Cold Night, Warm Stranger

by Jill Gregory

  Cold Night, Warm Stranger by Jill Gregory

  A shivering cold angel -- Maura Reed was all alone in her Montana hotel, curled up in her robe and slippers, when the blizzard hit. It was cold, quiet, and lonely -- until a rugged gunslinger blew in from the storm demanding shelter. Just for this night -- this wild, stormy night -- Maura wanted someone, something. Recklessly, she abandoned herself in his arms, knowing he would be gone by morning. The last thing she ever expected was the need that drove her into the wilderness... to find the stranger who haunted her dreams... A hot, dangerous devil -- He was the fastest gun in the West, a man who feared nothing until he met the woman who touched his heart. Quinn Lassiter didn't even recognize Maura when she cornered him in a distant saloon months later. Never in his wildest dreams did he see himself married -- until he said the words that made her his wife. He was determined to do the right thing by the woman he'd wronged, but he'd never reckoned on falling in love with her...

  "I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO STAY WARM," THE STRANGER SAID.

  "Taking off my clothes doesn't seem like the way to do that!" Maura replied.

  He seized her then, and pulled her close. "Trust me— it works."

  For a moment she was dizzy with the nearness of him. "I don't even know your name."

  There was a heartbeat of silence. Then he spoke flatly. "It's Lassiter."

  "Not...Quinn Lassiter?" she asked in a trembling voice.

  "The same. You think I'm going to shoot you?"

  "Of course not." She glanced up at him from beneath her lashes. "You wouldn't, would you?"

  "No. Never." He cupped her chin in his hand and forced her to meet his eyes. "I'm going to make love to you, angel. Real nice, hot, hang-on-to-your-hat love. If you want me to, that is. I'll keep you warm all night long. Fact is, I'll make you sweat. I'll even make you burn. And you won't need clothes, and you won't need fires." He slid a hand slowly, languidly, down her bare arm and Maura shivered. "That's a promise."

  Published by Dell Publishing a division of Random House, Inc. 1540 Broadway New York, New York 10036

  Copyright © 1999 by Jill Gregory

  ISBN: 0-440-22440-3

  Printed in the United States of America Published simultaneously in Canada August 1999

  To Maggie Crawford Maggie, thanks for everything! This one's for you!

  Chapter 1

  On that savage January night when snow engulfed the Rockies in a raging blur of glittering white, when the wild creatures hid and shivered, and no one stirred in the tiny, dirty town of Knotsville, Montana, Maura Jane Reed had no inkling that her life was about to change forever. She drank her tea and shivered in her thick blue robe, struggling with the bone-numbing loneliness she had known all her life. She had no inkling that miles away, a gunfighter on a horse named Thunder was fighting his lone way through the blizzard, across Looper's Pass, barreling toward Knotsville and into her life.

  Neither did she know that thirty miles north, in the town of Hatchett where a high-stakes poker tournament had drawn gamblers, adventurers, and fools from all over the territory, a fortune in diamonds had been stolen that same night, a killer gunned down in the street, a woman murdered.

  Or that any of it would ever touch her. Maura only knew that she had to get out of Knotsville, away from the Duncan Hotel and the vicious bullying of her adoptive brothers, and build a decent life for herself. She was twenty-four years old and had never gone to a dance, owned a new dress, spoken aloud without giving careful thought to each word, or kissed a man.

  Come spring, she thought, hugging her arms around herself, trying to ward off the chill that threatened to permeate her bones, I'll find a way to get out of here—I'll go someplace where Judd and Homer can never find me. Never hurt me—or anyone else I know or care about.

  Shivering, she peered again through the window of the hotel kitchen, mesmerized by the whirling sea of white. Even Willy Peachtree, the wizened old-timer who helped her run the place while Judd and Homer caroused, hadn't made it over from the saloon since the snow had begun in earnest.

  "Maybe it will never stop," she mused as she set her cup down on the table. She tucked a strand of auburn hair behind her ear and pondered the great drifts of snow enveloping every dark, grimy inch of Knotsville's Main Street. Even wrapped in the bulky robe, with long johns and a flannel nightshirt underneath, she felt halfway frozen. The blizzard had begun three days ago and showed no signs of abating.

