“I am virtuous!” Her cheeks pinkened. “And you are wrong.”

“Am I?”

Her annoyed gaze locked with his. “Yes.”

“Hmm. That’s interesting.” He observed her anew, liking her courage. “I bet you wish you’d left when you had the chance.”

He felt a smile sneak onto his face and was dumbfounded by it. It couldn’t be that he was enjoying her company, could it?

It seemed it could, Griffin marveled, and smiled afresh. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled twice in one day.

His pleasure only appeared to gall her further.

“I wish I’d clobbered you with your breakfast tray. That’s what I wish!”

He offered a tsk-tsk of sham politeness. “Come, now. That’s hardly the exemplary service the Lorndorff is known for.”

An unintelligible sound of frustration came from her. Oddly enough, Griffin liked it. He liked seeing her ladylike façade crumble. He liked knowing he could affect her. He liked … her.

The realization made Griffin falter.

AUTHOR NOTE

Thank you for reading NOTORIOUS IN THE WEST! I’m delighted to return to the Arizona Territory, and I’m thrilled to share Olivia and Griffin’s story with you. If you had fun reading about them—and I hope you did!—please try another book in my Morrow Creek series. It includes THE HONOUR-BOUND GAMBLER, MAIL-ORDER GROOM, THE BRIDE RAFFLE and several others—including some short stories and an eBook exclusive—all set in and around my favourite Old West town.

If you’d like to try a few sample chapters, you can find first-chapter excerpts from all my books at my website: www.lisaplumley.com. While you’re there, you can also download an up-to-date book list, sign up for new-book alerts, read sneak previews of forthcoming books, request reader freebies and more. I hope you’ll stop by today!

As always, I’d love to hear from you! You can follow me on Twitter @LisaPlumley, ‘friend’ me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/lisaplumleybooks, send an e-mail to lisa@lisaplumley.com or visit me online at www.community.eharlequin.com

Best wishes till next time!

Notorious in

the West

Lisa Plumley

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DEDICATION

To John, with all my love,

now and forever.

When she found herself living in modern-day Arizona Territory, LISA PLUMLEY decided to take advantage of it—by immersing herself in the state’s fascinating history, visiting ghost towns and historical sites, and finding inspiration in the desert and mountains surrounding her. It didn’t take long before she got busy creating light-hearted romances like this one, featuring strong-willed women, ruggedly intelligent men, and the unexpected situations that bring them together.

When she’s not writing Lisa loves to spend time with her husband and two children, travelling, hiking, watching classic movies, reading, and defending her trivia game championship. She enjoys hearing from readers, and invites you to contact her via e-mail at lisa@lisaplumley.com, or visit her website at www.lisaplumley.com

Previous novels by the same author:

THE DRIFTER

THE MATCHMAKER* THE SCOUNDREL* THE RASCAL* MARRIAGE AT MORROW CREEK* (part of Halloween Temptations anthology) MAIL-ORDER GROOM* THE BRIDE RAFFLE* SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING TRUE (part of Weddings Under a Western Sky anthology) THE HONOUR-BOUND GAMBLER*

*Morrow Creek mini-series

And in Mills & Boon® Historical Undone! eBooks:

WANTON IN THE WEST

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter One

March 1872, Boston, Massachusetts

Even at the age of fourteen, Griffin Turner always knew when one of his mother’s “bad times” was coming on. First she’d quit cleaning the meager four rooms they shared. Dust would pile up. Dirty pans and plates would accumulate. Rats would saunter across the gritty floors, as bold as you please—as bold as they tended to be in the tenement building Griffin and his mother had moved into After Their Circumstances Changed—and chew their way into the few remaining foodstuffs in the kitchen. A good swat with a broom got rid of them, Griffin had learned, but he hated the way that smacking their furry bodies made his skin crawl.

He also hated how weak it made him feel to admit that. After their circumstances changed, Griffin had become the man of the house. The man of the house could not be weak. He knew that.

When he failed to remember it, his mother reminded him.

A day or so after she stopped cleaning up, his mother would pull all the tatty draperies tightly shut, so that not even the tiniest sliver of wintertime sunlight could penetrate their home’s dank interior. Then she would abandon whatever piecework job she’d grudgingly taken on. Finally, she would take to her bed.

