Liz Ireland (12 page)

“You put on a brave front this afternoon.”

Paulie looked up, startled out of her reverie by Will’s coming to sit close to her by the fire. Too close. The warmth of his body had double the impact of the flames of the fire they had built. She looked nervously around for Trip, who was over by the horses, checking that they were secured for the night.

She swallowed, hard, and scooted away from Will. “Brave front?” she asked, confused.

Will gestured in Trip’s direction. “His sudden announcement
that he was going to marry Tessie Hale,” he explained. “I thought you handled it like a real trouper.”

Paulie blushed. “Oh, that,” she said with a false bravado. If Will wanted to see her as a martyr for love, she was willing to play the part to the hilt. She’d read too many of her father’s books about women who suffered exquisitely for love, some even expiring from the ailment of heartsickness, to shy away from the opportunity this presented. “I suppose deep in my heart, I expected it.”

She turned away slightly and added with a melodramatic quaver, “Maybe it wasn’t meant to be.”

Will scowled in the direction of the horses. “It was sort of callous of him to announce it that way, right in front of me.”

She sniffed. “It’s true, he didn’t seem to care much about my feelings.”

Will crossed his arms. “That’s all right. You’re better off now anyway.”

“Yes, you’re probably right,” she admitted truthfully. How long could she have gone on allowing Will to believe that she and Trip were in love without his discovering her falsehood?

Not that the switch in Trip’s affections would mark any change in Will’s. All his talk about seizing the day wasn’t lost on her. He probably intended to seize his own day the minute he clapped eyes on Mary Ann. Now that he’d nearly lost her forever to Oat, he wouldn’t want to waste time before whisking her away to the nearest preacher, just like he’d suggested Trip do with Tessie.

She sighed a genuinely forlorn sigh at the thought.

Will moved closer to her again, and that odd fluttery feeling inside her made another sudden reappearance. Heavens, the man affected her in ways she’d never
dreamed. Who would have thought love would feel so much like a queasy stomach?

He cleared his throat, causing her to turn and look into his brown eyes. Her insides felt like they just might melt. “You know,” he said, “back when I was a little kid, before my parents died, I remember our neighbor had a pony—a little paint. I was nine years old at the time and had decided that it was time I had my own horse. My father had other ideas, but I was determined, and I begged for an entire year, and did double chores to convince him that I would be able to handle the responsibility of an animal of my own.”

Paulie nodded, uncertain where this discussion was headed.

“Wanting that horse nearly ate me up. All winter I passed him every time I walked to school. Then finally, on my birthday I walked past the field and he wasn’t there. I ran the rest of the way home, thinking how happy I would be when I got my first ride atop that beautiful pony. And when I ran into the barn, there he was.”

Paulie smiled, remembering the elation of a childhood dream come true. As Will described saddling up the little paint, she could just imagine how giddy and happy he must have felt.

“And then it was time to take my first ride. And you know what happened?”

Paulie stared at him in anticipation.

“He threw me.”

She laughed. “How many times?”

“Every time I rode him,” Will admitted, smiling broadly. “That pony was a menace. All those months I had stared at him, wanting him, never guessing how miserable I’d actually be with the object of my desire.”

Paulie blushed, suddenly realizing why he was telling her this silly story. He was trying to explain why she shouldn’t
be upset over losing Trip—but of course he had it backwards. What would Will have thought if he had known that
he
was the ornery painted pony in her life, not Trip?

Then again, the story could work both ways. What if he was right? Maybe she and Will
would
make a terrible pair. They might fight, just like they always did now. Then their funny little arguments might not seem so humorous anymore. His poking fun at her for being a homely tomboy wouldn’t be funny, either. She got up and paced a few feet away.

“You understand what I’m telling you, Paulie?” he asked, following her.

She frowned. “Unfortunately, I do.”

He put an arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “You shouldn’t worry about losing Trip.”

Trip was about the furthest thing from her mind when Will had his arm around her. Paulie squirmed uncomfortably. Being so close to Will made her heartbeat race way ahead of her reason, yet she couldn’t force herself to pull away. She tried to hide her face, which she was sure was pink with embarrassment. Here she was getting all worked up over being close to him, and he’d just been trying to offer her a little neighborly advice. Will had no way of knowing his very touch made her feel as if she could leap over the stars.

“You’re young,” he observed.

“I’m not
that
young!” she blurted out. Heaven knew, she was old enough to know that the tempest tossing inside her meant that she wanted to wrap herself around Will and kiss him like there was no tomorrow.

