Page 106 of Just Imagine
He glanced uncertainly toward a flight of curving stairs at the back and then down at the glass he was polishing. “There’s no one here by that name.”
Kit walked past him and made her way toward the stairs.
The man dashed around the edge of the bar. “Hey! You can’t go up there!”
“Watch me.” Kit didn’t slacken her pace. “And if you don’t want me invading the wrong room, maybe you should tell me exactly where I can find Mr. Cain.”
The bartender was a giant of a man, with a barrel chest and arms like ham hocks. He was accustomed to dealing with drunken cowboys and gunslingers out to make a reputation for themselves, but he was helpless in the face of a woman who was so obviously a lady. “Last room on the left,” he mumbled. “And there’s gonna be hell to pay.”
“Thank you.” Kit climbed the stairs like a queen, shoulders back and head held high. She hoped none of the men watching could guess just how frightened she was.
The woman’s name was Ernestine Agnes Jones, but to the men at the Yellow Rose, she was simply Red River Ruby. Like most people who had come West, Ruby had buried her past along with her name and never once looked back.
Despite powders, creams, and carefully rouged lips, Ruby looked older than her twenty-eight years. She’d lived hard, and it showed. Still, she was an attractive woman with rich chestnut hair and breasts like pillows. Until recently, little had come easy for her, but all that had changed with the convenient death of her last lover. Now she found herself the owner of the Yellow Rose and the most sought-after woman in San Carlos—sought after, that is, by every man except the one she wanted for herself.
She pouted as she looked across the bedroom at him. He was tucking a linen shirt into a pair of black broadcloth trousers that fit him just closely enough to renew her determination. “But you said you’d take me for a ride in my new buggy. Why not today?”
“I have things to do, Ruby,” he said curtly.
She leaned slightly forward so that the neck of her red, ruffled dressing gown fell farther open, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Anybody would think you was the boss around here instead of me. What do you have to do that’s so important it can’t wait?”
When he didn’t answer her, she decided not to press him. She’d done that once before, and she wouldn’t make that mistake again. Instead, as she walked around the bed toward him, she wished she could break the unwritten rule of the West and ask about his past.
She suspected there was a price on his head. That would account for the air of danger that was as much a part of him as the set of his jaw. He was as good with his fists as he was with a gun, and the hard, empty look in his eyes gave her a chill just looking at them. However, he could read, and that didn’t fit with being a man on the run.
One thing for sure, he wasn’t a womanizer. He didn’t seem to notice that there wasn’t a woman in San Carlos who wouldn’t lift her petticoats for him if she got the chance. Ruby had been trying to get into his bed ever since she’d hired him to help her run the Yellow Rose. So far, she hadn’t been successful, but he was about the handsomest man she’d ever seen, and she wasn’t going to give up yet.
She stopped in front of him and put one hand over his belt buckle and another against his chest. She ignored the knock at the door to slip her fingers inside his shirt. “I could be real nice to you if you’d give me the chance.”
She wasn’t aware that the door had opened until he lifted his head and looked past her. Impatiently she turned to see who’d interrupted them.
The pain hit Kit in a wave. She saw the scene before her in separate pieces—a gaudy, red, ruffled dressing gown, large white breasts, a brightly painted mouth open in indignation. And then she saw nothing but her husband.
He looked years older than she remembered. His features were thinner and harder, with deep creases at the corners of his eyes and near his mouth. His hair was longer, hanging well over the back of his collar. He looked like an outlaw. Was this the way he’d been during the war? Watchful and wary, like a piece of wire drawn so taut it was ready to snap?
Something raw contorted his features as he saw her, and then his face closed like a locked door.
The woman rounded on her. “Who the hell do you think you are, bargin’ in like this? If you come here lookin’ for a job, you can just drag your tail downstairs and wait till I get to you.”
Kit welcomed the anger that rushed through her. She pushed up the veil of her hat with one hand and shoved the door back on its hinges with the other. “You’re the one who needs to go downstairs. I have private business with Mr. Cain.”
Ruby’s eyelids narrowed. “I know your type. High-class girl who comes West and thinks the world owes her a livin’. Well, this is my place, and there ain’t no la-de-da lady gonna tell me what to do. You can put on airs back in Virginny or Kentucky or wherever you come from, but not in the Yellow Rose.”
“Get out of here,” Kit said in a low voice.
Ruby tightened the sash of her dressing gown and moved forward menacingly. “I’m gonna do you a favor, sister, and teach you right off that things are different here in Texas.”
Cain spoke quietly from across the room. “My best piece of advice, Ruby—don’t tangle with her.”
Ruby gave a contemptuous snort, took another step forward, and found herself looking down the barrel of a snub-nosed pistol.
“Get out of here,” Kit said quietly. “And close the door behind you.”
Ruby gaped at the pistol and then back at Cain.
He shrugged. “Go on.”
With a last assessing glance toward the lady with the pistol, Ruby hurried from the room and slammed the door.