Griffin wasn’t sure how that was supposed to help anything. After all, nothing happened in bed except dreaming. Dreaming didn’t exactly put food on the table and kindling in the fireplace. But he knew better than to say so.

At least he knew better than to say so twice.

Most of the time, Griffin managed his mother’s bad times without too much hardship. He learned how to dust and sweep. He figured out how to light the stove and how to inveigle a few grocery items from their careworn neighbors when things got desperate. He learned to leave crackers by his mother’s bedside while she was asleep, but never to mention having done so the next day. He learned the precise time to bring a bracing cup of coffee into his mother’s room. He learned that doing so made her smile at him...but only if he got the timing right. So he learned well.

During the bad times, Griffin tiptoed a lot.

Overall, he didn’t think about his mother’s moody spells much. They came like the weather; they went for reasons that were as inexplicable and as evergreen as springtime in the city. They were a fact of life—like his growing body, his work tending the fiery furnaces at the glass factory and his knowledge that the only way to get by was to toil until sweet oblivion took him at the end of the day. Sleep was good, even if he didn’t remember having any dreams of his own. Work was good. He earned money to support his mother and himself. He kept busy. He had every Sunday off to do as he pleased—which wasn’t, by the age of fourteen, to attend Sunday church services alone, as his mother believed he did. It was to revisit their old town house, which still stood in the neighborhood where they’d lived before their circumstances changed, and try to figure out how to get it back.

Generally, life was shambolic but manageable. As long as you didn’t count on anything, Griffin knew, you would be fine.

Sometimes, though, enough time passed between bouts of tidying and tiptoeing—and treating his mother with the same care that the glassblowers at the factory handled their bottles and pitchers and glasshouse whimsies—that Griffin forgot about the bad times. That was dangerous. That was when he was blindsided.

He came home on one such day, full of verve and vinegar, puffed up on the thrill of having spent his Sunday with a girl he liked—a girl who worked at the glass factory as a sweeper. He’d met her after church. They’d spent all day roaming around the city, going to Griffin’s old neighborhood and sharing a single precious gooseberry tonic at the soda fountain. The girl—Mary was her name—had taken Griffin home to meet her parents. They’d invited him in for some Irish stew and brown bread. They’d sent him home high, with a freshly barbered head of hair—courtesy of Mary’s mama—and a care package of leftover stew.

He hadn’t wanted to think why they’d given it to him. He knew he was thin, on account of the meals he missed or gave to his mother, but he was also tall and broad shouldered. He didn’t look sickly enough to warrant a gift of potato-filled stew.

But they gave it to him kindly, so Griffin didn’t refuse. He was carrying it when he breezed into the tenement building and clomped up the rickety staircase—daydreaming about Mary’s winsome face, mentally placing her in the fancy town house he meant to own someday, dressing her in finery fit for a carriage ride—and came inside to find all the draperies drawn.

Too happy to abide the gloom, Griffin opened them.

“Leave them shut,” his mother snapped from her chair.

But this time, Griffin didn’t want to. He’d had a nice day. He’d felt content. He didn’t want his mother to ruin that.

“Are you hungry?” Deliberately leaving the window curtains as they were, Griffin strode through the beams of sunlight and presented the care package—wrapped in newspaper and secured with butcher’s twine—to his mother. “I brought you some stew.”

Suspiciously, his mother squinted. “Where have you been? I’ve been here on my own all day long. The fire went out.”

Her peevish wave indicated the woodstove. Undaunted, Griffin set aside the stew. He took off his coat, went through the practiced motions of laying a blaze then dragged his mother’s favorite quilt from a nearby chair. He laid it on her.

She clutched it, frowning. “Only the most selfish boy leaves his mother alone on the Lord’s day. You should be ashamed of yourself! Sauntering in here, flaunting your friends and your strength and your stupid, stupid stew.” She cast it a disgusted glance. “It smells like Irish slop. I wouldn’t want that.”

