At length, Nick shook it from his head and pulled out his
watch. Half past six. Maybe Del had gotten it wrong, or maybe Nick had, but he
wasn’t going to spend another second loitering in this lobby like a jilted
lover. A man had his pride.
***
Star stopped about two feet from the door, raising her
pitcher as her hands shook. “Who is it?”
Silence. Then a deep, husky voice. “It’s Nick McGraw.”
Her shoulders relaxed. Nicholas. Oh, of course it was
Nicholas!
She opened the door. “Come in.”
He frowned down at her, and then glanced up and down the
hall. He stepped inside, shutting the door with a tiny click. “You O.K.?”
“Yes, of course. Why do you ask?” She turned and crossed the
room to replace the pitcher in the washstand. She missed. It fell to the floor
and broke into as many pieces as her clothing. Only, she thought leaning over
to pick them up, not quite so neatly.
Footsteps behind her. “You’re not O.K.,” Nicholas said as
one big, strong hand, encased in white gloves so tight they looked like the
seams would tear, reached down. “No, don’t do that,” he said grasping her
elbow. “We’ll get somebody else to clean it up. Look, you’ve cut yourself.”
A small line of blood trickled from a cut along the crease
of her finger and into her palm. “It’s nothing,” she said, staring at it in
fascination.
Holding her wrist in his left hand, Nicholas produced a
pristine white handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped it around her hand.
“I can bandage myself perfectly well,” she said, even though
she seemed frozen in place.
For a short spell, his eyes held hers—deep blue comfort—then
focused on her palm again. “Sure,” he said, turning her hand over to tuck the
ends into the bandage. “There. That’ll keep long enough to stop the bleeding.”
After scanning the room, he took her elbow and led her to a
chair and table in front of the windows. A light summer breeze flowed over her
cold face. So soft, so mellow, so
normal
, in stark, paralyzing contrast
to the horror hiding in her trunk.
Nicholas took a seat across from her and said in his typical
no-nonsense manner, “O.K., spill the beans.”
She didn’t want to, for doing so meant facing it again.
Instead, she ran her eyes over his person. He’d washed up after the train trip,
and shaved and dressed in casual black eveningwear. “You have blood on your
gloves,” she observed.
Shrugging, he stripped them off and dropped them on the
table. “Have plenty more in my room. So what happened that made you answer the
door with a pitcher in your hand? Your face is as white as a ghost.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Doesn’t make you any less white.”
She took a deep breath. “It’s—it’s the trunk.”
Nicholas frowned at the evil thing in the center of the
room, then turned back to her again. “O.K. Sure. Reckon I can see how it’d
scare you,” he said, with a bemused twinkle in his eyes. “Paint eyes on it, and
a mouth around the opening, and it’d scare the bejesus out of me.”
A tiny flash of amusement marbled her panic. “It’s not the
trunk itself. It’s what’s in the trunk.”
“Ah,” he said, his confusion dissipating. “Find a spider
then? That’d turn me ghost white too.”
A little gurgle bubbled up her throat. “You’re not afraid of
spiders!”
“Sure as shootin’,” he said. Grinning, he leaned back in his
chair, and she had the distinct impression that if he’d been wearing his
Stetson, he’d have tilted it backwards. “Not them little ones, mind you. They
don’t bother me a’ tall,” he drawled, “but if’n it’s one o’ them big hairy
types, why that’s a different story altogether.”
“Of course, for you’ve never shot a rabid mountain lion as
cool as you please, and contemplated taking its pelt a mere two minutes later!”
He shrugged. “You can’t shoot a spider.”
“But you can step on it.”
“Don’t matter if it already bit ya. Don’t always see ’em
coming, not like a cougar. Spiders can be poisonous, ya know.”
“No spider, Nicholas McGraw,” she said, as merriment
controlled her voice, “would dare bite you, fearing that but one drop of your
blood would kill
it
!”
“Oh no, ma’am, I’m not venomous.”
“Ha!”
He smiled, glanced at the trunk, and said, “O.K. So what’s
in the trunk?”
She started, having forgotten about it. His silliness had
distracted her, relaxing her muscles and soothing her ragged nerves. Had he
done it on purpose? Of course he had. Another man would have plunged straight
into the problem. Another man would have attempted to sooth her frail female
sensibilities with platitudes and false assurances that he would handle the
situation for her. But not Nicholas. . . .
