He hoped this run of bad luck had nothing to do with Lily, that it wasn't the result of a curse her father had put on him for enticing his daughter away from the safety of her home.
No, he was being foolish. Tomorrow things would be different. Tomorrow he wouldn't be awakened at nine o'clock.
* * * * *
The next day wasn't any better. He was awakened at a miserable hour by someone shaking him and chirping in a disgustingly cheerful voice, "Wake up! Wake up. I got a job."
"Wonderful," Zac muttered then buried his head under the pillow.
"Don't you want to hear about it?"
"No."
"You've got to. I have nobody else to tell."
"Tell Dodie."
"She's busy."
The merciless shaking continued. Next thing he knew, the pillow was jerked out of his grasp, and he was staring directly into a beautiful face that dazzled him quite as much as the sunlight that streamed through the windows with appalling intensity.
Zac slammed his eyelids shut, but he was too late. The brilliant rays had pierced his eyeballs and slammed into the center of his brain with explosive force. He probably wouldn't have felt any worse if he had had a hangover.
"You're not going to go away, are you?" he asked, peering at her out of one eye.
"I ought to, but you've got to get up."
"If you leave, I won't get up."
Zac didn't know what perverse desire to inflict torture on himself had caused him to utter those words. He had actually asked her to stay, to ruin his rest, to make him miserable.
He must be insane.
True, there was this tiny part of him that wasn't entirely sure it wanted her to go away, but it was a very tiny part. He was generally able to ignore impulses that had insanity written all over them. Besides, she was a flower woman. He knew he was walking on thin ice already. Inviting her into his bedroom was the same as racing headlong toward the thinnest patch of all.
No woman had ever had this effect on him. He didn't know what caused it, but it was making him feel decidedly odd, indecisive, or vaguely confused.
Maybe it wasn't Lily at all. Maybe it was something he ate. He'd have to ask the chef about the mussels. If the seafood caused customers to feel like this, they'd start eating elsewhere.
"Dodie says I'm to bring you downstairs directly," Lily said. "She says I'm to tell you Josie is ruined and the enforcers have gone to bring in the gull. I have no idea what she's talking about, but she says you'll understand."
Zac groaned louder. "I told that silly girl what would happen if she kept hanging around that useless layabout. She ought to know you can never trust a gambler."
Zac sat up and started to throw back the covers, but his hand paused in midair. "You'd better go back downstairs while I get dressed."
"I'll wait," she said. "Dodie said it would move you faster."
"I'm naked, and you don't like that."
"I'll keep my eyes closed until you reach the bathroom. If you leave the door slightly ajar, we can talk while you dress."
Zac knew he ought to insist she leave, but he didn't have the energy. "Turn around."
When she did, he grabbed his sheet and made off to the bathroom at a very undignified trot. He made haste to run his bath water. He was in and out in five minutes. If he was lucky, she'd be through talking without his having heard a single word.
But when he got out of the tub, the suite was silent. He dried himself, put on his underclothes, his pants, and sat down to shave.
"Now that you're through with your bath, I'll tell you about my job."
Zac looked up to see one blue eye peering through the open door. He jumped. Fortunately he was working up his lather. He most certainly would have cut himself if he'd been shaving.
"I'm sure your papa would be horrified if he knew what you were doing."
"I used to bring him his shaving water and take it away again when he was done."
"Well mine will disappear down this drain."
"Where does it go?" Lily asked.
"I don't know. Probably into the bay."
"How does it get there?"
"Through pipes."
"Do all houses have them?"
"I guess so."
"Bella's doesn't. Where does the hot water come from?"
"This pipe." Zac turned a knob and steaming water came out.
"Papa and the boys would love this," Lily said. "Papa's always complaining the water's too hot or too cold, and the boys hate chopping and carrying wood. Does the bath work the same?"
"Yes." It was strange to see Lily marvel at things he had come to take for granted.
