An Impassioned Redemption: A Defiant Hearts Novella

by Sydney Jane Baily

  “With that little toy gun of hers,” Pete cut in, then grimaced as he shifted himself. “I feel like a damn fool. Or a hog-tied calf. I can barely move.”

  “We’ve all been targets,” Jameson said. “I’d better get back. Your father-in-law will watch over your house. And we’ll figure this out before anyone else gets hurt.” He hoped.

  Unease that had grown since he’d left his boat—and left Jo behind—blossomed into full agitation, making his scalp tighten. He fairly ran to his horse and kept it at a full gallop across the bridge and all the way home. It didn’t help his anxiety when he approached his dock and saw that there were no lamps lit, and he always had two on the leeward sign and two on the other. Perhaps Jo had put them out, worried about fire. Perhaps there’d been a malfunction, and Jo hadn’t noticed but had fallen asleep. That wouldn’t be a surprise. At this point, Jameson knew he could just about sleep standing up.

  Not a sound emanated from his boat as he crossed the dock, his own footfalls seeming loud and heavy in the silence. A frisson of fear skated up his backbone. He had been certain Jo would wait up to hear word of Pete’s condition. The other ladies, of course, would be in bed.

  He entered the lower-level gaming room and climbed the inner staircase to the luxurious upper-level chamber. At the sound of his footsteps, a lamp flared to life, and for a split second, he started to smile, imagining Jo was waiting for him in the darkness in her sinfully red satin.

  However, the scene that emerged was not a sensual dream but a nightmare—Jo sat at a table on which the lamp had just been lit next to an empty brandy glass. Lucille Strong, standing on the other side of the table, tossed an extinguished match onto the floor and stepped on it for good measure. She had a pistol trained on Jo.

  “Ah, the viper has returned to his nest,” Lucille intoned, slowly directing her gun toward him.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Jameson asked. Had the ladies gotten into another fight with Jo on the losing end this time? Instinctively, he knew there was more to it.

  Then he noticed that Jo’s mouth was bound with a cloth tied behind her head. Her hands, however, were on the table in plain sight. Most likely, Lucille hadn’t wanted to get close enough to tie her up in case Jo overpowered her in the process.

  “Sit down,” Lucille ordered. Then she sighed. “No Mr. Carlisle? I was hoping you’d bring him back here to make it easier for me. But I’ll get him tomorrow.” She angled her head and looked at his holster. “I think I’ll use your gun to kill her partner. Nice touch, don’t you think?”

  “Why are you doing this?” Jameson asked, not taking a step closer to the table. Once he sat there, he would literally be a sitting duck. And he had no intention of going down easy.

  “Simple. An eye for an eye. You gunned down my brother in cold blood.” She cocked the trigger. “I told you to sit down.”

  He took a single deliberate step forward. Jo had been wrong about Frank not having any family. He risked taking his eyes off the flushed and livid face of Lucille, and looked at Jo. She struck him as more angry than frightened. Her eyes were glaring at Frank’s sister, then narrowing when she looked at him, in warning perhaps.

  “Can she remove her gag?” he asked, hoping to get a little more help if Jo was able to talk.

  “It was a pleasure finally shutting her up,” Lucille said. “And doing it permanently will be even better.”

  She was insane, he thought.

  “But if you take a seat and put your gun on the table,” Lucille added, “I’ll let her take it off. One wrong move and I’ll put a bullet in her heart right quick.”

  “Understood,” he said. He risked another glance at Jo. Her spiritedness worried him in this situation. “You behave, too. No heroics.”

  His feisty lady rolled her eyes in response.

  Lucille watched Jameson take a seat and slowly draw his gun out and lay it on the table.

  “You can take the gag off,” she said to Jo, not taking her eyes off Jameson.

  Jo did so, untying the cloth—one of the cook’s bandanas—and yanking it off.

  “That was disgusting,” she declared, wiping her mouth. Jameson noticed she returned only one of her hands to the tabletop; the other disappeared into her lap.

