Her Forbidden Gunslinger

by Harper St. George

  For the life of her, Sophie did not understand exactly what had precipitated the change. But her fingers twitched around her cue in awareness and she straightened, pretending to assess the shot from a different angle. The hum of conversation resumed somewhat.

  She brushed past some of the crowd that pressed too close on her way around the table to take the shot from the other side. The wall on that side was much too close to afford many unhampered shots but she sought the sanctuary it offered more than anything else. Just on her way around the last corner, a large hand shot out from the crush and fitted itself to her hip. She was too shocked to protest and then she heard the voice behind her.

  “Throw the shot.”

  Gray!

  She froze. Then she frowned because it meant they—the gunmen—knew she was there and if they did, so would her uncle. Her gaze flicked to the two piles of cash resting under a heavy marker on the table’s bank at the other end. Her contribution had been desperately hidden away one dollar at a time over the years.

  It represented freedom and it was hers if she sank the shot.

  She moved to continue but the hand grabbed her wrist in a grip that refused to be ignored. “We’ll never make it out of here if you don’t.”

  That made her look back at him over her shoulder. He wasn’t looking at her. He merely nodded with his head tipped forward. She followed his gaze to the group situated behind the cash. There stood the man she was competing against, Jeb, she thought someone had called him, cue in hand, in deep discussion with a few rather unfriendly looking characters. Those men had not been there earlier. Not when she’d beaten Jeb in the first game and certainly not when he had so graciously proposed a double or nothing scenario.

  Then the man looked at her and her heart sank. He was angry. And then the group around him looked at her and she actually blanched. Something dark and menacing gleamed deep in their eyes.

  “The lady forfeits.” Gray’s voice carried loud and strong across the table and over the din of the crowd.

  Sophie immediately took exception to his interference and opened her mouth to say so but then closed it, mentally evaluating the possible outcomes. If she sank the shot would she be allowed to walk away unscathed? The looks the men gave her suggested not.

  “Does she know that?” The idiot with the cue laughed.

  Gray came around her then and she found herself pushed behind his shoulder and her hat shoved onto her head. Black with a short veil, it had been borrowed from Martine as a means of escaping from the dress shop undetected. And then discarded as too cumbersome the moment she had stepped inside the hall. Even now she pushed the stiff lace veil up so she could see.

  “Doesn’t matter. She forfeits.”

  Sophie had grudgingly accepted that Gray’s assistance was needed to get her out of the situation, but hearing herself relegated to an insignificant detail was more than she could take.

  “Now—” She started to interject but his hand pressed lightly against her stomach and halted anything she might have said.

  “Just who are you?” The idiot persisted.

  Sophie noticed a movement and when she saw the men as a group look down she realized Gray must have pushed his coat back so they could see his gun. How had it come to this so fast?

  One of the men muttered something to the others. It was too low for her to hear but created a rumble in the folks gathered round. Surely they must have noticed he was something of a professional.

  “You her husband?” It was a peace offering and when she heard it Sophie grasped Gray’s forearm where it still rested against her.

  Gray’s head lowered slightly in a move that could have been considered affirmation if the receiver was so inclined.

  “Well, I accept her forfeit,” the man said. “But on the condition that you tan her arse when you get her home. A lady,” he snickered when he said the word as if that did not describe her in the least, “should know to mind her menfolk.”

  Sophie cringed with anger. Was it her fault he was a sore loser? Was it her fault he had assumed she didn’t know how to play? Well, maybe she had played up that part a bit.

  Without responding to the man, Gray grabbed her elbow and began to steer them away from the table. Sophie’s gaze fell on the cash and she realized it was more than she could walk away from. “Wait! I want my money back.” She could accept forfeiting her winnings but she should at least walk away with the amount she had brought to the table.

  “Sophie!” Gray breathed angrily near her ear, while staying focused on the men and the potential danger.

  Jeb was already busy thumbing through the bills, but he heard her. “Get that bitch out of here.” One of the men in the group palmed the butt of the gun strapped to his hip.

