Authors: Linda Bridey
Tags: #Romance, #Historical, #Victorian, #Western, #Historical Romance, #Westerns
Luke and Jamie continued on to the main barroom and Jake went to get Wendell from the back.
“Well, if it isn’t our very own heroine, Miss Jameson?” Joe said as he came in the bar and spied Sammi.
Sammi grinned at him. “Jamie said you’d be coming.”
“That’s right. C’mon and join us,” Joe said.
“I can’t. I’m working,” Sammi said.
Joe frowned. “Are you a waitress?”
“Nope. Security.”
Joe looked at Jake who nodded.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Joe said. “I think you made a good choice, Jake.”
“I know it,” Jake said. “She already threw Slim out of here tonight.”
“He got a little too friendly with my rear end,” Sammi told Joe.
Joe laughed. “I’d have liked to have seen that.”
“Stick around. There might be more action later on,” Sammi said.
“I intend to.” Joe rubbed his hands together. “I’m feelin’ lucky tonight.”
Jamie came over and grabbed Joe. “C’mon, Joey. It’s time to sing!”
Joe let Jamie pull him over to the piano. Wendell struck up a song that he knew they sang and good times ensued.
Mitch finished up at the office and headed over to the hotel. Sammi wasn’t there or at the Grady House. There was only one other place she’d be; the Watering Hole. Mitch smiled as he walked to the bar. She had looked so pretty in her dress, but he knew that she’d probably changed back to her other clothes by now.
He could hear the music from outside the bar and knew that Joe and Jamie were performing. Entering the bar, he also heard a fiddle. Apparently they’d coaxed Luke into playing along. As he walked over to the bar, he saw Sammi sitting on a stool just inside the main barroom and thought that was strange.
Jake came over and asked, “What’ll it be, Mitch?”
“I’ll have a beer,” Mitch said.
Jake poured the brew and said, “Hey, thanks for not hiring Sammi.”
“Um, you’re welcome. Why are you thanking me?” Mitch said.
“Because I hired her as my new bouncer,” Jake said with grin.
Mitch smiled and said, “Good joke, Jake.”
Jake’s smile faded and he said, “It’s no joke, Mitch. I hired her. She saved my life and almost everyone here watched while she lambasted Slim and put him out on his rear end.”
Mitch’s eyebrows rose and he glanced over at Sammi. “What did he do?”
“Put his hand on her, uh, hind end,” Jake said.
That set Mitch off on a laughing jag. He was remembering how Sammi had hit him in the stomach for grabbing her arm. He could only imagine what she’d done to Slim for copping a feel. Jake laughed along with him.
“I don’t think Slim will ever lay a hand on her again. She knocked him out cold and dragged him out the door like a sack of horse feed. The damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” Jake said.
“I can just imagine,” Mitch said and moved away from the bar.
Mitch stopped by Sammi and looked down at her. “So this is where you disappeared to.”
Sammi smiled. “Yep. This is the place, Sheriff. All done for the day?”
He nodded. “I hear that Jake hired you,” he said as he watched Jamie and Joe sing.
“That’s right. He’s paying me a good salary, too,” Sammi said.
“Good. I think this job suits you. I hear you wiped up the floor with Slim earlier. Sorry I missed that,” Mitch said.
Sammi laughed and Mitch enjoyed the sound. Her laugh was heartier than some women’s and there was a warm timber to it. “Seems like it was the highlight of the night. So tell me something,” Sammi said.
“What’s that?”
“If there’s a problem here and I’m dealing with it while you happen to be here, are you going to step in and take over or are you going to let me do my job?” Sammi asked.
Mitch thought about that for a moment. He was the sheriff and it was his responsibility to keep the peace, but this was Sammi’s jurisdiction in a way and he could understand why she was questioning him. He looked at it as if she were a man.
“Tell you what; I’ll let you deal with it unless you ask me for help. Does that work?” Mitch asked.
