“I was offered a job at the King’s High Saloon,” Ella said softly.
Hunter, sitting at the foot of the bed, putting on his boots, glanced over his shoulder at Ella’s lovely naked body and frowned.
“What about the millinery? I thought you had something lined up there?”
“I thought so, too. Mrs. Adamson was apologetic, but she said she looked at her books and decided she couldn’t afford to hire anyone until spring. She did say she’d give me a job then, but I can’t wait five months. I’ll go crazy staying in this hotel all winter with nothing to do.”
“Did you try the hardware store?” he ventured.
She kicked him playfully with one of her bare feet. “What do I know about hardware?” she laughed. “I might as well go to work in the gun-shop.”
“I don’t like the idea of you working in the saloon,” Hunter said without looking at her.
“It’s not like Dekker’s. They don’t have a second floor,” she retorted, alluding to the place where they had met and where she had made her money lying on her back.
“I know that,” said Hunter, trying tactfully to make his point, “but this country is mighty short of good-lookin’ women like you. With you wearin’ nothin’ more than some black lace underwear, a man, after a few too many drinks, won’t be satisfied just to look; he’s gonna want to touch. And things could get ugly.”
“You worry too much,” she said simply.
“I only started worrying after I met you,” he replied with a wry smile.
“Well,” she said, moving across the bed and putting her arms around Hunter, “you’re just going to have to keep on worryin’, because if I don’t get a regular job soon, I’m going to take Chappee King’s offer and go to work at the saloon.”
Hunter was silent.
“No comment?” she asked.
“I was just trying to remember the last time you took my advice.”
“And?”
“And I don’t think you ever have,” he answered lightly.
She hugged him. “If I listened to everything you said, you probably wouldn’t love me.”
“This doesn’t change things, you know. I’m still against the saloon job,” he stated.
“I don’t particularly want to work for Chappee King. I’m still going to keep looking for a job. But if I do end up at the King’s High, I want you to remember that I worked in saloons for six years before I met you and I know how to handle myself.”
“I’m not worried about how you handle yourself,” he cautioned. “It’s those six foot two, two hundred pound fellers who haven’t been with a woman in a year-and-a-half that I’m worried about.”
“Look, I haven’t taken the job yet. Let’s not talk about it anymore. All right?”
“That’s okay by me,” he agreed.
“I’m getting pretty hungry,” she said, making sure to change the subject.
Hunter nodded. “I’m gonna go pick up my pay from Avery down at the office,” he told her. “Get dressed and when I come back we’ll go over to the cafe and get something to eat.”
Jack Creasey, a wrangler from S. J. Lindstrom’s Lazy J Ranch, had a room near the top of the stairs. With a few days off, he was looking for some fun but finding precious little of it available in Lost Creek. He’d spent his first night in town with Bonnie Clemson and the only fun he had with her was beating her up.
It looked as if his second night was going to be worse than his first ... until he caught a glimpse of Ella Phillips talking to Chappee King in the saloon that afternoon. Creasey followed her at a distance, watching the way Ella’s hips gently swayed from side to side as she hurried across the muddy street to the hotel. Once inside, she went up the stairway to the second floor, the cowboy looking up at her legs and liking what he saw.
“That woman that just went up the stairs,” Jack Creasey asked the clerk, “does she live here?”
“Miss Phillips? You bet. In number twenty-six.”
The cowboy smiled. He figured that a single woman who lived in a hotel, and who went into saloons, was probably a whore. And the best news was that her room was just down the hall from his.
Still, there was a doubt in his mind, if only a small one. He wondered why it was he hadn’t heard about her before. It only made sense that word would spread like wildfire if there was a beautiful woman in town who was putting Bonnie Clemson out of business. Yet why hadn’t that word reached him? Could it be that this Miss Phillips really wasn’t a whore? Creasey didn’t want to believe that. Maybe, he decided, she was new in town. Maybe he was the one destined to spread the good news. But first he had to make sure.
Around about dusk, Creasey hauled a chair out of his room and carried it to the far end of the hall where there was a little alcove, and sat himself down to keep an eye on the doings in room twenty-six.
He didn’t have long to wait.
A little while after the stage came into town, a tall man wearing worn clothes, dusty from the trail, walked briskly down the hallway, stopped at room twenty-six and went inside.
Sweat began to bead on Creasey’s upper lip as he impatiently counted the minutes that soon stretched to more than half an hour. What was going on behind that closed door? Was it what he expected? What he hoped?
The door to number twenty-six suddenly opened.
The tall stranger emerged alone and, if Creasey wasn’t mistaken, wasn’t there a smile on that man’s face?
