Just This Once

by Jill Gregory

  But now, thanks to Snake, in addition to the brooch there was the ring. The ring had given her new hope. It had suggested a place to look.

  And that place was England.

  So don’t let that scowl the man’s wearing scare you off, she urged herself. She straightened her spine. If there’s one thing you learned from Pop Watson, it was how to pick pockets and not get caught, so just go ahead and do it.

  The crowd was jostling, moving. Perfect. She reached his side, turned toward the gallows, but kept her eyes lowered so she would not see the men standing on the platform, what they were doing with Innes and the rope.

  She peeked quickly up at the tall man beside her. The top of her head just reached his shoulder. His wavy hair was the color of midnight, worn long beneath his dusty black hat. Close up, she saw that he hadn’t shaved in at least a day, perhaps several; coarse black stubble added to the harshness of his uncompromisingly masculine face, a handsome face of hard planes and shadows, the face of a dangerous man.

  The crowd was starting to shout. To jeer. They were probably coiling the rope around Innes’s neck. Then the moment she’d been waiting for, the slight surge as people inched forward as one, the jostling.

  Josie swayed against the gunslinger.

  “Ohhhh...!” she whispered, hoping she sounded faint. A hand caught her elbow, steadied her. She leaned into him, her body staggering against his, her free hand brushing with seeming haphazardness against his torso. For an instant she clung weakly, then her hand fell away.

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured, blinking dizzily. “For a moment I felt so strange...”

  She let her voice trail weakly off. She had it. She had the wallet, she was nestling it securely in her pocket—but suddenly the tall man moved so swiftly, she didn’t even have time to flinch. Iron fingers clamped over her wrist as he yanked it into the air, the wallet still clenched between her fingers.

  “Ouch!” Josie squeaked.

  A slight gasp, and then a cheer went up as the hanging commenced. But she was paying no attention to the crowd or to Innes’s fate. Josie’s gaze was locked onto the coolest, deadliest pair of gray eyes she’d ever seen.

  Her stomach tumbled down to her kneecaps.

  “Mister,” she tried, as firmly as she could, “let me go!”

  “The hell I will.”

  “How dare you! Let me go this instant!” She yanked her wrist back, trying to break free, but succeeded only in inducing him to dig his fingers in even tighter. Josie braced herself against the pain—and against a rising panic. “You’re hurting me!”

  “That’s what you get, lady, for trying to pick my pocket.”

  “I didn’t! Why, I never...!”

  “Then why is my wallet clasped in your pretty little fingers?”

  “Your wallet?” All around them rose the chatter of the crowd as it began to disperse and people returned to their homes or businesses. For the moment no one had noticed them, but Josie knew someone would soon, and then her goose would be cooked.

  “Your wallet?” she repeated desperately. Somehow, with her eyes still locked on the gunslinger’s fierce gray gaze, she managed to unclench her fingers. The wallet slipped from her grasp and hit the dirt with a solid plop.

  “You mean that thing lying there on the ground?”

  “Nice try.” He hauled her toward him, one long arm snaking around her to imprison her waist, his other hand still crushing her wrist. But Josie scarcely noticed for as she hurtled forward into his chest, hitting a wall of solid muscle, she caught a glimpse over his shoulder of the grotesque vision hanging from the gallows.

  “Oooooh!” There was no false faintness in her tone this time. Josie closed her eyes, swallowing back a hideous rush of nausea. “Oooooh. Aaaagh....”

  Her skin had turned a sickly green. The gunslinger scowled. “Women,” he muttered. He spun her around to face the opposite direction. “Give it up,” he said roughly. “You just tried, not very skillfully, to pick my pocket.”

  Eyes still closed, Josie automatically shook her head. “You’re loco, mister. It fell out of your pocket, that’s all. Please, I feel sick.”

  “Yeah? Well, you look like hell. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re a thief.”

  She opened her eyes, swallowed hard, and as the nausea faded, realized she was being held hard and fast and indecently close by a man who could be a dead ringer for the devil. A man far stronger than she, with an icy hard gleam in his eyes, and a face so handsome, she ached looking at him, a man who would turn her over to the sheriff in a heartbeat.

