We’ll see about that. Jake headed out to his horse to get the money from his saddlebags. He’d never had such a hard time controlling his temper as he was having right now. What happened yesterday at his mother’s grave didn’t help his mood. Think about the girl and getting her out of here, he told himself. One wrong move, and you’ve blown it. All that matters is the girl…and killing Sidney Wayland and that cocky sonofabitch Luis Estava!
Forty-six
Jake paced…and smoked. He’d planned on buying Annie outright and taking her home, but he’d ended up having to buy her for just one night, which created a problem for tomorrow morning. Getting her out of the brothel would be more difficult than he’d planned. Thank God Don de Leon hadn’t come for her yet.
The door finally opened, and someone shoved a young girl inside. She stumbled from being pushed. The door was slammed shut behind her. She stood there in a negligee so thin Jake could see right through it.
She was incredibly beautiful, more so than he’d expected. Now he understood why Sidney Wayland considered her worth a lot of money. Her long, blond hair was brushed out and hung in thick waves nearly to her waist. She was tall for her age, her legs slender, her breasts almost too full for a fifteen-year-old.
She folded her arms over those breasts and stood there, staring at Jake, her beautiful blue eyes as big as saucers. The look she gave him reminded him of how Randy had looked at him the first time she’d met him—and shot him—in that supply store back in Kansas. The story was a family joke now, because she’d later found him dying and had taken the bullet out, saving his life. If she had been smart, she would have left that bullet inside of me, Jake liked to tell others.
“Get away from the door,” he told Annie.
She hung her head as she walked closer on unsteady bare feet. She shivered so badly Jake thought she might pass out. He walked to his gear and took out one of his shirts. “Look up here,” he told her.
She raised tear-filled eyes. My God, she looks just like a young Gretta. “Put this on,” he told her, handing her the shirt.
Her eyes remained wide and her lips quivered. She swallowed before answering. “Why?”
“Because I don’t think you want me seeing right through that thing they put on you.”
She looked down again. “Isn’t that what you want?”
“No.” Jake draped the shirt over her shoulder and walked to the door, noticing there was no lock. Most whorehouses didn’t have locks on the bedrooms. That was so a pimp or a guard outside could burst in if it sounded like a woman was being beaten, although he knew some places that actually accepted extra money from men who preferred to beat a woman first.
He yanked the door open, revealing a local man wearing a gun. “Get the hell away from here!” he ordered.
“Señor, it is my job to—”
In the blink of an eye, Jake’s gun was under his chin. “I paid three thousand dollars for that girl in there, and I’ll have some privacy,” he ordered. “I don’t want anybody standing out here listening or trying to peek under the door or barging in on us. Got that?”
The man swallowed. “Sí, señor.”
The man left, and Jake slammed the door shut again. He shoved a rug under the bottom of it so no one could try looking inside, then propped the back of a chair against the doorknob so no one could barge in. When he turned, the girl had his shirt on. It was so big on her it came to her knees. Jake suddenly remembered little Sadie Mae. “I don’t wanna be bare,” she’d said when he’d taken her nightie off and given her his shirt. This girl had had the same devastated look on her face.
“You Annie?” he asked. He knew he had the right girl, but he wanted to hear it from her own lips.
She nodded. A tear slipped down her cheek. “You…paid three thousand dollars for me?”
“I sure did.”
“Luis said…you were going to…rape me. He said I have to do whatever you say, but…I don’t know about…those things.” She backed away when he stepped closer. “I think I’m gonna be sick.” She burst into tears. Jake grabbed her up and whisked her into an adjoining washroom, hanging on to her as she leaned over the bathtub and threw up. He grasped her hair and held it behind her neck.
“Annie, I’m not going to do anything to you. I’m here to help you.” He hung on tightly as she threw up again, after which she couldn’t stop the tears.
“Don’t…tell Luis. He’ll do something bad to me if he…thinks I disappointed you.”