Nobody's Darling

CHAPTER ONE

Calamity, New Mexico

Esmerelda Fine eyed the Wanted poster nailed to the porch post of the stagecoach station with a jaded eye. “Billy Darling,” she murmured. “A rather harmless name for such a wicked man, isn’t it?”

“Beggin‘ your pardon, ma’am, but Billy ain’t wicked. He’s just a man that does what needs to be done. If someone needs killin’, he kills ‘em.” The grizzled cowhand who had overheard her musing spat a fat wad of tobacco on the plank sidewalk, barely missing the pleated hem of her skirt. “You cain’t fault a man who enjoys his job. Why, Billy’s the only Darlin’ since the war to turn his hand to good honest work.”

Drawing her skirts close to her legs, Esmerelda cast the man a withering glance. “Which means he kills for profit instead of amusement?”

She turned her attention back to the image of the hired killer glowering down at her from the Wanted poster. The handbill was a weathered twin of the one she’d kept neatly folded in her silk reticule during the long, arduous train and stagecoach journey from Boston. Seeing his ignoble image displayed before all the world gave her some small measure of comfort, reassured her that he wasn’t some imaginary devil woven from the fabric of her darkest fears and fantasies.

A thick growth of whiskers obscured the outlaw’s features, but the menace in his eyes was palpable. How many men had gazed into those steely eyes over the barrel of a pistol and known them to be the last sight they would see on this earth? An invisible cloud shadowed the sun as Esmerelda remembered that her brother had been one of them.

Bitterness tightened her lips as she shifted her gaze from the poster to the cowhand. “So how did such a paragon of industry end up with a price on his own head?”

“Aw, them U.S. marshals got all riled up when Billy brought one in dead that was wanted alive. Seems they needed the feller to testify against a band o‘ bootleggers that’d been sellin’ whiskey to the Comanche.”

“But your Mr. Darling saw fit to administer justice himself. How terribly noble of him.”

Her sarcasm did not escape the old man. “From what I heard tell, miss, Billy had every right to be riled. The feller shot him in the back. If he hadn’t been so all-fired contrary, Billy wouldn’t have had to blow his damn fool head off.”

Esmerelda felt herself blanch. Alarmed by her fading color, the cowhand jerked off her bonnet and began to fan her with it. “Now, miss, you ain’t goin‘ to swoon on me, are you?” He reached for her reticule. “You got any smelling salts in that there fancy bag?”

Shocked by the stranger’s familiarity, Esmerelda clutched the reticule to her bosom, comforted by its solid weight. “I should say not, sir. It’s simply the heat. I’m not accustomed to such a brutal climate.”

That much was true. The brave little bonnet that had elicited such a pang of yearning when she’d seen it displayed in the window of Miss Adelaide’s Millinery Shoppe had done little to deflect the ruthless rays of the sun. The saucy pair of bluebirds affixed to its brim had wilted just west of St. Louis. Esmerelda breathed a sigh of relief at being freed from the bonnet’s sweltering confines. A whisper of a breeze, arid yet sweet, teased the damp tendrils of hair at her temples.

But a lady did not march bareheaded into adversity. Snatching the bonnet from the old man’s hands, Esmerelda slapped it back into place and secured it with a fastidious bow. “If you would be so kind as to direct me to the livery stable, sir…? I am in need of a mount and a dependable guide. If I’m to locate this outlaw before he reaches the Mexican border—”

“Well, hell, miss,” the cowpoke drawled, “there’s no need to go to all that trouble just to have a set-down with Billy.” He winked at her. “There weren’t never a Darlin‘ born that weren’t willin’ and eager to oblige a purty lady.”

Esmerelda cringed at both his offhand profanity and his leering implication. Her dealings with the male sex had been limited to the wealthy Boston merchants who hired her to teach music to their pampered daughters, but she could still summon a disturbing, if fuzzy, image of the methods a ruffian like Billy Darling might use to oblige a woman.

Dashing a trickle of sweat from her cheek with a gloved hand, she scooped up her violin case and hefted the battered leather trunk that contained the few meager belongings she hadn’t sold to finance her journey. “I can assure you that your honorable Mr. Darling won’t be quite so eager to have a set-dawn with me.”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

Esmerelda’s gaze flew to the old man’s smirking face. The trunk slid out of her grip and thumped to the sidewalk. She barely managed to catch her precious violin case before it followed suit. “You’ve seen him? Where? When? Was he alone? Was he armed? Which direction did he take?”

The cowpoke pointed across the dusty street.

Esmerelda shaded her eyes against the sun, struggling desperately to gauge its position. “West? South? How long ago did he depart? Hours? Days? What color horse was he riding?”

“He weren’t ridin‘ no horse, miss. He just walked out o’ Miss Mellie’s whorehouse a little after noon and moseyed right on over to the saloon.”

The plank sidewalk seemed to buckle beneath her feet, giving Esmerelda cause to regret that she hadn’t packed a vial of smelling salts. Her stunned gaze drifted to the weathered facade of the saloon across the street. The tinny notes of a poorly tuned piano spilled out of its swinging doors, barely penetrating the roaring in her ears.

He was there. Now that she knew he was there, she could almost feel him. Coiled. Deadly. Waiting for her.

She swallowed in a vain attempt to stifle the flutter of raw excitement in her throat. She had never dreamed her quest for justice would be fulfilled with such ease. Shock made her voice sound distant and quavery, even to her own ears. “You must fetch the sheriff immediately, sir. I shall insist he march over to the saloon and take the renegade into custody.”

The cowpoke scratched his balding head, his expression oddly reticent. “Uh, miss, the sheriff is already at the saloon. Been there since this mornin‘.”

Esmerelda blinked in confusion. “And what, pray tell, is he doing there?”

“Playin‘ poker, most likely. He and Billy’ve had a runnin’ game for almost three months now. Ever since Billy got shot up and moved into the whorehouse.”

Her eyes widened in disbelief. Nearly choking on her outrage, she glanced frantically around, earning nothing but a polite tip of a passing gentleman’s hat for her trouble. “What manner of place is this Calamity? Surely the townsfolk aren’t content to stand idly by while their sheriff consorts with outlaws!”

“Aw, don’t be so hard on Sheriff McGuire. He’d arrest Billy if he thought it’d do any good. But our jail cain’t hold him. Before the marshal could come to take him to Santa Fe for trial, his brothers would just bring a bunch o‘ dynamite and blast him out. You see, miss, Billy’s brothers is outlaws to the last man. They come from Missoura after the war and there’s some that says they even rode with Quantrill’s Raiders and Bloody Bill Anderson, just like them James and Younger boys.”

Esmerelda shivered. The exploits of those Confederate desperados who had refused to accept that their cause was lost had reached as far north as Boston. The wild-eyed boys and their ruthless leaders had struck terror in the heart of a nation already ravaged by four years of war.

The cowpoke shook his head. “You don’t want to mess with them Darlin‘ boys. They set a high store by Billy, him bein’ the baby o‘ the family and all.”

Esmerelda clenched her teeth against a frisson of rage. How could a cold-blooded killer like Billy Darling be anybody’s baby? Her brother’s face drifted through her memory as it had so many times in the months since his disappearance—his plump, rosy cheeks pale and sunken, his sable hair dulled by blood, the spark of mischief in his eyes doused by the icy, black waters of death.

Beset by a strange and dangerous calm, Esmerelda gently placed her violin case on top of her trunk and dipped a hand into her reticule to caress its sleek contents.

As she stepped off the sidewalk into the dusty street, the cowhand called after her. “Miss! Oh, miss, you forgot your fiddle and trunk.”

“Watch them for me, won’t you?” she replied, studying the beckoning doors of the saloon through narrowed eyes. “I won’t be long.”

Esmerelda Fine’s arrival in Calamity on that lazy Wednesday afternoon had garnered more attention than she realized. While the townsfolk had grown accustomed to having the stagecoach pass through, they were not accustomed to seeing anyone actually disembark from it. Especially not a slender wren of a lady garbed in a bustle and bonnet the provincial folk of Calamity assumed was the very pinnacle of city fashion.

When Esmerelda plunged into the dusty street without a visible care for her high-heeled kid leather boots, curtains twitched and children came creeping out of alleyways. When it appeared her destination was to be none other than the Tumbleweed Saloon, shopkeepers emerged from their deserted stores to sweep the sidewalks, trading curious and wary looks.

They breathed a collective sigh of relief when Esmerelda paused just outside the saloon, obviously realizing her error. No true lady would ever darken the doorstep of such an establishment. The townsfolk nodded and smiled at one another, their faith in the innate nobility of womankind restored.

Until the young woman squared her slender shoulders, thrust open the swinging doors, and disappeared inside.

The sudden shift from sunlight to gloom nearly blinded Esmerelda. Long shadows cut a swath through the interior of the saloon. The isinglass windowpanes admitted only enough light to gild the dust motes drifting through the air.

A garishly painted woman straddled a chair in front of the piano, banging out a rollicking dance-hall tune with her crimson fingernails. A bartender stood behind a long counter, polishing glasses in front of a row of amber-tinted bottles. A handful of stragglers slumped at the bar, but most of the chatter and merriment in the room seemed to be coming from a table situated just below the upstairs balcony.

Two bleary-eyed cowboys flanked a broad-shouldered man whose mouth was dwarfed by a drooping mustache. His silver hair flowed past his shoulders like lustrous waves of corn silk. A tin star was pinned to his satin waistcoat.

The esteemed sheriff McGuire, Esmerelda deduced, fortified by a fresh surge of contempt.

The trail of bills and silver scattered across the table’s pitted surface led directly to a fourth man. A man who sat with his back to the wall and his face shadowed by his hat brim. A thin cigar was clamped between his lips. A dimpled whore perched on one knee.

He was watching her, Esmerelda realized, repressing a shiver. His regard might be nothing more than a wary gleam penetrating the shadows, but it was powerful enough to draw every other eye in the saloon to her frozen form. It was almost as if she hadn’t existed until the moment he had chosen to take notice of her.

The piano fell mute. The bartender’s cloth ceased its circular motions. Curious faces appeared in the saloon windows, struggling to peer through the gloom. Avid eyes peeped over the top of the saloon door, abandoning all pretense of discretion.

Chin up and one foot in front of the other, girl, Esmerelda heard someone say in her head. If you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you’ll eventually get where you’re going. Although she had never heard her grandfather speak, Esmerelda knew exactly who that clipped British voice belonged to. She might loathe the man for turning his back on her mother, but it was his pitiless scolding that had prodded her to get up off the bed and stop feeling sorry for herself after her parents had died, that had goaded her into drying little Bartholomew’s tears when she was still blinded by her own.

Despite her hatred of her grandfather, or perhaps because of it, his gruff, no-nonsense tones never failed to calm her fears.

Until now.

She marched to the table, stopping directly across from the man she had traveled over two thousand miles to find. The woman on his lap wrapped a possessive hand around his nape, surveying her with sloe-eyed amusement.

“Mr. William Darling?” Esmerelda winced when her voice cracked in the unnatural silence.

His only acknowledgment of her presence was the faint twitch of a muscle in his jaw. Smoke wafted from his cigar, curling toward her like tendrils of brimstone.

“I am,” he finally drawled, stubbing out the cigar and tipping back his hat with one finger.

Esmerelda had braced herself to confront a bewhiskered fiend. She nearly dropped her reticule when the shadows retreated to reveal lean cheeks shaded by the barest hint of stubble and a pair of dark-lashed, gray-green eyes that failed to betray even a glimmer of shiftiness. Those eyes assessed her, taking her measure with disturbing bluntness.

Praying that she had practiced in front of the mirror often enough to do it without shooting herself in the foot, Esmerelda fished the derringer from the satin-lined depths of her reticule and leveled it at his heart.

“You’re under arrest, Mr. Darling. I’m taking you in.”

CHAPTER TWO

Billy Darling was a jovial drunk.

Which explained the dangerous edge to his temper as he surveyed the haughty young miss who had presumed to interrupt his poker game. His first whiskey of the day sat untouched on the table just inches from his fingertips. The way his day was going, he doubted it would be his last.

The woman disagreed. Noting the direction of his glance, she gave the brimming glass an imperious nod. “You’d best finish your whiskey, sir. It may be the last you taste for a very long while.”

Billy barely resisted the urge to bust out laughing. Instead, he curled his fingers around the glass and lifted it in a salute to her audacity. She really ought to be flattered by the stir her announcement had caused. Noreen had gone tumbling off his lap in a flurry of scarlet petticoats while Dauber and Seal went diving under a nearby table, scattering bills and coins.

Only Drew had remained upright, but even he had scooted his chair back a good two feet and thrown his hands into the air. The waxed tips of his mustache quivered with alarm. Billy suspected he would have joined the cowboys under the table if he hadn’t feared rumpling the new paisley waistcoat he’d had shipped all the way from Philadelphia. You could almost always count on Drew’s vanity overruling his cowardice.

It wasn’t the first time Billy had faced a woman across the barrel of a gun, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Hell, he’d even been shot once by a jealous whore in Abilene. But she’d cried so prettily and tended the wound and the rest of him with such gratifying remorse, he’d forgiven her before the bleeding stopped.

It wasn’t even that he particularly minded being shot by a woman. He just wanted to do something to deserve it first.

He sipped the whiskey, narrowing his eyes to study the woman over the rim of the glass. Her hands were steady, but an unnatural flush heightened her color. Any woman with a gun was dangerous, but he suspected this one might be more dangerous than most. Her delicate nostrils flared like a high-strung mare’s each time she exhaled.

He searched his memory for any transgression he might have committed against her. She didn’t look the sort to thrust some squalling brat into his face, claiming it was his. He swallowed a shudder of distaste along with a mouthful of whiskey at the thought of inflicting another Darling on the hapless West.

His gaze roamed briefly over her trim form. She was as slender as a reed—downright underfed by his standards.

She most definitely didn’t favor the busty whores who bore the brunt of his romantic attentions.

Billy frowned. He’d woken up on more than one occasion with women whose faces and names he could barely remember, but it troubled him to think such an encounter could have escaped him completely. He studied the pristine curve of the woman’s cheek, wishing he could see the hue of the hair hidden by that ridiculous bird’s nest of a bonnet. As his gaze lingered on her mouth, he decided he had never known her, biblically or otherwise. If he’d have ever persuaded those prim lips to part for him or made those snowy cheeks flush with pleasure instead of indignation, he damn well would have remembered it.

He drained the rest of the whiskey in a single searing swallow and thumped the glass to the table, making her flinch. “Why don’t you put the gun down? You really don’t want to get powder burns on your pretty white gloves, do you, Miss…?”

“Fine. Miss Esmerelda Fine.”

She flung her name at him like a challenge, but it failed to trigger even an echo of recognition. “Esmerelda? Now that’s a rather lofty name for such a little bit of a lady. Suppose I just call you Esme?”

He would have thought it impossible, but her mouth grew even more pinched. “I’d rather you didn’t. My brother was the only one who called me Esme.” Then that same mouth surprised him by curving into a sweetly mocking smile. “Unless, of course, you’d rather I call you Darling?”

Billy scowled at her. “The last man who cast aspersions on my family name got a belly full of lead.” In reality, he’d gotten only a bloody nose, but since Billy didn’t plan to give either to this persistent young lady, he didn’t see any harm in embellishing.

“It wouldn’t have been my brother, by any chance, would it? Is that why you gunned down a defenseless boy? For hurting your poor, delicate feelings?”

“Ah.” Billy’s good humor returned as he folded his arms over his chest and tilted his chair back on two legs. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Do refresh my memory, Miss Fine. You can’t expect me to remember every man I’m supposed to have killed.”

He felt a surprising flicker of remorse when his jibe drew blood. The gloved hand wrapped around the derringer trembled ever so slightly. Dauber and Seal cowered deeper beneath their table, all but hugging each other.

“I should have expected no less than such callous disregard from an animal like you, Mr. Darling. A cold-blooded assassin masquerading as a legitimate bounty hunter.” Her contemptuous gaze flicked to Drew. “Sheriff, I demand that you arrest this man immediately for the murder of Bartholomew Fine III.”

“What happened to the first two Bartholomews?” Dauber whispered. “Billy kill them, too?”

Seal elbowed him in the ribs, earning a sharp grunt.

Drew twirled one tip of his mustache, a habit he indulged only in moments of great duress. “Now, lass,” he purred in that lilting mixture of Scottish burr and western drawl that was so exclusively his. “There’s no reason to get your wee feathers all in a ruffle. I remain confident that this private quarrel between you and Mr. Darling can be settled in a civilized manner without the discharge of firearms.”

“Private quarrel?” The woman’s voice rose to a near shriek. “According to that Wanted poster out there, this man is a public menace with a price on his head. I insist that you take him in!”

Drew sputtered an ineffectual retort, but Billy’s melted-butter-and-molasses drawl cut right through it. “And just where do you propose he take me?”

Miss Fine blinked, her face going blank for a gratifying moment. “Why, the jail, I suppose.”

Billy slanted Drew a woeful look. Avoiding Miss Fine’s eyes, Drew polished his badge with his ruffled shirt sleeve. “Sorry, lass, but our jail’s not equipped to hold Mr. Darling. You’ll have to take your complaint to the U.S. marshal in Santa Fe.”

Righting his chair, Billy favored her with a rueful grin, briefly entertaining the notion that she and her sad little bonnet just might admit defeat and creep away to let him finish his poker game in peace. After all, any fellow hapless enough to be stuck with the name of Bartholomew was probably better off dead.

She dashed his hopes by swaying forward, her voice husky with menace. “If this miserable excuse for a lawman—”

“Now wait just one minute there, lass!” Drew cried, his Scottish accent deepening along with his agitation. If she got him any more riled, there would be g’s dropping and r’s rolling all over the saloon. “There’s no need to insult my—”

She turned the gun on him; his defense subsided to a sulky pout. She returned it to Billy, aiming it square at his heart.

“If this miserable excuse for a lawman won’t take you in,” she repeated firmly, “then I will. I’ll take you to Santa Fe and turn you over to the U.S. marshal myself. Why, I’ll hog-tie you to the back of a stagecoach and drag you all the way to Boston if I have to, Mr. Darling.”

Rubbing the back of his neck, Billy sighed wearily. She’d left him with no choice but to call her bluff. As the smile faded from his eyes, the bartender vanished behind the bar, Drew inched his chair backward, and Dauber and Seal plugged their ears with their fingertips.

Billy rested his hands palms-down on the table, flexing his fingers with deceptive indolence. “Oh, yeah?” he drawled. “Who says?”

Little Miss Fine-and-Mighty cocked the derringer, her face going white with strain. “I’ve got one shot in this chamber that says you’re coming with me.”

The Colt.45 appeared in Billy’s hand as if by magic, accompanied by a personable grin. “And I’ve got six shots in this here Colt that say I’m not.”

Esmerelda stared dumbly at the gun in Darling’s hand. His movements hadn’t betrayed even a hint of a blur. One second his hand had been empty. The next it had been cradling an enormous black pistol. The imposing barrel dwarfed the stunted mouth of her derringer, making it look like a toy. Darling’s smile was unflinching, but all traces of green had disappeared from his eyes, leaving them ruthless chips of flint.

Esmerelda sucked in a steadying breath, cringing when it caught in a squeak. She’d spent so many sleepless nights in the past few months dreaming of the moment when she would confront her brother’s murderer. But none of the possible scenarios had included engaging him in a standoff. Billy Darling was rumored to be a crack shot, lethally accurate at thirty yards, much less four feet. What was the proper etiquette in these situations? Should she suggest they choose seconds? Step outside and draw at twenty paces? She flexed her numb fingers, choking back a hysterical giggle.

Almost as if he’d read her mind, he said, “It has occurred to me, Miss Fine, that this may very well be your first gun-fight. We have both drawn our weapons so all that remains is to determine which one of us has the guts to pull the trigger. If you’d rather not find out, then I suggest you lay your gun on the table and back out of here. Nice and slow.”

“Now, William,” the sheriff whined. “You know you’ve never shot a woman before.”

Darling’s affable smile did not waver. “Nor has one ever given me cause to.”

“Drop your weapon, sir,” Esmerelda commanded, praying the derringer wouldn’t slip out of her sweat-dampened glove. She waited a respectable interval before adding a timid, “P-p-please.”

“I asked you first.”

Her hands were starting to shake in earnest, and there seemed to be little she could do to still them. The sight infused her with frustration and bone-deep weariness. She had sold everything she’d worked for since she was twelve years old—her beloved music school, her tidy little house with its red shutters and gardenia-filled window boxes, the precious books and sheets of music she’d bought with pennies hoarded from her own food money.

She’d forfeited all she held dear just to come to this godforsaken town and bring her brother’s killer to justice. And there he sat, smirking at her with cool aplomb, all the while knowing that he had crushed her brother’s life beneath his bootheel with no more concern than for a discarded cigar butt.

He had robbed her of everything that made her life worth living, and now he dared to threaten that life itself.

Esmerelda suddenly realized that she no longer wanted justice. She wanted vengeance. Her finger tightened on the trigger. A scalding tear trickled down her cheek, then another. She dashed them away with one hand, but fresh ones sprang into their place to blur her vision.

She did not see the sheriff rock back in his chair, grinning with relief. Billy Darling might be able to stand down the meanest desperado in five territories or gun down a fleeing outlaw without blinking an eye, but he never could abide a woman’s tears.

“Aw, hell, honey, don’t cry. I didn’t mean to scare you…”

Billy was out of his seat and halfway around the table, hand outstretched, when Esmerelda Fine, who had never so much as swatted a fly without a pang of regret, closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger.

CHAPTER THREE

When a lone man emerged from Miss Mellie’s Boardinghouse for Young Ladies of Good Reputation and sauntered across the dirt road later that afternoon, the crowd gathered outside the sheriffs office fell silent. Not one of them dared to protest. Not even when he strolled right past them and into the office just as pretty as you please, although the sheriff had threatened to blow off the head of the first man fool enough to stick it in the door.

The man found Sheriff Andrew McGuire reclining in an oak spindle chair, his feet propped on his desk. Both his boots and the tin star pinned to his satin vest had been buffed to a near-blinding shine. He had his nose buried in a book and was paying no more heed to the rumbling purr of the yellow cat napping on his chest than to the loaded shotgun laid across his lap. The cat had been a gift from Billy Darling, the shotgun a retirement present from the governor of Texas for surviving twenty-five years as a Texas Ranger—a survival ensured by his blatant distaste for danger.

“Afternoon, Drew,” the man drawled.

The sheriff leveled a glance over the top of the book. “Afternoon.”

His visitor jerked a thumb toward the door. “Quite a mob you have out there. You expecting a lynching?”

Drew rolled his eyes. “A cotillion, more likely.”

The man propped his hip on the edge of the desk and nodded toward the cat. “If Miss Kitty there is accounted for, then what might be the source of that godawful caterwauling?”

Although Drew appeared to be making a valiant effort, the sound was almost impossible to ignore. It wafted out from the corridor behind him where the back cell was located, not so much off-key as woefully shrill and set at just the right pitch to make even a long-suffering man grit his teeth in pain.

The wailing rose to a crescendo, making Drew wince. “It’s her. The lass has been praying and singing church hymns ever since she woke up from her swoon. She claims to be a music teacher.” When his companion’s eyebrows shot skyward in disbelief, he leaned forward and confided, “”The Battle Hymn of the Republic‘ seems to be a particular favorite of hers.“

The man’s jaw tightened. Drew knew damn well that every man who’d fought on the losing side in the War of Secession, or lost someone who had, despised that song above all others.

Drew chuckled. “The lass even had the audacity to ask if I had a copy of the Good Book on hand. I offered her this volume, but she declined.”

The man plucked the book from Drew’s hands and examined the cover, cocking a skeptical eyebrow. “The Amorous Adventures of Buxom Belle?”

Drew snatched it back. “Well, it’s a damn good book, if you ask me.”

His friend’s eyes were strangely thoughtful. “Has she shown any signs of remorse?”

The sheriff stroked the slinky curve of the cat’s back. Despite his grave tone, his own feline smirk revealed that he was enjoying himself more than was strictly proper. “She claims she’s resigned to suffering the earthly consequences for taking a man’s life, but insists the good Lord in his infinite mercy will surely pardon her for ridding the world of a heartless vermin like Billy Darling.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “The good Lord probably would. But I sure as hell won’t.”

A particularly grating note floated out from the corridor. Throwing a black scowl over his shoulder, Drew caressed the hammer of the shotgun. “One more chorus of ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ and I’m going to have to shoot her. Or myself.”

The man reached across the desk to pluck a ring of iron keys from a hook on the wall. “Why don’t I spare you the trouble?”

Drew sprang to his feet, earning a sulky look from the displaced cat. He’d seen that wicked sparkle in his friend’s eyes before and knew it boded nothing but trouble. “Now, you wait just a minute there, lad. The woman might be prepared to meet her Maker, but she sure as hell isn’t prepared to meet you.”

The man neatly sidestepped him, the keys setting up a merry jingle as he headed for the shadowy corridor. “She should have thought of that before she came to Calamity. I intend to find out exactly why such a prissy little peahen would come gunning for the likes of Billy Darling.”

“If the lass screams,” Drew called after him, “I’m going to come a-running.”

The man tossed a grin over his shoulder. “And if I scream?”

Drew settled back into his chair, propping his boots on the desk and raising the book to shield his smile. “You, my friend, are on your own.”

As the final note of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” faded from her lips, Esmerelda clasped her hands and turned her eyes heavenward. She had hoped for some visible sign of God’s approval—a light streaming down from heaven, perhaps, or a chorus of celestial harping. But the plaster ceiling remained, its chipped and water-stained surface making her wonder how many other condemned murderers had sat on this very bunk, gazing wistfully toward a heaven they might never reach.

Rising from her aching knees to plop down on the bunk, she chafed her arms through the thin silk faille of her basque. Although the air was warm and dry, the short jacket that flared into graceful flounces over her bustle did little to protect her from the chill that had clung to her skin since she’d first awakened in this windowless cell. An awakening made all the more cruel in contrast to the dream she’d been having. A dream where she’d been cradled against the broad chest of a man who smelled of tobacco and leather. She’d wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled his throat, feeling safe for the first time since her parents had died.

Swallowing around the lump in her throat, she warbled the first few notes of “Amazing Grace.” But she got no further than the chorus before the melody died on a hoarse croak. It was just as she’d feared all along. She’d been singing less out of pious conviction than to drown out the voice of her conscience telling her she had done a terrible thing. A voice growing louder and more strident by the moment.

His eyes haunted her.