He knew his mother still considered herself above the life they had in the tenement building. He knew she didn’t mean to offend. This was the point where, ordinarily, Griffin would have apologized. That was what worked best to keep the peace. But today, with Mary, Griffin had glimpsed a brighter future—a future that didn’t involve endless toil and smacking rats and accepting handouts from neighbors. A future that held the promise of laughter and plenty...and genuine smiles that didn’t need to be coaxed into being but happened all on their own.

He wanted that future. His mother couldn’t stop that.

“Maybe you’ll want it later.” He picked up the stew, wended his way past a pile of unfinished mending—piecework was all his mother could manage, owing to her continual “nervous strain”—and started an enamelware pot of coffee in the kitchen. Keeping his voice even, Griffin called into the other room, “Coffee?”

“Men don’t make coffee,” his mother grumbled. “Men don’t.”

He offered her a cup all the same. He was used to her abuse. He knew she didn’t mean it. Not when she was like this.

“Drink it,” he urged. “You’ll feel better if you do.”

“Humph. You’re getting older. Bigger.” Her accusatory gaze moved from his shoulders to his face. “You don’t need me.”

He knew how to answer that. “You’re all I have.”

But instead of the smile he yearned for—instead of the reward he wanted for holding inside the rebuke that kicked to break free—his mother gave him a disapproving finger wag. “You’re getting ready to leave! That’s why you were gone all day—why you’re gone every day. I see it all over your face!”

Griffin was “gone every day” because he was working. Because he was trying his hardest to keep them in baked beans and brown bread, eaten in their own home instead of in a charity ward. But he didn’t want to say so. That would only rile his mother. Everything got worse when he riled his mother.

Besides, he loved her. Despite...everything.

He set down the coffee nearby. “I’m not going anyplace.”

“That’s what he said, too. But you and he—you’re the same kind.” Another critical look. “You’ve got the same mark on you that he did—the same sign that tells me you’re rotten inside.”

Griffin tried to ignore that, too, the same way he’d ignored her command to close the curtains. But he was only one boy—a boy of fourteen, at that. He was old enough to work but not to shield himself against the vitriol in his mother’s expression. He was, as she’d pointed out, not a man. Not yet.

“It makes me sick to look at you,” she went on. “Sick!”

Her scathing tone dug deeply. Griffin flinched.

“It makes me sick to have birthed you into this world.” His mother’s voice trembled with emotion. “You’re going to wreak havoc on it, just like he did, and it will be my fault.”

Griffin knew what to say to that, too.

“It’s not your fault. It never was.” He kept his voice low, his hands steady, his manner patient. He’d practiced this part. He knew what to say. He knew how to say it. “You did all you could for him. You were a good wife. You’re a good—”

Mother, he meant to say, but suddenly he wasn’t so sure.

Was she a good mother? Mary’s mother was a kind woman. She was gentle. She never would have said such harsh things to her own child. All at once, Griffin was sure of it. He straightened.

“Good what?” his mother demanded. “I’m a good what?”

He could tell by the wounded sheen in her eyes that she knew the praise he was withholding. At the same moment, Griffin realized he meant to keep right on withholding it. There was no way he’d give in. Not even to make her feel better. Not this time. If that made him as rotten as she’d said—

It did make him as rotten as she’d said, he understood just then, and felt despair rush through him. Of course his mother was right about him. She was his mother! She knew him, inside out.

“You can’t say it because you’re evil, like him.” Her voice cut into his self-condemnation, scattering his thoughts like the hot embers he shoveled all day at the glass factory. Her gaze pinned him in place, making him listen—making him endure the way she scowled at him, from his scruffy boots to his newly shorn dark hair. “You’re cruel,” she judged. “That’s the mark of it, right there on your face. Everyone can see it. Especially me.”

“No. I’m not marked.” Somehow, Griffin found the strength to raise his chin. “There’s nothing wrong with my face.”

But even as he said it, his voice quavered. His throat closed up. It ached, just like his hands did. He’d clenched his fists, he saw, without realizing it. Because he knew his mother was telling the truth. After all, people had stared at him his whole life. They’d pointed and whispered. They’d laughed.

They’d turned away. Away from him.

Even at the glass factory, where he’d earned some respect, they’d nicknamed him Hook. Hook Turner. Griffin hadn’t blamed them for that. His oversize hook of a nose was conspicuous. The nickname had begged to be given. But now he wondered...

