Somebody Wonderful

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Authors: Kate Rothwell

BOOK: Somebody Wonderful
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IN HIS ARMS
 
“Thank you,” Timona whispered, and he took it as an invitation to move.
He wanted this to last at long as possible, for he would not feel the like of her again. But he’d been craving her too long. Too many long hours.
She arched her back and he stopped for a moment in a last desperate attempt to hold back.
“Ah, no, Timmy, God, don’t,” he groaned into her fragrant hair, and he nearly blacked out with the pleasure.
Thoughts of any other woman vanished with Timmy in his arms. He rolled away from her and fumbled around for the candle.
“Mick,” she said, and he could feel her skin as she moved close and brushed against him. “I don’t think you have kissed me enough. I do like your kisses.” Her soft hands lightly stroked up his belly and across his shoulders.
In the dark, Mick found her mouth and he kissed her. His tongue traced her lips. The tender kiss deepened and bloomed into something demanding and rich. He ripped aside the last scrap of linen that was once a lacy petticoat he’d caught glimpses of, and there was nothing but sweet bare skin between them. He forgot about light.
Somebody Wonderful
 
 
 
Kate Rothwell
 
 
 
 
ZEBRA BOOKS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
http://www.zebrabooks.com
 
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
To Margaret R. with love and gratitude;
And I owe more than a measly lunch
to Linda Ingmanson and Nan.
Chapter 1
 
