Teresa Medeiros - Nobody’s Darling

“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.”

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.”