  “Shut up,” Lucille said sharply. “You are disgusting! Luring my brother, a God-serving preacher, into your foul establishment and then . . . then,” she faltered and her voice caught. “You murdered him, like Jezebel slaughtering the prophets.”

  Jo’s gaze shot to Jameson.

  “So, you’re Frank’s sister?” he asked, thinking to calm her down with a little chitchat and draw her attention away from Jo.

  “Shut up,” Lucille said again. “Don’t you dare say his name, unless you do so with respect.”

  “All right,” Jameson tried again. “Did Reverend. Hirsch have any other family?” Other lunatics who are going to come gunning for us if you fail?

  “Just me. You took the only kin I had left in this world and sent him home in an eternity box. And all for what, a toss on the sheets with this one?” She jerked her head toward Jo.

  Jameson figured that Jo wasn’t correcting Lucille in order to protect her ladies. No need to endanger Madeleine, as the real object of Frank’s lust and the cause of his going berserk with frustration.

  “He’d been serving the Lord for so long,” Lucille continued, “he probably wanted to help this strumpet to see the errors of her ways, to help her escape the fires of hell. I tried to send her to eternal damnation by fire. Now, I’m going to send you both there for what you did. So, who wants to lay down the knife and fork first?” Lucille asked suddenly, swinging her gun from one to the other.

  Jo fumed. Lucille had caught her off-guard and by surprise, drawing a gun on her while she sat and waited for Carter. She had been unable to talk her way out of the ambush, and now Carter was in the thick of trouble with her.

  “How will you live with yourself after hurting innocent people?” she asked Frank’s sister.

  “I won’t hurt any innocent people,” Lucille protested,

  “You already have,” Jo insisted. “All my girls lost their home and are out of work.”

  Lucille merely shrugged, waving her pistol in the air to dismiss the statement. “Saloon whores are not innocent people!”

  “What about my horse?” Jo asked, thinking of her sweet Daisy .

  Lucille looked at her as if she were a simpleton. “An animal! We’re talking about my brother. Shot down in cold blood in your disgusting brothel, lured there by your drink and easy women, and by you.”

  Jo decided that bad-mouthing Frank by telling Lucille the truth about how often he visited was not going to help; most likely, she’d get herself shot faster.

  Instead, she asked, “And what about my bartender? Why did you set the trap for him?”

  However, before Lucille could answer her, Jo turned to Carter. “How is Pete?”

  And as easy as that, while Lucille became distracted by their conversation, Jo started to slide her hand from her lap down her leg toward her holster. She saw Carter’s eyes widen nearly imperceptibly as he tracked her movements.

  “Pete’s hurting,” he told her, “but nothing fatal. He’ll have a limp for sure.”

  “No, he won’t,” Lucille interrupted, “because I intend to kill him shortly. The trap was just to slow him down so I’d know where he was after I finished with you two. And if you’d brought him here, then like the angel of the Lord, I would’ve got you all at once, the way you all murdered Frank.”

  “Thou shalt not kill,” Jo reminded her, figuring nothing would make an impression on the preacher’s sister except biblical words. However, Lucille turned a cold stare on her.

  “Behave as a barbarian,” she said. “and you’ll be treated like one.”

  “You call Miss Holland a barbarian when you set a steel coyote trap on a man,” Carter scoffed, and Jo sent him a silent thanks for taking Lucille’s attention once more.

  “T
hat terrible man!” Lucille declared. “I asked around. I know that Pete Carlisle leveled a shotgun at my brother at 20 paces.” Her voice hiccupped with emotion, and she started to lower her weapon.

  Jo hoped Lucille broke down. It would be much easier to comfort her than shoot her. But like a drooping plant suddenly watered, Lucille’s gaze focused again on Carter as she stood straight and whipped the gun back toward Jo.

  Jo paused. Caution and fear entwined to halt all her surreptitious movements.

  “Enough stalling,” Lucille said to Carter. “Apologize right now for killing my kin. Or you can watch me kill this adventuress first.” She gestured at Jo with the gun. “Perhaps, a shot to her belly for the most pain?”

  “Don’t,” Carter said, firmly, quietly, and seemingly without panic.

