Debra Lee Brown - Rocky Mountain Marriage

She’d rather walk the two miles back to Last Call in the dark than stay here another second. Tomorrow she’d see a lawyer in town. Perhaps he could straighten everything out for her, and she’d never have to set foot in this place again.

Chance Wellesley tipped his hat to her. “Have a safe trip to wherever it is you’re going, Miss…? You never did tell me your name.”

This time he looked at her as if she were wearing little more than the redhead in the painting above the bar. Never in her life had she met a man so insufferable.

“Fitzpatrick,” she said, louder than perhaps she should have, but then she was mad. She always did have a temper. One day it would catch up with her, her mother had been fond of saying. “Eudora Elizabeth Fitzpatrick.”

“Well, what do you know?” the bartender said.

She felt Chance Wellesley’s eyes on her as she marched toward the swinging doors, men scattering before her like spooked quail.

“Wild Bill Fitzpatrick has a daughter!”

She had sturdy boots and strong legs. Two miles on a good road under a full moon was next to nothing. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the longest, most unpleasant two miles of Dora’s life.

“Will you please stop following me!”

Chance reined his mount alongside her and picked up the pace to match hers. “I’m not following you, particularly. I’m just heading into town.”

“Why?”

He’d stormed out the door of the Royal Flush after her, and had tried, but failed, to dissuade her from leaving. He’d gone so far as to suggest there’d be no accommodations for her in town. She knew better. Besides, her mind was made up. She refused to spend another second in that saloon.

“No reason. Just exercising old Silas here.”

She glanced at his mount, a tall black-and-white gelding. A paint. As horses went, Silas appeared to be an agreeable animal. Too bad the man riding him was not.

“You left your trunk behind,” Chance said. “Better hope no one steals it.”

“The bartender said he’d put it away for me. Besides, there’s nothing important in it.” Which was a lie. The letters her father had written her over the years, letters her mother had kept from her and that she’d only just discovered after Caroline Fitzpatrick’s funeral, were secreted away in the lining. “Everything I need I have with me.”

Including the small brass key that had been tucked inside the envelope of his last letter to her, the letter informing her of her inheritance. She patted it inside the pocket of her dress as she walked. She had no idea what the key opened. On the stagecoach from Colorado Springs she’d been excited by the mystery. Now she just wanted to get as far away from the Royal Flush as possible.

“You should have said something when you first arrived, about you being Wild Bill’s daughter.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call him that.” Though it did seem fitting. Her childhood had been peppered with stories of her father’s wicked ways. It had been her mother’s way of insuring Dora steered away from men like that. Men like the man riding beside her, who, despite her numerous protests, seemed intent on escorting her back to town.

“Why not? Everyone called him that. Besides, he liked the name.”

“Did he? Well, that doesn’t surprise me.”

“You sound angry.”

“I’m not angry. I’m just…” Confused was what she was, though she’d never in a million years admit it to the likes of Chance Wellesley.

She barely remembered her father. Growing up, all she’d known of him was what her mother had told her, and Caroline Fitzpatrick hadn’t painted a very pretty picture. Dora had believed every word of it—until she’d found the letters.

“Funny he never told me.”

“Told you what?”

“That he had a daughter.”

Dora stopped and looked at him. “Why would he? He left when I was five. I haven’t seen him since.” But he’d seen her.

In his letters, her father had described his visits to Colorado Springs over the years, how he’d watch her from afar on her way to school or leaving church on Sundays. They were full of fatherly observations and practical advice. The last one, the one tucked carefully into her diary and that she’d read over and over on the stagecoach, had said how proud he was the day she’d become a teacher.

“That doesn’t sound like Bill.”

Now, after reading his letters, she didn’t know what to believe. Why hadn’t he made himself known to her? And why had her mother told her he didn’t want her, that he didn’t care? Her mother had obviously lied, but why?

“You talk as if you’d known him well. Did you?”

He sat back in the saddle, toying with what looked like a watch fob that hung from a short chain attached to his belt. “As well as anyone, I guess. I spent a lot of time in that saloon.”

“Yes, you would, wouldn’t you? Given your profession.”

“My profession.” He smiled at her in the moonlight, and for a moment she caught herself thinking how handsome he was. “You say it like it’s a dirty word.”

“Well, you are a gambler, and you do work in a saloon.”

“A saloon you own.”

The reminder shocked her to her senses. She pulled her cloak tightly about her and continued her march toward town. “I plan to sell it, if you must know. That and whatever ranch land goes with it.”

“Good luck. You’ll find out soon there aren’t any buyers.”

“Really? I’m not stupid, Mr. Wellesley, despite what you may think of me on first impression. My father’s business appeared quite robust.”

The rich sound of his laughter in the dark sent a shiver straight through her.

“You have no idea what I think of you, Miss Fitzpatrick, and if you did, I suspect you’d slap me.”

Of all the nerve! Dora quickened her pace.

“And robust it may be, though I’ve never heard a saloon described quite that way before.”

“I’m certain you know what I mean.” The image of a scantily clad employee waiting with a drunken cowboy in the long line outside one of the upstairs bedrooms popped unbidden into her mind.

He laughed. “I know exactly what you mean.”

“Hmph.” She kept walking, curtailing any further conversation with him. Though she didn’t know what to believe anymore—her mother’s warnings or her father’s adulation—one thing was clear to her.

Chance Wellesley was trouble.

He trotted along beside her, whistling bawdy tunes, while at the same time making certain she moved safely off the road when carriages rumbled by. She thought that bit of chivalry amusing, given his character.

Why was he so interested in her? What would provoke a gambler she’d never laid eyes on before tonight to give up an evening of card-playing to see a schoolteacher on her way? She didn’t know and she didn’t care. She just wanted to get away from him.

When at last they reached town, she headed straight down the muddy main street toward Last Call’s only hotel, the one she’d spied that afternoon when she’d first arrived.

“There’s something you ought to know about your, uh, inheritance.” He didn’t say saloon, and for that she was grateful. To think she actually owned the place!

“What’s that?” she said curtly, refusing to look at him again.

“Your father owed a lot of money to a lot of people, some of them not so nice. The Flush is likely mortgaged to the hilt. The ranch land, too.”

“How would you know?”

“Let’s just call it a hunch.”

“I don’t believe in hunches, Mr. Wellesley.” The bank was just ahead, across the street next to a law office. She’d make visits to both establishments first thing tomorrow morning.

“No?”

“No.” She shot him a hard look to make the point, then stopped in front of the hotel, relieved that the Vacancy sign she’d seen earlier that afternoon was still displayed in the window. “Well, here we are.”