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Matt pulled on the reins to slow the horses so he wouldn’t run over three little boys playing Kick the Can up and down the street.

No little girls were in the mix. Lily remembered when her brothers could do that very thing and never had to do women’s work in the house or the yard.

And they got to go to town once a month with her father.

Not so with her! She had to stay home and close to her mother to learn the skills of taking care of a house and raising babies.

Lily tucked that memory into the back of her mind and concentrated on reading every sign hanging outside businesses on the bumpy ride from the station to the respectable hotel.

She didn’t see a single one advertising custom-made clothing and hats, and counted that as a good omen.

When Matt stopped the wagon in front of a building that had to be four times the size of the Paradise, she bit back a gasp.

He hopped out and then helped both women down.

A hot breeze reminded Lily of the blast of heat she often got when she opened the oven door in the kitchen at the Paradise.

The wind set the Crockett Hotel sign in motion, sending a squeaking sound every time it moved.

Matt opened the door for her, and she stepped inside the lobby to the murmur of dozens of conversations going on between people sitting around tables covered in white cloths.

To her right, a man stood behind a tall desk with a book on a swivel base.

The windows and doors were open, letting in a few flies and some of the dust from the road.

Lily brushed away a couple of the insects that landed on the sleeve of her dress, then turned around to see why everyone had left, only to find that they were still there.

Apparently, only the conversations had stopped, and everyone in the hotel lobby was staring at her and Daisy.

She bit back a soft giggle as best she could—if they knew where she and Daisy had worked the past few years, they would probably run them out of town on a rail.

“There you go.” Matt set the first trunk on the floor. Then he hurried back outside and brought in the second trunk.

“How much do we owe you?” Lily asked.

“Not a thing,” he said.

“Then thank you, kind sir,” Lily said.

“We’ll make you a shirt for your help, if you’ll stop in at our seamstress shop after we get things set up,” Daisy offered.

“That sounds beyond fair.” He tipped his hat and disappeared outside.

The clerk cleared his throat and fiddled with his thin, blond mustache. “May I help you ladies?”

Daisy marched up to the counter with her back straight and her head held high. “We need a room for a week.”

“One or two?” he asked.

“One will do fine,” Lily replied.

He raised an eyebrow. “Will your husbands be joining you?”

“We are traveling alone,” Daisy said. “We’ll be looking around for an empty business to put in a seamstress shop.”

“Sisters?” he asked.

“Cousins,” Lily answered, thanking Daisy inwardly for the change of term.

The man handed them a key, told them the price for a week, and flipped the guest book around for them to sign. “That’s room 214. If you need someone to take your trunks up for you, that will be an extra dollar.”

Daisy took the money from her purse and handed it to him. “Thank you—and yes, we do need the services of the porter. Plus, we would like some hot water brought up to our room each evening. Do we pay for that now, or can you add it to our bill and we’ll take care of it when we leave?”

He nodded toward the book. “Once you sign in, I can run a tab for you, and that can include any meals you have in the dining room.”

“Thank you,” Daisy said.

Lily stared at the ledger book for what felt like a full minute. Did she sign her full name, Abigail Carolina Boyle? She had simply been known as Lily for so long that she was taken aback for a moment.

Daisy looked down at the ledger, dipped the pen in the ink, and without hesitation, signed Daisy Lindberg with a flourish.

Lily followed her example and signed Lily Boyle .

When Miz Raven took her in, she’d had trouble getting used to having a different name, but the madam of the Paradise assured her that she was leaving her past behind her and adopting a new way of life.

Now her birth name brought back memories that made her both sad and angry.

Now I’m leaving the past behind again , she thought. So should I go back to Abigail or stay with Lily? She figured she’d have to ponder that over the next few days, since the answer didn’t fly into the lobby with the next group of winged insects.

The desk clerk frowned. “You sure don’t look like you share enough blood to be cousins.”

“I was adopted into the family,” Daisy lied.

“Well, that would explain it. Thank you, ladies. I’m Frank Calvin. Just let me know if you need anything at all. We serve supper until seven, and then we close the dining room. You can still order tea after that time, but no food.”

“Don’t look back,” Lily said when they started climbing the staircase.

