Page 36

“Let’s not quibble over the details. You’ve got the book learning, but I’ve got the street smarts, and I know the look of love in a woman’s eyes.”

This was most likely true because he’d been with so many. She didn’t say that, however.

Footsteps pounding up the stairs drew their attention. Lilah, who was serving drinks tonight, appeared in the doorway, flushed and winded. She exclaimed in a frantic cry, “Things are getting out of control, Mr. Sneed. You better get down there.”

“I’m on my way,” he replied, but he didn’t follow her out. “Don’t fret, sweetheart. I plan to be around driving you mad for a long time, same as always. And my first order of business when I return is to coax you back to my bed.”

Before she could lampoon his hopes, again—he’d been threatening that for a decade—he started down the stairs and into the melee below.

Charlotte leaned against the doorjamb and sighed.

Fen could pour on the charm when he wanted to.

He could make her laugh and was so very handsome, and she’d never had complaints about his stamina.

Every few months, his persistent assault on her defenses came close to wearing her down, but she never forgot Elise’s warning to guard her heart.

After checking her hair in the mirror and reapplying a subtle hint of rouge to her cheeks and lips, she was out the door.

It was time to make her rounds and pair up her idle ladies with hesitant men.

Sometimes all it took to get them to climb the stairs was a little nudge of encouragement from her or a no-pressure introduction. Her girls usually took it from there.

As she descended the steps, she immediately noticed both the nonstop banging of the piano and the usual low drone of conversation were absent. Halfway down, she heard Fen say in an ominous tone, “You don’t want to do that. Drop your gun.”

With a jolt, Charlotte halted and peered over the rail.

The tension in the room was oppressive to the point she found it hard to breathe, but it wasn’t because of a standoff between Fenton and Bert Olsen.

It was a different man dressed all in black with a battered black bowler hat.

His back was to her as he and Fen faced one another in the center of the room with guns drawn .

“I want my money, Sneed, and I’m tired of asking,” the man in black warned before he leaned to the side and spat a stream of tobacco not into a spittoon but directly onto the floor. His actions both disgusting and patently disrespectful.

Fenton didn’t so much as flinch. “Mr. Winslow took issue with your dealing.”

“It was a clean deal, and he lost fair and square. Though you’ll have to accept my word on it, seeing as how he’s dead.”

Charlotte didn’t know anyone named Winslow, but she guessed the pair of jean-clad legs sprawled on the floor beyond the standoff belonged to him.

“Dead by your hand,” Fenton accused. “But the sheriff is on his way and will sort that out.”

“There’s nothing to sort,” the man in black hissed. “That son of a bitch accused me of cheating. Them’s fighting words in this territory if your sissified, high-falutin’ ass don’t know it.”

Charlotte’s heart seized at the man’s sneering condescension and the snakelike lisp—both hauntingly familiar.

“I took offense and shot him,” he went on, showing not an iota of remorse. “Now, I plan to collect my winnings and leave.”

“You’ll wait for the law, Thorn, like everyone else, including me and these two dozen witnesses.”

Thorn? Wait. Was she mistaken?

His height and build were right, but she couldn’t see his face. Carefully, she moved down a step. From her new vantage point, she could see the rest of the victim. Like Carson, his vacant, glassy eyes stared blankly as his life’s blood pooled beneath him from a gaping chest wound.

As memories of her husband’s violent death on that awful day assailed her, dizziness overcame her, and her knees buckled. Her trembling hands lost their grip on the railing, and she landed with a thud on the steps.

Everyone looked her way, including Emmett, or Thorn, whatever he called himself now, her husband’s killer.

“Ah, this must be the incomparable Miss Charlotte I’ve been hearing about. Tell you what, Sneed. For a trip upstairs with her, I won’t shoot up the place. Men say she’s mighty particular—and clean. I haven’t had clean pussy in a month of Sundays. Do we have a deal?”

“No deal,” Fen shot back. “She’s not available, and you have an appointment with the sheriff as soon as he arrives.”

“Not available? She’s a whore like the others, ain’t she?”

“You’ve heard my answer,” Fen snapped. “Hal, go see what’s taking Sheriff Walker so long.”

Thorn backed up slowly toward the stairs. “Now I’m curious. What’s special about this one? Is her cunt made of gold or something?” His free hand shot out and encircled her wrist—the same one he’d broken over a decade ago.