He chuckled patiently. “You’ll find someone else. There’s more than one fish in the sea, you know. Believe me, someday soon you’ll wake up one morning and forget all about Trip.”

“Have you been able to forget about Mary Ann?” she challenged.

His face became an unreadable mask. “What does that have to do with anything?”

She folded her arms. “It doesn’t seem that you have gotten over her. You’re going all the way to San Antonio to find her.”

His jaw clenched, and his eyes began to burn with a fire she couldn’t understand. “That’s different.”

Paulie laughed bitterly. “Everyone thinks they’re different! Maybe my feelings are different, too. Have you ever stopped to consider that? Have you ever noticed that I’m not a girl anymore, but a woman over the age of twentyone?”

He stared at her for a few moments, surprised by the vehemence of her outburst. Paulie knew she should have held her tongue, but she couldn’t help herself.

“I didn’t mean to sound condescending, Paulie,” he answered, his tone chastened.

She felt embarrassed now, especially when he kept staring at her that way, as if he were trying to see right through to her most secret thoughts. What a shock he would be in for if that were actually possible!

She attempted to shrug away, but he held her fast.

“Will you forgive me?” he asked.

“Oh, sure,” she mumbled hastily. Anything to get him to let her go.

But he didn’t. Instead, he brought his face closer to hers—his lips were tantalizingly close. She was surprised at the brazen urge she felt to simply tilt her head a little and press her lips against his.

“I keep underestimating you, Paulie,” he whispered gruffly.

His voice sent a shiver through her, and that was all it
took. Suddenly, she was the trout in front of the baited hook. The kid with his hand on the cookie jar. The mouse spying a hunk of cheese. Nothing short of natural disaster could have stopped her from tasting his lips.

There was nothing tentative about kissing Will this time. The minute their lips touched, she felt fireworks shoot off inside her, and there was no keeping her arms from snaking around his neck. Nor could she have managed not to press herself as close to him as humanly possible. He felt so warm, so strong, so sure of himself. He made her feel as if everything she was doing were perfectly right.

He tilted her head and drank more deeply of her mouth, and his hand moved up and down her spine, causing little explosions wherever he touched her. She felt dizzy from all the sensations happening at once, but she would have never forgiven herself if she’d chosen that moment to faint. Not for anything would she have missed a single moment of being this close to him, of smelling the strong male scent of him, of their playful fencing with their tongues.

She intended to hang on forever. It didn’t matter to her if she never ate or drank or even breathed ever again. As long as she remained attached to Will, he was all the nourishment she needed. And she needed him with a fever she never knew existed. She felt a heat build deep inside her, a desire she couldn’t begin to comprehend. She only knew that Will was the only man who could stoke the flames—or put them out.

But put them out, unfortunately, was what he intended to do.

All of a sudden, Paulie felt a different kind of pressure, and she realized with a horrified shock that it was Will, trying to unpeel her arms from around his neck. She pulled her lips away, and looked into his shocked. face, her own surprise mirrored in his dark eyes. Her lips were also reflected
there, and were positioned in such a comically perfect O that the sight would have been funny, if she weren’t so ashamed.

Had she really lost control so completely?

“Lord, Paulie…” Will muttered huskily.

She looked down and was further mortified to discover that her hands were attached to his forearms like leeches to an invalid. “Oh!” she cried. She let go of him and stepped quickly away—reeled away, almost.

He looked repentant. For her, heartbreakingly so. “I should never—”

She cut him off, not caring to hear his regrets. “Oh, no, I should never—”

He agreed, nodding vigorously. “This was the wrong time. We both know…”

She nodded with him, their heads bobbing up and down in unison like floating ducks on a stormy pond. She couldn’t begin to describe the hurt she felt, especially when he was so obviously sorry that the kiss happened at all. But it had only happened because she had attacked him—thrown herself at him as if she’d been launched from a cannon!—and now she wanted to escape.

She waved her hands in front of her face, cutting off any further examination of the topic. “I had better go check on Partner,” she said. “It’s been a long day, and…”

Before she could get another word out, or look another moment into his perplexed eyes, she turned tail and dashed over to the horses.

“Lord-a-mercy, Paulie,” Trip whispered over Feather’s back, “what was
that
all about?”

Even as her mind roiled with shame, heat and desire burned hot inside her. “You didn’t see, did you?”

“How could I help it? You two were standing right there in the moonlight!”

She closed her eyes, remembering how it was partly the moonlight illuminating his face so close to hers that had made her want to throw herself at him.

“Do you want me to talk to him, Paulie?”

She blinked in confusion. “About what?