She couldn’t remember now if they’d been gray or green, which only made her feel worse. If you were going to take a man’s life, then you ought to at least be brave enough to look him in the eye while you did it. But she’d been the lowest sort of coward, closing her own eyes to blot out the dreadful finality of what she was doing. She supposed it wasn’t much better than shooting a man in the back.

She couldn’t remember the color of his eyes, but oddly enough, she could remember the exact texture of his eyelashes. They’d fringed his eyes like threads of gold silk, giving the dangerous planes of his face the disturbing illusion of vulnerability.

But it hadn’t been an illusion. Billy Darling had been as vulnerable as any mortal man to a woman with a gun in her hand. Now those extravagant lashes would forever rest on his pale, still cheeks.

Pressing a hand to her mouth to stifle a moan of shame, Esmerelda rose from the bunk and began to pace the cell. She’d already compounded her sin of murder by lying to the sheriff about her prospects for eternity. She wasn’t nearly as afraid of being hanged as she was of going to hell. The tin kerosene lamp suspended from a peg in the corridor outside the cell cast writhing shadows on the wall. From the corner of her eye, they looked like the flames of perdition licking at the bars of her cell.

The devil himself was probably chortling with delight at her predicament. Since her parents had died, she’d striven to be a paragon of Christian virtue her younger brother could emulate. And aside from the occasional uncharitable thought about her grandfather, she’d succeeded. Every naughty impulse and selfish desire had been ruthlessly squelched beneath the iron fist of duty.

A hysterical laugh welled from her throat, sounding more like a sob. Her steadfast devotion to virtue had all been in vain. Each time she’d bitten back a blasphemy when she’d scorched the biscuits. Each time she’d forced herself to hasten past a store window without pausing to covet the pearl-inlaid combs and pleated rosettes. Each time she’d given Bartholomew the last slice of bacon in the house when her own stomach was cramping with hunger.

Despite her years of unflinching self-denial, Satan was going to get his bony claws into her after all. And all because of some born sinner who’d probably spent every waking moment of his abbreviated life indulging his selfish desires.

Bitter regret flooded her, for all the delicious sins gone uncommitted and all the guilty pleasures she would never know.

“Damn you,” she whispered fiercely, clenching the cold iron bars of her cell. “Damn you straight to hell, Billy Darling.”

“Now that’s not a very charitable sentiment, ma’am, even for a woman who’s already done everything in her power to send me there herself.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The laconic drawl came out of the darkness, a thousand times more damning than the voice of her conscience.

Esmerelda backed away from the bars as Lucifer himself emerged from the shadows wearing a butternut shirt, black vest, scuffed boots, and a pair of sinfully tight copper-riveted Levi’s. There didn’t appear to be so much as a scratch on him, proving that he was indeed Satan incarnate. Unless Old Nick, not content to wait for her arrival, had sent one of his most devoted emissaries to escort her to his unholy kingdom.

The wicked sparkle in his eyes made a mockery of his sympathetic frown. “Perhaps you should sit down, Miss Fine. You look like you just saw a ghost.”

Esmerelda had no choice but to obey. In her attempt to put as much distance between them as possible, she’d backed all the way to the bunk. Her knees buckled and she plopped down on the lumpy mattress.

“I shot you,” she blurted out, unable to come up with anything more coherent. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Am I?” He drew off his hat to reveal a devilish grin. “Ma always said I was never any good at doing what I was supposed to.”

With the reddish glow of the lantern haloing his disheveled hair, he looked less like a demon than an avenging angel come to claim her soul. In that feverish half-light, she could no more determine the color of his hair than the color of his eyes.

Esmerelda rose from the bunk, drawn toward the apparition by a dangerous combination of fascination and fear. He curled his hands around the bars and cocked one knee through them, all but daring her to approach.

When she reached the bars, she stretched one trembling hand toward his chest. If he’d have grabbed her hand or whispered “Boo” at that instant, she would have crumbled into hysteria. But he simply watched her without blinking, his expression almost as wary as her own.

Her fingertips slowly came to rest against his chest. Beneath the faded fabric of his shirt lay a solid wall of muscle and bone. His heart throbbed beneath her touch, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that her visitor was no demon or phantom, but Mr. William Darling in the flesh.

She recoiled from the bars with a soft cry. She could not have said herself if it was one of relief or dismay.

Darling smoothed back his tousled hair with one hand. “Sorry I couldn’t oblige you by being dead, Miss Fine. I’m afraid that little jaunt to hell you had planned for me will have to be canceled. Or at least postponed.”

His quip made Esmerelda wonder just how long he’d been standing in the shadows watching her anguished pacing. He looked so earnest, it was impossible to tell if he was teasing her. “How?” she croaked.

He shrugged, his rueful smirk giving her the eerie sensation that he really could read her mind. “Luck of the devil, maybe? I really can’t fault your aim. You put one hell of a hole in my chair, right where my heart would have been.”

“If you had one?” she mumbled, still battling shock.

He gave her a reproachful look. “If I’d still been sitting there. But I was halfway around the table when you fired. You really should learn how to shoot a firearm without closing your eyes first. It’s a dangerous habit. If I’d have been a different sort of fellow, I might have shot you dead instead of catching you when you swooned.”

“You?”she whispered, horrified anew. “You caught me?”

He nodded. “I couldn’t very well let you bang your pretty head now, could I?”

Esmerelda had no reason to doubt his claim. She remembered only too well how the pistol had materialized in his hand. He had the grace and reflexes of a cougar. But if Darling had been the man who caught her, he’d also been the man who had carried her to the jail. The man who’d smelled so utterly delicious—like the leather of book bindings mingled with the aroma of tobacco. The man she’d clung to as if she were a frightened child and he her only salvation. She began to sputter, mortified beyond speech. He held up a hand. “There’s no need to thank me, ma’am. It was my pleasure.”

This time there was no mistaking the mocking quirk of his lips. Esmerelda blushed to the roots of her hair. Dear Lord, what liberties had the scoundrel been allowed to take while she lay defenseless in his arms? Her reticule, gloves, and bonnet had all been missing when she awoke. She touched a hand to her disheveled topknot, then to her throat to find the modest lace collar of her basque still buttoned to her chin. She licked her lips, breathing a sigh of relief when she tasted no whiskey upon them.

Esmerelda returned her attention to Mr. Darling to find him staring at her mouth, his expression impossible to interpret. But when he raised his eyes to meet hers, they were darkened by scorn. “If I’d have compromised you, honey, I’d have made damn sure you remembered it. It may even surprise you to learn we Darling men prefer our women conscious.”

Esmerelda couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t mentioned willing. Refusing to be further intimidated by the ruffian, she stiffened her spine and lifted her chin. “If I didn’t kill you, Mr. Darling, and mores the pity, then why am I being held here? Against my will?”

“I believe the charge would be assault with attempt to kill.” All traces of good humor had vanished from his eyes, leaving them icy and flat.

She took an instinctive step backward, thankful for the sturdy iron bars that separated them. Until she saw the ring of keys dangling from his finger.

As he inserted one into the lock, their cheerful jingle seemed to toll her doom.

She backed toward the farthest corner of the cell, chilled to the marrow. She was completely at the outlaw’s mercy. No one even knew that she’d come to this place to seek her brother’s murderer. No one except her grandfather.

And he didn’t care.

“Now, Mr. Darling,” she said, her words tumbling out in a nervous rush. “I can certainly understand why you might be just a little angry—”

“Furious.”

She swallowed, but only succeeded in wedging the lump of fear deeper in her throat. “Furious with me for—”

“Trying to shoot me down in cold blood,” he provided with an agreeable smile.

“Firing my derringer in your general direction,” she gently corrected. As he swung open the cell door, her gaze nicked to the gunbelt slung low on his lean hips. “But you left me little choice. Had you surrendered yourself to the sheriff as I requested—”

“Demanded.”

“Insisted,” she conceded. “Then the entire unpleasant incident might have very well been averted.”

“And it would be me behind those bars instead of you.”

She smiled brightly. “That would be the logical conclusion. You, after all, are the criminal.”

“Accusedjudged, and condemned by one lone woman.”

He sauntered toward her, but she was forced to stand her ground. There was nowhere left to retreat. “On that charge, I stand convicted. I had no right to take the law into my own hands.” She elevated her chin another notch, which barely brought it to the level of his breastbone. “But no one else seemed willing or able to do it.”

He shook his head. “I never heard of your brother, Miss Fine. And I sure as hell never killed him.”

His words rang with just enough conviction to give Esmerelda the first pang of doubt she’d suffered since leaving Boston. A doubt compounded by the bewildering flutter of her pulse at his approach.

He stopped near enough for her to divine the dark gold hue of his hair, the sun-burnished strands that brushed his shoulders, the tawny stubble shading his jaw. But his eyes continued their maddening shift between gray and green. He was taller than she’d realized, lean and lanky without an ounce of wasted fat on his broad-shouldered frame.

She held her breath as he reached out his hand. But instead of throttling her as she’d feared, he caressed a fallen curl from her cheek. His calloused thumb lingered against her smooth skin.

“Holler,” he said.

“Pardon?” she whispered, believing she’d misunderstood him.

“The sheriff promised to come running if you hollered. I think it might be a good idea.”

She drew in a shaky breath. “I may have swooned beneath the weight of extreme duress, sir, but surely you haven’t mistaken me for the hysterical sort of female who screams at the slightest provocation…”

His lashes swept down to mask his eyes as he lowered his lips toward hers.

Esmerelda screamed.

When Drew came skidding around the corner, he found Billy and Esmerelda on opposite sides of the cell. His prisoner stood rigidly in the corner, the knuckles of her demurely clasped hands white with tension, while her visitor lounged against the wall, hat in hand. Oddly enough, she was the one who looked flushed and guilty, while Billy was the very picture of wide-eyed innocence. Molasses probably wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

Drew scowled, instantly suspicious. “You look quite natural behind bars, William. Have you done something to make me leave you there?”

Billy shrugged. “Ask the lady.”

Drew deliberately gentled his voice as he addressed his prisoner. “I heard you scream, lass. Did Mr. Darling give you a fright?”

“I wasn’t screaming,” she replied, shooting Billy a defiant glance. “I was… singing.”

Puzzled, the sheriff rocked back on his heels. But having heard the lady sing, he had no choice but to believe her.

“I’m glad you happened by, sheriff,” Billy said. “Miss Fine and I were just discussing the penalty for assault with attempt to kill should I choose to press charges.”

Esmerelda gaped at him, amazed at the ease with which the scoundrel lied. Although he appeared to be giving all of his attention to shaping his hat brim between his long, sun-bronzed fingers, his eyes reflected a calculating glint that only deepened her apprehension.

The sheriff rubbed his clean-shaven jaw. “Well, all I can do is hold her until a U.S. marshal passes through town. Which could be weeks from now. Or months.”

“And if I don’t press charges?”

“Now, William, you know I can’t have some hotheaded female running around town shooting people every time the whim strikes her. I am sworn to provide law and order for Calamity.” Ignoring Esmerelda’s derisive snort, McGuire gave the waxed tip of his mustache a thoughtful tug. “However, I might just be persuaded—pending the receipt of the appropriate amount of bail money, of course—to release the lass into the custody of a responsible party.”

“How much?” Darling asked without a beat of hesitation.

“Fifteen dollars,” replied the sheriff. When Darling drew a wad of bills from his pocket, McGuire grinned and added, “In gold.”

Although his glare could have crumbled the remaining plaster from the ceiling, Darling drew a pouch from the opposite pocket and tossed it to the sheriff. “That should stake you for tonight’s game.”

McGuire caught it with one hand. “Much obliged, William. She’s all yours.”

Darling slapped his hat on his head. “Shall we go, Miss Fine? A jail is no place for a lady.”

Esmerelda had watched the entire exchange in dumb horror. When she finally recovered enough of her wits to do more than sputter in outrage, she marched out of the corner, her very petticoats rustling with indignation. “How dare you! I’m not a cask of whiskey or a sack of sugar to be bartered between the two of you.”

Billy raked a speculative glance from the tip of her kid boots to her unraveling topknot. “That’s one mighty tart sack of sugar.”

She whirled on McGuire. “And you dare to call this man a ‘responsible party’? He may or may not have killed my brother, but he’s still wanted for murder. He has a price on his head.”

McGuire waved off her concern. “Only until the U.S. marshals need him to hunt down another rifle runner or stage robber. Billy’s the best tracker in the Territory and they know it. As soon as they require his services, they’ll come crawling back on their knees with a sack of gold and a promise of amnesty.”

Esmerelda swept a disbelieving stare between the two men. There was obviously to be no reasoning with either of them. So she simply wheeled around and marched back to the bunk, sinking down on the yellowing mattress as if she intended to spend the remainder of eternity there. “I’d rather rot in jail than give myself over into the hands of that miscreant.”

“There’s no need for name-calling, ma’am,” Darling said. “If you’re not careful, you might bruise my tender feelings.”

She turned the full force of her scorn on him. “I sincerely doubt that a man of your character has any feelings.”

“You might just be surprised.” He spoke the words softly, but his gaze trapped and held hers in a velvety vise broken only by the sheriff’s heartfelt sigh.

“I have to respect the lady’s wishes. William. It wouldn’t look good to the townsfolk if I let you drag her out of here against her will.”

Darling shook his head ruefully as he turned to go. “I understand, sheriff. Let’s just hope that marshal gets here before my brothers do.“

Esmerelda bounded to her feet. “Your brothers? Why would your brothers come here?”

Billy turned back, but it was McGuire who replied. “Gossip spreads like prairie fire on the range, miss. The Darling boys probably won’t take very kindly to hearing about their brother’s narrow escape from death. They might just want to pay the lass responsible a wee social call.”

She shuddered, remembering the wizened cowhand’s warning. You don’t want to mess with them Darlin‘ boys. They set a high store by Billy, him bein’ the baby o‘ the family and all.

“Just how many brothers does he have?”

“Four,” the sheriff replied. “William here is the runt of the litter.”

Esmerelda swallowed hard before slanting Darling a wary look. He probably stood all of six feet two inches— without his boots. As their eyes met, an emotion that might have been remorse flickered across his face. Surely he must realize he was asking her to choose between the gallows and the firing squad.

She could not have said what made her even consider entrusting herself to his hands. He didn’t try to coax her into coming or offer her his arm, but simply stood there, awaiting her verdict.

When he’d denied killing her brother, the conviction in his voice had been unmistakable. But he could be a liar as well as a murderer. Or he could be innocent. If she let him walk out on her without so much as a backward glance, she might never learn the truth.

She jerked on the hem of her basque and smoothed her overskirt to hide the trembling of her hands. “Very well, sheriff. If you’ll be kind enough to fetch my bonnet and reticule, I shall accompany Mr. Darling from the jail.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Billy had to admire the lady’s nerve.

Once she decided to accept his offer, she sailed from the cell as if it had been her idea all along, her delicate nose tilted to an imperious angle. He and Drew exchanged a wry look before trailing after her like a pair of mismatched footmen.

She tapped her foot impatiently while Drew retrieved her personal belongings from the bottom drawer of his desk. Her composure didn’t waver until she saw her bonnet. The homely little hat had been knocked from her head and thoroughly stomped on during the chaos in the saloon. Billy’s own boot print scarred the battered crown.

Her lips puckered in dismay as she tried to coax some life back into the bonnet’s bedraggled feathers. Billy scowled, both touched and annoyed by the pathetic gesture. How could the woman mourn a bonnet when the undertaker might be measuring her for a coffin at this very moment? His scowl darkened as he swept his gaze down her slender form. A very small coffin.

He leaned down and whispered, “The next time you swoon after trying to murder me, Miss Fine, I’ll leave you to be trampled and save your hat.”

Drew chose that inopportune moment to place her derringer on the desk. She snatched at it, but Billy swept it neatly out of her reach.

She smiled at him through gritted teeth. “Why, Mr. Darling, surely you can’t object to the sheriff returning my gun. After all, it’s not even loaded anymore.”

His answering grin was equally tender. “That can be easily enough rectified.” He slid the miniature gun into his pocket. “If I turn up dead, Drew, check my back for hat pins.”

Exchanging her smile for an open glare, Miss Fine slapped on the bonnet. It sat askew on her head, the bird that hadn’t flown the coop bobbing over one of her narrowed eyes like a broken spring. Billy swallowed a sigh of regret. Her hair was a warm chestnut tinted with honey and cinnamon and he rather enjoyed the sight of it hanging all cockeyed like that. It made her look like she’d just rolled out of some man’s bed.

Before he could follow that dangerous thought to its inevitable conclusion, he thrust her reticule into her hand and herded her toward the door.

Her brash courage didn’t falter until they reached it.

She clutched his arm and gazed up at him, her brown eyes the precise shade of candied maple sugar. “I can’t go out there. Can’t you hear the mob? They’re howling for my blood.”

Billy cocked his head to the side. He did indeed hear an ominous rumbling, punctuated by the occasional masculine bellow. Tucking a grin into the corner of his mouth where she wasn’t likely to see it, he dipped his head close to her ear and murmured, “You’d best stay close to me, ma’am. They’re bound to be a bloodthirsty lot.”

Although he knew it must have galled her, she shrank into his side as he eased open the door. He’d expected her to be all angles and sharp edges, but she was much sorter than she looked.

As they appeared on the stoop, the shouts and cursing dwindled to an expectant silence. It seemed the entire male population of Calamity had turned out to gawk at his companion. Billy even spotted Dauber and Seal in the crowd, their eager faces scrubbed free of trail dust and their hair slicked back with enough bear grease to fry an elephant.

As he ushered Esmerelda onto the sidewalk, the men retreated to a respectful distance. A shoving match between two grizzled sodbusters broke out on the fringes of the crowd.

“Git back! I done seen her first!”

“Shit, Elmer, ye’re nearsighted as a prairie dog. You ain’t seen nothin‘ in nigh on twenty years.”

“I see good enough to know ye’re nothin‘ but a yellow-bellied, two-timin’ old sonofa—”

“Gentlemen!” boomed Horace Stumpelmeyer, the recently widowed town banker. “I urge you to remember that there is a lady present.”

Both men immediately snatched off their dusty hats and clutched them to their hearts. A stripling cowboy, still young enough to have a chin furred with peach fuzz, lifted his hand. Esmerelda ducked as if she expected to be pelted with a rotten tomato. But he only smiled shyly, revealing a mouthful of crooked yellow teeth, and thrust a bouquet of wilted ragweed beneath her nose.

She gave Billy a puzzled look before accepting the offering. Capturing her elbow, he guided her firmly through the throng. A mounting chorus of mutters and whines marked their progress. Some of the bolder men began to declare themselves.

“I got me ten acres and a mule, miss.” “My Effie birthed me nine younguns afore she died at the tender age o‘ twenty-four, God rest her sweet soul, and they sure do need a ma.”

They were halfway across the street when a cowboy tore off his hat and tossed it on the ground. “Hellfire, Billy! You git all the purty ones. It jest ain’t fair.”

Esmerelda waited until they were safely out of earshot before casting a baffled glance over her shoulder. “Who were those men?”

“Your suitors,” he replied shortly, tightening his grip on her elbow.

“I don’t understand. I never had any suitors.” He shot her a skeptical look. If that were true, the men in Boston must all be more nearsighted than old Elmer. Her finely chiseled features were only enhanced by a straight, narrow nose with just the faintest hint of a cleft at its tip.

“You do now,” he said. When she continued to look doubtful, he sighed. “You see, Miss Fine, the male population in Calamity outnumbers the unmarried female population by at least twenty to one. And that’s even counting the whores and old Granny Shively.”

Esmerelda’s ripple of laughter caught him off guard. “Surely they must realize that I’m far too old to marry.”

Billy shot her an even more skeptical look. Although many men chose to raise their brides from teenagers, he had always preferred women to little girls. Esmerelda talked like she was doddering toward the sunset of her dotage, but her dewy skin was still tinted with the first blush of dawn. She might be slender and small-breasted, but those curvy hips of hers were ripe enough to turn any man’s mind toward breeding.

Even his.

He jerked his gaze back to her face, gruffly clearing his throat. “Granny Shively’s rumored to be over one hundred and seven years old, and she received a dozen proposals in the last year alone. She’s broken many a heart by claiming she’s still waiting for the right fellow to come along.”

“I suppose you can’t fault the woman for being choosy.” Esmerelda stole another dubious look over her shoulder.

Billy knew exactly what she’d see. A horde of eager male faces—some hopeful, some earnest, some crestfallen—their tongues all but lolling from their mouths. They’d have torn out their hearts and offered them to Esmerelda for nothing more than an encouraging smile. Billy both pitied and scorned them, even as he hoped like hell their lovesickness wasn’t catching. He still couldn’t figure out why he’d been tempted to steal a kiss from the prickly Miss Fine. Under the guise of adjusting his hat, he brushed his brow with his fingertips. Was it his imagination, or did he feel a touch feverish?

All this talk of matrimony must be making him sick.

He felt suddenly compelled to blurt out, “Drew and I are the only men in town above seventeen and under eighty who aren’t looking for a wife.”

If the news disappointed her, she hid it well. “The rest of them were even willing to court a woman accused of attempted murder?”

“Unless you’d been convicted of poisoning your last five husbands, they’d court you. And a few of them might overlook even that minor transgression.”

She studied the droopy little bouquet for a moment before murmuring, “How sweet.”

Aw, hell, Billy thought, slanting her a disgusted look. The last thing he needed was a romantic on his hands. Sugar melted too easily in the blazing New Mexico sun, but vinegar kept its tart tang even under the most brutal circumstances.

He deliberately hardened both his voice and his face. “It’s always sweet when a man can get a poke he doesn’t have to pay for.”

She shot him a shocked look, blushed, then stiffened. For a brief moment, Billy regretted disillusioning her. It had been too easy. Like swiping a peppermint stick from a baby.

She was too incensed to notice that they’d reached their destination. “Perhaps those gentlemen possess purer motives than your own, Mr. Darling.”

He just barely resisted the urge to snort. “I’m sure you’re right, ma’am. That would explain why they hoard their earnings all week so they can donate them to this charitable establishment every Saturday night.”

That said, he pushed open the door of the two-story clapboard house that sat on the most prominent corner of Calamity’s only street and ushered her inside. Shafts of sunlight filtered through the stained-glass windowpanes Miss Mellie had imported from San Francisco to prevent potential customers from peeking without paying.

Billy glanced down at his companion, gratified to discover the loquacious Miss Fine had finally been struck dumb.

Everything about the parlor, from its plush Oriental carpets to its brass-studded leather furniture, had been chosen to please a man. But the women sprawled about the room in graduating states of undress were savoring the precious afternoon hours in which they were allowed to please only themselves. Although their faces still bore traces of the rouge they’d worn the night before, their smiles were sincere and their giggles almost girlish.

Maude napped on a high-backed divan, her dimpled knees in a shameless sprawl. Caroline, clad only in a scanty wrapper, dabbed scarlet paint on Esther’s toenails. Eliza, Bea, and Dorothea clustered around an occasional table, trading last night’s earnings back and forth in a riotous poker game. All three of the women puffed gamely on cigars pilfered from their clients.

Miss Fine’s delicate nostrils twitched. The cigar smoke mingled with the fragrance of cheap lilac water and the stale musk of sex, creating a cloying aroma Billy had never noticed before. As overpowering as it was, the tantalizing fragrance of fresh peaches wafted to his nose, making it twitch with curiosity.

It was only then that he realized Esmerelda had inched even closer to him. He swept his gaze across the parlor, seeing the women through her widened eyes—the spill of pale flesh over half-unlaced corsets, black lace garters peeping out from gaping wrappers, mussed sausage curls, ruby lips still swollen from the kisses of strangers.

Esmerelda’s affronted innocence should have amused him, but it made him feel something he hadn’t felt in a long time—shame. Although he enjoyed needling the prim Miss Fine, he should never have brought a lady to this place.

Since it was too late to rectify his mistake, he grabbed her hand and drew her toward the back stairwell. The abrupt movement had the opposite effect of what he’d intended. Every eye in the parlor turned to stare at them.

Billy scowled fiercely, hoping to discourage comment. When it came to teasing, the girls could be more merciless than a bevy of older sisters. But his murderous expression was to no avail.

A sultry giggle sounded behind them, warning him that Maude had awakened from her nap. “She the gal that tried to shoot you, Billy? I do hope your aim is better than hers.”

Esther shook a finger at him. “Now, Billy, you know Miss Mellie said no more bringing home strays unless they sleep in the barn.”

Caroline gave one of Esther’s newly painted toenails a suggestive blow. “Oh, I dare say he’ll find a place for this one to sleep.”

The girls erupted into gales of laughter. Almost wishing he were the sort of man who could shoot a woman, Billy quickened his steps.

Dorothea winked at Esmerelda over her hand of cards. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. He may be in a rush now, but our Billy always takes his time when it counts the most.”

Foreign prickles of heat surged up the back of his neck. Fortunately, they’d already ducked into the shadows of the stairwell. When they reached the first landing, Esmerelda began to drag her feet. By the time they arrived at the top of the stairs, she was practically dead weight.

He drew her into the largest of the two attic rooms and slammed the door behind them as if they were being pursued by a cloud of harpies. Before he turned around, he braced himself to receive another well-deserved lecture on his morals. Or lack of them.

But when he faced his guest, he discovered that she’d backed halfway across the room. All the color had bled from her cheeks, revealing a faint sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

“Please…” she whispered. She backed into the bedpost, then flinched as if a monster had grabbed her from behind.

I sure hope your aim is better than hers.

Our Billy always takes his time when it counts the most.

As he gazed into her tear-glazed eyes, he realized exactly who she thought that monster was.

She actually believed he’d brought her to this place to… that he intended to punish her for nearly shooting him by…

He rested his hands on his hips, incredulous. “Just what kind of man do you think I am?”

Her convulsive swallow was answer enough.

Billy couldn’t have said why her reaction stung so deeply. People had believed the worst of him most of his life. Everyone knew bad blood ran in his veins. Darling blood. The same blood that was even now pooling hot and heavy in his groin and making him wish he was every bit as bad as she thought he was.

He had no defense except to do what he’d always done—try not to disappoint. Folding his arms over his chest, he drawled, “I realize you’re mine, Miss Fine, bought and paid for. But I don’t intend to take a pound of your pretty flesh as penance for your crime. There’s more flesh in this whorehouse than even a man of my voracious appetites requires. You must have a pretty inflated opinion of yourself if you think I’d spend fifteen dollars on you when I could have any one of those girls downstairs for a dollar.”

