Read The Outlaw's Kiss (an Old West Romance) (Wild West Brides) for Free Online Page B

this place to the
ground by now. Well, him and Al. And I can tell by the sour face you’re making
that you’ve met the town boss, hmm? Less said the better.”
    The cadence of Mr. Star’s voice was mesmerizing. His
up-and-down, quicker-then-slower speaking reminded me of the way rain falls.
    “Well I can see you folks have some food to
finish. If you’re needing anything, come across the street when you finish.
We’ve got everything from camp latrines to daily ice delivery during the cooler
months, which if you can believe it, September is one of.” He pantomimed the
wiping of sweat from his head.
    “Thank you,” Father said. “We actually were
planning to visit you anyway as soon as we were finished, so I’ll look forward
to seeing you then.”
    Mr. Star stood and nodded politely, then left us
alone. The inn, actually, was quite empty aside from the late-rising
prospectors and the inebriated. It was a dusty place, but to me there were
stories here. I spent most of the time Father ate just looking around. Above
the over-large stairwell was a longhorn’s skull, and the dining room was marked
with a number of plaques declaring that Bill Hickok did such-and-such here and
such-and-such there. Or that Calamity Jane got into a fight with the mail
carrier by the doorway.
    “I’ll not be offended if you write,” father said.
“I can see the look in your eyes, dear. I know you quite well, after all.”
    “This place is just so fascinating , isn’t it?”
I sat up straighter on the edge of my seat. “There’s so much history here, to
me, it seems that all the wildness of the western frontier has come through
here at one point or another.”
    Father just smiled and chewed his bacon. He nodded
at me in a ‘ just go on ’ sort of way. For the next few minutes, until he
was finished, I furiously scribbled every detail of the place. The longhorn
skull, the way the inn keeper seemed to habitually repeat the last word of each
sentence, a count of the slovenly men who stumbled through the common area –
anything I could think to write, I wrote. It’s compunction, really, and serves
no purpose except to keep my hands and my mind busy while idle. I’d never do
such a thing in the company of anyone excepting my father, but he had grown
used to it over the years.
    “What do you think of that Star fellow?”
    “Hmm?” I looked up, surprised. “Mr. Star? He seems
nice enough. I like the way he speaks.”
    That got a smile from Father. “I noticed how you
were quick to point out Eli’s recommendation. He’s a fine man, Eli. But I don’t
want you catching a flight of fancy that ends up hurting you. After all, we’re
only going to be here for six months or so, maybe less if everything goes smoothly
and the mine gets up and running.”
    I was mortified. “But no, that’s not it, I was
grateful to him. That’s all.”
    “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to embarrass
you. I just don’t want to see you get hurt. It’s not my business though. You’re
a strong woman. I shouldn’t pry into your life like that. We need to be going.”
He stood and extended his hand. “Ready, partner?”
    I couldn’t help but laugh. I’m lucky to have him
instead of someone else. I’ve always known that, but never more than when I
passed the age where all of my friends had been pushed off to some advantageous
husband, or married to a family their fathers thought would benefit their
business. But for whatever reason – either because he thought me capable of
making my own decisions, or because he simply didn’t want to deal with it, my
heart was my own business.
    *
    “C ould you please calm down, Mr. Rawls?”
Sol Star’s voice was quite a bit less melodious than it had been when we spoke
at breakfast as it came out of his shop’s swinging door. “There’s no reason for
this sort of behavior. We’re both adults. If you bought a chisel, and the
chisel broke, I’d give you another one. But my books show you’ve