by Sarah Hegger
“I do keep them in line.”
“It sure don’t look like that to me.” Jake looked dazed as Minnie kept snuffling on his neck and scratching up his chest. “You get them in line, Ellie. Or someone who can will run the girls.”
“Are you threatening me?” Theo would never have tolerated Jake and his cheap, bold hussy of a fiancée trying to shove her aside. Theo would have started by slinging Minnie out on her round ass.
“I’m just saying.” Jake grabbed Minnie’s arm and hauled her onto his lap. “And which of the girls is going to make up the money we’re losing with Kitty and Maisy not working?” He looked at her over Minnie’s shoulder. “You?” His cold, hard gaze let her know he meant it too.
Ellie got herself right out of there.
She made her way to the kitchen on shaky legs. Jake had threatened her. Not only with taking the girls away from her, but also with the possibility of her turning into one of the girls.
Theo would have Jake’s head, but Theo wasn’t here, and none of them had heard from him in six months.
“Sweetie?” Pearl looked up from kneading bread as Ellie walked into the kitchen. She stopped and dusted her hands on her apron. “What happened? You look like someone scared years off your life.”
“Jake.” Ellie dropped into the nearest chair and propped her elbows on the table. “He’s mad about Maisy and Kitty.”
“That woman is trouble.” Pearl slammed her hands into her dough. “I saw it the moment she walked in here. Some whores live for stirring up trouble.”
“I didn’t want Jake to hire Kitty.”
“Sweetie, I’m not talking about Kitty.” Pearl pointed her floured finger toward Jake’s office. “I’m talking about Minnie.”
Ellie traced patterns in the flour on the table. “She says she’s not one. Jake swears she isn’t.”
Snorting, Pearl flipped the dough on the table. “I made my living on my back for long enough to know a whore when I see one.” She slammed the dough again. “And that’s one all right. Now, she’s got it as has her spreading for only one man. That kinda situation, she’s gonna hang on to, and she’s gonna be mean as she does it.”
From the moment Minnie had come into their lives, she’d set her sights on Ellie. “And I’m in her way.”
“You sure are.” Pearl shook her head. She had come to them years ago, too old to work and starving. Ellie had taken Pearl on as a cook, and she had become the closest thing to a mother Ellie had ever had. Needless to say, Jake wasn’t fond of Pearl either. Pearl spoke her mind, and she didn’t care who you were when she did.
Leaning forward, Pearl caught her hands. “You watch yourself around that one, sweetie. She don’t got no sense of right and wrong. All she got is a sense of what Minnie wants.”
“Ugh!” Ellie wished with everything in her she was still sitting under her shady porch and reading her book. Not that she had said anything to her brothers, but Ellie had never loved running the girls. Lately it had been getting harder and harder to care. “Maybe I should step aside and let Minnie have at it.”
“You could do that.” Pearl shaped her bread into loaves. “But that don’t mean she’s not gonna come after you anyway. That girl don’t want anyone near her patch.”
“I wish Theo was here.”
Pearl sniffed. “But he ain’t, and you’re gonna have to get through this on your own.”
“Jake even hinted at me working.” Saying it aloud sent a shiver of fear snaking down her spine. The look in Jake’s eyes as he’d said that had put the fear of God into her.
Going still, Pearl looked at her. “Working?”
Ellie pointed upstairs to the bedrooms and nodded. “Working.”
“Ah hell, no!” Pearl ruffled up like a chicken. “You didn’t spend all these years guarding your treasure to have that Minnie bitch give it away.”
“Treasure?” That made her giggle. Pearl could sound like a church matron sometimes. “One thing’s for sure. I’m the only virgin in this house.”
Chapter Two
Cole pushed open the doors to the Four Kings and a Queen Saloon and took a moment on the doorstep to let the unadulterated gaudiness of the place assault his eyeballs.
Gold, tassels, red velvet, mirrors and gleaming wood all fought for dominance amongst the beat-down miners, dirty cowboys and hardened characters who came to Colorado to escape a past it would earn you a gut shot to ask about.
