Page 6

Over the next few days, with decent food and a little peace, Melissa began to regain her strength. She still jumped at loud voices and noises, but not every time, and the bruise on her face had finally faded.

The rocking chair had proved to be a godsend. After that one horrible night, Jenny had settled down again into her sweet-tempered disposition, but Melissa loved to rock the baby while she fed her or put her to sleep. Sometimes they just sat by the window and rocked while Melissa sang to her. Jenny would stare up at her with wide eyes and a half smile, captivated. Although the noise from the street below was nearly continuous, it was the quietest, most tranquil time that Melissa had known as a mother—in fact, in her whole life.

No loud voice assaulted her ears, no drunken man demanded intimate access to her body, slobbering kisses on her and using her until he passed out.

Though she viewed Dylan as an intimidating man, now she didn't always flinch when she heard his footsteps on the stairs. And, true to his word, he had not made one attempt to touch her in any way beyond the night he offered her his hand. Except for meals, though, she hardly saw him. They settled into a routine he spent most of his time downstairs in his store, and Melissa kept to this room, cleaning and cooking and taking care of Jenny.

She was in a peculiar position. She knew that she and Jenny were invading his privacy, and that he felt stuck with them, as if they were a pair of charity cases. Which, she supposed, they were. She wasn't really Mrs. Harper; she worked for him, he said. And he had given her money last Saturday, telling her it was a week's wages. But her job was not like a shop girl's, or a factory worker's, or even a domestic's, at least not like her mother's had been at the Pettigreaves's. In order to earn her keep and pay back Coy's debt, she would have to do more than just sweep this room and cook. At any rate, it wasn't enough to keep her busy.

Dawson was like a giant carnival, and Melissa knew that a lot of gold dust changed hands in this town, more money than she had ever seen in her life. A lot of people were growing wealthy just by catering to miners and free-spending Klondike kings. Dylan himself was making his money that way. There had to be some way she could do that, too. Having cash would give her independence and security, and the ability to safeguard Jenny's future. Nothing seemed more important to her—not nice clothes, not a husband, not even love.

Her budding desire to improve her lot was reinforced early one morning shortly after the incident with the rocker, when she and Dylan were standing under the side stairs. There Melissa had set up a washtub and scrub board to do their laundry, and Dylan had carried down some of the wash for her.

From the milling crowd, a petite, well-dressed woman with a plain face hailed them.

"Dylan Harper! I haven't seen you in weeks."

Melissa recognized Belinda Mulrooney, one of the most successful entrepreneurs, man or woman, to come to the Yukon. She was highly respected and admired for her business savvy; Melissa wished that she possessed one quarter of her shrewdness.

"I'm here at the store every day, Belinda. You keep yourself pretty busy,"

Dylan replied, chuckling.

Everything about the woman, even her bearing, seemed energetic, Melissa thought.

"That I do. There are too many opportunities in this town to let one get past me. You should've taken advantage of that lay I told you about. The first one I took out measured five hundred feet square, and I got a thousand dollars a day for the month that I had it."

A lay, Melissa knew, was a short-term, temporary arrangement, whereby a claim owner allowed another person to mine the property in exchange for a percentage of the gold found there. A few people had suggested this kind of enterprise to Coy. He'd rejected the idea outright, saying he was no sharecropper. The truth, of course, was that such an arrangement would have required him to work.

Dylan shifted his weight to one hip and rubbed the back of his neck, giving the impression of mock regret.

"Well, I know about horses, not mining. Besides, I didn't have any interest in digging around in the dirt."

Belinda grinned archly.

"When that kind of money is involved, I'd dig in a hog wallow."

She looked Melissa up and down, although not unkindly.

"Are you going to introduce me to this lady, Dylan?"

Melissa shifted Jenny in her arms, feeling awkward, and waited to see what he would say.

He straightened.

"Oh, uh, this is Melissa Lo—Harper. Melissa, this is Belinda Mulrooney. She's got her finger in just about every successful business venture in Dawson."

"Flatterer,"

Belinda said, then echoed, "Did you say Melissa Harper?"

She glanced at Jenny.

"Well, it's a long—"

Melissa began.

"Melissa is my . . . wife."

