by Craig, Emma
That was fine with her.
* * * *
The first thing Sophie did the following morning, even before she took Tybalt outside for his morning exercise, was ascertain the exact state of Dmitri’s health. She wished she’d done it the night before, but Juniper had dissuaded her, citing the time, which by then was well past midnight. Sophie had obliged her aunt, and had suffered a bad night inconsequence. She considered insomnia a just punishment for having put Dmitri in peril.
Now, as Tybalt snuffled at her feet, eager to go outside and piddle, she stood in Dmitri’s hotel room doorway and asked, “Are you sure you weren’t hurt?” She eyed the little man closely, trying to determine if there were bruises or breaks he was trying to hide.
He shook his head, gloomy as usual. “Nyet. That Mr. Caine, he help me.”
Sophie felt her lips pinch and endeavored to smooth them out. She didn’t like knowing that Gabriel had saved Dmitri from a situation brought about by her own personal, single-
minded pursuit of vengeance. Her goal sounded bad when looked at in that light. But it wasn’t bad. Not at all. It was just and proper.
Sniffing, she said, “I’m glad he came to your assistance. I must say I’m rather surprised that he’d do such a thing. I didn’t think he possessed the compassion.”
She was also surprised when Dmitri shook his stubborn Russian head and growled, “Mr. Caine good man. He help me. Besides, Miss Juniper say so.”
Sophie couldn’t keep from rolling her eyes. Good heavens, Gabriel Caine had not only succeeded in worming himself into Juniper and Tybalt’s hearts, but he’d even conquered Dmitri, who could barely tolerate the majority of people cluttering up the earth. She could hardly stand it.
“At any rate,” she said stiffly, “I’m sorry if my brazen actions last night put you in jeopardy. I shan’t do anything so foolhardy again.” Not if she had to walk into saloons all by herself.
Dmitri frowned up at her, as if he’d read her unspoken vow. “Not a problem. I help you. I don’t mind.”
“Nonsense. I shan’t drag you into my troubles.”
“Not trouble. I help.”
Well, Sophie thought, there it was. She was stuck. Now she’d not only have to find Ivo Hardwick—again—and kill him, but she’d also have to protect Dmitri, who would insist upon accompanying her, as well. Lord, life could get complicated at the worst times.
However, there was nothing she could do to dissuade the tiny Russian at the moment. Resigned, she said, “I’m going to walk to Mr. Huffy’s boardinghouse and ask him to track down Hardwick again. I’m sure the lout has left Tucson by this time.” Shaking her head in anger, she added, “Thanks to Gabriel Caine, Hardwick knows I’m after him now, so he’ll probably be harder to track.”
Without a word, Dmitri went into his room, retrieved his cloth cap, pulled it down on his head, walked into the hallway, and shut the door behind him, ready to accompany Sophie and Tybalt into hell itself if Sophie wanted him to. Or even, Sophie reflected unhappily, if she didn’t want him to. With a sigh, she set out in the direction of Miss Partridge’s Boardinghouse.
* * * *
“You didn’t get him?” Emerald Huffy was incapable of looking incredulous, but his bland features did crinkle a bit as he stared at Sophie. “I brung you right smack to him.”
Sophie didn’t appreciate the accusation she heard in her hireling’s voice. “Indeed, you did. And I got him out in the alley and had the gun trained on his evil heart. Unfortunately, before I could finish the job, somebody interfered.” If she ever got Gabriel Caine alone, she’d teach him a lesson about interference he’d never forget, too.
Preferably with a knife or a gun.
Good Lord, she never used to have violent thoughts about anyone but Ivo Hardwick. For the briefest of moments, Sophie wondered if her pursuit of retribution was maiming her essential and basic nature, which used to be rather kindly—at least towards those she loved.
But she couldn’t afford to think like that, so she stopped it at once. Huffy pulled at his lower lip. “Well,” he said slowly, “I reckon I can trace him. He ain’t too hard to follow, but it’s going to take more time. You got the money?”
Cold old chap, wasn’t he? Since she’d hired him, in part, for that very characteristic, Sophie knew she was being foolish to resent it now. “Oh, yes, I have enough money. Nothing is going to stand in my way this time.”
Huffy nodded. “All right. I’ll get on it. You still at the Cosmopolitan?”
