“Mrs. Coyne! Jim.” Vance Calhoun came striding down the hall, hand outstretched. Reluctantly, Jim raised his own. Vance ignored it, taking Gilly’s elbow and turning her. At least the neckline didn’t plunge like the back. “Let me show you the house. Jim, there’s punch in the drawing room to your left.”
“I’ll just tag along if you don’t mind.”
“Suit yourself.” The bastard didn’t even bother turning his head. He took off with Gilly clomping along happily by his side, her face alight with admiration. Jim trailed behind like a stray dog. In spite of her claims of owning her own “very nice house,” from the rapt expression Gilly wore, Jim had to wonder if she’d ever been in one as extravagant as the Calhouns’.
She acted like a tourist in a museum, exclaiming over the furniture and the drapes, admiring the oriental carpets and chandeliers, complimenting Calhoun on his
objets d’art
and paintings.
She was “charmed” by the billiards room. She “adored” the solarium. She thought the music room was “wonderful” and the drawing room “elegant.” And all the while, Jim wondered where the hell Margaret Calhoun was while her husband leered at his wi— He stopped himself just in time. She was his ticket out of here. That’s all. But he was having a harder time remembering that with each passing day. Hell, with each passing hour.
And it wasn’t just her lovely body or siren’s voice. He enjoyed her company, her nonsensical stories and glib wit, the fiery sense of outrage that any perceived injustice roused in her, an indignation so like his own.
“Look at all these books.” Gilly’s exclamation interrupted his thoughts. He peered over her shoulder into the library.
It was a big room crowded with hide-bound chairs and animal heads. One wall held a set of French doors that led onto the house’s wraparound porch; two others crawled with books.
“Have you read every one of these books, Mr. Calhoun?” Gilly asked.
“Vance, honey. And no, I haven’t. They’re for looks. What would I do with a book? I have work to do. My business doesn’t run itself. A real man doesn’t have time to read.” He glanced at Jim. “No offense meant.”
“Oh!” Gilly’s hand flew with extreme—and therefore fake—chagrin to her mouth. “Of course not. I don’t know what I was even thinking suggesting such a thing.” She caught Jim’s eye, and he saw the spark of amusement in her face. Evil creature. Wholly wondrous evil creature.
She wandered over to the bookshelves, running her fingertip along gold-embossed spines. She turned, smiling saucily, her hand on one leather- bound set. “These aren’t even books, Mr. Calhoun.” She waggled a fingertip at him. “They’re glued together.”
“Well, the rest of the books are real, honey.” Jim fervently wished he’d stop calling Gilly “honey.” “And those serve their purpose. They cover my safe.”
“Oh!” Gilly’s hand dropped as though scalded. Jim’s heart thudded with sudden, awful certitude. “Should you be telling me that?”
Calhoun shrugged. “You’re not going to rob me, are you?”
“You never know.”
Jesus. She didn’t fidget a mite. Just smiled.
“Only a fool like George Reynolds gets robbed by a woman.”
“Like who?”
“George Reynolds. Fellow up north. Got robbed twice by that Lightning Lil gal. Twice. I always said that he—”
“Vance!” Margaret Calhoun sailed into the library. “Ah. The Coynes. I see Vance is giving you a tour of my house.” The emphasis on the pronoun was unmistakable.
“It’s gorgeous, Mrs. Calhoun,” Gilly enthused, releasing Vance’s arm and stepping away.
“Thank you.” Margaret thawed slightly. “It isn’t furnished as I’d like yet. But as we’ll be touring Europe, I expect I’ll be able to pick up the few odds and ends there. Too tedious, all the travel, but worth the effort. Europe is so grandly . . . old. You’ve been there, of course.”
Gilly shook her head, and Margaret smiled like a cat feeding on liver. “Oh, but my dear, you must induce James to take you. You’d love it.”
“I’m sure I would. Are you going soon?”
“In a few weeks,” Margaret returned brightly. “Now, Vance, as delightful as it is to have cosmopolitan guests, we do have others. Don’t neglect your duties as host.” Her gaze found Gilly’s cast. “It’s too bad about your injury, Mrs. Coyne. We’re to have dancing later. Or what passes as dancing in these parts. You might call it stomping. James, perhaps you would partner me that we might show the heathens how it’s done?”
“My pleasure, Mrs. Calhoun.”
“Good. Come along, Vance.” She snagged her husband’s arm and tugged him after her.
“How long has Mrs. Calhoun lived in Far Enough?” Gilly asked when they’d gone.
