Cash (The Rock Creek Six Book 6)

by Linda Winstead Jones

  Cash

  The Rock Creek Six

  Book 6

  by

  Linda Winstead Jones

  By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this eBook. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of copyright owner.

  Please Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The reverse engineering, uploading, and/or distributing of this eBook via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Copyright © 2002, 2012 by Linda Winstead Jones.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  eBook design by eBook Prep www.ebookprep.com

  Cover design by Kim Killion at http://thekilliongroupinc.com

  Thank You.

  The Rock Creek Six Series

  (in series order)

  now available in eBook and Print format

  Reese

  Sullivan

  Rico

  Jed

  Nate

  Cash

  This book is dedicated to Lori Handeland,

  who has been such a joy to work with. Thanks to e-mail,

  Wisconsin and Alabama just got a little bit closer.

  Table of Contents

  The Rock Creek Six

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Excerpt:Reese by Lori Handeland

  List of Titles

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Webberville, Texas

  March 1876

  “Can I touch it?” Henrietta whispered.

  “No.”

  “Please, Cash,” she purred.

  They lounged, naked and relaxed, across a canted and creaking bed in a small room above the Webberville saloon. Henrietta, a pretty enough calico gal for these parts, smiled widely. Of course the redhead was happy. She’d been well satisfied and well paid, and Cash wasn’t finished with her. He just wished she wouldn’t talk so damned much.

  “No,” he said again, setting his eyes on her in a way that made her bright smile fade.

  Her own eyes landed on the fancy six-shooter that rested on the bedside table, close at hand, and she sighed deeply. Her ponderous breasts rose and fell. “But it’s so pretty, and shiny, and... and I know what you can do with it.”

  Cash didn’t understand the fascination. He killed with that six-shooter. He was fast, he was accurate, and he was deadly. Henrietta practically salivated over that damned gun. She wanted to caress it the same way she’d caressed him, with curious fingers.

  The sick fascination annoyed him, but not enough to make him kick her out of his bed. He was on his way to Rock Creek, and once he arrived there, women available for bedding would be few and far between. There were too damn many respectable, meddlesome women in that town.

  “Cash, darlin’,” Henrietta began, rolling seductively toward him. Her eyes were no longer on his six-shooter. “How long will you be here?”

  “Just until tomorrow morning.”

  “Take me with you when you go.”

  It was a tempting prospect for the span of a half second. “No.”

  She pouted, jutting out her bottom lip. “That’s all you can say tonight. No, no, no. I don’t like it here. I know you have your own saloon in Rock Creek. I could work there, or...” Her eyes got big. Wide and hopeful. “Or I could just be with you. I don’t ask for much. I’m real easy to get along with.”

  “Honey, you wouldn’t be in Rock Creek a week before the good women of that fine town had you opening a bakery or married to the closest single rancher,” he teased.

  “You don’t think good women have tried to save me before?” she countered with a wicked smile. “I don’t want to be saved. It would take an army of good women to drag me away from you.”

  “Unfortunately Rock Creek has that very army.”

  The shuffle of a shoe in the hallway registered in his brain, in that small corner that was always on alert and kept him alive. He noted the shuffle as he continued his conversation with the woman who had decided to make her argument with her body. She could argue all she wanted, she could argue all night, but when he headed out of here in the morning, she’d be staying behind.

  “You’ll be lonely there,” she whispered.

  “Yes, I will.”

  “Then why are you going?”

  It’s home. He wasn’t foolish enough to admit that, not even to a prostitute he’d likely never see again.

  The muted snick outside the door made Cash sit up straight and shove Henrietta aside as he reached for the six-shooter on the bedside table. He kicked her off the bed and onto the floor as the door burst open. In the same smooth motion he swung the pistol forward, taking aim and firing in an instinctive and deadly accurate fashion. The man in the doorway got off a single shot, but it went wide and the bullet smacked into the wall above Cash’s head.

  Blood bloomed on the dingy white shirt of the attacker in the doorway. The moron looked surprised. Stunned, even, as he glanced down at his fatal wound. His six-shooter dropped from numbed fingers as he fell forward, slamming down face first onto the plank floor.

  Henrietta screamed loud and long. Cash cursed as he reached for his trousers, leaping from the bed to pull them on. He was almost decent by the time a bald head peeked around the doorjamb. Again, his arm reacted and the gun snapped up.

  But it was the bartender. Pale and shaking, the old man looked from Cash to the body on the floor. “Who... who is that?”

  “I don’t know,” Cash said as he lowered his weapon. “You tell me.”

  Henrietta took a deep breath and started to scream again.

  “Shut up,” Cash ordered in a low voice. She did.

  “He’s not from around here,” the bartender said. “Showed up an hour or so back and started asking questions. I reckon someone told him you were up here.”

