“I’ll get it,” said Junius, hopping up from the table and heading to the door.
Nick glowered, as if he expected whoever had knocked was going to try to impede him in his purpose for the day.
His eagerness amused Eulalie, although it also stirred the butterflies in her stomach to life.
“Come in, come in!” cried Junius when he saw who was at the door.
Mrs. Johnson took him at his word and stepped into the house. “Brought you fellows over a pie,” said she, smiling at Eulalie, who returned the favor, although she wasn’t necessarily happy to see the pie. She had enough trouble resisting meat and potatoes. She was a sucker for pie.
“Looky here, Nicky! It’s a pie!” Junius sounded as if he’d never seen a pie before.
Nick and Eulalie rose from the table and joined Mrs. Johnson and Junius in the parlor. “Thanks, Mrs. Johnson. What kind of pie is it?” Nick wanted to know.
“Cherry. I canned a whole mess of cherries last spring, and this is the last of them.”
“Oh, my,” said Eulalie. “Cherry pie.” One of her favorite foods, and one she’d assumed she’d left behind in Chicago. “Where did you get the cherries, Louise?”
“Why in the groves up near La Luz,” said Mrs. Johnson. “My Zeke, God rest his soul, and a few of the other men in town planted those cherry trees. Closer to town here, we have pecan and apricot trees, too. They were planted some fifteen, twenty years ago. They’re producing real well now.”
“You’ve lived here that long?” Eulalie blurted out the question before she thought about it. “I mean … good heavens, Louise, Rio Peñasco must have been nothing fifteen or twenty years ago.” It was nothing now. Eulalie couldn’t even imagine what it must have been like then.
“You got that right, sweetie.” Mrs. Johnson laughed, a circumstance for which Eulalie was grateful. She hadn’t meant to criticize Louise’s adopted hometown.
So they all ate pie. Eulalie despaired of her figure.
Dusk was falling when Nick escorted Eulalie back to her little adobe home. Eulalie’s heart was racing like a roadrunner alongside a stagecoach. She opened the door and looked up at him. “Um … are you coming inside, Nick?”
Nick glanced up the street. Then he glanced down the street. Rio Peñasco was an exceptionally small town, but it looked to Eulalie as if every single one of its inhabitants had decided to sit outside that evening and take the air. Nick said, “Hell, I’d better wait until dark.”
Thank God. Thank God. Eulalie wasn’t sure why she was thanking her Maker, since her reprieve was only temporary, but she did anyway. “Very well. I’ll … see you later then.”
“Yeah.” He scowled at her. “And this time, you’re going to have to start paying.”
She sighed heavily. “Yes, Nick. I know.”
He stomped off, and Eulalie retreated to her nice new, if small and fairly crude, home. Sinking into the sofa she’d bought from Fanning’s Furniture, an infinitesimally small furniture store located along the row of business establishments running each side of the main street of Rio Peñasco, she looked around and decided life wasn’t half bad at the moment. True, there was still Patsy and her problem to be dealt with, but all in all, Eulalie felt a sense of satisfaction she hadn’t experienced since before Gilbert Blankenship darkened her life. She missed her family like crazy, but at least Patsy would be joining her tomorrow. And Uncle Harry had written that he intended to pay a visit to her before much longer. She smiled when she thought about what Uncle Harry, the quintessential city feller, would make of Rio Peñasco. Knowing Harry, he’d probably profess to love it.
She wished she had something to read besides the few books she’d brought with her from Chicago, all of which she’d read at least once already. Along with a choir, this town could use a public library. Eulalie wondered if Rio Peñasco was large enough to support such an institution, and decided that was one more thing she might as well look in to. As long as she and Patsy were going to be living here permanently—her heart twanged painfully at the notion—the place might as well be as up to date as she could make it. As soon as Patsy was settled, Eulalie decided, she would just write to Mr. Dale Carnegie and see what he had to say about the establishment of a public library in Rio Peñasco, New Mexico Territory. It seemed to Eulalie remotely possible that, with care and a good deal of help, one day Rio Peñasco might actually grow up to be a real town.
