Nobody's Darling

“Good God, William, you look like hell,” Drew said, sliding into the chair opposite him. Despite the heat, he looked as crisp as a newly minted two-dollar greenback in his double-breasted waistcoat, shiny knee boots, and broad-brimmed white Stetson.

Billy stroked his unshaven jaw, eyeing his friend warily. “Did you come all the way to Mexico just to insult me?”

“If you must know, I came to make you a proposition.”

“Sorry, Drew. I haven’t been without a woman that long.”

Billy reached for the fresh bottle of whiskey only to discover that a plate of steaming food had appeared in its place—pinto beans and something with a savory aroma wrapped in a corn tortilla. Its mysterious arrival confounded him nearly as much as the startling awareness that he was hungry. Maybe even ravenous, he admitted, shoveling a spoonful of beans into his mouth.

Drew watched him eat with the amused tolerance of a king presiding over a beggar’s feast, holding his tongue until the plate had been scraped clean.

Billy darted him a suspicious look. “I thought you were going to buy me a drink.”

“So I was,” Drew admitted, snapping his fingers in the direction of the bar.

The raven-haired whore swaggered over, smug now as she swished her hips in Billy’s face and thumped an earthenware flask down on the table. Billy took a long, thirsty gulp, then spat the bulk of it on the cantina floor, shooting Drew an accusing glare. “It’s water!”

“Aye, it is. If you want anything stronger, you’ll have to crawl over to the bar on your belly and get it yourself.”

Billy surged to his feet, despising Drew for pitying him when no other man would have dared, despising himself for deserving it. His pride was the only thing that prevented him from staggering. “Go to hell. I don’t need your charity.”

“Sit down, William,” Drew said mildly.

“And if I don’t,” he snarled, “what are you going to do, sheriff? Arrest me?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to leave that unenviable task to someone else. I am no longer acting as sheriff of Calamity. I have officially resigned my post.”

His precarious balance unable to withstand the blow, Billy sank back into the chair. He gestured to the tin star twinkling merrily on Drew’s vest. “Then why are you still wearing your badge?”

“Because I have abdicated the job, but absconded with the title.” He leaned back in his chair, twirling the silky tip of his right mustache. “As you well know, it has long been a dream of mine to leave behind the dangerous vocation of law enforcement. Hence was born the notion of”—he paused for dramatic effect, his eloquent hands painting a banner in the air over the table—‘“Sheriff Andrew McGuire’s Wild West Extravaganza.”“

Billy leaned across the table and sniffed his breath. “Maybe you should have switched to water a little sooner.”

Drew sighed. “I should like to claim credit for the idea, but its genesis came out of a recent conversation I had with a Mr. William Cody, who was starring in a theatrical melodrama penned by Ned Buntline.”

Billy was familiar with Buntline. He’d written most of the dime novels that still sat on the bookshelves in Miss Mellie’s attic. Remembering how much he’d enjoyed those books, he felt a pang of regret for leaving them behind.

“According to Mr. Cody,” Drew continued, “all you would need to launch such an endeavor are some horses, guns, cowboys and settlers, wild Indians—”

“You don’t know any wild Indians,” Billy pointed out.

“Of course I do. There’s Crazy Joe Cloudminder right there in Calamity.”

“Joe’s a barber!”

“Then I’m sure he can wield a tomahawk just as skillfully as he can a razor.” Drew leaned his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers beneath his chin, studying Billy with an intensity that made him itch to bolt. “All I lack now is a sharpshooter. Oh, say, someone who could hit a dime in midair or shoot a playing card in half at a hundred and twenty feet.”

Billy shoved his chair back from the table again, lunging to his feet. “Oh, no, you don’t! In case you haven’t heard, I’ve hung up my guns for good. I’m not for hire. Not even by you.” He wheeled around and started for the door, determined to walk out of the cantina while he still could.

“I’ve already booked our first engagement.”

Drew’s casual announcement stopped Billy in his tracks. His nape prickled with dread. Worse than the dread was the emotion that tripped along at its heels. He’d grown comfortable with despair, but hope might just kill him.

“Where?” he whispered.

“London.”

Billy turned around and returned to the table, sliding into the chair as gingerly as if his bones were made of glass. Jesus, he needed a drink, he thought bitterly, locking his hands together to hide their trembling. He doubted he could even hold a gun without dropping it.

Forcing himself to look up and meet Drew’s kind blue eyes was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. It took him three tries just to swallow. “I know why you’re doing this.”

Drew beamed at him. “I thought you would. A man of your discerning palate must surely appreciate the charms of my Anne.”

Billy continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “And I thank you most kindly for your concern, but—” He stopped, scowling in bewilderment as Drew’s words sank in. “Anne? Anne Hastings? That dried-up old persimmon of a—”

“Watch your tongue, lad.” Drew held up a restraining hand. “I hasten to remind you that you are speaking of my future bride. She is no persimmon, but a ripe, luscious pomegranate, trembling with eagerness to fall into my waiting hand.”

Billy snorted. “The last time I saw her with you, she was trembling with rage, not eagerness.”

“Despite our past differences, she’s agreed to finance my little endeavor. I prefer to think of it as a sort of dowry. Although it may not have been readily apparent,” Drew assured him, “we have an understanding.”

“Oh, I understood perfectly. She despised you and wished you would die.”

“Be that as it may,” Drew admitted with an injured sniff, “I can assure you that she has been very tender toward me in our recent correspondence.”

Billy responded to that revelation with stony silence. If Drew thought he was going to beg him for any pathetic scrap of news about Esmerelda, then he was wrong. Dead wrong.

Drew sat back in his chair, eyeing him shrewdly. “Anne made brief mention of her niece in her letter. If I’m not mistaken, there was talk of a suitor. An earl, I believe.”

Billy’s fingers began to drum on the table, losing their tremble.

Drew leaned forward as if to impart a particularly delicious snippet of gossip. “It seems the man once courted Esmerelda’s mother. Since the mother left him languishing at the altar over twenty-five years ago, he’s set his sights on the daughter. You might think a fifty-year-old man would be in his dotage, but Anne assures me he’s a handsome, virile fellow of quite notorious appetites, perfectly capable of satisfying his young bride and providing himself with an heir to—”

Billy lunged across the table, jerking Drew out of his chair by his flawlessly folded necktie. The guitar fell silent. The occupants of the cantina ceased their smoking, chattering, and dancing to gape in fascination. They’d never seen any sign of emotion from him more intense than a bored flicker of his eyelids.

If they were astonished by his violence, they were even more dumbfounded when, after holding the stranger’s gaze for a tense eternity, he gently lowered the man back into his chair, smoothed his necktie, and drawled, “So, when do we leave?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

When Billy found out who Drew had recruited to portray the notorious outlaw gang in his Wild West Extravaganza, he almost wished he’d gone ahead and choked him to death with his own necktie right there in that cantina.