Rebecca Hagan Lee

by A Wanted Man

  Heat surged through Will’s body as Julie moved closer. He wrapped his arms around her, cupped her bottom with his hands, kneading her beneath the silk.

  Julie molded herself against him, enjoying the taste of his mouth, and the slight friction of his chin against the sensitive skin of her face, and the warm, clean, spicy scent of aroused male.

  He groaned aloud. Julie pulled away from him, gasping for breath. Her shoulder was aching. She was light-headed, giddy, and completely immersed in the sensations his kisses created. She opened her eyes and found herself staring up into Will’s brown ones.

  She smiled at him, and Will leaned close to place a string of kisses from the two stitches in her bottom lip to the five stitches above her eyebrow. “Julie,” he murmured. “Lovely, scandalous Julia Jane.”

  The look in his eyes was so warm, so tender, so caring, it almost hurt to see it. Closing her eyes, she whispered, “Gorgeous, sinful Will Keegan.”

  He tightened his arms around her, breathing in the peach scent of her soap. He wanted to bury his fingers in her hair, her real hair, but he remembered she was wearing her wig and caught himself in time. The importance of her safety far exceeded that of his needs.

  She squeaked in pain and Will released her, reaching up to gently unwrap her arms from around his neck, stepping back to put some much-needed distance between them.

  She looked at him and Will read the confusion in her expression.

  “I hurt you.” He was instantly contrite. “I caused you pain.”

  “No—” She started to deny it, but Will cut her off.

  “Enough scandalous behavior for now,” he said firmly. “We have a billiards game and a bottle of champagne to finish.” He amazed himself by summoning the strength he needed to let go of her, when everything inside him implored him to hold on.

  Julie pulled herself to her full height, straightened her back, and stiffened her shoulders. Draping herself in all the dignity she could muster, she lifted her champagne glass and held it out for a refill, sounding as regal as the queen of England and all her forebears. “Let’s get to it then, shall we?”

  Lifting the champagne bottle, Will refilled her glass and topped off his own. Gesturing toward the billiard table, he said, “I believe it’s your second shot.”

  She took her cue, lined up her second shot, and missed. “Your turn.”

  He picked up his stick, drew a deep breath, and began to clear the table.

  She stared at him, disappointed. “You won.”

  “I’m good at this game and I’ve had more practice. I’m the expert and you’re the novice, remember?”

  “But I thought . . .”

  “That I would go easy on you? Allow you to win?”

  Julie nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a gentleman, and gentlemen always allow ladies to win.” She made the statement as if she were reading the rules of billiards and the rules of society to him.

  “That would be demeaning to both of us,” he said. “You couldn’t expect to best me the first time. You had only made your first shot. I’ve made hundreds, even thousands of shots.”

  She was quiet for a moment, thoughtful. “Why would allowing me to win—to experience beginner’s luck, as it were—be demeaning to me?” She took a deep breath. “I understand why losing to a beginning player and a female would be demeaning to you. And I understand that men object to losing in general, but I don’t understand the other.”

  “I don’t mind losing to a better player or a luckier player, male or female,” Will explained, “because I always learn something from those losses. What would I learn from losing on purpose to a player playing her first game? Other than the fact that she expected me to let her win? Neither one of us would learn from the game or become better players. And I don’t believe in insulting women by pretending I don’t know they are as capable of mastering the game as any man. I despise that sort of hypocrisy. We are both Homo sapiens. We both have brains of approximately equal size; why shouldn’t the female of the species be every bit as intelligent as the male? The only difference I can see in our proficiency of the game is experience.”

  “You believe it’s possible that I might best you at billiards?” Julie asked.

  “It’s possible,” he said. “Not likely, but possible.”

  “Let’s play again,” she said.

  Will bit the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling as she accepted the challenge. She had the makings of becoming a talented billiards player. All she needed was practice, and incentive to play through her inevitable losses instead of quitting. If he had learned one thing about Julia Jane, it was that she didn’t like to lose. She wanted to best him. And he would be happy to have her best him, as long as she did it honestly. A little incentive could be a powerful tool—and a powerful aphrodisiac. . . .

