Rocky Mountain Marriage. Debra Lee Brown

popped unbidden into her mind.

      He laughed. “I know exactly what you mean.”

      “Hmph.” She kept walking, curtailing any further conversation with him. Though she didn’t know what to believe anymore—her mother’s warnings or her father’s adulation—one thing was clear to her.

      Chance Wellesley was trouble.

      He trotted along beside her, whistling bawdy tunes, while at the same time making certain she moved safely off the road when carriages rumbled by. She thought that bit of chivalry amusing, given his character.

      Why was he so interested in her? What would provoke a gambler she’d never laid eyes on before tonight to give up an evening of card-playing to see a schoolteacher on her way? She didn’t know and she didn’t care. She just wanted to get away from him.

      When at last they reached town, she headed straight down the muddy main street toward Last Call’s only hotel, the one she’d spied that afternoon when she’d first arrived.

      “There’s something you ought to know about your, uh, inheritance.” He didn’t say saloon, and for that she was grateful. To think she actually owned the place!

      “What’s that?” she said curtly, refusing to look at him again.

      “Your father owed a lot of money to a lot of people, some of them not so nice. The Flush is likely mortgaged to the hilt. The ranch land, too.”

      “How would you know?”

      “Let’s just call it a hunch.”

      “I don’t believe in hunches, Mr. Wellesley.” The bank was just ahead, across the street next to a law office. She’d make visits to both establishments first thing tomorrow morning.

      “No?”

      “No.” She shot him a hard look to make the point, then stopped in front of the hotel, relieved that the Vacancy sign she’d seen earlier that afternoon was still displayed in the window. “Well, here we are.”

      Chance dismounted and tied Silas to a hitching post jammed with other horses. Cowboys and miners and men of every description roamed the street. She’d never seen a town so small so busy, and at this time of night.

      “You see?” she said, turning toward him. “I was perfectly capable of getting here on my own.”

      “Maybe so. But you might be needing a ride back to the, uh, ranch, after all.” He nodded toward the hotel.

      She followed his gaze, then gasped, thunderstruck, as a hotel clerk snatched the Vacancy sign from the window.

      “Told you they’d be full up. One of the big mines outside Fairplay struck a lode last month. Paid off today. The town’s crawling with miners who’ve got money to burn. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

      She ignored him, marched up the steps to the hotel and threw herself on the mercy of the clerk. He had to find her a room. He just had to! Five minutes of pleading later, she was back on the street, fuming.

      Chance leaned casually against the hitching post, his hat pushed back on his head, that irritating grin of his aimed right at her.

      “I will not spend the night in that saloon.”

      “You sure?”

      “And I will not ride double with you on that horse.” It was out of the question. She never intended to be that close to him ever again.

      “It’s either that or walk back. Silas doesn’t take to people, especially women. In fact, he’s downright ornery. Likely he’d buck you off if you tried to ride him solo.”

      She eyed the horse. “He doesn’t look too terribly ominous. I’m sure I’ll manage.”

      “So you will come back to the Flush with me.”

      It appeared she had no choice, unless she wanted to sleep in the street. If she had to stay the night in a saloon, at least it would be her saloon and not one of the questionable-looking drinking establishments lining Last Call’s main street.

      She approached the gelding and matter-of-factly untied him from the post. Silas looked at her, seemingly unconcerned. “I’m not with you, Mr. Wellesley. I’m simply borrowing your horse.”

      “Whoa, wait a minute. I meant what I said about him not liking women. It’s too dangerous for you to—”

      She ignored him and mounted without incident, then arranged her skirts as modestly as possible under the circumstances. Silas glanced back at her, waiting.

      “Well I’ll be a—” He gawked, first at the horse, then at her.

      “A what?” she said, casting him a smug expression. A number of nouns, all of them improper, came to mind.

      He smiled suddenly, his gaze heating with the same underlying carnality he’d exhibited in the saloon. She swayed a bit on the horse.

      “Come on,” he said, and took Silas’s reins from her hand. “I’ll lead.”

       Chapter Two

       C hance Wellesley knew a sure bet when he saw one.

      He sat in the window seat of the upstairs room he rented at the Royal Flush and, through a pair of opera glasses he’d won off a Denver politician in a poker game, watched Miss Eudora Elizabeth Fitzpatrick scribbling madly into what he’d thought last night was a bible.

      “Well I’ll be damned. It’s a diary!”

      He would have given his last plug nickel to know what she was writing in it.

      She’d made quite the commotion when they’d returned to the saloon last night. Delilah had tried to set her up in her father’s old room, but the intractable Miss Fitzpatrick would have none of it. He laughed, recalling the look of horror on her face when Delilah had suggested it.

      In the end, a few of the girls fixed up one of the cabins out back for her, and there she’d passed the night. He’d been up since dawn, waiting to see what she’d do next. Everybody knew schoolteachers rose early, and Wild Bill’s daughter proved to be no exception.

      She sat at the desk under the cabin’s single window, her back straight as a washboard, her lips pressed into a tight line, penning God knows what into that little red book of hers. In the morning light she looked different than she had last night. Younger, softer, almost pretty.

      He ran a hand over his beard stubble, then took a swig of hot coffee to clear his head. “You’re seeing things, Wellesley.”

      After wiping the lenses of the opera glasses with his handkerchief, he looked at her again. Nope. Nothing different, after all. Just a trick of the morning light. She had the same dishwater-blond hair, pale skin and wore the ugliest gray dress he’d ever seen.

      Not that it mattered. She was a woman, and women generally liked him. He didn’t have to like her. He’d made a bad start of things last night. Today he’d do better. By sundown she’d be mooning over him, and he’d know everything he needed to know about what her father might have told her before he died.

      He’d spent six long months at the Royal Flush, watching and waiting for Wild Bill to make a slip. He’d come too far to quit now. Maybe his daughter knew something the rest of the folks around here didn’t.

      Maybe she knew where the money was.

      Dora capped her fountain pen and sighed. She’d spent a sleepless night on a lumpy mattress huddled under a pile of musty blankets. The potbelly stove had gone out in the middle of the night, and when she’d gotten up to relight it she realized she had no matchsticks. This morning she’d found an old flint on the floor near the coal bin and in no time was toasty warm again.

      “Now, one last thing…” She slid her father’s final letter to her out of her diary and carefully reread every word.

      The