Riding With the Devil's Mistress (Lou Prophet Western #3) Read Online Free PDF

need something done. What?’
    ‘ Oh,
Lou, what will you think of me, asking a favor after we’ve . . . ?’
She let the sentence trail off and drew her shoulders together,
bunching her breasts.
    ‘ Ask
away,’ he said absently, swallowing as he stared at the flesh
exposed by the open wrapper.
    ‘ The
door to the privy won’t shut all the way. I think the boards are
warped.’ She had a pained look on her face. ‘Would you mind taking
a look at it? I mean, since you don’t have any other plans for the
day and all?’
    Prophet ran his eyes up and
down her scrumptious figure once more. ‘I would be more than happy to fix
anything you got ailing, Mrs. Cordelia Ryan.’
    ‘ Oh,
Lou!’ she said, running back to the bed and kissing his cheek.
‘You’re a dear!’ She went back to the door, began opening it, then
closed it again gently, half-whispering, ‘Until this evening, my
stallion ,..’
    She blew him a kiss and left.
    Thoroughly bewitched, Prophet rolled back on
the pillow with a big grin on his face.
    As soon as
he ’d
polished off a big plate of ham and eggs and fried potatoes, and
washed it down with hot, black coffee, he got started on the privy
door, which was so badly warped by moisture that he had to remove
it, take it apart in the maintenance shed in the backyard, and
replace two boards and a handful of screws before putting it back
together and remounting the knob, which he also took apart and
oiled.
    Before he put the door back on
its hinges, he gave it a fresh coat of paint. That done, something
didn ’t look
right. The problem was the fresh white paint on the door no longer
matched the dull, gray paint of the rest of the privy. It bothered
him to the point that he went ahead and painted the whole
privy.
    ‘ Now,
if that ain’t the best lookin’ two-holer in town, I’m not the
middle son of Homer and Minnie,’ Prophet said, stepping back to
admire his handiwork.
    ‘ Oh,
Lou?’
    He turned. It was Cordelia
standing on the house ’s back porch. ‘Annabelle was cleaning a room
upstairs and found a cracked window.’ She thrust her lower lip out,
pouting.
    Prophet sighed and offered a
wry smile. ‘Be right there.’
    By the time Prophet had
replaced the window, repaired several pickets in the fence
surrounding the boarding house, plastered several cracks in the
parlor ’s
ceiling, cleaned the kitchen chimney, and hauled a load of food
staples back from the mercantile, stacking it all in the basement
storage room, he was ready to saddle Mean and Ugly and head back
out on the owlhoot trail for a little rest and
relaxation.
    But he was rewarded that
evening by the finest meal— young chickens roasted in white wine and butter
and a dessert of peach cobbler and ice cream—he’d ever eaten in his
life. And the coffee Annabelle brought him on the porch afterward,
where he sat smoking with the two older, chess-playing gents from
the evening before, was liberally laced with a sweet liquor—a
clandestine gift, he knew, from Cordelia.
    The gift she gave him later was
just as clandestine but not nearly as subtle. Slipping into his
room after everyone else in the house was long asleep, the old
gents ’
snores resounding in the walls, she snickered into her hand, ripped
off her wrapper, threw herself atop him, and hissed, ‘Come, my
stallion—throw the blocks to your sweet Cordelia!’
    He did, and paid for it again
the next day, so that by the time he ’d finished repairing the house buggy’s
left front wheel and greasing both axles, his back was squawking
like an old goose. Rather than head back into the boarding house,
where surely Cordelia or Annabelle would have another chore for
him, he washed at the outside pump, donned his hat, unrolled his
shirtsleeves, and walked south toward the business district. He
thought he’d have a beer and the free lunch in the town’s only
saloon, maybe even indulge in a game of five-card stud—if such
impious dalliance was allowed in Luther Falls.
    On the way