Trip frowned. “I don’t like him taking advantage of you like that. Especially with all this business about Mary Ann still up in the air.”

“No thank you, Trip.” It was too humiliating to admit that Will had already apologized to her for kissing her when he still cared for Mary Ann. Or that
she
was actually the one who had taken advantage of Will.

“Well, all right,” Trip said. “But you know I’m here if you need me to deal with him.” He snorted in disgust. “A man ought to know better!”

She
ought to have known better. “You don’t have to play big brother for me,” she assured him.

It was Will’s big-brotherly feelings that had gotten her into so much trouble to begin with. And the fact that she had misinterpreted his closeness for an invitation, which was the only lame excuse for her brazen behavior that she could grasp on to.

But oh, what she wouldn’t have given for Will to feel something besides big-brotherly toward her!

“M
y goodness!” Paulie exclaimed, her eyes bugging in amazement as she looked at the town around her.

Trip laughed. “I told you the place had changed.”

But San Antonio wasn’t just bigger than the last time she had made her way out here four years ago, it had an entirely different ambiance. The dusty town was bustling, impersonal. The sight of the three of them riding through old Market Street with their riderless horse turned not a single head—except, Paulie noted with dismay, the heads of a few ladies who craned their bare elegant necks to get a second look at Will. Even after untold days straight in the saddle, the man was still a sight for female eyes to behold.

Some of these ladies were a little overly enthusiastic with their smiles, which made Paulie stare back in astonishment. Though the sun was still high, the fancy ladies were out in full force, plying their trade—and within spitting distance of the Alamo, that almost sacred monument to the Texans’ fighting spirit. Will didn’t seem to notice the inviting glances of the women, but Paulie caught Trip actually winking at one of them.

She harrumphed loudly. “You aren’t forgetting dear old Tessie, are you, Trip?”

“No, no,” he said, coughing self-consciously. “I was just…just wonderin’ if maybe one of those ladies would know where we could find Mary Ann.”

“I’ll bet!”

Will turned to them. “I thought we could stop here and ask around.” He nodded toward a bright pink stucco building with a sign proclaiming it to be Las Tres Reinas. The Three Queens. “If we find Tyler, we’ll most likely find Mary Ann.”

Las Tres Reinas was by far the most fancy-looking gambling establishment they had passed on their way through town, and appeared just the place that would appeal to a man like Oren Tyler. There were plenty of men of all descriptions trundling through the black bat-wing doors, both coming and going.

“I’ll bet Oren Tyler’s been through here, all right,” Paulie observed.

Will laughed sharply. “Half of humanity’s been through here.” He got down from Ferdinand and tethered him to the post in front of the saloon. “Trip, you come in with me.”

“Okay, boss,” Trip answered with a mock salute.

Paulie stared slack-jawed at the brim of Will’s hat. Was he insinuating that she wasn’t supposed to go inside? Quicker than Trip could blink, much less move, she swung to the ground and tied Partner next to Ferdinand. Will looked at her and rolled his eyes.

“You watch the horses, Paulie,” he said.

After coming this far, she wasn’t about to be left out in the cold. Especially not when things were just about to get interesting! “Trip can watch the horses.” She pivoted and shot a cunning smile at Trip, who was still perched atop Feather. “Can’t you, Trip?”

He was as yet mulling over the speed with which she had pounced to the ground. “Why, sure…”

Will’s jaw clenched, and he pinned her with a stem glare. “The Three Queens isn’t a place for a girl.”

Just then, two women with red hair a vibrant shade never meant to appear in nature, except perhaps in parrots and cactus flowers, let out a laugh and pushed right through the double doors. Paulie nodded at them. “Looks like they’re welcome,” she pointed out.

“I believe they’re going to work,” Will replied.

She planted her hands stubbornly on her hips. “I work in a barroom, too.”

He smiled patiently. “Yes, but I don’t believe you all share the same occupation.”

Paulie shrugged. “Well I don’t care. I’m going in.”

She began to march past him, but he caught her by the arm and whirled her around to face him. “Suit yourself, as long as you keep your mouth closed and let me ask the questions. Is that a deal?”

She hopped impatiently. “You make it sound like I talk too much!”

He didn’t reply to that. “Deal?”

Paulie pursed her lips, annoyed. “Deal.”

