She accepted his challenge, sending him a slow smile across the table, but he had to laugh at the gleam in her eye. Dusty was competitive. No matter what she was doing, she liked to come out on top.
He prayed to God he would win the hand because he needed that money. It was part of the hard-won thousand dollars he’d earned to start his ranch. With that, plus the money he’d salted away in the bank, he could purchase four good horses and four or five heifers and a young bull to start his herd. Maybe he wouldn’t eat too much for the first couple of years, but he had to have stock.
No one around the poker table said a word as the cards were shuffled and dealt for the final hand. And no one spoke when Dusty traded in three of her cards. Zach claimed only one.
She studied her hand. “All right,” she announced, her voice grave, “I will speak.”
Juan leaned over and whispered something to her.
“Oh, of course.” She grinned. “I mean I will call,” she amended.
Zach spread his three queens in front of him. Dusty looked down at them, and then her blue eyes flicked up to hold his for a long moment. There was some kind of message in her gaze, but he couldn’t read it.
Then she leaned forward and spread two tens and three jacks on the table.
Hell in a handbasket, she had a full house! And that sure beat his three queens.
The hands cheered. Stunned, Zach just sat there. “Curly, get me a piece of paper and a pencil.” He scratched out an IOU, walked around the table and pressed it into her hand.
Then, to his surprise, she did something he would remember for the rest of his life. She glanced at his IOU, looked up and held his gaze for a long minute. Finally, she smiled at him and tore the paper up into tiny pieces. She dropped them on the poker table, then rose and smoothed out her skirt. The men stood up, as well.
Zach couldn’t seem to get his brain in gear. She’d just won hundreds of dollars from him in an all-or-nothing poker hand, and then she’d tossed it back into his lap. He shook his head. Guess he’d never understand her, not in a million years.
But, he thought with an inward groan, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d scratched his head over Miss Alexandra Murray. And it sure didn’t change the way he felt about her. Nothing would ever change that.
“Gentlemen,” she purred. “I believe I will retire now. You are loading cattle tomorrow, and I am returning to Chicago.”
The men shuffled out of the saloon, and after a moment, she started for the door. Zach stepped up and grasped her arm. “Dusty, wait a minute. You won that hand fair and square, and I always pay my debts.”
She stood on tiptoe and whispered near his ear, “I can’t take your hard-earned money from you, Zach. Really, I should be paying you! After all, you didn’t want me along on this cattle drive in the first place.”
He heard the words, but the only thing he really understood was the tremor in her voice. Leaving was going to be as hard for her as it was for him.
She walked on into the hotel foyer and swept up the stairs. He followed her. When he caught up with her, he reached for her hand. “Having you along on this drive, riding the trail with you...it was worth it, Dusty. You know that.”
“Yes,” she said softly, “I do. And I also know how much you want to start your own ranch. That takes money.”
“Yeah, but—”
She stopped short and pulled him around to face her. “Zach, for heaven’s sake, let’s not argue about it. Not on my...our last night.”
That stopped him cold. Their last night. He’d spent all evening shoving that realization to the back of his mind. He’d never worked so hard to forget something in his life.
“Dusty...” She looked up, and he saw that her eyes were all shiny with tears. All at once, whatever he was going to say to her died on his lips. Instead, he folded her into his arms and held her close.
“I can’t think about tomorrow,” he said against her hair. “I had a hard time thinkin’ about it for the last three hundred miles, and right at this moment I’m not doin’ much better.”
“What are you going to do now?” she asked after a long silence.
“Go down to the bar and get a double whiskey.”
“Bring me one, too.”
He choked out a laugh. “I’ll bring you a lemonade, Dusty. Not another whiskey. I don’t want to send you off on the train tomorrow with a hangover.”
“Very well.” She sighed. “Leaving will be...” She swallowed. “Leaving will be hard enough, won’t it?”
He couldn’t speak. Hard didn’t even come close. He looked at her for a long moment. “I’m going out for a walk. I’ll be back in an hour.”
She studied his face and tried to smile, then said only one word. “Promise?”
