So that was it, she thought triumphantly. She’d wanted to go with him to look for gold. He’d told her she had to stay behind. Nothing new about that, she thought dryly.
Apparently this time, though, she’d decided to take matters into her own hands and go off on her own. The fact that she’d landed in trouble only a few miles out of town might be considered ammunition for Riley to make his case against her plan. Clearly this was no time to back down by so much as an inch.
“I’m going,” she said stubbornly. “With you or on my own.”
“You can’t go on your own. Just look what happened the minute you tried that,” he retorted, just as she’d anticipated.
“That was a fluke,” she argued. “It will never happen again. I’ll get a gun.”
“And do what with it?” he inquired derisively. “You’re too softhearted to shoot a rattler, much less some man who takes it into his head to steal your claim.”
“You don’t know that.”
He tucked a finger under her chin and lifted it until her gaze was even with his. “I do know it. There is no one on God’s earth who knows you better.”
Her pulse skittered wildly at the possessive look in his eyes. She had a feeling there was no arguing the truth of his claim. She truly wished she could recall the times he had possessed her. Instead, she kept the argument alive.
“Then you must also know that I won’t back down on this,” she said quietly.
“You have a job,” he said, gesturing toward the Golden Nugget. “Martin Henry might not be much of a boss, but he’s been paying you to sing. You can’t just go off and leave him in the lurch.”
“I’ll give him notice. He’ll bring in someone else.”
“I can’t wait for that.”
She studied him shrewdly. “Is that gold going someplace?”
“Of course not.”
“Then a week or two won’t matter, will it?”
“More than likely it’ll be a month. Maybe longer.”
“All the more time to teach me to shoot.”
“Or for someone else to take over my claim,” he countered.
Abby thought she detected a weakening in his arguments. “Two weeks. I’ll tell Martin that’s all the time he has.”
“Abby, I don’t know about this. What if—”
“You can `what if’ anything to death, Riley Walker. The real issue here is whether or not you want to take me on as a partner. I know you talked to half a dozen other people about going in with you.”
“All men,” he interjected.
“Did you trust them?”
“That’s not the point,” he retorted too quickly to have contemplated the answer.
“It would be when you found the gold.”
He sighed heavily.
“Tell the truth now,” she persisted. “Who would you rather have by your side when you find that gold? Some unscrupulous man? Or a woman you know you can trust with your life?”
He apparently had no ready answer for that.
“Just think about it overnight,” she urged. “That’s all I’m asking.”
“And if I still say no?”
She grinned at him. “Then you’ll be making the biggest mistake of your life.”
“But you will stay here?”
“I never said that.”
“In other words, you’re going, with me or without me?”
She nodded cheerfully. “That’s about the size of it.”
He frowned at her. “Remind me never to get into a poker game with you.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell worth a damn whether or not you’re bluffing.”
She stood on tiptoe and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I am not bluffing.”
He groaned. “I was afraid of that.”
“Is that a yes?”
“I don’t recall saying yes or no. Besides, you gave me till morning to make up my mind. Maybe you’d best be spending that time convincing me,” he said, giving her a speculative look that made her whole body tingle.
She shot him a saucy look. “How would you ever be able to look at yourself in the mirror if you let a woman persuade you in such a way?”
“Oh, I suspect I’d manage,” he said dryly.
“Well, I wouldn’t dream of tempting you to go against your own best instincts. When you make this decision, Riley Walker, it will be because it’s the right one to make.”
He regarded her wearily. “Why do I get this gut-sick feeling the decision’s already been taken out of my hands?”
She patted his cheek. “Because you are one very smart cowboy.”
He sighed heavily. “That’s probably what they said to Wyatt Earp right before he walked into the OK Corral.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Telling this Martin Henry person that she planned to walk out on her job was the hardest thing Abby could recall ever having to do. She figured that whether Riley agreed to take her along on his search for gold or not, she had to get out of this saloon and this town. She wasn’t wild about the reputation she seemed to have attained here.
Martin did not take the news well. It seemed he had some sort of personal fondness for her that went beyond the bounds of employer-employee relations. Abby wished like crazy that she could recall where he’d ever gotten such an idea. She could tell with one glance that he was all wrong for her.
For one thing he never once cracked a smile. True, she was not giving him news he wanted to hear, but she got the distinct impression that he never laughed. Not the way Riley did, full-out and from the gut. She couldn’t imagine spending much time with a man with no sense of humor.
For another thing, he seemed obsessed with the bottom line. He dragged out some big old ledger and pointed out how his profits had increased since she’d been performing. Being viewed as a cash cow didn’t exactly make her day, especially since she sensed that very little of that money made its way into her pockets. It was probably significant that for all the talk of profits, he never once offered her a raise as an enticement for staying.
“What’s mine is yours,” he