“Yes, we’ll stay there until we get word from you.” With Dmitri to drum up business, Sophie expected to be reading palms and telling fortunes for the rest of the next day or two. People were such fools. They’d believe anything if Juniper saw it in the cards. Yet most, if not all, of them would swear they were sane, balanced individuals who were not easily duped.
Sophie knew from experience that the sanest, best-
balanced person could be duped by a scoundrel without the slightest trouble. She needed look no farther than the nearest mirror if she ever began to doubt it.
On that dismal note, she, Dmitri, and Tybalt took their leave of Emerald Huffy. He was counting the bills Sophie had handed him when the door closed.
* * * *
Furious with himself for oversleeping, Gabriel bounded down the staircase in the Oriental, aiming to race to the Cosmopolitan before Sophie and Juniper could slip through his fingers. He’d be fried if he’d let them loose on the world without his supervision. With any kind of luck at all, Sophie would find Hardwick again, and if she had her way, she’d kill him, and then Gabriel’s job would be ruined.
“Damn her,” he muttered as he slammed through the batwing doors.
And that was another thing. Everything had worked out all right last night, because his sleeping quarters were directly above the saloon where Sophie had tried to do her dirty work.
But he was getting too damned old to sleep through the noise that emanated from even the tamest saloon—and the Oriental was far from tame.
As much as Gabriel hated to give in to age, still more did he cherish sleeping a full night through. From now on, he’d stop wherever the Madrigals were stopping, if they intended to follow Hardwick. Since he’d as yet no reason to doubt Sophie’s dedication to her pursuit of the villain, he assumed they did.
He hoped like hell that they hadn’t already skedaddled this morning. If they had, he’d have to figure out where they’d gone. Damn it. But he wouldn’t allow her to tackle Hardwick alone again. For the love of Mike, Hardwick was a grade-A bastard who’d as soon kill Sophie as look at her. The notion made Gabriel’s blood run cold.
Muttering soft curses as his long strides ate up the boardwalk, Gabriel screeched to a halt when he turned the corner. By damn, there she was. With her ugly dog and the little Russian tagging along as usual. Relief flooded him so fast, he clapped a hand to his chest, alarmed. Criminy, that had never happened before. Maybe he really was getting old.
Stifling his odd reaction to finding Sophie in Tucson, and evidently alive and well, Gabriel trotted over to the odd-
looking trio.
Sophie didn’t see him until Tybalt whuffled excitedly and tugged at his leash. Then, looking up to see where her dog wanted to go, she spied Gabriel—and frowned.
Gabriel had expected it, so her frown didn’t much diminish his delight in finding her. Oh, sure, he was accustomed to pretty women smiling at him, generally in a come-hither manner, but this wasn’t merely a pretty woman. This was Sophie Madrigal, blight of his life, and the only woman he could ever remember actually fascinating him.
Hoping to disconcert her, he swept his black hat from his black hair and bowed formally. “Top of the morning to you, Miss Sophie. I hope the new day finds you well.” He winked at Dmitri. “You all right this morning? No lasting damage?”
Dmitri grinned and nodded. Sophie, Gabriel noted, didn’t approve of the little guy grinning at interfering old him. Too bad. Dmitri might be dead now but for Gabriel’s
interference. His heart stammered when he thought about what might have happened to Sophie if she’d succeeded in killing Ivo Hardwick. Or in merely wounding him.
All at once, he wanted to holler at her, to rage and stomp and demand to know if she had any idea what the authorities would do to her if she fulfilled her bloodthirsty scheme. Or what Hardwick might do if she only maimed him. He knew that if he succumbed to the impulse to holler, she’d only sneer at him and say she didn’t care. Gabriel cared, however, and he had a momentary, mad impulse to pull his hair out—or hers.
Subduing all of his violent urges with some difficulty, he pasted on his most suave smile and cocked his head at Sophie, trying to convey his interest in her answer to his query about her health. His suavity didn’t last long because Tybalt was leaping on his trouser leg and digging his sharp little claws into the fabric. Gabriel bent over to forestall damage from his affectionate greeting. “You’re in fine fettle this morning, Tybalt.” Because he couldn’t help himself, he added, “And your mistress is still alive to tend to you, too, through no fault of her own.”
