Nan Ryan (13 page)

“Forgive me, Fontaine—if I may call you Fontaine—and please, call me Lew.” Reluctantly releasing her hand, he glanced at the clock above her head. “I suppose you go to lunch when the other girl gets back?”

“Put your finger right there, Mr. Tay … Lew,” Mollie instructed, thinking that his name fit him too. Lew. She liked it. Lew placed a tapered forefinger directly on the crossed string while Mollie pulled the twine tightly, then tied a perfect knot. “Other girl?” she said, lifting her eyes to meet his.

“Yes,” Lew answered casually. “The other female clerk who works here with you. Is she at lunch?”

Mollie handed Lew the neatly wrapped package. “There is no other female clerk, Lew. Just Mr. Stanfield, the proprietor, and Willie, the other clerk who is now out sweeping the sidewalk. And me.”

Lew’s jaw dropped and his blue eyes widened, then narrowed. Taken aback, Mollie wondered what on earth had gotten into him. For a long, uncomfortable minute he stared at her as though suddenly he disliked her intensely. His handsome face hardened perceptibly and his rich baritone voice took on a sharp edge.

“There’s not another woman who works at this Emporium?”

“No. Nor has there ever been,” Mollie proudly informed him. “
I
am the first and only female who has ever worked at the Maya Emporium.”

“No,” Lew muttered aloud, a stricken expression on his face. “No.”

“Yes. Are you all right, Lew? You look ill.”

Lew quickly regained control. He consciously
relaxed his tall, tensed body, softened his hard face, and smiled engagingly down at Mollie.

“I’m fine, Fontaine,” he said evenly, then proceeded, immediately, with his well-laid plans, forcing himself to remember his one and only purpose for being in Maya: to charm and seduce this violet-eyed, ivory-skinned impostor who looked nothing at all like the outlaw she was. Holding the package with a forefinger curled around the tied twine, Lew idly tapped it against his thigh. “I have never felt better in my life.”

Skeptical, her face reflecting her confusion, Mollie asked, “Have you eaten today?”

Lew laughed easily. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t. Why don’t we walk over to the Nueva Sol and share a meal? I’m told the chef performs magic with leg of mutton.”

“Indeed he does,” Mollie affirmed, relieved to see his appealing grin return. “The spring duck is even better, but I’ll have to decline your kind invitation.” She gave him a coquettish smile, just as the professor had coached her to do, letting this attractive man know that she was flattered by the offer, and casually interested, but was, of course, too much of a lady to seriously consider accepting such an invitation from a stranger.

He was instantly apologetic. “No, of course, you can’t. How presumptuous of me to suggest it. I’ve not even inquired … you may be a married lady, and—”

“No!” Mollie burst out shrilly, caught herself, and lowered her voice to a soft, cultured pitch. “No, Lew. I have no husband. I’ve never been married.”

He visibly exhaled, as though greatly relieved, and Mollie felt her face flush with joy. She grew uncomfortably warm when, his voice low and oh so enticing, he said, “Since you have no husband and I have no wife, may I come to call on you one evening soon? After I’ve met your folks and asked their permission?”

Mollie blinked up at him. She wasn’t sure what her answer was supposed to be, but she knew what it was going to be. “Yes, Lew, I’d like that. I live with my uncle in a big white house at the northern end of Manzanita Avenue. Why don’t you join us for dinner tomorrow night?” Smiling eagerly, she added, “My uncle is Professor Napier Dixon. You can find him almost anytime in his office above the First National Bank.”

“I’ll go there this afternoon,” he said, his blue eyes caressing her face. “I’ll be honored to dine with you and your uncle. May I bring wine? Or perhaps you are too young for—”

“I’m twenty-one!” she quickly informed him and then wanted to bite her tongue.

Patricia and Madeline had told her that many men were not interested in a woman who was twenty-one and had never been married. They said that you were considered an old maid in the Territory by the time you turned eighteen. Madeline was almost eighteen. Patricia was twenty, but she had been wed for a few short weeks to a young army lieutenant who had been killed by the Apaches. It was, Patricia said, all right to be a widow, in fact, men found experienced women exciting.

All at once Mollie was terrified that Madeline and Patricia would come sweeping into the emporium and Lew Taylor would lose interest in her and want to court the experienced Patricia.

“I attended a very strict girl’s academy back East where I came from and … and …” She was making it worse, she knew, rattling on, sounding like a pitiful spinster with her first gentleman caller. But she couldn’t stop herself. “… and so I was not allowed to go out with any of the young gentlemen who took a fancy to me and that’s the reason I’ve reached twenty-one without … without …”

“Thank the Almighty you’re not a child of eighteen,” Lew broke in smoothly. “I’ve passed my thirty-first birthday, Fontaine, and I feel that anything more than ten years between our ages would be too broad a gap. Don’t you?”

“Oh, most definitely,” she replied with cool authority, delighted now that she was a mature woman.

Mollie stood before a tall window in her spacious upstairs bedroom. Silvery moonlight washed over her, and a chill May breeze lifted tendrils of loose blond hair and pressed the soft batiste of her long white nightgown against the bare, warm curves of her tall, slender body.

It was well past midnight. The professor was sound asleep in his room at the far end of the hall, as was Louise in her quarters downstairs. Most of Maya was asleep and had been for hours. Mollie could look out over the moonlit valley and see only a few sparsely scattered lights twinkling.

Alternately sighing and smiling, Mollie was tired, but she was not sleepy. She was sure she would never be sleepy again. Besides, her flair for the dramatic, heightened by her newfound appreciation of poetry and literature, told her that on such a momentous night as this it would be nothing short of sacrilege to entertain notions of doing something as mundane as sleeping.

