Promises Keep (The Promise Series)

Promises Keep

Sarah McCarty

Dedication:

For Pam,

A wonderful woman with an incredible capacity to believe and inspire. May life reward you with the same positive enthusiasm you show others.

Sarah

Chapter One

Cattle Crossing, Wyoming Territory

May, 1869

Cougar downed his second scotch of the last twenty minutes. Quality stuff, not the rotgut he’d noticed the barkeep passing to most of the other customers who were so falling-down drunk, they couldn’t tell the difference. The luxury had cost him an arm and a leg, but the way he figured it, a man didn’t skimp when courting demons. He took a last drag of his cigarette and motioned at the barkeep to fill his glass again.

In an obscure corner, a man pounded the keys on a beat-up piano. Disgusted, Cougar blew a stream of smoke in the direction of the scrawny man’s back. He wished the guy would just give it up. It wasn’t as if anyone could tell what tune the fool was striving for. And about all he was accomplishing with the raucous rendition was a jarring of Cougar’s already raw nerves. He flicked the cigarette onto the floor and ground it under his heel.

Running his finger over the flimsy bar, he grimaced. He wasn’t a man overly concerned with dirt, but next time he came to one of these places, if there ever was a next time, he was going to select one with a little more emphasis on cleanliness and a lot less on obscurity. Madame Cecile’s Pleasure Emporium was so damned rickety, he kept expecting the stairs to collapse if one more saddle bum set foot on them.

He wiped his grimy finger on his pants. One thing was for sure, it was a safe bet none of his acquaintances were going to walk through the door. For himself, he didn’t care, but if Doc got wind of this, he’d be disappointed. And Dorothy, hell, Dorothy wouldn’t say a word, but the old biddies in town would sure rub her face in it. They’d been waiting since the day the McKinnely’s took “that breed” in for him to bring shame upon Doc and his wife. Which is why he’d come to Cattle Crossing for this endeavor.

Cattle Crossing was just a couple of miles east of his hometown Cheyenne, but they were pretty important miles. While Cheyenne was a town striving for respectability, Cattle Crossing was a cesspool of ill repute. The only people who came here, came with something to hide. So much so that anyone who recognized him wouldn’t admit it in polite company, so that was one worry off his plate.

Which meant he still had his original worry to contend with. He swirled the scotch in his shot glass and sighed. And that worry wasn’t going to go anywhere if all he did was sit here and count the nicks in the planks set across two crates that formed the bar.

He took a deep breath and viewed the seedy room from beneath the brim of his hat. What he beheld was shocking. Even after reminding himself that he was in one of the most disreputable whorehouses in the territory, he had to shake his head. Men and women were in various stages of mating, out in the open, without a care to privacy. He’d never in all his born days seen anything like it. Oh, he’d seen lust a time or two before, but never like this.

He watched a young boy, barely out of knee pants, sidle up to a plump blonde. The kid was young, but his instincts were sound. With eager hands, the boy freed the woman’s full, white breasts by simply yanking down her top. She had huge nipples. Pink, fat and mouthwatering. The boy took one look, grinned big, and latched onto a nipple with voracious hunger.

Cougar watched the couple intently, studying every nuance of the exchange, as if through sheer perseverance he could borrow some of the youngster’s heat. He looked down at his crotch and silently ordered, “React.”

But nothing happened. He tossed back the liquor in his glass, welcoming the burn as it slid down to his stomach. As the whore led her eager client up the stairs to the cribs above, Cougar slammed the empty glass down on the battered bar. His hand curled into a tight fist beside it. Had Emily’s death unmanned him?

It had been a year since her passing. In that entire time, he hadn’t successfully managed to bed a woman. Not once. Not even his housekeeper, whom he’d hired precisely because of her reputation in the bedroom. He motioned the barkeep for another shot as he contemplated life’s little ironies. Hell, for six months before that fateful day, ever since he’d gotten engaged to Emily, he’d walked around perpetually cocked and ready to fire.