  “I reckon,” Cash whispered, stepping around the bed to glance down at the body. The man had landed nose down on the floor, so it was impossible to get a decent look at his face from a standing position.

  Since the war had ended, he’d hired his gun out on numerous occasions. Killing people was Cash’s gift, and he embraced his talent the way other people embraced their own chosen professions. Between jobs he stopped in Rock Creek for the closest thing to real rest he knew. In the past couple of years he’d often found himself talking and thinking about staying there, making his saloon, Rogue’s Palace, home for good.
Putting down roots of a sort. But he always got restless and changed his mind after a few weeks or a few months. Sometimes he didn’t last more than a couple of days. There had been a time when Nate was always there to watch his back, and he’d returned the favor. For the past year, though, Cash had been on his own, more often than not.

  Some days a real anger boiled up inside him, when he thought of the way Nate had let Jo reform him. But when he realized that his old friend would probably be dead by now without that wife’s interference, the anger receded. That didn’t mean Cash had forgiven Nate for turning his back on the life the two of them had led for so long, though. Who would have thought he’d actually miss the companionship of a drunk who was given to passing out at the most inopportune moments, and who quoted Scripture and occasionally spouted incoherent words of wisdom when he was awake?

  Cash dropped to his haunches and lifted a mass of stringy hair away from the gunman’s face. It might have been a relief to see an enemy, a face he recognized... but this man was a stranger. A stranger who had tracked Daniel Cash down and tried to ambush him. For revenge or to make a name for himself? No one would ever know. This man’s secrets would be buried with him in a Webberville grave.

  He no longer had any desire to sleep in this bed, to lie with this woman. Rock Creek was calling him. Calling him home. He didn’t know how long he’d stay this time, but it was becoming increasingly clear that he was not safe or welcome anywhere else.

  He wasn’t even sure he’d be safe or welcomed there.

  Chapter 1

  Two months later

  “Marry me, dammit.”

  Cash grinned as he watched Jed chase after his very pregnant wife. Hannah had no reservations about bursting into Rogue’s Palace with her husband on her trail.

  “We’re already married,” she said with strained patience. “We have been for more than two years.”

  Jed let loose a long string of profanity. Her back to her husband, Hannah just smiled. Cash had never seen the quarrelsome woman so unnaturally serene. No one loved an argument as much as Hannah, and she normally had a most direct way of sharing her opinion. Jed swore his wife had been the very picture of gentleness since becoming pregnant. Cash found it downright unnatural.

  “We were married in Italian,” Jed argued. “I don’t even know if that’s legal in Texas or not!”

  “Of course it is, darling.”

  Cash pulled out a chair at his table, bowed in a gentlemanly fashion, and offered Hannah a seat. Good Lord, she really was huge. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen expectant mothers before, but Hannah apparently did pregnancy the same way she did everything else: to excess.

  Jed sat down beside Hannah and took her hand. After all this time, they remained a most unlikely couple. Jed’s wavy dark blond hair was getting long again, and while he managed to shave now and then, he didn’t get around to the chore every day. He was still given to leather and buckskins, though denim and cotton ran a close second. He was rough, he was crude... and he was accustomed to getting what he asked for. Hannah always looked like a lady, proper and refined. Regal and well bred. Her dark red hair was normally perfectly fashioned, and her clothes were always expensive, a fact Cash noticed and appreciated. You didn’t usually see the toughness in her until she opened her mouth.

  “Nate can just marry us again,” Jed all but pleaded. “We’ll have our family and friends with us this time. And the ceremony can be performed in a language I understand so I’m absolutely sure it’s legal and our baby is legitimate.”

  Hannah leaned over and planted a kiss on Jed’s roughly bearded cheek. “You are so incredibly sweet.”

  Cash lifted his eyebrows. Sweet? No one had ever dared to call Jed Rourke sweet.

  It was distressing to see how marriage had ruined five perfectly capable men. Amusing, at times, but also depressing. There were babies everywhere, children, families, and at the center of it were those interfering good women. Sex was one thing. Complete surrender was another.

  Cash had always felt like he lived on the outside, looking in. As an orphaned boy in Marianna, Texas, making his way however he could. As a soldier who had the ability to separate himself from everything and everyone else. As a gunman who could kill without compunction.

  These days he really was the odd man out. His friends, former soldiers who’d always been better at war than at peace, were all married. Tamed and comfortable. Five of the desperadoes once known as the Rock Creek Six reproduced regularly or took in orphans or did both. They and their wives tolerated Cash and his ways, for old time’s sake he was certain, but he no longer felt like one of them.

  Nor did he want to. No woman would lead him around by his nose or his pecker, and he had no desire to reproduce.

  There had been a time when Jed would have picked Hannah up, carried her to the church, and held her still while the ceremony he desired was performed. Hannah was enormous at the moment, but if any man could carry her, it would be Jed. Instead, the big man sat beside her, all but begging her to do as he wished.