  At this rate, it might be days before Judd and Homer returned.

  The thought cheered her.

  She was lonely, but not for her adoptive brothers.

  A deeper, more painful loneliness assailed Maura. As she left the kitchen, hands cradling the cup of tea, padding in thick socks across the small square hotel dining room and toward the lobby stairs, she felt as if she were the only inhabitant left in Knotsville—there was no one staying in the hotel and more than half the town had gone to Hatchett just like Judd and Homer to partake in the festivities of the poker tournament, which was to draw gamblers from across the East and West. She hadn't seen another soul in days, not since the blizzard started.

  But it wasn't anyone in Knotsville she was lonely for either. Thanks to Judd and Homer, no one dared befriend her or get too close. The one time someone had tried...

  Her blood congealed at the memory of what had happened to the new young cowpoke at the Hendricks's spread who had invited her on a picnic when she was seventeen. His name had been Bobby Watson. He'd been beaten, stomped, and run off before he had a chance to collect his first week's pay.

  And then there had been the young doctor passing through town on his way to Nebraska only last year. He had dared invite her to sit down at his table with him in the dining room, to talk and share a meal.

  When Judd and Homer had finished with him, he'd been a bloody pulp thrown onto the morning stage.

  She leaned her forehead against her palms at the memory and took deep breaths. And forced her thoughts away from the terrible images of her adoptive brothers' handiwork.

  Somewhere, someplace there was a man Judd and Homer couldn't beat, stab, shoot, or hurt. Someone who couldn't be frightened off or driven away, who wouldn't be left scarred for life, or half dead because he'd dared to be nice to her.

  And somewhere, someplace there was more to living than this dreary cycle of endlessly scouring the hotel, washing and pressing bed linens, sweeping floors, cooking meals for guests and for Judd and Homer.

  There has to be more to life than this, Maura told herself grimly as she reached the lobby, where a single candle burned in a wall sconce.

  Somewhere, there was someone who would care if she felt cold or lonely.

  But she wouldn't find him—or whatever she was searching for—here in Knotsville. The Duncan boys would see to that.

  She had to leave—and soon. Before she turned into the same kind of dreary, dried-up broomstick of a woman that Ma Duncan had become, especially in the months before she died, the months Maura had nursed her and had wondered if the poor, miserable woman had ever known anything of happiness in her entire life.

  I'm going to be happy, Maura told herself as she reached the staircase. Maybe I'll go to San Francisco and open a dress shop—sew dresses for rich ladies, and have my own carriage, and my own snug little house with a rug from Turkey and a Chinese vase on the mantel and shelves full of books and a hearth in every room. Or I'll go east—to Boston or New York—and I'll meet an educated man in the park, a professor or a doctor, and we'll drink tea together and discuss books and go to plays or perhaps the opera...

  The front door of the hotel burst open. Maura gasped and whirled back from the stairway, spilling her tea as an icy gust of snow and wind whipped at her. She gave a
strangled scream as a snow-draped giant of a man hurtled across the threshold and into the lobby with the force of a norther.

  He kicked the door shut behind him. "Hell of anight."

  His eyes flickered over Maura, bundled in her many layers, her hair wild and loose about her shoulders, the scream still dying on her lips.

  His cold gray gaze narrowed. He advanced on her, snow dripping from the broad brim of his black Stetson and melting from his great black boots onto the floor. "Lady, I'm warning you. I'm a damn sight too tired to pick you up, so if you faint, you're going to stay right where you drop. Got that?"

  Chapter 2

  "I'm not...going to faint. I never faint."

  The man's eyes flickered over her, quick as a hawk scanning a baby field mouse. "Then get moving," he said. "I want a room. But first a hot meal and a bottle of whiskey. Think you can handle that?"

  She nodded. Her voice seemed to have disappeared. For a moment she could only stare at the tall, black-haired stranger who had blown in out of the night.

