Her purpose was singular, to get the key to the secret door from Chance’s belt. In order to do that, she’d have to remove the belt from his trousers, and in order to do that, she’d have to remove the trousers.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
He lit a lamp whose soft light bathed the room in an amber glow. She studied their surroundings, paying attention to the precise scattering of objects on his bureau, the garish pictures on the walls, his clothes strewn a little too carelessly across a chair. His bedroom was like him, deliberately flashy on the surface, drawing one’s eye away from its true character.
“I’m perfectly aware of that,” she said, facing him.
Downstairs the thought had occurred to her that she simply could have waited until he was asleep, then crept inside his room and stolen the watch fob. Yet she hadn’t. She’d come here with him of her own volition, and she knew her eyes revealed to him why. Perhaps her purpose wasn’t so singular, after all.
“I’m not who you think I am.”
“No?” She moved toward him, placed her hands on his chest. “I disagree. I know exactly who you are.”
He looked at her but didn’t move, didn’t risk touching her, for the same reason she went no farther than to rest her palm against his heart and feel the heat of his body through his clothes.
“You’re a man my father trusted.”
“You sure about that?”
She glanced at the watch fob hanging from his belt, and knew it couldn’t be coincidence. “Yes.”
His hands slid around her waist. “Sometimes trust is misplaced.”
“Not this time.” Looking into his eyes, she rose up on tiptoes and pressed her lips to his. It was the boldest thing she’d ever done in her life.
At first he didn’t respond. The house around them was quiet, the wind in the trees outside the only sound. As she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing herself against him, she heard his sigh.
“Dora,” he said, then kissed her back.
Abandoning her good sense, she closed her eyes and let herself be swept away by her senses, expecting more of the same frenzied coupling they’d shared in the darkened hallway two long weeks ago.
His kiss was soft, achingly tender, and in that moment she knew her true purpose for being here had nothing to do with the watch fob at all.
She was in love with him.
Not the roguish gambler who tried too hard to convince her he was the kind of man who didn’t deserve her respect. She was in love with the man who’d helped her father when other men hadn’t, the man who’d followed her back and forth to town that first week to make sure she was safe, who’d advised foolish girls to get an education and unfortunate women to muster the courage to change their lives. She was in love with the man who, when her own life was threatened, had stepped in front of Dickie Hargus’s gun.
“Stop me,” Chance whispered against her lips.
She looked into his eyes and read a tangle of self-reproach and desire. His hands, twined around her waist, were quivering. “Why?”
“You know why.”
Gently she brushed a hank of dark hair from off his face. She considered simply telling him, taking him back downstairs and showing him the secret door inside the basement storeroom, revealing his watch fob as the key.
“My father left me a gift,” she began.
“No. What he left you was trouble. If he’d any damned idea what was to come, he’d never have done it.” He kissed her again, softly, holding himself in check, just as she was.
“I don’t mean the money. I mean you.” She slid out of his embrace and retrieved her diary. Her father’s last letter to her was tucked inside. She unfolded it on the bureau near the lamp.
“I’ve read it,” he said.
“I know. I was there, remember?”
Recognition flashed in his eyes. “You wanted me to read it. Why?”
She turned purposely into his arms. “To see if you could make more of it than I had. After all, you knew him, I didn’t.”
“He was a good man. You would have liked him.”
On impulse she stepped back and looked pointedly at the watch fob hanging from his belt. “This was his.” She drew it toward her, gauged the weight of the cast pewter in her palm.
“You think I stole it, don’t you?”
She knew her eyes held the question. She didn’t have to ask it aloud.
“He gave it to me. Two days before he was shot.” Her gaze followed his to the date on the letter. “The same day he wrote this.”
“Why you?”
He didn’t answer.
The room felt suddenly too warm, the air between them close. They stood inches apart, yet he was miles away, drifting somewhere in a troubled sea of memory that was reflected in his eyes.
“Tell me,” she said.
Then he smiled, came back to the present, fixed his gaze on hers. “He said the damnedest thing when he gave it to me. ‘Chance,’ he said, ‘this here’s the key to the future.’”
“Your future?”
“No.” He took her in his arms and pulled her close, tilted her chin so that his lips hovered over hers.
She dropped the watch fob.
