SOMETHING TICKLED Andy’s nose. Sleepily, he swiped at it, his fingers getting tangled in rose-scented silky curls.
That woke him up.
He blinked open his eyes and stared at the raven mass of hair, a woman’s soft body attached to that lovely head.
Daphne.
He smiled, indulging in the hot, sweet memories of last night’s lovemaking. And for a moment, he toyed with a repeat visit. What more perfect way to start the day?
But life wouldn’t be so perfect if he didn’t finish that damn honeymoon hotel article…and fast. He’d promised Frank he’d have the first draft e-mailed to the Post last night, and well, toes and faucets and mirrors and…
Well, a lot got in the way.
Andy jumped out of bed, tiptoeing around ripped-open foil packets, empty airplane bottles, piles of candy wrappers and a half-eaten bag of peanuts—oh, right, they’d missed dinner. With no small sense of pride, he counted five condom wrappers.
Several minutes later, he was sitting up in bed, typing like a madman. A few more paragraphs and this baby was done.
“G’morning, sexy,” murmured Daphne, looking up at him with a dark lock of hair curling down the middle of her forehead. “You always work in bed?”
“With you, baby, it’ll never be work. Unfortunately, my deadline was—” he glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Ten o’clock. Shit. “—fourteen hours ago. Let me wrap up this draft, sweetheart, then I’m all yours.”
“I don’t mean to bother you,” Daphne whispered, suddenly all serious, “but I keep thinking of that baby Jo.”
Across the room, the glass decanter rattled.
They both looked at it, back at each other.
“Not the wind,” said Daphne.
“Nope, not the wind. Or room service barreling down the hall or any other reason I’ve concocted in my half-cocked brain these last few days.” He squeezed Daphne’s hand. “I think that’s Belle talking to us and I’m the guy who never believed in ghosts.” Or true love. A lot had changed this weekend.
The decanter rattled again.
“Holy cow!” Daphne exclaimed, sitting up. “I think she really is talking to us!” Daphne fidgeted with the bed cover “Belle,” she announced loudly, “it was you who made both of us dream about being at my ancestor Charlie’s kitchen that night, right?”
Rattle rattle.
“Daphne, just talk normally,” Andy said quietly. “I think she can hear us fine.”
Good thing Andy was accustomed to working on a floor with thirty other reporters all typing and talking at once. Excellent training for staying focused no matter what the hell else was going on…like ghosts who suddenly felt chatty.
Daphne looked pensively at the decanter. “You wanted us to be lovers…”
Rattle.
“But there was something else about being at Charlie’s…were we supposed to be Charlie and Sarah?”
Silence.
“The child,” Andy whispered, the answer like a smack in the head with a two-by-four. “Hell,” he said, staring at the decanter. “Bonnie, or Belle, when you skipped out of Tombstone in 1889 or so, you didn’t know you’d been—” He paused, realizing that a woman was a woman even if she was a ghost and he didn’t need to blow it by saying something male dumb-ass stupid.
He took a breath, started again. “When you had to flee Tombstone, you weren’t aware…”
Lilacs, strong and sweet, suddenly swirled through the room and he had the sense she was agitated, maybe excited, because he was finally hitting on the truth.
“You weren’t aware,” he repeated gently, “that you were with child.” It was something he’d thought before, but had let the thoughts pass. Now it all made sense.
Daphne gasped. “Oh my God! Jo! Our baby at the neighboring house was Jo! I guessed it, remember? Well, I didn’t know why, but I wondered if the child might be named Jo. I wonder if that’s why we keep thinking about that little girl. Belle wants to know about her baby.”
The decanter rattled so strongly, it skittered slightly across the marble table top.
The long-buried secret brought a surprise mist to Andy’s eyes. Him, the guy’s guy, getting mushy. Well, hell, it was giving him an answer to his own life. He’d carried rage at his own mother for years, hating her for abandoning him. But suddenly, for the first time in his life, Andy felt empathy for the woman who’d given him birth. She’d had problems, terrible ones, but maybe she’d given him up for his own well-being, and although he’d never know, because she’d long ago passed away, she might have spent her life haunted by the child she’d lost.
A fate not unlike Belle’s.
“Bonnie,” Andy continued, speaking to the wafting scent, “you gave birth to Jo in 1890?”
Rattle.
“You knew she was nearby, I’d guess, because why else would you pick work in this remote mountain community? There were plenty of top-notch bordellos in Denver.”
Rattle.
Then he remembered what the Grand Dame had said. “Yellow fever hit around 1891…You probably thought your baby had died and, oh God, now I realize how you discovered she’d lived.”