Despite his sore ass from sitting a horse all day, the huge gold-framed painting of Sugar Ellie, which hung behind the bar, made him smile. His days of living in the saddle were over, and he’d grown soft.
Silas caught sight of him and gave him a gap-toothed grin as he called across the bar. “Well, lookee here. It’s Cole “Whisky” Mansfield alive and kicking. Guess that was a bad wind blowin’ in trouble all right.”
Heads snapped his way. A couple of those faces he knew.
He nodded in the direction of a couple of greetings as he made his way to the bar. Tapping his hat on his leg, he created a miniature dust storm around him. It looked like they were badly missing some rain in these parts.
A big mean looking son of a bitch at the bar locked eyes with him. The lessons learned when he was a greenhorn out west were instinct now, and he didn’t flinch, not so much as a twitch to let big, bad all dressed in black know how Cole felt about him.
Big Bad looked away.
“Silas.” Cole held out his hand. “You got fat. Sugar Ellie feeding you too much?”
Silas hissed a chuckle from between his missing teeth. “You know Miss Ellie.”
“Sweet as the day is long.” Cole gave him the expected response. “You got any decent whisky behind that bar?”
“Not for the likes of you.” Silas winked but bent and pulled out a bottle of the decent stuff. Cole had spent a lot of time in the saloon during his wanderings. Enough time to earn him his own bottle behind the bar, and he never drank the cheap cat piss Silas served up to everybody else.
Including Big Bad at the end of the bar.
Cole lifted his glass and toasted the man. “Give one to my new friend,” he said to Silas.
From the painting above the bar, Sugar Ellie gazed at Cole over her shoulder, an impish smile on her pretty face like she knew what those curves of hers did to a man.
Theo had commissioned the painting years back. That’s how long Cole had been coming here. There used to be some lewd knockoff of an overblown Titian up there before Ellie had taken over.
“Sugar Ellie.” Cole raised his glass to her. The reason his ass ached from spending all day on a horse.
Silas filled him up again. “Ain’t nobody sweeter.”
The second one went down easier than the first.
Sugar Ellie perched on a chair in the painting, her bare legs to the side, the curve of her ass visible above the chair’s cushion. The long, ivory sweep of her bare back was creamy and smooth, and Cole had not been the first man, and he wouldn’t be the last, to want to stroke that flesh.
“She real?” Big Bad gestured to Ellie with his glass.
Cole took a moment to answer. “Yeah.” Ellie was real enough, only he had never gotten over the sense that Sugar Ellie kept the real Ellie well out of sight. “If anything, it doesn’t do her justice.”
Big Bad whistled through his teeth. “I’d like to get me some of her.”
“You’re outta luck, mister.” Silas got there while Cole tried to master the violent streak of possessiveness that shot through him. Silas turned and gazed up at the painting. “Sugar Ellie ain’t for nobody to taste.”
Silas’s protectiveness toward Ellie had always mystified Cole. The woman ran a whorehouse, for God’s sake. She’d probably had more men between her thighs than he’d had hot cups of coffee. She also had four mean brothers to back her up when she said no.
His jealousy probably had more to do with the vexing fact that he’d never gotten between those beautiful thighs of hers, not for coaxing and charming, and not for an outr
ageous sum of money either.
Silas leaned his elbows on the bar in front of Cole. “Where you been?”
“Busy.” Cole shrugged off the question. Silas knew better than to press for details.
“It’s been a while.” Silas wiped the gleaming bar and went to pour two beers for a cowboy.
Cole worked out how long a while was. Damn! It had been near enough a year since he’d made his way to Sugar Ellie’s door. He hadn’t lied to Silas. He had gotten busy. Business in Denver was booming and taking up more and more of his time. Finally, though, his hard work had paid off enough for him to reap the rewards.
After his goodbyes, he was heading back east. He had twelve years to make up for and to get back what he’d lost by being young and stupid. Some part of him might miss the dusty trails and blazing heat that had made a man out of a spoiled boy.
