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anyhow. But if you wanna get yelled at by that shrew Harry married, then get up off your bee-hind and let’s go.”
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    A little smile tugged at Courtney’s lips as she closed the door to the guest chamber she had just finished cleaning. She had found another newspaper. Rockley didn’t have its own paper, and the only news she ever got from the outside world was from listening to the conversations of strangers passing through or from reading the rare newspaper left behind by hotel guests. That didn’t happen often. Newspapers were as good as books if you lived in a town that didn’t have its own paper. Most folks held on to theirs. Sarah had a collection of papers, but she never shared them, so Courtney always tried to find one first.
    She hid the newspaper under the pile of dirty linens she had to wash and headed for the stairs, planning to slip the paper into her room downstairs before she tackled the laundry.
    At the top of the stairs, Courtney slowed, taking notice of the stranger waiting below. Then she stopped altogether and did something she rarely did. She stared at a man. She even caught herself doing it and would have chided herself, except that she couldn’t stop staring. For some reason, this man captured her interest like no one ever had.
    The first thing she noticed was that he stood straight and tall. The second thing was his lean, hawkish profile. But the promise of his features being so very striking was what held her attention the most. He would be disturbingly handsome, she was sure of it, though all she could see was his left profile. And he was dark, from the black vest and pants to the bronze skin to the black hair that fell straightto just below his ears. Even the gray shirt and neckerchief were dark.
    The man had not removed his wide-brimmed hat to come into the hotel, but at least he wasn’t wearing any spurs. That was strange, for the saddlebags tossed over his shoulder suggested he had ridden into town, and Courtney had never seen a man who didn’t ride with spurs.
    And then she noticed what she hadn’t seen before because she’d been able to see only his left side. He wore double belts, which meant he undoubtedly had a gun strapped to his right thigh. That might not mean too much, for most men out West carried guns. But the guns, combined with the look of him, made her think he wasn’t wearing a gun just for his own protection.
    Courtney didn’t like gunmen. She thought of them as overgrown bullies—which most of them, in fact, were. That breed of man believed they could do or say anything. Too few people had the courage to upbraid them, since you could get shot that way.
    A person wouldn’t think a small town like Rockley would see too many gunmen, but Rockley did. There had even been two gunfights in recent years. Cowboys passed through Rockley on their way to the wild cowtowns, Abilene, and recently Newton. Those cowtowns drew every type of riffraff, and next year Wichita would become a cowtown too, and it was just seventeen miles away, so Courtney couldn’t see any letup in the steady stream of traffic.
    Working in the only hotel in town, she couldn’t avoid gunmen. One had nearly rapedher, others had stolen kisses. She’d been fought over, pursued, and propositioned most shockingly. That was the main reason she wanted desperately to leave Rockley and why she wouldn’t marry any of the Rockley men, not even if that would have gotten her out of the hotel, where she worked from morning to night as no more than a maid.
    Having signed the register book, the stranger put down the pen. Courtney immediately turned and hurried back down the hall to the back stairs that led directly outside. It was inconvenient, going this way, but she didn’t want to come in through the kitchen below, where she might run into Sarah and be scolded for dillydallying. No, she would have to go around the hotel and come in through the front