Gaffney, Patricia

As the owner of a saloon in Paradise, Oregon, Cady McGill is
surviving in a man's world. She can't afford to let her guard down for anyone
-- especially the man in black who arrives out of nowhere to arouse her suspicions
... and her senses.

He calls himself Jesse Gault ― an achingly attractive
stranger with guns on his hips and a mocking smile on his lips. But Cady has
seen her share of swindlers, and she knows that Gault's charms are as deceptive
as his name. She dares not trust him with what is rightfully hers. Yet even as
sudden gunfire blazes, desire flares in Cady's heart. Now she must fight her
own deepest feelings as a man who is not what he seems awakens a tender,
abiding passion that could only be the real thing ... true love.

Unfulfilled Passion

Cady went all soft inside whenever he said her name. She had the
strangest urge to run her fingers through his dark hair. She gave a short
laugh. "Seems funny—you know my first name, but I don't know yours."

He flicked his cigarette into the grass. She watched it smolder
while she waited for him to speak. "It's Jesse."

"What?" He'd whispered—she wasn't sure she had heard
right.

"Name's Jesse. You can call me that. I'd like it if you
did."

"All right." A slow smile bloomed on her face.

"You sure are pretty when you smile."

"Oh..." Cady knew she was blushing. "Mr. Gault,
you're flattering me." Her cheeks got even hotter. He leaned closer. He
dropped his gaze from her eyes to her mouth. They were going to kiss. She
wondered how it would feel. He had a beautiful mouth. They inched toward each
other. She shut her eyes.

"Miz Cady?"

It was Levi calling through the closed door of her office.

Jesse didn't move, just smiled a slow, sexy smile while Cady
jolted up straight, plucking at the closed throat of her robe....

TOPAZ

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, USA

Copyright © Patricia Gaffney, 1997

ISBN
1568955448

Printed in the United States of America

For Grace Pearson, with love, affection, and gratitude. You give
mothers-in-law a good name.

Some folks said it was a coincidence mat the church clock got
stuck at three o'clock on the day the gunfighter rode into Paradise. Maybe so,
but what about the leak that sprung in the water tower the same afternoon? And
what about the grease fire at Swensen's Good Eats & Drinks? Not to mention
the fact that Walter Rideout keeled over and died in his own outhouse that very
day. Walter was pushing ninety, but still. It made you wonder.

Most people could tell you where they were and what they were
doing the first time they laid eyes on the gunfighter. Nestor Yeakes was
sitting out in front of the new livery stable, eating a green apple and reading
the Paradise
Reverberator. "I
see a shadow, I look up, and there he
is, dressed in black and covered with guns. Two Colts in his belt, a Winchester
in his saddle, another pistol in his boot, and I swear I saw a derringer's butt
sticking out of his vest pocket." Later on it turned out the gunfighter
was only carrying two six-shooters and the rifle, but no one blamed Nestor for
overestimating, and nobody disagreed with him that it "Looked like a damn
army'd rode into town."

"Stable your horse?" he inquired, and according to
Nestor the gunfighter curled his lips under his long black mustache and
sneered.

"I didn't come here for a haircut," he answered in that
low, whispery voice you had to lean close to hear. Gave you gooseflesh, that
whispery voice, and he talked slow, too, Nestor said, like he wanted you to
understand every word, and if you didn't he'd just as soon shoot you as repeat
himself.

"This is Pegasus," Nestor said he said, introducing his
big black stallion like they were all at a barn dance or a box supper.
"What he gets is whole oats in the morning and ground oats at night.
Cottonseed meal and clover in the afternoon. Two ounces of salt. No timothy.
You feed him timothy, I'm afraid I'll have to kill you."

Nestor opened and closed his mouth a few times before he got out,
"No timothy. No, siree."

"Pegasus better look good when I come around to check on him
tomorrow. He better feel good. He better be singin'."

"S-singin'?"

"Some real happy tune. Like 'Little Ol' Sod Shanty on the
Claim.'"

Nestor kind of grinned at that. But then he saw the shine in the
gunfighter's eye, the one that wasn't covered up with a black patch, and the
icy cold in that steel-gray eyeball froze the blood in Nestor's veins.

Floyd Schmidt and his brother Oscar were playing checkers outside
the grange hall when they first saw the gunfighter. For once Floyd, who's been
known to stretch the truth to make a story tell better, didn't exaggerate when
he said, "Feller didn't have on one stitch that weren't black. Black
britches, black shirt, black vest, black coat. Black boots, black hat. Black
cigarette. Looked like a one-man funeral walking down Main Street."

"Friend," Oscar said the gunfighter whispered to him,
making what little bit of hair Oscar's got stand on end. "What's the best
saloon in this town?"

