Debra Brown - Rocky Mountain Marriage

She followed his gaze, then gasped, thunderstruck, as a hotel clerk snatched the Vacancy sign from the window.

“Told you they’d be full up. One of the big mines outside Fairplay struck a lode last month. Paid off today. The town’s crawling with miners who’ve got money to burn. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

She ignored him, marched up the steps to the hotel and threw herself on the mercy of the clerk. He had to find her a room. He just had to! Five minutes of pleading later, she was back on the street, fuming.

Chance leaned casually against the hitching post, his hat pushed back on his head, that irritating grin of his aimed right at her.

“I will not spend the night in that saloon.”

“You sure?”

“And I will not ride double with you on that horse.” It was out of the question. She never intended to be that close to him ever again.

“It’s either that or walk back. Silas doesn’t take to people, especially women. In fact, he’s downright ornery. Likely he’d buck you off if you tried to ride him solo.”

She eyed the horse. “He doesn’t look too terribly ominous. I’m sure I’ll manage.”

“So you will come back to the Flush with me.”

It appeared she had no choice, unless she wanted to sleep in the street. If she had to stay the night in a saloon, at least it would be her saloon and not one of the questionable-looking drinking establishments lining Last Call’s main street.

She approached the gelding and matter-of-factly untied him from the post. Silas looked at her, seemingly unconcerned. “I’m not with you, Mr. Wellesley. I’m simply borrowing your horse.”

“Whoa, wait a minute. I meant what I said about him not liking women. It’s too dangerous for you to—”

She ignored him and mounted without incident, then arranged her skirts as modestly as possible under the circumstances. Silas glanced back at her, waiting.

“Well I’ll be a—” He gawked, first at the horse, then at her.

“A what?” she said, casting him a smug expression. A number of nouns, all of them improper, came to mind.

He smiled suddenly, his gaze heating with the same underlying carnality he’d exhibited in the saloon. She swayed a bit on the horse.

“Come on,” he said, and took Silas’s reins from her hand. “I’ll lead.”

C hance Wellesley knew a sure bet when he saw one.

He sat in the window seat of the upstairs room he rented at the Royal Flush and, through a pair of opera glasses he’d won off a Denver politician in a poker game, watched Miss Eudora Elizabeth Fitzpatrick scribbling madly into what he’d thought last night was a bible.

“Well I’ll be damned. It’s a diary!”

He would have given his last plug nickel to know what she was writing in it.

She’d made quite the commotion when they’d returned to the saloon last night. Delilah had tried to set her up in her father’s old room, but the intractable Miss Fitzpatrick would have none of it. He laughed, recalling the look of horror on her face when Delilah had suggested it.

In the end, a few of the girls fixed up one of the cabins out back for her, and there she’d passed the night. He’d been up since dawn, waiting to see what she’d do next. Everybody knew schoolteachers rose early, and Wild Bill’s daughter proved to be no exception.

She sat at the desk under the cabin’s single window, her back straight as a washboard, her lips pressed into a tight line, penning God knows what into that little red book of hers. In the morning light she looked different than she had last night. Younger, softer, almost pretty.

He ran a hand over his beard stubble, then took a swig of hot coffee to clear his head. “You’re seeing things, Wellesley.”

After wiping the lenses of the opera glasses with his handkerchief, he looked at her again. Nope. Nothing different, after all. Just a trick of the morning light. She had the same dishwater-blond hair, pale skin and wore the ugliest gray dress he’d ever seen.

Not that it mattered. She was a woman, and women generally liked him. He didn’t have to like her. He’d made a bad start of things last night. Today he’d do better. By sundown she’d be mooning over him, and he’d know everything he needed to know about what her father might have told her before he died.

He’d spent six long months at the Royal Flush, watching and waiting for Wild Bill to make a slip. He’d come too far to quit now. Maybe his daughter knew something the rest of the folks around here didn’t.

Maybe she knew where the money was.

Dora capped her fountain pen and sighed. She’d spent a sleepless night on a lumpy mattress huddled under a pile of musty blankets. The potbelly stove had gone out in the middle of the night, and when she’d gotten up to relight it she realized she had no matchsticks. This morning she’d found an old flint on the floor near the coal bin and in no time was toasty warm again.

“Now, one last thing…” She slid her father’s final letter to her out of her diary and carefully reread every word.

The small brass key that had accompanied it was still tucked safely away in her pocket. She fished it out and held it up to the sunlight streaming through the window. It had an odd marking on it, one she couldn’t decipher. She was certain the key fit something, but what? Nowhere in the letter had her father mentioned it. Why would he send her a key and not tell her what it opened?

She had to admit, the enigma sparked her curiosity and appealed to her intellect. In secret, the past few months she’d been reading mystery novels in her room at night. Her mother, God rest her soul, would have been shocked had she known.

Dora had begun her diary shortly after discovering her father’s letters to her. In it she wrote her most private feelings and thoughts, in addition to faithfully recording her observations regarding any unusual events. She’d learned something from those mystery novels, after all.

Her journey to Last Call and the Royal Flush counted as perhaps the most unusual event of her life, and so she’d decided to record everything, including descriptions of the people she met. She’d wasted half a dozen pages this morning on Chance Wellesley alone. Perhaps now she could banish him from her mind.

She returned her thoughts to the letter and read the most cryptic paragraph again.

I know I haven’t been much of a father to you, Dora, but rest assured, your financial future is secure. I’ve left you something at the ranch. Something only you, seeing as how smart you are, will recognize. It’s the Chance of a lifetime, Dora. Take it.

She held the key up to the sunlight and studied it closely. “The chance of a lifetime.” Whatever did he mean? As she pondered her father’s parting words, her eyes refocused on an upstairs window of the house.

She gasped and dropped the key.

Chance Wellesley dropped his opera glasses. The insufferable man was spying on her!

He made it to the bottom of the spiral staircase a second before she burst through the kitchen into the saloon.

“How dare you!”

“Coffee?” he said, motioning toward the bar, where the bartender was pouring himself a cup. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you look like you could use it.”

“You were watching me from that window.”

There it was again, that trick of the light. She was pretty when she was mad, despite the ugly dress. Her eyes were gunmetal gray, he noticed for the first time, and flashed him a murderous look in response to his smile.

“Explain yourself.”

He shrugged. “I can’t. Guilty as charged.”

“So you admit you were watching me?”

“I do. Now, how about that coffee? I know I could use another cup.”