“Oh!” She heard the crutch clatter down, felt herself falling backward, waited for her head to crash into something hard and
—
He caught her. He just plucked her from midair, scooped her up.
“You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
Her heartbeat thudded into double time. It had been years since she’d felt a man’s arms around her, been touched so intimately and yet so innocently.
Long ago she’d forfeited romantic daydreams. She couldn’t trust anyone with her secrets, and she was too honest to encourage a relationship based on lies. But until this moment, she’d never fully appreciated just what she’d given up.
Jim’s body’s heat had warmed the starched cotton of his shirt. Beneath the thin, crisp material his body was solid and muscular, his chest rising evenly with each breath as he strode up the stairs. She liked the feeling of his arms around her. Suddenly she was just a woman in the arms of a man. She was . . .
She was very stupid, that’s what she was. A stupid spinster, yearning for a human touch. How her students would have snickered at her. She stiffened.
He nudged open the first door he came to and carried her into a tiny sitting room. A mismatched armchair and fainting couch, a scarred table, and a fringe-shaded floor lamp struggled for dominance. Papers, books, and lots of empty bottles covered every available surface. He searched around for a place to deposit her.
“Right here will do,” she said.
He flushed again, but set her down and left, returning a moment later with her crutch and trunk. He stared at her. Apparently something about her standing there didn’t sit well with him, for he suddenly scooped her up and perched her on the edge of the chair.
He gave a sharp nod, as though manners had been satisfied. “Okay, lady. Who the hell are you? And don’t give me any crap about being my wife. There’s not that much liquor in the world.”
“Of course I’m not your wife.”
He released a gusty sigh of relief.
Her cheeks burned. She wasn’t bad-looking, she had a nice figure, and she even had some money. The jackass! He could have done worse.
“Then who are you?”
She untied the bow beneath her chin and pulled the bonnet from her head. Her hair spilled out from under it. He stared at her. Oh, yes. She had very lovely blond hair too. She gave him her three- cornered smile. The cream smile, her mother called it.
“I’ve come in answer to your ad. I’m Lightning Lil.”
Chapter Three
Silky, glossy, the color of palest flax. Or honey swirled with cream. He wanted to touch her hair. He wanted to touch her. But he’d been wanting to touch her ever since he had touched her, and the minute he’d set her down he’d wanted to touch her again. Crazy. And damn it, what was her game anyway? Lightning Lil had dark hair.
“Lightning Lil has dark hair.”
She crooked a brow at him. Exotic, the way her thick, darkish lashes and brows contrasted with the long flow of pale hair. “Lightning Lil has a wig.”
She could be telling the truth. From what he’d found in researching Lil, no one had ever seen her with her hat off. He moved closer to her. The sunlight gleamed on her hair, burnished her skin, ruddied her lips . . . He halted the litany. He was a reporter, damn it, not a poet. “Why did you claim to be my wife? Why not just contact me through the mail?”
“I need your help. I was shot.” Her gaze fell to her ankle. “I found a doctor to patch me up, but I have to wear this cast for a while. I have nowhere to go. And an unattached woman, in these parts is bound to attract attention. Particularly one with an injury to her leg. I want you to let me stay with you and heal up for a couple weeks. In return I’ll give you the story of your career.”
He thought. Since he was dealing with a woman he took his time thinking. She waited patiently while he ran through alternative explanations for her presence, but besides a rather elaborate hoax perpetrated by his sisters, he couldn’t think of one.
“Please, Mr. Coyne,” she said quietly, gazing up at him with eyes the color of bittersweet chocolate.
“What happened to darlin’?”
She turned pink, but her gaze didn’t fall beneath his sardonic regard. “Just think of what a story you could write. ‘I lived with Lightning Lil.’ ”
Damn, she was right. It would make one helluva feature piece. It would all but guarantee that his publisher would bring him back to New York. And if he didn’t? He could peddle a story like that to any newspaper in the city. “Darlin', you have yourself a deal.”
*
Long ago Jim had learned the value of studying what a man wore and how he wore it. He figured it wouldn’t be any different with a woman. So he made Lightning Lil wait, looking awfully unhappy and guilty for a criminal, while he hung up her clothes.