New York, 1882
 
Mick had finished his beat and was strolling home from the precinct when the ruckus broke out. He could ignore it, the shouts and running footsteps echoing from the dark alley. God knew he wanted to ignore it. He’d had a hell of a couple of days on duty, and all he wanted was ten or twenty hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Someone howled, a wordless cry of wild, gleeful menace.
He stopped undoing the tight top button of his wool frock coat, and peered down the street into the shadowy corner. A pack of scruffy, mostly grown boys scrambled out of the alley. Probably the newly formed band of street arabs, all the big talk in McFee’s tavern. Nothing so tough as a real gang, but worth keeping an eye on.
On the corner, the ragged boys shuffled forward, circled, closed in, thin shoulders hunched up, the air electric with anticipation before an attack. What had they found? A cat stupid enough to venture from a shadowy basement? A near-starved dog?
In the center of the circle, an arm flashed out. A shout twisted into a scream, cut unnaturally short.
Not an animal. A human.
They must have trapped an off-streeter, a stray who didn’t move fast enough or pay whatever fine they demanded. Lone idiot, thought Mick, disgusted.
A brick smashed into the gutter. With a resigned growl, Mick yanked out his club, and took off at a run. “Get the hell off o’ him.” Mick pounded over the cobblestones toward the boys. “Beat it.”
The leader turned to watch Mick, probably waiting to see if a cop was willing to go one on six. Damn. The boy had to know police didn’t generally bother with street urchins’ fun. Not unless they troubled members of the tax-paying public, which didn’t include other shabby lads.
As Mick got close, the ferret-thin leader jerked his head, signaling his troops. The gang scuttled away.
“Yah, dirty mick,” they jeered as they scattered.
A couple of years back, Mick would have been startled to hear them yell his name. It hadn’t taken him more than a day in this country to figure out “mick” was a slur for all Irish. But when he donned the double-breasted, brass-buttoned coat and strapped on the truncheon of the New York Police Department, the name calling stopped. Usually.
The off-street kid sprawled in the gutter and across the stones of the filthy, manure-strewn street. He didn’t moved and his eyes were closed.
For a moment, Mick’s heart plummeted.
A Dhia
. God.
Another corpse. He never got used to the corpses, especially the young ones.
But no, the kid moaned faintly.
Mick hitched the knees of his blue serge trousers and squatted to check him. Still out cold. When Mick glanced up, a pale face disappeared behind the corner of a building.
The gang’s lookout, likely the youngest, watched to see if Mick’d go after them. He knew if he did, they’d split up and some would double back and harass the off streeter. Nuts to that.
He touched the back of the unconscious lad’s head behind the gray tweed cap that was jammed on at a rakish angle. His hand came away covered in blood. The boy had a cut gaping wide on one shoulder, too.
Mick sighed. He wished he could shake the lad awake, walk him to some safer street, all the while administering a stern warning to be more careful. Then he could get himself home at last. But the lad looked too beaten to abandon, even if he was led off the gang’s turf.
Mick leaned over to examine the cut on the kid’s shoulder. Hard to ignore the reek of putrid vegetables—the young idiot had landed in a pile of garbage. Mick pulled aside the blood and filth-covered jacket.
His heart took another, unpleasant jump.
This was no boy. Under the jacket, the victim’s shirt had ripped, exposing a lacy chemise and the curve of a breast.
Blessed saints. A female left here in this state would be a fine time for the older gang members, once they noticed her. What kind of a fool of a girl, or woman, rather, would run around the streets dressed up like a boy?
“Hell,” Mick muttered. The public hospital? A good half mile. After thirteen hours in hobnailed boots, he was reluctant to take a single extra step.
And he couldn’t forget the last urchin he’d left at the hospital. The boy had died there, though it was a matter of a simple break in the leg. Mick still berated himself—he should have set that leg himself, even if he had been on duty.
His flat was nearby. And he’d brought home strays before. Most of them stayed for a few days, then roamed off, though they’d come back now and then, to beg an occasional meal. But this would be the first female he’d brought home, unless you counted the dog that had been hit by a cart and later had puppies on his frock coat.
The woman’s eyes half-opened.
She started to sit up, and Mick hauled her to her feet. Her eyelids fluttered shut. She began to collapse. Mick caught her under the arms before she hit the stones again. Looking at her from above she looked entirely feminine—hard to imagine how anyone missed those obvious curves. Most of her skin, and even her fingernails, were fairly clean, so she hadn’t been traipsing around the streets in this disguise for long.
“Hell,” he muttered again. He did not need this.
Mick leaned forward and tossed her onto his shoulder. She weighed no more than a sack of feathers. As he made his way down the sidewalk, he gave an easy heave and shifted her to his other side. Might as well keep her off her injured shoulder.
A few passersby gave Mick curious glances. One gaunt neighborhood drifter strolled past. He had employment today: a sandwich-board advertisement for a tobacconist hung from a yoke on his shoulders.
He stopped to holler, “Hey, officer! That package what you coppers’re gettin’ for pay these days?” The vagrant cackled at his own wit. Mick ignored him.
His block was by no means the worst in the city, but that was the best that could be said of it. Gargoyles glared down from his apartment building’s façade. Other than that touch of whimsy, the place was as grim as all the buildings crammed uncomfortably on the crowded street.
Still, Mick made an effort to keep it clean. He absently brushed the worst of the filth off the breeches the girl wore and plucked a rotting lettuce leaf off her hip. He pushed open the front door with his large, booted foot. The ghosts of thousands of boiled cabbages, flavored with a hint of raw sewage, drifted to his nose.
Home sweet home.
“Mr. McCann,” fluted the widow who lived on the bottom floor. She leaned against her open doorway and smiled at him. The smile vanished when she saw the body flung over his shoulder. “Mercy!” she cried. “Is that the boy what caused the racket out there?”
“More likely the lads after him.”
With his free hand, he tilted his helmet politely at the widow, who wore nothing more than a chemise above her corseted waist. She scowled and slammed back into her apartment.
He wasn’t just imagining it, then. The ill-tempered widow clearly had an eye on him. For the first time, Mick was almost glad he had the kid—no, woman—over his shoulder.
He carefully bounded up the creaking steps two at a time, skirting the trash, chairs, washtubs and baskets that cluttered the hall.
In his dimly lit, one-room flat, he laid the woman onto his bed and stepped back to look at her. Delicate lines to her face, and high cheekbones and small nose. Italian? Jewish? Maybe even black Irish. Her skin was creamy pale, though the hair jammed under th tweed cap was dark, almost dark enough to hide the color of blood.
Oh. The cut on the back of her head. He looked down at himself. Christ, his coat was shoulder to waist in her blood. Fear jolted though him. Was she so badly hurt?
The woman’s breathing was steady enough. He gave her a quick examination. The blood had come from her head; he’d seen enough of those cuts to know they could bleed impressively. He could leave her for a few minutes.
Mick took down the large pot he used for washing, and trudged up a flight to the working pump for water. It didn’t take many days on the job for him to learn cold water was best for getting out blood—good thing, to be sure, since the building had no hot.
Botty must have heard his steps. The scruffy little mutt came careening down the stairs, a misshapen cannonball of a dog. He’d lurked up in the top floor, probably hiding from the widow.
Mick put down the full basin and bent to scratch the dog’s remaining ear. Botty pushed at his hand with ecstatic wheezing growls. When Mick opened the flat’s door, Botty clicked into the room and settled on a rag under the bureau with a contented sigh.
Mick poured some water into a clean saucepan to use for the woman. Then he stripped off his coat and shoved the most badly stained sleeve into the large pan. He’d see about the female after he got the damned boots off.
He pushed down the straps of his braces and plopped down on the sagging bed next to her.
She moaned. Then spoke. “My God, no. Not again.” The five words made her origins clear. An Englishwoman.
A pity. He didn’t think much of the English.
He swivelled around, one boot dangling from his hand. Horrified green eyes stared up at him from a pale face. The woman didn’t seem particularly happy to see him either.
She groaned. “Hell’s bells. All that effort, wasted. Did the boys on the street tell you where to find me?”
“Hey?”
“I should not have riled the man,” she murmured. “My God, this one’s much. My head is so wobbly, it will fall off. Oh, blast. I give up.”
“Aye?” Mick rubbed two fingers across his unshaved chin. Maybe she was a criminal who’d caved at the sight of his helmet hanging on the chair. “Right. What did you do, then? Were you going and asking for trouble from those lads?”
“No.” The woman sounded tired, but testy. “As I told the man in charge, someone will pay for my return. A good amount, no questions asked. He didn’t seem to care. I should have known better than to wander, but the light . . .” Her voice died away.
Perhaps she had suffered some kind of brain injury. He studied her pale face; her eyes were closed again. He’d check her pupils later. “The man in charge?” he prompted.
“Oh, I don’t know.” A definite peevish note to her tone. “Perhaps he’s not in charge. He claimed he was. Perhaps some other beast is the owner. Perhaps you are. I don’t truly care. I said I give up, so go on then.”
Mick dropped the boot he held onto the floor. He stood up, lit another candle and peered down at her. “Here, now. Are you all right, miss? You do know you got a nasty cosh on the head?”
She opened her eyes and looked at him again, glaring, for pity’s sake. Her blood-streaked brow furrowed in regal disdain. “And would that make the slightest difference to you?”
“What?”
“I mean, do you rougher types actually care if the girl is injured or unwilling? I tried drooling and crooning like a mad-woman and that didn’t stop the first man. Then they said that rough types get the girls who act up.” The woman gave a small moan. She examined him. “Though I must say you have a kind face. Does it help my—ah, me—if I say I give up? I will apologize to the men I injured if it is necessary. Might I be given a different sort of, ah . . .” She flushed.

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