"If you don't mind, I'd rather not do any of those things."
"Nonsense," Zac said, turning to face her. "Cooking's the natural choice. I know the perfect place." The sun was much too strong. He had to shade his eyes. Even then he could only make out her shape. "Come on. Don't drag your feet. You wanted a job. I'm going to get you one."
Charlie Drayton owed him a favor. Besides, he always needed a cook. Zac practically dragged Lily down a narrow alley and through the back door of Charlie's Homestyle Restaurant. They stepped into a kitchen, already filled with the smell of food being prepared for the midday meal.
Charlie was cutting up a piece of beef. His apron was covered with blood stains and bits of meat. So were his arms up to his elbows. His two assistants were equally soiled. Everything in sight -- pots and pans, stoves, ovens, walls, floor, curtains, the cooks -- seemed to be covered with a layer of grease. The smell of burning oil, cooking lamb, and garlic caused Zac's nose to quiver in distaste. Heat from the ovens made the kitchen miserably hot.
Zac had never realized a kitchen could be so unpleasant.
Charlie paused in his work. "What are you doing in here?" he asked, never taking his eyes off Lily.
"I want you to give my cousin a job," Zac said, the certainty this was the perfect solution for Lily gone from his voice. "She says she can cook."
"Great. I can always use more help. What's your specialty?"
"Opossum," Lily answered promptly.
"What?" Charlie asked, stunned.
"Opossum," she repeated.
"She's just kidding," Zac said, nearly as shocked as Charlie. "Tell him what you really cook."
"I'm also good with coon and squirrel. I can do rabbit, but not as well."
"I might as well ask my customers to eat rats."
"I never tried rats, but I don't imagine they're very different from squirrels."
"Pork," Zac said, revolted by the images that filled his mind. "You can cook pork."
"I can cook hog bellies at least five different ways," Lily said like one could actually take pride in such a questionable talent. "Everybody says I make the best pickled pig's feet in Salem. Of course, it takes a while for them to set up before you can serve them."
"Do they ever eat beef where you come from?" Charlie asked.
"Sure. Mama makes this blood sausage--"
Charlie turned back to the piece of beef he was working on. He hit it a good whack with the cleaver. It fell into two pieces of equal size. "I don't think I need a cook right now. Why don't you take her over to Chinatown? Maybe they eat some of that stuff she cooks."
Chapter Six
"You did that on purpose," Zac said when they were once more on the boardwalk.
"Did what?" Lily asked, her gaze wide and innocent.
"Told him you could only cook those ghastly things. Does anybody in Salem actually eat that stuff?"
Lily laughed. Zac didn't hear the least bit of guilt in the sound.
"I really can cook rabbit and squirrel. I've never eaten pickled pig's feet, but I know a lot of people who like them. As for hog belly and blood sausage--"
"Forget I asked!" Zac interrupted, truly horrified anyone would eat such things. "I don't think being a cook is a suitable job for you. I never realized a kitchen was such a dirty place. I can't understand why Tyler likes them so much."
"I imagine his are much cleaner," Lily said. "How about cleaning and sewing?"
"Not those either," Zac said, eliminating the easy choices. "You need something more suitable for a young lady."
He didn't know why he hadn't thought of that before. It was stupid to think Lily would be comfortable working with Charlie. Besides, it wasn't proper. She was a relation, even if a very distant one. He couldn't have her doing menial labor.
"What do you want to do?" he asked. The sun was in his eyes again. He gave up trying to see her expression and concentrated on getting her as far away from the Barbary Coast district as possible.
"I'm not certain. I could work in your saloon. You could teach me."
Zac stopped and stared at her from under his hand once more. "If this is the kind of thinking people do when they get up early, it's a good thing I don't. My saloon's the last place you can work."
"Why?"
"Because everybody would take you for a saloon girl."
"But I would be a saloon girl."
"But you aren't, not inside. A saloon girl likes rough men. At least, she doesn't mind them and knows how to deal with them. A lot of the girls drink and gamble and take men to their rooms. My girls don't, but others do, and the reputation would rub off.