Did everyone see what his mother did when they looked at him? Did everyone see his lack of character, his lack of strength, his lack of goodness?

You’re evil, he heard her say again, so callously and calmly. You’re rotten inside. You’re cruel. Everyone can see it.

Reliving those words, Griffin felt a hot rush of shame. There was no point sidestepping the truth. Ever since his voice had deepened and his shoulders had widened, his features had matured, too. He’d definitely inherited his father’s nose.

And with it, it seemed, his father’s wicked nature.

All Griffin could remember now of his father was his husky laughter and—hazily—his face, with its similarly prominent hawklike nose and incongruously merry eyes. Edward Turner had been scarred by the same disfigurement that now marked Griffin.

He’d been made uglier by it, even to his wife.

Of course he had. After all, everyone knew that having a good moral character was what made someone nice to look at. Virtuous women were beautiful. Decent men were handsome. That was why they were admired. Griffin didn’t know how he’d let himself overlook that fact. Maybe he’d just needed to. Until now.

“That’s the inheritance of the Turner men,” his mother went on. “I’d hoped you’d be spared. Now I can see you were not. You’re rotten, through and through.” She gave him a punishing look, confirming it. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

If that was meant to be a joke, it wasn’t funny.

From somewhere, though, Griffin found a glimmer of defiance. Maybe this didn’t have to be the end of him—the end of hope for him. It was whispered that, someplace in the city, Edward Turner was prospering. That he’d made good, despite his glaring nasal defect. Maybe Griffin could do the same.

Not that his father’s success meant much to his starving and abandoned family. To them, he might as well have been dead.

Maybe he hadn’t been able to bear the sight of his son....

Griffin fixed his spine. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll work.” I’ll work like my father did. “I’ll overcome it.”

At that, his mother burst out in unpleasant laughter. “You can’t overcome that, boy!” She pointed. “It’s ludicrous to try.”

But Griffin knew that he could. He had to. What other choice was there? He couldn’t go through life with his hated defect being all that people saw when they looked at him.

It was bad enough that he was helpless to hide it. He couldn’t wear a bandito’s bandanna, like a desperado from a dime novel. His only hat wasn’t big enough to obscure his face. And now, with his hair cropped so closely, his nose was even more noticeable. No wonder his mother had chosen today to tell him these things. Doubtless, she’d taken one look at his protruding feature and been overcome. That was why she’d been so cruel.

She hadn’t been able to help herself.

It had been for his own good, he reckoned.

He had to make up for his flaw somehow, Griffin knew. He had to amass other things, things that would compensate for his appearance. Things that would make him wealthy, make him whole, make him a real man—a real man who wasn’t afraid of rats, didn’t make coffee for the womenfolk and refused to be called Hook Turner by those knucks at the glass factory. Whatever it took, Griffin vowed, he would remake himself into someone stronger.

He couldn’t remake himself into someone better. He knew that now. Given his birthright, he couldn’t be good. So he would have to settle for being strong. Being hard. Being tough.

He would have to settle for being invulnerable.

As a first step, Griffin schooled his face into an impassive mask. It was sorely difficult, but he did it. Then he drew in a deep breath. He looked squarely at his mother.

“Someday,” he said, “you’ll know you were wrong about me.”

She gave him a dubious look. Pointedly, she glanced away.

“Someday,” he added, pushed by her obvious skepticism, “you’ll be proud to call me your son.”

His mother’s obstinate expression didn’t change. Neither did her refusal to acknowledge his promise. But Griffin didn’t care. He couldn’t allow himself to care. He wouldn’t.

What he lacked in other ways—what he longed for and couldn’t have—he could make up for with single-mindedness, Griffin reasoned. His mother might be stubborn—too stubborn, even, to love him—but he was stubborn, too. Stubborn and smart and ready to work his fingers to the bone to earn his success. Whatever it took to change his life, he would do it.

“You will be proud of me,” he repeated. “I swear it.”

Then, without waiting for his mother to answer him, Griffin left her with her cold coffee and her charity Irish stew and went to figure out how he could most quickly make his fortune.

Because everything started with money, he knew...and ended with him forcing the world to admit it was wrong about Griffin Turner and what he was capable of—hawklike nose and all.

