Ace's Wild. Sarah McCarty

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СКАЧАТЬ used her savings to pay off what she could of the bill, so Mr. Orvis would give Penny more credit.”

      “So you’re saying, she’s nowhere near the price of her ticket.”

      Ace didn’t know if he was relieved or annoyed.

      “You could just buy it for her,” Caden pointed out.

      “If I thought I could get her to take it, I would.” That was a lie. He had a lust/hate relationship with Petunia’s presence in town. More lust than hate. More want than was sensible.

      “So what are we going to do?” Maddie asked.

      “Why do we have to do anything?” Ace asked. “Can’t we just let her suffer the consequences of her actions, for once?”

      Maddie looked horrified at the very thought. “She has no idea of the potential repercussions. She’s used to Eastern ways.” She turned to Caden. “Do something.”

      “Don’t put me in this,” Caden said.

      Maddie glanced down the street where her Sunday customers were meandering their way. “Please?”

      Caden rocked back in the chair as she hurried back into the bakery. The bell above the door jangled a protest. “You heard the little woman.”

      Ace bit down hard on his back molars, reaching for patience. “I’m tired of cleaning up Petunia’s messes. I’m not her father. I’m not her brother. I’m not her husband.”

      “But you want her,” Caden said, putting it right out there.

      “There’s nothing about the woman to want. She wears her hair scraped back so tight her eyebrows meet her ears. And if her corset were laced any tighter, she’d die of suffocation.”

      Caden laughed and waved to the folk approaching. “You ought to be grateful for that. More wind means more words.”

      “I don’t need more words from that woman.”

      “Yes, you do, just sweeter ones.”

      “You could dump a bucket of sugar on that woman, and she wouldn’t be sweet enough.”

      Maddie fussed with the tray of buns and called out, “I think the right man could sweeten her up.”

      “Eavesdropping isn’t an attractive trait,” Ace snapped at her.

      “But a useful one.”

      Ace shook his head at Caden. “She isn’t even ashamed of it.”

      “Why should she be?” Caden asked with a fond look at his wife. “It gets her what she wants to know.”

      “You should be setting a better example.”

      Caden snorted. “Since when have any of us worried about what others thought?”

      Since never.

      Maddie stopped sorting the rolls and looked straight at him. “In that case, Ace Parker, you could stop saving her and just start courting her.”

      For the first time in a long time, Ace flinched. “I’m a gambler and a brawler.”

      “You’re a good man with a good heart, but you run too much.”

      He didn’t need Maddie weaving rainbows around the impossible. “Let it go, Maddie.”

      “Letting it go doesn’t change the truth. You want her.” She came back to the porch, licking frosting off her fingers. “She wants you. You have many things in common, including a passion for doing the right thing. The only difference between you is she’s open about it.”

      “Gambling is not the right thing.”

      Maddie huffed. “Gambling bores you.”

      “The hell it does.”

      Caden touched Maddie’s shoulder. “Let it go, Maddie mine.”

      She slammed her hands on her hips and jerked her chin at Ace. “So he can continue doing what he doesn’t like doing? So he can continue to be unhappy?”

      “A man’s got a right to be unhappy if he wants to be.”

      “But it’s silly when everything he wants is just an arm’s reach away. He’s just too afraid to grab it.”

      The hell he was. Frustration and anger prodded. Frustration because customers were gathering, and he couldn’t say what he wanted. Anger because Maddie didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. The last thing any woman needed was for him to give in to the needs that drove him. Especially a prim and proper woman like Petunia. Just the thought of touching her the way she needed had his blood heating dangerously.

      On a tight “I’ll see you later,” Ace turned on his heel and strode down the street, absently nodding in response to greetings, his mind consumed with the thought of pinning Petunia’s wrists to the bed, of kissing her so deeply her thoughts became transparent, her body pliant, her will his... He clenched his hands into fists, fighting back the desire. “Fuck.”

      Behind him he heard Caden say, “That was too much, Maddie.”

      And from Maddie, an uncharacteristic “I’m not sure it was enough.”

       CHAPTER TWO

      THE SMALL ONE-ROOM schoolhouse was quiet in the minutes before the day started, but soon Petunia would walk out the sturdy wooden door and ring the bell, and the excitement would start. Twenty children from the ages of five to thirteen would push through the doorway, sit at their desks and look at her with expressions ranging from boredom to anticipation. Educating growing minds was a hard job, a taxing job and one Petunia loved. But as soon as she saved the money for her ticket, she was going to hop on the stage and continue on to San Francisco to take advantage of the newly wealthy’s desire to compete socially with East Coast established society. If she were careful, she could take that desire to “do them one better” and use it to open a school that would fund her dream to truly educate all.

      Just thinking about leaving brought Ace to mind. And bringing Ace to mind just revived the familiar combination of ache and anger. Just who did that man think he was to take apart her way of life as if there was something wrong with it? He, who was in the middle of every fight, every scheme, every betting game that took place in this town.

      And in the middle of every type of aid, too, the little voice of fairness inside whispered.

      Damn it! Petunia erased the word she’d just misspelled on the chalkboard and started over. Just once she wanted to catch Ace doing something so wrong, so evil, that this irrational attraction she had for him would die an ignoble death. But every time she’d seen him fight, he’d been defending someone, and while she didn’t approve of gambling, he didn’t do it recklessly. He did drink more than she approved of, but when he was drunk, he never harmed anyone. He just got more quiet from what she could tell, more mysterious.

      She СКАЧАТЬ