"Can I take a bath in it sometimes?"
"I don't think so. You'll have to be satisfied with Bella's." For once Lily didn't ask why. Zac was relieved.
"What's this?" she asked.
"It's a toilet," Zac said, wondering how to explain it. "Water takes everything away when you're done."
Lily looked at it in amazement.
"Mama and Papa would never believe half of this. I'm not sure I do."
"You'll get used to it," Zac said. "Now before it gets any later, I'd better get shaved. Bring in a chair and tell me about your job."
Lily brought a chair in from the bedroom and sat. Zac's lather had gotten dry. He had to wash it off and make some more.
"It was the most unexpected thing," Lily began. "Bella had taken me to visit one of her friends, a perfectly charming old lady. It turns out she had just the job for me -- working in a women's clothing store. You know, where they sell all the garments men aren't supposed to see."
"I probably know more about them than you," Zac smiled wickedly into the mirror.
"I'm to start at twelve o'clock today," Lily said, apparently considering his turn in the conversation too dangerous to pursue. "I had to come tell you. I knew you'd want to know. Bella was rather put out that she wasn't going to earn any commission, but I assured her you'd pay her anyway."
"You're mighty generous with my money," Zac said, then immediately regretted it. Lily looked conscience-stricken. "Forget it. I was only kidding. You know gamblers, always happier to spend somebody else's money than their own."
"I know nothing about gamblers except what Papa used to say, but you're not as bad as that."
Zac had an annoying urge to ask her why she didn't believe the worst about him, but he fought it down. Once a man started wondering what a woman thought, there was no end to the foolish question she might ask.
"Why don't you go tell Dodie all about it?" He wanted her downstairs. He wasn't comfortable with her sitting with him while he got dressed. The situation felt positively domestic. Anything of that nature sent chills up and down his spine.
"I tried to tell her," Lily said, "but she was too upset about Josie. She said you'd want to know immediately. I guess you should hurry. I cut my story quite short so I wouldn't make you late."
Zac had to give her credit. It was obviously possible for her to talk less and say more. Since he had a notion he was going to see a lot of her, that thought cheered him considerably.
Zac had always liked women -- they were his favorite species of female -- but he liked them on his terms. That meant he thought of them when he was with them but could hardly remember what they looked like when they weren't standing in front of him. He didn't think of himself as using women or being unkind to them. The enjoyment was mutual, any warm feelings transitory.
Zac finished shaving. He opened his closet to choose something to wear. His gaze landed on a coat with maroon velvet lapels and cuffs. Then he remembered there was to be a wedding. The more formal the better. He reached for a plain black suit.
He wasn't exactly having warm feelings for Lily -- how could he when she'd caused him nothing but trouble -- but thoughts of her kept filling his mind. Haunting him more like. He kept feeling like he was a sinner, she the angel sent to save him. Because he was such an unregenerate sinner, they'd sent him the most beautiful, helpless angel they
had.
It wasn't fair to send him a seemingly defenseless female. Everybody knew that Southern chivalry thing was deeply embedded in his family. He'd worked hard to dig it out, root and branch, but it only needed Lily's appearance to show him he still had a lot of it left.
He struggled with the starched collar. The damned things were well nigh impossible to button. He wished inventors would stop messing around with light bulbs and horseless carriages and come up with a shirt with an attached collar. He cursed when the collar button spurted out of his grasp and rolled behind the clothes hamper. He got down on his hands and knees to look for it, but Lily was ahead of him. She found it with no trouble. With nimble fingers, she pushed it through his collar.
"I used to fix Papa's collar all the time. Give me the others."
Zac handed her the other buttons. For a sanctimonious old puritan, Isaac Sterling had given his daughter license to do a number of things that made Zac uncomfortable, such as regularly invade the bedroom of a cousin who was a virtual stranger. Another was to help him with his collar buttons.