Sammi said, “I think that’s a good way to handle it. Just don’t hold your breath waiting for me to ask.”
“Duly noted, Sammi,” Mitch said with a smile. He leaned against the wall by her. “So do you get a break?”
“Most likely. Why?” Sammi said.
“You don’t do this much, do you?” Mitch said.
Sammi frowned. “Do what?”
“Date.”
“Oh. Well, it’s been a while,” Sammi said with a smile.
“Ok. When you get a break, come over and sit with me,” Mitch said and squeezed her shoulder a little.
Sammi watched him walk away and admired his backside. She looked over at Jamie who was watching and gave her thumbs up sign. Jamie almost started laughing in the middle of the song and Joe gave her a sharp look. Sammi chuckled quietly.
An hour passed and the musical portion of the evening was over. It was calmer now in the bar and Sammi went behind the bar and poured a beer. Jake had no problem with her serving herself. She located Mitch and sat down beside him.
“Hi,” Sammi said. “Jamie and Joe are really good together. And Luke? Wow. He’s really talented.”
Mitch nodded. “I know. Seth plays, too. I like to hear them play together.”
“I met Seth earlier. He’s a nice guy,” Sammi said.
“That he is,” Mitch agreed.
“So is Marcus, for that matter. I’m looking forward to meeting the rest of Luke’s family,” Sammi said.
“You’ll like them,” Mitch said.
“So tell me about you, Mitch. Where did you grow up?” Sammi asked.
“I grew up in Helena and my parents still live there. I have a brother, Bobby, who moved to New York a while back,” Mitch said.
“New York? Wow. That’s pretty far away,” Sammi said. “Why did he move there?”
“Law enforcement runs in the family and he wanted to be a big city cop.”
“How come you didn’t?” Sammi asked.
Mitch leaned back in his seat. “I wanted to make a difference where I know everyone. Since New York is such a big place, you can’t really get to know a whole lot of people. I prefer a smaller town like Dawson.”
Sammi said, “I think it’s good for Dawson that you wanted to come here.”
Mitch smiled at her compliment. “Thanks. Seems like it’s good for Dawson that
you
came here, too. And me.”
“Are you sure about that?” Sammi asked. “I feel like I aggravate you more than anything.”
Mitch leaned closer to her and said, “Sometimes it’s good to shake things up a little like you have.”
“Really? I thought you like keeping things orderly.”
“There’s orderly and then there’s plain dull,” Mitch said. “I don’t like dull and you are definitely not that.”
Shouting interrupted their conversation. Two men starting to argue over a card game were getting loud. Sammi watched for a moment to see if they were going to settle down or not. One of the men jabbed a finger into the chest of the other one.
“Excuse me, Sheriff. I gotta go to work,” Sammi said.
Mitch watched as Sammi got rid of her hat and shook out her hair. He arched an eyebrow as she loosened a couple buttons of her shirt exposing a tantalizing hint of her cleavage. Sammi crossed the barroom with an added swing in her hips and more than one man turned to watch as she went by.
“Hello, gentlemen,” Sammi said as she arrived at their table. “Do we have a problem over here?”
“He’s been cheating!” one of the men answered.
Sammi looked over the rather slight man with red hair and blue eyes. “What’s your name?”
“Paul Charles,” he said.
Sammi turned to the other man and said, “And yours?”
“Chase Barton,” said the middle-aged man.
“Well, Chase and Paul, as you know I’m the new bouncer here and I really don’t want any trouble,” Sammi said.
“I am not cheating,” Chase said. “How can I cheat when they’re not even my cards? You’re just a sore loser.”
Paul made a move towards Chase but Sammi intervened and pushed Paul down in his chair. Then she sat on his lap which shocked the redhead.
“Uh, what are you doing, miss?” Paul asked as he looked into Sammi’s very blue eyes.
Sammi trailed a finger down over Paul’s chest. “I’m keeping you from making a very big mistake, Paul.”
“What mistake?” Paul said.
