused of selling myself to the highest bidder. Maybe it’s time I started doing just that.”

“But what could be worth more to you than your life, one thousand dollars, and a badge?”

Billy held the gleaming star up to the light, the expression in his narrowed eyes oddly unsettling. “That, sheriff, is just what I intend to find out.”

The woman who called herself Esmerelda Fine slept in a puddle of buttery dawn sunlight. Billy gently eased the door of her hotel room shut behind him, her unexpected vulnerability softening the grim set of his lips. He had expected to find the uncompromising Miss Fine sleeping flat on her back, her hands folded neatly over her chest as if the undertaker had just arranged them.

Instead, she sprawled on her stomach, one leg half-cocked to her waist, her rump in the air. A checkered quilt lay in a defeated heap on the floor, vanquished in what appeared to be a violent battle of wills. The awkward angle of her leg caused her gown to ride high on her thighs and hug her bottom like a pair of loving hands.

Billy studied the alluring mound with the practiced eye of a man who’d spent the past three months of his life living in a brothel. Miss Fine might wear a corset and
bustle because it was the current fashion, but she certainly had no need of the wire and horsehair contraptions to cinch in her waist or enhance the curves nature had given her.

She rolled to her back, flinging out one arm as if in supplication. Her hair spilled over the pillow like cinnamon sugar and an endearing little porcine snuffle escaped her delicate nostrils. Fascinated, Billy drifted toward the bed. Her lack of restraint in sleep was at direct odds with the stilted demeanor she wore like a starched veil when awake. Which only deepened his suspicion that it might be nothing more than a cunning disguise.

He scowled and fingered his swollen lip. Until his midnight encounter with Winstead, he’d had every intention of meeting her for breakfast in the hotel restaurant, pressing fifty dollars into her gloved hand, and putting her on the first stagecoach heading east. With or without her consent.

But Winstead’s words had changed all that. He never could abide a mystery, and he had every intention of finding out just who wanted Bartholomew Fine the most and why.

Billy allowed his gaze to drift downward, lingering at the softness of her breasts and belly. He wondered what Winstead would have thought had his spy lingered long enough to learn of their shocking bargain. Esmerelda had agreed to his proposition with unsettling ease. Perhaps she made it a habit to offer that tender young body of hers to strangers in exchange for her brother’s life.

Or her lover’s life.

He searched her face, forcing himself to be ruthless. He still couldn’t find any trace of the impish outlaw who called himself Black Bart. Sleep had heightened her color, reducing her freckles to a sprinkle of desert sand across the bridge of her nose. Her lashes curled against her cheeks
like a whittler’s mahogany shavings. Whatever her relationship to the outlaw, Billy couldn’t afford to forget that her devotion to the man had nearly cost him his life.

As he leaned over her, his nerves sang to life as they always did at the approach of danger. His keenly honed instincts had kept him alive through many an encounter that should have proven deadly. They’d allowed him to dodge Yankee bullets and Comanche arrows and had prodded him to take a step to the right instead of the left in the instant before Juan Estes had pulled the trigger of his Remington revolver and shot him in the back. The bullet had grazed his ribs, leaving his heart untouched.

He was afraid he might not be so lucky this time.

He sank down on the bed, resting a hand on each side of the feather pillow. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up next to a woman without stale whiskey on her breath. Esmerelda smelled warm and sweet, like Miss Patches’s fur on a chilly winter night. It was all he could do not to bury his face in the silken tangle of her hair. He’d assured her that the Darling men preferred their women conscious, but in her case, he just might be willing to make an exception.

When Esmerelda opened her eyes to find Billy Darling looming over her, her first thought was that she’d sold her soul to the devil and he’d wasted no time in coming to collect. Billy’s thick golden lashes gave his eyes an angelic cast, but the cynical curl of his lips reminded her that he was not one of God’s favored, but one of his fallen. She obliged him by letting out a shriek of the damned.

He winced and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Was that a scream, or were you of a mind to sing the Doxology?”

She glared at him.

He grinned at her. “Mornin’, Duchess.”

Desperate to dislodge the gentle but firm pressure of his palm against her lips, Esmerelda sank her teeth into the tender pad below his forefinger.

He jerked his hand back, then brought it to his lips to suck on the wound. Esmerelda felt a curious stirring in her belly at the sight of his mouth where hers had so recently been.

He lowered his hand, slanting her a reproachful look. “My mare used to nip like that. Until I taught her to trust me.”

“You certainly didn’t teach her to trust you by sneaking up on her while she was sleeping.” Addled by his nearness, Esmerelda sat up and glanced wildly around the room. “How did you get in here?”

He held up a shiny brass key.

She blinked in dismay. “Do you have a key for every chamber in Calamity, Mr. Darling?”

“Only the ones I’m paying for.” He dropped the key into the pocket of his buff-colored shirt. “It wasn’t very hard to convince the hotel manager that the gentleman who pays for the lady’s room should be allowed to come and go as he pleases.”

She scooted as far away from him as the feather mattress would allow. “Why, he must think …”

“The very worst.” Billy tipped back his hat with one finger, revealing an unrepentant dimple. “So if you want to go ahead with that scream, it might just increase my notoriety with the ladies.”

