Debra Brown - Rocky Mountain Marriage

She took stock of her surroundings, as if she’d just now realized she was standing in the saloon. It wasn’t much to see this time of the morning. Delilah and the girls were still asleep, and the bar didn’t usually open until ten, not until two on Sundays. Wild Bill had had standards, after all. For regulars like himself it was different, of course.

“Miss Fitzpatrick?” The bartender held out a cup to her. “Could rustle you up some breakfast if you like.”

“No, I, um…” She calmed herself down—for the bartender’s benefit, not his, he presumed. “Yes, a cup of coffee would be wonderful.” She walked up to the bar and he set the cup down in front of her. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure. Cream?”

“Yes, please. And sugar, if you have it.”

“Comin’ right up.”

Chance watched her as she fixed her coffee, doing the best she could to ignore him.

“I don’t think we were properly introduced last night. You are…?”

“James Parker, ma’am. But you can just call me Jim. We’re pretty informal around here.”

“Jim, then.” She nodded, looking past him along the bar, which hadn’t been wiped down from last night, to the pile of dirty glasses in the sink. The floor was littered with cigar butts and sticky with spilled beer.

“Oh, I, uh…” Jim cast her a sheepish look. “I meant to get this mess cleared up last night, but you know how it is.”

She wasn’t listening to him. Chance followed her gaze to the portrait above the bar. Her pale cheeks flushed the most disarming shade of scarlet he’d ever seen.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

She instantly averted her eyes. “Yes. No. I’m perfectly fine.”

He hadn’t been up long, and while he was wearing trousers and boots, his shirt was only half buttoned. Her gaze drifted to the opening, lingering on his chest hair. He knew she’d come around. They always did.

Their eyes met, and true to form she blushed hotter and turned her attention back to her coffee. He was beginning to enjoy this.

“Don’t like that painting much, do you?”

“No. No, I don’t.”

“Well, it’s your place now. You could always take it down.”

“Take it down?” Jim, who was hastily wiping the bar down, froze in midstroke.

“That won’t be necessary. I told you. I’m selling the place as soon as possible.”

“Selling it?” Jim had worked at the Flush since Wild Bill opened the place. He didn’t look happy about the prospect of losing his job.

“Yes. In fact, I’m going into town this morning to see a lawyer.”

“But, uh, Miss Fitzpatrick…” Jim ran a hand over his balding head, then toyed nervously with the ends of his moustache. “Your pa wouldn’t have wanted you to sell the place. Not right away, at least.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask someone.” She drew herself up in what Chance was beginning to think of as her schoolteacher pose, and said, “How did my father die?”

“You mean you don’t know?” Jim tossed him one of those you-tell-her looks.

“He was shot,” Chance said. “Right here in this very room.”

She sucked in a breath, and from the stunned look in her eyes he knew her surprise was real and not fabricated.

“W-who did it?”

“Nobody knows.” But he was going to find out, if it was the last thing he did. “It was a Saturday night. The saloon was packed. We heard the shot, and he just went down.”

“Right here,” Jim said, nodding at the floor behind the bar.

“You were here? Both of you?”

“Sitting right over there, playing cards.” He cocked his head toward one of the tables.

“I dropped a tray of beer mugs in the doorway there.” Jim nodded toward the kitchen. “Glass everywhere.” He shook his head. “Damned shame.”

“Excuse me?”

“About your pa, I mean, not the glass.”

“Oh, of course.” She stared past Jim at the dark stain on the well-worn pine flooring behind him, where William Fitzpatrick’s blood had soaked the unvarnished wood.

Chance caught himself feeling sorry for her. He downed the rest of his coffee and adjusted his attitude. He had a job to do, and it was time to get some answers. “Your father, uh, write you any letters before he died?”

She snapped to attention, her spine straightening, and cast him a suspicious look. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason.” He shrugged convincingly.

Not ten minutes ago he’d watched her read a two-page letter he’d mistaken last night for prayer sheets. His first erroneous impression of her and that red leather-bound book had cost him time. No matter, he thought as he noticed the diary and the letter sandwiched inside it poking out from the pocket of her dress. He’d get his hands on it soon enough.

Jim leaned toward her in his bartender-like “you can trust me” slouch, which Chance had seen him use with great success in wheedling information out of the most secretive of customers. “Your pa didn’t, uh, mention that he’d left you anything special here, did he?”

Chance went statue-still.

“What do you mean? Left me what?”

Jim looked at him, but Chance didn’t come to his rescue this time. He was busy viewing Jim Parker with new eyes.

“Well, uh, anything. Important papers, family keepsakes…” Jim ran a sweaty palm over his balding pate. “…valuables, maybe?”

“Valuables? You mean like jewelry or money?” Her frown deepened. She looked around the room again, this time with renewed interest.

“Oh, uh…” Jim looked away. He grabbed a wet towel and began wiping down the bar. Chance had never seen him so agitated. “Was just a rumor I heard, is all.”

Chance watched her closely to see if her gaze lingered too long on any one area of the saloon. It didn’t. “I suspect Miss Fitzpatrick doesn’t much believe in rumors.”

“You’re right,” she said curtly, avoiding his eyes. “I don’t. I base all my decisions on facts.”

She tried to mask her natural reaction to the painting over the bar when her gaze darted past it, but couldn’t. He smiled inwardly. Her prudish sensibilities were predictable, and that would make his job all the easier.

Eventually she dropped her gaze to the letter sticking out of her diary. He could tell by the twitch of her hand against her pocket that she fought the urge to take it out and read it again in front of them.

He had to know what was in that letter.

She caught him staring at it, and abruptly turned away.

“Well,” she said to Jim. “I’ll be going into town now, Mr. Parker. Is there a buggy or some other kind of conveyance I might borrow?”

“The place is yours, Miss Fitzpatrick. Take whatever, uh…conveyance you like.” He nodded in the direction of the kitchen door. “One of the boys out back will set you up.”

“I could take you in,” Chance said and risked a smile.

She arched a disapproving brow at him as if he’d suggested they run buck-naked together down to the creek and jump in. Hmm. He gave her dowdily clothed figure another once-over and thought the notion wasn’t a half bad idea.

Her nostrils flared. “That won’t be necessary.” She turned away. “Thank you again, Mr.—”

“Jim,” the bartender said.

“Jim, then.” She dropped a smile on him, and after a cautionary glance in Chance’s direction, she turned on her heel and marched out the way she’d come in.

Chance set his empty cup down on the bar and figured he had just enough time to finish dressing, grab his hat and saddle up Silas before she was gone.

“You’re not really thinking of selling the place, are you?” Jim called after her.

Wild Bill’s daughter didn’t answer.

For the second time in as many days Chance Wellesley followed her to town. Dora didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking back at him. Not once. Well, maybe once, but that had been a mistake. Her hat had flown off in a gust of wind, and she’d stopped to retrieve it a second before he caught up with her. He’d tipped his hat to her and smiled. She’d promptly ignored him.