“You mean, as in right now or forever?” Daisy glanced over her shoulder.

“This is a big town, and we’re being watched,” Lily said in a barely audible voice. “We want folks to see us as independent women, not as scared little country mice because we don’t have a male escort.”

“Well, let them look. If they are honest, I bet they’ve got more secrets hiding in their chifforobes than we do in our trunks,” Daisy said. “And we’ll need to be careful around that desk clerk.”

“Why’s that?” Lily asked.

“He’s got shifty eyes, and I never trust a man with three first names,” Daisy declared.

“He just said Frank Calvin.” Lily stopped by the door with “214” painted on the outside.

“I’ll bet you a dollar that his middle name is Edward or Paul or another first name, too. My dead husband was John Edward Andrew, and he had that same shifty look about him. He’d lie to his own mother to get what he wanted,” Daisy hissed.

“I believe you,” Lily said as she unlocked the door and stepped into a room even hotter than the lobby. “The fiancé I left behind had three first names, too, and he was horrible.”

“We do not need a man to tell us how to run our lives, or to own anything that belongs to us. Miz Raven taught us to outride a cowboy, outshoot any of those gunslingers out there, and outtalk a politician—so stand back, Autrie. Lily and Daisy are here, not Abigail and Ethel.”

“What makes you say that?” Lily crossed the room and raised the single window. The wind that blew the curtain back was still hot, but at least it replaced the stale scent that had greeted her and Daisy.

“Abigail and me, with my original name, and all the baggage we had when Miz Raven took us in are gone. We are Lily and Daisy, two independent women who don’t need a man to travel with them.

” Daisy tossed her hat on the vanity and eased down into a rocking chair.

“And we are more than cousins. We are sisters of the heart.”

“Great speech, and you are right,” Lily replied.

“We were both adopted into Miz Raven’s—if either of us can do anything at all, we owe it to her.

Do you really think she’s never going to be a madam again?

” Lily turned around slowly to take in the whole room: a large bed situated so that any breeze from the open window would flow across it, a dresser, and a vanity with a big round mirror attached to the back of it.

“She told me that she got into the brothel business because it was profitable, but she could see that in the coming years, it would die out, and she wanted to go home to London and help her sister with the women’s rights movement. ”

Daisy chuckled, removed the pins from her long, blond tresses, and let her hair fall to her waist. “The process of running a brothel might change, but men will always be men.”

“Yep, but who knows what tomorrow might bring?” Lily waved a hand around to take in the whole room. “This is not the Paradise, but it sure beats sleeping on the ground, or propped up in a stagecoach or a train.”

Daisy stood up and unbuttoned her jacket. “I could use a nap before we have supper. How about you?”

Lily had already taken off her jacket and slipped out of her skirt before she stretched out on the bed. “Yes, I could. It feels good just to stretch my bones out straight.”

She closed her eyes, and an image of Matt Maguire was right there, sitting close to her and causing her to sweat even more than the summer heat.

Not even the man she had been engaged to, Phillip Robert Paul, had brought on that kind of feeling—but then, he had been, and quite possibly still was, a brutish fellow when they were alone.

She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something about Matt screamed that he was a decent sort—at least for one of the male species, and at the very least, he didn’t have three first names, so that was a good sign.

A hard knock at the door made Lily sit straight up in bed, her eyes wide and staring across the room. “Who would be coming up here at ...,” she gasped.

Daisy cracked the door slightly and then opened it wide. “Our trunks are here. The porter just left them by the door,” she said and grabbed the leather strap on the end of hers and dragged it into the room. “Just lay back down. I’ll drag yours in, too.”

“Thank you,” Lily said and closed her eyes again. She wasn’t even fully asleep when the sharp sound of gunfire startled her and brought her to a sitting position for the second time. “Who got shot? Miz Raven makes the men check their weapons at the door.”

Daisy dropped the thin curtain over the window and turned to face her. “I couldn’t sleep, so I’ve been watching the people on the street. Evidently, there was a gunfight out there. Both men are wounded. Here comes a doctor from the saloon next door.”

Lily covered a yawn with the back of her hand. “I guess we didn’t leave that kind of thing behind in Spanish Fort.”