Infamous (19 page)

Out in the street, the actor playing Kid Gallagher rode his horse—which was behaving very nicely now that A.J. had given it a talking to—toward the Red Rock Saloon, just as Winter, playing Melody, came out of the general store on cue. Gallagher slowed to a stop, to watch her. He lit a hand-rolled cigarette, squinting slightly as the smoke curled around his face.

Beside Alison, A.J. shifted slightly. He shook his head, just a little, as if he didn’t like what he saw.

Out in the street, Melody caught sight of the Kid staring at her. She shrank back, as if in fear of the dangerous stranger.

“And … Cut!”

A.J. laughed. Alison looked at him, but he just shook his head as Henry called, “Nice job, everyone!” The director was happy—but not happy enough. “Let’s do it again, same angle.”

Melody moved back inside, and Kid Gallagher turned his horse around and went back to his mark. His assistant, Bonnie, snapped her fingers and several of her underlings went to bring the actor water, and to shield both him and the horse with giant beach umbrellas.

Alison turned to find A.J. watching her, still smiling.

“Go on,” she said. “Say it. I know you want to.
This isn’t how it happened
. We’re guessing about a lot of this. That’s what you have to do when you make a movie about historic events. There are holes that need filling in. We don’t really know when or where Kid—Jamie—Gallagher first noticed Melody. Or whether he was even aware of her as anything more than a means to his revenge.”

A.J.’s smile broadened. “He was aware of her. Very much so. This is actually pretty close to accurate. He rode into town and saw her, and he was toast. But the rest of it? The melodrama? You know,
Ooh, I’m so scared of you?”
He shook his head. “That didn’t happen. And of course, the little details are wrong. Jamie wasn’t on his horse when he first saw her. And the clothes she was wearing … But of course you wouldn’t know that.”

“And you
do
know what Melody Quinn was wearing on the day she met Kid Gallagher?” Alison couldn’t keep the skepticism out of her voice.

“Like I said,” A.J. told her. “Jamie noticed her. Big time. It was just after eleven in the morning on July 8, 1898. She was wearing a dark, I guess you’d call it navy, blue skirt and a long-sleeved white blouse that buttoned all the way up to her neck.”

“Of course. To hide her bruises,” Alison said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

“It was a hot day. Kind of like today. She wore a hat—a straw hat with a ribbon that matched the skirt.”

Alison sighed. “A.J.,” she started.

“Quiet on the set!” came the cry from the director’s assistant.

Silently, she motioned for A.J. to follow her, and she led him out of the tent and far enough away from the filming to talk. They were filming MOS—without sound—so it was really just a matter of not disturbing the actors and crew.

“Speed!”

There was shade back behind the Red Rock Saloon, and she pulled him into it with her as the AD called, “And … 
Action!”

A.J. spoke first. “You have no idea how many times I’ve heard that story. Gramps said it was like being struck by lightning—his seeing her there. He used to tell me that his entire life was separated into before and after. And that day was the dividing line. His plan was to ride on. His horse had thrown a shoe and he’d stopped at the blacksmith’s to get it replaced. He wasn’t intending to stay in town for more than a few days. He was in a hurry—he was heading for San Francisco, where there was a high-stakes poker game he wanted in on. But then he saw Melody and … Everything else went out the window.”

“A.J.,” she said, and sighed again. Where to start? “You said you were ten when he died. You honestly expect me to believe that a ten-year-old boy sat around listening to a hundred-year-old man talking about what a woman was wearing when he first saw her seventy-five years earlier …?”

“It wasn’t my favorite story,” A.J. admitted, “but I’d sit through it to get to the good stuff.”

She nodded. Okay. She’d buy that. “So … he sees Melody,” she said. “Lightning strikes. Then what?”

“Someone warned him off,” A.J. said. “He was standing right in the middle of the street. He’d stopped, just dead in his tracks, as if, you know …”

“He’d been struck by lightning,” she finished for him. “I got it.”

“So someone sees him, notices who he’s staring at, and tells him, Watch out, that’s Mrs. Marshal Silas Quinn. You’d
best take care, or you’ll find your … male parts … in … some discomfort.” He cleared his throat. “Yeah. But Jamie couldn’t look away. She was that beautiful.