There was no longer any doubt in Jack Creasey’s mind. He neither needed, nor wanted, any more evidence than this. As far as he was concerned, Miss Phillips was just what he thought she was. All that was left was for him to put up his money and then go for the sweetest ride this side of the Mississippi.
Creasey got up and started for Ella’s door. Then he stopped, decided at the last second to return the chair to his room first, and to maybe take a couple of slugs from a bottle of whiskey he had brought back from the King’s High Saloon. With all that sitting and worrying, he’d worked up an awful thirst. Maybe, he decided with a smirk, he’d have even more than a couple of slugs. After all, this was going to be a special night ...
After Hunter closed the door, Ella continued to lie on the bed. She stretched her hands up over her head and arched her back, the light from an oil lamp on the bedstand throwing a shadow of her supple figure against the far wall.
She felt content at that moment. At peace. She wasn’t in any rush to lose that feeling ... it had come to her too infrequently in the past. But more and more Ella was feeling that way ... because of Hunter. She allowed herself a sleepy smile and turned over on her side, hugging a big goose-down pillow against her smooth, naked skin.
Ella closed her eyes, planning just to doze for a few minutes before getting dressed. She didn’t know how long she slept. It could have been a few seconds, or it could have been as long as ten minutes, but she didn’t awaken till the door opened.
Thinking it was Hunter returned from Avery’s office, Ella turned toward the door with a smile.
Jack Creasey smiled right back, closed the door behind him, and began taking off his shirt.
Clutching the goose-down pillow to hide her nakedness, she cried, “Get out! Get out of here!”
“That’s all right,” Creasey said, reaching into his pants pocket. “I’ve got money.”
He showed her ten dollars.
Ella, still startled by the sudden appearance of this stranger, could only manage to blurt out, “No! Get out!”
So consumed was he by the thought that he would soon be in bed with the satin-skinned beauty, he decided to end all her objections by offering his entire month’s pay of thirty dollars. He took out the money and put it on the bedstand.
“There,” he said. “It’s all for you.”
“I don’t want it,” she retorted, finally regaining some of her composure. “Take your money and get out of here.”
“Now, hold on, you,” said Creasey angrily, his temper flaring, “that’s thirty dollars. Ain’t nobody gonna pay you more than that!”
“I don’t want your money. I’m not—”
She was trying to explain, but Creasey cut her off, “You don’t want my money? I’m not good enough for you? Why you no good tramp,” he roared. “A whore ain’t got no right to be choosy. I was willin’ to be generous, but now you’re gonna take the ten and like it! And you’re gonna like me, too! Ain’t you bitch?” With that, he swung the back of his hand and caught Ella flush in the face, knocking her sprawling onto the floor.
Stunned, her mouth and nose bleeding, Ella was unable to cry out before Creasey was on top of her, his liquored breath mixing with the sweet smell of the blood on her face.
Ella thrashed underneath him, trying to push him off, to get away, to scream for help. But the drunken cowboy outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds, and he had his mouth mashed against her lips, almost suffocating her. Still, she struggled and fought, scratching at his face, hoping that somehow she could find a way to free herself.
The drunken cowboy’s head was suddenly wrenched back, and an arm came curling around his throat, squeezing at the same time it was pulling him off Ella.
It was Hunter, in an explosive rage, who, after opening the door to number twenty-six, had grabbed Creasey by the hair, jerking his head up, and slipping his arm around the cowboy’s throat with the intention of strangling him.
Jack Creasey didn’t know what was happening. Whatever it was, it sure wasn’t what he had bargained for. He tried to break the grip Hunter had around his neck, but it couldn’t be done. His face turned purple.
“Don’t kill him!” Ella gasped at Hunter. “Just get him out of here. Please!”
The thought of this man—any man—attacking Ella filled Hunter with a fury that almost made him crazy. Many a time he’d risked his life to stand up for a woman, no matter who she was, to protect her from assault. That was his code. But in the past his purpose was to help the woman, not to kill the attacker. This time, though, seeing Ella as the target, Hunter was on the verge of choking every last breath out of Jack Creasey’s body.
Again, Ella pleaded, “Don’t kill him! Please! Just get him out!”
Hunter, with considerable reluctance, finally loosened his grip. But he wasn’t through with this drunken cowboy who had attacked his woman. Not by a long shot. He dragged Creasey out into the hallway, and despite the cowboy’s continued struggling, and despite the fact that Creasey didn’t have a stitch of clothing on, Hunter threw him down the stairs to the crowded hotel lobby below. Creasey tumbled and his bones cracked, and people looked on horrified, but even then Hunter felt the cowboy got off easy. After all, he had his life. In a good many parts of the west, a man caught molesting a woman found himself hanging from the end of a rope with a stretched neck.