This country had come close to breaking him more times than he could count, but it had also hardened him, fused his purpose and straightened his backbone.
Silas returned and leaned his elbows on the bar. “Sure has been hot.”
“The trail was dry as bone.”
“Yeah.” Silas shook his head. “Word is there’s been some fires starting up on the front range. Dang things raging for days before they burned themselves out.”
Cole shared Silas’s concern. Fires were disastrous and could wipe out a town before you even blinked. After another sip of whisky, Cole voiced the question he’d been dying to ask and jerked his head at the painting. “How is she?”
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” Ellie poked Cole in the back. “You yellow bellied snake. Slithering back in here like you’ve never been gone.”
Cole turned and snatched the fan Ellie had jammed in his back like a six-shooter. “Hey, Sugar Ellie. Miss me?”
“Don’t know if I’d go that far.” Her velvety brown eyes laughed up at him. “But I did wonder if you were dead.”
“They’d have to catch me to kill me.” He leaned close enough to whisper in her ear. She smelled like roses. “And that’s not going to happen.” Being near Ellie made the blood pound thicker in his veins and gave him that sense of wild and free that he’d craved as a younger man.
Ellie leaned her elbows on the bar. Her breasts swelled white and plump over the edge of her bright red corset. “I got the book you sent me.”
“Moll Flanders?”
“That’s the one.” She slipped open her fan and waved it in front of her face. “It’s good, although I enjoyed the last one more.”
He had taken to sending her books years ago, when they’d both discovered a mutual love of reading. Of course, Ellie had taught herself to read slowly and painfully. “Which one was that?”
“Pride and Prejudice.” Ellie sighed and looked incongruously young and innocent. “Such a romantic story.”
Cole didn’t know how old Ellie was. Whenever he’d asked, he’d gotten the same answer. “As old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.”
He always got the sense she was much younger than people realized. If she was younger, that would put her in her early twenties and meant she must have started selling her body when she was still mostly a child, and he didn’t like thinking too hard on that. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a romantic.”
Gaze sharpening, she cocked her head. “Because I own a cathouse?”
“Mostly.”
She sniffed. “You’d be surprised what we whores like.”
Although nothing showed on her face, he got the sense he had offended her, and he needed to lighten the mood. “Speaking of. How much are we up to now?”
“More than you can afford.”
Her gamine grin stirred his libido. Sexual tension crackled in the air between them. For the life of him, Cole never got why she kept saying no. He wasn’t a conceited man, but he’d gotten his fair share of female attention over the years. “Try me.”
“Twenty,” she said.
“Thousand?”
“Yup.” She giggled and pressed her breasts against his chest. “And it still won’t get you a night in my bed.”
Cole let his gaze feast on her tempting flesh. His body woke like it always did to Sugar Ellie.
Big Bad choked on his whisky and stared at them. “Twenty thousand dollars to fuck her?”
Cole wanted to shove his fist down the man’s throat, but Ellie had been doing this for enough years to know how to handle herself. “Well, sure, sweet britches.” She batted her lashes. “And he would still be getting a bargain.”
Big Bad laughed and went back to his whisky.
Cole leaned closer and whispered in her ear. He brushed the smooth curve of her bare shoulder with his mouth. “Is that a yes?”
They’d been playing this game for so long he didn’t know what he’d do if she ever said yes.
“As if.” She stepped out of his reach and blew him a kiss.
Strike that thought; he knew exactly what to do with her if she said yes. He’d start by kissing the hell out of that pretty, pouty mouth. Then he’d let his hands find the shape of her breasts, the indent of her waist and the slight swell of her belly. He’d take his time with her ripe ass, learning its shape by touch before his hand found its way straight to heaven, waiting between Sugar Ellie’s firm, white thighs.
His cock liked that idea fine and he breathed deep. Their game had started in earnest the first night he’d come in. He’d been playing poker at the table over by the window when Ellie had sashayed her pert, round ass into the saloon.