“He told me he didn’t think Melody had noticed him at first, that she was like a sleepwalker, just drifting past,” A.J. continued, his gentle western accent adding a touch of music to his softly spoken words. “Laudanum, he suspected, and his heart broke to think a woman so beautiful had fallen under the spell of that addiction. But then she turned and looked back at him and her eyes weren’t empty—they were haunted.”

How could he possibly remember all this? He had to be making it up.

“You know, it’s hard—it would be hard—for him to watch this scene, because he
did
use to smoke,” A.J. continued. “You got that right. He quit, pretty much right after they moved north to Alaska. When tobacco became a luxury. But he wished he’d quit sooner, because, well, she died of lung cancer. And he never really stopped blaming himself.”

Melody Quinn had died of lung cancer. She wasn’t abducted and murdered. She’d run away with and had a long, happy life with Jamie Gallagher. And A.J.—sweet, handsome, funny, kind, and courageous A.J.—was their direct descendent and unofficial proof of their enduring love.

Except two people didn’t have to be in love to make a baby. Alison’s own parents were proof of that.

“I’ll need to see the original of your birth certificate,” she told him abruptly. “And your father’s birth certificate, and whatever records
his
father had—marriage certificate, military registration, death certificate, I don’t know, anything that might mention Jamie Gallagher’s name, anything that required some account of paternity. Our best shot is records that belonged to your grandfather—Jamie and Melody’s son. Alleged son. What was his name again?”

“Adam.” A.J. thoughtfully rubbed his chin. “I told you, I’m not sure exactly what records are still available. There was a fire in Heaven in the late seventies, and the town building burned—”

“If you can’t come up with records as simple as birth and
death and marriage certificates,” Alison said flatly, because a fire in town was just
too
convenient—it set off all her alarm bells—“then I’m going to have to assume you have a reason to hide them from me. A reason such as, the name listed on old Grandpa Adam’s death certificate under ‘father of deceased’ is something other than Jamie Gallagher.”

“But … Adam doesn’t have a death certificate,” A.J. said.

“He’s
got
to have one—”

“No, he doesn’t,” A.J. said. “He’s not dead.”

He was smiling at her, but it was a gentle smile that shared the joke with her, rather than laughed at her surprise.

Alison had to smile, too. Then she sighed, and sat down on the cracked steps that led to a back door into the saloon. “Of course he isn’t,” she said, “because all the Gallagher men live to be a hundred.”

“Or more,” A.J. agreed as he sat down next to her.

And there they sat, shoulder to shoulder, outside the site of the most famous gunfight in the history of the American West.

“I’m sorry this is so difficult for you,” he said.

She looked at him. At the deep blue of his eyes, the straight line of his nose, that mouth that was so quick to curve upward in amusement—a mouth that had kissed her so exquisitely just last night.

He leaned forward to kiss her again—no doubt she was sending out all kinds of pheromones and
kiss me
signals, including the fact that she’d just been staring at his mouth.

But she leaned back, away from him. “Please don’t.”

“Sorry, I thought, um …” He was a little embarrassed, a little confused, a little amused—this time with himself.

“No,” Alison said. “You read me right. I want to kiss you. Very much.”

Her words lit a fire in his eyes and he leaned in again. But she stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“I’m working,” she said, “and … I have to be up front with you, A.J. If we keep up the kissing, or … even move things to the next level—the naked level? I’m going to need twice as much documentation,
twice
as much proof. The contents of your wallet won’t cut it. I’m going to talk to your
family, your friends. I’m going to wade through your life with hip boots on. And I’m going to make damn sure that you’re who you say you are, and it’s going to be weird, because people who kiss are supposed to trust each other, but I won’t be able to do that. At all. Do you understand what I’m saying? I will not take your word for anything.”

A.J. nodded. “I’m okay with weird,” he said. “I’ve got some weirdness going on of my own, so …”

Alison had to laugh. “Doesn’t anything ever faze you?”

“Just the big stuff,” he said. “But the little stuff …?” He shrugged.

“Having to find twice as much proof is
little stuff?”
she asked.