Sophie uttered a strangled, gurgling noise. Gabriel glanced up blandly. “It’s true, you know.” Dmitri, he saw, nodded. If that didn’t set her off, he expected nothing would.
“You,” she said, her voice shaking with wrath, “have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Right.” Leaving Tybalt to snuffle at his feet, Gabriel stood up again. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever find common ground regarding that particular subject.”
“For once, I believe you’re correct.” She gave him one of her more imperious sniffs.
Gabriel smiled. “So, will you be staying in Tucson for a few days, or will you and Miss Juniper be shoving off to parts unknown in pursuit of your prey?”
She started walking away from him, dragging Tybalt, who wanted to remain with Gabriel. Gabriel, who wasn’t going to let her get away, and who harbored in his heart a good deal of compassion for dumb animals, ambled along with her. She speared him with a fierce glance from the corner of her eye, huffed, and walked faster. He kept up easily, although Dmitri, he saw, was puffing while trying to keep pace.
“You’re wearing out your faithful servant,” Gabriel said.”You didn’t succeed in killing him last night. Are you trying to exhaust him to death?”
She stopped short and turned around, almost stepping on poor Tybalt, who gave a sharp, high-pitched yip of fright.
Amused, Gabriel said softly, “Just thought I’d mention it. I know you don’t much care about the folks in your employ, but—”
She whirled again, this time stopping with her face directly aimed at Gabriel. He kind of liked the fact that they were almost nose to nose. Most women were a lot shorter than the queenly Sophie Madrigal. “How dare you!”
She stamped her foot, something Gabriel hadn’t expected. That amused him, too. With a shrug, he said, “It’s the conclusion I’ve drawn from observing the way you treat poor old Dmitri here.”
Dmitri caught up with them then, and stood with his chest heaving. While Gabriel felt kind of sorry for the poor little guy, Dmitri was at least proving Gabriel’s point for him. He deliberately stared at the panting Dmitri—in case Sophie hadn’t caught his meaning.
“It’s his own choice!” Sophie declared hotly, pointing at Dmitri, who pressed a hand over his heart as if trying to get the organ to slow to a more sedate pace. “I didn’t tell him to come with me!”
Gabriel shook his head. “That won’t wash, Sophie sweetheart. You know good and well that Dmitri’s between a rock and a hard place. If he let you go roaming off on your own and you got yourself killed—or arrested, say, for murder—Miss Juniper would be crushed, and Dmitri would think it was his fault for not going with you and trying to stop you.”
He saw Sophie take in breath through gritted teeth. She was peeved with him, and no mistake. Gabriel didn’t care. He was peeved with her, too, so they were even.
This was the limit. Sophie couldn’t take much more. Not only was Gabriel Caine evidently determined to butt into her personal business and make her life miserable, but she could no longer avoid the one certain, absolute fact that made his presence intolerable to her.
Somehow or other, he, Gabriel Caine, this worthless piece of human flesh, this mere man, this person who had been the scourge of her life since the moment she’d met him, worked as a conduit between herself, Sophie Madrigal, of all people, and the “Other Side,” as Juniper was so fond of calling the mystical aspects of life. How else could she account for what happened to her whenever she was in his presence?
Besides that, the visions she kept having involved not merely Sophie herself, but the both of them. This was very bad. Very, very bad.
She wanted to stamp her foot again, and then screech and scream and throw a full-fledged temper tantrum right here on this filthy Tucson boardwalk. Even when Sophie was a child, she’d never thrown temper tantrums; she’d had too much pride. But pride be hanged. This was by far the worst thing that had ever happened to her, barring one or two other events that she couldn’t bear thinking about.
She took three furious steps away from him, then stopped suddenly and turned, making Gabriel bump into her, Dmitri bump into Gabriel, and Tybalt bark. She apologized to her dog.
“There’s no getting rid of you, is there, Gabriel Caine?” she said bluntly. Might as well face the truth straight on and quit shilly-shallying.
He backed up as soon as Dmitri did. He, too, apologized to Tybalt, because he stepped on the poor ugly thing’s toe. Tybalt yipped pitifully, and Sophie swooped him up and glared daggers at Gabriel. He was probably getting used to her glare by this time.
“Nope,” he said, petting Tybalt, who licked his hand.