"You could never be like that, so don't argue with me. The sun's making my eyes ache, and that's making my head ache. Purse your lips, try to look as sour as a lemon, and let's see if we can talk old Mrs. Ripple into giving you a job in her shop."
They couldn't. Mrs. Ripple said she had two sons and a nephew working in the shop and she had no intention of turning them into gaping fools. The proprietors of the next two shops said they didn't need any help at the moment. Zac doubted they'd have hired Lily if they had.
The first one, a butcher shop, was owned by a jolly fat man with a thin wife. The looks she gave Lily were not welcoming. The other shop was owned by a hatchet-faced harridan with a French accent who tried to sell bread to her customers while glaring at them as though she would have preferred to cut their throats. He wasn't surprised when they were shown the door with what he assumed were Gallic curses. His schoolboy French didn't reach that far.
"This isn't going to be easy, is it?" Lily asked.
"I'm not asking in the right places," Zac confessed.
He was awake enough now to have gotten over feeling aggrieved over his loss of sleep. His brain had also begun to function well enough for him to realize there were no suitable places of employment for Lily anywhere near his saloon. If he hadn't been in such a hurry to get rid of her, he would have realized that and not wasted his time. Besides, the farther away from the saloon she worked, the less likely she would be to drop in on him.
But even looking in the right part of town didn't help. It seemed no one needed extra help.
"Nobody will hire her," Zac told Bella Holt when he had escorted Lily back to the rooming house. "If she can't get a job, she'll have to go back to Virginia."
"She won't," Bella said. "We had a long talk last night, and she's dead set against it."
"I know," Zac said gloomily. "She even asked me to let her work in the saloon."
"What did you tell her?"
"I refused. What did you think I'd do?"
"I never know with you."
"Do you think I'm crazy?"
"No, just selfish. I figured you might think she'd bring extra customers into the place."
"She probably would," Zac said, "but they'd be more interested in staring at her than gambling."
"Always thinking of yourself, aren't you?" Bella said.
"Dammit, Bella! I've been thinking of Lily all day. I even decided not to let her take a job cooking or cleaning."
Bella exhaled in disgust. "I know why she hasn't gotten a job."
"Why?"
"Because you're with her."
"What's wrong with me?"
"Look at you. Black coat, mustache, top hat, spotless white shirt and tie, and looking so handsome it's sinful."
"What's wrong with that?" Zac asked, finding nothing to object to in Bella's description.
"Nobody is going to think a woman hanging on your arm is innocent. They'll take one look be certain she's--"
"You needn't say it," Zac said, hoping this explanation hadn't occurred to Lily. "I'd rather you turn your mind to figuring out how to talk somebody respectable into hiring her."
"What would I get in return?"
Zac had been asked that question too many times not to know how to answer it. Most women he knew were happy to accept money and gifts, maybe even his undivided attention for a short while. But ever since Bella had turned res
pectable, he never knew what to expect of her.
"I'm not cutting the interest on your loan," he said.
"I didn't ask you to."
Zac could tell from the tightness of her expression and the slight rigidity of her posture that was exactly what she had meant to ask. "Now stop trying to look like a Mormon and tell me how I'm going to find Lily a suitable job."
"You aren't," Bella said. "I am. For a fee."
"How much?"
"A week's room and board for each day it takes."
Damned steep, but cheap if it allowed him to sleep. "Done. Can you start before nine o'clock tomorrow?"
"Why? Nobody opens until after ten."
"Then you've got to do something to keep her busy. Make her change clothes half a dozen times, or fix her hair a dozen different ways."
"Why?"
"If you don't keep her here, she'll come wake me up again."
"Wake you up?"
"She broke into my bedroom before ten o'clock. I got less than three hours sleep. I'm so groggy I tried to get that fish-faced bread woman to give her a job."
"Mrs. Boulanger?"
"That's the one."