Belinda considered them both with a perceptive look, then glanced at Melissa's left hand. She didn't have a wedding ring—Coy had sold it long ago, and Dylan hadn't given her one. Surprised by Dylan's comment, Melissa waited for her to say something about the baby, or their obviously hasty marriage, but she only smiled.

"Congratulations, Dylan, I hadn't heard. How very nice to meet you Mrs. Harper. I've known Dylan, here, for a couple of years. He was one of the first people I met when I came up."

"Oh,"

Melissa replied faintly.

"You two must come by when I open my hotel. It should be ready in another couple of weeks. I'm calling it the Fairview, and it'll be the grandest place in Dawson."

She began listing the hotel's attributes, ticking them off on her fingers.

"I'll have twenty-two rooms with electric lights and steam heat. There'll be an orchestra in the lobby, and bone china and sterling in the dining room."

She reached up to readjust her black straw hat in the stiff breeze that blew under the cloudy sky.

"I've got brass beds and crystal chandeliers coming in over White Pass, so I'm leaving for Skagway tomorrow to oversee the whole thing."

"Are you going alone?"

Melissa asked. It seemed like a fearsome thing for a woman to do. Skagway was a raw, wild place, far more so than Dawson.

Belinda waved her hand dismissively.

"Absolutely. I have to make sure the packers I hired don't break those chandeliers, or cheat me."

She bade them good-bye then, and bustled down the street like a whirlwind through the crowd toward the site of the Fairview to harass her construction workers.

Dylan chuckled again and shook his head as he watched her go.

"She's a real piece of work, that Belinda."

He took her arm as they walked toward the store for soap. Melissa had to admit that she liked the feel of his hand under her elbow.

"Thank you for, well, for not embarrassing me in front of her."

She looked up at him, at the way his streaked hair caught in the wind and blew back behind his shoulders. Had she noticed the curve of his full mouth before?

"Oh, you mean I didn't belch or scratch where I shouldn't?"

He grinned, showing her dimples and white, straight teeth.

The joke was so completely unexpected, Melissa burst into laughter. The Dylan Harper she knew didn't make jokes. Or so she had thought.

"No, that's not what I meant. You didn't have to tell her that I'm your wife."

"What else could I have said?"

His smile faded. Releasing her arm, he shoved his hands into his front pockets, as if suddenly self-conscious.

"I don't think she believed it, anyway."

"Maybe not,"

Melissa said softly, almost wishing he still held her elbow. But his deed counted for more than his credibility. When he had told her that she could use his name, she never once expected that he would go out of his way to introduce her as his wife.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Rafe Dubois had told her the truth when he said that Dylan Harper was a gentleman.

***

"You want to work? Our agreement was that you would work here for me. What more do you think you can do when you have a baby to watch?"

Dylan asked when they went back upstairs.

She had broached the subject of her working with trepidation. If he'd planned on her looking after only his own wants, he might forbid her from doing anything else, and be angry besides But after meeting Belinda Mulrooney, Melissa had given more and more thought to making some money of her own.

Dylan stood at the mirror over the washstand, barefoot and wearing only a pair of jeans while he shaved. The sun, up since three-thirty, was bright beyond the canvas curtains and fell across his bare back, outlining the plane of his shoulders with light and shadow. Melissa tried not to stare at the ridges of muscles that flanked the long hollow of his spine, or the way his jeans seemed to hang suspended below his narrow waist and follow the curve of his backside. She didn't want to notice any of those things—he wasn't her husband and she didn't want another one after Coy. But she found the sight hard to ignore.

"Coy told me that saloon girls make a hundred dollars a night just for peddling drinks and dancing with miners,"

she replied, shifting her attention to the sink full of breakfast dishes that she was washing.

He looked at her over his shoulder, his razor stilled in his hand, and the lower half of his face hidden by shaving soap.

"Jesus, you want to work in a saloon?"

"No, of course I don't. But I've heard about women running roadhouses and dressmaking shops, and making a lot of money at it."

"How much money do you need?"

His tone turned oddly brittle.

"I'm not charging you for room and board."

She took a quiet breath before answering.

"I mean no offense, but you said yourself that this is temporary. That when you decide you've had enough you're going back to Oregon. I have to be ready for that day."

He turned back toward the mirror.

"I told you that I'll give you enough to make a new start somewhere else,"

he mumbled.

