Norine’s disappointment heightened as she twisted through the crowded, noisy saloon and through the doors which led to the private quarters she and her husband shared. The big bedroom with the full tester bed was dark except for the light of one candle in a twisted silver sconce. The door to the adjoining dressing room stood open a few inches and it was toward that darkened portal that Norine spoke.
“I’m alone,” she said. “He wasn’t interested. Tonight.”
Parrish Adams, a revolver in his right hand, shoved open the dressing room door and confronted his wife. “How did you know I was here?”
Nonchalantly, she sat at her dressing table and, guided by the scant light of the flickering candle, began plucking pins from her upbound hair. “I know you,” she said tartly. “You thought I’d bring Delmar up here and—give him a few nibbles, enough for you to come rushing in playing the wronged husband to the hilt.”
Adams slid the revolver into the waistband of his black trousers and walked up behind his wife. His long dark fingers slid around her slim white neck. “And you let me down.” He brought his fingers over her windpipe and tightened the pressure of his grip. He’d looked forward to the scene of the Frenchman, distraught, pleading for his life, finally trading his Gamble shares to keep it. Breathing heavily, he squeezed a little tighter and was pleased to see a look of fear flicker onto his wife’s expertly painted face. “Losing your touch, Norine?”
Gasping for breath, her hands fell to the dressing table as silently she stared at the vicious reflection Parrish Adams made in the shadowed mirror, behind the helpless woman whose throat his hands encircled. And then she twisted away from him. “No!,” she said acidly. “I’m not through with him yet. You’ll get what you want.”
His hands found their way to her shoulders, making red marks on her pale flesh as he jerked her to her feet and spun her around. “Will you get what you want?” Adams demanded. “From him?”
Norine’s head rocked back. A sound of rending cloth filled the room and her expensive gown, torn in two, floated down around her feet. “Ummmm,” she said. “From somebody.”
***
A week passed with no raids on the stage and Teddy began to hope the holdups had been enacted by a band of renegades who had moved on to other pickings. Maybe Adams had given up taking over the routes. Maybe she was crazy as a loon. Maybe he hadn’t been behind these last attacks like she had thought. The boys who had lived through them described a different set of outlaws than those who had first given the line trouble.
As for Rhys Delmar, she hadn’t said two unnecessary words to him since she’d seen him kissing that hussy Norine Adams. Lately she had been wishing that letter from London would hurry up and arrive. She no longer cared whether his claim was legitimate or not. All she wanted was to get him out of her hair. Seeing him nearly every day, being reminded, painfully, of what had occurred between them, was, loaded on the rest of her problems, more than she could bear.
He had betrayed her. How that was so she didn’t bother to reason out. She felt betrayed and it was interfering with everything else she had to do. What’s more she didn’t seem to have the stamina she used to have. By midafternoon most days she was weak as water.
“It’s the strain,” Felicity Gamble said. Concern for her overwrought granddaughter showed in her face. “Teddy, you’ve done all anybody could to keep this line running, but maybe it’s time to sell out. If you can’t stand selling to Adams, find another buyer. We’d still have the ranch if we did that.” Fearing she wasn’t getting past Teddy’s stubborn resistance, Felicity continued. “Nobody who matters is going to think worse of you if you give up now. Your father would understand. You know he would. Why, I don’t think even he could keep going in the face of all you have to contend with.”
“I’ll never quit!” Teddy paced the dining room where she and Felicity met for breakfast. Always. Felicity insisted that the household run as it had when Theodor Gamble had been alive, that schedules be kept, routines followed. Teddy was grateful for the order and comfort Felicity added to her life. This morning, though, she hadn’t touched her breakfast. She had no appetite at all, though she knew she had a hard day ahead and would need the nourishment of a good meal. Felicity, as usual, was a step ahead of her and had already wrapped up two fat biscuits filled with ham. She was tucking them in the saddle pack hanging on the back of Teddy’s chair.
By then some of the sting had gone out of Teddy. She stopped her pacing and kissed Felicity’s papery cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve got no cause to shout at you, but I do mean it. I’ll never quit. Cabe Northrop will be here today and I’ll tell him the same thing.” Looking for tolerance, at least, from Felicity, she threw the saddle pack over her shoulder and continued, “If he wants to cancel my contract I’ll fight him all the way. If he wants the shipments coming through safe let him get one of his detectives in here to help instead of threatening to shut me down. Maybe if somebody went looking for those outlaws instead of leaving it up to Len Blalock we’d be through with them by now.”
Felicity gave her a maternal pat. “Hard as all this is, Teddy, I’m sure it’s going to turn out the way it ought to.”
Teddy nodded, wanting to believe what her grandmother said was true, but doubting. In her opinion Wells Fargo had been slow to step in. True, no Wells Fargo shipments had been lost in the first few attacks, but in the last two the strongbox had been taken and, as was their policy, Wells Fargo would have to make up the loss. She didn’t like costing them money, but, dammit, they were quick enough settling up with other companies who suffered losses. Because she was a woman she got treated differently. Cabe might not say so but the results were obvious enough.
Teddy left the ranch before the sun was up, her mood blacker than the early morning sky. The first thing Cabe was going to want to know was when Zack Gamble would be arriving to get the company running right. She would have to ’fess up about Zack’s death and tell Cabe there would be no man coming in to straighten things out. And, in spite of all her talk, she was finished the minute he pulled the contracts.
Dune whinnied in protest as Teddy suddenly pulled her saddle horse to a halt. By damn, maybe there was a way. Maybe, if she could stomach it, she could acknowledge Rhys Delmar’s part in the company. If she could get him to indicate that he’d come to Arizona with the intention of being an active partner in the line, possibly even hint that he’d had experience with a company in France, maybe that would satisfy Cabe and Wells Fargo and keep the Gamble Line alive. Of course all that was just a shade away from a lie, but she was desperate.