Chapter Two

June 1872, Morrow Creek, northern Arizona Territory

As a girl who had never experienced neuralgia, lassitude or vexing biliousness, Olivia Mouton should not have felt drawn to the traveling medicine show that came to town on the Sunday after her thirteenth birthday. But there was something about the peddler’s intriguing medicinal claims that pulled her nearer.

“This latest miracle elixir will end nervous troubles and colonic maladies alike. It will restore youth and vigor!” The charming peddler, finely dressed in a woolen suit with a fancy waistcoat, held aloft a full glass bottle. Its label was typeset with an impressively diverse list of the ailments it purported to achieve a remedy for. The man wasted no time explaining his wares’ efficacy. “Wise lore from the savage! Grandmother’s soothing tinctures! Scrupulous scientific approaches! All are represented here!” He gave a graceful gesture, then grinned invitingly at the crowd. “Step right up and see for yourselves.”

Interestedly, Olivia examined the wares he’d arrayed in tidy rows atop his wagon’s hinged backboard. There were brown and green bottles full of distillations, cork-stoppered vials of fascinating tonics and flat tins of curative powders. There were jars of creams and ointments, sachets of dried herbs and boxes of exotic-smelling teas printed with celestial characters. There was even a selection of preserved exotic fruits, which—according to their labels—could improve “stamina.” Olivia knew it was unlikely that the medicine show’s merchandise could accomplish even half the things the peddler promised in his spiel, but that hadn’t stopped an eager crowd from forming.

After all, his arrival was the single most exciting occurrence in sleepy Morrow Creek township since the circuit judge had rode in a week or so ago...and promptly gotten too drunk on mescal to hear any cases or cast any judgments on wrongdoers.

Most days, nothing much happened in her tiny territorial hometown. Miners trudged off to their claims in the surrounding mountainside. Rail workers toiled on the incoming rail spur, felling the obstructive ponderosa pines and laying track past the burbling namesake creek. Wives and laundresses went about their chores and tended their children with dusty equanimity.

Someday, perhaps, Morrow Creek would be a bustling place, full of vigor and industry and stirring intellectual societies. At the moment, though, Olivia’s rough-hewn hometown lacked everything from a decent mercantile or a completed rail depot to a proper schoolhouse. Lessons were sporadic and held outdoors. The town leaders were attempting to woo an instructor from the East to educate the youth of Morrow Creek. Given their current rate of progress, such a teacher’s potential students would have long gray beards before that teacher’s hiring was complete.

It was fortunate for Olivia that her father was so brilliant. Without Henry Mouton’s tutoring and encouragement—and willingness to barter with the J. G. O’Malley & Sons traveling book agent who occasionally came through town—Olivia would have been in quite a fix herself. As it was, she spent less time studying, though, than she did helping with the day-to-day duties of running her beloved father’s nascent hotel business. At the moment, The Lorndorff Hotel was not much more than a few nailed-together timbers for beams, an array of canvas for walls and several lumpy beds. But someday, Olivia knew, the hotel would define Morrow Creek as a place for sophisticated and educated folk to gather, converse and entertain socially.

The collecting crowd was right to be interested, Olivia reasoned as the peddler’s avowals grew ever more animated and persuasive. At least some of the claims the man was making had to be true. This was the nineteenth century after all! Miraculous scientific achievements had taken place.

Some of those achievements had been made by women, too. Olivia knew that because she loved to read. She’d learned about Mary Fairfax Somerville’s experiments with magnetism and about Maria Mitchell’s astronomical discovery of her new comet. Olivia had daydreamed about creating and publishing botanical photograms like Anna Atkins or unearthing a Plesiosaurus fossil like Mary Anning. She’d thrilled to periodical accounts of Lady Augusta Ada Byron’s invention of the analytical engine. Of course, she also idolized pioneering medical professionals such as the physician Elizabeth Blackwell and the tireless nurse Florence Nightingale. To Olivia, those women were true heroines.