“The mistake of ticking me off and making me kick you out the door like I did Slim earlier,” she said. “See, what you don’t understand is that this is
my
barroom and I get to decide who stays and goes. If you behave you can stay and have a good time. If you can’t then you get booted out.”
“You can’t do that,” Paul said a little uncertainly.
“Oh, I can and I will,” Sammi said. Her gaze turned cooler. “Do not test me.” She got up off of Paul’s lap.
Looking at Chase she said, “If I were you, I’d find someone else to play poker with.”
“Yeah, but what about the game we’ve got going on now?” Chase said and pointed to the pot.
Sammi looked down at the table and smiled at both men. She bent down and counted the money and then split it in half. She pushed half over to Paul and the other half to the other side of the table.
“Since we can’t prove anything, you both get to go home with something, which is better than nothing,” Sammi said.
“That’s not fair!” Paul said and got up out of his seat in a menacing manner.
Mitch got ready to intervene as he watched the situation play out.
Sammi pulled her gun and aimed it at his head. “That’s close enough, Paul. I tried being nice. Now take your money and get out of here while you still can.”
Paul held up his hands and said, “Ok, ok.” He swept his money off the table, stuffed it into his pocket and left.
“Chase, you got any problem with that?” Sammi said as she holstered her gun.
“No, ma’am. None,” he, too, gathered his money and made himself scarce.
The place had gotten quiet. Sammi said loudly, “Nothing to see here, folks. Go back to having fun.”
She walked back and sat down again with Mitch.
“How was that?” she asked.
Mitch chuckled. “Not bad, Sammi.”
“Thanks. So where were we?” she asked.
Mitch sighed. “Unfortunately, I have to go get some sleep. Gotta be up early.”
Sammi was disappointed, but nodded. “Yeah, it’s getting late.”
Mitch put a hand on her forearm and said, “Let’s have lunch tomorrow.”
“Ok,” Sammi said with a smile. “I’ll meet you at your office around one.”
“Sounds good. Goodnight, Sammi,” Mitch said rising from his chair.
“Goodnight, Mitch,” Sammi said.
After Mitch left, there were no more incidents and Sammi had fun with Jamie and the guys. However, her mind kept turning to Mitch. Her main reason for coming to Dawson was to meet Mitch and spend time with him, but so far that wasn’t working out. While she kept an eye on things and visited with her friends, Sammi got an idea.
Mitch was woken by stealthy movements downstairs. He sat up slowly and listened to see if it was Beulah. He looked over on the pile of blankets in the corner of his room and saw that she was sound asleep on them. Someone was in his house.
“Some watch dog you are,” he whispered to Beulah. The dog continued to snore.
As Mitch picked up his gun from where it sat on his nightstand, he heard someone start to come up the stairs. Their steps were less stealthy now.
“Mitch?”
He was surprised to hear someone call his name.
“Mitch?”
“Sammi?” Mitch got up from his bed and went out to the landing and saw Sammi coming up the staircase.
She smiled at him. He was dressed in only his long underwear. “You look great, Sheriff.”
Mitch realized what he was wearing and smiled. He was pleased that she liked what she saw and then the next instant his gentlemanly side emerged. “Go back downstairs. I’ll be right there.”
Sammi frowned, but did as he said. She descended the stairs thinking how beautiful it would be once it was done. Mitch hadn’t been kidding when he said that his house was big. The staircase led to a large foyer off of which was a big parlor. Beyond the parlor lie a dining room and kitchen. Off the other side of the staircase was a den. She was able to walk through the downstairs using the moonlight coming through the large windows. As she came out of the den, she and Mitch ran into each other.
Sammi laughed as she hung onto Mitch to keep from falling.
“Sammi, what are you doing here?” Mitch said.
Sammi let her hands trail down over his strong arms. “I wanted to see you, but didn’t want to wait until tomorrow.” She noticed that he’d put on pants.
Mitch smiled. “Oh, yeah?”