Esmerelda didn’t bluster or bristle as he’d hoped. She simply dragged off her bonnet, the tremble in her hands more pronounced than before. Her rapid blinking warned him that she was still dangerously near tears. Seeing her try so valiantly not to cry was almost worse than seeing her cry.

“Forgive me, Mr. Darling. It’s been a rather trying day. I thought—”

Billy had no use for her apologies. “When’s the last time you ate, Miss Fine?”

“This morning,” she replied, just a shade too hastily.

“Give me your reticule,” he said gruffly. When she only clutched it tighter, he sighed. “I’m not going to rob you. I try to confine myself to stealing family heirlooms from little old ladies and candy from babies.”

She gave him a sullen glance along with the reticule, but allowed him to dump its contents on the bed. It yielded a pair of rumpled gloves and a single coin—a two-cent piece with In God We Trust inscribed on its bronze face.

She averted her eyes before confessing softly, “My money ran out in North Fork.”

North Fork. Three stagecoach stops before Calamity. A two-day journey.

Billy didn’t say a word. He simply spun on his heel and slammed his way from the room.

CHAPTER SIX

The slam of the door was still echoing in Esmerelda’s ears when she rushed across the room and twisted the brass knob. The door swung open easily beneath her touch. A husky ripple of feminine laughter drifted up the stairs from the parlor below.

She eased the door shut and sagged against the wall, feeling oddly defeated. If the door had been locked, she would have done everything in her power to escape from this room. But being granted her freedom only reminded her that she had nowhere left to go. She didn’t think she could bear to creep past those women again, with their sly eyes and mocking smiles. Billy was probably down there with them at that very moment, laughing at her pathetic assumption that a man like him would want to take her to his bed when he had all of those willing, and vastly more experienced, women at his disposal.

Groaning, she buried her face in her hands. What had possessed her to make such an utter fool of herself?

She shuffled over and plopped down on the edge of the bed, truly seeing the room for the first time. It was sparsely furnished with a cedar bedstead, a wardrobe, a small table, and a battered bookcase. The exposed beams of the sloping ceiling gave the room an undeniable aura of coziness, as did the long-haired calico cat napping in the rocking chair by the recessed window.

Esmerelda frowned, baffled by the absence of mirrors on the ceiling, red velvet bed hangings, or any of the other sordid trappings her limited imagination had expected. The sheets weren’t woven of black satin, but plain cotton, worn and slightly scratchy to the touch. Seized by an odd impulse, she brought a handful of fabric to her nose, expecting it to be scented with the musky perfume of Billy’s most recent lover.

Instead, the sheet smelled of leather, soap, and an indefinable spice that was so distinctly masculine she could not resist drawing in a deeper whiff. A jarring realization struck her. This room wasn’t just a trysting place for anonymous strangers. It was Billy Darling’s home.

The sheet slipped from her limp fingers. Disturbed by the intimacy of sitting in a man’s unmade bed, she bounded to her feet.

Utterly baffled, she wandered the room, pausing only to give the wary cat a distracted stroke. What manner of man would live in a brothel?

The room bore little evidence of a woman’s touch. She drew her fingertip through the thick layer of dust furring the top of the wardrobe before realizing she was being ridiculous. When Billy Darling invited a woman to his room, it probably wasn’t to dust his wardrobe or wax his hardwood floor. The women residing in this establishment were more likely to rumple his sheets than wash and starch them.

A curious pang in her midsection almost spoiled her righteous indignation. She must be hungrier than she’d realized.

She was also wasting the perfect opportunity to search for clues regarding her brother’s murder. She doubted an accomplished rogue like Darling would be foolish enough to leave a trail of evidence, but she certainly wasn’t above a bit of snooping to make sure.

She dropped to her knees to peek beneath the bed, but found nothing more incriminating than a chubby basset hound who eyed her mournfully before returning to its nap. The bookcase, however, contained something she’d never thought to find—books. Unable to resist the lure of the printed word, Esmerelda drew one of the thin volumes from its cubbyhole, noting that it was free of the mantle of dust that had descended over the rest of the room.

A wistful ache tightened her throat when she realized it was a dime novel, cheaply bound in orange paperboard. The lurid cover showed a sketch of a man standing with his boot propped on the chest of a fallen outlaw, an oversized tin star pinned to his lapel. The lawman managed to look both noble and smug as he pursed his lips to blow on his smoking pistol.

“Eldon Nesbith, Fearless Texas Ranger,” she murmured. She drew out another book. “Micah Delancey, Scourge of the Outlaw Gangs.” Then another. “Havershatn Deveraux, Pride of the Canadian Mounties?”

She was growing more puzzled by the moment. Why would Darling collect books about lawmen when he could be reading sensationalized epics glorifying the bloody exploits of gunslingers like himself? She flipped to the novel’s frontpiece only to find his name etched there in a painstaking script utterly unlike the loose and lazy scrawl she would have expected. She traced the signature with her fingertip, so engrossed in the discovery that she didn’t hear the door swing open.

Her host stood in the doorway, a plate of beefsteak and potatoes in one hand. Accusation darkened his smoky eyes. Esmerelda felt herself blush as if she’d been caught rifling through his pants pockets after a torrid assignation.

He set the plate on the table, then strode over to her. She barely resisted the childish urge to hide the book behind her back. But he simply took it from her hand and tossed it back on the shelf.

“They belonged to the fellow that had the room before me.” His blunt gaze dared her to contradict him.

Esmerelda simply arched her eyebrows. Darling wasn’t nearly as good a liar as she’d expected him to be, but that didn’t make his conduct any less confusing. During her years teaching music, she’d encountered several children and a few parents who were deeply ashamed because they could not read. But she’d never met a man ashamed because he could.

Deliberately risking his wrath, she plucked the book back off the shelf. “These are precisely the sort of books my brother Bartholomew always wanted to write.” She thumbed through the flimsy pages, caught off guard by a crushing wave of heartache. “Even as a boy, he used to beg me to read him tales of the Wild West and the men who sought to tame it.”

Billy snorted. “Suicidal fools like George Armstrong Custer, no doubt.”

Sighing, she let the book fall shut. “I’m afraid my brother was more enamored of the seamier inhabitants of pioneer life—the gamblers, the outlaw gangs…”

“The gunslingers,” he provided, flashing her another of those devilish grins.

She chose to ignore his barb. Gently returning the book to the shelf, she said, “My parents died of cholera when I was twelve and Bartholomew was only six, but it was always their dream that my brother attend university. I managed to save up enough money for a full year’s tuition at Boston College.” Her halting explanation didn’t even begin to encompass the years of sacrifice, of doing without all but the barest necessities. Of surrendering her own dreams so Bartholomew might pursue his.

Darling backed up to lean against the bedpost. “So why isn’t this upstanding young man in college right now?”

She inclined her head. “We had a terrible quarrel. He promised that he would attend university, but only after he spent a year out west researching his first novel. I, of course, forbade him.”

Billy folded his arms over his chest, secretly amused to imagine this little slip of a girl forbidding him anything.

“When I awoke the next morning, the tuition money was gone and so was he.” She lifted her eyes to his. Their crystalline brown depths reflected both guilt and despair.

Fighting a treacherous urge to comfort her, he forced an indifferent shrug. “Maybe he just got tired of clinging to your skirts. Most men would rather get under a woman’s skirts than hide behind them.”

Her delicate jaw stiffened. “My brother wasn’t like most men.”

Noting her use of the past tense, he said, “So this would be the same brother I’m supposed to have killed.”

“It would.”

“You’re an enlightened woman from Boston, Miss Fine. I would think you wouldn’t be so hasty to convict a man without any evidence.”

“Oh, I have evidence, Mr. Darling. Irrefutable evidence.”

Billy narrowed his eyes. She probably thought he didn’t know what irrefutable meant.

She surprised him by unbuttoning her high collar and ‘ reaching into her ruched basque to draw forth a weathered envelope. Billy was tempted to stand on tiptoe to see just what else she might be hiding down there. Their hands brushed as he took the envelope from her, sending a shock of awareness through him and a shudder through her. A shudder of distaste, no doubt, he thought grimly. Her hands were cold, but the warmth of her bare skin still clung to the envelope.

While she refastened her collar, he opened the envelope without ceremony, turning it upside down over the table. Out slid a gold pocket watch, a mourning brooch woven of silky hair the same honey-and-cinnamon shade as Esmerelda’s, a silver fountain pen, a folded piece of paper, and a recent daguerreotype of a grinning young man wearing that very same pocket watch on a handsome fob. Billy could well imagine the photographer’s consternation when the cocksure young fellow couldn’t resist smiling for his invisible audience.

He reached for the watch, but Esmerelda’s hand got there first. It was almost as if she couldn’t bear the thought of his touch sullying the precious objects. Her pale fingers played over them with wrenching tenderness, sending a strange shiver through his soul. It seemed like a lifetime since anyone had touched him with such care.

“The watch and pen were our father’s,” she said softly. “The hair our mother’s.” She boldly met his gaze. “My brother’s things, Mr. Darling. All he owned in the world before he died.”

Billy squinted at the daguerreotype. No matter which angle he came at it, he couldn’t find any resemblance between the black-haired man with the plump cheeks and the mischievous twinkle in his dark eyes and his prim, stiffhecked sister.

“How old was your brother?”

“Nineteen.” Esmerelda traced a finger across the image, as if to caress her brother’s dimpled cheek. “Just a boy…”

She missed the incredulous look Billy slanted her. At thirteen he was already riding with Quantrill’s successor, Bloody Bill Anderson. At fourteen, he’d killed his first man and tasted his first woman—both on the same night, when his elated brothers had taken him to a whorehouse to celebrate the kill. Billy couldn’t remember what the whore looked like, but he could still remember the haunted look in the Yankee’s eyes as he’d stretched out a bloodstained hand to him in the heartbeat before he died.

Billy swept the daguerreotype out from under her hand and studied it through narrowed eyes before tossing it back down. “I’ve never seen this man before.”

“Oh, no? Then explain this.” Esmerelda whipped the paper from the table and presented it to him with a regal flourish.

Billy cocked one eyebrow at her before cautiously unfolding it. He hadn’t even reached the third paragraph before his lips began to twitch. The handwritten report related a tale more melodramatic than anything he’d ever found between the pages of a dime novel. A tragic account of a botched stage robbery, a virginal girl journeying to a Mexican convent to take her vows, a noble and naive young man who took a bullet in the heart rather than allow his traveling companion to be ravished by a gang of bloodthirsty outlaws. As he read the final paragraph, written in a prose so purple as to be nearly black, he turned away so Esmerelda wouldn’t see the tears that had began to fill his eyes.

To his keen shock, he felt the slight weight of her hand descend on his quivering shoulder. “There now, Mr. Darling. Perhaps your soul isn’t quite as jaded as you feared.” Her voice deepened to a smoky murmur, making him wonder what she would sound like at night with the lamps extinguished and nothing between them but skin and darkness. “Even for a villain such as yourself, God always offers a chance for repentance and redemption.”

Billy could no longer contain himself. A strangled whoop of laughter escaped him. As Esmerelda circled around to peer into his face, he swiped his streaming eyes, unable to hide the guffaws shaking his body. He had to wait until they subsided to chuckles before he could muster the strength to rattle the paper at her.

“Whoever wrote this piece of”—he cleared his throat before continuing—“tripe failed to do their research. I don’t rob stages for a living, ma’am. I apprehend stage robbers. Perhaps the subtlety eludes you, being from Boston and all, but there is a distinct difference.”

Esmerelda snatched the paper from his hand, a frown betraying her first trace of doubt. “I don’t understand. Mr. Snorton swore that—”

“Mr. Snorton?” Billy repeated. “You wouldn’t be referring to a Mr. Flavil Snorton, would you?" When she only pressed her lips together in mute defiance, he held a hand up to his breastbone. “Little man, about yea high with ears bigger than he is and a voice like a gelded grasshopper.”

Esmerelda’s lips slowly parted until her jaw hung slack. Billy gently nudged it back up with one finger, enabling her to whisper, “He told me he was the very best detective the Pinkertons could provide.”

Billy drew his hand back from the silky skin beneath her jaw, thinking he’d do well to keep it to himself. “He’s not a Pinkerton. Never was. He’s a card sharp, a confidence artist. Hell, Flavil Snorton is wanted in more states and territories than I am. I ran him in myself in Kansas City only last summer, which might explain why my name sprang so smoothly to his lips when he was looking for someone to blame for killing your brother.”

Esmerelda began to back away from him, her eyes growing wilder than an unbroken filly’s. “Why should I believe you? You claim Mr. Snorton is a confidence artist, but you’re nothing more than a man who’ll sell his gun to the highest bidder.”

“Did you go to the Pinkertons, or did Snorton come to you?”

Her brow furrowed. “I went to the Pinkertons when Bartholomew first disappeared. But they turned me away because I didn’t have enough money to hire them. Two months later Mr. Snorton showed up on my doorstep. He informed me that the Pinkertons had been secretly working on the case all along and if I could just raise enough cash to finance his journey west…” She blinked up at him as if emerging from a blinding fog. “I closed my school and collected all my accounts. I sold my mother’s pianoforte. I gave him everything except the pittance I believed I would need to fetch Bartholomew home when he was finally found.”

“And in return he mailed you your brother’s belongings in a nice tidy package all tied up with brown paper and string. Case closed.”

As Esmerelda sank down on the bed, clutching her stomach, Billy almost regretted his ruthlessness. He could remember only too well how it felt to be sickened by your own naïveté.

Her chin began to quiver, giving him a brief moment of panic. But instead of bursting into tears, she clenched her teeth against a spasm of rage. “Why that wretched little man. That miserable, pathetic…”

Billy’s ears perked up. Was there a chance the saintly Miss Fine might actually resort to swearing?

“…jug-eared dwarf!” she finished, leaving him vaguely disappointed. “Oh, dear God,” she whispered, gazing up at him with dawning horror. “I almost shot and killed an innocent man.”

Billy propped one boot on the bedstead, practicing his most lascivious grin. “I may be many things, Miss Fine, but innocent isn’t one of them.” Gratified by the return of color to her cheeks, he shrugged. “If you’d have killed me, you could have just marched into the U.S. marshal’s office in Santa Fe, collected your reward, and been back on your merry way to Boston, believing your brother’s death avenged.”

“My brother’s death…?” she echoed hoarsely.

She bounded to her feet, forcing him to stumble backward or be trampled beneath her dainty kid boots. As she paced the length of the room, he winced in anticipation. But she whipped around a scant inch before her head could slam into the sloping ceiling. Her eyes sparkled with elation. “Don’t you see? My brother may not be dead after all!”

Billy hated himself for dousing her hopes, but knew it would be cruder to kindle them. “You shouldn’t set your heart on that, ma’am. You do still have his belongings.”

Esmerelda carelessly swept the trinkets back into the envelope. “But what do they really prove? That he was robbed by one of Snorton’s accomplices? That he might have run out of money and sold his valuables to buy food or supplies? What if he’s out there somewhere? Lost and alone?” Her expansive gesture seemed to imply that every inch of territory west of St. Louis was nothing but a vast wasteland. She cocked her head to the side, giving him a speculative look that made the hair on his nape tingle with apprehension, just as it did before an Indian attack or a particularly ill turn in the weather. “Sheriff McGuire said you were the best tracker in the Territory. If anyone can help me find him, you can.”

Billy couldn’t have been any more flabbergasted had she proposed marriage. He splayed an open hand on his chest. “Me? You want to hire me? Just a couple of hours ago you wanted to kill me.”

Her cheek dimpled in a coaxing smile. “Ah, but that was nothing more than a regrettable misunderstanding, Mr. Darling.”

For the first time, his name sounded like an endearment falling from her lips instead of an epithet. He didn’t much care for its effect on him.

He shoved the plate of beefsteak across the table at her. “I think you’d best eat something, ma’am. Hunger must be making you loco.”

She shoved it right back at him. “I’ve lost my appetite. And my brother. You have brothers, Mr. Darling. How would you feel if one of them disappeared without a trace?”

“Lucky,” he replied shortly. Whenever one of his brothers went missing, he never had to look any farther than the nearest jail, whorehouse, or saloon.

A door slammed in the next room. Esmerelda shot the wall a nervous glance, but Billy ignored it. Dorothea must have an early customer, probably one of those strapping Zimmerman boys from the lumber mill. They’d been known to indulge more than just their appetite for bratwurst and strudel during their afternoon break.

“Didn’t you just tell me you were destitute?” he asked. “How do you intend to pay me for my services?”

“How much do you cost?”

“More than you’ve got.”

A deep-throated groan interrupted them, followed by a feminine squeal of delight and the rhythmic squeak of a rusty iron bedframe.

Esmerelda slowly turned to gape at the faded cabbage roses on the wallpaper, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. A haze of pink crept up the delicate curve of her jaw.

She suddenly seemed to be having great difficulty meeting his eyes. And breathing. Her hand fluttered at the air. “Would it be possible for us to go somewhere else to negotiate our transaction? This hardly seems to be the appropriate place.”

Billy grinned, afraid he was going to bust out laughing all over again if she started fanning herself. “On the contrary, Miss Fine. Transactions are negotiated nearly every hour of the day and night in this establishment. But if it’ll make you more comfortable…” He marched over to the wall and banged on it with his fist. “Hey! Keep it down over there! I’ve got a lady in here.”

His request was greeted by muffled laughter, both male and female, and a resumption of the moans and squeaking at a more leisurely pace. As he sauntered back over to the table, Esmerelda gave him a look of withering disdain.

He knew she was done trying to charm him. He just didn’t know if the hollow feeling in his belly was regret or relief.

The woman was clearly a hazard, both to herself and to his peace of mind. He could just imagine her marching into seedy saloons all over the Territory, seeking a tracker to find her greenhorn of a brother. The image sent an invisible shudder through him. He’d seen too many innocent young girls come west to seek their fortunes only to end up flat on their backs like Dorothea in the next room, servicing immigrant mill hands and grateful cowboys for silver dollars. He doubted the genteel Miss Fine would survive such a fate. His only hope was to send her scurrying to catch the next stagecoach out of Calamity.

“I may not have cash on hand, Mr. Darling,” she said, “but I can assure you that I have other resources.”

He looked her up and down, deliberately insinuating the worst. “Oh, I never doubted that.”

Their gazes locked as the sounds next door escalated to a wild crescendo. Billy’s room suddenly seemed too small and close for them to stand without touching, even though neither of them had moved.

A guttural roar nearly drowned out a woman’s sobbing moan. After a brief silence, the clink of coins was followed by the thud of a door gently closing. Zimmerman probably hadn’t even bothered to unhook his suspenders, Billy thought wryly.

Esmerelda tore her gaze away from his with visible difficulty and took a shuddering gulp of air. “I’ll have you know, sir, that my grandfather is a peer of the realm.”

He rocked back on his heels, feigning ignorance. “Is that a treatable condition?”

“He’s a duke,” she bit off. “An extremely wealthy man.” When he failed to drop to one knee or doff his hat, she hastily added, "And he dotes on my brother. He always has. Once my letter informing him that Bartholomew is missing reaches London, I’m sure he’ll be more than eager to offer a handsome reward for his nephew’s return.”

Billy squinted at her. “Dead or alive?”

If looks could kill, she’d have no further need of her derringer. Her jaw was still clenched when she lowered her lethal gaze and began to pace around the table. “Bartholomew is Grandfather’s sole heir, you see, and there’s always been a deep and abiding affection between the two of them. I mailed my letter over four months ago when I first began to prepare for my journey west. Why, Grandpapa may have already received it! And if so, he probably caught the first steamer departing for America. He could arrive at any moment! That’s why it’s even more imperative that you agree to help me, Mr. Darling. You’ll get every penny I owe you. You have my word on it.”

She stopped near enough to touch him, those maple candy eyes of hers melting to an imploring amber.

Billy tipped back his hat, pretending to ponder her offer. He had played his first hand of poker at four years old. He could recognize a bluff when he saw one. The virtuous Miss Fine was lying through her pretty white teeth. Her deceit intrigued him, but not enough to dissuade him from trying to chase her back to Boston where she belonged.

It seemed that task was going to require more drastic measures than he’d anticipated. Which was precisely why he decided to call her bluff for the second time in that day.

“I’ll accept your offer, Duchess, but only on my terms. If your grandfather hasn’t arrived with gold in hand by the time I locate this brother of yours, then I’ll require payment in full.” He cupped her cheek in his hand and captured her gaze with his own, determined to leave no doubt whatsoever about the nature of his demand. “From you.”

As he awaited her response, he allowed his thumb to roam freely over the inviting softness of her lower lip. Her eyes widened. Her lips trembled, parting slightly beneath the pressure of his thumb. Her breath quickened, causing her small, plump breasts to rise and fall in an uneven cadence.

Billy had anticipated the effect his touch would have on her, but he was not prepared for its effect on him. Desire squeezed his groin in a ruthless vise, making him wish for a brief but piercing moment that he was exactly the sort of man he was pretending to be.

Emotions flickered across her face. Fear. Outrage. Desperation. And something more elusive. Something that made him wonder just what she would do if he slid his hand through the disheveled skein of her hair, tipped her head back, and caressed her lips with his mouth instead of his thumb.

But before he could succumb to that dangerous temptation, her expression hardened to contempt.

Billy braced himself for the slap he knew was coming. The slap he deserved for daring to make a lady such a scandalous proposition.

Her face was as pale as milk, but her eyes glittered with scorn. “Very well, Mr. Darling. Consider yourself hired.”

“What?” Billy nearly shouted the word. His hand fell numbly to his side. He’d expected her to run shrieking from the room in maidenly horror, not accept his crude proposal.

But it seemed he had underestimated both her determination and her devotion to her brother. A mistake he dared not make again.

While he stood there, still reeling with shock, she bustled around the room with businesslike efficiency, tying on her battered bonnet and gathering up her belongings. “I shall be at the hotel, assuming this provincial village has one. I’ll meet you at the restaurant promptly at seven tomorrow morning so we can discuss our plans.”

Billy’s eyes widened further. He hadn’t risen before ten since he’d retired to the whorehouse to recover from his gunshot wound.

She snapped on her gloves, then hesitated, frowning in dismay. “I hate to trouble you, sir, but might I borrow enough money to pay for a night’s lodging?”

He reached into his pocket and handed her a fat wad of his poker winnings. She could have taken the whole thing and he would have been too dazed to protest.

She peeled off one of the smaller bills and handed back the rest. “Just add it to my tab,” she suggested, her smile sharp enough to raise welts.

“My pleasure, ma’am.” He suspected his cocky grin was only a wan shadow of its former self.

She started for the door, then returned to sweep up the plate of beefsteak and potatoes. “No point in letting a perfectly good supper go to waste.”

When she had departed, the plate cradled tenderly in the crook of her arm, Billy sank down on the bed and dragged off his hat, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Miss Patches surveyed him from the rocker, her feline hauteur unruffled, while Sadie waddled out from under the bed to lean against his knee.

He gave the hound a distracted scratch before raking a hand through his own hair. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he breathed. “I will be damned.”

But for the first time in more years than he could remember, he didn’t feel like it.

CHAPTER SEVEN

My dearest Grandfather, Esmerelda wrote in her neat script. She nibbled on the end of the fountain pen for a thoughtful moment before going back and marking out the My and the est.

“Dear Grandfather,” she read aloud.

Scowling, she slashed through the Dear, leaving only Grandfather. She had thought to pen an earnest plea for deliverance, but even that stark salutation rang false to her ears. She crumpled the stationery in her fist before dragging a fresh sheet across the desk. It was well past midnight, but restlessness plucked at her nerves, making sleep impossible. If Sheriff McGuire hadn’t been kind enough to retrieve her trunk and violin case from the old cowpoke and have it sent to the hotel, she would have been penning her letter on the back of Billy Darling’s Wanted poster.

Lord Wyndham, she scribbled, forsaking her flawless penmanship for an impassioned scrawl, It is with great trepidation and no little regret that I am writing to inform you that due to your enduring neglect and indifference, I have been forced to barter my virtue to a ruthless desperado.

She pressed a hand to her cheek, distracted by the memory of Billy Darling’s possessive touch. He had sought to bully her, yet his touch had been as tender as a lover’s caress. The realization provoked a curious shiver that she prayed was fear. She’d nearly killed a man today, then lied shamelessly to his face. She didn’t think she could bear to add wantonness to her growing list of sins.

Curling her bare toes beneath the hem of her gown, she resumed her brisk scribbling. I trust you will suffer no distress on my behalf, since you never have before. Ever your devoted granddaughter… Esmerelda Fine.

She dotted the final i with savage violence. The pen spat an ugly blob of ink onto the page.

Groaning, Esmerelda lowered her head to the desk, tempted to bang it in frustration. She could post this letter at dawn and it still wouldn’t reach England for weeks. And even if it were to miraculously wing its way there on the morrow, she knew that it would meet with nothing but her grandfather’s apathy and scorn. She’d lingered in Boston for nearly three months after posting that first letter to him, hoping for a reply that she’d known in her heart would never come.

She tossed the letter on the growing pile, wondering what had possessed her to weave such an absurd fable. To boast that her grandfather would cross an ocean to come to her rescue when he wouldn’t cross a London street to toss a farthing in her cup if she were begging barefoot in the snow.

Once she’d started lying, she couldn’t seem to stop. Her desperation had only kindled the fantasies she’d never dared admit, even to Bartholomew. Fantasies of a man she might call “Grandpapa”—a man with snowy white hair and a bristling mustache that would tickle her cheek when he folded her into his strong, loving arms. A man who would stroke her hair and murmur, “There, there, girl. You’ve done well, but there’s nothing more for you to do. It’s time to come home now.”

Although the dream was sweet, it left a bitter taste in her mouth. Because she knew when it was over, she would be left, as always, with nothing to rely on but her own wits.

And a dangerous stranger.

Since her parents’ death, she’d refused to let herself need anyone. But she needed Billy Darling. Without him, she might never find Bartholomew.

Her brother might actually be alive! She savored a thrill of joy at the thought. She’d found it difficult enough to carry on when he’d ran away, but believing him dead had been nearly intolerable.

She closed her eyes, overcome by memories of the first time she had almost lost him. They’d been at the cemetery placing flowers on their parents’ freshly turned graves when he had put his little hand in hers and tugged, complaining that his tummy hurt. Despite the oppressive heat of the July day, she had glanced down to find him shivering violently.

