A Western Christmas Homecoming. Lynna Banning
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Название: A Western Christmas Homecoming
Автор: Lynna Banning
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Исторические любовные романы
Серия: Mills & Boon Historical
isbn: 9781474074155
isbn:
He tramped twice around the fire pit, stopping to extract a tin of corn and another of beans from his saddlebag. Using his jackknife, he jimmied the beans open and set the can on a flat rock near the fire. Then he sat back on his heels and looked up at her to answer the question.
“A saloon girl dances with the patrons. Gets them to buy her drinks. Flirts. Maybe she sings a bit.”
“Sings? Sings what? The only songs I know are hymns.”
He laughed. “Then it looks like I’m gonna have to teach you some bawdy songs.”
That piqued her interest. “What would be the lyrics to a bawdy song?”
Alice Montgomery, you should be ashamed of your interest in such things.
But she wasn’t ashamed. She was curious. In fact, she felt a bit daring, venturing to delve into the mysteries of the seamy side of life like the girls down at Sally’s, the ones Verena Forester sewed fancy dresses for.
“Are you going to share a bawdy song with me?” she asked.
Rand busied himself spooning corn and beans into a blackened kettle and set it near the fire. “A bawdy song,” he murmured. “Let me think.” After a long pause, he turned toward her.
“Here’s one. ‘A pretty girl from Abilene, tall with hair of red, she waltzed a gent and talked so sweet, he forgot his wife, took her to—’”
He broke off. “Well, you can guess the rest.”
Alice’s cheeks felt hot. Songs with words like those certainly did not appear in library books!
She stared at him. “Where on earth did you learn a song like that?”
“In a saloon,” he said drily. He busied himself stirring the corn and bean mixture in the pot, then dumped a handful of coffee beans in the small wooden mill and rattled the handle around and around. Alice thought his cheeks looked a bit pink, but it was getting dark so she couldn’t be sure.
She did wonder about him, though.
“Have you spent a lot of time in saloons?” she asked.
“Nope.” He set the coffeepot over the fire and spooned some of the corn and bean mixture onto a tin plate and handed it to her.
“You mean you just made up that song?”
“Sure. Kinda like you coming up with that wild tale about your mama’s frying pan and the Boise City sheriff.”
“And tomorrow I will have to pretend to be Lolly Maguire, a saloon girl.”
“Yeah,” Rand said. He shot her a glance. “Think you can manage it?”
Oh, my, Alice thought. What would someone called Lolly Maguire say to a man? Especially one in a saloon?
“I will try,” she said. “I might turn out to be such a convincing Lolly Maguire you may be quite smitten!”
Instantly she dropped the spoon onto her tin plate with a clank.
Where had that thought come from?
Rand gave her a long look and without a word poured a mug of coffee and set it on the ground near her elbow.
“Smitten, huh? Alice,” he said with a chuckle, “it’s the miners you’re supposed to charm, not me.”
When they reached Silver City they reined up on the hill overlooking the canvas structures and flimsy-looking buildings of the town spread below them. “It’s a mining camp, like I told you,” Rand said. “Looks kinda impermanent.”
“It looks like a sea of gray canvas.” Alice pointed to a large green-gray canvas structure with a white-painted wooden cross over the entrance. “Even the church is a tent!”
Rand turned to her. “Are you ready for this?”
“Yes, I am ready.” Her heart thumped under her plaid shirt as she followed Rand’s bay, guiding her mare down to Silver City. The narrow road into what passed for a town was oozy with thick mud that squished under their horses’ hooves.
They picked their way down the tent-clogged street until they reached the two-story red-painted Excelsior Hotel, which, thank God, was made of wood. But red? Such a bold color for a hotel!
Next door to the hotel was another wooden building, the Golden Nugget saloon. That seemed strange in a town named for its silver mine. There must be other wooden buildings, but all she could see were tents and more tents. Big ones. Little ones. Some more ragged than others.
Oh, poor Dottie. Could her sister really have been happy here in this temporary-looking place?
The desk clerk at the hotel, a bent gray-haired man with thick spectacles and a wrinkled shirt that had once been white, flipped open the register and stood poised with his pen.
“Name?” he said in a weary voice.
“George Oliver.”
“This your wife, Mr. Oliver?”
Rand turned to her. “This is Miss Lolly Maguire.”
“Separate rooms, then,” the clerk muttered.
Rand laid his hand across the register. “One room. Miss Maguire is a well-known entertainer, and I work as her bodyguard. Where she goes, I go.”
The clerk’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows waggled. “Even to her hotel room?”
“Our hotel room,” Rand said evenly. “Like I said, Miss Maguire doesn’t go anywhere without her bodyguard. Where she goes—”
“I go,” the clerk finished. “Oh, well.” He sighed. “It’s not the first time two crazy people came through town.”
“We’re not going ‘through’ town. Miss Maguire is staying. As am I.”
The graying eyebrows lowered into a frown. “That’ll be two dollars a night, Mister Oliver. In advance.”
Rand slapped a fistful of silver dollars onto the counter, and the clerk pounced on them. “Let’s see, now...” He counted them with his forefinger and slid them off into his palm. “That’ll get you five nights at the Excelsior.”
“Six,” Rand challenged. “You miscounted.”
There was a long minute during which no one spoke. Finally the clerk heaved another sigh. “All right, six nights.” He snatched a key from the row of hooks on the wall behind him and laid it in Rand’s outstretched palm. “Second floor, third door on your left. Number seven.”
The small room overlooked the street below and beyond СКАЧАТЬ