Emily had been everything a man could hope for in a wife. More than a half-breed should aspire to. When she’d agreed to marry him, he’d been through the roof. Blonde. Beautiful. Demure. Respectable. The perfect lady. Almost too perfect to touch. Which had him wondering if she’d meet his needs in bed. Which was why he’d pushed her so hard for a response the day before their wedding. The day she’d died.

He took a deep breath and let it out, remembering that day. He swallowed down his scotch. Damn! She’d been shocked. The glass hit the bar with a soft thunk. Horrified when he’d touched her breast. Repulsed that he’d wanted to put his mouth there. He pushed the empty glass away, wishing he could put the memories away as easily. The glass hit the seam in the planks, tipped and then rolled with an uneven thump to the edge of the makeshift bar. She’d called him every name in the book after he’d told her what he would expect as her husband. Words he had no idea she knew. The fury of the flash flood had been nothing compared to her fury that he, a dirty savage, expected her to let him do those animalistic things to her. He righted the glass but left it teetering on the brink of disaster.

She’d still been calling him names when the floodwaters had taken them both under. Fighting him, making it twice as hard to get them to the side of the gully. When the tree had slammed into them, she’d been wrenched out of his grip and he’d been unable to find her again. Three days later, the search party had found her body downstream. Two days after that, he’d helped put her in the ground. He gave the glass a nudge and it shattered on the floor.

And now he was here, in a rundown excuse of a whorehouse, looking for a miracle. He turned half around, leaned his elbow against the bar and pretended a nonchalance he didn’t feel as he searched the room’s occupants. He didn’t need perfect. He just needed one woman who could break the curse Emily had left him with.

The smoky haze permeating the dimly lit room forced him to squint as one by one, he narrowed his choices. The young prostitute heading his way looked like a “possible”. She had the wide hips and big breasts he favored in a woman even though there was too much paint on her face for his liking.

Hell, he admitted wryly, it wasn’t the makeup he objected to. It was the woman herself. She looked like she’d been ridden hard and put up wet, but a man couldn’t be too picky at times like this. He decided to motion her over, but in the time it took for him to make the decision, she’d veered to the right, latching onto the arm of an elderly gentleman. Damn! Obviously, he was going to have to put more pep in his step if he wanted anything but leftovers tonight. He resumed his lounging position and his search.

Despite his determination, when he heard the rustle of skirts behind him, his gut clenched. Maybe the woman was just passing by. Maybe she didn’t want to talk to him. Maybe he was getting skittish for no damned reason.

“I couldn’t help but notice that none of my girls appear to interest you. Is there something special you require?” That voice, coming from just right of his shoulder, was pure sin and seduction. His response to it marked him as a coward because as soon as she finished the asking, he had an inclination to get moving.

But it was too late to run and he wouldn’t allow himself to even if he could. He was done running, hiding and making excuses. He’d either bury this problem tonight or learn to live with it for the rest of his life. He pulled himself straight, turned and faced the woman.

She was tall, he noted. Her head came to just beneath his chin. She had a shape on her that could knock a man’s jaw to the floor. And there wasn’t much of her running for cover, either. Especially above the waist. Her white breasts looked ready to take a leap for freedom from the pale blue material of her bodice. Like maybe if he held his hands out right now, he’d be just in time to catch them.

This one had possibilities, he decided, as he met her cool blue eyes. He’d been told a man owed a whore nothing but the money on the dresser, but he found twenty-nine years of preaching just wasn’t as easy to shake as trail dust. He took off his hat.

“I’m not sure, Ma’am.” He noticed no one else had taken off theirs. Damn, he was probably sticking out like a sore thumb, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. She was a woman despite her profession, and in his world, women were treated with respect.

“Maybe if you could be more specific about your desires, I could help you,” she suggested in a soft, throaty voice.