Stricken with absolute terror, she had nursed him day and night, pouring every ounce of her energy into holding the shadow of death at bay. When the doctor had paid his final visit, shaking his head sadly as he snapped his black bag shut, she had cradled Bartholomew’s bloated little body against her chest and begged God to let him live. Guilt had torn at her even then because she didn’t know if she was more afraid of losing him or of being left all alone. Tears had coursed down her cheeks as she vowed that she would take care of him, would raise him to be the man her parents had always wanted him to be. If only God would let him live…

Esmerelda opened her eyes, surprised to find them stinging but dry. Taking care of Bartholomew had been the sole focus of her life since that moment. She had thought only to hold him close and keep him safe, but she had squeezed too tightly and he had slipped right through her fingers. Losing him had been like losing herself, or at least the only person she still remembered how to be.

Hugging her shawl around her, she padded to the window and drew back the ruffled curtain. The town of Calamity slumbered in the moonlight, a tiny oasis of civilization in a vast sea of wilderness. Most of its lamps had been extinguished, but burning in the attic window of the clapboard house that sat catty-cornered across from the hotel was a single candle flame.

Mesmerized by its flickering glow, Esmerelda leaned her brow against the warped pane. Was Mr. Darling tucked beneath his faded quilt with a drowsing cat snuggled against his side? Had he drifted to sleep while reading one of those dime novels he denied owning but plainly cherished?

The front door of the establishment swung open, shattering the cozy image. A cowboy staggered onto the sidewalk, a woman tucked beneath his arm. She wiggled out of his drunken grip, but he snatched her back, grinding both his mouth and his hips against her in a crude rhythm impossible for even a spinster like Esmerelda to misinterpret.

She ducked behind the curtain, her cheeks burning. When she dared to peek back out, the woman was gone and the cowboy was lurching down the street toward the saloon. Her gaze flicked back to the candle. Whoever slept in that house, including the occupant of that attic room, doubtless did not sleep alone.

How Mr. Darling spent his nights didn’t matter, she reminded herself sternly, as long as he spent his days searching for her brother. Once Bartholomew was found… well, she would just find a way to renegotiate their little bargain.

She’d always prided herself on her bartering skills. Her parents’ bodies had still been laid out in the parlor in their Sunday best when the creditors had descended on their modest house like a flock of vultures, demanding payment of her papa’s outstanding debts. Fearing they would call the constable and demand that she and Bartholomew be carted off to the Griswald Home for Orphans and Foundlings, where they might be forever separated, Esmerelda had managed to fend them off with a clever mix of promises and threats. She’d never begged or stolen, but neither had she ever paid a dime on Monday that could be put off until Friday. If she’d learned anything in the past thirteen years, it was how to handle creditors.

Her only fear was that a man like Billy Darling just might be more than she could handle.

“Sweet dreams, Mr. Darling,” she murmured, letting the curtain fall.

Had she lingered at the window a moment longer, she would have seen the shadows come creeping across his room in the instant before the candle was abruptly snuffed.

Billy awoke to darkness and the cold barrel of a Colt revolver shoved against his temple. That didn’t stop him from reaching for his gun, just as they’d known it wouldn’t. The butt of the revolver slammed into his jaw. The coppery tang of blood exploded on his tongue. There were at least four of them. They should have brought five, he thought grimly, counting them lucky that the darkness blinded them to his icy grin.

He would have never survived being born the runt of the Darling litter if he hadn’t learned how to fight dirty, how to kick and gouge and bite whatever appendage came closest to his teeth. His foot connected smartly with the nearest groin. A bit-off curse deepened into a tortured groan. The men swarmed over him like a horde of apes, all grunting and swearing and breathing heavier than he was. He knew Sadie would be cowering beneath the bed, but an offended screech warned him that one of them had stepped on Miss Patches’s tail. The long, fluffy appendage was the calico’s pride and joy.

Now he was really riled.

He got in a flurry of savage licks before they managed to bind his arms behind him and shove a feed sack over his head. They herded him down the back stairs none too gently, slamming his head against the wall when he tried to bolt. He fervently hoped none of the girls would hear the commotion and get scared.

The fecund smell of manure and fresh hay penetrated the musty feed sack, along with the whickers of agitated horses. Even before they shoved him to a sitting position against a wooden partition and jerked the sack from his head, Billy knew they’d taken him to the livery stable.

He took his own sweet time licking the blood from the corner of his mouth before lifting his head to meet the eyes of the man standing over him. “Winstead,” he said without a trace of surprise.

The man offered him a curt nod, his smile remarkably pleasant. “Darling.”

The man’s gray-peppered hair was parted in the middle and slicked to either side. His eyes were like chips of coal, opaque and glittering all at the same time. His clothing was impeccably tasteful—his shoes polished, the creases in his wool trousers crisp, the stripes of his double-breasted vest perfectly matched. He held a leather satchel tucked under one arm.

Of all the U.S. marshals Billy had tangled with, Winstead was the only one truly worthy of his contempt. And his respect. He had served as a colonel in the Union Army during the war and Billy would go to his grave regretting that he’d been too young to face those glittering eyes across a battlefield.

Winstead’s goons huddled behind him. One glowered at Billy through an eye swollen nearly shut. Another cradled an arm cocked at an awkward angle. Behind the four men stood a pale and silent sentinel.

“Et tu, Brute?” Billy murmured.

Even in the nickering lantern light, Drew’s flush was evident.

“Don’t be talkin‘ that French filth to Mr. Winstead,” snarled one of the men. “You want me to smack him, sir?”

Winstead waved off the offer. “Don’t be so hasty to brand your friend a traitor, Mr. Darling. Sheriff McGuire simply accepted our invitation with a bit more grace than you. I always like to keep the local law apprised of our endeavors.” He drew a gold watch from his vest pocket and gave it a cursory glance. “I do hope you’ll forgive me for rousing you so late in the evening, but I have a job for you.”

“I suspected as much. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just send a telegram?”

Again that implacable smile. “Easier, perhaps. But not nearly as discreet.”

Never one to waste anyone’s time, especially his own, the marshal flipped open the satchel and pulled out a rolled-up sheet of paper. With a snap of his wrist, he unfurled the poster in front of Billy’s nose. “I want this man apprehended.”

Billy squinted at the paper, then up at the marshal. “You’ll have to forgive me, sir. I don’t read so good with my hands tied. If you could just…?” He shrugged to indicate his bound hands and was gratified to see every one of Winstead’s men take a hasty step backward.

Billy blinked up at the marshal, giving him the same look he used to give his ma when she stormed out to the barn looking for the culprit who’d filched her freshly baked blueberry pie. She’d always said he could coax the devil into letting him out of hell with that look. She never could bring herself to whip him, not even after she’d spent an hour scrubbing the blueberry stains from beneath his fingernails.

Winstead wasn’t quite as gullible. “Sheriff, would you do the honor?” he called over his shoulder, earning an audible sigh of relief from his men.

They all but licked their bruised and swollen lips with anticipation as Drew squatted beside their captive to struggle with the crude knots. “I oughta break your nose,” Billy muttered without moving his lips.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Drew murmured, the exchange hidden by the silver waterfall of his hair. “It would ruin my profile.”

The ropes unfurled. Drew slowly backed away, holding both hands in the air as if his friend held a loaded pistol on him instead of just a nasty glare.

Billy surprised them all by not bounding to his feet the instant he was free. He simply plucked the handbill from Winstead’s hand and settled back against the stall to study it.

He read the caption at the bottom of the page before snorting up at Winstead. “'Black Bart?' What kind of self-respecting outlaw outside the pages of a dime novel would call himself Black Bart?”

“A very accomplished one, I’m afraid. The kind who robs banks, trains, and stagecoaches with equal flair. The kind who must be stopped.”

Billy scowled down at the sketch. The artist had captured the outlaw’s image in bold strokes. He’d never seen a dimple look quite so malicious or a boyish smirk so sinister. A dark beard shadowed the rogue’s jaw, but did little to disguise the baby-faced cheeks underneath.

Cheeks that had only too recently borne the tender caress of Esmerelda Fine’s hand.

Billy sent his stunned gaze traveling back up the sketch only to find himself staring into the twinkling black eyes of Mr. Bartholomew Fine III.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Meanness coursed through his veins. Billy could feel it slithering through him like rattlesnake venom, numbing first his limbs and then his heart. If Winstead and his men had known him better, they would have seen it, too. It was there in the set of his jaw, the faint thinning of his lips, the steely glint in his eye. He had called Esmerelda’s bluff only to discover that she was holding a secret trump of her own.

As he came to his feet, only Drew was wise enough to back toward the stable door, plainly fearing they were all about to witness an eruption of that notorious Darling temper.

Disappointment and relief mingled in his expression when Billy simply shrugged and said, “Never seen the man before in my life.”

“Oh, but I think you have,” Winstead said. “I believe you just recently made his acquaintance, perhaps this very afternoon when a certain charming young lady visited your room.”

“How did you…?” Billy’s narrowed gaze swept the marshal’s deputies, easily locating the one with the cockiest smirk. “So it wasn’t one of the Zimmerman boys with Dorothea after all. Maybe you need to find a spy who’s not so quick on the trigger, marshal. Your man couldn’t have been in that room more than three minutes at the most.”

Drew and the other deputies snickered. The man’s smirk hardened to a snarl as he took a step toward Billy, growling beneath his breath.

Winstead waved him back. “He was there long enough to learn what I needed. That you were entertaining a woman who was attempting to hire you to find the man in this poster.”

Billy nodded. “His sister, Esmerelda.”

Winstead snorted. “Surely you didn’t fall for that tired old ruse. An outlaw like Bart Fine probably has sisters in every cowtown and miner’s camp from Kansas City to San Francisco.”

There was something about Winstead’s leer that made Billy want to smash him in the mouth. “She was pretty damn convincing when she tried to put a bullet through my heart because she thought I’d killed her baby brother.”

“So I heard. An impressive and passionate display of her ardor, was it not? But was it the ardor of a devoted sister? Or a desperate lover?”

Billy could neither defend nor deny. To hide his troubled expression, he swung around, instinctively seeking the stall that housed Belle, his own mare.

Winstead followed him step for step, pressing his advantage. “I have it on good authority that Bart Fine is an only child. Fine doesn’t know it, but I’ve even had the Pinkertons tracking this woman since she left the Boston residence she once shared with him. Until today, we didn’t realize that she believed him dead. We thought she was coming west to rendezvous with the scoundrel. Since you were kind enough to persuade her that he might indeed be alive, we’re hoping she’ll do just that. When she does, I want you to be there to take him into custody.”

Billy reached into the stall and stroked his mare’s velvety nose. “You want me to use the girl for bait?”

“You can use the girl in any way you see fit, Mr. Darling.” Winstead’s callous words sent a primal shiver of anticipation through him. “I’ve arranged my own bait. I prefer to think of her as insurance.”

“What’s this fellow done to ruffle your feathers, marshal?” Billy asked, deliberately deepening his affable southern drawl. He’d learned through harsh experience that it was the most effective way to get someone to underestimate him.

“Made off with a shipment of treasury gold on its way to a prominent San Francisco bank. A shipment I was responsible for protecting.”

“Made you look like a fool, eh? Well, no man should have to tolerate that. Not even a Yankee.” He responded to Winstead’s glare with a mocking grin. “Why do you need me? Why don’t you just arrest him yourself? You do have an army of marshals and Pinkertons at your disposal, not to mention these fine upstanding young deputies.”

He indicated the battered men with a sweep of his arm. They glared murder at him.

Winstead glanced over his shoulder at his men and snapped, “You’re dismissed. Meet me back at the horses.”

“But, sir, I don’t think that would be a wise—”

“That’s an order.”

The deputies obeyed, skulking out of the barn like chastened schoolboys. Drew made a valiant effort to tiptoe after them.

“Stay,” Billy commanded. “The marshal here might not want any witnesses, but I damn sure do.”

Billy had always thought of Winstead as a straight shooter, but tonight a disarming aura of furtiveness clung to the man. “Why is this job different from any other?” He nodded down at his rumpled drawers. "Why'd you have to drag me out of my bed half-naked in the middle of the night to discuss it? We’ve done this a dozen times. You tell me who you want. I bring him in.”

“Because this time I don’t want him brought in.”

Billy would have liked to blame the chill that shot down his spine to his shirtless state, but couldn’t. “I’m a bounty hunter, marshal, not a killer for hire.” It galled him that this was the second time in twenty-four hours he’d had to explain the distinction.

“You killed Estes, didn’t you?”

“Only after he shot me in the back,” he replied evenly.

Winstead sighed. “I’m not asking you to shoot this man down in cold blood. Just to arrange a little… mishap after he’s taken into custody. He might take a tumble off his horse, slip beneath the water while crossing a river…”

“Choke on some stale jerky,” Billy provided.

“Yes!” Winstead cried, oblivious to his sarcasm. “That’s precisely the sort of subtlety I’m looking for.”

Billy exchanged a dry look with Drew. “And if I accept the job, what’s in it for me?”

“Your life, Mr. Darling. Your life for his.”

The sparkle had disappeared from Winstead’s eyes, leaving them utterly flat. The man was serious. Dead serious.

“If you reject this assignment, my deputies are prepared to take you back to Santa Fe tonight. You will stand trial for the murder of Juan Estes and most likely hang.”

“I guess I can count on you to handpick the jury.”

“I already have.”

Silence hung in the air, thick with tension, until Billy chuckled softly. “Go to hell, Winstead. And take your deputies with you.”

He started for the door.

“Wait!” Winstead cried. The raw desperation in his voice revealed that he had far less confidence in his men than he’d pretended to have. “What if I sweeten the deal? I might be able to offer you more than just amnesty this time.”

Billy kept walking.

“What if I could promise you that badge you’ve always wanted?”

Billy froze, then slowly swung around. Winstead had extended his hand. Lying on his palm was a gleaming badge. The tin star seemed to twinkle in the lantern light, more out of Billy’s reach than if it had been hanging in the night sky. He hated Winstead more in that moment than he ever had before.

“What good would a badge do me? We both know my first official act as deputy U.S. marshal would have to be arresting my own brothers and watching them hang.”

“Not if I can guarantee amnesty not only for you, but for them as well. Provided, of course, that they agree to practice their… um… trade a bit farther south of the border in the future.” Winstead held out the badge. “Go on. Take it. Try it on for size.”

Painfully aware of Drew’s troubled scrutiny, Billy reached for the badge. As he closed his fingers around the cool tin, the clasp’s pin stabbed his thumb. A single drop of blood welled from its tender pad, the pain both sharp and sweet.

Winstead hooked his thumbs in his vest pockets, making a visible effort to salvage some of his genteel charm. “As you well know, I’m not a stingy man. If you cooperate, you can also expect the usual reward of five hundred dollars.”

“One thousand,” Billy replied without batting an eyelash. “Five hundred in advance.”

Winstead hesitated only a heartbeat before offering his hand. When Billy didn’t even deign to glance at it, the marshal drew a bloated canvas pouch from the satchel. “You’ll receive a signed writ of amnesty for you and your brothers only after the job is done to my satisfaction.”

Billy tossed the pouch to a stunned Drew.

The marshal fastened the satchel, his crisp motions betraying his eagerness to cleanse himself of the taint of his own dirty dealings. “Black Bart was last seen in the vicinity of Eulalie. One of my deputies has determined that his gang may have a hideout in the hills near there. I’ve taken the liberty of arranging to have another shipment of treasury gold pass through that area on Friday morning. The gold will make a fortuitous overnight stop at the Eulalie First National Bank. I’ve heard the accommodations in the vault there are quite lovely.”

Drew paled, his plans for a peaceful retirement evaporating into thin air like the smoke from a Comanche peace pipe. “Hell, Winstead, if you’ve already leaked that information, you’ll have every outlaw from Dodge City to San Francisco crawling over the Territory.”

“Perhaps. But Mr. Darling here is only responsible for apprehending one of them.” He turned his gaze on Billy. “I’ve made sure that both the bank employees and the local law will be expecting you. I would so hate for you to catch a bullet in the back for your trouble.”

Billy frowned. “If you’ve already got the trap set, then why do you need the woman?”

“As I told you before—as insurance. I believe Mr. Fine will think twice about opening fire or making a run for it if he walks into that bank and comes face-to-face with his devoted mistress.”

Mistress. Billy could hold four aces and the king of spades in his hand without betraying so much as a gleeful twitch of his lips, but there was something about that word that made him flinch.

A ghost of a smile flickered across the marshal’s face. “I should warn you that our Black Bart has demonstrated quite a flair for the dramatic. No blowing up the safe in the dark of night for him. He prefers to thunder in at high noon with fire in his eyes and guns blazing.” Winstead leaned closer, challenge glittering in his eyes. “So, Mr. Darling… will you be there when he does?”

Billy crumpled the sketch of Bartholomew Fine in his fist without realizing it. “‘Oh, I’ll be there. You can count on it.”

When Winstead had taken his precious satchel and gone, Drew blew out a low, shaky whistle. “Well, William, my lad, I guess I can go tear up that Wanted notice that bears such an unflattering likeness to you.”

“I wouldn’t be too hasty about that.”

Drew frowned, more disturbed by his friend’s acceptance of such an unsavory job than he cared to let on. “But didn’t you just agree to—”

“Did I?” Billy blinked at him, his eyes as artless as a child’s. “I never took Winstead’s hand. I only took his money.”

Drew cocked his head to the side, growing more confused by the second.

Billy shrugged. “I’ve been accused of selling myself to the highest bidder. Maybe it’s time I started doing just that.”

“But what could be worth more to you than your life, one thousand dollars, and a badge?”

Billy held the gleaming star up to the light, the expression in his narrowed eyes oddly unsettling. “That, sheriff, is just what I intend to find out.”

CHAPTER NINE

The woman who called herself Esmerelda Fine slept in a puddle of buttery dawn sunlight. Billy gently eased the door of her hotel room shut behind him, her unexpected vulnerability softening the grim set of his lips. He had expected to find the uncompromising Miss Fine sleeping flat on her back, her hands folded neatly over her chest as if the undertaker had just arranged them.

Instead, she sprawled on her stomach, one leg half-cocked to her waist, her rump in the air. A checkered quilt lay in a defeated heap on the floor, vanquished in what appeared to be a violent battle of wills. The awkward angle of her leg caused her gown to ride high on her thighs and hug her bottom like a pair of loving hands.

Billy studied the alluring mound with the practiced eye of a man who’d spent the past three months of his life living in a brothel. Miss Fine might wear a corset and bustle because it was the current fashion, but she certainly had no need of the wire and horsehair contraptions to cinch in her waist or enhance the curves nature had given her.

She rolled to her back, flinging out one arm as if in supplication. Her hair spilled over the pillow like cinnamon sugar and an endearing little porcine snuffle escaped her delicate nostrils. Fascinated, Billy drifted toward the bed. Her lack of restraint in sleep was at direct odds with the stilted demeanor she wore like a starched veil when awake. Which only deepened his suspicion that it might be nothing more than a cunning disguise.

He scowled and fingered his swollen lip. Until his midnight encounter with Winstead, he’d had every intention of meeting her for breakfast in the hotel restaurant, pressing fifty dollars into her gloved hand, and putting her on the first stagecoach heading east. With or without her consent.

But Winstead’s words had changed all that. He never could abide a mystery, and he had every intention of finding out just who wanted Bartholomew Fine the most and why.

Billy allowed his gaze to drift downward, lingering at the softness of her breasts and belly. He wondered what Winstead would have thought had his spy lingered long enough to learn of their shocking bargain. Esmerelda had agreed to his proposition with unsettling ease. Perhaps she made it a habit to offer that tender young body of hers to strangers in exchange for her brother’s life.

Or her lover’s life.

He searched her face, forcing himself to be ruthless. He still couldn’t find any trace of the impish outlaw who called himself Black Bart. Sleep had heightened her color, reducing her freckles to a sprinkle of desert sand across the bridge of her nose. Her lashes curled against her cheeks like a whittler’s mahogany shavings. Whatever her relationship to the outlaw, Billy couldn’t afford to forget that her devotion to the man had nearly cost him his life.

As he leaned over her, his nerves sang to life as they always did at the approach of danger. His keenly honed instincts had kept him alive through many an encounter that should have proven deadly. They’d allowed him to dodge Yankee bullets and Comanche arrows and had prodded him to take a step to the right instead of the left in the instant before Juan Estes had pulled the trigger of his Remington revolver and shot him in the back. The bullet had grazed his ribs, leaving his heart untouched.

He was afraid he might not be so lucky this time.

He sank down on the bed, resting a hand on each side of the feather pillow. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d woken up next to a woman without stale whiskey on her breath. Esmerelda smelled warm and sweet, like Miss Patches’s fur on a chilly winter night. It was all he could do not to bury his face in the silken tangle of her hair. He’d assured her that the Darling men preferred their women conscious, but in her case, he just might be willing to make an exception.

When Esmerelda opened her eyes to find Billy Darling looming over her, her first thought was that she’d sold her soul to the devil and he’d wasted no time in coming to collect. Billy’s thick golden lashes gave his eyes an angelic cast, but the cynical curl of his lips reminded her that he was not one of God’s favored, but one of his fallen. She obliged him by letting out a shriek of the damned.

He winced and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Was that a scream, or were you of a mind to sing the Doxology?”

She glared at him.

He grinned at her. “Mornin‘, Duchess.”

Desperate to dislodge the gentle but firm pressure of his palm against her lips, Esmerelda sank her teeth into the tender pad below his forefinger.

He jerked his hand back, then brought it to his lips to suck on the wound. Esmerelda felt a curious stirring in her belly at the sight of his mouth where hers had so recently been.

He lowered his hand, slanting her a reproachful look." My mare used to nip like that. Until I taught her to trust me.”

“You certainly didn’t teach her to trust you by sneaking up on her while she was sleeping.” Addled by his nearness, Esmerelda sat up and glanced wildly around the room. “How did you get in here?”

He held up a shiny brass key.

She blinked in dismay. “Do you have a key for every chamber in Calamity, Mr. Darling?”

“Only the ones I’m paying for.” He dropped the key into the pocket of his buff-colored shirt. “It wasn’t very hard to convince the hotel manager that the gentleman who pays for the lady’s room should be allowed to come and go as he pleases.”

She scooted as far away from him as the feather mattress would allow. “Why, he must think…”

“The very worst.” Billy tipped back his hat with one finger, revealing an unrepentant dimple. “So if you want to go ahead with that scream, it might just increase my notoriety with the ladies.”

If appearances were any indication, his notoriety didn’t need any increasing. If anything, he looked even more debauched than he had yesterday. A day’s growth of dark gold stubble shadowed his jaw, carving intriguing hollows in the clean planes of his face. A fresh bruise smudged his cheekbone. Esmerelda resisted a ridiculous urge to try and dab it away with the hem of the sheet, but she could not stop herself from touching a fingertip to the swollen split at the corner of his mouth.

“Who hurt you?” she murmured, thrown off balance by the depth of her dismay.

Billy caught her wrist, freezing her hand in its instinctive caress. Although he applied no pressure, she was achingly aware of his strength and the fragility of her own fine bones.

His aw-shucks affability vanished, making her realize it had been nothing but a facade all along. She would have almost sworn that something subtle had shifted in his attitude toward her. Something perilous.

“I had a bad dream,” he drawled.

A bar brawl, more likely, Esmerelda thought. Probably over one of the buxom occupants of Miss Mellie’s house.

She lowered her eyes, sliding her wrist out of his grip only because he allowed her to do so. “I’ve had my share of nightmares since Bartholomew disappeared.” She decided now might not be the best time to confess that he’d figured prominently in most of them.

At the mention of her brother, he withdrew from the bed. He stood, drawing off his hat and turning it over in his hands. A worn leather duster draped his lanky form, the shoulder cape of the flowing coat emphasizing the breadth of his own shoulders. “That’s why I’m here so early. I may have a lead on your brother’s whereabouts. A man fitting his description has been spotted in a town south of here called Eulalie.”

Before he could finish, Esmerelda had bounded out of the bed and began to paw through her trunk for a clean basque, skirt, and a set of fresh undergarments.

“If I hit the trail now,” Billy continued, “I might just be able to catch up with him.” The hardwood floor creaked beneath his boots as he started for the door.

Esmerelda spun around, hugging a pair of ruffled drawers to her breast. “Oh, no, you don’t! You’re not going anywhere without me. I learned my lesson from Mr. Flavil Snorton.”

“I’m not Flavil Snorton, ma’am. I’ll see to it that you get every penny of your money’s worth.”

He replaced his hat, tilting it low over his eyes, but Esmerelda could still feel the heat of his gaze branding her tingling skin through the worn muslin of her nightgown. He seemed to be taking a perverse delight in reminding her of their unholy alliance.

“And I’ll see to it that you get every penny of your money,” she forced herself to say crisply. “As soon as my beloved grandpapa arrives from England. But only if you agree to let me accompany you to this Eulalie to look for Bartholomew.” She fought the temptation to plead, sensing somehow that this man would not be swayed by whining or cajoling.

His eyes narrowed as he looked her up and down, taking her measure. Esmerelda held herself straight and tall, refusing to betray how fearful she was that he would somehow find her wanting. Just as her grandfather always had.

He finally swept off his hat and made a mocking bow. “You’re the boss, Duchess.”

“I am not a duchess,” she said stiffly. “I’m the granddaughter of a duke.” She probably looked less like nobility than some wanton peasant with her hair unplaited and her naked toes peeping out from beneath the hem of her nightgown. “I need to dress and pack my belongings. If you’ll excuse me…?” Clutching her drawers even tighter, she nodded toward the door.

“Be my guest,” he replied, nodding toward the dressing screen that partitioned off one corner of the room.

Refusing to be baited into further argument, Esmerelda took her armful of clothing and ducked behind the screen, glaring at him all the while. She quickly shed her nightgown, draping it over the screen so she could scramble into her drawers and chemise. She scowled down at the remaining undergarments, realizing for the first time how impractical the confines of corset and camisole, petticoat and bustle, would be in the blazing New Mexico heat. After a moment of contemplation, she discarded everything but the petticoat. Leaving off the bustle would make her skirt hang long, but she’d rather trip than swelter.

As she wrestled with the hooks of her basque, praying the thick merino would hide the absence of a corset, her nightgown began a sensual slither over the top of the screen. She was too mesmerized by its unexpected flight to reach for it until it was too late. She held her breath, oddly discomfited by a vision of Mr. Darling’s calloused hands fondling the soft, skin-warmed muslin.

His voice, husky and far too near for comfort, further shattered her illusion of privacy. “So are you and this brother of yours very close?”

“Oh, very,” Esmerelda replied, relieved that he’d chosen such an innocuous topic of conversation. “You’d have to travel long and far to find two people so passionately devoted to each other.”