  “I’m not.”

  “Let’s ask the sheriff.”

  “No!” She began to struggle frantically in his arms. “Hey, don’t blame me if you can’t hang on to what’s yours. It’s not my fault if—”

  “Lady, I can hang on all right.” With a lightning movement he scooped the wallet up, then, before Josie could break away, he dragged her swiftly into the alley, out of sight of those in the street.

  “I’m hanging on to you until you’re locked in jail.”

  Two

  The gunslinger shoved Josie up against the crumbling rear wall of the apothecary, pinning her wrists above her head and holding her there. “Admit it. You’re a damned no-good little thief.”

  She fought back panic, trying to think. The alley was deserted except for a stray cat who’d been exploring the garbage piled in back of the apothecary. It sprinted off at the rough sound of the gunslinger’s voice.

  “They hang thieves in some of these here parts, you know,” he snarled, watching the fear, worry, and dismay flit across her face, and edging closer. “And in others, they just send ’em to prison. There’s some question among convicts as to which is worse.”

  “I’m not a thief! You can’t prove anything!”

  “I caught you red-handed.”

  “You’re wrong. You’re loco. I’m going to scream for help if you don’t let me go right now.”

  “Lady, you just scream away.”

  Josie opened her mouth, then clamped it shut again. She couldn’t risk attracting a crowd, or the notice of the sheriff. She couldn’t risk questions, delays, complications.

  And the man staring down at her with dark, glittering triumph in his eyes knew it.

  He actually laughed as she set her lips together and gulped. It was a mirthless, unpleasant sound, Josie decided, squirming again in another useless attempt to get free. She hated him. Hated him. There was no pity in his ice-gray eyes. No hint of softness or compassion. And even though she knew he’d been up the entire night playing poker, he didn’t look the least bit weary. He looked keenly alert, furious, and as if he was enjoying the fact that struggle as she might, she couldn’t break his grip.

  Damn him. Handsome as sin, and every bit as ruthless. She cursed her own foolishness for not having chosen an easier and less dangerous target.

  “Look,” she said, a blush staining up her neck and into her cheeks as she heard the genuine quaver in her own voice.

  “I’m... sorry. I did... take your wallet. It was a stupid thing to do and it was wro

  ng. But my father is ill, and needs to go east to a hospital right away for treatment, and we’re about to lose our farm, and all I need is enough for train fare for the two of us.”

  The stranger’s lip curled. She had a glimpse of flashing white teeth in that violently handsome face. “Lady, I’ve a mind to turn you over to the sheriff right now, faster’n you can blink those pretty long eyelashes of yours. I don’t believe a word you just said.”

  “It’s all true.”

  “And I’m half coyote.”

  “Please. Let me go.” She might as well beg. Things couldn’t get much worse, Josie thought, biting back a sob as the ache in her imprisoned wrists grew more intense. And then, suddenly, things did get worse.

  Much worse.

  From the corner of her eye Josie caught sight of someone riding up the street. Someone familiar. Dreadfully, terrifyingly familiar. She je
rked forward to see better, then lunged backward so sharply, she banged her head against the wall. Red stars splattered before her vision.

  Snake!

  Instinctively she tried to squeeze herself as far back against the wall as she could, trying to melt into it, to disappear. She prayed Snake wouldn’t turn his head, wouldn’t see her here in this alley.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” The stranger’s eyes were narrowed on her as he held her captive against the wall.

  “Nothing,” she croaked, her voice barely audible.

  “Something sure spooked you just now. What was it?” The gunslinger glanced curiously toward the street, but Snake was gone.

  “Nothing. I—”

  “You got a lawman after you? Or a bounty hunter?”

  No. A husband who’s an outlaw, who’ll kill me because I stole his loot when I ran away from him, she thought, fighting through her terror of Snake, a terror that threatened to surge up and engulf her in hysteria. Aloud, to the invincible dark-haired stranger with his muscles of iron, who probably had never known a moment’s fear in his life, she spoke with all the calm she could muster under the circumstances—and that wasn’t much.

