She looked him straight in the eye and said, “If that’s true, I’ll take my share in cash.”
He practically choked to death at that. “It was an expression, Miss Abigail. Surely you know I didn’t mean it literally.”
She gave him a rueful smile. “I knew. That’s why I can’t stay here. You want to own me like some pretty little trinket,” she said with sudden certainty.
It was as if in that instant so many things became clearer to her. Martin might offer security and protection, but never passion and love, never the sort of partnership she craved. She sensed somehow that that was something she should absorb and remember for another time, another place.
He regarded her with disbelief. “You can’t just walk out like this, not after all I’ve done for you.”
“You’ve gotten the services you’ve paid for, I’m sure. That’s all I owe anyone. I have a much greater debt to myself.”
She turned and walked toward the swinging doors of the saloon. She paused and took one last look around at the gaudy interior, the dazzling chandelier, the fancy bar with its beveled mirror, and wondered what had ever persuaded her to work there.
As she watched the other women in their daring gowns, draping themselves over the shoulders of the customers, she shivered. She couldn’t imagine being happy surrounded by men whose only goal was to drink themselves into oblivion or to win at poker.
Martin’s voice cut into her thoughts.
“Abigail, you promised me two weeks,” he called out.
She turned slowly and faced him. “I don’t think I have two more weeks of my life to spare. I think it’s time I started reaching out and grabbing what I need to make me happy.”
Fifteen minutes later she had tracked Riley to Dolly Webber’s boarding house. Despite the shocked expressions of those sitting in the parlor, she climbed the stairs directly to his room and pounded on the door.
“What the hell?” he demanded, flinging it open, gun drawn. At the sight of her, he lowered the gun, but his expression was no less daunting. His gaze narrowed. “Why are you here?”
“To tell you I’ll be ready to leave at first light.”
“Damn, Abby, I haven’t even agreed to let you come along.”
She slid into the room. “But you will,” she said confidently and winked provocatively.
Riley looked as if he’d been kicked in the stomach by a mule. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Life.”
“What the devil is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I am tired of sitting on the sidelines. It means that I am fed up with letting whatever will be, be. I am about to start making choices, claiming what I want.” She reached for the top button on his shirt to demonstrate.
He stilled her hand where it was and regarded her worriedly. “What exactly is it you think you want?”
She knew with certainty that she had wasted far too much of her life by not being direct. This time she didn’t mince words. She summed up her deepest desires with one single syllable. “You.”
Her candor seemed to render him speechless. That gave her the perfect opportunity to stand on tiptoe, slide her fingers through his thick hair and meld her mouth with his. He seemed to freeze for an instant. Then she could practically feel the heat rising through him, feel the tension in his muscles as he restrained himself from giving in to temptation. Her own pulse was racing like those runaway horses earlier in the day.
He clasped a hand around her neck and held her still. He leaned back to stare into her eyes with a steady, unflinching gaze. “If I decide to let you come along, it won’t be because of this,” he warned.
She took a deep breath and said with an air of pure bravado, “Right now the only thing I’m concerned about is this room and you and how fast you can get out of those clothes.”
After an instant of startled silence, he laughed at that and the last of Abby’s fears vanished. It was going to be all right. He wanted her with a man’s hunger for a woman, just as she had always known in her heart that he did.
“Sweetheart, you amaze me,” he said, gathering her close.
“I amaze myself,” she admitted. “Do you suppose, though, that we could stop talking and get on with this?”
“Losing your nerve?”
She shook her head in denial. “It’s just that I’ve been waiting an eternity for this moment.”
“Then let’s not rush it,” he said quietly. “Let’s make it last another eternity.”
He slowly, carefully, sprinkled kisses across her forehead, her cheeks, her nose and her chin before claiming her mouth. Abby was trembling by the time his lips slanted over hers, sealing them with a velvet heat. She thought she had never felt anything as wonderful as that kiss, never smelled anything as heady as the warm, masculine scent of him, never tasted anything quite as sweet as his tongue on hers. Her senses reeled with the wonder of it.
When the kisses dropped to her neck and then to her bared shoulder, her heart thundered in her chest. She touched her fingers to the pulse at the base of Riley’s neck and felt a beat as strong and fast as her own.
Suddenly she felt one of his arms behind her knees, the other across her back, and she was scooped high in the air, then nestled against his chest while he strode across the room toward the old four-poster bed with its plump, down mattress. His glittering green eyes locked with hers; he lowered her slowly, reverently. Her skirt billowed then pooled in a scarlet circle around her. For the first time since she’d found herself wearing it, she admired the effect that dress must create.
Alone in the middle of the huge bed, Abby felt bereft, until Riley