“It’s—well you see my clothes have been destroyed.”
Two identical furrows appeared between his eyebrows.
“Destroyed?”
“Yes. Someone took a pair of sheers to them.”
Lines of confusions formed around his eyes. “Sheers?” he
asked. His casual cowboy demeanor vanished as he rose and crossed the room to
lift the trunk lid. He froze, staring down at the bright confetti cloth. After
a short spell, he raised his eyes to hers. “All of them?”
She nodded, clutching the upholstered handle of her chair to
control the shaking that threatened to reclaim her body. The fabric was rough
but cool under her hands. “Yes. I slid my hand down to the bottom of the trunk
and . . . and nothing seemed intact. Not even—not even my unmentionables.”
“O.K.,” he said and looked down at the trunk again. “The
pieces of paper. I reckon it’s your speech.”
“And my notes.”
“Sure.” He closed the trunk with utmost care, as if suddenly
aware of the silence of the room. For all his effort, the tiny click rang out
harsh, final. “You got anything to drink?”
“I broke the pitcher.”
He closed his eyes for a moment longer than necessary. Then,
rubbing his neck, he crossed the room to retake his chair. “Sorry. I forgot.
How’s your hand?”
“I suppose it’s stopped bleeding. Would you like your
handkerchief back?”
“No, you keep it. I always have extra in case of trouble.”
Naturally. Nicholas, under his quiet, easygoing air, always
anticipated trouble. Perhaps that was the quintessential element in maintaining
his perpetual aura of confidence. He was prepared for anything.
He sat silently for a minute, his eyes focused on the floor.
She, on the other hand, focused on him and wondered what he was thinking and
where his thoughts were taking him. It was far easier than thinking herself.
“You hungry?” he asked finally, his gaze on her again.
She started. “Hungry?” Surely his thoughts were deeper than
that?
“Yeah. It’s been hours since we last ate. You must be
hungry. You didn’t show up for dinner.”
She’d forgotten all about dinner. “Oh—that’s why you came to
my room. Where are Del and Jane?”
“Del’s feeling poorly. They bowed out.”
“Due, no doubt, to his drinking on the train, which did
nothing but aggravate Jane further. You’d think he’d know better.”
Nicholas hesitated. “I expect he was trying to dull some of
the pain from that . . . fight.”
“Pain? I saw no signs.”
He looked at her, his eyes narrowed for a moment. “O.K.,” he
said at last, which meant in Nicholas-terms
I don’t agree with you but I
don’t care enough to argue
. “Tell you what, you wash up, fix yourself up as
best you can and I’ll mosey on down to the dining room and get us a table.”
“I’ve got nothing to wear,” she objected, although her
stomach was a tad empty, now that he mentioned it.
“You’ll have to wear what you’ve got on.”
She looked down at her crushed brown linen suit, with its
soot-stained cream and gold embroidered underskirt. “My traveling clothes?
Nicholas, they’re hopelessly stained and wrinkled, and were never appropriate
for dinner, at any rate. A lady wears a gown to dinner.”
A stubborn, mulish expression entered his eye. “It’s all you
have, and you’re too smart to starve because you aren’t dressed to the nines.
Don’t worry, tho’, I’ll make sure they seat us in a nice dark corner where
nobody’ll see you.”
She shook her head, exasperated. “You and I ensconced in a
dark corner will provoke gossip.”
“Less gossip, I expect, than you and I sitting here in your
room together.”
“Oh,” she said. “I hadn’t considered. Did anyone see you
enter my room, do you think?”
“No ma’am,” he reassured her. “Reckon I learned a thing or
two about back-East discretion. Now go on, do your best. You look great to me,
but women gotta fuss.” He stood. “See you in a few minutes?”
“All right,” she said with a sigh, for there was no use
arguing, not when her stomach was set to growl. As he strode to the door, she
rose and crossed to a mirror over the dressing table. “Nicholas?”
“Yeah?”
She looked at him in the mirror. “You’ll meet me at the
hotel desk, correct? A woman ought not to cross a lobby unescorted, you know,
not if she can avoid it.”
“Sure thing.”
