Just This Once

by Jill Gregory

  Just This Once

  Jill Gregory

  Praise for Just This Once

  “Refreshing characters, witty dialogue and adventure...Just This Once enthralls, delights, and captivates, winning readers’ hearts along the way.” —Romantic Times

  “Here is another unforgettable story that will keep you captivated. She has combined the Old West and the elegance of England into this brilliantly glorious tale. The characters are undeniably wonderful. Their pains and joys will reach through the pages and touch your heart.” —Rendezvous

  First published by Dell Publishing, 1997

  Copyright 1997 by Jill Gregory

  E-book copyright 2012 by Jill Gregory

  E-book published by Jill Gregory at Smashwords, 2012

  Cover art by Marsha Canham, 2012

  E-book design by A Thirsty Mind, 2012

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Author, except where permitted by law

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Excerpt: Cold Night, Warm Stranger

  About the Author

  One

  Abilene, Kansas

  He’s the one.

  Josie peeked out from the saloon’s back stairs as the tall, handsome cowboy dressed all in black shoved his chair back from the poker table. He rose up to a magnificent and most impressive height and scooped up his winnings. Carelessly he stuck a few bills in his shirt pocket, tucked the rest into a leather wallet, and then dropped the wallet into his vest pocket with a series of easy motions that hypnotized her. Actually, it was the sight of all that money that hypnotized her.

  She fairly quivered as she eyed the slightly bulging vest pocket that nestled against his lean, solid torso.

  My, my, she thought, her mouth nearly watering. What I couldn’t do with all that lovely money.

  First off, she could buy a train ticket to New York City—possibly even a first-class ticket—and then steamship passage to England... and even send some extra to the Magnolia Sisters United Orphanage in Savannah.

  But there was a tiny problem, she conceded, biting her lip as she crouched unseen in the dimness of the stairs. She had no doubt from observing the tall cowboy with the silver belt buckle that he was a gunslinger.

  Why, Lord, why does he have to be a gunslinger?

  She watched him carefully, holding her breath, wondering if she dared, if she really dared to try to pick his pocket.

  You must, she told herself. You need that cash to get out of this pesthole of a town and far away from Snake.

  You can’t, a wise, warning voice squeaked inside her ear. He’s not a man to be caught dozing.

  He was most definitely a gunslinger, she decided on a sigh as his glance skimmed coolly, indifferently, over the other men at the poker table. There was something mean and hungry about him, something cold. She noted his lean bronzed cheeks, the hard arrogant face, the simple but elegantly cut dark clothes he wore upon his strapping form. Then there was the leonine way he moved and the easy way he wore his guns, as if he’d been born with them.

  Oh, yes. A gunslinger. A deadly one, at that.

  Anxiety rippled through her as she weighed her choices.

  The miner at the table still had a pocketful of coins, she knew, but he looked down on his luck. Her conscience wouldn’t let her pick the pocket of a man who looked as if he needed every last dime.

  But this man was another story.

  This man appeared as if he could spare some cash, a great deal of cash. And if he was a gun for hire, well, when his wallet was gone, he’d still have his guns. He could always hire himself out and earn himself more blood money, or win it in the next poker game.

  So follow him and get it over with. What are you waiting for?

  She crept down the steps, and peeked around the door as he shouldered his way through the double saloon doors and out into glittering Kansas sunshine.

  Josie figured he was going to get some shut-eye at last or was on his way to watch the hanging along with everyone else in town. Either way, she’d better follow close behind, and find a chance to pluck that stash from his pocket.

  “Jo, no, don’t! I know what you’re thinking, and it’s a big mistake!”

  Josie whirled as Rose MacEwen clutched desperately at her sleeve. Rose was whispering at her furiously.

  “Honey, I know you want to get out of town, but you’ll get caught. You’ll land in jail. You can’t just—”

  “Shhh,” Josie hissed. She peered frantically over her shoulder to the double doors through which the gunslinger had disappeared. “Rose, let me go.”

  “But, honey—”

  “I have to do this!”

  “No, you don’t!”

  It was hard to believe that she’d only known Rose MacEwen for two weeks, since she’d arrived in Abilene and taken a job in the kitchen of the Golden Pistol Saloon and Dance Hall. Rose, who’d been thrown out of her family’s farmhouse when she was thirteen, had had a hard life—almost as hard as Josie’s own. That realization had formed a bond between the two young women immediately. “He’s got a fat purse, Rose, and that’s all I care about,” she whispered fiercely as the skinny, pale-haired saloon girl in the low-cut pink dress opened her mouth to speak again. “It’ll be all right. Now let me go.”

  But Rose’s grip tightened. “I’ll give you all the money I’ve got—six dollars, maybe seven... and I’m sure Liza can spare something, too.”

  “I don’t take money from my friends, Rose. Go on upstairs, and don’t you worry. I’ll be fine. All I need is enough cash to get out of town.”