She let him lead the way into Las Tres Reinas, which wasn’t quite as fancy on the inside as it was on the outside. In fact, Paulie felt a little disappointed with her first glance inside a real big-city drinking and gambling house. Somehow, she’d expected ornate crystal chandeliers and fine carpets from the Orient; instead, the place resembled nothing so much as Judge Bean’s on a large scale. The long bar was magnificent, carved of a fine oak and shined to a high gloss, as were the several bevelled mirrors hanging behind it. Yet the rest of the establishment was furnished with the
same plain oak tables that one might find in any barroom west of the Mississippi. There were just a lot more of them.

What really struck her about the place was the clientele. She didn’t spy Oren Tyler among the patrons enjoying cards at the tables, but she did see many men who could have passed for his likeness. Several of them were duded up like a mayor on meeting day, with enough brass and silver ornamenting their hats, suspenders and belts to keep a munitions factory going for a decade. And the women who lounged around the tables like living furniture were just as dazzling as the men; all sported brightly colored gowns and more face paint than Paulie had ever seen in one place.

She tugged on Will’s sleeve. “What do we do now?”

He studied the room carefully, searching the tables for an opening. “You stick close and say nothing. I believe I’ll play some cards.”

She gave him some of their precious money to stake him, then nodded, strolled across the room behind him as he approached a table playing stud poker. Paulie was always up for a game of cards, but even so, she wouldn’t have picked these men to play with. One had a long curly mustache that looked like it would take at least an hour of daily grooming to keep in presentable condition, and his partner wore a ten-gallon hat so bedecked with silver stars that it probably weighed more than she did.

“Mind if I join you?” Will asked the men.

The star-studded fellow looked Will over with a cold assessing gaze, but when he glanced to his partner for affirmation, the man nodded curtly without so much as a squint at Will. Paulie had the idea that he had probably pegged Will as an honest man the minute they had crossed the bar’s threshold.

Star man dealt the cards, and for a few minutes, the men
studied their hands in silence. Seeing a new man settling in for a game drew one of the ladies from a nearby table, who sidled up to Paulie. “Aren’t you playing?” she asked, looking Paulie over from head to toe.

Paulie, unnerved by the woman’s even gaze, shook her head. Maybe Will was right to tell her to be wary of this place.

“You’re too late for a game, Iris, but you might as well set for a spell,” the mustachioed gentleman told the fancy lady. He drew a card and added it to his hand without expression crossing his face. If she hadn’t seen his lips moving, Paulie would have doubted that the man had spoken at all.

“Thanks, Henry,” Iris said, sinking her bustled behind into the chair next to his. “Been a while since I seen you around here.”

“Just come back from New Orleans,” he answered, as if he weren’t the least interested in the cards the other men laid down in front of him.

“New Orleans?” Will said in the same nonchalant manner. “I know a man who’s there now, too.” Just as Paulie was about to ask who that could be, he finished by adding, “Oren Tyler.”

The woman named Iris raised her brows. “Tyler? In New Orleans? Not the last I heard!”

Will shot her a look so surprised that even Paulie would have believed the man was certain Oren Tyler had been in New Orleans.

“Why, just yesterday he was sittin’ where you’re sittin’ now,” Iris went on, not so schooled in the art of discretion as the men at the table.

“Tyler? Here?” Will asked as if amazed. “Perhaps he had my cousin with him?”

She shook her head emphatically at that notion. “Not
yesterday, he didn’t. He was alone. For a while he had a gal taggin’ ‘round him, some girl who’d rode into town with a patent medicine man, but that didn’t last.” She laughed. “They never do with Oren.”

Will was hard-pressed to keep his eyes on his game. “This woman wasn’t by chance a blond woman, with blue eyes?”

Iris nodded, and gestured broadly with a long-nailed hand. “Oh sure, a real cute thing. She was Oren Tyler’s girl, all right.” Her painted lips turned up in a sly sneer. “Or that’s how she fancied herself.”

The past tense of Iris’s reply didn’t escape Paulie, and she could tell by the way he stiffened that it hadn’t gone unnoticed by Will, either. Oren was still running around San Antonio, but he had apparently had his fill of Mary Ann.

So where was she?

Paulie could stay silent no longer. “Will, if your cousin’s in town, maybe we should try to find her. Do you know where she is, ma’am?”

Iris beamed a radiant smile at her, her teeth appearing stark white against her red lips. “Sure don’t, honey.”

Paulie frowned. Then, when Iris stood up and sidled up close to her, Paulie positively scowled down at Will, and pulled the brim of her cap self-consciously over her eyes. Did this woman actually see her as a potential customer? Did Iris, like Night Bird, actually think she was a
boy?

“Say…” Iris cooed seductively. “You’re just a young ‘un.”