Now the armoire was crowded with dresses and skirts and blouses and bright-colored . . . things. Jim, who’d had nearly two dozen years’ observation of his sisters’ “things,” noted shiny elbows, double-stitched seams, and turned hems. Apparently, the outlaw business didn’t pay that well.
In fact, the thought of the fresh-faced young woman blushing profusely as he produced an “unmentionable” was so incongruous that he would have thrown her out as a charlatan if at the bottom of the trunk he hadn’t found a neatly folded set of boy’s clothes, a Smith & Wesson Pocket .32 tucked into a well-oiled leather holster, a battered Stetson with a black wig sewn into the sweatband, and a money clip with the name George E. Reynolds engraved on it.
He held up the pistol. “No guns allowed in town. Sheriff’s orders.”
“Smart man,” she said. “But what he doesn’t know isn’t going to hurt him.”
He dropped the gun back into the trunk, closed the lid, and shoved it against the back wall. “You know, you sure have a lot of clothes for an outlaw.”
“I’m only an outlaw part of the time.”
“Oh, yeah?” He turned around. The bedroom was tiny, and she sat near the foot of the bed, occupying the one straight-back chair the room accommodated. He had a sudden image of her in that bed, hair spilled across the Irish-linen pillowcase, limbs loose and relaxed, all creamy smooth indolence. . . .
“What are you the rest of the time?”
“Schoolteacher?” she suggested brightly.
He snorted. “Play fair. The deal’s only good if you fulfill your end of the bargain.”
“Okay. I’m just a person the rest of the time.” She dropped the scarf she’d been folding and it floated down between them, landing out of her reach. He knelt on one knee to retrieve it just as she bent forward to do the same. He lifted his head and found her a handbreadth away, so close that he smelled her. Lilac water. What sort of desperado used lilac water? He snapped upright, dropping the scarf into her lap.
“What does ‘just a person’ do?” he asked, ignoring her knowing smile.
“Oh . . . live in a house . . . and you better believe it’s a real nice house,” she added with a hint of humor, “One doesn’t go into outlawing for the sheer fun of it. I grow roses—”
“Roses?” he repeated in disbelief.
“Yes, roses. A few gallicas, the damasks, albas, bourbons. Don’t look so surprised.
Inest sua gratia parvis
. Even little things have their own grace.”
Lightning Lil grew roses and spoke Latin. “What else?”
“I keep busy. Regular-person stuff: crochet doilies, put up jam, practice my fast draw . . .’’She chuckled at his confounded expression.
She was teasing him. Didn’t she realize the gravity of her situation? He could turn her in at any moment. One would think a hardened criminal would have learned a little mistrust along the way.
“Married?”
Her laughter trailed off. She glanced up. Little invisible currents seemed to arc from his skin to hers, galvanizing and stimulating him. He got up without waiting for her answer. He wished he hadn’t asked that question. Particularly as he hadn’t planned on it. Mostly, he didn’t like her so close to that damn bed.
“I need paper and pencil if we’re going to do this properly. We should go into the other room. Better light.”
A slow, lingering smile. “Sure.”
She rose, unaccountably graceful in spite of the awkward cast, and teetered her way crutchless into the sitting room, where she flopped into an armchair. “Okay. Ask what you will,” she said. “I’m all yours.”
Her lashes swept down, shadowing her dark eyes and making him uncertain whether she knew how his body was interpreting her words. He was going as hard and taut in belly and thigh as blood and imagination can make a man. But as much as her career choice suggested a hard and calculating woman who’d use anything—her body as well as her wiles— to get what she wanted, there was too much joy in her to let him believe it. Her sass had softness; her bite lacked teeth.
Taking the opportunity to regain some composure, he found paper and pencil and returned. “Okay. Tell me about yourself. What’s your name?”
“Gillian. Gilly for short, but I don’t think you better call me that around here. Sounds too much like ‘Lil.’ Too many people could make the connection.”
“What should I call you?”
“Darlin’ will do just fine.” She chuckled at the color flooding his tanned skin.
He cleared his throat. “Okay, darlin’, where were you born? Where did your parents come from? Start at the beginning.”
“All right, Mr. Coyne.” She straightened. “I was born in the gold fields of Colorado, in a shanty behind a bar.”
He started to write.