“Yours,” he said, and kissed her.
This time he used his tongue. This time she used hers.
The dream was different this time. Dora was there beside him, standing amidst the smoking ruins of the ranch house surrounded by slain cattle, looking with horror on the burned and twisted bodies of his mother and sister. His father hung from a tree near the barn, his body swaying hypnotically in the breeze.
Chance woke in a cold sweat, a silent scream rising up inside him.
“Dora?”
The lamp had gone out. The space beside him on the bed was still warm, but in the moonlight filtering through the lace draperies he saw she was gone.
“Damn it.”
He moved to the edge of the bed and readjusted his clothes. His vest was undone, his shirt partially unbuttoned. Thank Christ he still had his trousers on. He sat there for a moment in the moonlight, thinking about her before he got up and lit the lamp.
His hands were shaking.
He looked at the rumpled bed and recalled the feel of her in his arms, the softness of her lips, her hair undone around her shoulders. He’d never in his life forget the passion in her eyes as she’d pulled him down on top of her and said the words.
I love you.
Readjusting himself inside his trousers, he also suspected he’d never forget the moment he pushed himself away, stilled her protests with soft kisses, then held her close until they’d both drifted off.
He’d promised Bill Fitzpatrick he’d look after her, not use her then break her heart. Bill had been drinking the night he’d given him the watch fob. Chance hadn’t really believed him when he’d said he had a daughter. He’d thought the old man was just rambling.
Out of habit he reached for the silver chain hanging from his belt. “What the—?”
The watch fob was gone.
He studied the chain and saw that the clasp had come undone. He searched the bed first, then under it. It wasn’t there. Hell, it had to be here somewhere.
As he went through the pile of wrinkled clothes draped over the chair, he recalled the fascination in Dora’s eyes as she’d studied the watch fob. The last thing he remembered before falling asleep with her in his arms, was the way she’d run her finger along its edges, over and over, intrigued by its unusual shape.
Chance pulled on his boots.
The light in Dora’s cabin was out. The half moon hanging in the sky over the bunkhouse told him it was after three. It didn’t matter. He had to see her. It was time to tell her how things stood. He at least owed her that much.
Besides, he didn’t trust those Hargus boys as far as he could throw them. They were out there somewhere, and until he was sure who they were and why they were here, he didn’t want Dora sleeping alone out in that cabin. Chance grabbed his gun belt from the floor where he’d dropped it after he and Dora had moved to the bed.
Her father’s trust in him had been misplaced, and make no mistake, the only thing Wild Bill had left his daughter was trouble.
His letter to Dora was still lying on top of the bureau. She’d forgotten to take it with her when she’d left. Chance picked it up and reread it. “You crazy old geezer. What the hell were you thinking dragging her into this?”
He turned to the last page and was surprised at what was sandwiched there between the sheets. It was a tintype of Wild Bill. Recent, by the look of it. Chance held it up to the light and studied the image. He wondered where Bill had had it made?
He recalled a photographer who’d passed through town a few months ago. The only reason he remembered him was because the man had lost most of his money at cards one night at the Flush. Lily had relieved him of the rest of it upstairs, as Chance remembered.
“Hmm.” He stuffed the letter and the tintype into his pocket, blew out the lamp and left his room, locking the door behind him.
He didn’t make it to Dora’s cabin. He didn’t even make it to the kitchen. The wall sconce was lit in the hallway, and the door to the basement storeroom stood wide. Who the devil was up this time of night?
At the bottom of the stairs he got his answer. Chance went stock-still. A single candle burned, providing just enough light to see by. Dora was pressed against the back wall of the storeroom, the watch fob in her hand. What she did next gave him the biggest surprise of his life.
He watched as she fit the pewter fob into a hollow in the wall. She turned it, and a moment later a narrow section of wall gave way.
Son of a—
“Dora, wait!”
Too late. She’d stepped into darkness.
Chance drew his gun, leaped over a stack of boxes and a dusty chair. A second later he was there. He grabbed the candle and stepped inside the tiny room.
Dora whirled on him, bumping against an old table positioned against the wall. “Chance!”
“Damn it!” It took him less than a second to realize they were alone and the secret room that she’d stumbled upon was empty, except for the ornate object sitting on the battered wooden table.