  “What say we make a little wager?” he suggested.

  Julie was instantly intrigued. “Wager?”

  “Something to make the game more interesting.”

  “What would we wager on?” She frowned.

  “Whatever you like,” he offered. “How many balls you can sink? How many games I’ll win? How many you’ll win? How many colored or striped balls we sink? Whether I’ll run the table? Whether you will? Whether you can beat me?”

  Julie pursed her lips, discovered it hurt to do so, and frowned. “I should like to wager on whether or not I can best you.”

  That came as no great surprise. “Done,” he agreed. “Shall we set a game limit—say, you will best me after ten games? Forty games? Or would you rather we set a time limit? In two hours of play, or five or ten? In one session—a session being the time we have to play between closing and opening? Or a dozen?”

  “Sessions,” she decided. “I’ll wager that I shall beat you by our fifth session.”

  Will grinned. “I’ll take that wager.” He rubbed his palms together in a gesture of supreme anticipation. “Now, what are we wagering?”

  “Twenty dollars.”

  He frowned. “Money? Ah, Julia Jane, I hoped you might be more original than that.”

  She looked puzzled. “I don’t understand. Everyone wagers money.”

  “That’s right,” he agreed, making the idea of placing bets for cash sound incredibly dull and passé. “Everyone wagers money.”

  “If not money, then what?” she asked.

  “Pleasure.”

  She stared at him, and Will recognized the intrigued expression on her face.

  “How does it work?”

  “When you win, you demand something from me that gives you pleasure,” he explained.

  “Like champagne?”

  “Like champagne,” Will agreed. “If you win the wager, you could demand a bottle of my best champagne, or anything else that gives you pleasure.”

  She gave him a sly, calculating look. “Like playing the piano, or singing ‘Bringing in the Sheaves’ to my heart’s content?”

  “The piano, yes,” he said. “But no ‘Bringing in the Sheaves’ in any form. Someone else might hear it, and that could put you in danger again.”

  “All right.” Julie walked over to the billiard table and began placing balls in the rack. “What do you get if you win?”

  “I get to demand something that brings me pleasure from you.”

  “Like kissing?” Her question sounded innocent, but the knowing look in her eyes wasn’t.

  “Whatever, wherever, whenever I want,” he clarified.

  “You know more about pleasure than I do,” Julie told him.

  “How do you expect to learn if you don’t experiment?” he asked.

  Julie picked up his cue and handed it to him. “Break.”

  * * *

  THEY PLAYED FOUR MORE GAMES BEFORE CALLING THE SESSION TO AN END. JULIE WAS SAGGING WITH FATIGUE AND too much champagne, and Will was practically reeling from lack of sleep and exhaustion. Will won every game, but Julie was rapidly improving.

  “I should hav
e paid more attention to my geometry lessons,” she grumbled, realizing he could calculate angles and the force needed to sink the ball much faster than she could.

  “You’re improving.” He complimented her play, then collected her cue, placed it alongside his in the holder mounted on the wall, retrieved the rack and hung it up, then started corralling the balls, placing them in a felt-lined leather box.

  “Aren’t you going to collect your payment?”

  He had already collected three. He’d kissed her on the pulse points of her left arm—the inner part of her wrist and her elbow—for his first payment. His second payment had been a kiss behind her right ear, which he stretched to include the nape of her neck.

  She’d shivered in reaction and expressed her surprise that he was kissing her instead of demanding something from her.

  He’d given her that wonderfully mysterious smile of his and replied, “Kissing you brings me pleasure.”

  “That makes two of us,” she retorted.

  “I’m relieved to hear it.” He gave a huge theatrical sigh. “I’d hate to think my efforts were going to waste.”

  She had giggled, a rough, hoarse giggle that bore little resemblance to her normal voice. “I get it now.”