He turned to Daphne, whose eyes were so wide, only a line of hazel rimmed her black pupils. “Daphne, the night we looked at that old photograph of Charles Remington and the others, remember how the housekeeper and her baby Jo were in the background? That photo was, what, 1893? After all this time, over a hundred years, Belle finally saw that her baby had survived.”
The glass decanter rattled, although it seemed quieter, a little sadder. They sat in silence for a long moment, the only sound the almost-rushing babble of the falls.
“If you go downstairs to the historical parlor,” Andy said to Daphne, “there’s a photo album with a picture of Belle at a picnic. Can’t miss her—she’s the rowdy one in the back lining up a shot with her revolver.” He looked around the room. “Sorry, Belle, but I’m sure being called a rowdy isn’t such a big surprise to you.” He glanced back at Daphne. “And while you’re down there, maybe you’ll get one tired, on-deadline writer a cup of that free coffee?”
Daphne jumped out of bed, tossing on her cargo pants and Andy’s red fleece jacket. “Coffee, sure thing. Oh my God, Andy, I’ll actually see her!” She looked around. “I mean, I know I saw you before, Belle, but now I’ll have proof it’s really you!”
Daphne shoved on the baseball cap, stuck on her sunglasses and made a mad dash for the door.
“Your shoes,” Andy pointed out.
“Right.” She slipped into those insane green skyscrapers and, with a last waggle of her fingers over her shoulder, slammed the door shut behind her.
Andy didn’t have the heart to tell her she should’ve put on a bra. Maybe she thought sunglasses protected her from inquisitive looks, but he seriously doubted anyone would be checking out her eyes.
He looked around the room and smiled, realizing the best story of all had been in this room for years, generations, just waiting for someone to discover it.
A FEW MINUTES later, there was a sharp rap at the door.
Andy, nearly finished with the honeymoon hotel draft, looked up. “Probably forgot her key,” he muttered, shoving the laptop aside and hopping out of bed. He grabbed the fluffy towel he’d ripped off Daphne the night before and wound it around his middle as he headed to the door. Not that he wouldn’t mind answering the door naked for Daphne, but that didn’t mean he wanted to share his stud-boy status with a passing maid or a surprised guest.
He opened the door.
Snap!
He blinked, a dot of white light dancing in front of his eyes. “What the hell—?”
“Where’s Daphne Remington?” asked a male voice.
Andy blinked, vaguely recognizing a photographer and reporter from a rival newspaper. Shit. How’d they know she was here?
He started to speak, ready to do some of the sweet talkin’ he was infamous for, when a woman in a corset and lace-trimmed drawers, her hair falling down her back in long auburn waves, strolled between him and the gentleman.
“Looking for someone, boys?” she said in a husky, don’t-mess-with-the-lady voice. She jutted out one hip, showing off the pearl-handled revolver wedged in the waistband of her drawers.
Her drawers?
With boots?
“Da-Daphne?” the photographer rasped.
“Wrong lady,” she answered. “Now I’d suggest y’all leave before I call hotel security.”
The photographer, a glazed look on his face, raised his camera and started to take another picture.
Belle pulled out her revolver and pointed it in the general below-the-belt vicinity of the two men. “Do that again, and you’ll be missing somethin’ mighty important to you boys.”
The two men speed-walked down the hallway, quickly turning a corner out of view.
Andy, stunned, stared at Belle. No wonder Drake’s dying words had been that he loved this woman—she was frickin’ incredible. Reminded him of that actress Madeline Stowe, except with auburn hair laced with streaks of copper red. Eyes like a feline, sexy and green. And that voice…dear God, if the sun didn’t thaw the falls, that whiskey-deep voice could.
He glanced down the hall again just to make sure the idiots were gone. Then he turned back, murmuring “Thank you.”
But Belle was gone, too.
DAPHNE SAUNTERED into the lobby, feeling a bit cocky after a night of being a wild she-devil in bed, and debated whether to go for the coffee in the lobby first, or check out the picture of Belle in the historical parlor.
Being Monday morning, few people were around. No line for coffee, and hell, Daphne was beside herself with curiosity to verify the woman, well, ghost, she’d seen was really the notorious gun-toting card shark Belle Bulette.
She thought back to the sign on Belle’s bedroom door. Never Fold a Good Hand. Wonder if that had been Belle’s guideline for life?
In the historical parlor, a photo album was open right to a page with a sepia photo of a group of women in their Sunday finest sitting prettily on blankets, eating chicken and fruit…
And there, in the background was Belle. Couldn’t miss her.
It was the woman Daphne had seen in their room twice—the day they first walked in, and the time she’d whispered to Daphne that she and Andy were meant for each other. Daphne leaned closer and checked out the familiar tilt of the lady’s chin, that to-die-for hair and get a load of how she stood, ready to square off at some target and shoot at it.
What a woman.