That was the only thing about dogs Sophie didn’t fully appreciate: They couldn’t hold grudges worth a tinker’s dam.”I didn’t think so.” She turned again, as abruptly as she had the first time, and set off for the Cosmopolitan at a furious clip. She heard Gabriel and Dmitri behind her, the one stomping hugely and keeping pace with ease, the other pattering, trying to keep up.
Even mad as fire, Sophie couldn’t justify beleaguering Dmitri more than she had to, so she slowed her steps and put Tybalt back down on the boardwalk. He loved to walk, and she didn’t feel justified in depriving him just because she wanted Gabriel Caine to drop dead.
She didn’t want to slow down. Rather, she wanted to walk the length of Tucson, and then walk back again. And then repeat the process until she was so worn out, she wouldn’t be able to do anything but collapse from sheer fatigue. With luck, she might even have worn Gabriel down. She couldn’t do that to her precious Tybalt, though, or to Dmitri, so she spent the time it took to walk to the Cosmopolitan in thinking.
This leechlike quality of Gabriel’s was going to make her job more difficult; there was no getting away from it. She was still angry about his fibbing to her regarding the name of his prey. Oh, she knew he said she’d asked who’d hired him, but she didn’t believe it.
Although Juniper had said the same thing. Blast. Well, Sophie was sure the misunderstanding was all Gabriel’s fault, however it had happened.
He caught up with her and took her arm. She tried to wrench it away from him, but he was stronger than she was. Damn and blast. The one person on earth whom she could use as a real, legitimate conduit to the Other Side, and he had to be bigger than she. Why couldn’t it have been Dmitri who served as her conduit?
What was she thinking of? The Other Side, her hind leg. She didn’t even believe in such nonsense. Did she? How could Gabriel be a conduit to something that didn’t exist? And why would she need a conduit to it, even if it did exist and she believed in it?
Stopping again so abruptly that she created a pileup on the boardwalk, she pressed a hand over her eyes. Since it was the hand at the end of the arm Gabriel had taken, she lifted his hand, too, and the back of it, and a good deal more of him besides, pressed against her bosom.
Good God! She pull
ed away instantly, and felt her entire body get hot. He, the fiend, grinned at her as if he knew exactly how embarrassed she was. She heard Dmitri puffing beside her, but she couldn’t look away from Gabriel. Tybalt, ever happy to be anywhere with his humans, commenced sniffing the delicious odors emanating from the boardwalk.
Endeavoring with every fiber of her being to ignore her blush, Gabriel’s knowing look, Dmitri’s exhaustion, Tybalt’s snuffling, and her own humiliation, she spoke coldly to Gabriel. “Very well, if there’s no way to shake you off, I suppose I shall have to put up with you.”
“Good idea.” His smile broadened. “I think that’s a right sensible course of action. In fact, I think we ought to go upstairs to your room right now, and discuss this matter of Ivo Hardwick.”
“I will never, ever, tell you one single thing about Ivo Hardwick, Gabriel Caine, and don’t you even think it.”
His smile faded. “That’s stupid, Sophie.”
“It is not! And don’t you dare call me stupid!”
“I’m not calling you stupid, dammit. And keep your voice down, for God’s sake. Do you want some chivalrous frontier knight to shoot me right here in front of the Cosmopolitan.”
“Yes!”
He looked around, as if he expected the whole town to have heard her holler and to gather around.
Damn him. He was right. Sophie glared around, too, and saw several men who had stopped whatever they’d been doing to stare at her. Interfering beasts. She scowled at them, and they only grinned back. That was another problem with these foul western territories: nobody had any manners.
“Come inside,” she growled at Gabriel, and yanked Tybalt’s leash more strongly than she’d intended. Good heavens, she had to calm down. Gabriel was affecting the way she treated her dog—and since Joshua’s death, Tybalt was the only thing on earth that gave her any sort of comfort at all.
She tried to take deep, calming breaths, but she’d laced her corset too tightly this morning, and was thus impaired from doing so. Corsets. She hated them with a passion. She’d only laced it tightly because of him. She knew it in her heart, even though she wished it weren’t true. She wanted him, the second most despicable human being in her life—perhaps the third—to consider her attractive. She, Sophie Madrigal, whose life had been ruined practically before it had started, and by a man who reminded her a good deal of Gabriel Caine, was now trying to impress another one.