Floyd, who was drunk at the time and had more courage, answered
when Oscar couldn't get his tongue to work. "Well, we got Wylie's Saloon,
which you done passed comin' in. Then there's Rogue's Tavern up here at the
other end. That's about it, saloon-wise."

The gunfighter squinted his eye on the Rogue, which you can just
barely see from the grange hall. "Red balcony on the second story? Rocking
chairs settin' around?"

"Yep. You can rent a room there, too." Floyd could never
explain afterward what possessed him to say that.

The gunfighter thumbed the brim of his Stetson up a notch and sort
of smiled. "I got a hankering to set down in a rocking chair and watch the
world go by." Floyd and Oscar both shivered when he whispered, "Never
can tell who you might see passing down below. Ain't that right?"

They said that sure was right, and watched him stroll on down the
street real slow, spurs jingling, saddlebag over one shoulder and his rifle on
the other.

Levi Washington, the colored bartender at the Rogue, almost
dropped the whiskey glass he was drying when the gunfighter came through the
swinging doors, quiet as a puff of smoke. "You could hear the head fizz on
a beer," Levi claimed, "when he thunk that rifle butt down and say
he'd take a double shot of bourbon, best I got. Not many customers that time o'
day, and what we did have cleared off quick, shot out the door like they pants
was on fire. I was glad Miz Cady wasn't here in case trouble started, but kinda
wishin' she was here, too, 'cause she prob'ly coulda headed it off. You know
what she's like.

" 'House brand all right?' I say, and he cocked his head and
whispered, 'Talk into my good ear, friend,' just like that, like his voice
comin' outa the grave or a coffin or something. I begun to suspicion who he
was, but I don't know for sure till he say he want a room upstairs lookin' out
on the street. Corner room, he say in particular. He give me four silver
dollars, and say if anybody want to see him, I should send 'em right up.
Somehow I get enough spit in my mouth to ask his name.

"I swear the wind died down and some dog quit barking just
before he say 'Gault' in that tumble whisper that make your insides freeze.
'The name's Gault.'

"Well," said Levi, "I knowed we was in for it then,
because I seen it happen before. Nothin' the same once a killer come to
town."

****

Cady McGill always took Friday afternoons off. Lately, now that
spring was here and the weather had finally dried out some, she'd taken to
renting a buggy and driving out to the old Russell place by herself.

She'd unhitch the horse and let it graze while she wandered around
the old going-to-seed orchard, running her hand over the scaly bark of the
wild-blooming apples or down-at-the-heels pear trees. Butterflies fluttered
through knee-high wildflowers, and the smell was so sweet she could feel it
purifying her lungs, making her forget all the smoke she'd inhaled for a week
at the Rogue. She'd stroll over to the big house and press her nose to the wavy
front-door window, imagining what she'd be doing right now if she owned the
place. She might be sitting in the parlor, which she could see about a quarter
of from the door, drinking a cup of afternoon tea, maybe paging through a seed
catalog and planning her summer garden. Or maybe she'd be reading a book, a
novel, nothing serious, while she sipped a cold glass of lemonade. No, on
second thought, not on a gorgeous day like today. If she wasn't planting
flowers, she'd be working in the orchard alongside her men. Two men—three if
she could afford it. This might be a daydream, but she was practical enough to
put at least two sturdy day laborers in it.

Le Coeur au Coquin.
The Heart of the Rogue.
Thirty years ago, after the Rogue Indian wars ended, that's what the Russell
family had named their three hundred acres of orchard and pastureland on the
cliff edge of the river. Nowadays people just called it River Farm, all that
French being too big a mouthful for honest Oregon tongues. But Cady liked both names,
and some nights she even fell asleep whispering them to herself, pretending she
was standing on the high cliff and watching the blue-green Rogue rage from side
to side in its half-mile-wide canyon. Her bit of the river. Her orchard. Her
dark hills and pretty green pastures.

Well, someday, maybe. If everything worked out just right.

Time to go home now, though. It looked like rain in the west, and
besides, she had work to do.

She hitched up the buggy, climbed in, and gave the gray mare a
switch, thinking about Merle Wylie's latest offer for her saloon. If she
combined it with her nest egg, it might be enough to buy River Farm, but not
enough to do anything with it afterward. Like put it in working order. Anyway,
Wylie could kneel down, fold his hands, and kiss her butt before she sold him
so much as a shot glass. Why did the one man who could've helped her buy her
dream place have to be her worst enemy? Life sure was funny sometimes. Ha ha.
Life had been funny to Cady a few times too many. She wished it would hurry and
sober the hell up.