He holstered his gun and held the candle high.
“It’s the birdcage!” she said.
The same one he’d seen in the tintype. The tiny room was damp, and smelled even mustier than the rest of the basement. Chance leaned against the table and let out a breath, ran a hand over his sweat-soaked brow.
“Don’t you know you scared the hell out of me just now?”
It was the first time in the three weeks he’d known her that she looked sheepish. “I—I’m sorry. It’s just that…” She shrugged.
He studied the secret door, impressed with the unusual lock. He’d never seen anything like it. He pulled the watch fob out of the indentation and looked at it with new understanding.
“It’s the key.” Dora looked him in the eyes. Even in the soft light he could see her cheeks were still flushed, irritated from his beard stubble, her lips still swollen from their kissing.
He felt a hollowness in his gut that burned almost as much as his feelings for her. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
She shrugged.
“What we did upstairs…you coming up there with me to begin with…” He paused, then shook his head, feeling like a damned fool. “You didn’t have to pretend, Dora. Or lie. Not on my account. You could have just asked me for the watch fob. I would have given it to you. It was your father’s.”
He held it out to her, but she didn’t take it.
“No. It’s yours. He gave it to you, not me.”
“Take it.”
She wouldn’t. “You think I don’t trust you.”
That’s exactly what he thought, and while he’d told himself more than once it was a damned good thing she didn’t trust him, it still hurt. And that’s when he knew he was in way over his head.
He clipped the pewter fob to his belt, then from his pocket retrieved the tintype of Wild Bill along with the letter. “Here. You left these in my room.”
She took them, then looked away, embarrassed.
There were two things, now, that he wanted most in the world, only he couldn’t have them both.
One was to take her in his arms and convince her he was someone different, a man who had been there for his own father when Jack Wellesley had needed him most, a man who wanted her more than he wanted to punish himself, and more than the vengeance that both fed and ate away at him every day of his life.
The other thing he wanted so badly it burned inside him like white fire, was vengeance—a bloodlust so overpowering he could taste it in his mouth like the dead ash blanketing the earth where he’d buried his parents and sister.
“Go back to Colorado Springs, Dora. There’s nothing here for you.”
“Isn’t there?”
He wanted to believe she hadn’t been pretending upstairs, that when she’d whispered against his lips that she loved him, it hadn’t been a lie.
He thought about the watch fob, the key, what she’d done to get it. He took one last look around the tiny room, laughing softly at the birdcage. “It’s all a wild-goose chase. The letter, the tintype, this room.”
“There is no money, is there?”
The moment of truth was here, but he couldn’t bring himself to come clean. If he told her, he’d have to tell her everything, and if he told her everything, she’d never go back to Colorado Springs. She’d stay here and try to help him. She’d try to fix him just like she tried to fix everything else broken in her path. The saloon, the town’s finances, Susan’s self-image and Tom’s unrequited love. Hell, even Lily’s bad attitude hadn’t entirely escaped her good intentions.
But what was wrong with him wasn’t fixable. Even if it was, he didn’t want to be fixed. He didn’t deserve to be. He didn’t deserve her, either. Besides, if she did stay, he’d never be able to finish what he’d set out to do the day Wild Bill Fitzpatrick gave him his life back.
“No. There is no money.” The words rolled off his lips as if he’d practiced them.
“You knew I was coming.” She nodded at the pewter watch fob. “He told you. You knew.”
He had known. And while he’d expected Wild Bill’s daughter, never in a million years would he have expected her, a good woman with grit who reminded him every day of a decent world he no longer knew how to live in.
“Go home, Dora.”
She took the candle from his hand, their gazes locking for an instant as their fingers brushed. He followed her out into the storeroom and closed the secret door. She stood on the bottom step leading upward to the hall and said one last thing to him before leaving him alone in the dark.
“I am home.”
She hadn’t been pretending, and it wasn’t a lie.
Dora sat with her feet curled beneath her on the narrow bed in her cabin and waited for dawn. She’d stoked the fire in the potbelly stove and tried to clear her mind by watching the flickering firelight dance on the rough-hewn beams. It did no good. She could no more stop her thoughts than she could her feelings.