Feeling a bit giddy, as though she’d just met a long-lost friend, Daphne headed back to the lobby for coffee when she spied a copy of the Denver Post lying on a table.
Renegade Remington, Runaway Bride?
Her insides turned to ice. She read and reread the heading on the front page, scanning a few of the sentences, her insides roiling with nausea. It was filth, gossip…
And it was written by Andrew Branigan, his name at the top of the article. He’d said he was working on the article just this morning. Like hell. He’d been scamming her all along, writing and sending it in when she wasn’t looking, all the while pretending to write some “hotel” story.
She damn near stumbled back through the lobby, dashed madly up the stairs, and threw herself in the room.
“You bastard!”
Andy, leaning over from just unplugging the phone line into the computer, straightened and frowned. “What?”
“You know exactly what!” Heat rushed to her face. Her hands shook.
“Uh, no, I don’t.”
“Liar!” She marched to the phone, punched in a number and waited.
“Mother?” she said, swiping at her eyes. “I want to come home, now.” Pause. “What?” Daphne dragged the phone as far as the line would go and looked out the bay window. “You’re right,” she said, her voice breaking. “The media is descending on the inn. I’ll ask the concierge for a private room and wait for you. Please hurry. I don’t want to stay here one more minute.”
Andy, openmouthed, stared as Daphne began throwing items into her purse. Some makeup. Her silk chemise top. She tugged off his pullover.
“Daphne, please, keep it. You need something warm to wear.”
She flashed him a screw-you look as she kicked his pullover aside and jammed her arms into her jean jacket, buttoning it with shaking fingers.
She stormed past Andy toward the door, but he caught her arm.
“You don’t walk out on me without explaining what the hell’s wrong.”
She notched her chin higher, her eyes watery with emotion. “Now I know why they call you a sweet-talkin’ guy. You sweet-talked me with lies. Telling me I could have anonymity—not. Promising we’d work on an interview telling my side of the Renegade Remington story—not. Telling me—” she swallowed hard, barely able to keep her voice level “—telling me you loved me. Not.”
“Daphne, for God’s sake—”
“Read the Post, Andy. You got your front-page story. You’ll sell the story elsewhere, too, make big bucks off my reputation, and then you can write that book of your dreams. That’s what it’s all about, right? What you get, not how you destroy other people’s lives.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
“Step aside,” she said coldly, holding herself ramrod straight, “because I’m walking out of here with the one thing you or any other self-serving asshole can never destroy. My self-esteem. At one time, I thought it could be tarnished, walked on. But not anymore. It’s mine to nurture and protect…and no matter what anybody says or does, it’s untouchable.”
Holding her head high, she walked out the door.
OVER AN HOUR later, Andy stood in the lobby along with a crowd of guests and hotel staff, staring out the windows at the chaos in front of the inn. Crowding the porch steps was a mass of reporters, mikes, cameras. Standing on the top step was a pale-faced Daphne surrounded by an imposing, bigger-than-life crew of stone-cold profiles making her look like a speck on Mount Rushmore itself. Standing immediately behind her were the Remington clan and their assorted lawyers—or so Andy guessed by their Italian suits, jaded looks, and the number of times they checked their Rolex watches.
And standing next to Daphne, Mr. G. D. McCormick. No, not just standing next to, but with his frickin’ arm around her as though she needed his protection. Hell, the man hadn’t even known she’d run away from him, from her life in Denver, the only way she could let down her guard for a few days. Had he ever seen her photographs from the halfway house? Did he have any idea how talented she was?
Or how infectious her laughter was?
Or that she had a way of looking into people’s hearts and making them believe in love again? Andy closed his eyes, recalled the scent of her perfume, how it was named for Dulcinea, the woman who moved Quixote to heroic deeds. Who transformed Quixote into a man who believed that without her love, he was like a tree without leaves, or a body without a soul.
That’s how Andy felt. Bereft, empty.
He’d lost his Dulcinea.
He looked out the window again.
Someone had brought her a new set of clothes. Daphne looked ridiculously demure in a pink suit—knee-length for God’s sake—with matching pink, and very proper, pumps. Worse was her hair. The raven mass had all the curl taken out of it and was sleeked back in some kind of bun that even a nun would scoff at.
“Nothing significant happened here,” she answered some reporter, her voice like a ghost of the Daphne he knew, “except I needed a little R&R.”
G. D. McCormick pulled her closer to his side and leaned toward the microphone, “On behalf of my fiancée—”
Fiancée?
“I chastise the press for their sloppy reporting and sensationalist intent. In the future, stick to issues critical to Colorado’s future—tourism, reemployment assistance, promotion of Colorado’s agricultural products…”
Yada yada.