* * *
Zach stood at the bar between Curly and Roberto, staring into the tumbler of whiskey he was twirling around and around in his fingers. Suddenly he didn’t want it. He’d already downed three whiskeys tonight; he figured that was enough. He didn’t need a headache tomorrow, either.
Besides, when he went upstairs Dusty would be waiting for him.
Curly clapped him on the back. “Sure been a helluva drive, huh, boss?”
Other voices chimed in from the cowhands strung out along the length of the polished mahogany bar. “Sure has,” Skip agreed.
“Lotta fun, too, with Miss Alex along,” Jase added.
“What you think, Señor Boss, the señorita will come with us next year, maybe?” Roberto’s large brown eyes looked hopeful.
“I don’t think so, Roberto. Miss Murray’s life is in Chicago, not out here in the West.”
“But she like all of us, don’t she, señor?”
Zach clenched his fingers around his whiskey glass. “Yeah, she likes all of us.” He took a gulp of liquor. “But her newspaper job is back East. And it’s real important to her.”
“Why she need a job, señor?”
“Yeah, why?” Curly echoed. “Women out here don’t have jobs.”
“Some do,” Skip reminded him. “Just not the kind Miss Alex would know about.”
The buzz of voices droned on around him, but Zach shut them out and tried to think. Images of Dusty danced around in his brain. Dusty gobbling beans and corn bread along with the other hands. Dusty nibbling on her pencil stub and scratching away in her notebook. Dusty standing hip deep in the river, her hair tumbling down around her shoulders, her skin sheened with water.
Oh, God.
He shoved his drink over to Curly, clapped Roberto on the back and slid off the bar stool.
“’Night, boys. Don’t forget, we’re loadin’ cattle tomorrow morning early.”
He swung toward the saloon door and headed up the stairs two at a time. At the door to Dusty’s room he hesitated, sucked in a long breath of air and walked in.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Alex was almost asleep when she heard the door of her hotel room open.
“Dusty?”
She sat up in bed. The faint glow from the kerosene lamp on the nightstand illuminated the figure standing with one hand on the doorknob. “Zach?”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course you can come in. I thought you’d never get here!”
He set his hat on the dresser and moved toward her. “I forgot to bring you any lemonade. Or sarsaparilla, either.”
“I didn’t really expect any. I did expect you, though.”
“That’s good. I didn’t fancy breakin’ down your door.”
“Would you have, really?” she asked in a hushed tone. “Broken down the door?”
He sat down close to her on the edge of the narrow bed. “Damn right.”
She laughed softly. “That is extremely gallant of you, Zach. Like rescuing a princess locked in a tower.”
“Desperate, maybe,” he murmured. “Not gallant.” He pulled her leather-bound notebook out from under his thigh and looked at her enquiringly.
“I was writing down my notes from tonight,” she said. “You know, about playing poker.”
“And drinking whiskey,” he added with a chuckle.
“I don’t think I will ever, ever do that again. Whiskey tastes worse than... It tastes like furniture polish.”
“You drink a lot of furniture polish, do you?”
She looked up at him. “Not anymore. I did once when I was growing up, though. Mama cried and carried on for a week.”
He slid his forefinger under her chin and tipped her face up to his. “Dusty?”
“Yes, Zach?”
“Stop talking.”
He kissed her, moving his warm mouth over hers so slowly and deliberately it made Alex want to weep. When she could breathe again she unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and pressed her lips into the hollow of his throat.
He bent away from her to blow out the guttering lamp on the nightstand, and her notebook slid off the bed onto the floor. He ignored it. Instead, he finished unbuttoning his shirt. In the dark she heard his boots thunk onto the carpet, followed by his leather belt.
My heavens! A man was undressing in her hotel room, and she wasn’t the least bit perturbed! Something has happened to you, Alex. Something wonderful.
Before she could untie the ribbon on her nightgown, he reached for her. “Least you’re not wearin’ a corset,” he breathed against her mouth. “You know something?” he asked after a long minute, his voice gravelly.