  “But why, Jo, why do you have to leave?” Plaintively, Rose stared into Josie’s eyes. “First Penny and now you. Can’t you stay a while longer? I know Judd pays lousy, but you’re the best cook he’s ever had and business has picked up in the dance hall since you started fixing the meals—and it’s good steady work.” As Josie shook her head Rose plunged on. “And there’s a lot of men who come through the Golden Pistol. If you started dancing with us more regular, too, instead of just filling in, you might find some feller who wants to marry you—”

  “I’ve been married, Rose, and I’m never making that mistake again!” Impatiently, Josie shook free of the girl’s grasp. “Look, the less you know about my leaving town the better,” she added in a low tone. “If anyone asks, you never saw me. I’ll say good-bye before I leave, don’t you worry. But now I have to go and catch that hombre.”

  There was no mistaking her determination. Rose sighed in defeat and shook her head as Josie squeezed her hand, then dodged past her, rushing through the rear door.

  She darted around the alleyway an
d scanned the main street. It was now teeming noisily with excited men, women, and children come to watch the hanging, but to Josie’s relief, she spotted the tall gunslinger almost immediately. He had paused at the edge of the crowd, a little apart, definitely aloof.

  All right, mister. That’s it. You’re not getting away so easily. Josephine Cooper always gets her man.

  A grim smile curled her lips as she started forward in the hazy sunshine, her gingham skirt rustling. She’d dressed “respectable” for the occasion—her plain blue gingham gown buttoned up to the throat, tiny dangly jet earrings, her unruly mane of brown hair tamed in a neat, prim coil with not a wisp out of place. On her feet were her good sturdy shoes, not the wicked rhinestone-studded slippers she wore onstage whenever she filled in for one of the dance hall girls who couldn’t perform. She was certain no one would recognize the Golden Pistol’s practically invisible cook or the sometime dance hall girl with the wild brown curls as the demure, respectable creature making her way through the crowded street.

  The necessity of leaving Abilene tomorrow weighed heavily on her mind. Instinct told her Snake and his boys were closing in. Her skin had been prickling all day each time she looked out the window. Josie’s “feelings” about such things were never wrong. Snake would be here soon. If she stayed, he’d catch her and then...

  Then she’d be as good as dead. Because if her dear outlaw husband and his cutthroat gang got their hands on her, they’d show her no more mercy than these townsfolk would show Rusty Innes, who was going to be hanged today from the gallows in the center of town. Innes had killed a teller and a customer when he’d robbed the bank a month ago, and now he was going to pay for what he’d done.

  If Snake and the boys catch up with me, I’ll pay, too, Josie thought, swallowing down the metallic taste of fear. I’ll pay dear for what I did to them.

  But she didn’t regret it one whit.

  * * *

  All of Abilene seemed to have gathered in the street—farmers and ranchers and merchants and gamblers and miners and drifters mingling elbow to elbow. Women called to one another, men smoked cigars and squinted through the sun, dogs barked and horses stamped at their tethering posts.

  It was a beautiful day for a hanging.

  The stranger remained on the fringes of the murmuring, restless crowd. He seemed oblivious to the heat and nervous energy vibrating all around him. Though heat poured down from a molten July sun, and women fanned themselves furiously, he looked cool and unperturbed.

  Josie, on the other hand, felt sweat beading on her delicate brow as she slipped nimbly past a farmer in a checkered shirt, two boys tussling over a stick of licorice, a woman nudging forward for a better view. She spotted Judd Stickley, the slender, mustachioed owner of the Golden Pistol, standing on the boardwalk, studying his gold pocket watch, and as he glanced up she hunched her shoulders and ducked into the crowd.

  It wouldn’t do for Judd to spot her. Not at all. Her boss was none too happy that she’d befriended Penny Callahan, one of the other dance hall girls she’d met since coming to Abilene. He didn’t like Josie’s fearless attitude, the way she’d taken Penny under her wing. Stickley wanted to keep poor snub-nosed Penny in his bed—he was like a vulture that preyed on all those he sensed were weaker than he. And Penny had feared him too much to refuse.

  Unable to bear watching Stickley keep Penny under his thumb, Josie had only today persuaded the girl to take the last of Josie’s own stash of money and had sneaked her onto the noon stage bound for Missouri. Stickley would be livid when he found out she’d left town for good.

  But Josie was leaving too, quick as she could. And she wasn’t nearly as afraid of Stickley as she was of Snake. So now, though she hated pickpocketing, she’d have to do it to raise some quick cash and get out of town before all hell caught up with her.

  Too bad all the stolen loot she’d taken from Snake and the gang when she ran away was gone. Of course, she still had her “treasure,” but she wouldn’t sell that. Never. Josie averted her face as she slipped past fat, balding Elmer Mills, who owned the general store, and peppery Sally Klemp, who ran the apothecary with her husband, Fred. Jo knew that money always just seemed to slip through her fingers. She’d never had more than a dollar or two to her name at any one time—until the night she ran out on Snake Barker, the night he’d beaten her senseless.