Bella went off in a peal of laughter. For a moment she sounded like the Bella of old. Zac liked the old Bella better, but she needed respectability and he needed her to be respectable for Lily.
"I wish I could have seen that," Bella said.
"I'd have been happy to give you my place," Zac said. "Now before Lily comes back downstairs and conjures up something else for me to do, I'm off. If I don't get a few hours sleep, I'm liable to lose my shirt before dawn."
"You could always give up gambling."
"You're beginning to sound like Rose."
"Smart woman."
"That's why I stay as far away from her as I can. Let me know how you get along with Lily tomorrow."
Zac made his escape.
* * * * *
"Where's Zac?" Lily asked when she came downstairs. She had hoped to talk him into taking her back to the saloon for the afternoon. She liked the girls. She liked their bright smiles and good spirits. Most of all she liked their sense of freedom, the feeling they could do what they wanted and not worry what anybody else thought about it. She'd never felt that way in her entire life. It seemed like a wonderful way to feel.
"He had to catch a few hours sleep," Bella said. "You wouldn't want him so sleepy he'd lose his saloon, would you?"
"No, nothing like that. I was just hoping . . . "
"I know. That's what every woman hopes who meets Zac. But hope is as far as it gets."
"Oh, I don't mean like that. I--"
"I know exactly what you mean, but we're not going to sit around the house all afternoon. I'm going to take you to meet my minister. Don't worry," she said when Lily frowned. "He's not nearly so strict as your father."
* * * * *
Lily didn't feel comfortable in the severe parlor of the Right Reverend Harold Thoragood. She realized this must be how other people felt when they came to call on her father, but that didn't make it any better.
"Lily is new to San Francisco," Bella was explaining to Mr. Thoragood.
"Do you have family here?" Mr. Thoragood asked.
"Yes. I have two cousins."
"Would I know them?" Mr. Thoragood asked.
Bella frowned, but Lily plunged ahead. "I'm sure you do," she said smiling brightly. "One is named Tyler Randolph. He owns the Palace Hotel. The other is Zac Randolph, his brother. He owns the Little Corner of Heaven on Pacific Street."
Mr. Thoragood grew stiffer than a starched shirt drying in the wind.
"I strongly encourage you to have nothing to do with him," Mr. Thoragood said. "I'm certain your father wouldn't want you even to know such a man."
Lily decided it probably wasn't a good idea to tell Mr. Thoragood she was running away from her father, but she wasn't about to let a stranger talk about Zac like that, not and think she agreed with him.
"I don't know what you've been told about Zac, but if it's to his disadvantage, you've been misinformed. He took me to Mrs. Holt as soon as I arrived. Then he offered to provide me with anything I might need until I could find employment."
"I'm sure he did, but you can't--"
"He's been more kind and helpful than anyone in San Francisco. I won't have you speaking against him."
"He's only telling you this for your own good," Bella assured her. "I would have told you myself, but I thought it would be better coming from Mr. Thoragood."
"He may be quite sincere in his desire to help you," Mr. Thoragood conceded, "but he's a gambler and a womanizer. If you wish to have any reputation at all, you will stay away from him and his place of business."
"My father has always preached against gambling," Lily said, "but now I wonder if he knows very much about it. He said saloons were pits of vice, nests of sin, sinks of degradation."
"He was right," Mr. Thoragood said.
"But everybody there was very kind to me." She directed a look at Mr. Thoragood. "I don't plan to depend on my cousin, or anyone else for my support, but I can't let you malign Zac without meeting him. Even my father wouldn't do that."
"Lily's father is a minister," Bella interjected in a manner that indicated she was anxious to calm waters that seemed to be growing troubled.
Mr. Thoragood positively beamed. "Is his congregation close by? I believe I know most of the ministers from here to Sacramento."
"He's in Salem," Lily said.
"I don't know a town by that name."
"It's in Virginia."
For a moment he looked blank. "Do you mean the Virginia all the way across the country?"
Lily nodded.
"I wonder he should have let you come so far."