Perhaps not. She supposed it would forever have its own personality. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but Rio Peñasco’s personality was different from the personality of any other city or town she’d been in—and because her family traveled a lot, she’d been in tons of cities and towns. But that had been in the east.
A knock at her front door startled her. Who could it be? Not Nick, surely. Nick would use the back door, since he aimed to stay once he got here. With some trepidation, lest her visitor prove to be one of the more stubborn men who frequented the Opera House, Eulalie went to answer the door. She opened it a crack and discovered Bernie Benson surveying the front of her new house.
Opening the door wider, she said, “Mr. Benson, how kind of you to pay a call.” She didn’t really feel like entertaining the ubiquitous newspaperman, but she knew that she was obliged to placate the press. Her family had been dealing with reporters for decades.
“I can’t stay,” said Bernie, although he entered her house anyway. “I only wanted to bring you a copy of an article that appeared in a New Hampshire newspaper. I tell you, Miss Gibb, word of you and, by extension, Rio Peñasco, is spreading like wildfire.”
Wonderful. Just what she wanted to hear. She said, “How nice,” and wished she could think of some way to muzzle the man. Or, if not the man himself, at least his reportage of her own personal career. She’d come here to get away from publicity, not court it.
With a flourish, Bernie presented her with a folded newspaper. “I asked Clyde to send me two copies, so I’d be sure to have one for you.”
“Thank you.” Eulalie suspected her smile was sickly. “Er … I’m afraid I don’t have much by way of refreshment to serve you, Mr. Benson. As you know, I only moved in yesterday.”
“No refreshment required, Miss Gibb,” he assured her. “I’ve accomplished my mission, and I shall now depart. I’d meant to bring it yesterday and forgot.”
Well, there’s a mercy. “Thank you very much for the newspaper, Mr. Benson.” She offered him one of her charming smiles.
He swallowed and bowed. “Think nothing of it, Miss Gibb. I’m happy to be able to report your beauty and talent to the world.”
Oh, good Lord. “I wish you wouldn’t.”
Bernie looked at her as if she were crazy. “Why not? Don’t you want to be famous? After all, the more people hear about you, the more successful you’ll be.”
Eulalie would have liked to set him straight, but she didn’t quite dare. Knowing Bernie, he’d advertise Patsy’s tragedy to the entire world, and that might send Patsy into an even deeper melancholy than she was in already. She fought the urge to pummel Bernie and tried to convince herself that there was little chance that anybody who mattered would ever encounter one of Mr. Benson’s articles. Eulalie prayed that she and Patsy would be safe. Thank God for Nick Taggart. She kept her smile in place as she waved Bernie off.
And then Eulalie began to think about the advent of Nick into her home and her bed. How should she greet him? Should she remain clad in her Sunday best? Including corset, stays, corset cover, stockings, garters, chemise, and drawers? Or should she take the bulk of her armor off and put on a simple tea gown? That would be easier, but it might give Nick the wrong idea about her.
“Stop being an ass, Eulalie Gibb,” she advised herself aloud. Nick knew exactly what she was: a woman in need of a man’s support and protection, and one who was, moreover, willing to pay for those commodities using her best asset, said asset being her body. There was nothing wrong with that. Eulalie was only being more honest about her needs than most women, wh
o required marriage before paying for the assistance rendered by the males of the species.
That being the case, and because Eulalie was honest and straightforward except when she couldn’t be, she removed her Sunday dress, stepped out of her corset and stays, and breathed in a deep breath of relief. She simply had to stop eating so much.
The wavy mirror Nick had found for her and that she’d hung in her bedroom revealed she still looked good, in spite of a couple of extra pounds. Actually, she decided, her face looked better with her cheeks filled out a trifle. The dreadful tension of her final weeks in Chicago had killed her appetite. She pulled the pins from her hair and brushed it out. She’d been lucky when the gods were doling out hair, she guessed. Hers was red-gold and wavy and as thick as anything. Because she recalled that Edward had loved it when she wore her hair down, she opted to wear it down this evening, since men, being predictable creatures, probably had similar tastes in hair.
