Rocky Mountain Marriage. Debra Lee Brown
secretive of customers. “Your pa didn’t, uh, mention that he’d left you anything special here, did he?”
Chance went statue-still.
“What do you mean? Left me what?”
Jim looked at him, but Chance didn’t come to his rescue this time. He was busy viewing Jim Parker with new eyes.
“Well, uh, anything. Important papers, family keepsakes…” Jim ran a sweaty palm over his balding pate. “…valuables, maybe?”
“Valuables? You mean like jewelry or money?” Her frown deepened. She looked around the room again, this time with renewed interest.
“Oh, uh…” Jim looked away. He grabbed a wet towel and began wiping down the bar. Chance had never seen him so agitated. “Was just a rumor I heard, is all.”
Chance watched her closely to see if her gaze lingered too long on any one area of the saloon. It didn’t. “I suspect Miss Fitzpatrick doesn’t much believe in rumors.”
“You’re right,” she said curtly, avoiding his eyes. “I don’t. I base all my decisions on facts.”
She tried to mask her natural reaction to the painting over the bar when her gaze darted past it, but couldn’t. He smiled inwardly. Her prudish sensibilities were predictable, and that would make his job all the easier.
Eventually she dropped her gaze to the letter sticking out of her diary. He could tell by the twitch of her hand against her pocket that she fought the urge to take it out and read it again in front of them.
He had to know what was in that letter.
She caught him staring at it, and abruptly turned away.
“Well,” she said to Jim. “I’ll be going into town now, Mr. Parker. Is there a buggy or some other kind of conveyance I might borrow?”
“The place is yours, Miss Fitzpatrick. Take whatever, uh…conveyance you like.” He nodded in the direction of the kitchen door. “One of the boys out back will set you up.”
“I could take you in,” Chance said and risked a smile.
She arched a disapproving brow at him as if he’d suggested they run buck-naked together down to the creek and jump in. Hmm. He gave her dowdily clothed figure another once-over and thought the notion wasn’t a half bad idea.
Her nostrils flared. “That won’t be necessary.” She turned away. “Thank you again, Mr.—”
“Jim,” the bartender said.
“Jim, then.” She dropped a smile on him, and after a cautionary glance in Chance’s direction, she turned on her heel and marched out the way she’d come in.
Chance set his empty cup down on the bar and figured he had just enough time to finish dressing, grab his hat and saddle up Silas before she was gone.
“You’re not really thinking of selling the place, are you?” Jim called after her.
Wild Bill’s daughter didn’t answer.
For the second time in as many days Chance Wellesley followed her to town. Dora didn’t give him the satisfaction of looking back at him. Not once. Well, maybe once, but that had been a mistake. Her hat had flown off in a gust of wind, and she’d stopped to retrieve it a second before he caught up with her. He’d tipped his hat to her and smiled. She’d promptly ignored him.
As it turned out, her father had owned a number of good horses, a sound buckboard, a surrey and two wagons used for hauling loads of supplies from town. Rowdy, one of two ranch hands whom he’d continued to employ long after he’d quit the cattle business, had, true to the bartender’s word, set her up. She’d opted for the buckboard.
Guiding a pair of dappled mares, she pulled off the deeply rutted trail leading from the Royal Flush onto Last Call’s main street. It was a fine spring day, and the town looked far more welcoming in the sunshine than it had last night.
Out of the corner of her eye she spied Chance making the turn into town behind her, Silas dutifully trotting along in her wake. Why wouldn’t the man leave her alone? She was determined not to encourage him. She’d seen the way he’d looked at her in the saloon, and the suspicious way he’d eyed her diary. She’d simply have to ignore him.
Last Call was a fair size for a mining town. In addition to the establishments she’d already seen, the long boardwalk-lined main street boasted a mercantile, telegraph office, the livery where yesterday afternoon she’d hired transportation out to the ranch, a cattle exchange, grange building and a small, whitewashed church.
No school, at least not here in the center of town. Perhaps it was tucked away on one of the side streets among the residential buildings and boardinghouses. Boardinghouses that were full up, she remembered with irritation. Then again, perhaps Last Call had no school. She noticed a number of children playing in the street, children who should be in school on a Friday morning.
“The sign says Harrington, but his name’s Grimmer.”
“Excuse me?” She hadn’t noticed that Chance had spurred Silas up alongside her.
“Your father’s lawyer.” He flashed his eyes at the sign as she pulled the buckboard up in front of the law office she’d seen last night.
“How would you know my father’s lawyer?” He seemed determined to insinuate himself into her business. The question in her mind was why?
Had her father left her something more than the saloon and ranch, as both his letter and Jim the bartender had implied? He very well might have, and if Chance Wellesley knew about it, he was exactly the kind of unscrupulous character who would attempt to swindle her out of whatever it was. Perhaps it was money. Hmm…
He dismounted and was at her side a moment later, his hand extended to help her down from the buckboard. He flashed her that trademark smile, and it dawned on her that he meant to seduce her out of it, if money was indeed his motive in dogging her every step.
“Oh, Chance! Yoo-hoo,” a coquettish voice sounded from behind her.
She turned to look at the passerby, a surprisingly well-dressed woman, and Chance used her momentary lapse in attention—and judgment—to grasp her around the waist. “Oh!”
“Just helping you down, Miss Eudora.”
“It’s Dora. I mean—” The man completely discombobulated her! “Take your hands off me! I’m perfectly capable of—”
He ignored her protest and lifted her from the conveyance, setting her, light as you please, on the ground. “You’ve overstepped your bounds, Mr. Wellesley.”
The well-dressed woman winked at her as she passed them. “He’s been known to do that a time or two, haven’t you, Chance?”
He shrugged boyishly, angering her even more.
Dora stormed past them both, climbed the two steps up to the boardwalk, and a few seconds later opened the door to the law office of H. J. Harrington, Esquire.
“Mortimer Grimmer,” the friendly-looking man said to her, extending his hand. “How may I be of help?”
“Told you his name was Grimmer.” To her annoyance, Chance had followed her into the office.
“Wellesley! What brings you to town?”
Chance grinned. “I’m here to collect the rest of my winnings from Saturday night’s game.”
Dora was appalled. Not only did he know her father’s lawyer, it appeared they played cards together.
“Oh, and I’d like you to meet someone. Miss Eudora Elizabeth Fitzpatrick.” She was surprised he remembered her middle name.
“You’re Bill’s girl?” Mr. Grimmer grabbed her hand and shook it enthusiastically. “Well, I’ll be. You don’t much look like him.”