  She didn’t see Gray move but the next sound she heard was the resonant gasp of the crowd as they stared at him, his gun poised to be released from its holster. It was received with identical movements from Jeb’s companions.

  “Just the lady’s portion.” Gray offered reasonably. “Else…” He let the word hang in the air, allowing the men to decide if the amount was worth the bullet at least one of them would sport otherwise.

  Jeb seriously seemed to consider the alternative. After all, he wasn’t holding a gun. Chances were good he would avoid a bullet in the first round. But then he pulled out some bills and slid them across the table.

  Gray smoothly leaned over and collected them, pushing them into his pocket and slowly backing away at the same time. Sophie turned and led the way through the crowd that politely parted for them, not daring to stop until they had reached the street. Even then, Gray held her arm and only released his grip on the gun when they were well away from the establishment.

  “Let me go. You don’t have to pull me along like a child.” She snapped and jerked her arm away. She hadn’t decided if she should be grateful to him or angry for his interference.

  “Put down your veil.”

  She complied but it hardly seemed necessary given the fact that the people she had hoped to avoid, Gray and his cohorts, had found her.

  “Beaudin.” He supplied in answer to her unvoiced question. “He has men watching.”

  Sophie gasped and looked around. The street was fairly crowded with early-evening pedestrians running errands or going home but no one seemed to be following them. The very idea that Anton felt he had the right to monitor her movements made her furious.

  “Do you think anyone recognized me?” It seemed far-fetched considering the saloon’s clientele had not been society folks. But then she realized someone could have recognized him and, by association, her. “Or you?”

  “You, no. Me?” He shrugged, still not looking at her. In fact, he was walking so fast she had to almost run to keep up.

  No one seemed to notice them, though, or if they thought it odd that a rough-dressed man like Gray, in his buckskin breeches and duster, would be escorting a finely dressed woman like her in this part of town, they kept it to themselves. She had borrowed a stiff and somber black dress from Martine, but the modiste didn’t do subtle well. The skirt was striped with thin panels of dark gray satin and accompanied by a smart, hip-length jacket that accentuated the narrow waist of its wearer.

  It was a moment before she calmed down enough to realize Gray wasn’t leading her back to the dress shop or even home. They were going farther into the rougher part of town, marked by the uneven boardwalk beneath her feet and then the complete lack of one at all. The buildings here were all of wood and badly weathered.

  “Where are we going?” There was only a faint tremor to her voice, but she halted abruptly.

  It took a couple of steps for Gray to realize she had stopped, and when he did, he was smiling as he walked back to her. A wicked smile that caused a shiver of foreboding to travel up her spine. “Too late for that. You should’ve thought of the consequences before running away.”

  With that, he grabbed her arm in a firm grip and pulled her around a corner where he urged her up a r
ickety flight of stairs affixed to the side of an equally rickety building. At the top he stopped to unlock the single door before pushing her into the dark room beyond.

  Chapter Four

  The door closed behind her and the key turned in the lock with a click of finality. For one tense second Sophie wasn’t sure if he had actually locked her in alone or if he was in there with her. She took a deep breath to calm herself and was enveloped by the soothing embrace of his scent. Why she would find his scent soothing or even recognize it so readily left her shaking her head. It was completely illogical and really very presumptuous, but the tension that had made her shoulders so tight since she’d left Martine’s began to ease. She wasn’t afraid.

  This was his home. It smelled of leather, earth, and something else. Probably his cigarillos. Not the pungent, heavy smell she associated with Jean’s cigars but a clean, sweet scent. Like freshly cut grass in summer, only richer. His mouth had tasted of it faintly the night of their kiss.

  The sound of a match striking drew her attention across the room and soon Gray’s profile was lit by the glow of an oil lamp. Her eyes widened when the light also illuminated the bed beside him.

  His bed.

  A strange tingle began to flicker within her, much like it had the night he had taken her home. Unlike her room, which had been decorated from catalogs and christened with the comings and goings of maids and occasionally her uncle and Sinclair, his room was intimate in its scarcity and isolation. Everything in it had been imbued with his essence, free from the dilution of other hands. It was too intimate.