“All her life. She’s the town barber’s daughter.”
Gilly burst into laughter. “You’re teasing me.”
“No. Vance met her when he moved here a few years back.”
Her humor was infectious, and he grinned when she started laughing again. Until his eyes passed over the fake volumes of books.
“Gilly, you aren’t going to rob Calhoun.”
“No, Jim. I admit, I’d consider it under different circumstances, but this cast definitely hinders my style. It’s difficult to be stealthy in one.” She thumped the heel against the floor. “And impossible to fit one in a stirrup. Important when making a getaway.” She grinned.
He smiled back. The sound of a fiddle and piano awoke in the interior of the house. He didn’t quite feel up to dancing with Margaret Calhoun yet. He wanted to spend time with Gilly. Even after spending four days alone with her, he hadn’t had enough of her company.
“Let’s go outside for a few minutes,” he suggested, opening the French doors to the porch and offering her his arm.
Outside the air was sweeter, cooler, and the moonlight brushed her skin with a faint blue glow.
Gilly hugged herself and rubbed her hands briskly over her upper arms. Jim shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over her, his hand brushing the velvet warmth of her shoulders and lingering.
“Thank you.” Her eyes met his and held his gaze. Something as smooth and intoxicating and fiery as brandy flowed between them. She cleared her throat. “I wish Calhoun had shown us his trophy room. I would have liked to see his firearms.”
“That’s right. I almost forgot that you’re ‘one of the best shots in the territories.’ ”
She shook her head, smiling ruefully. She leaned on the railing, looking out over the darkness stretching endlessly away. “I’m an average shot at best,” she said slowly. “Maybe a spot below average. What I am is fast. Very fast.”
“Then how did you get a reputation for being a crack shot?”
“All right.” She turned around, leaning on her elbows against the rails, as though she’d come to a decision and was relieved at having chosen it. “I’ll tell you. On one of my first robberies I was cornered in a saloon by a couple of kids who’d lit out after me with their daddy’s gun. They were scared. Almost as scared as I was. Heck, they caught me mostly by accident.
“So there we were. Two boys looking to save face and me looking to save my life. No one else in the saloon had a gun. Just me and these two kids. Now, behind the bar were shelves lined with liquor bottles. I figured I had one chance at bluffing my way out of there alive, so I said, ‘Before you start something you can’t finish, men, I want you to see this.’ They stopped, more from surprise than anything else. I don’t suppose anyone had called them ‘men’ before.” She smiled, an utterly self-deprecating smile that charmed him more than any bravado could have, and he wondered if she knew and had gauged its effect.
“Yes?”
“So with one hand I started pointing up at the shelves and saying, ‘See that bottle? The one with the bright label—
Boom
! Quicker than I’ve ever drawn before, I fired off a shot.
“Glass shattered. Liquor sprayed all over the place. I holstered my gun and, praying harder than a nun with her rosary, I looked those two kids square in the face and said, ‘Well, you don’t see it anymore, do you?’
“It took maybe five seconds before the bartender, bless his nearsighted little hide, exclaimed, ‘I never seen anythin’ like that! She done hit that bottle square, boys! Save your lives and put up your guns!’
“The boys put up their guns. I don’t know who was more relieved. And that’s how I got my reputation. I pulled that stunt twice more, always making sure I was in a town with strict gun ordinances, at bars without too many customers, and always making sure that those customers who were there were surrounded by a whole lot of empty glasses
. Voila!
I’m a sure shot.”
He stared at her. One of her dark, elegant brows rose as if daring him to refute her. “I don’t know what to believe about you.”
The smile drained from her face, leaving it vulnerable. “That’s a problem, isn’t it?” She took a deep breath and straightened up. “Let’s go back inside, shall we?”
*
Though they stayed for only another forty minutes, it seemed like hours to Gilly. She’d told things to Jim Coyne she’d never told anyone else, but still he wanted more. Even though she realized that each fact she gave him could lead straight back to her real identity, she hadn’t been able to stop herself. Heaven help her, she wanted to tell him everything.
She had no reason to trust him. He’d said himself that a good story was the most important thing to him. What she’d planned as a nice, even trade-off—a fistful of highly improbable exploits for the use of his name and room—had turned into something else. For the first time in years, she was thinking of the future with a sense of longing, saw something she wanted for herself, and that was Jim Coyne. And that wasn’t good.
