Cold Steel and Hot Lead [How the West Was Done 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read Online Free PDF Page B

for. Who you really want is Antonio Franconi, the Italian—”
    “Get him!” the thug bellowed.
    So once again, for the second time that day, Derrick found himself on the run.

Chapter Four
     
    The Cactus Club was the most highfalutin restaurant in Laramie City, and Alameda Hudson had to juggle trays holding many bowls and cups.
    This wasn’t a very upstanding occupation for the daughter of the most prosperous merchant in town, but Alameda didn’t want to take money from her father. And what else would she do all day if she didn’t serve tables here? Sit at home at Vancouver House and read? She had busted away from New York for that very reason—boredom. After ten years of nursing her ailing mother through consumption, Alameda was entirely prepared to break free, to mingle with tracklayers, gamblers, and all the mountebanks who followed the Hell on Wheels railroad towns.
    And now the circus was stuck here due to high snowdrifts, and she was serving Joe the Rubber-Skinned Man and a pockmarked giant some plates of calf’s liver and peas. Her sister Tabitha back in Hyde Park, New York, would be green with envy to know that her day consisted of hobnobbing with such colorful characters. What could possibly be more exciting?
    Well, perhaps the arrival of the two handsomest men she had ever seen in her life.
    They weren’t with the circus, as far as Alameda could tell. They looked like businessmen in their brocaded waistcoats and warm wool greatcoats. But she didn’t recognize them as being from Laramie, so they must have been traveling east on the train when it got snowed in. They were a perfectly cultured pair of exquisitely stunning men—dark-haired, delicious, vigorous.
    The fellow with the wide striped necktie was dashing, his brunet locks curling around his shirt collar. His lovely expressive eyes spoke of great intelligence, and he was obviously extremely athletic. The other fellow had a silk scarf wrapped around his neck and the most luminous, riveting eyes Alameda had ever seen.
    Alameda hadn’t been attracted to any man since coming to Laramie, being resistant to masculine charms after the disaster that was Ralph Ellis in Hyde Park. But now for some inexplicable reason, Alameda practically shoved her fellow worker Irene aside in her zeal to serve these men. She felt vibrant, more alive than she had been in many months, as she steered toward their table to take their order. She was proud of the way the duo took note of her, swiveling their heads and resting their eyes on what she knew to be her extremely shapely form.
    Scouring her brain for something witty to say, she started, “I presume you’re not with the circus. You don’t have tattoos that I can see.” But she wasn’t halfway through the sentence before a wheezing, choking fit overcame her.
    Damn it all to hell. This goddamned asthma.
    She couldn’t breathe when this happened. She knew that her face turned red, and she clutched at her throat, her thankfully empty tray banging to the floor.
    Both men instantly jumped to their feet.
    “What’s wrong?” said the necktie man, laying a warm hand on her shoulder. “Did you swallow something? Are you choking on something?”
    The scarf fellow said, “I think she has asthma. I’ve seen this before. We need chloroform liniment.”
    The necktie man boldly felt her waist. While Alameda couldn’t breathe and tiny clear bubbles were flitting in front of her eyes from lack of air, she still had the presence of mind to take pleasure in the touch of his hands. They were firm and sure, definitely the hands of an athlete. “No. I think it’s something else. Come, miss. Let’s go in the back, away from prying eyes.”
    Alameda managed to gasp a few shreds of air, enough to prevent her from fainting as the necktie man led her into the kitchen. She waved a limp hand at Rusty Pipes, one of the chefs. Rusty assisted by saying, “Oh, is she having another fit of asthma?”
    “That’s what I thought,” said