by Harvest Moon
“No. Of course not,” she replied. “I thank you for saving me from that, but if you hadn’t come charging half-clothed down the staircase as if the building were on fire, I wouldn’t have been taken unawares or thrown off balance in the first place.”
“You’re blaming me?” Will was taken aback by her audacity.
He stood nearly three inches over six feet tall in his bare feet and was solidly built, while the top of her head barely reached his chest despite the two-inch heels on her boots. She was a tiny, auburn-haired spitfire of a girl standing toe-to-toe with a man practically twice her size.
A man whose hands, he recalled, were large enough to span her waist.
Yet she refused to be intimidated.
“Who else is there to blame?” she countered, glaring up at him. “You charged into me.”
“That’s because I didn’t expect to find you standing at the bottom of my stairs,” he told her. “I thought you’d be wreaking havoc in the saloon.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what all you Salvationists and Women’s Suffrage and Temperance women do.” He looked down at her, searching for an umbrella or parasol—the weapon of choice of nearly all the female crusaders. “You wreak havoc on private property. You sing at the top of your lungs while you smash bottles of liquor and mirrors and plate-glass windows.”
“I’ve never smashed anything in my life!” She was indignant at the very idea.
He gave her a wry look. “You must be new to the soul-saving business.”
“I’ve been a member of the Salvationists for nearly three months.”
“I don’t recall seeing you before. Who sent you to the Silken Angel?”
“No one sent me,” she told him. “I came on my own.”
Will snorted in derision. “How long have you been in San Francisco?”
“Two days.”
He snorted again. “In town two days and you manage to find your way from Mission Street to my establishment.” He looked down at her. “I don’t believe it.”
“It isn’t that difficult,” she told him. “The Salvationists warned us about Sydney Town and the Barbary Coast on the journey and explained that most of San Francisco’s disreputable establishments are located near the waterfront. I came by ship. I disembarked along the waterfront. Returning to it was simply a matter of going back the way I came.”
She was fairly boasting of her ability to navigate a strange and often dangerous city on her own, and Will was impressed in spite of himself. “Who the devil are you?”
She stiffened her spine and drew herself up to her full height. “I’m Julia Jane Parham. Who the dev—”
She caught herself before she uttered the oath, took a deep breath, and regrouped. “Who are you?”
Will bit the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning from ear to ear as the little spitfire’s temper got the best of her. “William Burke Keegan,” he replied, offering her his hand to shake. “My friends call me Will.”
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Praise for Harvest Moon and Rebecca Hagan Lee
Books by Rebecca Hagan Lee
Copyright Info Harvest Moon
Harvest Moon
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Epilogue
About the Author
Books by Rebecca Hagan Lee
Something Borrowed
Steal a sneak peek at Rebecca Hagan Lee’s A Wanted Man