“I’m pretty certain that we’ll find those diaries,” he said. “You know, I’ve been playing phone tag with my sister, but she left me a message. They’re real, she’s read ’em, but it was a long time ago—right before she got married. She doesn’t feel like she’s any kind of authority on their exact content, because it’s been so long since she read them, but she said she’d be happy to talk to you about the basics of what Melody wrote.”

And didn’t
that
sound suspicious. Alison looked at him, looked hard into his eyes. “If I find out that this is just some con, that you’re playing me …?”

“I’m not,” he said.

“But if you are?” she countered. “If you’re lying to me, about anything, I’m
gonna
find out. Because I will be thorough. And it
will
be ugly. And it’ll be exponentially worse if we become … entangled.”

He was looking down at the hat he was still holding in his hands, his long eyelashes thick and dark against his tanned cheeks. And when he looked back up at Alison, she was—not for the first time—startled by the vivid color of his eyes.

But he didn’t respond. He didn’t say anything. No promises, no
I’m not lying, not about anything
.…

“It’s not too late to pack up your things and just clear out of town,” she told him quietly. “You can disappear. Go back to Alaska or wherever, and we’ll both just forget you ever came here.”

Now
that
was a bald-faced lie. Even if he turned and walked away right now, Alison was going to remember the man who claimed to be A.J. Gallagher for a very long time to come.

“I’m not lying,” he said quietly. “And I know that you think even if
I’m
not lying, that maybe someone lied to me. That my great-grandfather wasn’t really Jamie. You want to work with that theory until my mother finds the diaries? That’s fine with me.”

Alison nodded. “Good. What do you know about your great-grandfather’s life before he left Philadelphia? I’m curious about the older brother—Caldwell Gallagher.”

A.J. was already shaking his head. “Jamie didn’t talk much about his family back east. At least not to me.”

“Caldwell’s middle name was also James,” Alison said.

A.J.’s reaction seemed genuine. Surprise—and amusement. “I didn’t know that.” He put two and two together. “You think Gramps might be Caldwell James. I’ll ask him—I mean, my grandfather. Adam. I’ll ask
him
about it. Next time I, um, talk to him. Adam. I’ll see what I can find out.”

Alison looked at him. He had these odd moments, where he stammered and stumbled all over himself in an attempt to clarify what he’d just said. For someone who claimed not to be fazed by the small stuff, he seemed rather fazed by something that was relatively small.

And then there were the times, like in her bathroom, with the snake, when he’d seemed to be giving orders to himself—
Do it now!
—or maybe to the snake.
You
are
real, aren’t you?

“I’d like to talk to him, too,” Alison told A.J. now. “Your grandfather. And your mother. They both knew your great-grandfather for far longer than you did. But do keep me posted about the diaries.” She stood up and A.J. rose, too. Always the gentleman. “I need to get back to work, but … Think about what I said, okay? About needing twice the proof, if we …?”

Move it to the naked level. There was no need for her to say that again. She knew A.J. was thinking it.

But he cleared his throat, and said, “I know you can’t completely trust me. Not right now, anyway. I understand that,
but I just wanted you to know that I do. You know. Trust you. To find the truth. To be, um, open to a truth that might not be all that … comfortable for you. Bottom line, I trust you and I respect you. Very much.”

And there she stood. Gazing up into the ridiculously handsome face of
the
most perfect man on the planet.

“Are you real?” she asked. “Or are you just a delicious little figment of my overactive imagination?”

He laughed, self-consciously. “I’m a little
too
real,” he told her.

“I’m working,” she said, more to herself than him, but he nodded and she knew he knew what she’d meant. That if she could have, she would’ve kissed him.

“Later,” he promised her, just as he had earlier, and the smile he gave her made her feel as if she were going to melt.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she said, but it wasn’t until Henry shouted, “Cut!” that she broke eye contact and turned, leading him back to the chaotic safety of the set.

Love is a strange, strange thing. There’s no explaining it.

Look at me. I’d been happily single for years. Sure, I was young, only in my early twenties when I met Mel, but I’d hit the road and left home when I was fifteen.

When you’re out on your own, you grow up fast, believe you me.