Sammi nodded. “Yeah.”
“Ok,” Mitch said and moved away from her. He went into the parlor and Sammi followed. He went to light a lantern but Sammi blew out the match before it could reach the wick.
“What did you do that for?” Mitch said.
“We don’t need light for what we’re gonna do,” Sammi said.
Mitch said, “And just what are we gonna do?”
“Talk,” Sammi said. “That’s what you’ve wanted to do, right?”
Mitch didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. “Right.” He remembered that he only had the one chair. “The only problem is that I only have one chair.”
Sammi shrugged. “We’ll share.”
Mitch said, “I don’t think it’s big enough.”
“Mitch, please just sit down,” Sammi said.
Mitch did and was surprised when Sammi sat on his lap the same way she had Paul’s.
“There. See? Told you we could share and we can see each other,” she said.
“Sammi, this isn’t exactly appropriate,” Mitch said.
“You said you didn’t like boring and that things should be shook up once in a while. Well, I’m shaking things up. So, we were rudely interrupted earlier tonight. You were telling me about your family. I wish I could do the same, but I have no idea who they are or were,” Sammi said.
“I’m sorry about that. It must have been rough growing up like that,” Mitch said. Her eyes looked more silver than blue in the moonlight.
She nodded. “It was sometimes. Especially when other kids were adopted. They got to have a family, you know. By the time I was thirteen, I knew that no one would adopt me because people only wanted babies and small children. I was too old. So, I stopped hoping because every time I was passed over, it hurt too much. If people came to meet us kids, I made sure I was outside or hid somewhere because I didn’t want to see their looks of pity and know that I wasn’t good enough for them.”
The picture she painted made Mitch’s heart go out to her. “So that’s why you’re so tough. You’ve been protecting yourself from rejection.”
“Among other things,” Sammi said.
“Like what?” Mitch asked.
“Men who wanted to take advantage of me,” Sammi said. She hadn’t been planning on talking to Mitch about any of this and wondered why she was.
Mitch drew back from her a little and looked into her eyes. “What are you saying, Sammi?”
Sammi said, “I shouldn’t have said anything about it.” She started getting up, but Mitch held her in place.
“Sammi, you can’t just start a conversation like that and then clam up,” Mitch said.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” Sammi said.
“Maybe because you know you can trust me,” Mitch said.
Sammi played with a button on her shirt as she tried to decide whether to go on.
Mitch gently turned her face to him and said, “Sammi, it’s ok. You’re safe here.”
“When I was sixteen a handyman that worked at the orphanage raped me,” she said quickly.
Mitch closed his eyes as she confirmed his suspicions. “Oh, Sammi. I’m so sorry,” he said as he opened them again.
“So I ran away. I vowed that would never happen to me again. I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I hid in farmer’s barn. I would sneak into the barn late at night and get up before anyone came in. I was probably there for about a week when the farmer’s son found me,” Sammi said with a smile.
Mitch assumed that since she was smiling that it was a good memory.
“His name was Gregory and he was so cute. Big blue eyes and wild dark hair,” Sammi said. “He didn’t tell his pa about me. He made sure I had food and he brought me some of his old clothes. That’s when I started dressing like this and I liked it better than wearing a dress because it really is more comfortable, but also because men didn’t pay so much attention to me.”
“Is he the one that taught you how to shoot and throw knives?” Mitch said. He felt grateful to the young man who’d taken care of Sammy.
“Yeah. He was very good at it and competed in contests. Greg saw that I had a good eye and that I could shoot and throw accurately,” Sammi said. “He was the first boy I ever kissed. You’d have laughed if you saw it because we bumped heads at first. We finally got it right, though.’
Mitch smiled. “I’ll bet you had a headache.”
“A little bit,” Sammi said. “He was also the first boy that I became intimate with after, you know.”
Something bothered Mitch. “Sammi, you said that your first boyfriend was a rodeo worker.”