  For her part, Jo felt dread, along with more than a few drops of panic, begin to slide along her spine. If Carter felt the same way, he hid it behind a face that a poker player would be proud of. Was this really the ignoble end because she’d dared to own a saloon and answer men’s need for willing women?

  Some days, it just didn’t pay to be a capitalist!

  Lucille glared straight at Jo, though she seemed to barely see her—her eyes were so glazed with vengeance and fury. “I don’t know what my brother saw in you anyway.”

  “It might be her lovely ankles,” Carter suggested, causing both women to focus their attention back on him. Jo noted the hopeful look on his face. She nodded, continuing to inch her hand down as slowly as molasses on a cool day.

  “Her ankles!” Lucille scoffed.

  All Carter had to do was distract the crazy woman and not get himself killed. Easy. Hope sang through Jo’s veins as she reached all the way beneath her hemline, her fingers curling around her derringer. In the same instant, Lucille swung the pistol in Carter’s direction and shot him.

  Jo jumped at the loud reverberation.

  “Carter!” she cried, sparing a glance at him and finding him pinned against his chair by the force of the gun’s discharge, eyes closed, and cursing a blue streak. She palmed her derringer and began to straighten.

  Her gaze still fastened on her latest victim, Lucille turned slowly toward Jo. “The wages of sin are death.”

  Jo briefly hesitated, holding her breath. Shoot a woman? Everything seemed to slow down, but Jo also knew there was no time to waste. Not the head, not the chest—I can’t do it. Luckily, the riverboat costume was skimpy enough that she could see an expanse of Lucille’s leg.

  Jo aimed low and fired. Pop! Bright red blood bloomed on Lucille’s thigh.

  “That’s for my horse, you bitch,” Jo muttered as Lucille screamed and then screamed again, stumbling sideways and grabbing at the table as she dropped her weapon. Then the brunette crashed heavily to the floor.

  Jo jumped up, ignoring Lucille’s sobbing and yelling, and paused only to level a kick to the girl’s gun, sending it skittering to the other side of the room. Then Jo rounded the table.

  Carter!

  He was leaning back, looking ashen with pain, clasping his left shoulder with his right hand.

  Jo laid a steadying hand on his arm, then sank to her knees by his side to inspect the wound.

  “Jameson, honey, I don’t think it’s too bad.”

  He blinked at her. “God, I must be dying.”

  Her stomach lurched. Had he been shot more than once? “No, why do you say that? It looks like merely a shoulder wound.” She said “merely” though seeing his blood, bright red and oozing, terrified her.

  “Because you called me by my first name,” he said. “You would never do that unless you thought I was heading for the pearly gates.” Then his face broke out in a wincing smile, and she nearly punched his other shoulder.

  He grabbed for her with the hand that had been clasping his injury. And even though she saw blood on his fingers, she let him take her hand and anchor her to him. Then she leaned in and kissed him.

  “We’re alive,” she murmured against his lips. “I had my doubts for a few minutes.”

  Then she could say nothing more as he kissed her hard, affirming that they were indeed very much alive. She wanted to stay right there, her mouth on his and never move an inch.

  Eventually, he released her.

  “Luckily, she’s a terrible shot. But you better send one of the ladies for Ben,” he advised.

  “And a doctor,” Jo added.

  He nodded and winced as he moved, and she imagined it hurt like hell.

  “I’ll go.” She started to get up.

  “No,” he said, squeezing her hand more tightly. “You stay right here where I can keep an eye on you. Just having you with me, sweet lady, is the only tonic I’ll need. Ever.”

  She smiled back at him. “All right. I’ll send Christine to get help.” Reluctantly, she tugged her hand free. “I’ll be right back, I promise.”

  And as she dashed down to the lower deck, her heart expanded at what his words implied: that he loved her the way that she loved him.

  Epilogue

  Jo looked up from the ruby ring glittering between Jameson’s pinched fingers. The words of his nervously delivered proposal were carried away out into the darkness and over the river. He waited, feeling as if his heart was going to beat right out of his chest.

  His gorgeous lady looked away from him, sending her stunned gaze over the bow of the ship where they stood, as she seemed to stare at the last rays of the fiery orange sun sinking gracefully into the Mississippi River.