In her diary she’d faithfully recounted the events of the past two days: the arrival of the Hargus brothers, the card game, the accusations regarding her father, the watch fob and secret room, John Gardner’s renewed proposal and the precious hour she’d spent in Chance’s arms.
She set the diary aside on the bed next to the tintype, her father’s letter and the tortoiseshell comb wrapped in newsprint. Three clues that, so far, had led nowhere. A wild-goose chase, Chance had called it. Maybe, maybe not. Two things she knew for certain.
Chance Wellesley was a man in pain.
He was also lying.
More than anything in the world Dora wanted to know why. Until she did, the battle raging inside her between rational thought and raw feeling would never be resolved. She was in love with a man she didn’t trust.
She picked up the tortoiseshell comb and studied it for what must have been the hundredth time. Chance had looked her in the eye when he’d said it.
There is no money.
And that had been his mistake. She knew him now. She knew when he was telling the truth and when he was lying—even when he didn’t know it himself.
Upstairs on his bed when he’d stilled her roving hands, arrested her ardent kisses, he’d told another lie. He’d said he wasn’t made the same as she was, that he couldn’t return her love, that he couldn’t feel.
He was wrong.
She grasped the comb so tightly the tines dug into her palm. Chance was fighting his feelings for her, and the reason had something to do with his past, with her father and the money she was certain was here.
“It is here. Somewhere.”
The comb was the final clue. It had to be. It was the one thing remaining her father had left her to which she’d been unable to make a connection.
What did it mean? What had he been trying to tell her.
“Delilah!”
Dora sprang from the bed and started to pace, her mind working.
Delilah had recognized the tortoiseshell comb at once, the night Dora had worn it to dinner with John Gardner. In the whirlwind of the past week, Dora had forgotten all about it. She knelt in front of the stove and held the pretty ornament to the firelight. It instantly came alive with color—whiskey-brown and deep russet, sun-gold and fiery red.
“Good Lord!”
It took her only seconds to rewrap the comb in the newsprint, grab her diary and pen and go. A minute later, the cabin locked behind her, she crept in the predawn fog across the yard toward the back door. The house was still and dark. Pausing behind the spiral staircase, she peered into the saloon.
The money had been here all along, right under her very nose.
She approached the bar, felt her way behind it and lit one of the elegant kerosene lamps flanking the cash register. “Oh!” Her own reflection in the mirror, distorted by rows of liquor bottles, spooked her.
After a calming breath, she emptied her pockets and set about documenting her theory before proceeding. She opened her diary to the entry she’d penned her very first night at the Royal Flush. Dora had always considered herself a fair artist, but as she studied the likeness she’d drafted that first night, she realized she’d missed the most important detail of all.
Unwrapping the tortoiseshell comb, she examined that detail now. Satisfied with her conclusion, she annotated the drawing in her diary, then in capital letters below it spelled out the precise location of her father’s secret fortune.
There was only one thing left to do. Get it.
Dora capped her pen and closed the diary. She turned toward the cash register and nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Evenin’.” Dickie Hargus’s blue eyes sparkled in the lamplight. He stood at the end of the bar, blocking her retreat.
Her stomach clenched in fear.
“It’s almost day, bro.” Lee stepped out of the shadows. “You oughtta be wishing our little schoolteacher a good morning.”
“Wh-what are you doing here? What do you want?”
Dickie inched closer.
Lee approached the bar, his gaze falling to her diary. “I would have thought that was obvious.”
She grabbed the red leather-bound book and backed away, holding it protectively to her chest.
Dickie kept coming. Lee was already there. She had no way out.
“One of the girls told us you like to write things in that little red book of yours.” Lee nodded at the diary. “That true?”
“One of the…girls?” Dora couldn’t think straight. All she had to do was cry out and someone would come. One good scream would do it, but her throat constricted and her mouth went dry.
“You know where it is, don’t you?” Lee smiled, sending a chill clear up her spine.
“Where wh-what is?”
Dickie backed her against the bar.
Lee leaned close enough to whisper. So close she could smell his whiskey-tainted breath. “The money.”
“I—I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear.”
A floorboard creaked in the hallway. Lee and Dickie spun toward the sound.
“She doesn’t know anything.” Chance’s voice was low and calm. He stood in the shadowed doorway, a Colt in each hand. “But I do.”