“My father was a poor, wretched miner, and my mother was a dance-hall girl.”
“Hold on.” He held up his hand, waving away her start of surprise. “Hold on just a second there. If Dad was a miner and Mom was a saloon girl, how did you learn Latin?”
“Good question.” Her brow furrowed in consternation before smoothing. “Daddy was a professor at. . . at Harvard University before the gold bug bit him. One day a respected member of the academic community, the next a swill-guzzling shell of a man, scrabbling from slag heap to rock slide, ferreting like an animal into the bowels of the earth, searching, always searching for that vein of gold, the mother lode, El Dorado!” She gave a dramatic sigh. “Tragic, is it not?”
“Yeah,” Jim answered sardonically. “I’m surprised Dad found time to bed Mom what with all that searching and scrabbling and ferreting.”
Her lids fluttered in becoming modesty. Fake becoming modesty. “Well, Mama
was
a stunner.”
“I’ll bet.”
“You don’t believe me?” she said, looking so affronted he nearly laughed.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe. It matters what my readers believe. And this Harvard shi—” He caught himself in the knick of time, “stuff isn’t going to go down smooth. Everyone knows someone who went to Harvard. It would be too easy to check Daddy’s credentials.” He leaned back, cradling his head in one hand. “Try again.”
“Well, if you don’t want—”
“What I want is ‘the story of my career.’ Listen, lady, I’m risking more than a job here. I’m risking a nice little stay in a territorial prison for harboring a notorious outlaw.”
“Suspected thief. I’ve never been convicted,” she corrected haughtily.
“Yeah. Right. At this point, I’m not sure that isn’t just a matter of time. Unless you’d care to deny the allegations?”
“Would that make a better story?”
“Nope. Everyone denies allegations.”
“Then I won’t. I don’t want to be hackneyed.” She dimpled, looking incredibly young and appealing. He shook his head, trying to clear it. She must put off some sort of electricity that he acted as a giant conductor for. He’d read some amazing studies of electrical fields and the human body. He’d be willing to bet a year’s paycheck that this woman put out one helluva charge.
“Shall I try again?” she asked ingenuously.
“Be my guest. Heck. Go for broke. Try the truth.”
“The truth? But of course. 1 was born into a circus family. My father was an escape artist, which accounts for my gift with locks and fasteners. . . .”
*
He’d stopped writing anything down a half hour ago. He’d set the pencil firmly away and folded his hands behind his head, leaned back, and stared at her. He’d been staring at her ever since. Only the infinitesimal tightening and relaxing of his mouth changed his expression.
Since he hadn’t said a word and she had no idea what this close scrutiny meant, she’d just babbled on, spinning through a fourth attempt at an “honest narrative of my youth” before her voice finally cracked and gave out altogether. She trailed off in midsentence and just sat too, meeting his blue-eyed gaze straight on. They sat like that for five minutes.
“Are you done?” he finally asked in a deceptively gentle tone.
She nodded.
“Good.” He smiled. “We’ll start again tomorrow.” He rose, looked down at the pages he had scribbled, and gave what looked like a shudder.
“Is there anything to eat?”
“Eat?”
“Yes.” She snagged a whiskey bottle from the piecrust table beside her. It was empty. “You may prefer to drink your dinners. I eat.”
“Lady, leave my bottle alone,” he said with a touch of asperity, though what he had to be irritable about was beyond her. She’d given him a good start for his series on her—several good starts even if you discounted the Atlantis one—and managed to remain even-tempered.
Thank heaven for the school’s summer thespian program. If she hadn’t had to read through several hundred plays last year looking for one appropriate for sixteen-year-old girls to enact, she would never have had the grist this mill was demanding. In her five years as a thief, no one had ever actually “talked” to Lightning Lil.
While she was aware of how very dangerous this was, she was also very tired and very near to the end of it all, and so she did not deny herself the small crumbs of enjoyment teasing this big, tough-looking gentleman afforded. He stuck the bottle behind the fainting couch, glowering.
“Besides, you’re not exactly in any position to be moralizing to me,” he said.
Gilly felt a wall come slamming down between them like the iron gates of a medieval castle. “You’re right.’’
She’d been having such a fine time spinning him tales that she’d almost forgotten who and what she was. An outlaw. A woman without morals.