If appearances were any indication, his notoriety didn’t need any increasing. If anything, he looked even more debauched than he had yesterday. A day’s growth of dark gold stubble shadowed his jaw, carving intriguing hollows in the clean planes of his face. A fresh bruise smudged his cheekbone. Esmerelda resisted a ridiculous urge to try and dab it away with the hem of the sheet, but she could not
stop herself from touching a fingertip to the swollen split at the corner of his mouth.

“Who hurt you?” she murmured, thrown off balance by the depth of her dismay.

Billy caught her wrist, freezing her hand in its instinctive caress. Although he applied no pressure, she was achingly aware of his strength and the fragility of her own fine bones.

His aw-shucks affability vanished, making her realize it had been nothing but a facade all along. She would have almost sworn that something subtle had shifted in his attitude toward her. Something perilous.

“I had a bad dream,” he drawled.

A bar brawl, more likely, Esmerelda thought. Probably over one of the buxom occupants of Miss Mellie’s house.

She lowered her eyes, sliding her wrist out of his grip only because he allowed her to do so. “I’ve had my share of nightmares since Bartholomew disappeared.” She decided now might not be the best time to confess that he’d figured prominently in most of them.

At the mention of her brother, he withdrew from the bed. He stood, drawing off his hat and turning it over in his hands. A worn leather duster draped his lanky form, the shoulder cape of the flowing coat emphasizing the breadth of his own shoulders. “That’s why I’m here so early. I may have a lead on your brother’s whereabouts. A man fitting his description has been spotted in a town south of here called Eulalie.”

Before he could finish, Esmerelda had bounded out of the bed and began to paw through her trunk for a clean basque, skirt, and a set of fresh undergarments.

“If I hit the trail now,” Billy continued, “I might just be able to catch up with him.” The hardwood floor creaked beneath his boots as he started for the door.

Esmerelda spun around, hugging a pair of ruffled drawers to her breast. “Oh, no, you don’t! You’re not going anywhere without me. I learned my lesson from Mr. Flavil Snorton.”

“I’m not Flavil Snorton, ma’am. I’ll see to it that you get every penny of your money’s worth.”

He replaced his hat, tilting it low over his eyes, but Esmerelda could still feel the heat of his gaze branding her tingling skin through the worn muslin of her nightgown. He seemed to be taking a perverse delight in reminding her of their unholy alliance.

“And I’ll see to it that you get every penny of your money,” she forced herself to say crisply. “As soon as my beloved grandpapa arrives from England. But only if you agree to let me accompany you to this Eulalie to look for Bartholomew.” She fought the temptation to plead, sensing somehow that this man would not be swayed by whining or cajoling.

His eyes narrowed as he looked her up and down, taking her measure. Esmerelda held herself straight and tall, refusing to betray how fearful she was that he would somehow find her wanting. Just as her grandfather always had.

He finally swept off his hat and made a mocking bow. “You’re the boss, Duchess.”

“I am not a duchess,” she said stiffly. “I’m the granddaughter of a duke.” She probably looked less like nobility than some wanton peasant with her hair unplaited and her naked toes peeping out from beneath the hem of her nightgown. “I need to dress and pack my belongings. If you’ll excuse me …?” Clutching her drawers even tighter, she nodded toward the door.

“Be my guest,” he replied, nodding toward the dressing screen that partitioned off one corner of the room.

Refusing to be baited into further argument, Esmerelda took her armful of clothing and ducked behind the screen, glaring at him all the while. She quickly shed her nightgown, draping it over the screen so she could scramble into her drawers and chemise. She scowled down at the remaining undergarments, realizing for the first time how impractical the confines of corset and camisole, petticoat and bustle, would be in the blazing New Mexico heat. After a moment of contemplation, she discarded everything but the petticoat. Leaving off the bustle would make her skirt hang long, but she’d rather trip than swelter.

As she wrestled with the hooks of her basque, praying the thick merino would hide the absence of a corset, her nightgown began a sensual slither over the top of the screen. She was too mesmerized by its unexpected flight to reach for it until it was too late. She held her breath, oddly discomfited by a vision of Mr. Darling’s calloused hands fondling the soft, skin-warmed muslin.

His voice, husky and far too near for comfort, further shattered her illusion of privacy. “So are you and this
brother
of yours very close?”

“Oh, very,” Esmerelda replied, relieved that he’d chosen such an innocuous topic of conversation. “You’d have to travel long and far to find two people so passionately devoted to each other.”

“How touching. I always did have a powerful hankering for a sister.”

Esmerelda froze in the act of fastening the pearl buttons at her cuffs. Mr. Darlings sigh had been heartfelt, but she would have almost sworn she detected a lascivious note in his voice. She popped her head up over the top of the dressing screen to give him a suspicious look. He blinked at her, his long-lashed eyes as innocent as a lamb’s. Her
overwrought nerves must surely be affecting her imagination, she decided.

Shaking her head, she plopped down on the low-slung dressing stool to draw on her striped stockings and kid boots. The ominous sound of paper rustling sent her bolting out from behind the screen, one boot still half-unlaced. She just barely managed to hobble over to the desk and snatch the sheet of crumpled stationery from Billy’s hand before he could read her unflattering description of him.

“I was writing Grandpapa,” she said, tucking the incriminating note behind her back, “apprising him of the current situation.”