And besides all that, Eulalie was sick and tired of pretending to be someone she wasn’t. She also suspected that Nick wouldn’t care much how she was dressed when he came to call. In fact, he’d probably appreciate fewer clothes and impedimenta in the way of his ultimate fulfillment. Therefore, she grabbed her favorite wrapper, flung it on over her head, stabbed her feet into her wooly slippers, left her hair down, and donned her spectacles. If Nick was going to be a more or less permanent fixture in her life, he could jolly well take her as she was.
Then she grabbed The Moonstone, plopped herself down in the overstuffed chair that nominally went with the sofa, lit the kerosene lamp on the table Nick had fashioned out of an old apple crate, and settled in to read. She’d been at it for about a half hour when she heard a tentative tap on the kitchen door.
Eulalie rose from her chair, took a deep breath, prayed for strength, and walked through the kitchen to meet her fate.
She opened the door, and Nick stood there, hat in one hand and a little bouquet of wild flowers in the other. She looked at the bouquet, feeling stupid. “You brought flowers.”
He shuffled his feet. “Figured it was the least I could do.”
Gazing up at him, Eulalie thought that here was the man who’d built her a house and furniture and agreed to protect her and Patsy, and now he’d brought her flowers. Which he’d picked himself. She said, “Thank you,” and stepped back so he could enter. She took the flowers and found a glass to put them in. “I’ll put them in the parlor.”
“Yeah. Fine.” Nick set his hat on the kitchen table and watched her fill the glass and take it into the parlor, where she set it on one of the apple-crate tables.
She stood back and observed the flowers, smiling. “They look pretty.”
“So do you.”
And he took her in his arms and kissed her. Eulalie, who hadn’t been held very much in recent years, melted.
Chapter Eleven
Nick left Eulalie’s bed and home before dawn on Monday morning feeling better than he had in … hell, better than he’d ever felt in his life.
Eulalie had surprised him. Not only had she met him at her kitchen door wearing a big, shapeless blue thing and slippers, but she’d had her glorious hair unbound, and she’d been wearing eyeglasses. Eyeglasses! Miss Eulalie Gibb, the most glamorous human female ever to set foot in Rio Peñasco, New Mexico Territory, wore eyeglasses! What’s more, she looked cute as a bug in them.
He hadn’t wasted much time, but Eulalie didn’t seem to mind. She hadn’t demonstrated the least little hesitation in fulfilling her part of their bargain. Nick, who had been prepared for evasive tricks, was thrilled.
She’s proved to be just as wonderful as he’d hoped she’d be, too. It occurred to him that Miss Eulalie Gibb might be the one female on the face of the earth that he might be able to stand being around for more than a couple of hours at a time. She didn’t bear the remotest hint of a resemblance to the females with whom he’d grown up—the sly, malicious, manipulative cats that had masqueraded as family—his stepmother and stepsisters.
The blunt truth was that Nick hadn’t wanted to leave her this morning. He said as much, shocking himself more than Eulalie, or he missed his guess.
“Don’t be silly, Nick Taggart,” she’d said as she shoved his trousers at him. She wore her big shapeless blue thing again, covering up her spectacular body that Nick had enjoyed every inch of during the night. “You’re the one who said people will talk if they see that you and I have spent the night together. I’m having a hard enough time being accepted by the good ladies of Rio Peñasco without them all thinking I’m a scarlet woman.”
“You’re kind of scarlet this morning,” Nick pointed out. He rubbed his chin. “Sorry. I shaved before I came over here.”
“I know it. Thank you.”
“Anyhow, they all like you. You’re already accepted.”
“Do you think so?”
“Hell, who do you think came to your party the other night?” He guessed, after last night, he could forgive her for letting him go to sleep at the party.
“Hmm. Maybe you’re right.”
“I’m right.”
“Well, I’m pleased to hear it. Now go.”