  What the hell was she thinking? He needed to know.

  Twice a day, she crossed the river to attend her business, and sometimes Jameson joined her for an evening on dry land at the new Pork and Swallow, bigger, better, and livelier than the old one. Clearly, her ladies were happy, Pete was happy, and Jo seemed content. They had a private room fixed up at her saloon, but normally, they spent their nights on his ship.

  This had gone on for months, ever since they’d defeated Lucille together. He felt sorry for the woman now. Mercifully, Frank’s sister was incarcerated in the Northern Illinois Hospital and Asylum for the Insane rather than having ended up hanging from the end of a rope. And he thanked his lucky stars once more that she was truly the worst shot he’d ever encountered.

  When he’d heard the fire alarm bells peeling again one night, his heart jumped into his throat. He’d raced his horse hard and fast across the bridge to Keokuk, only to see an abandoned warehouse burning; most likely a hobo had tried to cook something and had lost control of the situation. But something had changed in him, and Jameson decided then and there that since he was already hers, he wanted to make sure she was truly his for the rest of their livelong days.

  “Why?” Jo asked, her voice barely above a whisper as she searched his eyes.

  He frowned. He hadn’t expected such a reaction. Why? Why the hell not?

  She reached up and softly, sweetly stroked his cheek. “Don’t you think it ruins the image of a saloon owning madam,” she asked, “if I’m a lawfully married woman?”

  He tamped down the fingers of hurt that curled around his gut at her hesitation and her questioning. “That’s ridiculous. I want you as my wife,” he insisted.

  “I am utterly yours,” she promised. “You know that. And I already live with you.”

  “You could as easily move out,” he protested. Damn! This wasn’t what he’d anticipated. He’d thought she would take the ring, kiss him, and say a resounding yes, and they’d be in their cabin by now with their clothing off.

  She rolled her eyes. “I could move out anyway, married or not.”

  He leveled her with a stare that he hoped spoke volumes.

  “I’m not planning to,” she added quickly. “I love our life.” She stepped into the circle of his arms and nuzzled his neck. “And I’ll confess right now in case you don’t know, I love you.”

  All the air left his lungs. There was only one thing to say. “I love you, too. I love you as big as this river.”

 
She laughed, a delightful sexy sound, and he squeezed her tightly under his hands.

  “I just want everyone to know that you’re mine. You are my ladylove.”

  He bent his head and claimed her lips, softly at first. Then he probed his tongue along the seam of her lips and felt her welcome him inside.

  When they eventually parted, she took the ring from him and slipped it on her left hand, admiring it.

  “I’ll flash this ring around, and I’ll let everyone know who placed it on my finger,” she offered.

  “Maybe you’ll change your mind about letting me make you a wedded wife,” he teased, feeling fairly certain that he could. “Maybe I can change it for you tonight.”

  “Maybe,” she allowed, sucking her lower lip in a way that drove him wild with lust. “At least, we’ll have fun trying.”

  When Jo came home from The Pork and Swallow a week later, all the lights were on as usual, which always allowed her to see the boat from her side of the river and to have an easy drive up to the dock on his side. However, up close, she could see there were two new lamps, positioned on the dock, illuminating the starboard hull in front of her.

  The Josephine.

  Good God! She stared at the rich red lettering, edged in black.

  Jumping down from her carriage seat, she left the horse right where it stood.

  “Carter!” she called as she flew toward the gangplank, delight and astonishment vying for supremacy in her breast.

  “Right here,” he said, stopping her in her tracks. He’d been standing dockside in the shadows, apparently to watch her reaction.

  “You named her after me?” The gesture touched her in a place where only Carter’s love ever could. She rushed up to him, throwing her arms around him.

  A big, unwieldy riverboat shared her name!

  “Is that all right?” he asked, taking her in his arms.

  She heard the caution in his voice. He wasn’t sure of himself. How adorable! Was it all right? Was it? A sense of belonging circled her heart securely. Suddenly, this floating riverboat seemed solid and permanent. This was home!