Longarm sank back in his chair, in the room’s front corner. Time to get a hold of yourself, old son. You must have got your head overly battered aboard the train the other day. This girl was obviously a couple of social as well as economic rungs above your lowly, badge toter’s station.
Why, she’d as soon tumble with a hydrophobic cur behind a trash pile as spread her legs for your big, leathery, unhealed person. Her daddy no doubt has part ownership in the hotel or the opera house, and she’s here to take the holdings for a little ride.
She did seem to be dining alone, however.
Longarm noticed that the waiter had swept all of the extra place settings from her table. If the big lawman had any balls at all, he’d walk over and inquire if he could join her.
And get a glass of ice water thrown in his face for his trouble…
He dug into his shirt pocket for a cheroot, bit the end off, and fired a match on his cartridge belt. As he touched the flame to the cheroot’s tip, he vaguely opined that the girl could be married and possibly meeting her husband later for after-dinner drinks. Any man married to such a queen as her was likely some mucky-muck with business doings in these expanding parts and was likely too busy to sup with his wife.
As he got the cigar going to his liking, Longarm squinted through his billowing blue smoke at the girl’s table, trying to get a look at one of her delicate-boned hands still holding the menu in front of her. There did seem to be something shiny there, but from this distance he couldn’t tell if it was a diamond ring or a wedding band.
Uh-oh. Shit. She’d just lifted her eyes to his, and she turned away before he could do same, giving her right nostril a very subtle but very real winkle of utter disdain. She even seemed to sigh in disgust.
Well, there was Longarm’s answer. Now he could stop fantasizing like a schoolboy with his dick in his hands, and go back to being a man of pride and self-respect.
He was a professional, for chrissakes. He’d eat his meal, follow it up with a hunk of peach cobbler and fresh-whipped cream, smoke another cigar, sip a last shot of rye, and then tumble on into the old mattress sack. Just like he should do. He needed to be well rested for the last leg of his journey on down the long hills to Denver. The next day, he’d no doubt hear more about the bushwhacked lawmen, and get himself headed for Arizona to see about bringing the killers to justice.
His food came, and it was every bit as scrumptious as he’d dreamed it would be. He was so hungry, and the food was so good, that he looked up only a few times while he ate, using the warm, buttery buns as gravy sponges.
As far as he could tell, the girl, who was eating now herself—some kind of fish, he thought—gave him not a single glance. She kept her eyes on her food or on the book she had open beside her and whose pages she turned slowly as she ate, taking very delicate bites and following each bite with a delicate pat of her lips with her white linen napkin.
Occasionally, she became so immersed in her book, gazing down at the page before her, that nearly an entire minute would pass before she’d take another bite.
The gal obviously hadn’t taken down a trainload of curly wolves the day before, and then ridden sixty miles over mountain and plain, Longarm thought with a restrained snort as he swabbed the last of the gravy and bits of roast beef from his plate with his last bun.
Finished with the main meal, he ordered the pie, coffee, and a shot of rye, then sat back in his chair, stifled a belch, and very purposefully restrained himself from ogling the girl anymore. He’d genuinely become ashamed of himself, downright embarrassed.
He was half done with his pie, which he savored with the coffee and the rye, which he’d poured into the hot, black coffee, when he suddenly looked up and found himself staring into those hazel orbs once again. From three feet away, this time. Her red dinner dress was lower cut than the one she’d worn earlier, and a small, gold cross was tucked into the top of her deep, lightly tanned, slightly freckled cleavage above the rich, full mounds of her breasts.
Her right hand was closed, and for a second he thought she was about to punch him with it. But then he heard a quiet clink and looked down to see a gold room key on the table before him, beneath her now-open hand. Stealthily, using two fingers, she slid the key across the table until it was partly concealed by his coffee cup and saucer.
“The number is on the key,” she said, her voice low and sexily raspy. “Give me a half hour. Be clean.”
She turned away, strode coolly out of the dining room and into the lobby, heading for the stairs. Longarm sat staring at the broad, open doorway, hang-jawed.
Vaguely, he once again considered summoning a sawbones, because he thought for sure his heart really was about to seize up on him this time. Or that he’d gone insane and had dreamed up the unlikely encounter.
Maybe the dustup in the train had caused him to go all soft and squishy in his thinker box.
A half hour, huh?
He looked down at the half-eaten chunk of cobbler and slid it away. He was no longer hungry. All he could think about now was the girl.
Butterflies flitted in all directions in his stomach. When the waiter passed, he told him to take the pie away, and he ordered another double shot of rye and relit the cheroot he’d allowed to go out. When the double shot came and the waiter had cleared the table, he sat back, manufacturing a casual expression while he smoked and sipped the whiskey and listened to his heart drumming like a tom-tom.
The half hour passed as slowly as the last ice age.
He probably consulted the big grandfather clock at the far end of the softly buzzing dining room once every two minutes, until he watched the large hand click for the thirtieth time. No point in being early. She might expect him to go running up the stairs and down the hall, tripping all over himself, playing the fool, but that wasn’t how you played a girl like her.
You took it slow. Acted casual. You acted like you were doing her as big a favor as she was doing you.
She obviously enjoyed playing it coy up to a certain point—the point of finally dropping a key on a gentlemen’s public table, that was. But you had to break her of that false timidity. You had to tease the girl until she was fairly yipping and moaning like a feral bitch in heat and climbing on your cock.
Longarm paid his bill, stubbed out his cigar, donned his hat, and made his way very slowly, very nonchalantly out the door and into the lobby. He smiled and nodded casually at passersby, pinching his hat brim to the ladies, half consciously aware all the while that the hotel was spinning slightly around him, as though he’d had far more to drink that he actually had, and that he couldn’t feel his feet.
He held the key tightly in his left fist, glancing down at it twice as he sauntered up the stairs. The numeral 19 fairly shouted up at him, making his ears ring. In the second-floor hall, he stopped at the door and poked the key into the lock, fully aware of the metaphorical significance of the maneuver.
He turned the key and went inside.
The large bed straight across from him was made. It was also empty. A red Tiffany lamp guttered on the dresser to the right of the bed, but the girl was nowhere to be seen.
Suddenly, a warning tolled in the lawman’s ears, and he slid his hand across his belly to the polished walnut grips of his Colt.
Ambush?
He’d just started to slide the revolver from its holster when a soft, sensual voice said behind him and to his right, “Fuck me now and fuck me hard, you randy dog.”
Chapter 6
Leaving the iron in the leather, Longarm whipped his head around. His tongue grew as heavy as a beer schooner. His heart started hammering inside his head.