Stretching and purring like a lazy, satisfied cat, Mollie impulsively hiked up her nightgown, climbed up onto the window ledge, and sat down. Resting her back against the sill, she drew her legs up, wrapped her arms around them, and laid her cheek on her knees. She sighed dreamily. Then quickly raised her head, unfolded her arms, turned and swung her legs outside the window. She remained perched there for only a second before she placed her bare feet on the smooth wood of the veranda and crossed to the gallery’s railing.

Swinging a long, bare leg over, she climbed up and straddled it as she would have done in days of old. Clutching the railing, she leaned way out and squinted in the moonlight, anxiously searching for the Nueva Sol Hotel. She let out a little whoop of joy when she located the red-roofed, gleaming white adobe building where a handsome, raven-haired stranger was spending the night.

“Lew. Lew Taylor,” Mollie murmured his name aloud. “Lew,” she said more softly, experiencing that same unfamiliar fluttering in her stomach and dryness in her mouth that she’d felt earlier in the day when she’d walked over to wait on a customer whose back was to her and the handsome Lew Taylor had turned around.

Whether she lived to be ninety and saw Lew every day for the rest of her life or they were never to meet again, Mollie knew she would always remember the thrilling moment when he had slowly turned and smiled down at her.

Naive though she was, Mollie realized that the tall, black-haired stranger had touched something in her that no other ever had. She was unafraid of this new emotion. She had always thrived on risks and excitement, and she had the delicious feeling that she was about to embark on a new, electrifying adventure. She was ready for it! She would meet it the same way she had met every challenge of her life: with unrestrained enthusiasm and eagerness.

She wanted to miss absolutely nothing life had to offer and the strange tingling she felt from just looking at Lew Taylor’s mouth had her already wondering what it might be like to feel those sulky, sensual lips pressed to hers. Mollie exhaled with frustration. She would have to wait to find out. She was not Mollie Rogers, who could behave as shockingly as she pleased. She was now Miss Fontaine Gayerre, a highborn, sheltered young lady who wouldn’t consider allowing a gentleman to kiss her until she had known him for months.

“Rats!” Mollie muttered irritably into the rising night winds. “Being a lady can sure be a pain in the rump.”

She screwed up her face at the thought. But almost immediately she found herself smiling again. Violet eyes flashing with excitement, Mollie sat astride the railing on that windswept balcony and pictured Lew Taylor in his Nueva Sol suite. Was he sleeping? Was his long, lean body stretched out full length and comfortable in one of the hotel’s oversize pine beds?

Or was he, like she, too excited to sleep? Was he out on his balcony in the moonlight wondering how he could stand waiting for weeks, maybe months before he could kiss her?

His white shirt open down his dark chest, his black hair disheveled, an edgy Lew Hatton restlessly paced his Nueva Sol suite, a glass of bourbon in one hand, a smoked-down cigar in the other. He had been pacing for the better part of the evening. He was too irritable, too distracted to consider a poker game at one of the saloons or even to go downstairs for a sumptuous meal in the dinning room.

He had ordered a light supper sent up on a tray. It remained untouched on a round piñon table in the sitting room. He had not so much as lifted the white linen cloth to uncover the dishes. He was not hungry. Not at all. Now it was very late and he was not sleepy.

He was angry.

Lew was angry with Mollie Rogers for being so breathtakingly beautiful. Angry because he was helplessly drawn to her. Angry because the repugnant chore he had laid out for himself was not going to be repugnant after all. Damn her for being so pretty!

A vein pulsing on his forehead, Lew drained his liquor glass and slammed it down beside the untouched supper tray. He felt uncomfortably warm. He impatiently crossed to the double doors, pushed them open, and stepped out onto the hotel’s stone balcony. He drew in a long, deep breath of the cool desert air.

He stood there in the cold, a chill wind out of the west lifting locks of his hair and causing orange sparks from his cigar to swirl around his head. He gripped the railing and, squinting, directed his narrow-eyed gaze to the big white mansion located on a natural rise at the north end of Manzanita Avenue.

No lights burned in the mansion. Lew envisioned the young woman claiming to be Fontaine Gayerre sleeping soundly. He pictured her in her girlish bed with her glorious golden hair fanned out on the pillow. He could almost see that angelic face in sweet repose, the soft baby lips partially open, the thick lashes closed over those magnificent violet eyes.

Lew groaned aloud.

He told himself that maybe she wasn’t Mollie Rogers. There was always that possibility. He had no proof of her identity. It could be a mistake. She might well be Miss Fontaine Gayerre from back East, come to live with her uncle, just as she said.

Lew took the cigar from between his teeth, dropped it, and ground it out with his bootheel. He exhaled heavily. There was only one way to find out if the golden-haired beauty was Fontaine Gayerre or Mollie Rogers.

Make love to her.

If the butterfly birthmark was there on her creamy buttocks, he would take her in, turn her over to the authorities. If there was no birthmark …

One thing was certain. Whoever she was, making love to her was going to be anything but distasteful. So why the hell was he so angry? Why in God’s name should he be disappointed that the thieving, murdering female renegade he had come here to capture was so gorgeous it would make his job easy?

Too easy.

Professor Napier Dixon was smiling
.

He had smiled often in the past year, more than he had smiled since the carefree days of his youth back in Texas. Just as it had been then, a pretty woman was responsible for the frequency of his smiles. She was, in fact, responsible for his newfound joy in living.