"I really want to have money of my own, as much as I can make. Anyway, I still intend to pay you the twelve hundred dollars Coy owed you, and any other money it's cost you to take in Jenny and me."

"I don't expect you to cover Logan's debt. I told you that was between him and me, and you're not responsible for it."

He almost sounded irritated, but she couldn't imagine why. She'd expect him to be glad to get his money back.

"Just the same, I will pay you in Coy's place."

Dylan drew a deep breath and swallowed the surge of bitter annoyance that rose abruptly within him. Coy Logan. He thought that if she mentioned him one more time, he'd search out the bastard and give him the beating he so richly deserved. And she wanted a lot of money? Elizabeth had wanted lots of money too, badly enough to reveal the object of her true love—herself. Why did it seem that the women he'd known in his life put a higher value on cash than anything else?

He spoke to her reflection in his shaving mirror.

"What do you know how to do? Have you got goods to sell, or a skill people will pay for?"

He tipped his head back to shave his throat.

She thought for a moment.

"I can't dance or sing if that's what you mean."

Dylan would dispute that. He didn't know if she could dance, but she had the sweetest voice he'd ever heard. The few times he'd been around when she sang to Jenny, he would sit at the table and pretend to be busy with some task just for the pleasure of listening to her. But for such a timid woman, she was as stubborn as a mule.

He stole another glance at her as she scrubbed the frying pan. Apparently she had given up trying to keep her hair in a knot and now wore it in long, heavy braid that swung back and forth behind her when she moved.

In the brief gap of silence, he heard her sigh.

"I guess I don't know how to do much of anything besides cook and clean. That was all I ever did at home in Portland."

She sounded defeated.

"I never earned anything for it."

"Yeah? Why did you get stuck with it?"

She paused a long moment before answering.

"My mother worked as a maid for a wealthy family, so she only came home one day a week. The rest of the time I took care of my brothers and my father."

He heard a sharp edge of resentment in her voice.

"Things weren't so good there, huh?"

She paused on her way to the landing to throw out the dishwater.

"No, they weren't."

She didn't elaborate, and Dylan didn't ask her to. He knew the story wouldn't be a happy one, and hearing the details would just make it harder to keep his distance.

And he was having some trouble with that as it was. Sometimes her image rose in his mind when he least wanted to see it. Hell, he was just a man, and having her in his bed, even with that damned rice sack between them, gave him all sorts of notions. He kept telling himself that it was because he hadn't had a woman in months. It had to be that—it had to be the reason he sometimes woke in the middle of the night and propped up on his elbow to watch her sleep.

Let her find work, he decided, shrugging off the picture in his head. So much the better for him—he wouldn't try to stop her. If she learned a way to make a living, he'd be able to send her on her way without a twinge of conscience over how she would fare alone in the world with an infant. And he could go back home to The Dalles, buy the land he longed for, and get on with his own life.

He wiped the rest of the soap off his face and put on his shirt. It was nicely ironed. The collar and cuffs bore just a touch of starch, and all the buttons were sewn on. Until Melissa had moved in, he'd usually washed his clothes in a bucket and draped them over the chairs to dry. Then he'd put them on as they'd dried, wrinkled and stiff as boards. This was a luxury. A man could get used to sweet singing and good meals and ironed shirts.

He stopped himself. Yeah, a man could get used to a lot of things—the scent of a woman's hair, the lure of her body, the teasing softness of her voice. And that was when his troubles would begin.

***

After dragging the rest of the wash downstairs, Melissa put Jenny in her crate and set the box on a chair next to the washtub. The morning clouds had burned off, and the sun began to emerge. Dylan had put up an awning to create a roomy shelter, and strung rope between two pairs of poles to give her a clothesline. A little stove that he'd set up just behind the building provided her with a place to heat water.

It wasn't the best arrangement—she didn't know what she'd do come fall when the weather began to grow cold. And it felt strange to do wash in full view of the passing throng, who had only to look down the side street to see her working here. For now, though, the days were mild and this spot would have to serve.

Up and down Front Street the incessant racket of hammers and saws echoed as new three- and four-story buildings rose from the place that, until a little over a year ago as Dylan had pointed out, had been nothing more than a few tents and a moose pasture. At least the muddy streets had finally begun to dry out under the June sun.

Jenny gurgled and waved her fists, apparently pleased with her change of location. Looking at her, Melissa felt her heart swell with love. She was such a beautiful child, so full of promise, her future bright with whatever possibilities Melissa would be able to give her.