Paulie swallowed. She was beginning to feel sick to her stomach. “Gosh, Will, maybe we should go try to find your cousin
right now.”

He laid another card down. “No hurry,” he answered breezily.

“What’s your rush, pumpkin?” Iris asked. “You aren’t sweet on the man’s cousin, are you?”

Paulie was certain her face was beet-red. Though she had never harmed another creature in her entire life, if the woman said one more thing to her she was going to receive a hard clip to her powdered jaw. Will had told her not to gab with the people in the saloon; he hadn’t said a thing about hitting them.

Still, she aimed for patience. “No.” She glanced pleadingly at Will, pointing her head toward the doors. “Will…?”

He appeared all caught up in his card game. Or else he was having fun watching her squirm. “Hold your horses, Paulie.”

Iris giggled. “Paulie? That’s a sweet name.”

The whole place could probably hear Paulie’s teeth grinding. “Thanks,” she muttered.

“Don’t mention it. And since you’re such a nice kid, I’ll give you a tip. I saw that girl you were askin’ about headed for Maudie Worthington’s the other day. I wasn’t going to mention it to your friend there—even a snooty gal deserves to be left alone sometimes if she doesn’t want to be found. But you seem like a nice kid.”

Paulie tried to keep her mind on business, not on how much she wanted to murder Will. “Who’s Maudie Worthington?”

Iris shrugged. “She owns a house.” She mumbled a street name that meant nothing to Paulie.

Paulie wondered just what kind of “house” Mary Ann had gotten herself installed in. She cleared her throat and slanted an anxious glance at Will, who ignored her as he studied his cards.

Iris grinned at her coyly and scooted so close that Paulie thought she would be knocked out by the stench of the
woman’s pungent perfume. Was
this
what men found so appealing? “You interested in seeing my room, little Paul?”

Iris batted her long eyelashes, and finally Paulie could stand no more. “The name’s
Paulie,”
she corrected heatedly, doffing her hat and letting her braid spill down her back. “As in Paulette!”

The shock in Iris’s eyes was no less than it had been in Night Bird’s two days before. Silence was a shroud over the saloon as all eyes pinned on Paulie and the painted lady, whose red cheeks had by this time flushed crimson naturally.

“Look there—he’s a girl!” the old man behind the bar crowed.

Another man nearby hooted with laughter. “Say, Iris, hadn’t you seen enough men to get that part of your job nailed down yet?”

Suddenly, Paulie realized that Iris’s face wasn’t heated with embarrassment, but anger—and all of it directed straight at her. Her tricking the woman hadn’t been on purpose, but it hadn’t been smart, either. She scrambled to one side, but too late.

Iris reached forward and clutched Paulie’s shirt in two bunched fists, nearly lifting her clear off the ground. Paulie struggled like a perch dangling on a hook. Her bruised ribs still smarted. “Why you little cheap rascal chit—”

In a split second, Paulie felt another set of hands at her back, tugging her away from Iris. It was Will—and about time!

“We’re just going, ma’am,” Will told the angry woman, attempting to pry Paulie free.

“I oughta rip her little throat out!” Iris bellowed, holding fast. Her cry brought more peals of laughter from the card players and women at the tables around them.

Paulie feared she was about to be ripped in two in front of the laughing, jeering crowd when Will finally loosened her from Iris’s talons and steered her speedily toward the exit. He thrust her through the bat-wing doors and onto the dirt walkway. Iris’s outraged shrieks still rang in her ears even as she saw Trip gaping at her from atop Feather with wide surprised eyes.

“What the—”

Paulie didn’t even wait to answer the question evident on Trip’s tongue. She wheeled around and poked a finger into Will’s chest. “What were you doing in there—trying to win enough to buy a homestead?”

Will smiled and lifted his shoulders innocently. “Just having a friendly game.”

“At
my
expense!” Paulie cried, her voice now almost as shrill as Iris’s. “You saw what was happening. Why didn’t you get me out of there?”

“I did.”

“Not before I was almost clawed to death by that creature!”

Trip’s eyes rounded in horror at her words. “What the heck happened?”

Will shook his head. “Just a little argument between Sprout here and one of the ladies.” At Paulie’s angry sputtering, he lifted a hand to calm her. “How could we leave when you were doing so well at information gathering?”

Paulie’s mouth stopped in midprotest. Was he actually giving her credit for finding out where Mary Ann was? Why, that was almost like a compliment! She looked up into his light brown eyes and found her anger melting away like an ice floe in El Paso.

Then he smiled that devilish, smug grin of his. “Besides, I warned you to stay outside with the horses.”