  Cash had a feeling Jed would get his second wedding, but only after Hannah had strung him along for a while. Women. At times like this, Cash was doubly grateful that he’d sidestepped the seemingly sweet trap his friends had fallen into.

  “Tell me,” Cash said, sitting down at Hannah’s other side to join the conversation. “Why not just agree to the ceremony Jed wants and be done with it? Unless, of course, you’re sorry you ever married...”

  “No!” Hannah said sharply, lifting her head to pin her strong gray eyes on him. She immediately turned to her husband and raised a soft hand to touch his cheek. “Oh, you don’t think that’s why... You know I love you, and marrying you was the best thing that ever happened to me. But... our wedding was so perfect.” She turned back to Cash and smiled, but tears sprouted in her eyes. “You should have seen the cathedral where we were married. It was ancient and majestic, the most gorgeous building I have ever seen in my life. The sun slanted through the stained-glass windows in a way that was certainly heavenly, and Jed looked so beautiful.”

  Jed Rourke, beautiful and sweet. Cash shook his head.

  “The words were lovely—” she whispered.

  “And in a language I couldn’t understand,” Jed interrupted.

  “The day was magical,” Hannah finished. “I don’t need another wedding. I am already married in every possible way.”

  Jed sighed in what might have been capitulation. Cash suspected this surrender was nothing more than a temporary truce.

  Cash laid his eyes on redheaded Hannah. “You have no idea how it distresses me to watch you ruin a perfectly good man this way.”

  Hannah pursed her lips. “Jed is not ruined, you imbecile.”

  “Imbecile?” Cash repeated with a lift of his eyebrows.

  “Now, you two...” Jed began.

  Hannah silenced her husband with a lift of a single finger, and Cash stifled a grin as she stated her case. “You remain in this dark, cheerless saloon all day and all night, leaving only because Eden won’t deliver your meals.”

  “Rogue’s Palace is quite cheery,” Cash argued.

  “You should be able to find yourself a woman somewhere,” she said, the tone of her voice suggesting that Cash had tried to find one who would have him but could not. “You’re relatively good-looking when the light hits you just so, and you can be charming when you set your mind to it.” She made every word sound like a very friendly insult. “If you could just get a handle on that mouth of yours—”

  “My mouth?” Cash interrupted with a bark of a laugh. “Oh, this is definitely the pot calling the kettle black.”

  “You two, cut it out,” Jed said, his voice low and threatening.

  Hannah turned a softening gaze to her husband. “Sorry, darling. It’s just that Cash can be so exasperating. He needs a good woman—”

  “I’d rather be shot,” Cash interrupted. “I’d rather be hanged. I’d rather be drawn and quartered. God save me from the goo
d women of this world.”

  “If divine intervention is called for,” Hannah countered, “it would be on behalf of the women you try so diligently to avoid.”

  “Enough,” Jed said softly. “Can we talk about the wedding some more?”

  Hannah’s smile brightened. “What wedding?” She turned sparkling eyes to Cash. Good heavens, the woman loved a good argument more than he did. “Can I have a small whiskey, please?”

  “No,” Jed and Cash answered at the same time.

  She tried to pout. “Some saloon this is.”

  Jed assisted Hannah to her feet and led her toward the bat-wing doors. “We’ll head back to the hotel and I’ll have Eden fix you some tea.”

  “Tea is a poor excuse for a small shot of whiskey,” Hannah complained. “Just a teensy-weensy—”

  “No,” Jed said as he held the swinging door open. “Eden said it’s not good for the baby. You’ll just have to wait another couple of months or so.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Hannah said demurely. “I want only what’s best for the baby.”

  “I’m just trying to take good care of you both.”

  Hannah sighed. “Yes, dear.”

  Cash leaned back in his chair and shook his head. Yes, dear?

  The saloon was empty, a condition that did not bother Cash at the moment. It was early afternoon, and besides, he never exactly did a rousing business. Most people looking for entertainment went to Lily’s place, down the road. Three Queens. She had music in her fancy entertainment house, singing and dancing every night of the week. The last man who had tried to sing and dance in Rogue’s Palace had been tossed out on his ear, the drunken, tone-deaf bastard.

  Cash’s saloon offered whiskey and the occasional game of poker. It catered to men who were looking for the simple things. Booze and a way to lose their hard-earned money. Most days it was quite late before business picked up.

  So he was surprised when, just minutes after Jed and Hannah left, the doors swung open again. With the sunlight bright behind the newcomer, it was impossible to tell who it was. A small man or a boy in baggy trousers and an ill-fitting shirt, boots that clipped on the wooden floor, a wide-brimmed hat, and no gun belt. There was no sign of a weapon at all, and still a shiver of warning crept up Cash’s spine. Strangers, no matter how small and innocent-looking they might be, were usually trouble.