Lisa Plumley - Notorious in the West

Here, he’d be left alone. If he wasn’t, he swore as he strode toward town, he’d use his considerable leverage to change that. After all, he owned at least half the property that Morrow Creek’s citizens had built their saloons and shops and stables and houses on. Until now, Griffin had been a genial absentee landlord, but that could change overnight. His new neighbors would give him what he wanted. He intended to make sure of that.

The Boston Beast had arrived. Soon everyone would know it—beginning with the staff of The Lorndorff Hotel, his first and last destination, where Griffin meant to make his home for the foreseeable future. If he had to, he’d take over the place.

He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. But as a pair of ragged miners saw him coming down the street, gave a yelp of surprise when they saw his face then scurried to the side to avoid him, Griffin changed his mind. Suddenly, he felt in the mood to crush anything or anyone that displeased him...and he felt like starting now. Grimly, he shook out his wild, dark hair, pulled his flat-brimmed hat low over his eyes and took himself off to The Lorndorff Hotel, where—if they knew what was good for them—everyone from the merest maid to the most autocratic manager would be on their toes. Otherwise, he’d know the reason.

* * *

In retrospect, Olivia Mouton knew she should have realized something was amiss from the moment she finished breakfast in the sunny dining room of her father’s Lorndorff Hotel and heard the bellman chin wagging with the desk clerk as she passed by.

“I heard he’s the terror of Boston,” the bellman was saying in a scandalized tone, “with eyes like the devil and a fancy dark coat that drags along on the ground when he stomps by—prob’ly on his way to put some orphans on a chain gang or some such.”

“Pshaw. The way I heard tell, he could put grown men on that chain gang of his and get no guff,” the clerk replied with an offhanded wave hello to Olivia. “I ain’t the one who saw him, mind, but the night clerk told me he was about seven feet tall—”

“Seven feet? Holy moly!”

“—with a fully loaded gun belt and knives strapped to both legs. Dressed all in black, he was. Couldn’t scarcely see his face, ’specially with all that hair. Like a mountain man—”

“I heard he brung a huge ole bag of money with him.”

“—only fancier,” the clerk said with a nod, “but with that same no-good attitude. As if he’d sooner sock you than say hello. I heard he commandeered the train that brung him. Forced ’em to turn off their track and go his way to Morrow Creek.”

At that, the bellman whistled, apparently impressed. “Do you reckon he’s really him? I know Mr. Mouton got that telegram yesterday, but I thought Griffin Turner was practically a ghost.”

“Nobody’s ever seen him,” the clerk agreed, “so I’d say—”

Olivia cleared her throat. “Gentlemen,” she said gently, “you know we’re not supposed to gossip about our guests. This is a guest of the hotel you’re discussing, I assume?”

Both men met her inquiry with disbelieving stares.

“You haven’t heard?” the bellman asked. “I heard about him even afore I got to the hotel for work! The whole town’s abuzz.”

This did not enlighten Olivia as much as she would have liked. Patiently, she said, “Well, the whole town’s not been here, in the hotel where I live,” she said with a good-natured smile—one that the bellman, who’d proposed to her just last month, returned readily. “Not yet. So I haven’t heard a thing.”

“It’s The Boston Beast,” the clerk confided, leaning on his desk. He nearly smudged his guest register and upset his inkwell in the process. “The Tycoon Terror. The Business Brute!”

The bellman nodded vigorously. “It’s him! Plain as day! Or night, at least. He didn’t even take his own private train car. He just showed up, lickety-split, in the middle of the night!”

“Hmm. The Boston Beast, eh? You’ve been reading those tabloid journals from the states again, haven’t you?” Olivia guessed, shifting her gaze from one talkative employee to the next. She shook her head. “I’m going to have to ask the O’Malley & Sons book agent to stop bringing them with her.”

“It ain’t the press. It’s the truth.” Wide-eyed, the desk clerk turned his guest register. He pointed at the aggressive scrawl penned on the very last line. “See? There’s his name!”

“His name?” Olivia stifled a grin. She raised her brows. “Would that be The Tycoon Terror or The Business Brute?”

“Just look!” The clerk waggled his finger at the scribble.

Dubiously, Olivia peered at it. “That could be anything. It looks as if an especially tetchy chicken got a hold of a pen.”

The bellman guffawed. He traded glances with the clerk, then returned his attention to her. “You’re funny, Miss Mouton.” He hitched up his suspenders, then nervously wet his lips. “I don’t s’pose you’ve given any more thought to my proposal?”

Uh-oh. That was Olivia’s cue to skedaddle. No good could come of it when men talked about marrying her. She’d spent the past several years dodging proposals, having learned long ago that finding what she truly wanted—a man who’d value her for her genuine self—was as likely as finding gold in a guppy bowl.

“I can think of little else,” she assured the bellman with a kindly touch to his forearm. She smiled. “I promise.”

“I know you’ve got other offers.” The bellman stared at her hand as though transfixed. “I know that. Everyone does. But I would surely be honored, Miss Mouton, if you would choose me.”

The clerk only chortled. “Now, hold on, there. You know Miss Mouton is famously picky. She ain’t gonna be choosing you.”

“Well, she’s got a right to be picky!” The bellman gulped. Chivalrously, he came to Olivia’s defense. “She’s a famous beauty. She’s recognized in every single state and territory.”

He gestured helpfully—and unnecessarily—at the rows of bottled patent elixir lining the shelf behind the hotel’s front desk. Every last one poked at Olivia’s guilty conscience. She’d traded her hopes for the future for a lithographed likeness of herself staring out from those bottles of Milky White Complexion Beautifier and Youthful Enhancement Tonic. Now she was stuck.

Her father, finally and evidently as proud as punch, had purchased a whole case for himself. He’d used it to decorate the entire hotel—and to distribute to the other businesses in town, as well. No place she went was free of that blasted bottle.

She only wished her father had been proud of her, not her face. She wished he’d recognized what was special about her.

On the other hand, maybe there wasn’t anything special about her, Olivia reasoned. Maybe she was just as useless and as needlessly celebrated as those bottles of elixir were.

After all, she’d looked into that peddler’s remedy shortly after it had debuted. Its ingredients were scientifically ineffective at best. All Milky White Complexion Beautifier and Youthful Enhancement Tonic had going for it was the unreasonable hope it could engender in otherwise rational people.

That bestselling remedy was just like her in that regard, Olivia realized as she caught another besotted look from the bellman. Somehow, she made people believe she had something they needed...when she knew she didn’t have anything tangible to give. She knew she was a fraud. She’d been hiding her nonbeautiful, less than prim, intellectual-stimulation-craving qualities for so long that she wasn’t even sure they existed anymore.

In truth, that was why Olivia had turned down so many marriage proposals. That was why she dallied with answering them, the way she’d done with the poor bellman. She didn’t want to disappoint anyone...but she did want to be more than an ornamental wife to a beauty-loving husband. She wanted everyone to see her as more than a beauty on a bottle first...and a person last.