Page 56 of I Do, I Do, I Do
“I keep thinking about you.” He stared at her, every muscle tense and hard as stone. “In fact, I’ve been sneaking around in the dark just to look at you.”
She blinked. “You are spying on me?”
“I guess I am. I didn’t want you to know because you’re no good for me, and I’m no good for you.”
“Why do you think that?” She took a swig off the bottle, gazing hard at him as she swallowed.
“I own a saloon, Clara.”
“I know. The Bare Bear. You won it from Jake Horvath.”
“What would your father say about you keeping company with a saloon owner?” He knew the answer. Her father would object.
She surprised him by shrugging off the question. “Papa owned an inn. It was mine after he died. I imagine he’d see some similarities between your saloon and our inn.”
“You own an inn?”
“Iusedto own an inn,” she said, her chin coming up. A suspicious glare flickered in her eyes. Why, he couldn’t guess. “I don’t own anything now.”
“What kind of an inn did you own?” The news didn’t entirely startle him. He’d never been able to picture her sitting around wasting time with fancy needlework or china painting.
“One of the best of its kind. We didn’t sell liquor, but we sold bed and board. We served the best food on the Oregon coast, I’m proud to say.”
He drank the rest of his ale and thought a minute before his shoulders slumped. “It isn’t the same. I don’t guess you had nightly brawls at your inn. Or rinky-dink piano and cutthroat card games. I don’t guess you had whores looking to make a buck off your customers,” he added, watching her.
She was quiet, as he had expected she would be. Getting ready to jump up and march off in offense that he’d mentioned the whores who worked out of his saloon.
“I’m thinking. And I’m wondering—do the whores pay you part of what they earn?” she asked calmly, astonishing him.
“No,” he answered when he could speak. “I charge them fifty cents a throw to use the rooms over the bar.”
“How many—throws—does each whore have each night?”
He could not believe he was having this conversation with her. Or that she hadn’t flounced away, never to speak to him again.
“It varies,” he said finally. “With most of them, my take runs a dollar a night. Sadie usually pays six bits.”
“Well, now. Let’s see.” Sucking in her cheeks, she looked up at a gray sky. “Adjusting for the Yukon’s inflated prices, it probably costs you fifty cents per room for cleaning and laundry, would that be about right?”
Disbelief clouded his brain, and he didn’t answer for a minute. “I suppose so.”
“Bear,” she said, lowering her head to look at him. “You have to stop renting rooms to the whores. You have to send them somewhere else.”
“No, Clara,” he said softly, almost sadly. It had taken her longer than he would have believed, but she’d reached the point of taking offense, as he’d known she would. “I’m a businessman in the business of owning a saloon. Whores are part of saloons. I don’t expect a woman like you to understand, but I’d be foolish to close down a profitable side of the business.”
“I understand perfectly because I’m a businessman, too.” She pushed the ale bottle into the snow, then leaned forward. “But you’re not making a profit. You’re losing money.”
“What? How do you figure that?” If she’d jumped to her feet and started dancing the cancan, he couldn’t have been more surprised than he was at the turn this conversation had taken.
“Well, do the arithmetic. You’re making fifty cents a night from everyone but Sadie. Sadie pays a bit more.”
“No, I’m making a dollar a night from each whore.”
“I’m talking after expenses. It costs you fifty cents a night to maintain each room. But if you turned them into regular hotel rooms, you could charge, I don’t know, five or six dollars a night, maybe more, and your expenses would stay the same. You could earn four or five dollars a night for the same room.”
His mouth fell open, and he stared at her. Then he sprang to his feet, paced, and swore steadily.
She was dead-on correct, and damn his hide, he’d never seen it, had never questioned an existing situation. Jake Horvath had made the deal with the girls, and Bear had simply continued Horvath’s arrangement. The only flaw in Clara’s argument was the price of a hotel room in Dawson City. He could get twelve dollars a night without changing a thing. If he spiffed up the decor, he could charge twenty bucks a night. Hell, the Grand Hotel two blocks from his saloon charged thirty-five bucks for a room. When the Grand opened, everybody in town had laughed and said no one in his right mind would pay thirty-five bucks for a place to sleep. Everybody in town had been wrong. The Grand Hotel filled to capacity every night of the week.