  “Please, I’m begging you. Let me go. I won’t bother you again. Or anyone else. But I can’t be found here. I’ve got to get out of town... I...”

  “All right. You can quit your bellyachin’.” He released her and stepped back. She saw no softening in his eyes as she began to rub her bruised wrists. His jaw was taut, and the only expression he wore was one of contempt. Josie guessed it was the same derisive way he looked at an enemy the moment before he shot him dead. It was a wonder that look alone didn’t kill his prey for him.

  “I don’t give a damn about you or any of your stories, lady,” he went on, shoving his hat back on his head, glaring at her from beneath a dark thatch of hair. “And luckily for you, I don’t shoot women. But hear this. Woman or no, you’re a thief, and the next time you try to steal from me, you’re landing in a jail cell. Got that?”

  She nodded. She started to sidle sideways, but the stranger seized her again, making her gasp. He hauled her up close against his powerful frame and the color drained from Josie’s face. For a long moment he stared down at her, his eyes glinting in the sunlit alley.

  “You caught me on a day when I’m in a good mood. So just this once I’m giving you a break. But don’t press your luck.”

  “I won’t.” Josie moistened her lips with her tongue. “I won’t,” she repeated as he continued to stare menacingly into her eyes. She wondered what he was like on a day when he wasn’t in a good mood. And knew she didn’t want to find out. She was stunned by the strength of him as he held her, the solid, overwhelming power emanating from every bone and muscle of his being. But there was something else too. A seething heat beneath the icy surface. A black, restless energy infused with danger. After being married to Snake, Josie’d had her fill of danger.

  Then why, she wondered, did this man’s keenly dangerous eyes fascinate her as much as frighten her? Why this sudden heat burning her skin from within?

  Strangely, the dark-haired man seemed to draw her in, to drag at something in her soul. She gulped, fighting the pull, fighting the flaring heat that scorched her. Something about those eyes enthralled as much as frightened her.

  What had she been thinking when she’d started this? Why had she tangled with a man like him?

  “I won’t bother you again,” she promised in a whisper that caught in her throat.

  He let her go. Her skin still burned where his hands had touched.

  “Get the hell out of my sight.”

  Josie gulped at the hardness of his eyes. She turned nimbly and fled through the tumbleweed-strewn alley.

  Not once did she look back.

  She kept close to the buildings, praying she wouldn’t run into Snake. Her heart was hammering double time as her feet skimmed along the dirt. She slipped and stumbled in her haste, nearly falling once as she staggered into a trash can, but she never slowed for an instant. Her mind raced even faster than her feet, flashing with questions about Snake, trying to put the encounter with the gunslinger out of her mind for good.

  Was Snake alone? Was the whole gang with him—Spooner and Deck and Noah? Did they already know she was here?

  It was nerve-racking just getting back to the Golden Pistol, then sneaking in the back door and scurrying up the stairs.

  But she made it.

  And only when she had slammed and locked the door to her room, and leaned against it for a minute, did she start to tremble.

  The shudders shook her delicate shoulders, and made her knees quiver beneath the gingham skirt, but gradually, with effort, she gained control of her emotions. Conquered the fear.

  Slowly, unsteadily, she made her way to the bed and sank down upon it. Her fingers dipped into her skirt pocket. And drew out the gunslinger’s wallet.

  This was followed by his pocket watch, an ornate gold beauty dangling on a thick gold chain.

  A shaky smile crossed her lips. And the last of the fear receded.

  Josie tossed her loot on the bed and hugged her arms around herself. Nice work, she thought, resting her chin on her drawn up knees. Even though she’d left him the bills he’d tucked into his shirt pocket after the poker game, it was still a very good haul. Pop Watson would be proud.

  Now all she had to do was stay alive. And find a way to ditch this town before she got shot, locked in jail, or strung up.

  Jumping up from the bed, Josie grabbed her straw valise. She had little time to lose.