  “What do you get, Julia Jane?”

  “Pleasure. We both win,” she realized. “Whether we win or lose.”

  “Clever girl,” he murmured, before he lowered his head and claimed his third prize.

  “Will?” she asked now, after he’d doused all but one light in the billiard room and taken her by the arm to escort her through the darkened rooms to the stairs.

  They climbed to the second floor. “Yes?”

  “Aren’t you going to collect your last prize?” They were standing in front of her—his former—bedroom door. He reached around her and turned the doorknob and cast a longing look at his large, comfortable bed.

  “Haven’t you had enough kissing for one night?” he asked with a smile.

  “No.”

  Her one-word answer nearly undid him. He thought for a moment that his knees would forget to support his weight.

  Julie closed her eyes, pursed her lips, and waited.

  Will stroked her battered face, sliding his palm from her temple to her chin in a supremely tender caress. He touched her bottom lip. “This is already swollen from my kisses. Dr. Stone will have my hide if I do any more damage. Your stitches come out tomorrow. I’ll save my last prize until after that so we can both enjoy it.”

  Julie opened her eyes. “But . . .”

  “Whatever, wherever, whenever I want,” he reminded her, before adding, “Anticipation increases the pleasure, Julia Jane.”

  She groaned. If anticipation increased her pleasure, she would surely die from it. . . .

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “I would far rather be ignorant than knowledgeable of evils.”

  —AESCHYLUS, 525–456 B.C.

  The billiards lessons must have gone better than expected,” Jack commented as Will entered the kitchen late the following morning.

  “Why do you say that?” Will covered a yawn as he headed toward the coffeepot on the stove. He had slept the sleep of the dead, despite the short, uncomfortable bed into which he’d folded his big frame. Grabbing a mug from the cabinet, he poured himself a cup of coffee and looked around for Julie’s breakfast tray.

  Jack anticipated Will’s question. “She ate earlier. Zhing brought dim sum from Ming’s and pastries from Kingman’s Bakery on Stockton Street when she came to help Julie bathe and dress. Julie’s been up for hours. Oh, I took the tin of chocolates upstairs so Julie could give it to Zhing. And Zhing was thrilled.”

  Will nodded. “Thanks for tending to business, Jack.”

  “Headache?” Jack waved an empty bottle and two champagne glasses he’d lifted from the baize surface of one of the tables in the billiard room.

  Will gulped a mouthful of hot coffee and swallowed. It burned all the way down. He didn’t bother to respond to Jack’s barb. “Sorry. I meant to retrieve those this morning before any customers arrived.”

  “Hard to do when you sleep late,” Jack deadpanned, placing the bottle in the bottle collector’s bin and the glasses in a dishpan of soapy water. “We’ve been open for forty-five minutes. Not that I blame you for sleeping late,” he added. “Apparently you had a long and interesting evening.”

  Will looked at the wall clock to check the time, then smiled. “That reminds me: You need to replace the bottle of champagne you keep in the icebox behind the bar.”

  “I noticed.” Jack glanced pointedly at the bottle bin.

  “And you might want to add an additional bottle,” Will said.

  “Fond of the bubbly, is she?” Jack kept probing, hoping to get a scrap of information out of Will to satisfy his curiosity about what had taken place in the billiard room this morning. “Because I know you aren’t.”

  Will was not forthcoming. He confided in Jack in matters relating to business, but he was notoriously closemouthed about his personal affairs. If he had a regular lady friend, Jack didn’t know who she was. Or where she was. Or when Will visited her. And he and Will lived and worked in the same building. He shrugged. He had enjoyed being a detective, but he drew the line at meddling in his boss’s love life, or lack of one, or whatever the case might be. Will was entitled to some secrets. . . .

  “A gentleman doesn’t disclose details of an evening spent in the company of a female companion,” Will reminded his friend.

  “Nor would I expect him to,” Jack replied. “But—” He stopped abruptly, biting his tongue to keep from saying what he felt he needed to say.

