Lilac Temptress (15 page)

Drake spun around and promptly
advanced, coming face to face with Kyle. “What is your concern? You
can’t bear to see your sister spend her time with a man like me?”
he asked, sharp and irked.

“
A man like you, Mr.
McCalister, with your... obvious gentility and your big city talk
of railroads.” Kyle folded his arms across his chest. He’d be
damned if he’d back down from this outsider, no matter how
intimidating a figure he posed. “I just don’t want to see anyone
get hurt. Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.”

“
And who’s warning you
about your indiscretions?” Drake arched his eyebrows.

“
Sierra has told you about
me?” Kyle grimaced, and cast his eyes to the ground briefly before
looking at Drake again. Convincing Drake to leave his sister alone
was going to be harder than he had bargained for.

“
Doesn’t matter what she
told you. What I do is none of your business,” Kyle
scowled.

Drake grinned, increasingly amused at
this obnoxious kid.

“
Are you sleeping with my
sister? Because if you are, you’d better get out of this town
before it’s too late,” Kyle warned aggressively.

“
Is that a threat?” Drake
scoffed, scrutinizing Kyle.

“
Not from me, Mr.
McCalister.”

“
Then from whom might I
ask?”

“
Wil.”

“
William
Hunter?
What does Hunter have to do with
Sierra and me?” Drake inquired, less than thrilled with wasting his
time on Kyle.

“
He murdered the only man
Sierra ever loved, and I’m the only one who knows the truth of it,
other than Wil and his boys,” Kyle divulged with a heavy
tone.

Kyle’s response caught Drake off
guard. His curiosity piqued as he studied Kyle’s desperate and
worrisome eyes. “You’ve succeeded in getting my attention. I’m
listening.”

“
His name was Jason—Jason
Grant.”

“
Go on.” Drake eyed
him.

“
You see, Mr. McCalister,
William doesn’t think any man’s good enough for Sierra. He’s got
this idea in his head about the way things are supposed to be about
her... me...”

Kyle spotted a man, with a woman on
his shoulder, walking out of the brothel.

“
We can’t talk here,” Drake
said, glimpsing the couple.

“
I know a place. Come with
me,” Kyle insisted, leading the way.

Drake followed Kyle to a small white
building. “A chapel?”

“
Don’t look so surprised,
Mr. McCalister. It is the best place in the whole town to talk, and
avoid prying ears belonging to gossipers. Nobody’s tending the
place today. Doors are open.”

On a bench toward the rear of the
church, they sat near each other.

“
You see, Mr. McCalister,
Jason was just passing through town like yourself. He never moved
on after he met Sierra. He promised to marry her and take her away.
When Sierra told Wil she was going to marry Jason and leave town
with him, Wil lost his head and told Sierra that no city boy was
gonna come and take her away. He told her bad things about
Jason—that Jason wasn’t gonna make good on his promise, and that he
just wanted to get into her bed.” Kyle cleared his throat for a
moment—briefly wondering exactly what Drake and Sierra had been
doing in her bedroom.

“
To make a long story
short, Wil and Sierra had a falling out of sorts. Sierra went
crying to Jason, and they planned to leave as soon as she could get
packed.” Kyle took a breath. “William and his men set out to find
Jason the next morning at dawn, the day that Jason had planned to
take Sierra with him. They found him before he could make it back
to Sierra and forced him out into the swamps.” Kyle noticed Drake
tense his jaw.

“
I followed behind, unseen
and unheard. I saw William order his boys to shoot Jason out there
in the swamp, and that’s what they did. After I saw Jason go down I
ran like hell.” Kyle’s eyes appeared glossy as he relived what he
had witnessed.