“How touching. I always did have a powerful hankering for a sister.”

Esmerelda froze in the act of fastening the pearl buttons at her cuffs. Mr. Darling’s sigh had been heartfelt, but she would have almost sworn she detected a lascivious note in his voice. She popped her head up over the top of the dressing screen to give him a suspicious look. He blinked at her, his long-lashed eyes as innocent as a lamb’s. Her overwrought nerves must surely be affecting her imagination, she decided.

Shaking her head, she plopped down on the low-slung dressing stool to draw on her striped stockings and kid boots. The ominous sound of paper rustling sent her bolting out from behind the screen, one boot still half-unlaced. She just barely managed to hobble over to the desk and snatch the sheet of crumpled stationery from Billy’s hand before he could read her unflattering description of him.

“I was writing Grandpapa,” she said, tucking the incriminating note behind her back, “apprising him of the current situation.”

Billy nodded. “That’s very thoughtful of you. We wouldn’t want to worry the old man, would we? Why don’t you leave it at the hotel desk in case he arrives while we’re gone.”

Esmerelda hesitated, wondering if she was only imagining the sparkle of challenge in his eyes. Her own hastily scribbled words haunted her. I have been forced to barter my virtue to a ruthless desperado. Prodded by his expectant scrutiny, she retrieved an envelope from the desk, folded the note into a neat square, and tucked it inside. After all, it wasn’t as if the spiteful old man would ever actually read it.

“I’ll take it down for you,” Billy offered, extending his hand.

“Oh, no,” she said, clutching the envelope to her breast with even more desperation than she had clutched her drawers. “That won’t be necessary. I’ll just drop it off at the desk as we go.”

He slowly withdrew his hand and nodded. “You do that, Miss Fine. You just do that.”

A prickle of apprehension skated down her spine. Despite his lazy grin, Esmerelda couldn’t quite shake the odd sensation that Mr. Darling didn’t trust her any more than she trusted him.

“This horse seems rather tall. Do you have anything just a tiny bit shorter?”

As Esmerelda turned away from the stall, rejecting its velvety-eyed occupant just as she’d rejected the occupants of all the other stalls lining the north wall of the livery stable, Billy blew out a snort of exasperation that would have put his mare to shame. Although it was only late summer, at this rate they wouldn’t reach Eulalie until Christmas. Of next year.

Esmerelda meandered over to the opposite wall, her hands clasped behind her as if she were reviewing a line of shaggy troops.

The stable’s owner trotted at her heels, dabbing sweat from his brow with a dingy red bandanna. The shrill pitch of his voice revealed his growing desperation. “But, miss, you said the last horse was too short. And the one before that too broad. And the one before that too brown.”

She peered into the next stall, making a nervous little hop backward when the piebald gelding within nickered a welcome. “He’s a bit strident, don’t you think? Do you have anything quieter? More mannerly?”

The stable owner’s bottom lip began to quiver as if he was on the verge of bursting into tears. Taking pity on the fellow, Billy stepped forward. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Miss Fine, but none of Mr. Ezell’s horses were privileged enough to attend finishing school. Why don’t you just take a look-see at this docile fellow over here?”

He caught her elbow in a less-than-docile grip and dragged her to the next stall. The aged gray within lowered his head and gave them a sleepy look. If he were any more docile, he’d be dead. But this time Billy was standing near enough to feel Esmerelda’s quiver of alarm.

“Miss Fine?” he murmured into her ear.

“Mm?”

“Have you ever ridden a horse before?”

She drew in a shaky breath. “I sat on a pony once at the county fair.”

“Was the pony moving?”

She shot him a sheepish glance. “Only after I fell off.”

“That’s what I thought.” He steered her toward the stable door. “Why don’t you step outside while I choose your mount? I’m considered an excellent judge of horseflesh.”

She cast him a skeptical glance. He gave her an encouraging wink before pushing her out of the stable and gently closing the door in her face.

“Excellent judge of horseflesh, my… my… jackass,” Esmerelda muttered beneath her breath, eyeing the long-eared monster plodding in front of her with undisguised loathing.

She gave the reins a tentative flick. The hateful creature swiveled around to bare its long, yellow teeth at her and honked out a deafening bray. The basset hound perched on the bench of the wagon next to her threw back its head, jowls jiggling, and added a woeful howl to the chorus.

Esmerelda stuck her tongue out at the mule, only to end up biting it hard enough to draw blood when the rickety buckboard jolted through yet another rut. Her trunk and violin case were taking an awful beating in the bed of the wagon. If her bottom hadn’t gone numb hours ago, she’d probably be howling in pain herself. She’d spent most of the morning silently bemoaning the absence of her bustle.

She shot the portly hound a menacing glance and hissed, “If you don’t hush, I’ll sit on you.”

The dog subsided, giving her a doleful look that made her feel like the most heartless of bullies.

Her discomfort wouldn’t have been so galling if Mr. Darling hadn’t spent the entire journey loping ahead of the wagon on his chestnut mare as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He rode with remarkable skill, his long-limbed grace serving him as well in the saddle as it did in a gun-fight. Esmerelda gritted her teeth when a cheerful whistle accompanied by the jingling music of his spurs drifted back to her sunburned ears.

Her misshapen bonnet was proving to be a poor protection against the desert sun. The waves of shimmering heat had driven her to roll up the heavy sleeves of her basque. Her gloves shielded her hands, but she could almost hear the freckles popping out on her forearms. She sighed. There wouldn’t be enough buttermilk in all of New England to fade them now.

She shaded her eyes against the sun, hoping for a glimpse of civilization, but saw nothing but more of the same—sweeping plains of grama and buffalo grass peppered with sparse patches of mesquite beneath a blazing swath of sky. As alien as the landscape was to her eyes, she had to admit it possessed a wild and stark beauty nearly as compelling as it was disturbing.

Much like her stoic guide.

Darling’s cheery song had given way to the plaintive notes of “Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier.” The mournful refrain sent a shiver of loneliness through Esmerelda’s soul.

Desperate for human companionship, she flapped the reins on the mule’s back. He lunged into a reluctant trot, nearly tumbling the hound paws over jowls into the bed of the buckboard. By the time the wagon caught up with the mare, Esmerelda was panting harder than the dog with the effort it took to control the cantankerous mule.

Mr. Darling slowed his own horse to a brisk walk.

“You whistle very nicely, sir,” she said. "Shall we attempt a duet to pass the time?”

He immediately stopped whistling. “That might not be a good idea, ma’am. We wouldn’t want to attract Indians. Or buzzards,” he muttered beneath his breath.

She gave the sky a nervous glance. “I know the tune you were whistling. It’s an old Irish folk song that was very popular in Boston during the war. My mother used to play it on the piano.”

“Was your father a soldier?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Papa always felt he could best serve his country by wielding a pen instead of a sword. He was a staunch abolitionist. He wrote eloquent editorials for the Gazette denouncing the unfortunate tendency of the privileged to enslave their fellow man.” The taut set of Mr. Darling’s jaw beneath the shadow of his hat brim warned her that she might be at risk of offending him. Hoping to placate him, she hastily added, "Of course, some of Papa’s friends insisted that the war was less about slaves than money.”

Billy reined in the mare, swinging around to face her. His gray-green eyes had gone hard as flint, cutting straight to her heart. Esmerelda’s hands involuntarily tightened on the reins. True to his contrary nature, the mule picked that moment to respond to her touch for the first time, bringing the buckboard to a lurching halt.

“My pa was a dirt farmer,” Billy said, his voice oddly flat. “He didn’t have any money or slaves. But when one of our neighbors accused him of being a Confederate sympathizer, that didn’t stop the Union soldiers from hanging him from a tree in his own front yard while my ma watched. If it hadn’t been for the war, Pa might still be alive. And Ma…” He trailed off to gaze at the distant horizon, a muscle in his jaw working savagely. “That, Miss Fine, is what the war was about for me and my kin.”

Esmerelda remained frozen with shame while he wheeled his horse around and spurred it into a canter. For a moment, she thought he was just going to leave her there—an insignificant speck on that vast and windswept plain. But he reined in the mare at the top of a shallow rise and glanced over his shoulder, his lean form tense with impatience. It took her several agonizing minutes to bully the mule into motion. Only after she’d succeeded did Darling continue on, presenting his back to her with deliberate finality.

Esmerelda shivered as the fiery ball of the sun melted the horizon into a lake of gold. As breathtaking as the sight was, she knew night could not be far behind. Stars had already began to pierce the sky, tearing glittering holes in the lavender quilt of dusk. The steady rocking of the buckboard might have lured her aching body into a doze if she hadn’t feared losing sight of the mute sentinel riding ahead of her.

Mr. Darling’s unfailing vigilance reproached her nearly as much as his silence. He’d given her ample time to ponder her careless words. To her and her family, the war had been nothing but a battle of conflicting philosophies costing spilled ink instead of spilled blood. But it had cost Billy Darling both his father and his innocence. And what had become of his mother? she wondered. Had she been murdered by the Union soldiers as well? Or perished of a broken heart after being forced to watch her husband die in such a brutal manner?

Although Billy hadn’t whistled a note since their earlier encounter, Esmerelda would have almost sworn she could catch snatches of “Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier” in the mournful wail of the wind. When the basset hound edged near enough to rest its chin on her knee, she scratched the dog behind its droopy ears instead of pushing it away.

As the light faded, the sloping walls of a canyon loomed out of the land to embrace them. Esmerelda found herself yearning for the bleak desert plain, the broad sweep of the sky, the absence of shadows cast by the towering rock formations that seemed to watch them from the gathering darkness.

Something howled in the distance, making her skin crawl. “Mr. Darling?” she called out, cringing at the note of near-panic in her voice.

He hesitated for a nearly imperceptible moment before guiding his horse in a wide circle and loping back to her side. Even he wasn’t completely immune to their eerie surroundings. He rode with one hand resting lightly on the grip of the Winchester sheathed in the leather scabbard hanging from his saddle.

“Billy,” he said curtly, capturing the reins from her hands with enough authority to draw the mule to a halt.

“How far to Eulalie…” Esmerelda cleared her throat. The use of such an intimate nickname seemed to imply a fondness they did not share.“… Billy?”

He squinted at the hint of horizon visible through the narrow mouth of the canyon. “About a six-hour ride, I’d wager. If we start out at dawn, we should make town before noon.”

Esmerelda’s mouth went drier than it already was while her stomach recoiled at the prospect of subsisting for another day on beans, jerky, and libations that tasted more like rusty tin than coffee or water.

“We won’t reach Eulalie until tomorrow?” she asked faintly.

He nodded. “We’d best make camp now. After sundown, the desert can be a dangerous place. There’s outlaws, scorpions, rattlers, varmints…” He hesitated long enough to warn her that he just might be enjoying himself.“… Indians.”

Chewing on her lower lip, she cast him a dubious look. Sharing this man’s bedroll could prove more hazardous than any of those perils.

He leaned down to capture a tendril of hair that had been jolted loose from her coronet of braids. He threaded his fingers through the silky strand, the unexpected tenderness of his touch sending a parade of gooseflesh across her skin. “Why, I’ve known Apache who would sell their grandfather’s souls to get their hands on a scalp this pretty.”

Esmerelda’s first instinct was to flush with pleasure. Her second instinct was to snatch her hair out of his hand and berate him for deliberately trying to frighten her.

Before she could do either, a shot rang out.

Its echo hadn’t even died when Billy launched himself off his mount, Winchester in hand, and rolled her over the side of the wagon to the ground.

“Down, Sadie!” he shouted.

Whimpering in alarm, the basset hound dove into the bed of the wagon. Billy’s horse took off with a frantic whinny, galloping for the mouth of the canyon.

Esmerelda’s breath hitched in her chest. She tried to rise, but Billy pressed her into the sand, using his body as a shield. She didn’t comprehend why until a second shot struck the ground a few feet from the wagon wheel, sending up a blinding spray of grit. That was when she decided she just might be content to lie there all night, cradled beneath the shelter of his taut muscles.

With an ominous creak, the buckboard wheels turned half a revolution.

“Sonofabitch,” Billy breathed into her hair.

Esmerelda didn’t have the heart to chide him for his profanity. She understood their dilemma only too well. If the mule spooked and galloped away with their only shelter, they were done for. She could see the reins from where she lay, dangling just out of arm’s reach between the seat and the harness.

“Don’t move, honey,” he whispered. “Don’t even breathe.”

At first she thought his endearment was addressed to the mule. But that was before he inched forward on his elbows, dragging his hips across the softness of her bottom. Oddly undone by the contact, Esmerelda squeezed her eyes shut, once again mourning the absence of her bustle.

The chill night wind stung her skin as Billy rose to a crouch and peered over the bed of the wagon, Winchester in one hand, six-gun in the other. Esmerelda was surprised to learn that her curiosity was stronger than her terror. Ignoring his command, she wiggled to her knees and peered around the spokes of the wagon wheel.

The rising moon revealed a lone outcropping of rock sheltered by rubble on the far wall of the canyon—the perfect cover for an ambush. There was no way to determine how many attackers crouched on that makeshift platform. By squinting, Esmerelda could just make out the crown of one of their hats.

A shotgun blast thundered through the canyon. The mule bolted forward. Esmerelda made a panicked grab for the reins. She caught them just before they swung out of her reach, throwing her body’s entire weight against the beast’s forward momentum. Miraculously, he stumbled to a halt, his massive hindquarters still quivering with alarm.

“Nice mule,” she murmured, closing her eyes against a dizzying surge of relief. “Good mule.”

When she opened them, Billy was glaring at her. “I thought I told you to stay put,” he hissed.

“You should have told the mule,” she retorted, wrapping the reins around her gloved hands. If the beast took off now, she was going to be dragged the rest of the way to Eulalie on her stomach.

Still shaking his head, Billy rose to one knee with fluid grace and sighted the outcropping of stone through the eye of the Colt. Esmerelda’s blood froze. Had his arrogance blossomed into madness? she wondered. The pistol might have an advantage over the Winchester in accuracy, but not at such an impossible range.

The determination etched on his features made her breath come fast and short. If he hadn’t been about to get them both killed, his concentration would have been a beautiful thing to behold.

He closed one eye.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

He fired.

The hat flew off, making one of their assailants yelp like a girl.

Esmerelda frowned in bewilderment as the yelp gave way to a confusing muddle of grunts and curses, followed by the sounds of a minor scuffle.

A timid voice wafted across the canyon. “That you, Billy?”

Billy collapsed against the wagon wheel, paling as if he’d been mortally wounded. Weakened by relief, Esmerelda crawled to his side and sagged against him. “Friends of yours, I gather.”

“Worse.” The grim set of his mouth banished her exhilaration. “Relations.”

CHAPTER TEN

The Darling gang came charging down the embankment, whooping and hollering like schoolboys on the first day of summer. For a moment, Billy appeared to be nearly as paralyzed with shock as Esmerelda was.

Then he snatched her up by the shoulders, forcing her to meet his frantic gaze. “You’ve got to do whatever I say, gal. Swear you will.” When she just gaped at him in dumb surprise, he gave her a slight shake. “Swear it, Esmerelda. Your life may depend on it.”

It wasn’t the strength of his grip that swayed her, but the desperation in his smoky green eyes. In that one elusive moment, Esmerelda would have promised him anything.

At her tremulous nod, he reached over into the bed of the wagon and snatched down a length of rope. Before Esmerelda could so much as murmur a protest, he had the thick length of hemp twined around her wrists. He jerked a knot in it, binding her hands in front of her.

“What in heaven’s name do you think you’re doing, sir? I never intended—”

“You promised,” he reminded her sternly.

“I don’t care what I promised! You have no right—”

“Shhhhh.” He laid a finger across her lips, stilling them in midsputter. Their tense silence only emphasized the sound of his brothers stampeding across the canyon like a herd of drunken steers. Billy shook his head at her, his gaze softened by tender regret. “If you don’t hush, sweetheart, I’m afraid I’ll have to gag you.”

“But I—”

As quick as that, Billy plucked the lace handkerchief from the breast pocket of her basque and stuffed it into her mouth. If she hadn’t still been reeling from shock, she might have been able to spit out the wad of cloth before he secured it with the dusty bandanna he’d been wearing around his neck.

As he knotted the bandanna at her nape, his warm breath stirred her hair. “You’ll thank me for this later,” he whispered, causing her skin to tingle with an awareness that had as much to do with his absolute power over her as her sudden helplessness.

She was left with no recourse but to stamp her feet in outrage and emit a muffled shriek.

He circled back to the front of her, a crooked grin tugging at his lips. “That’s perfect, angel. Pretend you hate me.”

Even through the gag, it was possible to make out Esmerelda’s mumbled “I do hachoo.”

His brothers were nearly upon them now. Billy studied her through narrowed eyes. “Your color’s sure high enough, but we might need to make a few minor adjustments.”

She glared daggers at him as he dragged off her poor beleaguered bonnet and carelessly tossed it aside. He plucked out her hairpins and raked his fingers through her coronet of braids, sending her hair spilling in a wanton tumble around her shoulders. As galling as that assault upon her person was, it was nothing compared to the shock of his lean fingers dancing down the high-necked collar of her basque. His deft skill with the tiny hooks only served to remind her that he’d probably had more experience undressing women than she had.

He didn’t falter until the back of his hand brushed the naked swell of her breast, betraying the fact that she wasn’t wearing a camisole, corset, or much of anything else, beneath the basque. His gaze flew to her face. Esmerelda felt a perverse flare of triumph at his stunned expression, his quick, indrawn breath.

His knuckles lingered against her skin in a motion too uncalculated to be called a caress. Yet it shivered Esmerelda to the bone. As their eyes met, the distant roaring in her ears drowned out everything but the harsh rasp of his breathing and the wild throb of her pulse.

“Where the hell you hidin‘, Billy? Ain’t you glad to see us?”

The nearby shout startled both of them out of their reverie. A fierce scowl shadowed Billy’s brow. His fingers flew back up her basque, hooking with even more haste than they’d unhooked only seconds before.

“We want you to look ravished, not ravishing,” he muttered between clenched teeth, securing the hook beneath her chin with such enthusiasm she feared she might choke to death. “And try to look terrified,” he commanded as the hoots and curses swelled to near deafening volume.

Esmerelda didn’t have to fake it as he grabbed her by the elbow and shoved her ahead of him. But her worst fears were never realized. Before the scream building in her throat could escape the gag, Billy was snatched away from her and enveloped by a howling, back-thumping circle of men. One of them yodeled a rebel yell while another fired a volley of reckless shots into the air. They all reeked of whiskey, making it easy to understand why none of their shots had struck true.

Esmerelda stumbled to a halt, standing forgotten and invisible on the fringes of their reunion. The moon drifted over the lip of the canyon, giving her her first clear look at the notorious Darling gang.

The largest of the four men, a burly giant of at least six feet six, slapped Billy on the back hard enough to stagger him, then swept him up in a bear hug and swung him in a wide circle. “I knew that had to be you. Nobody but my baby brother could make a shot like that.”

From the shocks of gray at the man’s temples, Esmerelda deduced he must also be the oldest Darling. She might have been touched by the genuine affection in his embrace if Billy hadn’t hung so stiffly in his arms.

He finally managed to struggle free, his nostrils flaring with distaste. “Hell, Virgil, with all the stagecoaches you’ve been knocking off, you could at least spare a nickel for a bath and a shave.”

Virgil threw back his head and roared with laughter, his white teeth gleaming through his sandy beard in a wolfish grin. Even Esmerelda had to admit he was handsome, in a brutish sort of way. “Now, Billy, you know Jasper’s always been the pretty boy in the family. Shaves twice a day. Splashes on so much lilac water he ends up smelling like a two-dollar whore.”

“Better a whore than a hog,” retorted the man Esmerelda assumed must be Jasper.

His jibe initiated a brief shoving match with Virgil.

Esmerelda cringed, fearing the two towering men were going to come to fisticuffs.

But Billy pushed his way between them without betraying an ounce of apprehension. “I wouldn’t care to be downwind of either one of you.”

Jasper knocked off Billy’s hat and ruffled his tawny hair. “Where you been hidin‘, little brother? If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you been avoidin’ your own kin. Your very own flesh and blood.”

A shudder rippled through Billy as he retrieved his hat and dusted it off, too faint to be noted by anyone but Esmerelda. He was spared from answering by Sadie, who bounded out of the wagon and began to sniff at Jasper’s feet.

“Still got that mangy old mutt of mine, I see,” Jasper said, nudging her away with the toe of his boot. “The bitch is too old to hunt or breed. I still don’t know why you stopped me from shootin‘ her that time.”

“Because I didn’t want to have to kill you,” Billy replied darkly.

As the two men stood glowering at each other, toe-to-toe and nose-to-nose, it was Virgil’s turn to step in and avert a potential altercation. “Our little brother here has been one very busy feller,” he said, turning to one of the two men lurking behind them. “Enos, where’s that paper I gave you for safekeeping?”

Beneath his straggly hair and ragged yellow whiskers, Enos looked washed out, like a smeared charcoal draft of his older brothers. He blinked his red-rimmed eyes, shook his head, and jerked a thumb toward the nearly identical man who slumped next to him. “W-w-weren’t mine to keep. No, ”s-siree. You give it to Sam.“

Sam looked blank for a moment, then fished a folded square of paper from his dusty chaps. He handed it to Enos who handed it to Jasper who handed it to Virgil.

Virgil shook it open with all the pomp of a governor making a formal declaration. Even from where she stood, Esmerelda recognized the sketch in his hand. She’d studied it with her eyes a thousand times, traced it with her finger until it haunted her every dream.

It was the poster branding Billy Darling a wanted man.

Virgil studied the poster, then scowled down at Billy. “I had hoped for better, son. I’m disappointed in you. What would Ma say?”

At the mention of their mother, all the brothers except Billy sighed in unison, then drew off their hats and pressed them over their hearts.

After a moment of respectful silence, Virgil slapped his hat back on and winked at Jasper. “Ah, who cares what Ma would say? I say it took him too dadburned long to get his picture in the family album.”

“Amen!” the others chorused, surrounding their prodigal brother for yet another round of hugs and backslapping.

When Esmerelda realized they were congratulating Billy for being wanted for murder, she was appalled by their bloodthirstiness. But she was even more appalled by the cocky grin Billy wore as he accepted their gruff accolades. It chilled her to realize how much trust she had placed in a man who was little more than a stranger to her. As he basked in his brothers’ fellowship, she recoiled without realizing it, taking several steps backward.

The motion caught Jasper’s eye. As his gaze traveled from her scuffed kid boots to her bound hands to her tousled hair, a smile slowly spread across his handsome face. “What’s this, Billy? You bring us a present?”

With his clean-shaven jaw and lanky grace, Jasper resembled Billy more than any of his brothers. His lips had been cut from the same sensual mold, but his crooked grin was a sinister shadow of Billy’s smile.

Esmerelda took another step backward, alarmed by the sadistic glint in his eyes. As her gaze traveled between the two men—so alike, yet so different—she realized that what she’d mistaken for cruelty in Billy’s eyes was nothing more than wariness. A wariness that deepened in their narrowed depths as he deliberately stepped in front of Jasper and swaggered over to her.

He snaked one arm around her waist and drew her against him. When she squirmed in protest, he snuggled the top of her head beneath his chin. “Sorry, boys, but this one’s all mine. I thought I’d have a little fun with her, then sell her to the Comancheros for a profit.”

An involuntary shudder coursed down Esmerelda’s spine. Even she had heard of the Comancheros—renegade bands of Comanches, Mexicans, and outlaws who traded guns, liquor, and women up and down the Mexican border. An unspeakable fate awaited any woman who fell into their brutal hands.

Billy must have felt her quiver, because he gave her waist a hard squeeze. She might have been more comforted if she’d known whether it was intended to restrain or reassure. His own muscles were as taut as a rope stretched to the point of fraying.

“Aw, hell, Billy, don’t be so selfish,” Jasper whined. His greedy gaze dropped to her bosom. Although her basque was hooked all the way to her chin, Esmerelda felt even more exposed than she had when Billy’s knuckles had grazed the swell of her naked breast. "She's a little mite, but there’s more than enough to go around.”

Virgil’s tongue flicked out to wet his lips. "Jasper's right. I ain’t had me a woman in nigh on a week.”

“She shore is a p-purty little thing,” Enos shyly added.

Sam nodded. “I bet she smells real nice.”

Billy kept his voice soft and amiable. “If you re inclined to scrap over a woman, Samuel, then we will. But I’d have thought you’d have grown attached to that ear I left you with the last time we scrapped.”

Ducking his head to hide a pout, Sam tugged his hat down over his ears. Or what was left of them. The gag smothered Esmerelda’s horrified gasp.

Virgil and Jasper weren’t so easily discouraged. They exchanged a sly glance, then began to ease away from each other, plainly intending to circle around and flank them.

Tension charged the air, making Esmerelda’s nape tingle with apprehension. Her stomach churned with dread at the thought of their foul breath in her face and their filthy hands on her body. Billy no longer had to restrain her. She pressed herself against his lean, muscular body, instinctively seeking refuge.

“Don’t pay him no mind, Sam,” Jasper said, hooking his thumbs in the waistband of his chaps. “Billy’s just bein‘ stingy. He always was a mama’s boy.”

Billy’s good-natured laugh masked the sound of his pistol sliding out of its holster. When it appeared in his hand, all four of his brothers stumbled backward, their hands on the grips of their own pistols. But not one of them dared to draw.

A strange thrill of exhilaration shot through Esmerelda’s veins as she realized that Billy wasn’t afraid of his brothers. He never had been. He was only afraid for her.

Her discovery didn’t lessen the shock of his pistol barrel grazing her temple. Her breath caught in her throat as Billy dragged the weapon down her cheek, then used the muzzle to tenderly tip her chin up so he could caress the vulnerable skin beneath her jaw. The cool, hard metal provided a stark contrast to the tensile heat of his hips pressed against her backside.

He slid the barrel down her throat and between her breasts, marking his territory, branding her as his own before his brothers and all the world.

He waited until he had every ounce of their slack-jawed attention before gently drawling, “You’re right about one thing, Jasper. I never did like to share what was mine.”

Esmerelda shivered. With the smoky rasp of his voice in her ear and the barrel of his pistol cradled between her breasts, it was nearly impossible to remember that he was only bluffing. Wasn’t he?

Virgil was the first one to raise his hands in surrender. Sam and Enos immediately followed suit. Only Jasper kept his hand hovering near his holster.