Scowling at what she had sunk to, she clucked to the horse and rode on, a jittery bundle of nerves in the saddle. Dammit! It was the only way. She would just as soon ask favors from a scorpion—but it was the only way. Unless she presented a new partner, a man, she was done. Shoulders hunched, mood worsening, she rode on. No use in trying to tell Cabe that Rope was running things. He knew both of them too well and knew Teddy would override any decisions Rope made—and that Rope would let her do so. So, Rhys Delmar, it was. She would find a way to run the low-down Frenchman off later. Right now, hard as it was to take, she needed him.
Telling him was the hardest thing she ever did. She kept seeing him with Norine Adams wrapped around him, their lips fused in passion. Seeing those two together should have gotten the memories of her intimate night with Rhys out of her mind but it hadn’t. It had only made them stronger. She hadn’t stopped wanting him, even though she suspected he spent his off-time in one of the rooms above the Diamond doing sensuous things to Norine Adams or one of those other chippies.
“Rhys.”
“Yes?” He turned. Hearing her speak his name without snapping out an order sounded good. It also made him suspicious. Since the night they had made love Teddy had been in the same ill humor as when he’d arrived in town and announced that he was there to collect on Zack Gamble’s debt. The last few days had been even worse. She’d had about as much use for him as for a mad dog.
He’d let all that go. Life, at present, was hard for her. He understood that she needed time to sort out her feelings about what had happened between them. He needed great patience. A hundred times he’d wanted to drag her off somewhere alone and demand that she admit something was there, between them. He wanted to tell her it was foolish to pretend nothing had happened or to believe that it wouldn’t happen again.
“I need to talk to you,” she said. “It’s important. I’ve got a man to replace you as guard today.”
Rhys knew a moment of apprehension. He feared that Teddy’s cordiality bode ill for him. The mail had come through every day for a week. Possibly yesterday’s bag had brought the letter from London that would decide his fate. Very possibly Teddy’s contact there had learned of the charges against him and relayed the news to Teddy. He wondered what she was going to do about it.
The stage rumbled out of Wishbone a few minutes later. The driver cracked his long black whip inches above the team’s backs. Both guards rode on top. The lone passenger was the local schoolteacher who had gotten a better offer. He was California bound and could be heard above the roar of the wheels shouting a cheerful farewell to everyone the stage passed.
Teddy motioned Rhys into the cramped Gamble Line office as the stage disappeared. She moved around the stacks of boxes and bundles tagged for the eastbound stage and dragged one of the cane-bottomed chairs out in the clear. In one of the most unladylike moves Rhys had ever seen, she sat with her long legs straddling the chair’s back.
“I reckon you’ve been around long enough to know the line’s in serious trouble,” she began. “And I reckon you’re smart enough to know that your shares could wind up being half of nothing soon enough.”
“I know there have been setbacks,” Rhys said cautiously. Teddy had tried every argument to weasel out of paying off Zack Gamble’s debt. He braced for a new one.
“Setbacks?” Teddy returned. “By damn I could be hours away from being out of business. And when I’m out of business, you’re out of luck.”
“Every shipment has gone through since we added the extra messenger to the runs,” Rhys reminded.
“That’s right,” Teddy said drawing herself up to look as tall as possible. “But because of the ones that didn’t, the Wells Fargo agent over this district is coming in this afternoon.” Someone walked by the open door and Teddy quietly fumed until the footsteps faded. “It’s good as gone,” she said. “He aims to cancel our contract. When he does we’re busted. Me. And you.”
“Busted?” Rhys hadn’t heard the term. While he might normally have picked up the meaning from the gist of the conversation, he was too distracted by Teddy’s widely spread buckskin-clad legs. Didn’t the woman know she shouldn’t sit like that?
“Broke.” She got up but it was too late to redirect the line of his thoughts back to money and Wells Fargo agents. He’d been caught by a fever. His belly tightened. The veins in his temples throbbed. He’d have taken her in his arms but she went stalking across the room, kicking bundles out of her way as she went. “Dammit! I’ve got one chance.” She spun around. “I want you to tell Cabe Northrop you’re running things.” She paused a moment, having to choke out the next words. “I’m not waiting on that letter from London,” she said. “I’m acknowledging your ownership of Zack’s shares. I’m ready to sign a document to that effect. But if you want it to be worth more than paper, you tell Cabe Northrop you’re my partner and that you’ll be around as long as it takes to get this line up to snuff.” Again she stopped to gather her courage. “He’s got to think you know how to run a stage line, got to think you’ve had some experience somewhere. Understand?”
Rhys slowly nodded.
“Once this line’s out of jeopardy,” she added, “I can borrow enough to buy you out. Pronto.” She stood in the shadows but he saw tears welling in her eyes. He’d never seen her cry, not even in the worst of times. When a tear slid down her cheek it was his undoing. Teddy swabbed her face with the back of her hand. “Dammit! Got a speck in my eye,” she said.
He’d have granted her anything—had she but known to ask. As it was, Teddy was giving him exactly what he had come for. She was clearing the way for him to leave Wishbone and get back to the life he preferred—a life which, with all its complications, was beginning to look simpler than the one here. By now Alain Perrault had his letter and should have responded. He trusted that Alain had already begun efforts to clear him of the charges against him. As soon as he had the money Teddy owed him he could afford a defense. He could leave, forget the past, forget Teddy, be a devil-may-care man again.
His lips curved into a half smile, infuriating Teddy, who suspected he was laughing at her evident desperation and spineless show of weakness. She wasn’t mollified when he said, “I will do it. Whatever you want.”