***
True to his word, Nicholas found them a table in the corner
of the small dining room, dimly lit by low gas jets. Wanting to avoid
overwhelming Nicholas, Star had chosen a small hotel for their visit instead of
the more fashionable block-long Grand Union. Now her choice seemed prophetic,
for far fewer people would take note of her dishabille. Although she’d done her
best to remove stains with a wet cloth and had added pearls in an attempt to improve
the outfit, nothing could make it proper wear for dinner. As she pulled her
chair in, a surreptitious scan of the room, thankfully, revealed no familiar
faces. The knot in her shoulders eased.
“You look a mite better,” Nicholas observed from across the
table as she spread her napkin in her lap.
She gave him a little smile. “Why thank you, sir. Very kind
of you to remark on my previous state of squalor.”
He grinned as he opened the menu. “Just sayin’ as how you’ve
regained your color is all. Ah sh—shoot. This isn’t in English!”
She chuckled as she opened her own menu. “No, it’s French,
isn’t it?”
“I sure don’t understand you Eastern folk. Why are you so
obsessed with other languages? Isn’t plain old English good enough for you?”
“Apparently not. Do you need assistance in translating?”
“What I need is a steak. They got steak on this thing?”
“They do. Repeat after me—”
“No ma’am, I won’t. Can’t do it justice, no matter how much
I try,” he said closing the menu and placing it on the table with a decided slap.
“You order for me. Just make sure it’s steak and potatoes.”
She tilted her head in question. “You’d permit a woman to
order dinner for you? Doesn’t it harm your masculine sensibilities?”
“Ma’am,” he said with a twitch of his lips, “my mangling the
French language would do far more harm to your feminine sensibilities than you
could do to mine. Besides, my ‘sensibilities’, as you call them, are a
heckuvalot stronger than any words, either English or French.”
“It’s not the words,” she said, laying her menu down. “It’s
abdicating responsibility to a woman that might cause the harm.”
“Only if I do the abdicatin’ when there’s a rabid cougar
around. You aren’t such a great shot.”
A sudden sweet warmth surrounded her heart as she chuckled.
Oh, but it was so comfortably pleasurable to be with a man who wasn’t so
wrapped up in his sex that he must lord his superiority over
everything
.
“You seem determined, Nicholas, to bring that subject up time and time again.
It is very ill of you, sir! I assure you I don’t require daily reminders of my
poor marksmanship.”
“Poor? God-awful more like, and I’m going to remind you as
often as possible, so get used to it. Other than rowing, it’s the only thing
I’ve ever beat you at, and my ‘masculine sensibilities’ gotta have a daily
boost of confidence lessn’ you want them to be shot all to pieces.”
“In all the time I’ve known you, I have yet to see
anything
come close to harming your belief in yourself or your masculinity. And I
confess to having given it quite a few hits myself. I’m beginning to believe
it’s impregnable.”
His eyes gleamed back at her as the corner of his mouth
twitched. “More n’ likely, although I wouldn’t want you to holler calf-rope.
Never give up, that’s what I say.”
She laughed as the waiter approached them. “If you bang your
head against a brick wall too often, you’re ‘more n’ likely’ going to get
nothing other than the headache! That’s what
I
say. Ah, sir, if you
will,” she said turning to the waiter, “I shall be ordering for both of us.”
Lifting his eyebrows, the man, tall and thin with a
mustache, looked to Nicholas, who shrugged. “You heard the lady. My dinner is
in her hands.”
The waiter stared. He turned back to Star. “Why then, ma’am,
what may I bring you this evening?”
***
Sipping on his glass of water, Nicholas leaned back in his
chair and listened to Star order their dinner in the smoothest French. She
spoke effortlessly, like she’d been born in France. More important, though, her
voice was calm, not like it’d been when he’d entered her room. Having spent
most of his life fighting Indians, rustlers and the elements, it took a lot to
rattle Nick, but seeing her pale and trembling had shaken him to the core. The
last thing he wanted to do was bring up the blasted trunk. But he must. He
figured it’d be easier to talk over dinner than in her room with the trunk and
its contents sitting ten feet away, mocking him and his inability to protect
her.
Not that he was responsible for protecting her.
Those who were responsible weren’t here, though. At the last
minute, Lee had decided to remain behind to help the family with the yearly
relocation to Newport. And, Nick suspected, because that relocation had
intensified the strain between Jess and him.