Billy ignored him. “If you gentlemen will be kind enough to excuse us, I believe the lady and I will retire to the grove of mesquite on top of that bluff for a spell. We would appreciate a little privacy.” He accented his request by easing her hair aside and nuzzling her throat with his lips; the fresh shock of his warm, moist mouth against her skin made her knees buckle.

Taking advantage of her weakness, he began to waltz her backward, the pistol still gripped in his hand. “Oh, and Jasper, I’d be much obliged if you could fetch my mare. Your poor shooting gave her an awful fright.”

Jasper’s lips twitched in a feral snarl, but his hand remained frozen over his gun.

Virgil gave him a shove. “You heard the man, Jasper. Go fetch his horse.”

Jasper shook off his brother’s hand, then went plunging into the darkness, a vicious oath escaping his lips. Only then did Billy holster his gun. Enos and Sam slumped in relief.

As they passed the buckboard, Billy reached into the bed of the wagon with his free hand and snagged a bedroll.

Virgil rested his balled fists on his hips. “If you need a hand with her, just give a holler. We’d be more than obliged to help.”

“That’s a right kindly offer, but I do believe I can manage.”

As he dragged her up the rise toward the mesquite grove on top of the bluff, Billy’s grip was so implacable that Esmerelda couldn’t help kicking her feet and choking out a whimper of protest. Had he rescued her or betrayed her? Was he the same man who had caught her when she swooned and tenderly cradled her in his arms, or a ruthless stranger who had every intention of carrying out his implied threat?

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Before they could reach the tenuous privacy of the mesquites, Billy had a hellcat in his arms. Even with her hands bound, Esmerelda managed to twist around and club him in the chest. Her feet beat a savage tattoo against his shins. He cast a frantic glance backward to make sure they were out of his brothers’ sight before hefting her over his shoulder where he hoped she could do less harm.

Her linked fists slammed into his kidney, making him bite off a heartfelt oath. He anchored her bottom with one hand, unfurled the bedroll with the other, then dumped her unceremoniously on top of the coarse woolen blanket.

Billy followed her down, thinking only to bury his laughter in the sweet-smelling spill of her hair. “That was quite a performance, honey. I doubt Sagebrush Sally down at the old Divine Theater in Santa Fe could have done any finer.”

When her passionate squirming failed to subside, he lifted his head. His grin slowly faded as he realized her struggles were genuine—as genuine as the panic gleaming in her eyes.

“Aw, hell,” he breathed. He’d spent too much of his life raging at his own helplessness not to recognize the signs in someone else.

“Hang on, sweetheart. Just hang on,” he murmured as he reached around and began to tear at the knot binding Esmerelda’s wrists.

As soon as she was free, she swung on him, her fist connecting soundly with his jaw. He took one or two of her clumsy blows, figuring she owed him that much, before recapturing her slender wrists in one of his hands and pinning them above her head.

He allowed her to buck and heave until she realized she wasn’t going anywhere with six feet two inches of well-muscled male lying on top of her. Only then did her struggles subside. Only then did her eyes focus, glaring furiously at him over the gag.

Wisely keeping his fingers out of biting range, he loosened the bandanna and tugged the damp handkerchief from her mouth. Her breath escaped in a furious sob. Billy nearly smiled, pleased somehow that even now, she was more riled than afraid.

“How dare you take such frightful liberties with my person?” she hissed, bright enough even in a temper to realize that his brothers might very well be lurking just below the bluff, their ears pricked to hear their every word.

“I didn’t have any choice,” he hissed back. “I had to stake my claim on you before one of my brothers decided to.”

“Why couldn’t you simply explain to them that you were in my employ?”

He snorted. “Trust me. They wouldn’t have been impressed. The very idea of one of their own working for a woman would have only made them itch to put her in her place.”

“Which is?”

Billy briefly considered glossing over the truth, but decided it would do her far more harm to underestimate his brothers than to think the worst of him. He met her eyes squarely. “Flat on her back with her skirts up and her drawers down.”

Esmerelda’s mouth fell open, then snapped shut, as if she’d suddenly realized how perilously close she was to that exact posture. Her body quivered beneath his, but her whisper was steady. “Your brothers may be afraid of you, Mr. Darling, but I, most certainly, am not.”

Sobered by her lie, Billy said, “I never wanted you to be. And I had no choice but to make my brothers afraid of me. From the moment I was born, they were bigger than me, stronger than me, and meaner than me. If I wanted to survive, I had to prove I was smarter, crazier, and a better shot.”

“Is that why you shot off your own brother’s ear?”

Billy frowned, baffled by her assumption. “I never shot off anybody’s ear. I was only ten the last time Samuel and I scrapped.” At her relieved sigh, his frown curled into a wicked grin. “I bit it off.”

Esmerelda recoiled from his bared teeth, as if afraid he just might bite her, too. It wasn’t as if he wouldn’t like to, Billy thought, remembering the moment when he’d pressed his open mouth to her throat. By rights, she should have tasted like sweat and trail dust, but her flavor lingered on his lips, sweeter than anything he’d sampled for a very long time. Sweeter even than the ripe, juicy peaches she smelled like. It made him wonder what she might taste like in other places. Made him want to do something even more foolish than biting her, like stealing a taste of those tender lips trembling only a breath away from his own.

Stung by the raw power of the temptation, he released her wrists and rolled off of her.

He half expected her to strike out at him again, but she took advantage of her freedom to scramble to her feet. He caught her wrist before she could take a single step.

“Let me go!” she whispered between clenched teeth, attempting to twist out of his grasp.

“Not until I make sure you’re not thinking about bolting out of here and tempting one of my brothers to put a bullet in your back.”

Esmerelda sank down in a puddle of skirts, her sullen pout informing him that was precisely what she’d been thinking.

She made a great show of searching her wrists for bruises, frowning with disappointment when she didn’t find any. “I hate to be rude, Mr. Darling, but I really don’t care much for those brothers of yours.”

He shrugged, hoping the casual gesture didn’t reveal more than it hid. “They weren’t always so bad. Prone to mischief as most boys are, I suppose. If it hadn’t been for the war, they’d have probably raised a little hell, then settled down with the first farmer’s daughter they got with child. Provided her pa wanted a wedding and a son-in-law more than a funeral and a bastard, that is.” Esmerelda’s shocked expression stopped him from telling her that would have probably been his fate as well. “But riding with Quantrill and Anderson changed them—cut a mean stripe in their hides that’s been festering ever since.”

She shivered and began to toy with the pleats of her skirt, avoiding his eyes. “What would you have done if they’d have called your bluff tonight when you drew your pistol? If Virgil had rushed you or Jasper had drawn his own gun?“

Billy’s jaw tightened as he remembered how Jasper had ogled her breasts, the greedy way Virgil’s tongue had snaked out to wet his lips, as if she was nothing more than a cheap piece of horehound candy to be devoured in one brutal bite.

“I’d have pulled the trigger,” he said flatly, surprised to realize he meant it.

Her head whipped up before he could wipe the murderous expression off his face. Her brown eyes shimmered with a curious mix of disbelief and wonder. “You’d have shot one of your own brothers. For me?”

Billy was as staggered as she was by the depth of his urge to protect her. He never could stand to see anyone bully a woman. Which was exactly why Miss Mellie and the girls had been so delighted to have him living in their attic. His presence alone discouraged most of their rougher customers. But what he felt as he gazed into Esmerelda’s eyes was something more primitive. And far more dangerous. Especially for a man with his temper.

Although the shape no longer felt natural, Billy forced his mouth into a mocking smile. “I’d have done the same for any lady,” he assured her, though he wasn’t at all sure he would.

He would have almost sworn he glimpsed a hint of disappointment in her eyes, but before he could be sure, she bowed her head, hiding her face behind a curtain of hair. “How very gallant of you, Mr. Darling.”

“Billy,” he whispered, tipping her chin up so he could search her eyes.

“Hey, Billy!" Virgil's booming voice sent a violent start through Esmerelda. “It’s awful quiet up there, son. You need me to come up and remind you how to make a woman squeal?”

Billy touched a warning finger to Esmerelda’s lips before calling out, “Don’t bother, Virg. I remember more about making a woman squeal than you ever learned.”

A derisive hoot of laughter greeted his retort. Exchanging a wary glance, he and Esmerelda crawled forward on their stomachs and elbows to peer down into the canyon. The faint glow of a fire and the clink of a bottle being passed from hand to hand warned them that their worst fear had been realized. His brothers had camped in the small valley just below the bluff.

“Damn,” he whispered. “I was afraid of this. They’re not going to give us a moment’s peace until we give them a taste of what they’re hungry for.”

“How about some arsenic?” Esmerelda muttered.

Billy bit back a grin. “A little noise should satisfy them for a while.”

“Noise?” she echoed, turning her head to blink at him.

He cleared his throat, wondering why it had suddenly gotten so hard to swallow. “You know—a few whimpers, a couple of moans, maybe a grunt or two thrown in to make it convincing.”

Even though they were both lying prone, Esmerelda still managed to look down her nose at him. “I do not grunt, Mr. Darling.”

Although she seemed merely bemused by his request, Billy realized with horror that he was on the verge of blushing like a virgin. He rubbed the back of his neck and clenched his teeth. “If you could just make the sort of sound a woman makes when a man comes into her…”

Esmerelda looked so blank that Billy decided she was either utterly innocent or a much more cunning actress than he’d suspected. Then her cheeks burst into crimson flames. “Oh! You mean the sort of noises that woman was making back at the… the…”

“Whorehouse,” he drawled, beginning to enjoy the game now that he was holding the winning hand. “Yeah, like maybe you don’t like what I’m doing to you at first, but then I make you like it even if you don’t want to.”

He half expected her to slap him for his insolence, but she surprised him by rolling over on the blanket and pressing the back of her hand to her brow.

She remained in that dramatic posture for several minutes before lowering her hand and fixing him with a stern look. “Close your eyes, sir.”

He pretended to comply, using the asinine eyelashes his brothers had always teased him so mercilessly about for the only thing they were good for.

“And no peeking!”

He swore beneath his breath, but obeyed in earnest this time. Until Esmerelda’s first breathy whimper sent a prickle of awareness dancing across his flesh.

His eyes flew open. Esmerelda lay on her back in the moonlight with her eyes pressed shut. Longing and pain flickered across her features in a wistful duet. Her lips were no longer pressed together in prim disapproval, but parted to release throaty little gasps that soon had his own breath coming in feral pants.

Billy gaped in unabashed fascination as her whimpers deepened to a full-bodied moan, earthy and wildly stirring in its power. The dead silence drifting up from below warned him that his brothers must be similarly captivated. He could almost see them there in the firelight, their eyes glazed with lust, a forgotten mouthful of whisky dribbling down their chins.

Esmerelda arched her throat; her small, firm breasts strained against her bodice, a tantalizing reminder that there were no barriers of lace or linen between flesh and fabric. All he had to do was lean over and flick open one hook, then another…

He knocked off his hat and groped for his bandanna to mop away the beads of sweat forming on his brow. In the months that he’d slept in the attic at Miss Mellie’s, the moans and grunts of pleasure being given and received had ceased to move him. Especially since he knew most of the girls were faking their cries of ecstasy in the hope that some gratified cowboy might flip an extra nickel on the bed before strutting from the room.

But his body throbbed in time to the irresistible rhythm of Esmerelda’s song. As it reached a crescendo, the ache intensified, growing more bitter than sweet as he realized what its melody signified.

Winstead had been right. Either Bart Fine had taught her how to make those sounds or some other man had. The innocence shimmering in those big brown eyes of hers was an illusion. Just as much of a disguise as the mask an outlaw might wear to rob a bank. Only she wasn’t using it to steal his money, but his heart.

Billy’s keen disappointment did nothing to defuse his lust. He wanted to coax her out of his brothers’ earshot and make her moan in earnest. He wanted her to watch everything he did to her until the sight of his face above her blotted out every memory of the man who had touched her first.

He wiggled forward on his elbows until he was looming directly over her. He didn’t really want to know, but couldn’t resist growling, “What in the hell were you thinking about?”

Esmerelda opened her luminous eyes and smiled up at him, her cheeks flushed with the rosy glow of a woman well satisfied. “A French cream puff.”

Struck mute by her reply, Billy had no choice but to listen to her dreamy recital.

“After Mama and Papa died, I used to pass by this bakery on Beacon Street on the way to the market. Every morning, they’d put the tray of cream puffs in the window, fresh out of the oven. I desperately didn’t want to want one because I knew we didn’t have enough money to waste on such extravagances. But I wanted one anyway.” She sighed wistfully. “I never succumbed to the temptation, but I used to stand there in the cold until my breath fogged the window, imagining what it would feel like to lick away the glaze of honey butter, to sink my teeth into the flaky pastry, to plunge my tongue into the cream-filled center…”

Billy held up a hand to silence her, his groin bound into a knot of sweet agony. If Esmerelda could get that worked up over some imagined indulgence, what might a taste of genuine pleasure do to her? He thought it a damn shame that she’d deprived herself of such a simple delight and spent the rest of her life regretting it. He’d never denied himself any pleasure he wanted.

Until now.

Esmerelda stretched and yawned, looking as drowsy and vulnerable as a woman who had actually experienced the release she’d so cleverly mimicked. “Do you think we fooled your brothers?”

Desperate to escape before she realized she’d made an even bigger fool of him, Billy threw the other half of the blanket over her and climbed to his feet. “I’ll go find out,” he said tersely. “You stay put. Get some rest.”

“Yes, sir,” she replied, touching her brow in a mocking salute.

He started to go, then hesitated and turned back. Esmerelda’s eyes widened as he slipped her derringer out of his boot and tossed it on top of the blanket. “It’s loaded.

Shoot the first man who lays a hand on you in a disrespectful manner.“

“Even if it’s you?”

He didn’t return her wry smile. “Especially if it’s me.”

As Billy stumbled down the path wind and time had carved into the canyon wall, he ruffled his hair and unfastened the first two buttons of his Levi’s. He was thankful both his brothers’ wits and their vision had been addled by whiskey. If any one of them gave him more than half a glance, they would realize his hunger had been in no way satisfied by his tryst with Esmerelda. On the contrary, he was as hard and thick as a bundle of dynamite awaiting the kiss of flame to its fuse.

He swore, but the eloquent oath failed to give him its usual satisfaction.

As he approached the campfire, he shifted his walk into the deliberate swagger of a man who’d just proved his prowess to a woman for all the world to hear.

Virgil presided over the fire like a tribal king, puffing on a cigar Billy recognized as being stolen from his saddlebag. Jasper reclined on one elbow, nursing a fresh bottle of rotgut. His smoldering glare warned Billy that he was still sulking over their earlier confrontation. Sam was tearing at a ragged hunk of jerky with his yellowing teeth while Enos sat next to Sadie, absently fondling the basset hound’s floppy ears. Her tail twitched a lazy welcome at the sight of her master. The aroma of canned beans wafted up from an iron pot dangling over the fire.

Virgil winked at Billy, his booming voice softened by mock concern. “I hope she was gentle with you, son. You did tell her she was your first, didn’t you?”

Billy tucked his thumbs in his gunbelt and forced a grin, hoping it didn’t look as sick as it felt. “She must have been your first, Virg, because she swore I was the best she ever had.”

Virgil’s roar of laughter did nothing to lighten Jasper’s black expression. He took another swig of the whiskey and cast the bluff above them a contemptuous look. “I bet I could give the little whore a ride she’d never forget.”

A scarlet haze descended over Billy’s eyes, blinding him with rage. He took a step forward, fully intending to launch himself across the fire and wipe the sneer off his brother’s pretty face with his fists. But that was before he remembered that Jasper was only believing exactly what he’d wanted him to believe.

His amiable smile still couldn’t completely buff the dangerous edge from his voice. “That might be true, Jasper, but it’d be the last ride you ever took. Last time I checked, horse thieving was a hanging offense.”

Still spoiling for a fight, Jasper started to rise, but Virgil clapped a hand on his shoulder. “No need to scrap, son. I’m sure Billy only meant to say you were hung like a horse.”

Enos and Sam stuttered out a nervous laugh while Virgil pried the whiskey bottle out of Jasper’s clenched hand and offered it to Billy, along with one of Billy’s own cigars. Jasper might be the brains of the gang, but Virgil had always been the muscle.

Billy accepted his brother’s peace offering and sank down on the opposite side of the fire. Still acutely aware of Jasper’s glare, he made a great show of wiping the mouth of the bottle on his sleeve before lifting it to his lips for a desperately needed swig. He had hoped the rotgut would sear Esmerelda’s taste from his mouth, but it only intensified the yearning ache in his belly.

While he struck a match and lit the cigar, Sam finished off the jerky with an audible gulp and shot Sadie a predatory glance. “I shore is hungry. A fellow can grow mightily sick of canned beans and prairie dog.”

Billy patted his thigh. Sadie ducked out from under Enos’s hand and waddled to his side. He rewarded her for her obedience by gently stroking her grizzled muzzle. “I can assure you, Samuel, that my Sadie ain’t near as tasty as those tender little ears of yours.”

Sam sheepishly jerked down his hat and helped himself to a ladle of steaming beans.

Billy hid his smile behind a long draw on the cigar and another swig of whiskey. “Where you boys headed? I figured you’d be off somewhere raising hell instead of stuck out here in the middle of it.”

Enos opened his mouth, but Virgil’s booming voice drowned him out. “We been thinkin‘ about headin’ south. To Mexico City.”

Billy’s spirits soared. Blood might make them brothers, but the badge tucked into his shirt pocket would make them mortal enemies. He’d love to see them well on their way to Mexico before he was forced to make use of it.

“A wise choice,” he said. “I hear there are opportunities to be seized and fortunes to be made in Mexico City for enterprising young gentlemen such as yourself.”

Virgil and Jasper exchanged a furtive glance, but it was Enos who piped up. “We ain’t g-g-goin‘ to Mexico just yet. We’re on our way to Eulalie first.”

“Eulalie?” Billy echoed. He caught the smoldering cigar before it could tumble out of his slack mouth into his lap and disguised his blossoming dread with a bark of laughter. “Why Eulalie? I’ve always heard the only thing uglier than the town is the women who live there.”

This time it was Virgil who opened his mouth and Enos’s high-pitched giggle that drowned him out. “Why, we’re g-goin‘ to Eulalie to rob us a b-b-bank!”

CHAPTER TWELVE

When Esmerelda awoke, the heat had yet to tighten its relentless grip on the day. She sat up and pushed the blanket aside, indulging in a languid stretch. An arid morning breeze caressed her hair.

She smiled to find Sadie curled into a shapeless lump at her feet. If the dog hadn’t wheezed out a melancholy sigh, Esmerelda would have been tempted to pry open one droopy eyelid and make sure she was still alive. Bemused, Esmerelda shook her head. Who would have thought she would sleep so soundly wrapped in a coarse blanket on a sandy rock next to a snoring hound with four incorrigible outlaws camped only a stone’s throw away?

But as her gaze fell on the man sleeping across from her, she understood why.

Her guardian sat with his back against a rock and his hands curled around the stock of the Winchester laid across his knees. His position had to be painfully uncomfortable. He must have nodded off only after a long and harrowing battle with exhaustion.

Esmerelda found Billy’s vigilance oddly irresistible. She’d forgotten what a luxury it was to sleep while someone else kept watch against the night.

Rising to her knees, she crept closer, eager to study him without the shield of his hat. Even in sleep, his was the wary face of a man who had known too little tenderness in his life, too many stolen kisses and bought caresses. His most recent wounds were already fading, but he still bore the scars of past battles, both won and lost.

A thin white knife scar bisected his right eyebrow, ebbing to insignificance dangerously near to his eye. A matching one marred his stubborn chin. His nose had been broken more than once. Esmerelda pondered it from all angles before deciding that she fancied it. It kept him from being too pretty, like Jasper. The harsh New Mexico sun had etched permanent creases around his mouth and eyes, but the tumble of his hair made him look younger than his years—boyish, yet every inch a man.

Caught off guard by a swell of tenderness, Esmerelda gave in to a temptation she had managed to resist ever since Bartholomew had grown old enough to roll his eyes, shove her hand away, and accuse her of mothering him. She reached over and gently brushed back the lock of hair that had fallen across Billy’s brow.

He came awake at the first touch of her fingertips, swinging the rifle around to point the barrel at her breast.

Esmerelda slowly raised both hands in the air, just as she’d seen his brothers do the night before. “Don’t shoot me. I surrender.”

Although she uttered the words in innocent fun, the intensity of his smoky gaze seemed to imbue them with another meaning altogether, leaving her to breathlessly wonder what it might be like to surrender to a man like him. To lay down her own carefully chosen weapons and trust her lips, her will, her very heart into his keeping.

Sanity came rushing back with her next uneven breath. She nodded toward the gun. “I surrendered without a struggle. Isn’t that your cue to put down the rifle?”

Billy lowered the gun and rubbed a hand over the thickening stubble on his jaw. “I ought to shoot you anyway. Didn’t your mama teach you never to sneak up on a man with a loaded gun?”

Esmerelda managed a shaky laugh. “She probably didn’t realize it was a social skill I would have need of. She was too intent on teaching me how to fold supper napkins, monogram handkerchiefs, and darn my father’s socks.”

Skills that had proved utterly useless once Esmerelda had been forced to accept that she would never have a husband or children of her own.

Discomfited at having revealed so much, she scowled at Billy. “Do you always wake up this grumpy?”

He swayed forward like a rattler poised to strike. “Wouldn’t you like to find out?”

Stiffening, Esmerelda swayed backward. “Perhaps grumpy was too kind a description. Insufferable might be more appropriate.”

He snorted. “You’d be insufferable, too, if you had to stay up half the night making sure my brothers didn’t roast Sadie on the spit.”

“You should have let them eat the mule.” He gave her a dark look before climbing to his feet. As he rolled back his shoulders to work the stiffness from them, his muscles strained against the worn fabric of his shirt. Raking a hand through his hair, he went to the edge of the bluff and stared out over the canyon with eyes that were red-rimmed from what Esmerelda suspected was too little sleep and too much strong drink. Desperation haunted his features, making him look even more dangerous and unpredictable than he had in the saloon where she had found him. A coarse oath and the aroma of brewing coffee drifted up from the canyon below, warning them that his brothers were already awake and stirring.

Esmerelda shuddered, chilled anew to remember the fate she had so narrowly escaped. Billy could growl and bluster all he wanted, but she knew very well that he hadn’t forfeited his sleep to protect Sadie. She gazed up at his inscrutable profile, overcome by sudden shyness.

“Mr. Darling?” In the crisp, clear light of day, she couldn’t quite bring herself to call him by his Christian name.

He swung around, reluctance plain in the stiff motion.

She forced herself to meet his eyes. “Thank you for looking after me last night.”

“Just doing my job, Duchess.” Although his voice was as mocking as ever, his eyes had lost their teasing sparkle. His level gaze made her skin prickle with a curious combination of apprehension and anticipation. “After all, that is what you’re going to be paying me for.”

Before she could break the strange spell his words had cast, a shrill wail shattered the tranquility of the morning. Sadie bounded to her feet and threw back her head, her baying only adding to the dreadful racket.

Billy’s eyes narrowed in bewilderment. “What the hell…?”

Esmerelda clapped her hands over her ears in a vain attempt to dull the piercing screech. “Sweet God in heaven, it sounds like they’re torturing a cat…” Her eyes widened in horror as comprehension dawned. “A cat!”

Her dismay shifting to fury, she snatched up the derringer from the folds of the blanket and went scrambling down the slope, leaving Billy to gape after her in stunned disbelief.

By the time Billy managed to shake off his shock and race down the slope with Sadie loping along behind him, Esmerelda was already holding the entire Darling gang at gunpoint.

They stood in a frozen tableau, caught red-handed rifling through the belongings in her overturned trunk. Jasper held an unstoppered scent bottle beneath his nose while Virgil clutched a pair of ruffled pantalettes to his burly chest, his face rapidly purpling from the cigar smoke he was afraid to exhale. Billy narrowed his eyes at the sight of Virgil’s meaty hands fondling Esmerelda’s drawers. His reluctance to stain the delicate fabric was the only thing that stopped him from drawing his own pistol and shooting his brother down in cold blood.

Esmerelda’s wrath was directed toward the man with her violin tucked beneath his quivering chin. He held the bow captive in his other hand, poised to assault the strings and evoke another of those piteous screeches for deliverance.

Esmerelda’s voice rang like a mission bell in the morning stillness. “Take your filthy hands off my mother’s violin.” She drew back the hammer of the derringer. “I’m not bluffing, Samuel Darling. Unhand that instrument or I’ll shoot you. I swear I will.”

Her target gulped hard enough to make his Adam’s apple bob in his skinny throat. “I ain’t Sam, m-m-a’am. I’m Enos.” He jabbed the bow toward the man buried up to his elbows in a pile of petticoats. “H-h-he’s Sam.”

Esmerelda’s gaze darted between the two men as she considered that revelation. “Then I’ll shoot the both of you.” Her eyes narrowed to menacing slits. “Or maybe I’ll just shoot off one of your ears, Enos, so no one else will be able to tell the two of you apart.”

Enos’s yellow teeth began to chatter. Billy could hardly blame his brothers for being cowed. With her cheeks flushed with rage and her hair whipping around her shoulders in a cinnamon froth, Esmerelda looked nothing like the meek captive he’d led them to believe she was. The regal sneer curling her lips was more suited to a queen than a duchess.

With an unexpected thrill of pride, Billy thought how pretty she was when she was riled. Nothing this side of Abilene rivaled the sight of Esmerelda Fine in a temper.

Virgil wheezed, puffing a stream of smoke out of his nostrils like a consumptive locomotive. Jasper’s free hand inched toward his gunbelt.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Billy drawled, folding his arms over his chest. “The little gal’s got a right twitchy trigger finger and a deadly aim. She almost shot me clean through the heart the first time we met, and us not even properly introduced.”

Esmerelda tossed him a startled look, but he couldn’t tell if she was surprised by his presence or his praise. He winked at her, rattling her composure enough to make the derringer waver.

Fortunately, Enos was already holding out the violin. “I didn’t mean no h-h-harm, ma’am. I’ve just always been right partial to fiddle music.”

Mollified by his polite surrender, Esmerelda laid the derringer in Billy’s outstretched hand and rescued the violin. Oblivious to his brothers’ hungry inspection of her shapely calves and trim ankles, she tenderly polished Enos’s greasy fingerprints off the rich wood with the ruffled hem of her petticoat.

Targeting the brother with the nastiest leer, Billy snarled, “Give the lady her perfume, Jasper.”