  Her face bloody and bruised, she’d come to on the floor, every limb aching as if she’d been knocked over a cliff. She’d crawled to her knees and found Snake passed out beside the stove with the empty whiskey bottle next to him.

  Her mind was blurred with pain and shock, but Josie’d known one thing. Snake had nearly killed her. First he’d forced her to marry him, imagining in a liquored haze of infatuation after he’d first set eyes on her that he wanted to settle down, have a passel of kids, and have someone cook and clean for him when he wasn’t holding up stagecoaches or banks—and then, as if that hadn’t been bad enough, he’d nearly killed her. If the liquor hadn’t rendered him unconscious when it had, he probably would have beaten her to death.

  She’d staggered across the room, grabbed up his saddlebag containing the loot from the most recent stage holdup, taken his fastest horse, and hightailed it out of there.

  He and the boys had been hot on her trail ever since.

  The crowd in Abilene was growing restless. “Bring ’im out, Sheriff.”

  “It’s noon. Let’s hang him and git back to work.”

  Josie threw one quick pitying glance at the gray-faced man being led to the gallows by Sheriff Mills. What he’d done was wrong, and he deserved to die for it, but she had no intention of watching. While everyone else was immersed in the process of justice being served, she would dip her fingers into that gunslinger’s pocket and, with any luck, come up with enough money to buy a ticket on tomorrow’s eastbound train.

  The stranger was less than ten feet away, his hat pulled low across his eyes to block the sun. Josie sidled closer, ignoring the flutter of nervousness in the pit of her stomach.

  Don’t let him catch you, Jo, she warned herself, wishing she could turn back somehow, but knowing it was impossible at this point. She needed that money a damned sight more than he did at this moment.

  Growing up in orphanages and foster homes, Josie had been taught over and over that you had to look out for yourself. She always seemed to end up worrying more about others who seemed somehow more unfortunate than she—people like Penny Callahan, or the other children at the Magnolia Sisters Orphanage, the ones who had nightmares and stomachaches and trouble learning to spell.

  Old Pete Thompson and his gray-haired stick of a wife, Em, had tried to break her of this habit when they’d adopted her at the age of twelve, not because they’d wanted a child to love and care for, but because they’d desired an extra pair of hands to do chores on their Kansas farm.

  They’d taken turns shouting at her whenever she sneaked extra scraps of table food to the dogs, or put a blanket out in the barn for the cats during the winter.

  “The Lord helps those who help themselves!” they’d yelled, and slapped her hands, and pinched her arms, and sent her off to bed without supper. But Josie had never seemed able to get this idea into her head.

  She had a feeling that Pete and Em, who worked their barren little Kansas farm from dawn till dusk, never smiled or spoke a kind word to anyone, who attended church and sneaked coins from the collection plate when no one was looking, didn’t know as much as they thought they did about the Lord.

  Anyway, she couldn’t help herself. In the orphanage the younger children, whose clothes she mended and whose tears she’d wiped with the hem of her own ragged dress, had called her Ma. She’d been touched by this, since her own mother must have died shortly after she was born and she’d never known her, at least, not as she could remember.

  Josie knew almost nothing about her own background, except that since the first orphanage she could remember was the Magnolia Sisters United Orphanage in Savannah,
she guessed she was from the South. And she knew she’d been wrapped in a satin blanket when she’d come there, and most importantly, right from the beginning, she had the brooch.

  The brooch had been pinned to her swaddling clothes—along with a note that had the words Baby Josephine scrawled upon it—and nothing else. The rest had been torn off, lost forever. Mrs. Guntherson, the kindly and honest woman who’d run the Magnolia Sisters United Orphanage, where Josie had lived until the age of seven, had kept it for her until the day she left, when her first family, the Coopers, had adopted her. On that day, Mrs. Guntherson had shown Josie the brooch, and advised her to keep it close.

  From that moment on, Josie kept the brooch with her at all times—it was her one link with her past, the main clue she hoped would eventually help her discover her real name, and who she really was. It was exquisite. The centerpiece was the opal, a great pale, shimmering stone that flashed with blue fire. It was set in lustrous gold, surrounded by four creamy pearls. It looked to be an heirloom, a magnificent, treasured heirloom.

  A family heirloom.

  Josie had grown up wondering how it had come to belong to her. Who had pinned it to her swaddling clothes? Perhaps her true family had never wanted her, perhaps they might all be dead by now, or wish never to be found by the child they’d given up to strangers. Whatever the answer, she needed to know.

  Knowing would be enough, she’d told herself many times over as she clasped the brooch in her palm, eyes closed, trying to conjure up an image from the heat and shape of it, trying to discern the dark curtain of her origin, the secret of her past.

  She’d been trying for years to find out who’d brought her—and the brooch—to the orphanage, who her family had been, where they’d lived, and why they had abandoned her. She’d searched near and far, written letters, asked questions, studied the faces and jewelry worn by strangers. Always she scanned for resemblances, wondering if she’d “know” her mother or father if they came face-to-face in a chance encounter, and dreaming endlessly of a joyous, glorious reunion.

  All to no avail.