At those sharply spoken words, the three people in the parlor looked up to see a woman Lily assumed to be Mrs. Thoragood had entered the room.
"As long as she's in Mrs. Holt's care, we can feel perfectly comfortable about her," Mr. Thoragood assured his wife, his smile not quite as broad now. "Shall I see you in our congregation this Sunday?" Mr. Thoragood asked.
"I've barely had time to think about it," Lily said. "I've been so worried about getting a job."
"One should think of the church first," Mrs. Thoragood intoned. "If one does that first, all else will follow."
She sounded exactly like Papa.
"I'm sure she does, my dear, but you must admit it's very worrying to be without employment."
"I've undertaken to find her a job," Bella said in a manner that was positively fawning.
Lily decided she liked Bella better when she wasn't around Mrs. Thoragood.
"In that case, I shall have no worry," Mrs. Thoragood said with a tight smile. "Now I'm afraid you'll have to excuse us. Harold has an appointment."
Lily jumped to her feet before Bella could prolong their visit. "I shall look forward to hearing you speak," she said, extending her hand first to Mrs. Thoragood and then to her husband.
"You are in for a treat," Bella said. "Mr. Thoragood could cause the Devil himself to quake."
"He would," Sarah Thoragood said, her expression growing positively sour, "if we could ever get him inside the church. What's the good of all those words when the men who need to hear them are lying drunk in an alley or in a bed not their own?"
Lily wondered why she felt so certain Mrs. Thoragood was referring to Zac. She also wondered why she resented it so much.
"Then he should go out and find them," Lily said.
"That's impossible," Bella replied.
"Papa would find them." He would find Zac and preach the devil right out of him. Once again Lily started to wonder why that should disturb her, unless it was that she liked Zac just the way he was, devil and all. She knew that was wrong, but somehow it didn't change the way she felt.
"What are you smiling about?" Mrs. Thoragood asked, suspicion in her voice.
"I was just thinking about San Francisco and being glad I'm here. It's such a
beautiful city."
Lily wasn't used to telling lies, not even little ones, but no one would understand if she told the truth. She was thinking about Mr. Thoragood storming into Zac's bedroom, shaking him awake, only to find himself staring at a sinner lying stark naked in the bed.
A giggle escaped her.
"You're laughing at my husband, aren't you?" Mrs. Thoragood accused.
"I don't find him the least bit funny," Lily assured her.
"Good. Trying to save the souls of these sinners" -- she waved her hand about to indicate most of the inhabitants of San Francisco -- "is a mighty serious business. We can use all the help we can get."
"I'll be happy to do anything I can."
Mrs. Thoragood considered Lily for a moment. "I'm not sure you're exactly what we need. You look more like an invitation to sin than an agent of retribution."
Lily decided that was quite the nicest thing anybody had said to her all day.
* * * * *
Zac didn't come down until nearly eight o'clock that evening. The saloon was filled with men laughing, shouting and cursing their luck. The players at his favorite poker table were into their fourth game.
"I was beginning to think we weren't going to see you again today," Dodie said. "Did your little cousin wear you out?"
"Stop trying to get a rise out of me," Zac said, his sunny mood completely restored by his long sleep. "I couldn't get anybody to hire her, so I turned her over to Bella. She's under strict orders to get her a job that starts before nine o'clock and doesn't end until at least six."
Dodie laughed. "Are there any such jobs?"
"Apparently there are lots of them. I had no idea people kept such ridiculous hours."
"It's a natural thing to rise with the sun," Dodie said.
"Not for me. Now stop picking at me and direct me to the richest game on for tonight. I'm feeling particularly lucky."
He didn't feel that way when he trudged up to bed at about five-thirty. He had suffered through the worst run of bad luck he could remember ever having. He'd been lucky to end the night with the shirt still on his back.
He told himself it was the natural swing of the pendulum, that after drawing a royal flush, he could expect bad luck to balance things out. But he hadn't won a single hand. At least a dozen times his hands had been so bad he'd thrown down his cards without even making a bet.
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