Jasper stole another whiff from the bottle. “Hell, this ain’t no perfume. It’s peach extract.” His scowl curved into a grin as he elbowed Virgil in the ribs. “No wonder she smells good enough to eat.”

Billy’s trigger finger twitched again. What in the hell was wrong with him? He couldn’t very well shoot a man for saying exactly what he’d been thinking.

Esmerelda surprised him by marching right over and plucking the bottle from his brother’s hands. Even the arrogant Jasper looked chilled by the brittle insincerity of her smile. “Unlike you and your brothers, sir, I have to pay for what I want instead of simply taking it from those who are weaker than I. Why should I waste my money on lilac or lavender water when a dab of extract behind each ear will suffice?”

Billy frowned, pained as much by her dignity as her frugality. Hell, a woman like the Duchess deserved more than peach extract to scent her creamy skin. She deserved the most expensive perfume gold could buy, eau de cologne from Paris, frankincense and myrrh.

As Esmerelda snatched her drawers from Virgil’s hands and moved to stuff them back in the trunk, Enos dogged her every step like a determined pup. “C-c-can you really play that there fiddle, ma’am?”

“I can.”

His nasal voice rose to a wheedling tone Billy recognized only too well. “I do so love f-fiddle music. We all do. I don’t suppose you’d do us the honor of p-p-playin‘ us a tune?”

Alarmed, Billy stepped forward. “I really don’t think that would be a good idea.” If Esmerelda played like she sang, the noise just might incite his brothers to murder.

He was too late. Esmerelda’s cheek had already dimpled in a nattered smile. “Why, I’d be delighted, sir! I had no idea there were music lovers among you. What would you like to hear? ”Amazing Grace‘? “Onward, Christian Soldiers’? Or perhaps ‘The Battle Hymn of the—’ ”

Billy clapped a hand over her mouth, then just as quickly withdrew it when her smoldering glare warned him that he was in imminent danger of drawing back five bloody stubs.

“Any old’t-tune will do,” Enos insisted.

Sam and Virgil shuffled closer, doing a poor job of hiding their eagerness. Jasper struck a match on the sole of his boot and touched the flame to a fresh cigar, but even his indifference seemed forced.

Billy shrugged his defeat. “You know what they say. Music soothes the savage beast.”

“Breast,” Esmerelda automatically corrected, tucking the violin beneath her determined little chin.

Billy squeezed his eyes shut, dreading the moment when that first hideous screech would echo through the canyon.

But when Esmerelda drew the bow across the strings, it was a thousand times worse than he’d anticipated. He’d never heard the like and never hoped to again.

The music flooded both the canyon and Billy’s soul, utterly shattering in its beauty. There was no escaping it. He would hear it even if he clapped his hands over his ears, even if he shouted at her to stop or snatched the violin from her hands and dashed it to pieces against the rocks. The instrument sang with a purity and grace he’d only found before between the pages of a book. It made his throat tighten with a wistful ache—a keen longing for places he would never travel, the man he would never be, a woman he could never love.

Women, he corrected himself fiercely, opening his eyes to glare at Esmerelda. Her own eyes were closed in passionate concentration as she stroked the bow across the strings with the tender ferocity of a lover. Esmerelda Fine might sing like a harpy, but she played the violin like an angel.

The music ended on a plaintive note, leaving a raw scar where it had been.

Virgil and Enos exchanged a bewildered look while Sam scratched his head, obviously straining to be polite. “That there was real purty, ma’am, but it weren’t like no fiddle music I ever heard before. Cain’t you do ‘Goober Peas’ or ’Jim Crack Corn‘?”

Esmerelda frowned, plainly dismayed to have disappointed him. “I should have known you wouldn’t care for Mozart.”

“I’m sure that Mo’s a nice enough f-feller,” Enos said, “but I did have a hankering to hear a few b-b-bars of ‘Two Dead Varmints in the Cotton Patch’.”

Esmerelda glanced at Billy. Despite his savage scowl, her own expression softened to a winsome smile. “Here’s one you boys might know.”

The very first notes sent a shiver of recognition down Billy’s spine. It was “Dixie” as it was meant to be played— simple and sweet, not as a march or a dirge, but as a gentle tribute to innocence lost. One by one, his brothers drew off their hats and stiffened to attention, the ghosts of the boys they had been and the men they might have become transposed over their haggard faces.

As Billy met Esmerelda’s gaze over the graceful dance of the bow, he realized the song wasn’t for them, but for him. She was offering him an apology for any offense he might have taken when they’d discussed the war yesterday.

An apology he couldn’t accept and didn’t deserve. Not when she’d betrayed him by lying about her identity. And not when he had every intention of betraying her as soon as he came face-to-face with the man she had hired him to find.

He reached over and gently laid his fingers across the strings, silencing the song in midnote.

Sam slapped his hat on his knee in disgust. “Now what’d you have to go and do that for?”

Virgil shook his head sadly. “You’d best watch your step, little brother. We’ve killed men for less.”

Deliberately avoiding Esmerelda’s wounded gaze, Billy swung around to face his brothers. “However sweetly the lady plays, we don’t have time to stand around in the sunshine all day listening to a concert. In case you’ve forgotten, we’ve got unfinished business to tend to in Eulalie.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Are your brothers going to help us find Bartholomew?” Esmerelda shouted, tightening her grip on Billy’s waist as he guided his mare through the bustling crowds clogging Eulalie’s main thoroughfare.

“You could say that,” he replied, forced to yell over the shrill jingle of harnesses, the deafening clamor of the crowd, and the constant hammering of new construction. “But it wouldn’t make it true,” he added beneath his breath.

Billy didn’t know what disturbed him the most—the hopeful note in Esmerelda’s voice, the sight of her white-gloved hands folded over his rigid belly, or the torturous softness of her breasts pressed against his back. When Enos had insisted on driving the wagon so she wouldn’t blister her delicate palms tugging on the reins, Billy had had no choice but to invite her to ride with him. He sure as hell didn’t want her bumping thighs with Enos or twining her arms around Jasper’s waist. His brothers had taken care to ride behind them for most of the journey, reluctant to kick dust in Esmerelda’s luminous eyes.

Billy shook his head in disgust. If Sherman had marched on Atlanta with Esmerelda playing “Dixie” on her violin, he could have conquered the city without striking a single match. He’d seen his brothers drink themselves silly on everything from moonshine to furniture varnish, but he never thought he’d see them drunk with adoration. For a fiddle-playing Yankee, no less. Even the jaded Jasper had drawn him aside and offered him a gold pocket watch and a pair of boots freshly pilfered from a dead man, hoping to convince Billy to sell Esmerelda to him instead of to the Comancheros.

As they trotted past the sheriff’s office, Billy gave the bandanna knotted around his throat a nervous tug. It was beginning to feel more and more like a noose.

He’d already cursed Winstead to hell and back for spreading the rumor about the treasury gold spending the night in Eulalie, knowing all the while that he’d do just as well to curse himself. He never could resist a mystery or a pretty face, and it was precisely that failing that had sent him careening down the road from Calamity to disaster.

He swung the horse around a crippled wagon, narrowly missing a burly mule driver who swore and shook his fist at him.

Since his last visit over seven months ago, Eulalie had become a bustling metropolis. A recent silver strike in a nearby mine had brought miners and gamblers stampeding into the sleepy little town hoping to make their fortunes, followed by a stream of prostitutes hoping to earn theirs on their backs.

As they passed a saloon with whoops of drunken laughter and rollicking piano music pouring out of its swinging doors, a colorful flock of half-dressed women hung over the scrolled rail of the second-story balcony.

“Hey, cowboy, you new in town?” crooned a brassy blonde to the top of Billy’s hat. “Why don’t you come on up and let us show you the sights?”

“Why don’t I come up instead?” Virgil bellowed. “They don’t call me his big brother for nothin‘.”

The women trilled an aria of giggles and blew him and Jasper several inviting kisses. Virgil motioned to Enos and Sam, then winked at Billy. “At least this way you’ll know where to find us tonight.”

Billy nodded grimly. The whores stood a better chance of keeping his brothers out of jail for a few hours than he did. He’d managed to convince Virgil and Jasper that it would be best to dynamite the bank’s safe after dark. He hoped to stall them until he’d had a chance to take Bart Fine into custody and clear out of town.

Billy scowled at a vision of Esmerelda wrapped in the scoundrel’s arms. Arranging an untimely accident suddenly didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

As Billy drew Esmerelda off the mare and deposited her on the bench of the buckboard next to Sadie, he discovered that she’d been mercifully deaf to the entire exchange between his brothers and the whores. She was too busy craning her slender neck this way and that, as if she expected the elusive Mr. Fine to come strolling right out of the crowd and into her adoring arms.

As Billy tethered his mare to the back of the wagon, she snapped out of her trance. “Where did your brothers go?”

“To start the search,” he replied, climbing into the buckboard.

She nodded her approval. “We probably ought to check the missions and churches in the area first. If Bartholomew’s been robbed or wounded, he might have sought refuge there.”

Billy snapped the reins on the mule’s back, turning his face away to hide the bitter twist of his lips. She knew as well as he did that his brothers stood a better chance of finding Bart Fine in a whorehouse than a church.

He drew the buckboard to a standstill in front of a handsome structure that still smelled of sawdust and fresh-cut pine. Its gleaming brass lanterns and diamond-paned windows clearly branded the Silver Lining Hotel the finest establishment in town. And why not? Billy thought grimly. The Duchess deserved the best. Especially when it was being paid for with Winstead’s blood money. As cheery and imposing as the building was, Billy knew that it would be as lonely and forsaken as the rest of the town a few months from now when the silver strike played out.

As he untied the mare and unloaded Esmerelda’s belongings, Sadie lumbered down from the wagon, her slack white belly brushing the plank sidewalk.

Esmerelda quickly joined the basset hound, giving the building a skeptical look. “This doesn’t look like a church.”

“That’s because it’s a hotel.” Billy drew several bills from his pocket and pressed them into her hand. "Get us a room. Order yourself a hot meal and a bath. I have some business to tend to.”

Without further explanation, he tipped his hat forward and ducked across the teeming street, leading the mare behind him. He glanced back only once to find Esmerelda and Sadie still standing on the sidewalk, staring forlornly after him.

Esmerelda paced the hotel room, utterly oblivious to its elegant brass appointments and cherrywood four-poster. She had eyes only for the gold-plated watch pinned to her bodice. According to the leisurely crawl of its gilded hands, a scant three minutes had passed since the last time she’d glanced at it. Billy had already been gone over two hours.

“He’s probably halfway to the Mexican border with those outlaw brothers of his by now,” she muttered, casting a rueful glance over her shoulder at Sadie.

The basset hound rested her chins on her paws, her drooping ears making her look even more dejected than Esmerelda felt.

Esmerelda made a nervous circuit around the copper tub that crouched on a braided rug in front of the hearth. As delicious as it had been to scrub the grit from her skin and hair, she hadn’t been able to savor the steaming bath for fear Billy would come strolling in at any minute. When he hadn’t, she’d been too disappointed to enjoy her meal. She could hardly be expected to eat with her stomach coiled into a miserable knot of apprehension. The veal cutlet had sat untouched on a silver tray until she’d thought to offer it to Sadie. The hound had wolfed it down, refusing to let despondency dull her appetite.

Esmerelda touched a hand to her damp chignon, wondering why she’d even bothered to don her finest Sunday-go-to-meeting walking dress and a full complement of underwear. The dress had been an extravagance she had convinced herself was a necessity, since she wanted to look presentable to her pupils’ parents whenever she hosted a recital to show off the talents of their little darlings. The mellow peach hue of the wool nattered her complexion and wove shimmering strands of auburn through her mousy hair.

“I simply want to look my best when Bartholomew and I are reunited,” she told her skeptical reflection in the cheval glass. It had nothing to do with igniting that lazy gleam of appreciation in Billy’s eyes.

Disgusted with herself for lying, she marched to the window and shoved up the sash, hoping to catch a glimpse of a lanky, tawny-headed cowboy weaving his way through the crowds below.

Eulalie might lack the brick streets and ivied grace of Boston, but raw exhilaration perfumed the air. Esmerelda closed her eyes and drank in a deep breath, the mingled scents of sawdust and desert wind stirring her blood in a way the clouds of coal dust hanging over Boston never had.

She was so taken by the sensation that she might not have heard the soft rap on the door if Sadie hadn’t pried open her droopy lids and let out a welcoming “Woof!”

Nearly tripping over the inert hound, Esmerelda tore across the room and eagerly flung open the door.

Her disappointment was so keen she collected only a scattering of impressions: a neatly knotted necktie where a dusty bandanna should have been; a dark suit and double-breasted waistcoat woven of the finest serge; a gleaming pocket watch on a gold fob. A tooled leather gunbelt peeked out from the parted folds of a handsome coat.

Realizing how imprudent she’d been to open the door to a stranger, she barely glanced at his face. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. You must have the wrong room.”

She had already narrowed the opening between door and frame to a mere crack when one shiny black shoe protruded through it. “My deepest apologies, ma’am,” he drawled. “They told me at the desk that this was where the crazy girl from Boston was staying.”

Esmerelda stumbled backward in shock, leaving the door free to swing wide open. Her visitor leaned one brawny shoulder against the doorframe, his gray-green eyes sparkling with pure devilment.

“Mr. Darling?” she croaked.

“Billy,” he gently corrected before sauntering past her.

Esmerelda had never dreamed that Billy’s predatory grace would lend itself to such polished elegance. While he squatted to greet Sadie with a scratch behind the ears, she eased the door shut, struggling to steady both her hands and her rioting emotions.

When she turned to face him, he straightened and drew off his dapper bowler, revealing dark gold hair that had been cropped of some of its natural curl and smoothed close to his head. His face had also been shorn of its rugged stubble, baring the clean masculinity of his features. His jaw was more stern than she’d supposed, which only made his easy grin more beguiling.

Noting the direction of her gaze, he ruefully stroked his chin. “I decided to take the advice I gave Virgil and invest in a nickel bath and shave. It wouldn’t do to roam around town like the spitting image of my Wanted poster. There are too many men out there looking to make an easy dollar.”

“Men like you?” Esmerelda knotted her hands behind her to keep them from reaching up to explore the naked curve of his jaw.

He acknowledged her barb with a mocking nod. “Men like me.”

“Where did you find the suit? I wouldn’t think it would be possible for a tailor to so quickly fit a man of your, um…” Eloquence deserted her as she blinked up at him, feeling like a porcelain doll in his shadow. “… proportions.”

Billy stroked his broad thumbs down the lapels of the coat. “I purchased it from the local undertaker.” Esmerelda took a hasty step backward.

He caught her elbow to steady her. “Don’t worry. The suit’s fresh from a boiling at the Chinese laundry. And he promised me the fellow who owned it before me won’t mind one lick. It’s a trick I learned from Jasper. He buys all his finery there.”

Esmerelda managed a breathless laugh. “Your brother probably gets a discount for providing them with so much business.” Flustered by Billy’s touch, she drew her arm away from his and started for the scarlet cord of the bellpull. “I’ve already eaten,” she lied, “but I’d be delighted to order you some lunch.”

“I can’t stay. I’ve got a job to do.” Esmerelda changed course, heading for the wardrobe where she’d unpacked her scant belongings. “Then I’ll be right with you.” She dropped the room key into her reticule and hooked the tiny purse’s braided cord over her arm. “Just let me find my bonnet and gloves and we can—”

“Not this time, Esmerelda.” She swung around to discover the sparkle in Billy’s eyes had sharpened to a grim glitter. “The streets of a town like this are no place for a woman like you.”

Esmerelda took one step toward him, then another, sensing even as she did so that she was courting a far more devastating danger than any that could be found on the streets of Eulalie. “They are if I have a man like you to protect me.”

Hanging his bowler on the doorknob, Billy took her by the shoulders, not to draw her nearer as she’d both hoped and feared, but to hold her at arm’s length. The intensity of his grip revealed that his charm was nothing more than a thin veneer over some unspoken desperation. “There are some things even I can’t protect you from.”

Instead of shying away as he plainly hoped she would, Esmerelda gently cupped his forearms in her palms and tipped her head back to meet his fevered gaze. “If I believed that, Mr. Darling, I never would have hired you.”

He drew her inexorably nearer, the rasp in his voice deepening to a smoky growl. “And would you still have hired me if I’d demanded payment in advance?”

Before she could catch her breath, Billy sought his answer from her parted lips. Esmerelda expected his kiss to be crude and punishing, but his lips simply grazed hers, as if to steal a taste of some forbidden sweet he desperately craved, yet feared he could never get enough of. Her lips melted beneath that delicious seduction.

Only then did he dip his tongue into the moist hollow of her mouth. Only then did he deepen his demand, urging her own tongue to respond in kind. Desire purled through her blood, thickening to warm nectar in the most scandalous of places.

Billy was no bounty hunter in that moment, but a ruthless outlaw, out to rob her of all she considered worthy and dear—her steadfast devotion to propriety and her stern self-denial. She might have been able to resist him had he sought only to take. But the ferocious tenderness of his kiss promised that he had much to give. More than she had ever dared hope for.

His mouth slanted over hers, one kiss melting inevitably into another. Her fingers crept up to shyly caress the fine hairs at his nape. He smelled nearly as delicious as he tasted—like leather and shaving soap mingled with a tantalizing hint of male musk.

He was the one who ended the kiss. Esmerelda could only cling helplessly to him, thankful for the possessive pressure of his arms around her. She couldn’t have stood on her own had she wanted to. Although she’d never imbibed so much as a drop of cooking sherry, she felt drunk. Drunk from a single sip of pleasure that had only whetted her thirst instead of quenching it.

Billy rubbed his cheek against her hair, taking a ragged breath. “I guess we’ll just have to consider that a little bonus.”

Exhaling just as shakily, Esmerelda rested her cheek against his chest. His heart was pounding just as madly as hers beneath the woven serge of his vest. Her trembling fingers plucked and kneaded the fabric, seized by a foreign longing to caress and explore the warm masculine expanse of skin and muscle underneath.

That was how she discovered the small flaw in the fabric. It lay directly over his heart, nearly invisible to the naked eye. As Esmerelda drew back to finger the neatly mended tear, a chill of foreboding cascaded down her spine.

“Don’t go,” she whispered, the plea coming from some elemental place deep within her. She tipped her head back to gaze into his eyes. Eyes that were heavy-lidded and glittering with desire for her. Esmerelda was shocked to discover in that moment just how far she would be willing to go to keep him safe in her arms. “If you walk out that door without me, I’m afraid you won’t come back.”

He cupped her elbows and gently set her away from him, his grin returning with its old heartbreaking ease. “I have to go. I wouldn’t be much of a tracker if I let myself get distracted by every beautiful duchess who crossed my path.”

Esmerelda realized with a start of alarm that he had taken advantage of her delicious languor to abscond with her reticule. Even as he bestowed that angelic smile upon her, he was fishing through it with methodical deliberation.

“Stay.” Her voice cracked, then faded to a whisper. “If you do, I’ll make it…”

His fingers froze in their task. His smile faded.

Esmerelda closed her eyes, unable to meet his wary gaze while she bartered away the only thing of value left to her. “… worth your while.”

She might have imagined his helpless chuckle, but she didn’t imagine the tender brush of his lips against hers. “You already have, honey. You already have.”

The door slammed. The key turned. Esmerelda opened her eyes to find both Billy and his bowler gone. She rushed to the door and frantically twisted the knob. Just as she feared, he had locked it from the outside, leaving her a helpless captive.

Esmerelda pounded on the door, shouting until she was hoarse. When no one came running to rescue her, she realized that Billy must have peeled some more bills off that fat wad of cash he always carried and paid the hotel manager to ignore her cries.

She collapsed against the door, dizzied by frustration and fear. Dear Lord, what had she done? She might finally find Bartholomew, but at what cost?

She opened her mouth to shout again, then abruptly closed it. Her mama had always taught her that her voice was a precious instrument, never to be strained without good cause. A determined smile slowly curved her lips. Outwitting Billy Darling just might be the best cause of all.

As Billy strode down Main Street, the crowds shied away from him. A well-dressed gentleman wearing wire-rimmed spectacles crossed the street to avoid him, while a mother snatched her tiny daughter out of his path, whispering frantically in the little girl’s ear. Although he pretended indifference, Billy was only too aware of their desperate swerving and fearful glances.

He might be able to change his clothes, but he could do nothing to disguise his gunslinger’s gait—that lazy roll of the hips that made it possible to flip aside the hem of his coat, draw his Colt, and fire before his opponent had time to make his final peace with God.

Nor could he dim the predatory gleam in his eye, a gleam that always sharpened whenever he sensed his prey was nearby. As he passed the brothel where he’d left his brothers, he tipped the bowler forward to shadow his face, praying they were too busy spending both their money and their seed to spare a glance out the window.

His nape prickled as he crossed the street, making him wonder if Winstead had men out there somewhere, watching his every move. The notion made him itch to bolt. He might carry the badge of a deputy U.S. marshal in the breast pocket of his vest, but outlaw blood still pulsed through his heart, tarnishing everything shiny and beautiful that he dared to touch.

Everything but Esmerelda. He had gone to that hotel room determined to take her to the bank with him. He’d been fully prepared to drag her if necessary and force her to witness the havoc she had wreaked with her schemes and her lies.

But the minute she’d flung open that door, a welcoming smile softening her prim lips, he had realized that he could no more deliberately endanger her life than he could draw his own pistol and put a bullet through her heart.

Billy inhaled a ragged breath, trying desperately to clear his head. The musky sweet fragrance of peaches still haunted him. It clung to his clothes and his skin everywhere he had touched Esmerelda, tempting him to turn around and march right back to that hotel room. To throw open the door, lock it from the inside, and spend the rest of the day and night making hot, delicious love to her.

He could still see her as she’d stood before him—her eyes pressed shut, the cinnamon lace of her lashes resting against her cheeks. A convulsive swallow had rippled down her graceful, white throat when she’d begged him to stay. She’d looked less like some calculating temptress than a sacrificial virgin. In that moment he had known it no longer mattered whether Bart Fine was her brother or her lover. He didn’t care if she’d had one man or a dozen. He didn’t have to be the first man she took to her bed. He only wanted to be the last.

It was that shocking realization that had driven him from the room. Esmerelda would never know what it had cost him to spurn her offer. To steal one last bittersweet taste of her lips before turning away and leaving her there. Because she’d been right about one thing. He was never coming back.

Once he apprehended Fine, he had no intention of turning him over to Esmerelda. Given Winstead’s desperation to be rid of the outlaw, he’d most likely hunt them both down before they could get out of New Mexico. Billy’s jaw hardened along with his resolve, sending a grizzled miner scurrying out of his path. He’d decided to risk both Esmerelda’s and Winstead’s wrath by turning Fine over to Elliot Courtney, the U.S. marshal in Albuquerque. Countney still owed him for bringing in a notorious horse thief last fall and could at least be counted on to guarantee Fine a fair trial.

Which was more than Billy could expect. Winstead was not the sort to forgive or forget. As soon as he learned of Billy’s betrayal, there would be a price on his head even higher than the one he carried now. Winstead was also likely to add those four words that were such sweet music to every bounty hunter’s ears—Wanted: Dead or Alive. Billy would have no choice but to spend the rest of his life on the run or flee to Mexico with his brothers.

Like the specter of that grim future, the shadow of the Eulalie First National Bank fell across his path. Billy paused to purchase a newspaper from a freckled boy, studying the imposing two-story brick structure from the corner of his eye. The bank boasted two narrow side doors and one main door, through which a steady stream of newly prosperous customers passed.

He tucked the newspaper beneath his arm and entered the bank, holding the door open for a stooped, white-haired woman who shuffled past, leaning heavily on her cane. If Fine came in as Winstead had warned, with a belly full of sass and a blaze of gunfire, Billy was going to have to take him down fast or risk some innocent bystander getting shot.

He strolled over and sank down in a leather wing chair that offered him an unobstructed view of all three doors. One of the tellers perched behind the brass bars of his cage shot him a nervous glance, but a genteel smile and a reassuring wink seemed to set the young man at ease. If Winstead had done what he’d promised, the teller must suspect that Billy was the deputy sent to protect the shipment of treasury gold languishing in the bank’s vault.

Opening the newspaper to hide his scrutiny of the doors, Billy waited.

He had learned quickly that a bounty hunter need possess only one virtue—patience. The patience to sit motionless on his mare with cold rain dripping from the brim of his slouch hat until a drunken horse thief came stumbling out of a saloon. The patience to keep smiling while he lost hand after hand of poker to a man suspected of bashing his wife to death with a frying pan and burying her poor, broken body in the vegetable garden. The patience to peruse a newspaper in a sunny bank lobby, knowing his presence there would cost him dreams he’d never even known he had until he had gazed into Esmerelda’s sparkling maple eyes.

But this was one job that didn’t require as much patience as he’d anticipated. The afternoon sun slanting through the bank’s frosted glass windows had barely begun to shift angles when Billy’s nape began to tingle. He stiffened. The newspaper slid from his lap to the floor.

That reliable indicator of danger was followed by the thunder of hoofbeats, cries of alarm, and a frantic commotion in the street outside the bank.

Billy eased aside his coat to rest his hand on the butt of his pistol. He slipped his other hand into his breast pocket to give the badge a brief caress. It would be the first and last time he would ever have the right to use it.

As the left side door burst open and four men with drawn pistols rushed into the bank, a woman screamed and Billy came to his feet.

“Everybody down!” he shouted. “On the floor!”

The customers obeyed, responding instinctively to the authority in his voice. Even the old woman’s screams subsided to panicked sniffles.

Instead of rushing to the tellers’ windows as everyone expected, the intruders stumbled to a halt a few feet from Billy.

The skinniest of the four, whose marked absence of a hat revealed that he only had one ear poking out from his tousled, straw-colored hair, pointed an accusing finger at Billy. “See! I ain’t no dummy after all. I told you it was him that went strollin‘ by the whorehouse jest as purty as you please.”

Billy rolled his eyes, wondering why he couldn’t have been born into the James family or the Younger family or hell, even the Borgia family.

It didn’t alarm him that Virgil’s suspenders were unhooked and dangling over his massive barrel chest or that Enos’s red drawers were peeking out of his half-unbuttoned pants. But the sight of the persnickety Jasper with his hair ruffled and rouge smudging his shirt did send a faint shiver of foreboding through him.

“You double-crossin‘ sonofabitch!” Virgil roared, the sheer volume of his voice enough to send the old woman cowering in the corner into a fresh fit of hysterics.

