Scandal at the Cahill Saloon

by Carol Arens

  He was a gentleman, not a cowboy, but tall and muscular-looking just the same.

  Leanna had been judging men’s looks since she’d first learned to flirt. There were important things a woman needed to know, such as that a handsome smile did not mean a handsome heart. A dashing flash in his eye might mean danger as often as welcome.

  This one did not mean her any harm, she judged. But he did have the advantage over her. Even though they were strangers, he knew her name and where to find her. She’d be wise to keep her wits about her and her legs ready to spring inside the building, just in case she had misjudged him, after all.

  “Take a good, deep breath, miss.”

  She yanked her hand. Really, she could remove her own splinter.

  He held her fingers as though he hadn’t noticed her pull at all.

  And there went his smile. She had guessed right. It was irresistible…and distracting. She let her fingers fall open in his palm.

  Maybe it was the lamplight that made the mischievous crinkle at the corners of his eyes so appealing. In the harsh light of day, no doubt he would be just another man.

  In a blink, he had plucked the splinter out and wrapped the handkerchief around her thumb again. She watched his fingers, long and lean, hold the cloth to the wound. He squeezed with the just the right amount of pressure to hold the pain at bay.

  “You’re no stranger to splintered thumbs,” Leanna pointed out.

  “Just to removing them from such a delicate hand.” There came that smile again, intimate, even though she didn’t know his name.

  “You are a flirt, Mr…?”

  “Cleve Holden.” He checked her wound. The bleeding had stopped so he returned the kerchief to his suit pocket and let go of her hand. “Sorry about that, the flirting. Bad habit of mine when I see a beautiful woman. And you are very lovely.”

  “You aren’t an ordinary flirt, Mr. Holden. You’re quite skilled.”

  “That last bit wasn’t flirting, just the plain truth.” A crease beside his mouth flickered.

  Irresistible, to be sure.

  “Is there something you wanted? I doubt that you showed up on my back porch in the rain by chance.”

  “There is something, something rather urgent that I need to discuss with you.” He looked at her face, clearly studying swollen eyes that were, no doubt, redder than beets. A deaf man would have heard her sobbing a few moments ago. “Now doesn’t feel like the right time. It can wait until tomorrow.”

  “I’d rather discuss it now.”

  He shook his head, then glanced about.

  “What do you say I put these boxes inside and walk you home?”

  “What do you say you tell me how you knew where to find me at this time of night?” He seemed like a decent man but she might be mistaken this one time.

  He hefted a crate like it was made of paper. Muscles tensed and flexed; they shifted the fabric of his coat sleeves. She hurried to open the back door. She absolutely would not sigh…or let her heart flutter at this display of male brawn.

  “Finding you was easy,” he said with a backward glance. “You’ve got to know that you are the talk of the town, Miss Cahill. Everything you’ve ever said or done is, at this very moment, being gossiped about from one end of Cahill Crossing to the other.”

  That was no surprise, but Cleve Holden was. He knew that she was a fallen woman and treated her with respect, anyway?

  She watched him carry crate after crate into the building. He closed the door after putting the largest and last one inside. He didn’t appear a bit winded.

  She would not by any means imagine that he was her knight in shining armor simply because he hadn’t insulted her.

  “You know that I’m a strumpet of the worst kind?” she reminded him.

  “Is that what you see when you look in the mirror?” A frown shadowed his face, etching waves of fine lines across his forehead. “I’d wager not.”

  “I’m a mother. I’m not married. That speaks for itself.” Drumming rain ate up the silence between them. “I’m opening a saloon.”

  “Things aren’t always what they seem, are they, Miss Cahill?” For a long heartbeat, his gaze held her.

  No one knew the answer to that question more than she did. She wasn’t entirely comfortable that he had asked it.

  Before she had time for concern to settle in, he grinned. Lantern light cast a glint in his eyes that twinkled mischief, not malice.

  Cleve Holden took off his coat and extended his elbow. “I’m walking you home whether you agree to it or not.”