  He seemed to feel it, too, and avoided her gaze as he straightened and removed his coat and hat. Then he walked around her and hung both on a set of pegs by the door. Bereft of words, she followed his lead and removed her hat with its annoying veil. It didn’t seem to belong on a peg, though, so she walked the few steps necessary to reach the small table near the single window and set it there. The window was completely covered in a heavy, dark fabric that eliminated all light and most of the sound from the street, further adding to the feeling of intimacy.

  “Here.” He turned with his hand outstretched to her.

  “Oh.” She recognized the bills that Jeb had pushed across the table. “Thank you.” She managed to take them without touching his hand and was about to push them uncounted into her reticule but thought better of it and slowly spread them out in her hands. “That bastard.” She muttered, thinking of Jeb, and stuffed them in. It was less than half the amount she’d started with.

  “For what it’s worth, you’re a damn fine player. You won the first game fairly.”

  Sophie looked up to see him smiling at her in a way she had never seen from him before. Relaxed in his own environment, his even, white teeth shone brightly in contrast with his golden-brown skin and his eyes softened, losing a good bit of their usual solemnity. The effect quite literally made it difficult for her to breathe, so she looked back down under the pretense of tying the drawstring closed on her bag. “M-Monsieur Sinclair taught me to play. The past two winters were so cold there was plenty of time—” The full meaning of his words registered. “Wait, what? You were there, in the gaming hall, from the beginning?” Her gaze flew up to his, suddenly recovered from her temporary bout of bashfulness.

  He nodded, looking a bit too smug for her taste. “I followed you from the dress shop.”

  “Why did you let me get so far then?”

  He sobered a bit and seemed reluctant to speak, the muscles of his throat working before he finally answered. “Because I wanted to watch you.”

  The statement touched her like a caress, stealing her words again. It could have been benign, a simple curiosity to know how she played, but the nuance of his tone suggested it wasn’t. She felt cowardly as she did it but she looked away again, her eyes flitting between the single chair, the neat row of hooks that held his extra shirts and pants, the bedside table, the bed.

  “You’ll be safe here.”

  She blushed because she knew he saw her looking at the bed and guessed he was thinking about their kiss. “Why am I here?”

  “Beaudin’s men. We didn’t think they saw you leave the dress shop, so Cole took Martine home in your place. We can’t risk sneaking you back tonight. We’ll go back to the dress shop in the morning and you can leave for home from there.”

  Martine was only a few years older than herself with similar coloring, so she hoped the plan would work. But she thought of the other woman alone with Cole and prayed that he wouldn’t deal too harshly with her. With his scarred cheek and callous eyes, he was the one she feared the most. But then she realized Gray’s words meant she would be spending the night with him and her stomach twisted. “Does that mean you won’t tell Jean about this?”

  “You deserve to have your arse tanned, but we won’t tell him.” He grinned.

  “Then let me go now. Tell Cole you couldn’t find me.”

  “You won’t get far if that’s all the money you have.” He gestured to her reticule, the teasing light vanished from his eyes. She was sorry to see it go.

  Sophie opened her mouth to argue that she might have had more without his interference but recognized it for the childish inclination it was. He had probably saved her and the knowledge chaffed. “Then help me get more. With you backing me up, Jeb wouldn’t have tried to renege. I could get enough to go to Chicago and find my brother.”

  “You don’t even know he’s in Chicago.”

  “He went there after our parents died. Jean corresponds with him….” Her words died out when she realized her only contact with her brother had been through Jean. What if he wasn’t in Chicago? Would Jean lie about that? Her heart sank. “Do you know where Alexandre is?” She asked very softly.

  “No.”

  His answer was just as soft and it wasn’t a surprise. It should have driven home to Sophie how alone she really was, completely cut off from the one family connection she’d held on to, but it didn’t. Because her brother had been lost to her for a long time and for some inexplicable reason, Gray made her feel safe.

