“Sweetie pie, you don’t need no more whiskey. But I brought you something better.”
Josh focused blurrily upon what she offered. It was a girl, he thought. But he wasn’t sure. Yeah. A girl. Her jeans and denim shirt could have belonged to a man, but no man ever ?lled out clothes in quite that way.
Strange way for a whore to dress, but there was no accounting for taste.
“No, thanks,” he mumbled. “No woman. Drink.”
Hell, right now he wouldn’t be any use to a woman. Not in his state-which state he really needed to help along with at least one more shot of whiskey.
The yellowhaired vixen in pink chuckled throatily and turned to her associate. “He’s all yours, honey, if you can hook him.”
THE man smelled of sour whiskey and other things Tess didn’t really want to think about. The notion of hitching herself to this slug, even for a short time, made her stomach turn. She looked to Glory for help, but Glory’s attention had turned elsewhere, namely, to a poker player who looked as if he might donate all his winnings for a chance to peer down her corset.
Tess sighed and sat down, trying not to scowl at her prospective suitor. The man was old enough to be her father. Silver hair hung in his face, reddened eyes sunk into shadows, and his mouth sagged. He might start drooling at any minute. All in all, the bum looked like something you might ?nd beneath a rock.
Even if she scrubbed him up, would anyone believe that Tess McCabe would hitch herself to this piece of dog shit? Well, maybe they would. She had a certain reputation in these parts. Most folks would shake their heads and say something like “That’s what comes of a woman wearing pants.”
The man seemed to have forgotten Tess was there, so she woke him up with a kick beneath the table. “Hey, you.”
He jumped. “Huh?”
“You look like you could use some help.”
His laugh sounded something like a burp. Maybe it was.
“I’ve got a deal to offer. Maybe it would help you out.”
The man simply looked into his empty shot glass. “You wanna go get me a drink?”
Tess wrinkled her lip. She didn’t much approve of boozing, at least not on this scale. Plainly she’d better work fast before the poor slob passed out.
“You don’t need another drink, looks like to me, mister.”
Maybe she should try to put on some feminine airs, Tess mused, then decided that ploy didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Less, maybe. She decided to come right to the point of her offer. “You married?”
He snorted. She took that as a no.
“You need money?”
That put a spark into his eyes. A dull spark, but there it was.
“How does three hundred dollars easy money sound to you, mister?” Tess pitched her voice low so it wouldn’t carry to the other tables.
The man choked. “Three… three…”
Glory abandoned her poker player and came to Tess’s aid. “Shush now, you. Tess, honey, you don’t want the whole saloon listening in on your private business, so why don’t we take this up to my room?” She nudged their reluctant Romeo. “What do you say, sweetie pie?”
He crossed his eyes and nearly fell from the chair. They took that as a yes.
Glory’s “room” was one of the upstairs gilded “cages” that gave the Bird Cage its name and fame. Getting the poor slob up the stairs posed a challenge, because he was bigger than Tess expected. When she took his arm and braced it across her shoulders, the hard muscle beneath his shirt surprised her. Apparently the fellow had only recently turned to liquor. Jerking him off of his downward path could be a good deed.
Or not. This could be the biggest mistake of her life. Still, a woman had to do what a woman had to do.
“Let’s sit him on the bed,” she told Glory. “I don’t like him towering over me like that.”
The stair climb had brought the fellow around a bit. His eyes now looked more wary than dull.
“What are you gals up to?”
“Saving your sorry ass from boozing yourself to death,” Glory answered primly. “And setting you on the road to riches.”
“That’s right. We’re doing you a good deed, is what.”
Tess nearly strained a muscle helping Glory sit the fellow on the bed. He didn’t carry much fat on him to lighten things up. Finally, she straightened up and looked him narrowly in the eye. “I’ll put it to you honest, cowboy. If you aren’t already hitched to a wife, you can earn yourself three hundred easy dollars in one afternoon’s work. Just stand up with me before a preacher and say ‘I do.’ Then you can be on your way to whatever hell you’re headed for.”
The poor man nearly toppled over. Glory and Tess both took an arm and hauled him upright again.
“You see…,” Tess continued, hoping to make her proposal sound reasonable, “my father left me the ranch when he died. It’s not much of a ranch,” she added hastily. It wouldn’t do to set the fellow’s thoughts running along lines of greed. “But it’s home, you know? But my noaccount brother gets the whole thing unless I get myself hitched by March ?fteenth. And today is March ?rst.”
In truth, her father had been buried on a hot day back in September. He had given her six months to ?nd a husband, but she had kept putting things off, hoping a miracle would happen. A miracle hadn’t happened, and so now she found herself facing this sorry excuse for a man in Glory’s gilded cage.
He made a choking sound that might have been a laugh. “You…you want me to marry you?”
Tess bristled. “You don’t have to make it sound like I asked you to go to hell and back.”
He laughed again. This time it was de?nitely a laugh. “You want
“A few minutes with a preacher,” Tess continued through gritted teeth, “then, when the deed is in my name, you can collect your money and be on your way. I don’t need a husband, and if I did, I sure wouldn’t choose a drunken bum like you.”
Glory lifted a cautioning ?nger at her. “Now, Tess, honey. You’re wanting this man to do you a favor. Mind your temper.”
The prospective groom heaved an alcoholic sigh and shook his head. “I’m not much for lovin’ and leavin’.”
Tess hastened to squelch that notion. “You won’t be doing no loving in this deal, mister! You can be sure of that!”
“You wouldn’t be married long,” Glory hastened to assure him. “Once things have settled down and people have forgotten about Colin’s stupid will, you’ll get an annulment, won’t you, Tessie? It’ll be like the marriage never existed.”
“Right!” Tess con?rmed. Then she narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You aren’t already hitched, are you?”
The man chuckled a little too cynically. “Hell no.”
“And you could use the money, couldn’t you?” Tess took an envelope from her shirt pocket, extracted a sheaf of bills, and dangled the money before his eyes. “Couldn’t you?”
The poor sot’s eyes crossed as he tried to focus on the greenbacks. “Three hundred dollars,” he said slowly.
“Three hundred dollars,” she echoed temptingly. Good old money, the bait that would hook almost any ?sh. “And you’ll be a free man to use the money however you want.”
He reached out to take the money, but she pulled it away. “When the deed is in my hand, cowboy. Not before.”
He squinted suspiciously. “No strings?”
“I’ll cut the strings while the ink is still drying on that deed.” Her heart jumped. The ?sh had taken the hook.
“Nobody gets hurt.”
“Not a soul.”
“Nothing ill… illegal,” he slurred.
“Of course not. Say a few words and sign a piece of paper. Then you leave, and a while later, I send word that you’re legally free. Simple.”