She was courting heartbreak. In a few weeks, when he found out the truth about her, he’d never want to lay eyes on her again. She should be able to accept that.
But she hadn’t expected to meet anyone like Jim. Funny that the very things that would ultimately keep them from having a future together—his outrage at injustice, his disregard for personal consequences in exposing that truth—were the very things that drew her to him.
But there were other qualities that drew her too. Worldly without being weary, knowing without being jaded. Big, strong, a little worn around the edges, with a sardonic, self-effacing wit and a shrewd intelligence. The least vain man she knew, he was also the most capable. Nothing she’d seen in her life was more appealing than his big, mature body, his rumpled silver-shot hair, the laugh lines radiating from blue eyes that had seen more than enough and yet still remained open, looking for more.
She knew better than to hope. Once she’d thought that after Lightning Lil had disappeared, Gillian Jones would live happily ever after. She’d given up on that notion years ago. But now Jim Coyne had resurrected dreams she was better off without. Yet, with every step she took, with every act she planned, she killed every potential that that dream could survive.
“You’re slowing down,” Jim said. “Are you tired? Do you want to stop and rest?”
“No. I’m fine. I just—”
“Jim Coyne!” A voice boomed from the door of the Cattleman’s Saloon. A huge, neckless, bald-pated man stepped out of the smoky haze and marched stiff-legged down the walkway, directly toward them.
Jim pulled Gilly closer to him.
“Friend of yours?” Gilly asked.
“I’ve never seen that man in my life. I would remember.”
“I’m sure you would,” she agreed.
“Jim Coyne, you are going to rue the day your sorry ass landed in Far Enough, Texas!” the gargantuan bellowed.
“I already do,” Jim said over his shoulder, turning and shepherding Gilly down the steps onto the street.
They were almost to the center of the street when the hulking man called, “Stop right there, you lily- livered pantywaist!”
Jim didn’t stop. Wise, wise, wonderful man, Gilly thought happily.
“Gutless wonder!”
He kept marching.
“Course, I might be running, too, if’n I had a wife like that. Maybe after I’m done with you, Coyne, I’ll just comfort the widow. Nice piece of—”
Jim spun around. “Do not say it.”
Gilly ground her teeth in frustration. “He didn’t say anything.”
The gargantuan, who’d followed them out onto the street, stopped and chuckled. Curiosity seekers, alerted to the possibility of entertainment by the bull-like man’s shouts, began drifting out of various saloons and buildings and forming an impromptu circle around them. Among their number was Mort James, who, on seeing Jim, hastened forward.
“Who is that guy?” Jim asked him.
“Ox. I warned you about him, remember? Tommy’s uncle?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Let’s go, Jim,” Gilly urged, tugging his arm.
“I’m gonna teach you to mess with my kin.” Ox smiled. More of a baring of broken teeth than a real smile, but Gilly supposed it was as close an approximation as he could manage. She tugged harder.
“Listen, Ox,” Jim said, “those kids jumped me. Whole thing was over in a few minutes.”
“You broke my nephew’s nose.” Ox took off his shirt and threw it on the ground. Muscles bulged like knotty gourds beneath an oily layer of flesh.
“Oh, come on,” Jim protested. “It wasn’t anything special to begin with.”
“I’m gonna tear you apart, New York City man.”
Jim emitted a gusty sigh and peeled Gilly’s fingers from his coat. The Carmichael twins appeared at the far side of the crowd, their little eyes gleaming with battle fever.
“Hey, Mrs. Coyne!” one of them shouted, waving her plumed headdress high above the crowd. “How you doin’, sugar? I got me ten bucks says your husband there beats the hell outta old Ox!” She beamed like that bit of news was supposed to make Gilly feel better.
“No,” Gilly said, yanking at Jim’s arm. The din of the crowd had risen and Ox was flexing his muscles. Jim glanced down at her.
“Mort,” he said, “she doesn’t want to see this.”
Mort nodded. Ignoring her protests, he grabbed Gilly’s arm and began dragging her away. Jim let him do it, casting a look after her that said in no uncertain terms that he’d just as soon someone were hauling him away, too. His expression awoke her worst fears.
Even though they looked to be near the same age, Jim was probably some years older than Uncle Ox. Ox had lived like . . . well, an ox, and that tended to put years on a man’s face. For all Gilly knew, Ox might be a decade younger than Jim. All too obviously he was also a savage, bare-knuckle grappler, who’d think nothing of gouging eyes—even Jim’s glorious Irish blue eyes! Not to mention breaking bones and
—