Page 103 of Snowbound Surrender

“We really shouldn’t keep the fire lit in the saloon itself,” Randall suggested after a somewhat disappointing lunch of boiled cabbage and salted ham. “Who knows how long we’ll need our fuel supplies to last?”

Oursupplies. How longwe’llneed them to last. The way his words wrapped themselves around her, they wouldn’t need much in the way of wood or coal at all.

“Well,” she began hesitantly. “I still haven’t cleaned the rooms upstairs.” She’d been too filled with dread over what she might find in those rooms.

As if Randall could read her thoughts, his expression grew mischievous and teasing. “Now’s the time. The heat from the saloon’s main chimney will have warmed up that part of the building, but if we let the fire go out, it’ll get awfully cold again.”

Miranda pursed her lips and pretended to think about the prospect, but the spark in his eyes alone had already convinced her to tackle what she’d been avoiding. “All right. Let’s do it.”

The tiny, second floor bedrooms ended up being everything she dreaded they would be. The linens hadn’t been washed in longer than she cared to think. They were stained and smelly in more of the rooms than not.

“Whew!” Miranda held her nose with one hand and a nasty, old sheet in the other as she carried it into the hall. “How could people live in these conditions?”

As she dropped the sheet in the dry washtub that Randall had hauled up to the second floor hallway, he came out of the room with an armful of sheets. “Um, Miranda, I don’t think peoplelivedhere.”

His words were monumentally scandalous, but his tone of voice was laced with humor and his eyes were bright. Miranda giggled even as she rolled her eyes. “It’s shameful, is what it is.”

“Forgive me for arguing with you once again, Miss Clarke, but I believe this is, in fact, shameless.” He managed to speak with a combination of mock seriousness and impish teasing.

Miranda pressed a hand to her mouth to cover her laughter, then jerked it away at the thought of what her hands had been touching moments before. That only increased her laughter, which caused Randall to break his pretend stern character to chuckle along with her.

“What was Uncle Buford thinking?” Miranda shook her head and marched down the hall to the next room.

“Probably that there is a good deal of fun to be had in being shameless,” Randall answered.

Miranda squeaked and twisted to face him, unable to keep the smile out of her tone. “Scandal, Mr. Sinclair! Blasphemy!”

Randall raised his brows. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been shameless on purpose just to have a good time.”

All joking dropped from Miranda’s expression. “Never,” she answered, and for the first time in her life, she felt as though that was her loss.

“We’ll just have to change that then.” Randall slipped up behind her and swept her into his arms.

For one, glorious moment, Miranda thought he would clasp her in his arms and kiss her, like some dime novel hero. Her entire body thrilled with the prospect. She even softened her lips and gazed up into his eyes in preparation. But instead of making passionate love to her, he hopped right into the steps of a polka, wheeling her around the narrow hallway as if they were on the widest dance floor in town.

“What are you doing?” she laughed as the initial shock of her disappointment in not being kissed wore off.

“I’m shamelessly dancing with you in the middle of an upstairs hall in broad daylight.”

Miranda laughed out loud at his ridiculousness. “But how can it be shameless if no one is here to see us?” she asked, even as their lively dance steps pushed the air right out of her lungs.

He stopped his silly dancing so fast that Miranda’s head spun. “I suppose you’re right,” he said, back to being overly grave and serious once more. “Never mind that, then. We have whores’ bedchambers to clean out.”

Miranda slapped both hands to her mouth in shock over his frank language as he let her go. She should have been horrified. She should have been furious over him being so blatant and indelicate with her. But all she could do was laugh. Laugh until her sides hurt. She’d never known anyone who could toss convention and propriety aside as deftly as Randall did and still remain unquestionably a gentleman. And she had no idea what she would do once he was gone.

So far,the quest to clean up the upstairs rooms—or booths, as Randall was beginning to see them—had uncovered one riding whip, a handful of French letters, a phallus carved from soapstone, and more putrid sheets than Randall had ever wanted to see in one place. He managed to hide the more offensive items from Miranda’s sight by burying them in the pile of sheets they’d decided to throw out instead of attempt to salvage by washing in lye soap, but who knew what else was out there?

“Now that the worst of it has been removed,” he began as they stood at one end of the hall as the afternoon sun sank toward the horizon, “the rooms almost look normal.”

In fact, each one held a small bed and a tiny nightstand with one drawer. Now that the contents had been cleared out, they could pass for hotel rooms. Extremely cheap hotel rooms.

“Do you think it would be possible to knock down some of these walls to make larger rooms?” Miranda asked, stepping inside the closed room and running her hand down the flimsy wall dividing it from the room next door.

Something about the tender way she stroked the wall, the way her fingertips brushed it lightly, caressingly, sent a jolt of fire thundering through Randall. He adjusted his stance to hide the sudden tightness in his trousers and focused on her question.

“Yes, you could do that. I doubt any of these walls are holding the structure up.”

She turned back to him. “The structure of the building is sound. It’s almost a shame it’s a saloon and not a house.”