"Would you like to hear a song, button?"

Melissa asked as she plunged her hands into the soapy tub to scrub a diaper. She took up Stephen Foster's ode to Jeannie, but changed her name to Jenny, and her light brown hair to pale blond. The little girl smiled and watched her, fascinated, as though she understood the words.

After she washed her own things, she began Dylan's clothes. They carried the scent of him, not an unpleasant smell, and one that Melissa had come to recognize, just as she knew the sound of his footsteps on the plank flooring in the store. While she worked, she sang softly, as much to amuse herself as to keep the baby happy. Melissa was in the middle of "Shenandoah"

when she looked up and saw a man standing just at the edge of the awning.

She sprang up straight from the washtub, her heart lurching around in her chest.

"Wh-what do you want?"

He looked like any of the other grimy, tired men she saw on Front Street, bearded and wearing a battered hat. He was about thirty, she thought, perhaps a few years older than Dylan.

"

'Scuse me, ma'am, I don't mean no harm. I was just passing by"—he pointed his thumb over his shoulder toward the duckboards—"and I thought I heard singing."

Melissa put herself between the stranger and Jenny.

"I was singing to the baby,"

she said while mentally calculating the distance to the front door of Harper's Trading.

He nodded, his face shadowed by a trace of melancholy. The clearing sky behind him contrasted with his expression.

"It sounded so sweet, I just wanted to listen for a minute. Sort of reminded me of home, that's all."

Melissa relaxed slightly.

"Have you been gone long?"

She didn't bother to ask if he'd come from far away. Everyone had traveled a long distance to get to this place.

He nodded.

"Yes, ma'am, I left Sacramento just about a year ago now, but it seems ten times that. The missus and my two girls are waiting there for me. I promised I'd come home a rich man."

He chuckled humorlessly.

"I guess I can't go yet, but I sure miss them."

"I imagine they'd rather that you were there with them, rich or not."

"Oh . . . after I talked so big about what a grand life we'd have, and all the fine things we could buy, I don't feel like I can go home a failure."

His rueful smile all but admitted the foolishness of his logic.

He sounded determined and yet hopeless at the same time, and Melissa could think of nothing else to tell him.

"Well, good luck to you. I hope you don't have to be away from your family much longer."

"Thank you for the singing, ma'am. And good luck with your business, too."

He gestured at her washtub.

"Oh, no, not a business. This is just my family's wash. My baby's."

She glanced at Dylan's wet shirt in her hands.

"And my husband's."

The stranger looked down at his own muddy clothes, and then at her.

"Ma'am, forgive me if I seem like I'm getting above myself, but— Being out in the gold fields most of the time, I don't get any clothes washed regular-like. Generally, I wear them till I can't stand them no more, then I buy new duds and throw the old ones away. I guess it seems like a waste of money. Would you consider— Well, ma'am, could you be persuaded to do laundry for me if I paid you?"

Someone wanted to pay her to wash clothes? All these years she had performed such work in exchange for nothing more than a roof over her head.

"I should probably ask my husband,"

she said. Melissa was unaccustomed to being permitted to think for herself. In fact, none of the men she had known believed a woman capable of intelligent thought.

Then she remembered Belinda Mulrooney and her enterprising spirit, and the germ of the idea she'd discussed with Dylan began to take hold. Melissa could probably do very well in a town with thousands of men who were far away from the domestic services of home. This might be just the chance she was looking for.

"On second thought, I'll do your wash, Mr. . . ."

"Willis, ma'am, John Willis."

"I'm . . ."

She faltered a moment.

"I'm Mrs. Harper, Mr. Willis. Bring your clothes."

In one of the most daring decisions Melissa had ever made, she added, "And tell your friends to bring theirs, too."

***

"I'm going to need a lot of soap, I guess, and starch, and a couple more washtubs."

Melissa ticked the items off on her fingers as she paced in front of Dylan's counter. She'd hurried into the store with Jenny, anxious to get her new venture under way. The prospect of planning for her own destiny was terrifying but exciting, too.

"Oh, and I'll need to string more clothesline. I guess I'll have to get a pair of those gold scales too, since I'm starting tomorrow."

