High Country Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

recall, afterward, whether that was his first name or his last. He’d been raised near San Antonio, by an aunt and uncle, and he owned part interest in the herd of cattle Emmeline had seen clogging the street earlier. In time, though how long it was, she couldn’t have sad, he took her hand, helped her to her feet, and led her up the stairs and into the quiet shadows of the corridor.
    There, he kissed her, and though it was pleasant indeed, Emmeline was mildly disappointed. Her reading, and her fantasies, had led her to expect something more, though she couldn’t have said precisely what that something was. She sagged against the wall, when it ended, and sighed, causing him to chuckle.
    “I thought so,” he said wryly.
    “Hmm?” she asked, and burped delicately. Her knees seemed a little weak, and she started to slide down the wall, but he caught her, lifted her easily into his arms.
    “Your room,” he prompted.“Where is it?”
    The vague thrill she felt then was neither alarm nor anticipation, but something different, something she didn’t recognize. She rubbed one temple, trying to will her thoughts into some semblance of order. “I think you should put me down,” she said. “I’m sure this is quite improper.”
    He chortled at that. “That may be true,” he agreed, “but you’re in no shape to be wandering around a brothel by yourself.”
    She sighed again.“I live here,” she said.
    “So you say,” he replied.
    Emmeline thought fast, and it wasn’t easy, given the fog whirling in her brain. Then she gestured toward the door of a room she knew was empty—only a few days before, Chloe Barker had left Becky’s employ, and Kansas City, for good, taking a train west. Emmeline felt a sharp and sudden stab of envy over that, an uncharitable emotion that she’d been able to subvert when she was sober.
    “In there,” she said. If she could just lie down for a few moments, close her eyes, recover her equilibrium, well, she’d be fine.
    The Texan opened the door with a motion of his foot. The ghost scents of lavender water and talcum lingered faintly in the still air, dust motes floating like fragments of stars in the pale gaslight pouring in from the hallway. The bedstead was iron, painted white, and the coverlet was cream-colored sateen, threadbare but still pretty.
    Emmeline yawned widely, and the man called Holt laid her down on the mattress, causing the bedsprings to creak. She tried to sit up, remembering that she was still wearing her shoes, aware that there were other, more important matters of concern as well, but he put a hand to her shoulder and she settled deeper into the pillows. She felt a merciful loosening sensation around her ankles as he undid her laces.
    That, alas, was the last thing she remembered, for she was caught in a backwash of shadows then, and sent spinning into a place too dark and deep for dreams. When she awakened, the sun was up, and her head ached as though she’d laid it on the railroad track just before the 10:03 came through. The first thing that came to her awareness was that she was alone in the borrowed bed, wearing nothing but her skimpies.
    Her eyes went wide as memory returned; bile surged into the back of her throat. Disjointed recollections traipsed one by one through her mind—the red dress, the man from Texas—what was his name?—the whiskey. She stumbled to the washstand next to the window, blinking against the harsh light, bent her head over the porcelain basin, and was violently ill. Then, with frantic motions of her hands, she touched her breasts, her belly, her thighs. She didn’t feel different. She wasn’t sore anywhere, and when she tossed back the bedclothes, holding her breath, there was no blood.
    Maybe— please God —nothing had happened.
    She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, breathing slowly and deeply, both hands clasped to her stomach, lest it rebel again. And that was when she saw the gold pieces stacked neatly on the bedside