Nobody's Darling

When he straightened, his brothers were all waiting to clap him on the back and wish him well. A dripping Enos elbowed Samuel aside so he could stutter a goodbye while Virgil pressed some of his own cigars on him. Even Jasper managed a grudging handshake. Billy glanced at his mother. She looked away.

He figured he ought to be getting used to women not speaking to him. Although he had to admit it was going to be mighty nice to get back to Miss Mellie’s. The women there had never minded speaking to him. And they’d made it perfectly clear they wouldn’t mind doing anything else to him if he were so inclined. It was only his strict code of gallantry that had kept him from taking advantage of their hospitality while he resided under their roof. A gallantry he was rapidly beginning to reconsider.

While he saddled his mare and hitched up the mule to the buckboard, Esmerelda stood on the steps, impatiently tapping her foot. He heaved her trunk and violin case into the bed of the wagon, tempted to throw her over his shoulder and do the same with her. Ignoring his outstretched hand, she clambered stiffly onto the seat and gathered the reins in her gloved hands. Sadie bounded up beside her, her tongue lolling out in excitement.

Billy wasted no time in urging his mare into a trot. He refused to give Esmerelda the satisfaction of glancing back to see if she was following. The strident jingle of the harness told him she was. They were nearly to the bottom of the hill when he heard the door creak open behind them.

He almost fell off his horse when his ma’s shout rang out. “You take care, boy, you hear? And you take care of that gal, too. The good Lord knows she cain’t take care of herself. Standin‘ off a Darling with a shotgun! Why, that child ain’t got the sense of a boll weevil. You look after her, you hear!”

Billy’s throat tightened. He wanted to wheel his horse around. But he knew if he did, his mother would just go right back into the house and shut the door.

So he kept riding.

“And you look after my boy, gal! Don’t go lettin‘ him get his fool self shot up again. And don’t go breakin’ his heart or you’ll answer to me.”

Billy turned in the saddle to give Esmerelda a long, hard look. He would have almost sworn he saw a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes.

Wheeling north, he spurred his horse into a canter, riding hard until the wind had swallowed even the echo of his mother’s voice.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Billy and Esmerelda arrived in Calamity just after eleven o’clock the next night with Billy driving the wagon, Esmerelda asleep in the back, and Sadie wearing the bonnet. The stolen treasury gold had been deposited in a vault at the Eulalie First National Bank to await the arrival of Elliot Courtney and his deputies. Courtney had vowed to see Winstead brought to justice. As soon as he could find him, that is. It seemed the good marshal had up and vanished right after Black Bart’s disastrous raid on the Eulalie bank. That news had Billy searching every shadow and keeping his hand poised near his pistol.

But it didn’t account for the tension that had been coiling tighter in his gut with each revolution of the wagon’s wheels. A tension that had nothing to do with Winstead and everything to do with the woman curled up in the bed of the wagon.

“Whoa, girl,” he called out softly, drawing the mule to a halt in front of the livery stable. He noticed with a nicker of curiosity that a lamp still burned in Drew’s office.

The streets of Calamity slumbered beneath an overripe peach of a moon. A faint ripple of music and laughter drifted out from the saloon. The lighted windows of Miss Mellie’s beckoned him home.

Home, Billy thought, closing his eyes briefly. A place where pleasure changed hands as carelessly as money, neither bringing lasting satisfaction. His jaw hardened. Maybe that was the most a man like him could ever expect.

He swung around to study his sleeping cargo. With the rosy petals of her lips slightly parted and her gloved hands folded beneath her cheek like a pair of angel’s wings, she looked so sweet, so vulnerable…

Billy reached back and gave her bottom a sharp swat.

“Ow!” Esmerelda sprang up, rubbing the offended territory.

Billy suspected she would have lit into him, but good, if she hadn’t been distracted by the sight of Sadie. The bags beneath the basset hound’s soulful eyes made her look just like old Granny Shively on a good day.

Esmerelda pointed. “May I be so bold as to inquire why that dog is wearing my bonnet?”

Billy shrugged. “The desert nights are chilly. Her ears looked cold.”

“And mine didn’t?”

He swept her a calculating glance. “Not any colder than the rest of you.”

Grinding out an inarticulate sound, Esmerelda scrambled over the side of the buckboard, nearly falling when it turned out her foot had also been asleep. Still muttering beneath her breath, she hopped up and down, massaging it through her boot.

Billy struck a match and lit a cigar, watching her performance with detached amusement. She tried to drag her trunk out of the wagon, but the awkward angle made it nearly impossible.

After it tumbled back into the bed for the third time, she arched an eyebrow in his direction. “Would you mind…?”

“Oh, but I’m afraid I would, Duchess.” He puffed out a smoke ring that would have done his ma proud. “I’ve been dismissed, you see. I no longer work for you.”

She breathed a theatrical sigh. “If I’d have known you were going to be so contrary, I’d have asked Jasper to escort me.”

Billy snorted. “He’d have had those fancy drawers of yours around your ankles before you got out of sight of the house.”

Her startled gaze searched his face. When she didn’t find any trace of amusement there, she ducked her head back into the wagon bed, cheeks aflame. After several false starts, she managed to wrestle both trunk and violin case to the ground.

Still panting with exertion, she jerked her jacket straight and adjusted her bustle with both hands. Billy cocked an eyebrow. It wasn’t the lace collar buttoned primly to her chin or even the unspoken challenge of the tiny row of buttons edging her sleeves that made his loins surge with heat.

It was those ridiculous gloves.

Billy wanted to peel them off with his teeth. To tenderly nip the tip of each finger until she cried out for the kind of mercy only he could provide.

It was somehow fitting that she woke him from his dangerous daydream by jerking them past her wrists, as if to deny him even a glimpse of her creamy flesh.

She tucked the violin case under her arm and hefted the trunk by its handle, staggering slightly. “Thank you ever so much for all your assistance, Mr. Darling. I should have been utterly bereft without you.” She delivered this scathing speech gazing just past him instead of at him.

Then she turned and started down the street toward the hotel, wobbling beneath the weight of the trunk.

Billy’s mouth fell open.

She was actually going to do it.

She was actually going to flounce right out of his life as if she’d never laid in his arms, wracked by tremors of pleasure. As if she’d never offered up her lips for a delicious openmouthed kiss. As if she’d never marched into that saloon and taken his heart into her custody.

Billy Darling had finally met an adversary he couldn’t cuss, shoot, or toss into jail. It was that realization that brought his simmering temper to a boil.

He was a Darling, after all.

Maybe it was high time he started acting like one.

He bounded out of the wagon, landing smack-dab in the middle of the street. He took a long draw off the cigar, then flicked the glowing stub into the night. His fingers instinctively flexed over his gunbelt, as if preparing for a shoot-out to the death.

“Miss Fine?” he called out.

Esmerelda stopped walking, but didn’t turn around.

“Take off your gloves.”

He was actually going to do it.