She’d knotted her hair on top of her head, too. In that blue thing and with her hair up and her spectacles on, she probably should have looked like a schoolmarm, but Nick’s masculine tool reacted to her with the joy of experience and blissful memory, and he had a hard time getting his buttons fastened.
“I’ll come over again tonight. That all right with you?” He tried to sound casual, but he didn’t feel casual. He felt as if his entire life had just become … enchanted or something.
She frowned, as if she were mulling over his request.
Nick’s delight faded slightly. “You and I have a bargain, don’t forget,” he said, his voice almost as hard as his cock.
“I know we have a bargain,” she snapped. “But my sister will be arriving today on the stagecoach, and I don’t know if tonight would be the best time for you to pay another visit.”
Damn. He’d forgotten all about the reason Eulalie had struck this bargain with him. For a minute there, he’d begun to think she might actually care about him a little bit. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Hell.
“Mrs. Johnson has asked us to supper with her, and we’ll be home after that. Mr. Chivers let me have the evening off, and this is about the only time I’ll have to spend with Patsy until next Sunday.”
“Yeah. I know. All right. Not tonight.”
She reached for his arm. “I’m not trying to be difficult, Nick. Truly, I’m not.”
He eyed her closely for a moment before he decided she actually meant what she said. “I know it. I just … aw, hell, Eulalie, you were great. I … I’ll be looking forward to our next … ah … meeting.”
Did her cheeks just flush? By God, they did!
“Actually,” she said, “so will I.”
He swept her up into his arms. “Good. I want us both to be happy with this deal.”
“Me, too.”
He kissed her then, long, deep and hard, and by the time he put her down, he was as ready for consummation as he’d ever been in his life. And he wouldn’t be able to fulfill his desire until another damned day had come and gone. Putting her down and plopping his hat on his head, he said, “I’ll be at the stage with Junius to meet your sister.”
She gave him probably the sweetest smile he’d ever received in his life. It shocked him a little, Eulalie generally being so prickly and all. “Thank you, Nick. That’s very nice of you.”
He stared down at her, wondering if this was an act or if she meant it. “Hell, Eulalie, the stage only comes once a week, and it’s about the most excitement we get here in Rio Peñasco. You know that.”
“Yes, I do know that, but I still think it’s nice of you and Junius to greet Patsy. She’s had a very difficult time lately, and I know she’ll be eager to meet you. I’ve written to her about you, you know.”
“Oh,
yeah?” He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she’d written. Probably something about him being a small-town hick or something like that.
“Yes. I told her how very kind you and your uncle have been to me. In spite of our shaky start.”
“Aw, hell, it was nothing.”
“No, it wasn’t nothing. It was definitely something.”
To Nick’s horror, tears flooded her eyes. “Hey. There’s no need for that.” He never knew what the hell to do when women cried in front of him. He stood there, feeling solid and stupid and wishing she’d stop it.
“I’m sorry.” She fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief. “It’s just that I miss my family so much, and Patsy has been through such a terrible ordeal. I’m happy, that’s all. And … and …”
“Aw, hell, Eulalie. I know your life has been rough lately.” He’d deduced that, actually, since she hadn’t really told him much. But he’d come to appreciate her character, and he knew good and well that she was too strong and independent and smart to cry over nothing. Because he couldn’t seem to help himself, he wrapped his arms around her again. “It’ll be all right, Eulalie.”
“Oh, Nick, I appreciate you so much.”
His eyes, which had been closed as he held her close—he loved the feel of her in his arms—popped wide open. “You do?” Well, hell, how had that happened?
“Of course, I do. I don’t think I could have survived here if you and your uncle hadn’t been so kind to me. And Mrs. Johnson and her children. And Mrs. Sullivan. And the Loveladys. And … oh, everybody.” She sniffled onto his shirtfront.
“Territorials stick together,” he muttered, trying to think of something more brilliant to say. He failed.
“I guess they do.” Sniffling again, she withdrew from Nick’s arms, leaving him feeling cold and alone. “I’m sorry for being so silly.”
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