  She didn’t need his arm to walk home on or his coat to huddle under. But once in a while a woman needed a knight, and if his armor was shining, for that brief moment, life was sweet.

  She ducked under his coat and took his arm.

  With lightning etching the sky all around, they dashed out into the rain.

  Chapter Two

  The next morning Cleve stepped onto the front porch of the Château Royale, closing the door on an argument between the proprietor and her daughter. Leanna Cahill’s name had been mentioned a time or two.

  Everyone, it seemed, had something to say about Miss Cahill. One of the things he knew to be a lie. A few he guessed were likely lies. The rest were none of his business.

  Sometime during the night the storm had blown over. Morning air filled his lungs. It chased away the foggy visions that had haunted him through the wee hours and left him restless.

  Surely by the light of day the lovely Miss Cahill would not seem so appealing. Last night in the rain and the lightning, the distressed woman had touched him in a way he hadn’t expected. No doubt, in harsh daylight she would no longer seem a lost angel, weeping and in need of protection.

  The truth was, he hadn’t traveled to Cahill Crossing to protect Miss Cahill.

  Far from it. As soon as he concluded his business with her he would leave this fledgling town and try very hard never to think of her again.

  If his discussion with her went as he hoped, he could be on the noon train out of here. Since he hadn’t even bothered to unpack his bag, he could be gone as quick and smooth as a deck of cards being shuffled.

  Cleve straightened his coat, adjusted his hat and walked toward the most wicked establishment ever to spring up on the right side of the tracks, according to the lady proprietor of the Château Royale.

  He didn’t know if that was true. He didn’t care much, either. Leanna Cahill had something that belonged to him and he meant to take it back from her.

  There was a letter in his pocket, tattered and worn with many readings. It had led him from home, a hardscrabble homestead, to one tawdry town after another. Finally, in Deadwood he had discovered that Cahill Crossing was where he would find what he was looking for.

  The note, written in a scratchy hand, kept him focused on his goal. It reminded him that in spite of whatever enchantment Miss Cahill might possess on a stormy night, he would not be swayed by it during the full light of day.

  He would face her, take what was his and be on his way.

  Fifteen minutes later he stood at the front door of Leanna’s Place. The paint on the sign over the entrance smelled fresh. She must have been at work before dawn. The sign hadn’t been there last night.

  Miss Cahill must be a hard worker. He tried not to admire her for that, but he fell a bit short. Hard work in anyone was an admirable quality.

  “Leanna,” he heard a woman’s voice say from inside. The front door stood open but the voice came from a portion of the large room that he couldn’t see. “Maybe we ought to wait on the postings another day so that we can get this place open on time.”

  “That would be the logical thing, Lucinda.” Miss Cahill’s voice hadn’t lost a peck of charm by daylight. It carried out of the door as soft and melodious as he had feared. “But when I was here last night, I closed my eyes and listened. Those places across the tracks sounded every bit as wicked as the ones in Deadwood.”

  His task would be a lot easier i
f Leanna Cahill’s voice didn’t sound like a love song. Damn!

  Cleve knocked on the doorframe. He stepped inside to find four women gathered about a table. Leanna sat with a pen in her hand; the other three stood behind her watching over her shoulder.

  If Miss Cahill had looked fetching in trousers and a flannel shirt, she tripled the effect by wearing a dress. It was a practical gown of red gingham; nothing so special in that, except that it made her eyes blue as… What? Sky, bluebirds, blue birds’ eggs?

  “Mr. Holden!” She stood. Smaller hands than his could span that waistline. And the rest of what nature had given her, well, he wouldn’t get a word out of his mouth if he looked at her chest a second longer. “How nice to see you again.”

  He had seen beautiful women before. In his line of work they came and went on a regular basis. As a gambler, he had encountered his share of scantily clad bosoms, but even with her dress buttoned to the neck, Miss Cahill’s was more alluring than the lot of them put together.

  She introduced her friends. Her employees, he discovered as the introductions went along. There was no hiding the fact that they were whores, in spite of the respectable clothing they wore at the moment.

