Silver on the Road (The Devil's West Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

pull the covers over, and pretend.
    She placed the hairbrush on her dresser, smoothed the fabric of her skirt, and left the room.
    All the bedroom doors were closed, and no one else seemed to be about, although there was the usual muted clatter coming from the kitchen when she came down the stairs. The tables were covered with their usual sheets to keep dust and dirt off the felt, the chairs tipped forward or stacked against the far wall. Somehow, she had thought that everything would change today. Instead, it felt exactly the same.
    A door opened and shut above her, the wood creaking the way it always did, and someone shuffled into another room. When the saloon was open, everyone wore hard-soled shoes that tap-tapped merrily on the wood. After hours, though, the women wore sheepskin slippers, upswept hair came down over shoulders, and tired faces smiled only when they wanted to, the saloon a refuge rather than a place of business. Izzy felt guilty for wearing her shoes this early, as though she were making too much noise, but the thought of facing this in slippers . . . Izzy blanched. No, for this, she would be dressed and ready.
    The boss was in his office, coffee by his elbow, the steam rising lazily into the air while he entered figures into the ledger book.
    “You’re up early again, dearling.” He didn’t look up when she paused in the doorway. The boss’s office wasn’t exactly forbidden; she’d been in there often enough, usually when being scolded. But she waited anyway, and finally he sighed, closed the ledger book, and looked up at her.
    The boss hadn’t aged in all the time she’d known him, but he looked . . . tired this morning. There were no windows in his office, but she thought sunlight might pick out a few more silver strands in his dark blond hair. He was clean-shaven today, his shirt open at the neck, vest undone and no cravat around his neck, so she could see his Adam’s apple move when he spoke.
    “I didn’t sleep well,” she admitted.
    “Not well or not at all?” He pointed at the chair opposite his desk, and she sat in it obediently. Unlike yesterday, she wasn’t wearing her best, just a simple brown wool dress that she thought made her look older, more serious. She crossed her feet at the ankle to keep from tapping her toes nervously on the floor. What had seemed so obvious, so plain, before she fell asleep last night now fluttered like a butterfly, too flighty to consider.
    “Not well—barely at all,” she admitted. Her fingers twisted together in her lap, and she sighed, giving up on any pretense of maturity, solemnity, or dignity. “My indenture ended last night.”
    “So it did.” He was giving her his full attention now, his eyes still arrowhead-sharp, the brown tinged with gold, his skin sun-weathered and creased. She’d always liked this look best on him. “A grown woman with her life spread out in front of her.”
    His tone was teasing, but his expression was serious. She nodded, and suddenly the words, rather than being locked up in her throat, flowed easily.
    “I’ve been thinking. Like you said yesterday. I’ve considered my options, and I want to stay. I want to work for you. Not the saloon, not . . . I don’t want to work the back rooms or the bar. I want to work for you .”
    It had sounded better, clearer, when she’d rehearsed it in her head, lying in her bed last night. Izzy felt her skin flush, and she looked down at her fingers again, embarrassed.
    He wasn’t going to make this any easier, reverting to the formal posture and voice he used when someone came calling for a Bargain. “What is it that you want, Isobel Lacoyo Távora?”
    The sound of her family name, her birth name, brought a flash of memory, voices and warmth, but she pushed it away. The past was past. Her future was what mattered now.
    “Respect.” There was no thought of lying to him or shading the desire. There was no point: if she were to bargain with the devil, she needed to