Читать книгу Forever And A Day - Mary McBride - Страница 10

Gideon paused in the lobby of the hotel, his eyes lingering on the batwing doors of the saloon at the back. It was early afternoon, but already he could hear the chink of bottles against glasses, the slap of cards, the rough harmony of male curses and throaty female laughter. The tightness in his gut pulled in another notch. Too easy, he thought. It would be too easy to push through the doors, down the liquor to put out the fire that was burning in him, take a woman upstairs to douse the other flames.

He wished...

Forget it!

With a brittle curse, he headed for the stairs, took them two at a time, then slammed the door of his room behind him. Before him there, on the bed, all prim and pressed, were the little bank teller’s clothes. The dress was laid out—its skirt fluffed out and the sleeves set primly at each side—as if waiting for Edwina Cassidy to take shape inside. He focused on the pristine white lace of the dainty underclothes carefully folded there, ready to be lifted and fleshed out. Gideon’s mouth went dry.

His eyes slanted to the mirror. “You’re one sorry case,” he told his gaunt, dusty reflection. Pretty sad when the mere sight of feminine smallclothes bashed a man’s heart against his ribs and dried his tongue like so much jerky. But it wasn’t the clothes, and he knew it. It was the woman who had worn them. The little windflower who had gotten in his way, thanks to the banker’s indifference.

But Edwina Cassidy was gone. Gideon grinned in spite of his sullen mood as he pictured her shaking her fists at him from the back of the speeding train. She’d have jumped. He had known that instinctively. That was why he’d hitched her to the door with a succession of half-knots and slipknots that would take her a good ten minutes to undo. He hoped. Hell, his fingers had been shaking so bad while he was kissing her it was a wonder he hadn’t tied himself up right along with her.

He sighed. By now she was probably hunkered down in a seat, still mad as hell. He could almost see her, staring out the window, gnawing on her lip, attempting to conceal her lush bosom while she tried to figure out what to do next about the stolen money. But once she got back to Santa Fe and once she discovered nobody at the bank held her accountable for the loss, the tiny teller would calm down and go about her business as if nothing had ever happened.

Probably in a week she wouldn’t even remember him. Some young storekeeper or cowhand would walk into the Logan Savings and Loan to make a deposit, take one look at the little teller’s sea-colored eyes and hand his damn heart right over the counter along with his money. Probably in a month or two...

A sudden rapping on the door obliterated his thoughts. Gideon’s hand rested on the butt of his gun as he called, “Yeah? Who is it?”

“Angie.”

He opened the door in response to the feminine voice, then leaned against the frame, looking down at the redheaded whore from Missouri. From home. It flashed through his mind that here stood a kind of answer to his needs, and he wondered why it suddenly seemed to matter that she wasn’t the right answer. When he finally spoke, his voice was as taut and barbed as wire. “What do you want?”

The whore’s mouth twitched in quick disappointment, then smoothed out to resume its customary, half amused, half bored expression. “There was a man downstairs asking after the girl,” she said. “Just thought you’d want to know.”

Angie shrugged then and turned to go, but Gideon’s hand flashed out to catch her arm.

“Who?” he growled.

“Said his name was Logan. That’s all I know. Said he was looking for a girl, about twenty, about my height.” She lowered her voice. “He mentioned your name.”

“What did you tell him?”

She glanced at her arm, where his fingers were compressing her pale flesh. Gideon followed the direction of her gaze. He released her, cursing under his breath as he saw the crimson imprint that would soon turn black-and-blue. He closed his eyes briefly. “Sorry,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Hey. Don’t worry about it, Missouri.” Angie gave her head a little toss. “I’ve been treated worse.”

Ashamed because he had bruised her, unaccustomed to apologizing, Gideon simply stared at her. The whore’s mouth tilted into a small, fleeting grin.

“A lot worse,” she added. “And don’t worry none about Logan. He was looking for her, not you. I heard you’d put the girl on the northbound train, so that’s what I told him. He was out of here so fast it like to made my head spin. Seems to set great store by the girl.”

That was obvious, Gideon thought. It was obvious, too, that the banker had much more than an employer’s interest in his little teller if he had followed her all the way here.

Well, hell, what natural man wouldn’t? If Miss Edwina Cassidy worked for him, Gideon would open the bank early and toil late just to keep her in his sights. Why should Race Logan be any different? Still, it didn’t make any sense when the man had allowed her to face a hard-bitten bank robber all alone.