  It was their smiles that gave them away, something assessing in their glance. He’d been invited away from the card table by many such smiles, but he’d never accepted a single offer.

  Each of those broken women had been someone’s daughter…maybe someone’s sister.

  “Ladies,” he said in response to the introductions. He removed his hat and turned it in his hands. “A pleasure.”

  All four women stared at him in silence for a moment.

  Leanna spoke first. “All right, girls. When a gentleman greets a lady, she doesn’t look at him like he’s a dollar in the bank. Remember what we practiced.”

  Miss Cahill turned her attention on him. A clear blue lake is more what her eyes resembled. “May we borrow you for our lesson, Mr. Holden?”

  “By all means.” What was going on here? Was Miss Cahill teaching them advanced skills? How to entice a man with sophisticated ways?

  He’d better state his business and in a hurry! The train was leaving in a couple of hours. Nothing would keep him from being on it.

  The whore named Lucinda peered at him with her arms folded about her waist. She was a shade homely about the mouth but had black lustrous hair. She inclined her head an inch. “A pleasure, Mr. Holden,” she said.

  Cassie, a green-eyed beauty, straightened her back and copied what Lucinda did.

  Massie, who looked too young and fresh even to be out of the schoolroom, presented a bobbing curtsy and a shy smile. “Pleasure, sir.”

  “No need to curtsy to a man, Massie,” Miss Cahill advised. “A graceful acknowledgment of his presence will do. Like this.”

  Miss Cahill smiled brightly at him. She inclined her head a degree. She made a sweeping motion with her hand and pivoted slightly from the waist. “Welcome to Hearts for Harlots, Mr. Holden.”

  What kind of a name for a saloon was that? Not the one over the door.

  The rumor about town was that Leanna’s Place would be a den of iniquity that was sure to doom all of Cahill Crossing.

  Beautiful beyond her reputation, a gifted card dealer who had made a fortune from her skills and her smiles, were just a few of the things that he had learned about her.

  All reasons enough for him to be here.

  “Hearts for Harlots?” he asked because he quite honestly couldn’t think of an intelligent thing to say.

  “Miss Leanna is teaching us proper ways,” Massie said. “I’m hoping to be able to go home and see my folks. Maybe if they see a lady coming up the walk they’ll think a minute before they toss me out.”

  He opened and closed his mouth like a gasping fish. Miss Cahill was running a sanctuary for unfortunate women?

  “I wish you luck, Miss Monroe,” he said when he recovered his voice. In fact, he couldn’t think of anything he’d wished for more in a long while. “If I can be of any help…”

  “Maybe you can take a glance at the handbill we are going to have printed,” Lucinda said. “The sooner we get it passed around the dirty part of town, the sooner we can open Leanna’s Place.”

  Miss Cahill picked the flyer up from the table and handed it to him. Her thumb brushed his in passing. The gash from last night’s splinter was red but not swollen. Given a day or two it wouldn’t pain her a bit.

  He looked away from her slender fingers to the advertisement she had handed him.

  The handbill invited any woman who wanted to change her life to come to Leanna’s Place.

  He was mightily confused. If he’d placed a wager on the purpose of this establishment he’d have lost every last cent. Miss Cahill must have read his puzzled expression.

  “Leanna’s Place is a gambling hall where gentlemen can come for entertainment that does not involve the purchase of a lady’s favors,” she explained.

  “We are on a higher road now, Mr. Holden.” Cassie smiled brightly at him. “Working here with Leanna to teach us respectable ways, we’ll find the futures we’ve only dreamed of.”

  Everything that he’d believed of the scandalous Leanna Cahill had just been turned on its ear. That didn’t mean he didn’t have business to settle with her; it just made it a hell of a lot more difficult.

  Taking something of value from a scandalous vixen would be easy; it would be right and decent.

  Very clearly, Miss Cahill was not a scandalous vixen.

  The back door flew open.

  “Mama!” a young voice called. A boy, not more than a baby, really, careered across the floor and grasped Miss Cahill’s skirt.

  The memory of another baby’s face flashed through his mind and he had to remind himself to breathe.