  Something must have shown on his face, because Will looked at him and uttered the words, “Go on, Jack; spit it out.”

  “It’s none of my business . . .” Jack began.

  “Probably not,” Will agreed good-naturedly, “but that’s never stopped you before. We’ve been friends too long for you to mince words. And we’ve been in this venture together from the beginning, so you might as well say what you’re thinking.”

  “Be careful, Will,” Jack cautioned him. “She’s young and innocent and . . .”

  “You’re concerned that I’ll hurt her,” Will finished Jack’s sentence for him.

  “No,” Jack corrected. “I’m concerned that she’ll break your heart.”

  Will finished his coffee, stood up, carried his cup to the stove, and refilled it. “You know better than that, Jack.” He turned from the stove and shrugged. “Ask any lady with whom I’ve kept company and you’ll find that I don’t have a heart.”

  Jack scoffed. “Says the man who’s going back into the dragon’s lair to rescue more helpless girls.”

  “Not this time,” Will told him.

  “What?” Jack was stunned. He couldn’t imagine Will missing an auction when there was so much at stake. “You’re not going?”

  “I’m going. But not into the dragon’s lair. This time it’s at the Nightingale Song.”

  Jack shot him a sharp look. “It’s always been Friday nights at the Jade Dragon.”

  “This time it’s Saturday night at the Nightingale Song,” Will said. “Send an unopened case of Irish whiskey there for me.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Will.” Jack told him.

  “I always have whiskey sent to the site of the auction, Jack. We don’t need to bring suspicion on us by changing the routine now.”

  “I’ll send it, but, Will, that place is in the roughest part of Chinatown. And it’s closer to the waterfront than the Jade Dragon. They shanghai sailors out of the Nightingale Song. There could be all kinds of hoodlums and roughnecks about. The only good thing about the change is that we can move the girls early Sunday morning, instead of having to wait until the wee hours of Monday, when all the tradesmen are about.” He scratched his chin. “But the Nightingale Song . . . I don’t like that at all.”

  “There isn’t much I can do about the location, Jack. It’s
Li Toy’s auction. She holds it where she feels the safest. My concern is that we be ready. I have no idea how many girls to expect, and even with the Pinkertons doubled up, we’ve got three fewer rooms.”

  “I’ve been giving that some thought, and I think you’ve already provided a solution to one of those problems.”

  “Enlighten me.” Will set his mug on the table and began rummaging in the warming oven for something to eat. He found slices of ham and several sourdough biscuits in a pan. Grabbing a plate and a bread knife, Will sliced a biscuit in half and slipped two pieces of ham inside it, put it on a plate, and carried the sandwich to the table.

  Jack opened the door of the pantry and brought out a tin of shortcake and a box of fresh pastries from Kingman’s Bakery and set them on the table. “No dim sum. But we’ve got some grapes and cheese in the larder if you’d like some to go with your ham.”

  Will sat down and took another bite of his ham biscuit, then shook his head, but helped himself to a cream-filled pastry. “You were saying I might have solved the problem. . . .”

  “You recently instigated a hostile takeover of a very nice hotel, Will. We can house the off-duty Pinkertons in the Russ House.”

  The impulsive decision to acquire the Russ House he and Jack had second-guessed had suddenly become an asset. Will slapped himself on the forehead. “We’ve got to decide who will run the place, Jack, and whom we’re going to keep and whom we’re going to let go.”

  “I suggest we bring a manager in from Craig Capital, Ltd. Pete Malcolm can help with that. He’ll know the best man for the job,” Jack reminded Will.

  “I think Seth Hammond would be a very good temporary desk clerk.” Will had given a great deal of thought to the staffing or restaffing of the hotel as well, but he hadn’t taken the opportunity to discuss it with Jack. He had mentioned it to Seth when they’d left the Russ House, and Seth had liked the idea. It might help them find Julia Jane’s assailant and would-be assassin.