Ричард Деминг - She’ll Hate Me Tomorrow

“Good God!” she murmured when he finally rolled aside and pulled her head against his shoulder. “I didn’t know there were men in the world like you.”

Then, with a little sigh, she went into a deep sleep.

Ross slept until noon, and awoke to find the pillow beside him empty. Singing came from the direction of the kitchen. Donning a robe and slippers, he went to investigate.

Stella, fully dressed, stood before the electric stove. Eggs and bacon were frying and the percolator emitted the satisfying odor of fresh coffee.

“Where’d you find the food?” he asked. “I never keep the larder stocked because I eat downstairs.”

“I raided the downstairs kitchen. I left my shoe between the elevator doors so I could get back in.”

“The chef will probably call the police,” Ross told her. “He keeps a neurotically exact inventory.”

Coming over to him, she took his chin and gave him a resounding kiss on the lips. “I’m sure you’ll bail me out. I’ll give you three minutes, if you want to brush your teeth, but you haven’t time to shave.”

It was a pleasant breakfast. Momentarily Ross found himself wondering if there wasn’t some advantage to domestic life, but immediately he killed the thought. As agreeable as it was to have a cheerful and shapely young woman across the breakfast table from him, it didn’t quite counterbalance the advantages of bachelorhood, he decided.

For one thing, marriage, to him, would mean monogamy, and he wasn’t quite ready to settle down with one woman for the rest of his life.

At a quarter of four, just before the club opened, Bix Lawson phoned. Ross took the call in his office.

“George Mott and Bull Hatton caught the seven a.m. plane to Chicago,” Lawson said. “Thought you’d like to know.”

“Good for them,” Ross said. “Bull Hatton is Beanhead’s name, eh?”

“Huh?”

“Just a little private joke between Bull and me. How’d they feel?”

“Roaring mad. Whitey Cord won’t take a slap like this, Clancy. If you don’t back down at least part-way, he’ll move fifty guns into town to take that girl.”

“What do you mean, back down part-way?”

“Well, if you won’t give the girl up, will you at least ship her out of town so I can tell Cord she ain’t being harbored in St. Stephen? We’d have to come up with some kind of proof that she’s really gone. Maybe rig a clear trail to, say, Kansas City, then have it go cold there. Whitey is still going to be mad, but I don’t think he’d move in on the town. He’s businessman enough not to waste guns on revenge. All he wants is the girl.”

“Sort of let her skip from town to town for the rest of her life, you mean? With one eye over her shoulder all the time?”

“For Christ’s sake, Clancy!” Lawson exploded. “She can’t mean that much to you. According to Mott, she can’t have been in town more than ten or eleven days.”

“Stella hasn’t done a thing to anybody,” Ross said, “except learn something — unfortunately and accidentally — which could put Whitey Cord in the chair. She has the right to walk down the street without fear. She stays right here.”

“Is that your final word?” Lawson demanded.

“Uh-huh.”

“You’ve got a head like a brick,” Lawson said, and hung up.

For the next few days Stella left the club only when escorted by Ross. She continued to work at her cloakroom job, spending her nights in Ross’ apartment.

On the Monday morning four days after the departure from town of George Mott and Bull Hatton, Stella and Ross were breakfasting in the third-floor apartment when she said tentatively, “You think it would be safe to move back to my room now, Clancy?”

His black eyebrows raised. “Getting bored here?”

“Oh, no,” she said quickly. “I love it every night when—” She broke off and blushed a furious red.

“When what?” he asked with delighted amusement.

“I meant to say, I like being here with you,” she said primly. “It just started to come out wrong. I don’t think those men will come back. I shouldn’t impose on you any more.”

“It’s hardly an imposition, the way I’ve been making use of your soft white body.”

Her color had started to fade, but now she blushed again. “You’re making fun of me.”

“No, I’m not. Just building up to making fun with you.”

She had started to raise her coffee cup, but she set it down again and gave him an interested look.

“Any-time Annie,” he said wickedly. “The only time she ever said no, she didn’t understand the question.”

Leaping to her feet, she stood glaring down at him. With a lithe movement he got to his feet, moved around the table and took her in his arms. Momentarily she struggled, her expression angry, then suddenly her arms shot around his neck and her lips came up to his.

“All right,” she whispered. “So I’m a pushover for you. I’m not for just anybody.”

“That’s the way I want you,” he said, sweeping her up into his arms and heading for the bedroom. “I think I’ll keep you around a while longer.”

“As long as you want,” she murmured into his neck. “When I get to be a nuisance, just tell me and I’ll go.”

It was an hour later before they got around to their second cup of coffee.

That same evening, about midnight, Ross was making a tour of the gaming room when a striking brunette in a low-cut black evening gown approached him. Several times earlier he had noticed her at the roulette table and wondered who she was, for he had never spotted her in the club before.

About thirty, she had smooth, dusky skin and sensual lips which pouted as though they had been freshly bitten. A small, attractive but slightly flat nose and almond-shaped eyes gave her a faintly oriental look. Slim-waisted, she had a bosom like a pouter pigeon, a good deal of it exposed by her low-cut gown.

“You’re Clancy Ross, aren’t you?” she inquired in a husky voice.

“Uh-huh.”

“My name is Christine Franklin. I’ve been having a run of bad luck, and they tell me I have to see you to cash a check.”

“That’s right, miss—” Glancing at her left hand, which bore a sparkling diamond and a wedding band, he amended it to, “Mrs. Franklin. How large a check do you want to cash?”

“Five hundred.”

“Hmm. Are you local?”

Shaking her head, she drew a white card from her evening bag and handed it to him. The card read: FRANKLIN REAL ESTATE COMPANY, INC. and gave a Kansas City address and phone number. In the lower left hand corner was printed: GORDON FRANKLIN, PRESIDENT

“Gordie is my husband,” she explained. “I’m vacationing here.”

“I see. If you’ll step into my office for a minute I can probably accommodate you.”

He escorted her out into the foyer and down the hall to his office. Stella, behind the cloakroom counter, gave the brunette an appraising look as they passed.

Inside the office the woman gave a quick glance around, noting the huge mahogony desk, the fireplace in one wall, the small bar along the opposite wall, and the single surrealistic painting over the desk. Her face registered approval at Ross’ decorating taste. Approaching the bar, she placed her evening bag on it and opened it.

“You’ll want some identification other than my husband’s business card, I suppose.”

“Naturally,” the gambler said pleasantly.

Drawing a wallet from the bag, she produced a Missouri driver’s license made out to Mrs. Christine Franklin. Glancing at the physical description, Ross noted that she was five feet five, weighed a hundred and twenty-four pounds, had black hair and brown eyes. Her age was given as thirty-one.