  Leanna’s child reached up his small sturdy arms. She caught him and spun him about, nuzzling her nose in his hair.

  “There’s my baby Boodle,” she crooned into his neck. “I missed you so much.”

  All of a sudden the world felt off-kilter. Nothing that he had believed of the woman had been true, with the exception of her beauty.

  “I kept him away as long as I could, Miss Leanna,” a slender older woman said. Another whore, reforming, he supposed, looked him up and down. She seemed harder, more bitter than the others.

  “He missed you something terrible so here we are.”

  “Thank you, Dorothy. I missed my baby something terrible, too.”

  The boy clung to Miss Cahill’s neck, peeking out at him. Cleve resisted the urge to reach out and loop a whirl of fine dark hair about his thumb. Instead, he greeted Mrs. Wilmont, who had been introduced as Miss Cahill’s housekeeper and nanny.

  “He resembles you, Miss Cahill,” Cleve admitted because, quite honestly, he did. He was a handsome child.

  “He’s got his uncle Bowie’s blue eyes and his uncle Chance’s temperament.”

  “Play,” the boy said, or something like it.

  Leanna let him down and he toddled toward the front door.

  Cleve headed him off before he made it outside.

  “You’re a busy little man.” He closed the door, then aimed him back toward Miss Cahill.

  “Horsee!”

  Miss Cahill stooped down to the boy’s level. Her skirt billowed out and wrapped him up.

  “All right, my little Boodle. I did promise you a horse ride.”

  “Boodle?” Cleve asked. What had the woman done, naming the child something so strange?

  “It’s a nickname.” She stood with Boodle in her arms. He clasped his small arms about her neck and snuggled in. “His name is Cabe. C for Uncle Chance, A for…well, I needed a vowel to make sense of it. B for Uncle Bowie, E for Granddaddy Earl. His middle name is Quin for his uncle, my oldest brother.”

  No initial for his daddy, Cleve noted.

  All at once the boy reached out his arms, clearly wanting Cleve to hold him. He thought he could, so he reached forward and Cabe Cahill came to him.r />
  The ladies went back to work on the handbill. He listened to the drone of feminine voices while he chucked the boy under the chin and made him laugh.

  Cabe was a very happy child.

  “He likes you, Mr. Holden,” Miss Cahill said, coming to stand beside them. She kissed young Boodle’s pudgy hand. “He doesn’t always take to strangers.”

  “I haven’t always taken to babies, either. Looks like we’ll get along just fine.”

  Miss Cahill laughed. Her eyes softened and he was done. She was everything she had been last night and more.

  “I reckon you’ve come to discuss that business from yesterday evening.” She blinked at him with those lake-hued eyes and he nearly dropped little Cabe.

  “Another time.” He gave Cabe a squeeze, then handed him over to Leanna.

  He could hardly set straight what needed straightening with his mind in a jumble over who this woman really was. She wasn’t the seductress that the town said she was. Well, she was, but not in a tawdry way. She was a high-class lady who could make a man’s heart leap with a mere smile.

  Any woman who did what she was doing, trying to save those who couldn’t save themselves, was an angel on earth.

  The heavenly seductress was turning his resolve into mush.

  He couldn’t set forth a firm countenance when the only part of him growing firm had no business doing it.

  Dammit, there was another train leaving Cahill Crossing at noon tomorrow.

  The afternoon could not have been better suited to take her son on a horse ride. Leanna sat upon Fey’s back with Cabe in the saddle in front of her.

  Summer air warmed her cheeks. The fresh scent of green things growing beside the creek and the twitter of little birds in the brush welcomed her.

  In spite of everything, she was glad to be home. At any rate, she couldn’t have raised her son in Deadwood much longer. It was a rough town and no place to bring up a child.

  Besides, Cabe had uncles right here in Cahill Crossing, if they would only accept him.

  A time of reckoning was coming. She was surprised that she hadn’t been paid a visit by Quin or Bowie already. Or had they so washed their hands of her that they wouldn’t even acknowledge her return? Had her brothers turned their backs on her for good? She’d find out soon enough.