Not that she had much to complain about nowadays. Nothing like in
the old days. Some might say she had it made—a few good friends, her own place
to live, a business she owned free and clear. Why, she even had a gold mine.
She had to smile as the buggy passed by the muddy, poky, weed-infested turnoff
to the Seven Dollar Mine, the second thing any man had ever given her. (Third
if you counted the tattoo.)
If it weren't for Mr. Shlegel, you wouldn't
have
anything at all, Cady McGill.
She reminded herself of that whenever she was
feeling down on men. Which was pretty often. Being in the saloon business, she
figured it came with the territory.

Riding past the entrance to the Rainbow Mine a few minutes later
wiped the smile off her face. Merle Wylie's turnoff wasn't scraggly and
overgrown, and his mine wasn't placered out like hers. Which just went to show,
there wasn't any justice in this world. If there was, a no-account rodent like
Wylie wouldn't still be digging gold out of the ground, and a saint like Gus
Shlegel wouldn't be moldering in his grave. He'd still be running Rogue's
Tavern and hauling gold out by the bucket from the Seven Dollar. And Cady would
be... his mistress? Wife by now? She couldn't quite picture herself in those
roles, although she'd wished for either one of them often enough when Mr. Shlegel
was alive.

But all that was water under the bridge. You couldn't get anywhere
by ruminating on the past, which wasn't going to change no matter how much you
wished it would. You couldn't count on the future either, but sometimes you
were allowed to dream about it. Paint yourself a picture of what you thought it
would look like. For Cady, it always looked like an orchard farm in the Rogue
River Valley.

****

Jesse almost set himself on fire lighting one of his damn black
cigarettes. He was sitting in a rocker on the red balcony outside his room,
doing his badass sonofabitch outlaw routine, when half an inch of red- hot ash
fell in his lap. It's hard to look menacing when you're jumping up and down and
slapping at your privates. Nobody was ogling him just then, though—which was a
miracle, since about the only thing the good folks of Paradise had done since
he hit town was stare.

He liked Paradise. It didn't look like much, but with gold towns,
looks could be deceiving. He was sure there was money under the wheel ruts in
the dusty, unpaved streets; big money in the pockets of the rough-looking
customers stumping up and down the wooden sidewalks; buckets of money behind
the yellow brick facade of the First Mercantile Bank & Trust Company. All
an enterprising fellow had to do was be patient and wait for it.

Knock knock knock.

Well, shoot.

He got up, moving cool and slow in case anybody was watching. But
he had to look down to hide a grin. This trick was getting so easy, it wasn't
hardly even any fun anymore.

"Gault?" somebody mumbled through the door to the
hallway. "Speak to you, Mr. Gault?"

Strapping on the gunbelt he'd hung on the bedpost, Jesse said,
"It's open," in his creepy whisper.

"Mr. Gault?"
Knock knock knock.

Which was so often the trouble with creepy whispering. He cleared
his throat and yelled, "The door's open!"

The knob turned and the door cracked an inch, two inches. Three,
four. Tired of waiting, Jesse yanked it all the way open, and a bowlegged,
ginger-haired man with a smell on him like dead buffalo half fell, half jumped
into the room.

"Don't shoot, I ain't packin'!" he shouted with both
hands in the air. He was built like a cob horse, short and stocky, and if he'd
changed his clothes in the last year or so it didn't show. He didn't look like much,
but Jesse had learned opportunity came in many different shapes and sizes.

"State your name," he hissed, flexing his fingers over
one of the Colts, like a nervous habit.

"Shrimp Malone. Name's Shrimp Malone."

He looked like a shrimp, little and orange-headed. Then, too, he
could've been
Chicken
Malone because of the blond eyebrows and
eyelashes. That and the fact that he didn't have any lips to speak of.

"I've been expecting you, Mr. Malone," Jesse said, and
Shrimp's red face turned pasty under the dirt and grime and gingery whiskers.
"Close the door."

"You wouldn't shoot me here, would you?"

"Depends. Close the door and sit down."

Shrimp pretty much fell into a spindly ladderback chair by the
door, while Jesse moved back as far as he could and still be heard in the
creepy whisper, because the stink coming off his visitor was strong enough to
wither trees. Under the reek of booze and sweat lay the sour odor of clay dirt,
though, and that told him Mr. Malone was a prospector. Which made him as
welcome as if he'd smelled like a perfumed hankie.

The fastest way to make a man with a guilty conscience talk is to
keep quiet. Shrimp Malone stood the silence for about twenty seconds before
blurting out, "Well, hell's bells, did you
see
'er? God
damn,
that
was the sorriest-lookin' female I ever clapped eyes on! I only poked her in the
first place on accounta I was shit-faced drunk. Which she knowed, and so did
her whole idiot family. They
tricked
me. Any man woulda ran off if he'd
saw the chance— you'd'a done it, too! God Almighty, she looked like a goddamn
possum, breath like a shut-up cave, and them two black teeth stickin' out like
dominoes. Whuh!"