  With eyes paler, grayer, and icier than sleet, he stared back.

  He was a stranger—a dark-and-dangerous-as-the-devil kind of stranger. He wore a long black duster draped with snow. From his black hat to his black boots he dripped with snow. But something else clung to him besides snow and ice. Power and menace. It emanated from him. His face was hard and handsome, all strong planes and harsh angles, with a ruthless jaw, and those commanding ice-gray eyes beneath slashing dark brows. His mouth was a thin line, uncompromising, lacking any trace of humor or softness, as hard and no-nonsense as the rest of him.

  A gunfighter, Maura guessed. Fear, mixed with a kind of mesmerized fascination, quivered through her. They'd had gunfighters pass through before, but no one ever quite as intimidating as this man.

  He looked like he could gobble her whole for dinner and casually spit out the bones.

  "What's the problem, lady?" he growled, his gaze locked on her face. "Don't you have a free room?"

  She found her voice, what was left of it. "Yes, sir, I've a room. Eight of them, as a matter of fact—all empty. You may have your pick—there's no one in the whole place except you and me."

  His expression never changed, except for an almost imperceptible lifting of his brows.

  Maura's cheeks whitened. What an idiot she was. Why on earth had she told him that she was alone? What if he... if he...

  If he what? she asked herself. If he decided to try to take advantage of you?

  She had a feeling that even if there was someone else there, nothing would stop him from "taking advantage of her" if he had a mind to. He had the look of a man who took what he wanted, when he wanted, and Lord help anyone who stood in his way.

  It was doubtful, she reflected with a tiny shock, that even Judd and Homer would be able to stand in his way.

  But she also realized something else after that first flash of alarm. For all his dangerous air, he really didn't look like the kind of man who would harm a woman. There was no cruelty in his face—only toughness, and the kind of dark, scowling handsomeness that would have women throwing themselves at him right and left. She had no doubt that he could have his pick of women, as many as he liked.

  And suddenly intensely aware of her thick robe, wool-stockinged feet, long johns, and flannel nightgown, Maura was absolutely certain she looked nothing like the kind of woman he would want. Not that she would even if she were dressed up in her Sunday best. Ma Duncan had told her once that she was pretty, but she knew that couldn't be true. She was too tall, too slim, too small-breasted. Too quiet and tongue-tied. Perhaps if her eyes were vivid green instead of plain brown, if her hair weren't a simple boring red but was instead the romantic color of copper. If her lower lip wasn't so wide and was shaped more like a tiny perfect rosebud...

  But it wasn't. She wasn't. And he was already looking past her into the gloom of the dining room. "I'll have a steak, mashed potatoes, and pie," he said curtly as he strode past her.

  When he reached the table in the corner, he tossed his bedroll down against the wall, pulled out a chair, and sat with his back to the wall.

  Maura hurried after him. She should tell him that the kitchen was closed. Breakfast would be served at sunup. Not a moment sooner.

  But she didn't. She couldn't. Beneath the hard set of his face, he looked tired. And hungry.

  How had he ever made it through the blizzard? she wondered. And where had he come from?

  But before she could ask him, he spoke again.

  "Whiskey." He pushed his hat back and closed his eyes. "Bring that first."

  "All I have in the kitchen right now is some beef stew with carrots and potatoes. And a chocolate cake," Maura peeped at him nervously. "Will that be all right?"

  He did open his eyes and look at her then, a long, narrow-eyed look that had probably brought hardened outlaws to their knees. Maura's heart pounded harder in her chest, but she managed to keep her gaze steady on his.

  "It'll do," he grunted after what seemed like an endless silence. "Did you say you're all alone here?"

  "Y-yes."

  "Who the hell would leave a girl all alone in a place like this?" he growled in irritation.

  Maura's shoulders relaxed. He wasn't going to shoot her because she didn't have any steak. He wasn't going to rape her because she was all alone. "Actually," she confided quietly, with a small, shy smile, "I don't mind at all. I like being alone sometimes."

