Promises Linger (Promise Series)

Promises Linger

Sarah McCarty

Chapter One

1868 Wyoming Territory

It wasn’t every day a lady strolled into Dell’s. A few strumpets graced the place, but Asa was willing to bet every dollar in his pocket that the last time a buttoned-down, poker-backed lady had entered this rundown excuse of a saloon was never. One by one, the other patrons noticed the gray clad intruder. The cacophony of voices dropped until, with a resounding clank on the keys, the piano player took note.

Asa watched as the woman turned this way and that, no doubt straining to see through the murk. He lifted his whiskey to his lips, took a sip, and waited. He wondered whether it was a husband or a lover she was seeking. He hoped it was the former. A wife in search of an errant husband was bound to put on a better show.

With a sharp tug on each finger, she yanked off her gloves. Backlit as she was by the doorway, Asa had an excellent view of her silhouette. Petite and curvaceous with softly turned hips that had Asa thinking in terms of sinking deep and riding hard. He took another sip of his whiskey. As it burned the back of his throat, he tried to figure out why the sight of this woman had his cock sitting up and taking notice. Maybe it was the way she stood that piqued his interest. Kind of a cross between it’s-snowing-in-hell panic and hell-bent-for-leather determination. Then again, maybe he was just the contrary sort and his cock followed suit, longing after what he could never have. Respectable women like her were the wives of bankers and judges. They were never seen within a country mile of a saddle tramp such as himself. Just because this one was perched on the doorstep of the seediest saloon in town didn’t change that fact.

The sun peeped out from behind a cloud. The feeble shaft of light curved around the door, illuminating the woman’s profile. His cock came fully erect and he almost wasted a swallow of rot gut choking on his surprise.

A man could look at a face like that for years and never get tired. It wasn’t that she was beautiful, though she was mighty easy on the eyes. It was the way the planes and hollows came together in a delicate balance of strength, humor and bone-deep sensuality that had him gaping like a green kid. A face like that spoke of endurance and character. A face like that invited visions of naked bodies and long, lusty, leisurely nights. And her mouth, hell, her mouth was a fantasy unto itself. He couldn’t begin to corral the ideas the sight of those wide plump lips had running through his head.

He shifted in his chair to ease the pressure on his manhood and reigned in his imagination. The woman might be every fantasy he’d ever had wrapped into one delectable armful, but she was about as attainable as the moon. And the sooner he forced himself to accept that fact, the better he’d be. He’d stopped lusting after what he couldn’t have about the same time he had realized the son of a whore and a passing through gambler was good for only one thing in the townsfolk’s eyes. Cleaning up other people’s messes. He’d gotten real good at cleaning up over the years, and someday he was going to take the money he had earned bringing in robbers and murderers, and he was going to buy a future for himself and his kids. Someday.

He forced his fingers to relax their grip on his glass before it cracked under the pressure. He didn’t know why this woman was stirring up old demons, but he didn’t like it. He’d long since adjusted to the way the world worked, and he wasn’t about to let the sight of a woman, no matter how temptingly packaged, upset the peace he’d made with life’s ironies.

A quartet of poker two tables over from Asa broke into yells. A fancy gambler with his back to the door let out a hoot and leaned over the table, raking in the winnings.

As if that were the signal she’d been waiting on, the woman launched into motion. Head high, shoulders back, she crossed the cramped room with a determination that sent the working girls in her path fleeing for cover. Asa released the breath he’d been holding and tipped his chair back on two legs until his shoulders connected with the wall. Raising his glass, he toasted her grit. Not many women had the wherewithal to confront their man’s shortcomings.

“Hello, Brent.”

Her voice was well modulated, without any hint of a drawl.

The blond-haired gambler froze in the act of raking in his winnings. The woman moved around the table, murmuring “Excuse me” as she went, stopping when she reached the man’s side. The flickering glow from the oil lamps set off the red highlights in her scraped-back hair. Those sparks were nothing compared to the fury raging in her vivid green eyes. One of which was black and blue.

“What in hell are you doing here, Elly?” Brent growled.

The name landed wrong on Asa’s ear. No one that buttoned-down could ever be an Elly.

“I came for my money.”

“You don’t have anything I don’t give you,” the gambler retorted in a snide voice that just made Asa itch to feed him a few of his own teeth.

The woman didn’t seem to share his irritation. Cool as a cucumber, she replied. “You’re wrong.” Reaching across her husband’s arm, the woman snatched a pile of bills. “This is mine.”

She was halfway through the stack before one of the other players thought to react.

“Hey! We’re playing a game here.”

“Mr. Doyle is cashing out,” she said, not looking up from her counting.

Mr. Doyle apparently had other ideas. “Put the money back, Elizabeth.”

That, Asa thought, was a more fitting name for the lady.

Elizabeth looked up from her counting. “You owe me two hundred dollars more.”

“I don’t owe you anything, woman.” Despite the confidence in his voice, Brent’s hands clamped down on the rest of his winnings. “Put it back, Elly.”

Elizabeth tucked the bills she’d confiscated into her reticule. Not by a flutter of an eyelash did she indicate she heard the warning in her husband’s voice. “You took four hundred dollars from my bank account this morning. Money that rightly belongs to the hands that put in a hard month’s work. Two hundred I just put in my reticule. Hand me two hundred more, and we can both consider this unfortunate circumstance finished.”

“Since when,” Brent asked, pulling out a cheroot from his pocket and scraping a match across his boot sole, “does a man have to account to his wife for anything?”

Elizabeth placed a small circle of gold on the table. “We aren’t married.”

“Like hell.” Brent eyed her steadily over his cupped hand as he touched the tip of the match to his cheroot.

Asa noted the distinctive band around the tip of the cheroot. Elizabeth’s husband had expensive taste.

“The hell would have been if I were truly trapped into a marriage with you,” Elizabeth stated flatly. “Fortunately, I’m not.”

“Oh, we’re married.” Brent shoved his chair back. He tossed the match into the nearby spittoon. At the end of the sharp movement, his hand curled into a fist. With the tip of the cheroot, he indicated the ring on the table. “And as your husband, I’m telling you to put that ring back on and get yourself back home where you belong.”

Elizabeth made no move to take the ring or hit the door. She merely stood for the span of two heartbeats, doing nothing but meeting her husband’s stare with one of her own. The tension between the two was thick enough to chew on.

Around Asa, men started shifting restlessly. No mistaking it, this argument was getting ugly fast. It was easy to tell from the set of Elizabeth’s shoulders that she was a proud woman. Too proud to back down. It was just as easy to tell from Brent’s demeanor that he was more than willing to make the discussion physical. Asa didn’t know about the rest of the men in the saloon, but he’d be hard put to watch a man take his fists to a woman. Wife or not.

With a sigh, Elizabeth, broke the stare-down. “You’re such an egotistical fool.”

Asa wondered if the disgust in Elizabeth’s voice was aimed at Brent or herself, for it was becoming more obvious by the second that, if husbands were apples, Elizabeth’s choice had been core rotten.

Brent growled low in his throat and ground out his cheroot beneath the heel of his boot. With a jerk of his chin, he indicated the remains of his cigar. “I’ll be taking the price of that out of your hide tonight.”

Elizabeth calmly put her gloves and reticule in the pocket of her skirt. “You won’t be doing anything tonight, I imagine, besides crying into the bottom of a liquor bottle. For you see, due to what I suspect is typical ineptness on your part, yesterday’s so-called marriage between us has not been consummated.”