She stopped then and considered both Rafe and Dylan. She realized that she was the only one talking, and an alarm sounded in her mind. In making her grand plans she'd forgotten how much men disliked women to think for themselves.

"That is, if it's all right with you. I'll still take care of the chores upstairs."

Dylan shrugged indifferently, shifting his sun-blond hair.

"I don't care what you do with your time as long as you keep your end of your bargain with me."

He took a sip from a thick-lipped white coffee mug, then began piling bars of yellow soap in front of her on the counter.

"I can do both,"

she hurried to assure him.

"I can still cook and clean for you, and do this, too."

"Then do what you want."

She shifted Jenny to her shoulder.

"Maybe I should have a sign painted. You know, so people will know I'm here. MRS. HARPER'S LAUNDRY, or something like that. Are signs expensive?"

It was a silly question, she realized—everything in the Yukon was expensive.

Dylan hoisted a forty-pound crate of Kingford's Silver Gloss Starch to the counter.

"You don't need a sign. I can promise that you won't lack for business. Once the word gets out, you'll be buried under a pile of dirty clothes."

His tone had that funny brittle edge that she'd heard once or twice before.

He didn't like the idea. She could tell by his voice and the flinty expression in his eyes. She didn't even think that Rafe liked it—he sent Dylan a look that was even more forbidding than his friend's hard, blank expression. But at least Dylan didn't object outright, and she had gained enough wary confidence in him to believe that he wasn't simply waiting until they were alone to explode in a boiling fury.

About that time Jenny started fussing for her afternoon meal, and Melissa welcomed the chance to escape.

"Oh, dear, I'll have to come back for everything."

"I'll put it under the stairs for you,"

Dylan said, and her last thought of him was that he was the most complex man she had ever known.

***

Dylan watched Melissa leave, and heard the swish of her calico skirt as it brushed around the door frame. This was a hell of a change from the silent, terrified rag doll he'd met three weeks ago. She was still too thin, but her new clothes helped to hide that.

With no little effort, Rafe unfolded his long cadaverous frame from the straight-backed chair that now took the place of the rocker. Dylan could hear his breathing again today.

"I'd almost believed that I made the right decision in giving Melissa and her child over to your protection."

Walking to the counter, he removed a small silver flask from the inside pocket in his coat and took a drink from it.

"I admit that I'm wondering if I did the right thing."

Dylan stared at him.

"Why?"

"I'd hoped that you'd make her life a little easier—obviously that woman has been sorely abused. But now I find that she feels she has to wash clothes in the street to earn her own way. She'll be prey to every unsavory opportunist in Dawson. What did you say to give her the impression that she has to work?"

Rafe's slow, melodic drawl could cut like a whip when he was peeved.

"Not a goddamned thing! And she won't be in the street,"

Dylan retorted, surprised that Rafe would care about his relationship with Melissa.

"This was her idea, not mine. She told me she wants to earn as much money as she can."

The lawyer coughed, then drew a gasping breath that sounded like his last.

"Have you wondered why that is?"

he asked when the fit had passed.

Dylan knew perfectly well why, and the reason made him feel guilty somehow. But he wasn't of a mind to discuss his earlier conversation with Melissa. He shrugged.

"Well, what woman doesn't want money?" he asked.

"At least she's willing to work for it."

Rafe shrugged and took another drink.

"I wouldn't subject my wife to that."

Feeling beleaguered by the interrogation, Dylan snapped, "She's not my wife!"

From the first day he'd agreed to this temporary alliance with Melissa, he'd had the uneasy suspicion that his friend viewed the arrangement as permanent "And I don't want one."

Rafe gazed at the street through the open door, as though another voice called to him.

"Dylan, do you ever think about your own death?"

The anger had left his voice.

Puzzled by the change of subject, he replied, "Sure, once in a while."

"Probably on those nights that seem to have no end, when the rest of the world sleeps but you can't? All kinds of thoughts are apt to cross a person's mind in the hours that should belong to Morpheus."

Dylan had to admire his friend's classical education.

"True, but it isn't a subject that I dwell on."

Rafe nodded.

"Probably not. Nearly every man dies with regrets, though."

He tapped his thin chest "Keeping this heart, faulty though it is, all to myself is one of mine."

It was as frank a comment as he'd ever made. He considered Dylan with dark, deep-set eyes.

"Don't let it be one of yours."