  Three

  Ethan Savage slept for no more than three hours that afternoon, despite having played poker throughout the preceding night. Then he had himself a bath, and a sandwich at the grease-and-smoke-filled cafe at the edge of town, and returned to the Golden Pistol in time to see the dancing girls perform and to find himself a bottle of whiskey and a new poker game.

  He scarcely watched the girls. Once or twice he glanced at them, saw several of them meet his eyes and smile widely as they lifted their skirts and kicked their legs, flashing ankles and knees with abandon. Tempting, but he wasn’t sure that even a loose woman would calm him tonight.

  Maybe later he’d find out.

  The whiskey at his elbow was good. He usually didn’t drink much, though lately he’d turned to it more and more. It helped to soothe the restlessness that gripped him of late, a restlessness even the open splendor of the plains no longer seemed to ease. Even tonight, his mind couldn’t concentrate on the game. He’d developed a sixth sense, an instinct, for when something momentous was about to happen to him—be it an ambush by enemies on a mountain pass, his horse going lame, a card opponent coming up with a straight flush.

  Instinct. Ethan Savage was known to have it in spades.

  And instinct told him tonight that something was going to shake up his dull little world.

  Maybe tonight he’d get shot.

  In all these years of riding, hunting, shooting, gambling, living the solitary life in a lawless land, he’d never been shot. But there was a first time for everything.

  It would be a diversion, he told himself, almost smiling as he fanned out his cards.

  Few people would consider his life dull. He roamed the West at will, hiring himself out as a professional gunfighter when he needed cash, now and then tracking down an outlaw to fill his pockets with enough bounty money to stake himself to the next poker game in the next town. All the towns were the same to him—Deadwood and Abilene, Tucson and Laramie, Fort Worth, Dodge. He’d passed through all the wildest places on the frontier in the past ten years, stayed awhile in some, lingered only a day in others, and it seemed to him that the frontier was dying fast. Getting civilized, fenced in, closed up.

  Oh, there was still space enough, land enough, sky enough, but something told him that the wildest, grandest days were on the wane. The sun was setting on the West he’d made his own when he’d flung himself away from England all tho
se years ago.

  England. Why was he thinking of England now? He hadn’t thought of his native land in months. Had almost succeeded in blocking it entirely from his thoughts, just as he’d blocked his accent from his voice, his memories from his brain.

  He’d never set foot on British soil again. He was an American now.

  “I’ll raise you, mister,” the old miner rasped with a smelly grin, throwing a pile of chips onto the table as one of the saloon girls refilled the glasses. The miner squinted through the cigar smoke. “What’s it goin’ to be?”

  Before Ethan could reply, the doors to the saloon swung open and a neat little man whisked inside. He was small of stature, slightly built, and balding. He wore thin gold spectacles on a squashed little nose. He had a pleasant face, a round chin. He was handsomely garbed in a neat black suit and gray bowler, and his pebble-blue eyes scanned the smoky saloon with mathematical efficiency.

  They paused upon Ethan.

  Then the man started forward, crossing directly toward the poker table.

  “My lord, a word with you,” he said in a low, steady tone marked by a British accent.

  That accent and the man’s dandyish appearance, clearly out of place in this rough western saloon, told Ethan far more than he wanted to know.

  “Damn it all to hell.” He glared at the small man, the same glare that had unnerved many hardened gunmen who’d encountered it, and convinced a good number of them to back down before pushing him to a fight. But the Englishman remained outwardly calm, placid even.

  “He sent you, didn’t he?” Ethan threw a card, then glanced back up at the man. “After all these years? Whatever it is, I’m not interested.”

  “Sir, we must speak in private. The matter is of the greatest urgency.”

  “Git the hell out of here, fella,” the miner exploded, squinting fiercely at his cards. “Cain’t you see we’re tryin’ to play poker?”

  “Idiots who interrupt a game end up with an early funeral in these parts, mister,” a cowboy in a plaid shirt warned as he gripped his cards between tense, callused fingers. “Git.”