Devil's Dare. Laurie Grant

badly, after all. He’d met Mercedes LaFleche, the subject of the cardsharp’s dare, and he had an appointment to take her to supper tomorrow evening at nine o’clock.

      This evening, he corrected himself with a grin, realizing it was after midnight. By the time the clock struck midnight again, he would have had an enjoyable supper with a beautiful woman whose sister he had rescued—a chivalrous act that should weigh heavily in his favor—and if his luck held, by the next morning he just might already have won the wager.

      “Mercy, Mercy, have mercy,” he mused aloud, grinning all over again as he remembered how her green eyes had flashed sparks at him for making a play on words with her name. So her real name is Fairweather, hmm? Yet she goes by Mercy, rather than Mercedes… The sparks—of anger? of challenge?—hadn’t dismayed him. Sam liked a woman to have some fire in her nature. It usually made the time in bed a lot more worthwhile, and the morning after a hell of a lot more interesting.

      So her sister wasn’t a prostitute—yet, he amended. His quick impression of Charity Fairweather, made when she had been sitting at the table with the boys and himself and flirting with all of them, was that the foolish little blonde was the natural harlot, not Mercy. Still, Charity’s distress at Culhane’s pawing had seemed genuine enough. But you could never tell with sporting women. It may have just been a matter of her asking more money than Tom wanted to pay.

      What was clear enough to Sam, though, was that Mercy didn’t want her sister in the business, and to him that indicated a basic goodness in her that he found very likable. He thought he would enjoy their little supper tomorrow, quite apart from considerations of winning the bet.

      He hoped she’d wear that green dress again, or something like it. The neckline of that dress had been just high enough to make her look like a lady, so that he could take her to dinner at Abilene’s one respectable hotel, and just low enough to hint at the delights that awaited him later. Farther down, its silken folds had clung lovingly to a slender waistline above enticingly feminine hips. He liked the fact, too, that she didn’t seem to paint her face like the other sporting women did; in fact, unless he missed his guess, Mercy’s face was completely clear of paint. But then, some women didn’t need paint to make them appealing, and perhaps this woman was one of the few who realized that fact. Though not classically beautiful, she was pretty in her own way.

      She had told him she would meet him at the hotel. She hadn’t wanted him to come and escort her from her rooms above the Alamo, and he wondered why. He didn’t think she was worried about him seeing some other well-satisfied customer leaving her. Most saloon girls didn’t start working, so to speak, until later in the evening.

      Was it possible she was attracted to him, and saw his invitation to dinner as romantic, rather than just business? If so, she might not want to remind him of what she was by having him pick her up at her place of employment. He hoped that was the reason, and his hope had little to do with the money he had a chance to regain by succeeding with the lovely Mercedes.

      

      Mercy waited until they’d walked a block from the Alamo Saloon before rounding on her sister. “How could you? How could you, Charity? After all Papa has told us about the things those cowboys get up to! You could have been…well, violated out there, Charity, did you realize that? How do you like your yellow-headed cowboy now?”

      Charity shuddered. “He was horrible, Mercy. He said he just wanted to go for a stroll! His breath stank of whiskey and tobacco, and his teeth were yellow. And his hands—I swear, Mercy, he had more hands than that octopus in our old picture book! And the way he kissed me, Mercy—it started out kinda nice, and then all at once he stuck his tongue right in my mouth! It was awful! Mercy, I’m not ever g-going near a m-man again!” Her breath caught on a renewed sob.

      Mercy put her arm bracingly around her sister’s shaking shoulders bracingly, and spoke in softer tones. “Yes, you will, honey. They’re not all lecherous beasts like that cowboy. You’ll find a good, decent man someday. But in the meantime, we need to have a talk about men…”

      “When we get home?”

      “No, silly. It’s going to be tough enough to get us both back inside without waking Papa, if he’s not already awake and waiting up with a switch, that is. No, we’ll have that talk soon, I promise, but tonight we need to get some sleep. That ol’ rooster’s going to crow before you know it.”

      “I don’t think I could sleep now,” Charity confessed as they walked through the darkened streets of Abilene. Here and there lamplight spilled through a saloon window, illuminating a patch of the hard-packed dirt beneath their feet, enabling them to see and step around piles of horse droppings and, in one case, a snoring cowboy, obviously the worse for wear after an excess of tanglefoot.

      Mercy didn’t think she could sleep tonight, either. As she lay in bed, she was sure she would be thinking about the darkly handsome Sam Houston Devlin, with those dangerous, deep blue eyes and that predatory smile.

      She found it difficult to believe she’d agreed to go to supper with him. A frisson of terrified delight tingled all the way down her spine. She knew instinctively that he was dangerous to her, though she could not define what that meant. And yet, she would not have given up trying to see him tomorrow night for the moon and the stars. But how on earth was she going to be able to manage to do it?

      She’d almost lost her nerve when he’d asked to come pick her up. He’d raised an eyebrow curiously when she’d refused, and for a moment she’d been afraid he was going to ask her why not. She couldn’t very well tell him that the reason for her reluctance was a fire-breathing papa who’d shoot him on sight rather than let his daughter spend a minute in a Texas cowboy’s company.

      But thankfully, he’d accepted her request without further comment, and now she just had to figure out a way to get out of the house tomorrow night, dressed appropriately for supper at Abilene’s Grand Hotel.

      She’d wear Mama’s garnet silk dress with the bishop sleeves and the ivory lace trim, she decided, along with Mama’s garnet earbobs and black cameo on black velvet ribbon.

      “Mercy…” began her sister, breaking into her thoughts.

      “What?”

      “What did Mr. Devlin say to you? If…if you don’t mind my askin’, that is.”

      Mercy said nothing for several paces, so long that Charity finally spoke again. “Did he…did he say he thought I was an idiot? That I deserved what could have happened? He…he has such a fierce look about him, Mercy. You can’t tell for sure what he’s thinking, can you?”

      Her words surprised Mercy. Charity could be such a featherhead so much of the time, and then she’d come up with these perceptions about people that were dead on target.

      “No, he wasn’t saying anything about you at all, you silly,” Mercy said, putting her arm around her sister as they walked on toward their house. “I…I shouldn’t even tell you this, Charity, but he was asking me to supper.”

      Charity stopped stock-still in the road for a minute, her mouth making an O of astonishment. Then a smile began to play about her lips.

      “Are you going to go? Do you want to go?”

      Mercy pretended to be concentrating on making her way past a particularly dark stretch between two buildings. “I shouldn’t even consider it for a heartbeat, and you know it, Charity. He’s just the sort of man Papa’s warned us about. He might be just like that Tom Culhane, in spite of the fact he helped me find you just in the nick of time tonight, and got rid of Culhane when he wanted to be ugly about it.”

      “But?”

      Mercy could hear the grin in her sister’s words, even though she couldn’t see her face just now.

      “But I want to go, if there’s a way to get out without Papa knowing.”

      Charity let out a whoop of glee, and hugged her sister. Mercy immediately put a hand over Charity’s mouth