  “So you won’t help me earn more money?”

  “Sophie.” Her name on his lips pleased her in ways it shouldn’t have. “If you run, LaSalle will find you.” Instead of being cold, his eyes were filled with tenderness and regret.

  He was right. She meant to be angry at his words, but his eyes thwarted her. She knew he was right, but now she also knew that maybe it pained him to be right. “You’re not like anyone else.” Sophie finally gave voice to their secret conversation.

  Gray’s eyes cut to the left, away from her, and a muscle worked in his jaw. Heartened by his reaction, she took the few steps that would bring her to within arm’s reach of him.

  His solemn gaze moved back to her face, the intensity brushing across each feature like a caress until coming to rest on her mouth. Something responded deep inside her. She always felt so safe with him but now there was the undercurrent of something else, something dangerous and exciting, and it colored every interaction. She longed to explore it.

  When his eyes moved back up to hers, full of fire and hunger, she knew he felt it, too. He’d looked at her exactly the same way the night of their kiss. She wanted to experience that kiss again. To experience those feelings he could stir to life within her. If it turned out she had to go to Anton’s bed, she could take that with her.

  “If I wanted to kiss you again, would you let me?”

  His eyes flared in surprise and she heard him suck in a quick breath. “You’re very bold.”

  Her face burned and she silently acknowledged the truth of his words. The reckless streak in her did seem to be running rampant lately, but she attributed it to the fact that her life would be ending in two weeks. Surely this is how people felt when they knew death was coming. Heedless of consequence and irresponsible of judgment. For what consequence could be worse than marrying Anton Beaudin?

  “I know.” Her brow furrowed. “But you want me to. Don’t you?”


  There was no hesitation in his answer. “More than anything. But you don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “We did kiss once.” Her lips curved in a soft smile at the memory but she had to look down at her hands, away from him. “You liked it. I think I remember what it involves.”

  “What you remember happened in your room where anybody could’ve walked in on us. And still it went too far. No one could see this kiss.” His voice was tense.

  “Isn’t that a good thing?”

  Gray’s breath came out in a long sigh and he rubbed a frustrated hand over his face. “It’s bad, Sophie. So bad.” Instead of looking at her, he chose a spot on the wall over her shoulder. “Just go to sleep. I can’t talk about this with you.”

  Her lips parted in surprise and, despite his best attempts, Gray looked at them. She looked so unhappy and dejected he wanted to take his words back. To pull her into his arms, bear her down to the bed beneath him and lose himself in her until those eyes were too full of passion to look sad. And then he wanted to take her away. Ride with her across the plains until it was just the two of them and never look back.

  Damn! What had he been thinking to bring her here? His obsession couldn’t withstand the temptation of having her so close.

  “It’s too early to sleep.”

  “Just go to sleep.” He repeated through clenched teeth.

  She looked miffed when her fingers came up to begin unfastening the buttons on her jacket.

  “Whoa! What the hell are you doing?”

  “You try sleeping in a corset and bustle.” She snapped, undeterred in her objective.

  His sense of self-preservation made him do what he had never done to another human being in his adult life. He turned his back on her. But still he couldn’t take his eyes from her and they immediately strayed to the small shaving mirror mounted on the wall a few feet away. It wasn’t big and it was cracked through the middle, but it was enough.

  Gray watched in acute discomfort, clenching his fists at his sides, as Sophie slowly revealed herself to him. When she unbuttoned the jacket, she exposed creamy shoulders and a chemise that was far too sheer. His mouth went dry when he noticed the darker hint of areolas peeking just above her corset. She threw the jacket over the back of the chair and then moved on to her skirt. He watched her fidget with the tie and knew a second of madness when he had to stop himself from tearing it apart for her. Moments later she stepped out of it and it was soon followed by petticoats and bustle. He broke out in a sweat when she began the laces of her corset and had to look away. Only to look back as she sat on the edge of the bed to remove her ankle boots and stockings, unveiling shapely, pale calves and a pair of dainty feet.