It had been so long since a woman had turned him down, he’d almost forgotten how rejection stung, but Ellie had smiled her wicked smile, flashed those eyes at him and said no thank you.
He’d doubled his offer, and she’d laughed and still said no. And kept right on saying no every time he drifted into her saloon. Now they were at twenty thousand dollars and it had become a joke. What Ellie didn’t realize is that he might pay it anyway. If she ever said yes.
“You’re leering,” she murmured.
He followed the flare of her hips and down her legs, a good deal of which were visible due to the hitch in the side of her skirt. “I know.”
“So, stop it and tell me what you’ve been up to that has kept you away for nearly a year.”
He liked that she knew how long he’d been gone. “Mostly business. Getting myself set up.”
“For?”
He shied away from the truth. “Consolidating.”
But Ellie wasn’t listening anymore and had her attention fixed across the room. Tension kept her body dead still.
Jake strolled down the stairs with a voluptuous redhead in bright blue satin on his arm. Her breasts threatened to spill out with every breath. As it was, the edge of her nipples peeked over her bodice. “New girl?”
Ellie snorted. “Don’t let either of them hear you say that.” Her face tightened. “That’s Minnie, and she and Jake are engaged.”
“Engaged?” Cole couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you joking?”
“Nope.” There was no mistaking the tension in Ellie now. “I wish I was, but Miss Minnie has moved herself in, and Jake doesn’t change his mind without checking with her first.”
Cole could believe it. Minnie had the shrewd look of a voracious harpy. He’d met her kind many times, even tangled with one or two before he had learned his lesson. They wrapped themselves around you like a velvet ribbon, all smooth and pretty to touch, and before you knew it, that ribbon was making up your noose. “I would have thought Jake was sharper than that.”
“So would I.” Ellie sighed and took a small sip of his whisky.
Ellie’s brothers were all big bastards. Theo was the biggest, but Jake ran a close second. With his coarse, brutish features and cunning eyes, it was hard to remember he and Ellie shared blood.
Minnie wrapped her arms around Jake’s neck and whispered in his ear. With her breasts pressed into him and her hand snaking to his belt, Cole could guess the gist of her whisper. �
�What does Theo make of her?”
“Theo’s not here.” Ellie grimaced. “He went to San Francisco on business. We haven’t seen him for over six months.”
Damn! That couldn’t be good. Theo was the oldest and the brains of the four brothers who ran the saloon with Ellie. In addition to being Ellie’s favorite, Theo watched over Ellie like a papa bear. “Are you worried about him?”
“Yeah.” Ellie nodded but she didn’t allow any of that to show on her face.
Cole made a note to make enquiries on her behalf. California was a big place, and it was easy to disappear in its vastness. It didn’t necessarily mean bad news that Theo hadn’t been heard from in so long. Theo could take care of himself.
Ellie’s twin brothers joined Jake and Minnie. Called the Triggers because of their hair-trigger tempers and where those tempers led, Paul and Patrick took care of the rough side of owning a saloon. They shared Theo and Ellie’s more refined features, but their manners were all Jake, mean as a grizzly out of hibernation.
Cole had spent most of his adult life relying on his gut, and his squawked at him now. The way Jake, the twins, and Minnie stood over there like a team with Ellie over here on her own smacked of no good. Even though he guessed she wouldn’t give him the whole truth, he still asked. “Are you okay?”
Sugar Ellie tossed her dark curls and threw him a bright smile. “I sure am.”
Cole didn’t believe her, and he wasn’t leaving town until he found out what was causing those shadows in her eyes. “Sure you are.”
Chapter Three
Ellie had missed Cole, and she hadn’t realized quite how much until she had seen him standing by the bar sipping a whisky that was the same color as his eyes.
“Shut it down, Silas.” Her feet ached, and since Cole had left a couple of hours ago, the night had dragged on and on. A few stragglers nursed the dregs of their drinks, but Caleb, their hired muscle, was making short work of getting them up and moving.