Zac didn't know why such a simple thing as the feel of Lily's fingers on his neck should agitate him, but it did. Her touch was light, gentle, almost feathery like, but it stirred something quite remarkable in him, a liking for this nearness, this kind of companionable intimacy.
He heard a knock at the door. "Answer it," he told Lily, anxious to get a little more space between them until he could understand what was happening to him.
"It's Dodie," Lily said, coming back almost immediately. "She says the gull is here and willing. She says you're to hurry before he changes his mind. I thought a gull was a bird."
That's exactly what he meant. It wasn't safe to let her loose in a town like San Francisco. No telling what kind of trouble she would get into. Moreover, knowing her, she'd bring it all to him.
Zac slipped into his coat, checked his image in the mirror, gave his hair a few brushes. "A gull is a man you talk into doing something he doesn't want to do."
"Like what?" Lily asked.
"Marry Josie."
Chapter Seven
"Is that the gull?" Lily whispered to Dodie when Zac went straight to a man who looked far too angry to be on the verge of getting married.
"That's the miserable bastard!" Dodie said. "Sorry, I forgot you don't like cussing."
"I didn't know any cuss words until I met Zac," Lily confessed.
"You're kidding me," Dodie said.
"Men never cuss in front women back home. Not Mama and me, anyway. Papa disapproved of it. He said it was the result of a small mind and a limited vocabulary."
"Not in this case," Dodie said, indicating the man who was arguing with Zac.
"If he's so bad, why do you want Josie to marry him?"
"I don't. I think she ought to shoot him, give her baby up for adoption, and forget the whole thing. But St. Zac won't allow it. He says any gal who gets pregnant has to marry the father of her baby. He says there's nothing worse for a kid than growing up without parents."
Lily wondered what Zac's parents could have done to make him feel like that. She'd heard stories about his father all her life. Her father used him as an example. According to him, if the Devil had ever walked on earth, it had been in the person of William Henry Randolph. She thought Zac was better off not having known his father.
"Did Zac miss his parents?"
"He must have," Dodie said, keeping a close eye on the progress of the discussion that was threatening to get violent. "He has so many brothers I don't see how he could have noticed the difference."
Lily knew all about that Zac's brothers. She also knew they had spoiled him, but that wasn't the same as having parents.
"Where's Josie?" she asked Dodie.
"I sent her upstairs. I didn't want her to see that the object of her dreams was having to be forced to do the decent thing."
"She wants to marry him?"
"Can't wait. Josie's not the sweetest tempered gal in the place, but she wouldn't give any man the time of day until this one came along." Dodie snorted. "Just look at him. I've seen better washed out of the gutter after a heavy rain. Can you figure?"
Actually Lily could. If she loved a man enough to have his baby, she'd want to marry him. Even if he did have faults.
"What's his name?" Lily asked.
"Cat Bemis," Dodie said, disgust heavy in her voice. "Would you want to marry that man?"
Lily hadn't the slightest desire to marry Mr. Bemis, but she could see his attraction. He was tall, well-muscled, and young. He was in a temper just now, but he seemed more angry than mean. He probably didn't like being forced into things, even something he might want to do. She had discovered most men didn't.
"Uh-oh," Dodie said. "They're going into the office. That means Zac is about to apply the clincher."
"What's that?" Lily asked, expecting to hear it was some kind of special gun.
"He'll offer to lend them enough cash to get set somewhere."
"Why would he do a thing like that?" Lily asked, stunned. "Why should he care that much?"
"I don't know. Why don't you ask him? If you get an answer, it'll be more than the rest of us have ever gotten."
"Oh, I'd never do that."
"Why?"
"Men hate to be asked questions, especially about themselves."
"It would serve him right. I told him not to bring her here, that she was going to be trouble, but he insisted I give her a job."
"Zac brought her here!"
"Lord, yes. He picks up every helpless stray he finds. Half the girls upstairs are here because he found them down on their luck. He brings them here, gives them a job, and expects me to train them. All he asks is that they walk the straight and narrow."