Of course, old “Gordo” would find an opportunity to bang his political drum. Did he even care that Daphne felt betrayed and traumatized? No, it was a promo op for G. D. McCormick. Andy could march out there right now, take Daphne by the hand and run to his Jeep, the hero saving the damsel on his mighty steed, but he’d already made a big enough mess of things.
Not that he’d known the story would break the way it did, or even that he could have stopped it, but, out of respect for Daphne, he wouldn’t create more public chaos and pain in her life.
Anyway, he’d tried to explain after he’d discovered what happened, but hotel security denied him admission to her room. Daphne Remington, he’d been told in no uncertain terms, refused to see him.
Andy turned away from the media circus, weaved his way through the crowd in the lobby, headed back up the stairs to their room.
My room. Not ours.
Earlier, after Daphne had called him a liar and told him to read the front page of the Post, he’d done just that. He’d been more surprised than anyone to see the horrific heading—Renegade Remington, Runaway Bride? Sick to his stomach, he’d skimmed the story. Half the words were his from the interview, but skewered and pulled out of context to give the story a seamy slant. Worse, his name had headed the article as though he’d written it.
To Daphne, he looked like the biggest lying jerk who’d ever walked the planet.
He’d immediately called Frank, who’d explained all hell had broken loose at the Post when they got word a rival paper was ready to print a hot story about a certain Post reporter shacking up with the infamous, and very engaged to a possible future governor, Daphne Remington. Frank’s boss demanded to see all of the stories Andy was currently writing, which was how the interview was yanked off the server, and the publisher himself gave the go-ahead to wipe out the almost-ready-to-print heading and story and replace it with the Renegade Remington one.
Another writer had done a fast-and-dirty revision and it had gone to press.
Frank had apologized profusely. The Post’s circulation needed a boost, the powers-that-be wanted to beat the competition…the rest of Frank’s words had been a blur…
Andy opened the minibar and pulled out an airplane bottle. But when he smelled the sting of whiskey, memories of that night when they’d first kissed came flooding back. How she’d stuck her pinkie in the bottle, “begged” him to kiss her, how he’d nearly lost his mind tasting her lips for the very first time…
I gotta get out of this freaking room.
Too many memories. Too much heartache.
He had halfheartedly tossed some things into his backpack when he looked up and caught his reflection in the smoky mirror on the back wall.
Next to him stood Belle.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He nodded. “Me, too.” He swallowed back the rock in his throat, then whispered, “I’ll keep looking for Jo. I promise.”
He swore he saw the glimmer of a tear in her eye as she faded into nothingness.
THE JUDGE and Miss Arlotta sat behind the table, staring at Belle. The judge’s normally twinkling blue eyes were somber; Miss Arlotta’s red lips were tight. Belle noticed a copy of the Post, with that damn headline, lying on the table between them.
“Miss Arlotta and I have reached a unanimous decision,” the judge said solemnly, his bushy mustache quivering as he spoke, “that you be stripped of all earned notches.”
All? “What about the three gold bonus stars?”
“Including the three gold bonus stars you negotiated with Miss Arlotta at candle-lighting yesterday.”
The judge still used terms from their real-life days. Like candle-lighting for nighttime, and Belle’s heart twinged recalling how joyous Andy and Daphne had been when they’d fallen asleep last night in each other’s arms.
“But surely the three gold stars must mean I can keep something. One notch, maybe two?”
Miss Arlotta shook her head of pale-blond curls. “Belle, darlin’, this isn’t a negotiation.” She waggled her fingers and the scroll with the golden rules appeared in her hands, which she quickly scanned. “You not only broke at least four of the rules, but you committed the greatest grievance of all—you broke two hearts.”
Miss Arlotta paused, releasing the scroll, which fluttered into thin air. “What the judge and I also decided,” she said, her voice strained, “is that for the nine bedpost notches you earned, you’ve now earned as many black marks.”
Nine black marks? It would take Belle years, lifetimes, to even get back to square one!
“But I’m innocent!” She paced back and forth. “The Denver Post made the decision to run that story—”
“Those reporters you threatened,” cut in Miss Arlotta, darting a look at the revolver in Belle’s waistband, “would have left with zero evidence if only Andy had answered the door. But, no, they got an eyeful of a—” she tapped the paper “—‘scantily clad bodyguard’ who ‘threatened them with a gun’ so they questioned other guests, got an eyewitness report from some woman who accused Daphne of lascivious behavior the previous morning at the complementary coffee urn. One thing led to another and the Post lifted that sordid story, and theirs to press…a story they never would’ve run if a certain ghost hadn’t materialized in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Belle stared out the window at the blue sky and realized it was going to be a long, long time—another hundred, two hundred years?—before she’d ever leave this hotel.
Her only hope being that maybe, before his soul departed for the great beyond, Andy Branigan might discover what had happened to Jo. That thought alone would be her solace for many, many years to come.