  He leaned back in the chair, stretching his long legs out before him. His eyes closed, dismissing her. "Whiskey. Fast."

  With as much dignity and speed as she could manage in her robe, Maura turned away and made for the kitchen.

  When she brought him the bottle of whiskey and a glass, he didn't even glance at her, just took it and poured himself a good dollop of liquor. He gulped it down in one long swig.

  Maura returned to the kitchen as he poured himself some more.

  But as she took down plates and utensils from the shelf, and set the stew to heating on the stove, and sliced up some of the morning's corn bread, she couldn't forget the expression on the stranger's face. He looked like a man intent on getting drunk, not for fun, not with relish, but with desperation. As if he were running from something. Or someone.

  Except that man out there didn't seem like the kind who would ever run from anyone. Except perhaps... himself.

  Maura burned her fingers on the stewpot and nearly dropped it, but slid it onto the countertop just in time. She stuck her fingers in her mouth, and decided she'd best concentrate on what she was doing and forget about that stranger out there. Judd and Homer always told her she spent too much time thinking and not enough doing. Which was almost laughable since she spent every minute of her life running this hotel, working, cleaning, cooking, while they spent the better part of their days and nights in the saloon, playing either faro or poker, drinking, or getting into fights. But she knew they had always been contemptuous of her love of books and ideas, and jealous of the praise their mother, a former schoolteacher, had heaped on her for her good marks in school. The only thing Judd and Homer had ever learned in school was how to torment the teacher, poor frazzled Miss Lansdown, with dead mice in her desk drawer, snakes under her chair, spiders dropped down the back of her neck.

  If the boys were here, they'd waste no time in reminding her that the stranger out there was none of her business. Running the hotel was.

  The stranger seemed to be asleep in his chair when she brought out the tray of food. His hat hid his handsome face.

  "Here's your dinner, sir." She set down the heavy tray and began setting out the plates. She noticed that almost half the whiskey was gone from the bottle. He tossed his hat onto an empty chair and surveyed the food.

  "Much obliged." Picking up his spoon, he tasted the stew. Without comment, he began to eat.

  "Is everything... all right?"

  "Just fine. Much obliged," he repeated, continuing to take spoonful after spoonful as she continued to st
and and stare at him.

  She couldn't seem to take her eyes off his face. He needed a shave, Maura thought—though that wouldn't make him look any more handsome. Staring at his strong-jawed countenance, intriguingly shadowed with a dark growth of beard, she could only conclude that he was already handsomer than any man had a right to be.

  He ate quickly, hungrily but not sloppily, she noted with approval. Not like Judd, who chewed with his mouth open, or Homer, who used his fingers more times than not.

  The stew was gone. All of the potatoes, all of the meat, all of the carrots—gone. So was the corn bread. He reached for the plate of chocolate cake.

  Then suddenly he seemed to remember that she was still there.

  "You want something?"

  His eyes were so cold that Maura shivered as they touched her.

  "No... no. I was just wondering. Did you ride far?"

  "Far enough."

  "How did you get through? I mean, the snow... it must have been difficult."

  "I've seen worse."

  "Um... do you have business in Knotsville or are you just passing through?"

  He set down his fork. He leaned back slightly, enough to regard her again, staring at her so intently that Maura felt a blush stealing into her cheeks. "You always talk this much?"

  The blush grew hotter. "No. As a matter of fact, I hardly ever talk at all—at least not to anyone except myself." She rushed on, "But my brothers have been gone for days and I haven't really seen another soul and..." Her voice trailed away as she saw him give his head a shake and return his attention to the chocolate cake.

  He thinks I'm a nuisance, she thought in dismay. A silly, chattering ninny in long johns and stocking feet. A pest.

  "I beg your pardon." She scooped up the empty plates and hurried away.

  At the kitchen doorway she paused and glanced back. He had finished the slice of cake, every crumb of it, and had poured more whiskey into his glass.

  But it was the slump of his broad shoulders that caught her attention. And the haunted expression in his eyes. They'd lost their hard metallic gleam. Now, instead of looking cold and frightening, they just looked bleak.