“
When Sierra went looking
for Jason and questioned Wil, he told her that Jason had left her.
And when she didn’t believe Wil, she turned to me for answers. She
wanted to know if I knew anything about Jason’s disappearance. I
told her that I didn’t. I let Wil lie to her—I lied to her. I
couldn’t tell her the truth. I wanted to spare her suffering. If
she knew that Wil had murdered Jason, she would have thought that
it was all her fault. I wouldn’t let her carry any guilt,” Kyle
sighed. “I live with the burden. To this day, she thinks that Jason
abandoned her. You see now, why I had to warn you?”

Drake, thoughtful and quiet for a
moment, spoke again. “Why didn’t you do something? Go to the town
Sheriff?”

“
Wil’s the only law in this
town. He’s bought off everyone.”

Drake nodded at him. “You have my
gratitude, Kyle. Indeed, I needed to know this,” Drake said
standing to his feet.

“
You won’t tell Sierra,
will you?” Kyle asked nervously.

“
No. She’ll never hear any
of this from me.” Drake started to depart. “Are you
coming?”

“
Actually, I’m meeting
someone here.”

Drake exited the building.
He saw a pretty little ash-blond woman, heading his way.
Claudine,
Drake thought
to himself as she swept past him.

Kyle reminded Drake of his
younger self.
The boy is dead set on a
path for hell and fury,
he thought. It was
the path that Girard had often told him he was headed
down.

Drake thought of Girard even longer
while he walked the dirt road toward the Casa Bayou Inn. Girard was
right about him. Drake knew that welcomed his share of problems.
Most of which traced back to a woman.

Drake wasn’t bluffing, when Sierra had
remarked at his grace under pressure. He’d been called out a
countless number of times by his lovers’ family: brothers, fathers,
and even husbands—defending the dame’s honor or more likely his
own. Whether dueling swords or pistols, Drake never lost his cool
and usually left unscathed from such encounters.

Sierra represented a whole different
kind of trouble. She was the first woman that he had ever
desperately desired, and she had initially denied him, which had
only made him want her more, he supposed. The fact that William had
murdered Sierra’s fiancée did not deter Drake from wanting her
either. Rather it stirred a deep desire within him to rescue her
from William and the small town filled with his cronies, which
threatened to break her free spirit.

He stepped through the doors of the
Casa Bayou Inn. The inn boy he was paying to care for his steed
eagerly handed him a large brown envelope.

“
It was delivered here this
morning sir with your name on it.” Drake gave the boy a few coins.
The boy smiled big and waited patiently for further
instruction.

Drake opened the sealed enveloped
addressed to him from New Iberia. The note, penned in Girard’s
simple handwriting, read, “Buyers coming in three days by time you
get this letter. Be ready.”

Girard, you are
ingenious
, Drake grinned to
himself.

“
You want silver coins
instead of copper this time?” Drake spoke to the boy and watched
him nod his head positively.

“
I’m going to prepare a
message for you to deliver to a Mr. William Hunter. I trust you
recall who he is—the same man that I had you make a late afternoon
delivery to yesterday.”

“
Yes, sir. I do recall,”
the boy responded readily.

Drake soon gave the boy a quickly
written letter and sent him on his way. He would have met William
himself to announce the news, but he was still mulling over Kyle’s
earlier revelation and devising how he could protect Sierra when
his business in Jadesville concluded.

While he sat in his room contemplating
what he could do or should not do, he admitted to himself that
Sierra was taking up entirely too much of his waking thoughts. No
woman had ever made him feel like she did. Her performances at the
saloon cast spells on him and her body, he shuddered to think, was
by far the most flawless he’d ever seen.

He didn’t like his feeling of need for
her. Truly he didn’t know where it came from. Maybe he felt this
way because she was such a welcome change from the haughty gentry
he was raised among: spoiled, rich and rotten, lacking in all good
conscience, with insatiable greed. While most Society men reveled
in thoughts of how they could make more money, their female
counterparts—money-grubbing, lacking in intelligence, and far too
promiscuous—were too conniving to be trusted.

Sierra was a refreshing break from his
predictable lifestyle filled with fancy parties and pretentious,
false smiles. Sierra was a whole new world to him.