“Let me go!” she shrieked at the same time Fen shouted, “Release her!”

Charlotte tried to break free, but he dragged her down the remaining steps and up against him. With the muzzle of his gun, he lifted her chin, revealing a grin that with its missing or blackened teeth still gave her nightmares.

“Well, well. Look what we got here,” he said, echoing his words from that long-ago fateful day.

Emmett’s pistol dug into her flesh as he turned her head from side to side and perused her face.

“Older, but still as purdy. It’s Rowena, ain’t it?

No, wait. It’s Rowie. Leastwise, that’s what your man called you before he cocked up his toes. ”

“Before you shot him, you mean?”

If she had Fenton’s shotgun, she would have blasted him straight to hell without batting an eye. Instead, she called on him to do it for her.

“Shoot him,” she demanded.

But Fen spoke over her. “You two know each other, Charlotte?”

“Oh, so it’s Charlotte, now,” he said, grinning, his teeth as rotten and his breath as putrid as ever.

“Interesting. But no matter the name, I haven’t forgotten the whore who puked on me twice even with sluttier clothes”—his gaze shifted to the neckline of her gown—“and rounder titties, which ain’t a bad thing.

You were on the scrawny side back then.”

“I wasn’t a whore when I puked, you bastard. You turned me into one.” She struggled furiously, kicking and scratching, revolted by his touch and his smell. “If you don’t let me go, I’ll do it again.”

He immediately released her. Off-balance, she fell to the floor.

“I’m done with this trip down memory lane. I’m collecting my winnings and getting gone.”

Fen cocked his pistol. “You’re not going anywhere, Thorn. Except to jail, even if I have to haul you there myself.”

“Is that right?” he drawled, grinning. “I’d like to see you try, but I ain’t hanging around that long.”

In a blur of movement, he fired. The room exploded in chaos. Women screamed and men shouted, flipping tables on end and shoving chairs aside as everyone moved to get clear of the crazy man with the gun.

Feeling like she’d lived this nightmare before, Charlotte scrambled on her hands and knees to get to Fen.

Unlike Carson, the bullet hadn’t killed him instantly, but it had struck him in the chest, and she could tell by his wheezing and the terrible gurgling sound in his throat it had punctured his lung.

“Someone send for the doctor,” she called.

She didn’t see anyone move but heard the scuff of boots behind her.

With both hands pressed to the hole in Fen’s chest, as if she could hold back the blood gushing out, she glanced over her shoulder at the bastard who shot him.

Unperturbed over having just gunned down a man, he calmly raked a pile of cash and gold coins into a pouch.

Fen coughed, and blood gushed between her fingers.

“Hang on,” she urged frantically. “The doctor will be here soon.”

But his eyes were hazy with pain, and fear. She knew as well as he must, her assurances were worthless platitudes, and the end was near.

“Love…you…Lottie,” he choked out hoarsely between gasps and gurgles. “Always have.”

His eyes fluttered closed, and she whispered, “Don’t go.” A strangled sob escaped her and tears, which she hadn’t shed since Carson, splashed on his cheek. “Where’s the damn doctor?” she screamed.

“Don’t waste his time,” Emmett advised, without being asked.

He bent and spoke near her ear. “How many does this make for you, Red? First, there was your husband, who couldn’t have seen twenty-five.

Now, your saloon owner who’s a sight older but had a lot of years left in him.

It makes me wonder about a certain Frenchman, up in years with a liking for the whip.

He got burnt up in that fire at Heloise’s, which was the same night you dropped out of sight.

It’s like you’ve got the kiss of death all over you. ”

With a malevolent chuckle, he straightened and moved to the exit.

In the stillness following the chaos, his voice carried.

“Sorry I can’t stay longer and reminisce, but Laramie’s not my favorite town.

I call it the armpit of the West because between South Town and that slaughterhouse, it reeks.

” With a black, snaggle-toothed grin, he started for the door.

“I’ll see you around, Miss Charlotte. Something tells me you and I aren’t done crossing paths.

When we do, count on me taking that sample I never got—on the house. ”

Another shot rang out and screams erupted. Plaster rained down from the ceiling. When the dust settled, Charlotte knelt on the floor, pistol in her blood-slick hands. She had intended to blow his head off, and be done with him for good, but she missed—damn her lousy aim.

It wasn’t fair that he was still breathing when Fen no longer did.