“Somebody slap her before she gets us all killed.” The disembodied voice floated out from one of the teller’s cages. The threat was enough to stifle the woman in mid-shriek.

“What’d you do this time, Billy?” Virgil bellowed. “Pay them whores to distract us? You too dadburned greedy to share all that treasury gold with your own flesh and blood?”

Billy raised one hand in a pacifying gesture, but kept the other fixed firmly on his gun. “Rein in those wild horses of yours, Virg. It’s not what you think.”

“I told you the bastard was selfish, "Jasper purred, caressing the hammer of his pistol with his thumb. “That’s what comes of bein‘ coddled by Ma all those years.”

Virgil’s ham-handed fist came swinging toward Billy. Billy’s gun was half out of its holster when Virgil clapped him on the shoulder, a dazzling grin breaking over his broad face. “First you go and get yourself wanted for murder and now this. By God, son, I ain’t never been so proud. You just might have Darlin‘ blood flowin’ through those veins of yours after all!”

Billy choked out a strained laugh, but he was saved from replying by the fresh thunder of hoofbeats outside the bank. Four more men came rushing through the opposite side door, dusty bandannas tied across the bridges of their noses to mask their features.

They skidded to a halt, their whoops and hollers fading as they gaped in dumb surprise at the Darling gang. The Darling gang gaped back, their own jaws slack with shock.

Billy might have been tempted to duck out and let them shoot it out amongst themselves if the main door of the bank hadn’t swung open at that precise moment to admit a petite brunette wearing pristine white gloves and a squashed bonnet.

Esmerelda stormed through the door, tugging a reluctant Sadie along behind her on a scarlet cord that had once been an elegant bellpull at the Silver Lining Hotel.

She marched right up to Billy, completely oblivious to the drama unfolding around them. He lunged forward, making a desperate but futile attempt to put his body between her heaving bosom and all eight pistols trained upon it.

She shook one white-gloved finger at him, as if he were some hapless piano student who had struck an off-key note during a recital. “There you are, you shameless deserter! I suppose you thought you were protecting me by locking me in my room like a child. Well, I’ll have you know this is 1878, not 1778.Women are no longer content to languish in the parlor while you arrogant men march into battle on their behalf.” She tilted her patrician nose in the air, looking even more smug than Jasper. “You’re probably wondering how I escaped your clever little trap. As soon as I realized that you must have bribed the hotel manager to ignore my cries for assistance, I stopped screaming and started singing. All it took was twelve verses of 'Soldiers of Christ, Arise‘ and the poor man was begging me to leave his establishment before the rest of his guests did. Even after I quit singing, poor Sadie here wouldn’t stop howling, so he evicted her, too.”

The hound settled back on her haunches and cast Billy a reproachful look, as if to chide him for going off and leaving her in the care of a tone-deaf lunatic.

Standing on tiptoe, Esmerelda tried to peer around his shoulder. He feinted right, then left, frantically trying to block her vision.

She shot him a perplexed look. “What on earth are you doing? Have you had any luck finding…?”

Her fingers uncurled. The leash slipped from her hand. Tears flooded her eyes, making them shine with a regard so hopelessly tender it made Billy ache to be the man she was looking at.

“Bartholomew?” she whispered.

Billy swung around to glare at the man behind him. There could be no mistaking the mischief sparkling in the black eyes above the scarlet bandanna.

“Esme?” the man croaked, those same eyes rapidly losing their sparkle and widening in horror.

Billy groaned aloud, knowing that he’d just lost his last chance of getting out of that bank without killing somebody.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Bartholomew?” Esmerelda echoed, her vision blurred by tears. The shimmering haze surrounding her brother only deepened her conviction that she must be dreaming.

“Bartholomew?” the masked men chorused in disgust, swinging around to gawk at him.

“I believe he calls himself Bart now,” Billy said quietly, his expression as grim as she’d ever seen it. “Black Bart.”

“Black Bart?” Esmerelda wrinkled her nose. “What an abominable sobriquet.”

“But it’s one hell of an alias,” Sam said, watching the proceedings with the sharp-eyed interest of a one-eared ferret. Virgil, Enos, and Jasper appeared equally captivated.

Bartholomew began to back away from her. He couldn’t have looked any more alarmed had she waved a lit stick of dynamite under his nose. He clawed at the bandanna, jerking it up so high he nearly blinded himself.

His voice was muffled by the bubble of fabric he sucked into his mouth with each panicked breath. “You must have mistaken me for someone else, ma’am. I ain’t never heard of this Bartholomew fellow. Now I suggest you step back before I’m forced to shoot you.” He crashed into the bank’s long counter, barely managing to steady himself with one hand.

Esmerelda tilted her head to study him. If memory served her, this wasn’t the first time she’d come face-to-face with the dastardly Black Bart. As a precocious four-year-old, her brother had delighted in tying one of their mama’s handkerchiefs over his pug nose in just such a manner. He would sneak up on Papa, poke him in the back with a wooden spoon, and demand all of his money. Pretending to quake with fear, Papa would empty his pockets of change, pouring the shiny coins into Bartholomew’s greedy little hands.

Emboldened by his success as a robber, Bartholomew had even taken to jumping out of darkened corners at Esmerelda. At least until the morning she’d swung around and boxed his ears between two books. He’d bawled at the top of his lungs for over an hour, earning Esmerelda a stern lecture from their parents. But the satisfaction had been well worth it.

A flare of anger burned away the tears in Esmerelda’s eyes, leaving them dry and aching. Suddenly she could see clearly. All too clearly.

Billy grabbed for her elbow, but she stalked forward, shaking off his grip. “Ain’t?” she bit off, her voice pitched dangerously low. “Ain’t, Bartholomew? Is that how I taught you to talk? Is that what you learned from studying thirteen years of grammar and elocution?”

“I knew a feller who was elocuted once,” Sam remarked.

He shook his head, sighing sadly. “I told him not to stand under that tree durin‘ a lightnin’ spell, but he jest wouldn’t listen.”

The other three masked men stood frozen, mesmerized by Esmerelda’s fearless pursuit of their leader. Bartholomew flattened one hand on the counter, but the bars of the teller cages prevented him from vaulting over it. Before he could devise a new plan for escape, Esmerelda grabbed the bandanna by its triangular fold and snatched it down.

A flabbergasted silence swept the bank, broken only by the muffled whimper of the forgotten woman in the corner.

Bartholomew hung his head. If it hadn’t been for the sinister beard shading his jaw, he would have looked exactly like the cherubic four-year-old whose ears she had boxed. She almost expected his plump lower lip to start quivering and tears to flood those big, dark eyes of his. It made her want to shake him and kiss him and smack him all at the same time.

She wagged a finger in his face instead. “Why, Bartholomew Ignatius Fine, I ought to turn you over my knee.”

“Ignatius?” his men chorused again. This time, one of them even had the temerity to giggle.

Jasper elbowed Virgil. “She can turn me over her knee any day of the week.”

One of the masked men eagerly raised his hand. "Or me!”

“How ‘bout me!” volunteered another. "I've been a very bad boy”

Holstering his pistol, Bartholomew shook his hair out of his eyes and fixed her with a smoldering glare. The phony drawl disappeared from his voice, leaving it clipped and sullen. “See what you’ve gone and done now, Esme.

Those men respected me. At least they did until you came along and spoiled everything. You never did want me to have any fun.“

“Fun?” Esmerelda choked out a disbelieving laugh, sweeping a hand toward the bank customers cowering in the floor. “Is this what you call fun? Terrorizing innocent citizens? Stealing the money they’ve worked for and sacrificed to save?”

He cocked his head back, as unrepentant as he’d been when she’d caught him gobbling lemon drops right out of the jar at the corner apothecary when he was nine. "I'm just doing research for my novel. A man’s got to live life before he can write about it.”

All the anger and hurt Esmerelda had hoarded in her heart over the past few months spilled into her eyes as fresh tears. “And I suppose it didn’t bother you that while you were out here living life, I was back home thinking you were dead.”

Genuine shame flickered across his face. “I’m truly sorry about that, Esme. I swear I am. I didn’t hire Snorton to hurt you, but to protect you.”

Esmerelda took a step backward, recoiling as if he’d slapped her. “You hired Snorton?” she whispered. “You hired that horrid little weasel?”

It was Bartholomew who stalked her now, stretching out his hands in supplication as she continued to back away from him. “You had to believe I was dead, Esme. It was the only way I could keep you safe. If you thought I was alive, I knew you’d take it into that obstinate head of yours to come out west and find me.”

Esmerelda stopped, standing her ground. “So you had Snorton swindle me out of the pittance I had left and deliver that overwrought account of your death?”

Bartholomew’s brow furrowed in a sulky frown. “Overwrought? That’s not very generous of you. I found it to be a very moving piece of fiction. I had to stop and dab my eyes more than once while I was writing it.”

Esmerelda heard a snort behind her that could have only come from Billy.

“You see, Esme,” Bartholomew continued. “I made a man very angry—a dangerous and powerful man. I deliberately let him believe that I was an only child. I was afraid if he found out I had a sister, he might try to use you against me or hurt you out of spite.”

“I doubt that he could have hurt me any more than you have,” she said stiffly.

Bartholomew’s words began to tumble out, propelled by his growing excitement. “Someday you’ll understand that I did what I did for the both of us. As soon as the fuss died down, I had every intention of contacting you with the wonderful news.” He clutched her shoulders, giving her the dimpled smile that had never failed to soften her heart when he was a little boy. “I’m a wealthy man now, sister. Wealthy enough to make sure that you never again have to scrimp or sacrifice or go hungry on my account. You won’t have to listen to those spoiled rich brats pound on the piano all day. You’ll be able to afford all the pretty gewgaws and ribbons you always deserved.” He captured one of the curls that had escaped from her bonnet, tenderly coiling it around his finger. “You’re not so old yet, Esme. If you fix yourself up with some powder and paint, you might even be able to snare some lonely widower and have some babies of your own to mother.”

A wave of humiliation broke over Esmerelda, flooding her cheeks with heat. She might have been able to endure it with more grace if she hadn’t known that Billy was back there somewhere, listening to the entire exchange. Did he find her as pathetic as her own brother did?

Before she even realized she was going to do it, her hand had crossed Bartholomew’s face, wiping the self-satisfied smirk from his mouth with enough force to make every man in that bank wince in commiseration.

He staggered backward, rubbing his cheek. His dark eyes brimmed with reproach. “Esme, how could you? You haven’t so much as swatted me on the bottom since Mama and Papa died.”

“I know. And I’m beginning to think I made a very grave mistake.”

They glowered at each other with simmering hostility. Esmerelda wasn’t even aware that Billy was circling them, studying the unconscious mirroring of their stances, the pugnacious jut of their jaws—a trait their mother had sworn they’d inherited from their pigheaded grandfather.

“Well, I will be damned,” Billy breathed. “You really are his sister, aren’t you?”

Esmerelda whirled on him, fighting hysteria. "Of course I’m his sister. Who did you think I was?”

As their gazes collided, she realized exactly who, and what, he had thought she was. It was there in the wariness shadowing his eyes, the raw tension curling his fingers into fists. It had been there in every exchange they’d shared, but she’d been too much of a fool to see it.

The realization hurt more than it should have. Even more than her brother’s betrayal. For a moment, Esmerelda didn’t know if she was going to be able to breathe through the unbearable tightness in her chest.

“Who the hell is he?” Bartholomew demanded, jealous of her attention just as he’d been as a toddler. “And why is he looking at you like that?”

Esmerelda barely heard him. She had eyes only for Billy. “You knew all along, didn’t you?” she asked softly. “You knew exactly what I would find in Eulalie.”

Unlike Bartholomew, Billy didn’t try to excuse his actions or charm her into forgiving him. He simply looked her straight in the eye and nodded, damning them both with his honesty.

Esmerelda’s hoarse laugh sounded more like a sob, even to her own ears. “How utterly delicious! One of you thinks I’m a dried-up old spinster, the other some outlaw’s whore.”

Bartholomew stiffened to his full height, outrage glittering in his eyes. “Just who do you think you are, sir, calling my sister a whore?”

Billy gave her brother a look of pure contempt. “I’m William Darling, you ungrateful little whelp, the man you let Snorton accuse of killing you.” Slipping his hand into his vest pocket, he pulled out something shiny. He shoved the object under Bartholomew’s nose, distracting them all from the quicksilver grace of his other hand drawing his Colt. "I'm also the deputy U.S. marshal who’s about to take your sorry ass to jail.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Oh, son,” Virgil wailed, squinting at the badge in Billy’s hand. “Say it ain’t so!”

Esmerelda stood transfixed by the sight of the shiny tin star while Bartholomew’s gang went scattering in all directions. They shot through the three doors hard enough to leave them banging behind them. Only Sadie appeared unfazed by Billy’s revelation. She reclined on her haunches and hiked one back paw for a lethargic scratch behind her left ear, yawning in satisfaction.

“Get the hell out of here, Virg,” Billy ordered, never taking his eyes off of Bartholomew. “Take the boys and go before I have to haul you in, too.”

Enos and Sam huddled together, looking even more sallow than usual. Jasper snorted in disgust while Virgil shook his head, genuine grief darkening his eyes. “I do believe my big ole heart is broken. I never thought I’d live to see the day a Darlin‘ crawled into bed with the law.”

They silently filed out, Jasper pausing at the door just long enough to spit over his shoulder.

Ignoring the crude insult, Billy jerked his head toward the cowering bank patrons. “You’re free to go,” he called out. “And I wouldn’t waste any time about it.”

He didn’t have to ask twice. They crawled, ducked, and scrambled their way to freedom, leaving Billy, Bartholomew, and Esmerelda alone in the deserted bank lobby.

Esmerelda was still reeling from shock when Bartholomew grabbed her wrist, bruising it in his desperate grip. “You can’t let him take me, Esme. You don’t understand. I’ll never make it to trial alive. I’ll never even make it to jail. He’ll make sure of that.”

“Step away from the lady,” Billy said, his steely composure as unwavering as the pistol in his hand.

Bartholomew began to inch backward, freeing Esmerelda’s wrist when he realized her feet were still rooted to the floor. “He paid you, didn’t he?” he shouted at Billy. “Paid you to shoot me down in cold blood. Well, if I die, he’ll never find out where that gold is hidden! And neither will you.”

“What gold?” Esmerelda wailed. “Who are you talking about?”

Bartholomew stabbed a finger toward Billy. “Ask him. He knows who hired him to find me.”

“Of course he does. I did.”

That admission momentarily distracted her brother from his mounting hysteria. He squinted at her. “With what? You don’t have any money.”

Painfully conscious of Billy’s heavy-lidded scrutiny, Esmerelda said, “Mr. Darling is well aware of my present impoverishment. A state, I hasten to remind you, that I owe solely to your selfish and callow pilgrimage west. However, he was kind enough to extend me credit. Especially after I explained to him how grateful our grandfather would be once you were found.” She clenched her teeth in a frantic approximation of a smile. “We both know how generous dear Grandpapa is inclined to be when it comes to his beloved grandson.”

“Grandpapa? Grandpapa?” Bartholomew parroted with a shrill squawk of laughter. “And you dare to call my fiction overwrought!”

“Step away from the lady and put your hands over your head, boy.” Billy’s lazy drawl warned them that he was running out of patience. Esmerelda had already deduced that the slower Billy talked, the faster he could move.

“Do what he says,” she urged her brother. “We’ll sort out all this confusion later.”

“Why not sort it out now?” As Bartholomew shifted his attention from her to Billy, his eyes took on a calculating glint. “You and me, Mr. Darling, we could be partners. I’ll even give you Winstead’s share of the gold. Whatever he’s paying you, it can’t come close to what I’ve got stashed away only a few miles from here.”

Although Esmerelda feared both men had lost their wits, her brother had left her no choice but to appeal to the least deranged of the two.

She ran to Billy, grabbed him by the lapels of his coat, and gave him a savage little shake. “What in heaven’s name is he babbling about? Who is this Winstead and why is Bartholomew trying to bribe you?”

She might have thought she was invisible if Billy’s arm hadn’t clamped around her waist, drawing her hard against him. She barely managed to wiggle around enough to see her brother’s face, which was now wreathed in a friendly smile.

“You’re probably thinking you can’t trust me,” he said, taking a step backward each time he paused for breath. “But I swear I never would have double-crossed Winstead if I hadn’t overheard him telling one of his hired guns to kill me after I returned with the gold.”

Billy’s exasperated sigh ruffled her hair. “I don’t want your gold, son. I want you to put your hands over your head where I can see them.”

A spasm of raw panic crossed Bartholomew’s face. He began to scuttle backward in earnest, a strategy that might have been successful if he hadn’t tripped over his own boots and gone sprawling on his backside. Even with the beard disguising his baby fat, in that moment he looked painfully young.

Esmerelda breathed a sigh of relief. Until she saw his hand rumble with the mouth of his holster.

“Don’t do it!” Billy shouted.

“Bartholomew, no!” she screamed.

Billy drew back the hammer of his own pistol. The click rang in Esmerelda’s ears, louder than a gunshot itself. Frantic with desperation, she wrenched herself out of his arms and stumbled across the lobby, flinging her body across her brother’s.

Dead silence greeted her gesture. Bartholomew’s chest heaved beneath her own, but his arm did not close around her as Billy’s had. Raising herself up on one elbow, she twisted around until she could meet Billy’s stricken eyes.

“Jesus Christ, sweetheart,” he whispered hoarsely, his words more prayer than oath. “I could have killed you.”

Billy lowered the gun, his hand unsteady for the first time in his memory. If he hadn’t been gazing at Esmerelda in helpless horror, he might have heard Sadie’s low-pitched growl, felt the hair at his nape prickle in warning.

As it was, he didn’t see the black steel barrel emerge from beneath Esmerelda’s arm until after the explosion. A fiery inferno erupted high in his chest.

His pistol clattered to the floor. He flattened his hand against his chest, then held it out in front of him, struggling to grasp why so much blood would be dripping from his fingers. As comprehension dawned, he shifted his disbelieving gaze to Esmerelda.

If she lived to be a hundred, Esmerelda didn’t think she would ever forget the look of shock and betrayal on Billy’s face. Her ears were ringing in earnest now. The caustic stench of gunpowder seared her nostrils, stung her eyes. Billy’s knees seemed to buckle an inch at a time, sending his lanky frame crashing to the floor.

Esmerelda might have remained frozen in shock while his life seeped away if Sadie hadn’t trundled over, still trailing the frayed cord behind her, and began to lick his face. Esmerelda couldn’t tell if the frightened whimper she heard was the dog’s or her own.

Easily disengaging herself from Bartholomew’s limp body, she scrambled on hands and knees to Billy’s side. The badge lay where it had fallen, only inches from his bloodstained fingers. His shirt was already soaked with blood, the ugly stain rapidly spreading to his vest. His chest hitched with each shallow breath.

Her fingers trembling, she gently brushed a lock of hair from his brow. With those thick lashes of his resting against his pallid cheeks, he looked terribly young, terribly vulnerable.

He groaned as Esmerelda gathered his head into her lap and pressed her gloved hands to the wound, instinctively trying to stanch the welling blood.

“Look what you’ve done,” she spat at her brother over Billy’s fallen form.

Bartholomew was gazing in mute horror at the gun dangling from his flaccid hand. It struck Esmerelda that it must be the first time he’d ever actually pulled the trigger and witnessed the destruction it could wreak. Once she might have felt pity for his predicament. Now she felt only scorn.

Blistering tears spilled down her cheeks. “Is this how you want to live life, Bartholomew? By taking another man’s away from him? Have you something clever to write about now? Some profound new insight for your ludicrous melodramas?”

He slowly lifted his gaze to hers. She had hoped to find shame, or even repentance, in his eyes, but saw only panic. The instant they came back into focus, he shoved his gun into its holster and bounded to his feet.

He crossed the bank in two strides, grabbed her by the arm, and tried to jerk her to her feet. “We have to get out of here, Esme! It’ll only be a matter of time before the law arrives.”

She snatched her arm out of his grip, her voice surprisingly firm. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Bartholomew shot the main door a frantic glance, plainly torn between argument and flight.

“Go with him.” They both started at the rusty rasp of Billy’s voice. Esmerelda looked down to find his eyes open and glaring fiercely at her. “Go,” he gritted out between clenched teeth. “If you stay, I’ll just arrest you,” he swallowed hard, droplets of sweat bleeding from his clammy brow, “for giving aid and comfort to a known outlaw and obstructing justice.”

Esmerelda summoned a teasing smile with an effort that nearly matched his own. “Then I’ll just have to surrender myself into your custody and throw myself on the mercy of the court, won’t I?”

“No mercy,” he whispered, his eyes fluttering shut.

Although his words sent a faint shiver through her, she still bowed her head to tenderly graze his hair with her lips.

When Esmerelda lifted her head, her brother was gone. His disappearance only underscored the differences between the two men. She’d known Bartholomew since the day he was born. She’d known Billy only three days. Bartholomew had left her. Billy never would have.

Her brother’s flight was marked by shouts from the street and fading hoofbeats. Esmerelda’s alarm escalated to panic when Billy opened his eyes and began to struggle to his feet.

She tried to shove him back down, her gloves already slick with his blood. “Be still! We have to wait for a doctor.”

He caught her by the frill of lace trimming the neck of her dress and hauled her roughly up against him. Near enough to see the pain furrowing his face, the savage desperation distorting his features.

“You’re a clever girl, Esmerelda,” he bit off. “I want you to listen very carefully. Winstead is the marshal your brother double-crossed. He promised to call off the local law while I apprehended your brother, but his men will soon find out it went bad. If Winstead gets wind that Bart told us he was in on that robbery before I’m back on my feet, I won’t need a doctor. I’ll need an undertaker. And so will you.”

Esmerelda hesitated, torn by indecision. He couldn’t take three steps on his own. He might die if she helped him flee. But if what he said was true, he would surely die if she didn’t.

She finally nodded. “Then we’d better go. I’d hate for the undertaker to sell that cursed suit to another unsuspecting buyer.”

“Back door,” he rasped, hissing beneath a fresh onslaught of pain.

Esmerelda had to agree with his choice. Although the mule and wagon were tethered out front, the din coining from the street was growing louder and more strident by the second. Wrapping her arms around Billy’s lean waist, she braced one shoulder beneath his, wishing desperately that she were taller. He refused to inflict the brunt of his weight on her slight form, choosing instead to brace himself against the counter until they reached the gate leading to the rear of the bank. As if their journey wasn’t already torturous enough, Sadie kept insinuating her plump body between their legs, plainly terrified to let Billy out of her sight.

When their legs became tangled for the third time, Billy staggered to a halt and buried his face in the crook of her neck. “C-can’t go on. You go. Alone.”

Esmerelda struggled to keep from collapsing beneath his weight. She was surprised to find the thought of going on without him nearly as terrifying as leaving him there. When she opened her mouth, it was not her voice that emerged, but her grandfather’s, in all of its astringent glory.

“I don’t think so, Mr. Darling. When I hire a man to do a job, I expect him to see it through. Of course, if you decide to just he down here and drown in a puddle of blood and self-pity, I won’t have to worry about paying you for all your trouble, will I?”

He lifted his head to glower at her. His slumped posture brought them eye to eye, mouth to mouth. In that moment, she would have almost sworn he hated her.

“What difference would it make?” he growled. “You never planned to pay me anyway.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Darling. I always pay my debts.”

Before she could lose her nerve, Esmerelda pressed her mouth to his, determined to kiss the snarl from his lips, no matter the cost to herself. At first his mouth was as stern and unforgiving as she feared. Then he yielded to her, taking her mouth with a primal ferocity that left her limp and trembling. She could taste the salty tang of sweat and desperation in his kiss, on his tongue. Her knees threatened to crumble. She dragged her lips away from his before she could swoon. One of them had to stay on their feet long enough to get them out of that bank alive.

This time when Billy buried his face in her hair, his groan was one of sweet agony. “Hell, woman, are you trying to kill me or give me a reason to live?”

“You’ll just have to last long enough to find out, won’t you?” she taunted, urging him into motion.

Billy had not exaggerated. His strength was nearly spent. By the time they reached the door left standing wide open by the fleeing tellers, Esmerelda was all but dragging him.

The narrow alleyway provided a welcome respite from the racket in the street. Her frantic gaze darted both ways. Billy’s mare and a second horse were tethered to a nearby post. She blessed his foresight even as she realized that the second horse must have been intended for her brother. Her instincts had been right. Billy had never had any intention of returning to that hotel room for her.

Swallowing her bitterness, she steered him in the direction of the mare. He was weaving like a drunk now, barely maintaining his balance, even with her guidance.

“Dark,” Billy muttered. “Didn’t realize it was… so damn late.”

Esmerelda glanced skyward. The sun still hung in the afternoon sky, blazing like a merciless orb. Oh, dear God, she prayed, don’t let it be too late.

Her despair only deepened when they finally reached the horse. The mare might as well have been twenty feet tall. Esmerelda had no choice but to try and heave Billy into the saddle using any means available.

She pleaded and ordered, cajoled and shouted. She even slipped in a few of the swear words he was so fond of, hoping the shock would prod him into motion. She almost had one of his long legs hooked over the pommel when the mare shied away, spooked by the coppery scent of his blood.

Billy fell heavily, sprawling to his back in the dust. His eyes struggled to focus, once, twice, then rolled back in his head and fluttered shut.

Sadie sank to her haunches, threw back her head, and began to bay as if her heart were broken. Esmerelda longed to do the same.

Instead, she dropped to her knees beside him. Tears spilled down her cheeks, dripping from her chin to his face. She gathered him into her arms and gave him a ferocious shake. “Don’t you die on me, Billy Darling! Do you hear me? I won’t stand for it!”

She pressed her mouth to his, hoping to force some of her own precious breath into his mouth, but even that desperate kiss failed to stir him.

She buried her brow against his, utterly defeated. She never heard the jingle of a harness, the clatter of wagon wheels, the dull thud of a massive pair of boots striking the dirt.

She didn’t hear anything at all until a lumbering giant, his sandy hair haloed by the sun, reached down and took Billy from her arms as if he weighed no more than a child.

Tenderly cradling his brother’s limp body against his formidable chest, Virgil winked at her, the twinkle in his eyes dimmed by concern. “We Darlins’ might fight and scrap amongst ourselves, ma’am, but we’re still bound by blood.”

As he gently laid his brother in the back of the wagon, the beast in the harness swiveled around to honk at her and bare its yellow teeth. Esmerelda cupped a hand over her mouth to capture her grateful sob. She’d never seen such a welcome sight in her life as that cantankerous old mule.