Chapter 6

“
He is the most fantastic
lover!” Liandra exclaimed as she beautified herself by decorating
her face with make-up.

Sierra listened to her while sitting
backstage at the vanity. In fact, all the girls were
listening.

“
I never knew love making
could be like that,” Jasmine boasted. “He was made for it. A real
stallion, he was.” She laughed heartily at the girls around
her.

“
You’re lying. A man of his
standing would never sleep with the likes of you,” Sierra
sneered.

“
Oh you think so? Do you
think I am not good enough for a man like him? Well let me tell you
something, I learned things that I never thought were possible
between man and woman, a real experience in pleasure. I bet I could
give any harlot at Adrienne’s a run for her money now that I’ve
become so much more knowledgeable,” Liandra voiced with
enthusiasm—tossing her hair back, eager to provoke Sierra’s
jealousy—she never cared much for Sierra’s know-it-all,
self-righteous behavior and had detested her for years.

“
Then why don’t you join
the girls at Adrienne’s since you’re not far from being a whore
yourself,” Sierra snarled at the woman who would spread her legs
for any man. “Of course the only difference is that at Adrienne’s,
at least the women are clever enough to make men pay for it!” she
snapped sarcastically.

“
Jealous?” Liandra
retaliated. “Just because you live as a whore and have never had
the pleasure of tasting a man’s cock?”

Sierra abruptly leapt across the room
onto Liandra. The girls around them desperately tried to pull them
apart, but Sierra relentlessly clawed at her rival in an attempt to
shred her to pieces. It took three girls to separate them. “What
the hell has gotten into you, Sierra? Are you trying to ruin
tonight’s performance?” one of the girls angrily chastised
her.

Grabbing a hand-held mirror to assess
the damage, Liandra shrieked at her reflection. “Damn it, I can’t
go on tonight. Not now!” Liandra cried looking at her right eye,
already starting to swell shut. “Sierra, all of this is your
fault!” she accused madly.

Seeing the damage she’d inflicted,
Sierra’s anger quickly dissipated. She wasn’t feeling so great
herself she realized as she placed her hands on her throbbing
temples. All she wanted to do was get away from these women. Drake
couldn’t have slept with Liandra and Jasmine, she thought. And then
it hit her that she was jealous. Drake, having shared his
affections with them, meant that she was no longer special. “I’m
not feeling so well. I cannot remain here.”

“
I bet you can’t!” Jasmine
barked, her face contorting into a mass of contempt.

Sierra turned away from Jasmine, full
of shame.

“
Sorry Lian, I don’t know
what got into me. I can’t dance tonight.” Sierra ran out of the
dressing room laden with guilt—knowing that her apology probably
wouldn’t be accepted by the woman who loathed her, and knowing that
she shouldn’t have let her jealousy raise her emotions to the point
of such selfish retaliation.

“
Just great! Now we got two
girls who can’t perform? How we gonna make any tips?” Jasmine
yelled after Sierra.

In truth, the tips were affected when
not all of the girls performed, particularly Sierra, whom everyone
agreed was the biggest draw. But Sierra couldn’t bring herself to
return. She needed to clear her head, and after the events of the
prior night, she was no longer comfortable walking the town streets
alone at night. So, she persuaded one of William’s boys to stall
his gambling and walk her home. She couldn’t believe that she only
felt comfortable with an escort now. She never had need of one
before last night.

If Drake hadn’t been there anything
could have happened to her. She might not have even made it through
the night, she thought grimly. He had saved her, but he was also a
source of her frustration.

How could she have brawled like that?
And how could she face Drake again after boldly throwing herself at
him? He had been right not to sleep with her. He had been right to
guess that she would change her mind.

After hearing of his tryst firsthand
from Liandra and Jasmine, Drake would be lucky if she ever even
acknowledged his existence again. But he had saved her and she was
indebted to him.