“That’s just a cover story. No one knows any of this. Not even Jamie or Lacey,” she said looking into his eyes.
He saw the question in them and said, “I won’t say a word to anyone.”
“Thank you.” She smiled at him. “I felt that you deserved to know the truth and I just wanted to get it out of the way, I guess.”
“A lot of things about you make more sense to me,” Mitch said. “I should have figured it out from the way you reacted when I grabbed your arm.”
Sammi said, “I’m sorry about that. I have kneejerk reactions to things like that when I’m not expecting people to touch me.”
Mitch ran a hand up her arm and squeezed her strong biceps. “That’s what these are for. Too keep you safe, right?”
“Yeah,” she said. His hand felt warm through her shirt. “I’ve worked hard to become strong so that guys think twice about messing with me. Plus, most men aren’t looking for a woman like me,” she said. “They’re after someone dainty and demure. I’m neither of those things.”
Mitch chuckled. “No, you’re not, but that’s perfectly fine with me. You’ve certainly proven that you’re capable of handling yourself. That said you still have to understand that it’s my instinct and my job to protect you just like I do everyone else. That’s why I was so angry over you playing deputy. I didn’t want to see you get hurt.”
Sammi sighed. “I’ve been taking care of myself for so long that it’s hard to let someone else do that kind of thing for me.”
“I know, and I don’t expect you to give up your independence, Sammi. It’s one of the things that interested me about you, but you need someone to lean on sometimes. Don’t be afraid to lean on me,” Mitch said.
Sammi laughed. “I’d say I’m doing more than leaning on you right now.”
“Yes, you are,” Mitch said with a laugh. “And I confess it feels nice.”
“Yes, it does,” Sammi said. “You feel nice.”
Suddenly Mitch became very conscious of the way she felt in his lap. Their eyes met and the air became charged. Sammi ran her hands over his broad shoulders and pulled his head closer. Mitch took her actions as permission and ran his hands over her back as their lips met. The kiss was not gentle and their passions were quickly ignited. Mitch’s hands roamed over her womanly curves and Sammi encouraged him.
Sammi experienced an explosion of desire as they kissed. His chest and shoulder muscles were hard as she caressed them. Mitch was the right size and strength to make her feel womanly, since she was as tall as many men. She felt Mitch’s warm hands on the bare skin of her back and moaned against his mouth. Mitch didn’t remember doing it, but he’d pulled her shirt from the waistband of her pants. Her back muscles were defined and exciting to him. The thought that she wasn’t wearing much under the shirt popped into his mind.
Sammi removed her hands from Mitch’s chest and began undoing the buttons of her shirt. Mitch felt the movement and realized what she was doing. Sammi was surprised when Mitch’s hand clamp down on hers.
“Sammi, we can’t do this,” Mitch said.
“It sure feels like we can,” Sammi said and wiggled her rear end a little.
Mitch sucked in a breath. “Stop that!”
Sammi laughed.
“It’s not that I don’t want you, it’s just a little soon,” Mitch said.
Cocking her head at him, Sammi said, “There’s that gentlemanly side of you. He sure picked a heck of time to show up.”
Mitch chuckled. “I can’t help it. Sammi, you gotta get up. It’s too tempting for me to have you to stay where you are.”
Sighing Sammi stood, buttoned her shirt, and tucked it back into her pants. Mitch took a deep breath and rose from the chair.
Sammi said, “I’m sorry for waking you up. I know you have to be up early. I want you to know that I don’t make a habit of sneaking into people’s houses.”
“That’s good. Then I don’t have to arrest you,” Mitch said.
Sammi gave him a provocative smile. “It might be fun, though.”
Mitch laughed and said, “Get out, Sammi.”
“That was rude,” Sammi said as Mitch pointed at the door.
“Sammi,” Mitch said in warning.
She rolled her eyes and opened the door. She gave him a slightly shy look. “Thanks for listening, Mitch. Goodnight,” she said and closed the door behind her.