"What straight and narrow?"
"I could never tell," Dodie said. "It seems to be different with each girl. If I didn't know he spent his nights gambling with every kind of two-bit crook who washes into a place like this, I'd swear there was something of the preacher in him."
Lily couldn't help but laugh. If Dodie thought there was anything about Zac that even remotely resembled a preacher, she hadn't seen any real preachers. He was too good looking, too charming, too happy. In addition, he gambled and stayed up late. According to Papa, he also did a lot of other things, but Papa had never told her what they were, just that they were sure to lead him straight to the devil.
Lily thought it would be a shame for such an attractive man to be swallowed up by the Devil. There was a great deal more to Zac than either Dodie or her father knew. Any man who took so much trouble to look after women in distress couldn't be all bad, even if he did sleep during the day and do she hadn't the slightest idea what all night. He not only cared about what happened to Josie and her baby. He was prepared to do something about it. Wouldn't her father be surprised to find a gambler playing the good Samaritan.
No, he wouldn't believe it.
But Lily did. She couldn't forget what he'd done for her. He hadn't wanted her on his hands, but since she had told him about her father's plans to marry her to Hezekiah, he hadn't said a word about sending her back to Virginia.
No matter how close he had trod to the gates of Hell, Lily was convinced he'd never stepped inside.
In that moment, Lily decided she had been sent to San Francisco to save Zac Randolph. She accepted her charge as solemnly as if it had been delivered by the archangel Gabriel himself.
* * * * *
Zac got up from the table in disgust. He hadn't won enough money in the last five nights to pay for his dinner. He could hardly have had worse cards if his worst enemy had chosen them for him.
"Your luck finally desert you?" Chet Lee asked. He hated Zac and made no attempt to disguise the pleasure in his voice.
"Seems that way," Zac said. He looked at the chips piled in front of Lee. "Yours seems to be almost as good as mine is bad."
"Yeah," Chet said. "It almost makes me think you run a clean house. Almost," Chet added with a s
arcastic edge to his voice.
The expressions on the faces ringing the table grew rigid.
"You always say that when you're losing," Zac said. "I'm sure you'll be saying it again soon enough." He didn't smile at Chet because he didn't feel like it.
"I won't have to until you start playing again."
Zac did smile then, but it was a dangerous smile. "I know your kind, Chet. You can't stand to think you're not the best. You come here only because you know you can't beat me."
"Sure, like that time in--"
"This table's closed for tonight, fellas. Chet's going to cash in his winnings and go home."
"I'm not through!" Furious, Chet jumped to his feet so quickly he upset the table. Chips and cards spilled onto the floor and rolled in all directions.
Play came to a halt at neighboring tables as the gamblers stopped to stare at the thousands of dollars worth of chips rolling about the floor. Only Zac's presence kept them from diving after them. That and the two huge bouncers who seemed to materialize out of nowhere to take hold of Chet Lee, one on each side.
"You sorry son-of-a-bitch!" Chet shouted. "You're too much of a coward to fight your own battles."
"I hire my garbage hauled away," Zac said.
Zac never considered banning Chet permanently. Nearly all gamblers tried to cheat. It was part of the business. As for Chet, better the devil he knew than one he didn't.
Chet struggled to break away. One of the bouncers, easily half again as big a Chet, twisted Chet's arm behind him until Chet finally went still.
"He's packing a gun," the man said to Zac. "I can feel it."
Zac felt his blood turn cold. The rest of the saloon faded from his vision until he could see only Chet and the men around him. Zac didn't allow guns. No saloon owner could afford to, not with the dangerous mixture of gambling and whiskey.
"Seems you just can't follow any rules, Chet," Zac said as he threw Chet's coat open. Chet struggled, but the men had no trouble holding him.
"It's strapped to his back," the bouncer said.
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