While her best friend Annie’s oak bureau held hairbrushes and pearled pins and precious scraps of scented soap, Olivia’s makeshift crate-turned-nightstand held Familiar Lecturers on Natural Philosophy by the intellectual Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps. The work was somewhat dated, but it was fascinating—as was The Mechanism of the Heavens by Mary Somerville, another of her favorites. Naturally, Olivia also treasured her well-thumbed copies of texts by authors such as Charles Darwin and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, but she preferred reading the work of female scientists and scholars. Somehow their achievements felt all the closer to her own life...and all the more real for it.

Even if those women didn’t live in a single-street Western town with not much more to brag of than a church, a popular saloon and more tobacco spittoons than were strictly reasonable.

As far as Olivia was concerned, anything was possible. The lives of the great women she’d studied proved it. They’d all asked questions, encountered important turning points in their lives and let their curiosity guide them on to greatness.

Maybe this encounter with the peddler’s scientific wonders was her own call to greatness, Olivia fancied. So, fully ready to begin her own quest for enlightenment, she stepped a little nearer. She picked up one of the bottles for closer study.

As she did, though, someone jostled her. Startled, Olivia held tight and glanced to the side...only to see a familiar and dispiriting sight. Old Mr. Richter, one of the railway foremen, was staring at her with a contemplative expression on his face.

He tipped his hat. “Afternoon, Miss Mouton.”

In time with his greeting, his gaze dropped to her skirts. He peered at their simple calico folds as though hoping to penetrate them, then moved on to her high-buttoned bodice...and lingered. His attention took a very meandering path back to her face, leaving her feeling fidgety and uncomfortable in its wake.

Ugh. Why did men have to ogle her? She’d noticed this happening more often as she grew taller and more mature. Her father insisted the townspeople were merely being friendly. Olivia had her doubts. The leers she garnered didn’t feel like simple neighborliness. But without a mother to rely upon for advice—her own poor mama had died during the journey westward—Olivia was on her own, swimming in a sea of adult interactions she wasn’t entirely prepared for and certainly did not want.

Politely, she inclined her head. “Hello, Mr. Richter.”

With that accomplished, Olivia directed her attention back to the patent remedy in her hand. Studiously, she examined its label. It purported to use bottled extractive magnetism as a curative. That was an innovative approach that Olivia had never heard of before. According to Mary Fairfax Somerville’s work—

Before she could consider the scientific implications further, Mr. Richter’s brusque voice intruded on her thoughts.

“Did your pa talk to you about my prop’sition?”

Oh, no. The railway foreman had to be referring to his facetious offer—made at her father’s tent hotel over cups of Old Orchard whiskey late one night—to “get that girl’s head outta them books and into some wifely duties, where it belongs!”

“I thought you were joking.” Reluctantly, Olivia postponed her examination of the magnetism-based curative. She gave him a direct look—one she hoped he’d perceive. “If you were joking, Mr. Richter, that would save us both from embarrassment.”

He did not recognize her attempts to sidestep the issue. Instead, Mr. Richter merely scratched himself absently while the medicine-show man began making sales and collecting coin.

“Ain’t nothin’ embarrassing about getting hitched to a beautiful woman.” He spat tobacco juice. “No, ma’am.”

“Mr. Richter!” This time it was Olivia’s turn to gawk. And likely to blush, as well. “I am thirteen years of age!”

He shrugged. “That’s old enough, if your pa agrees.”

“My father will not agree.”

“Then I’ll bide my time.” Plainly unperturbed and undeterred, Mr. Richter tipped his hat. “I can be patient.” He cast a glance at the peddler’s preserved exotic fruits, raised an eyebrow at their scandalous promises to bestow “bull-like stamina” then sauntered away without purchasing anything.

Irked to have had her stimulating outing interrupted for such a nonsensical reason, Olivia turned toward the medicine show’s wagon—only to come face-to-face with the alert gaze of a dark-haired, lean-looking Romany man. She recognized him, having glimpsed him earlier, as the medicine show’s driver and bagman.

Evidently, he’d overheard her conversation with Mr. Richter, because he aimed a disgusted glance at the foreman.

“Some men, eh? They have no finesse.” The bagman leaned confidingly nearer, his warmth compelling in the cool mountain air. “A girl like you deserves better. You are—” he gave an elegant wave “—special. Very special. I saw that right away.”

Olivia couldn’t help feeling vindicated by his perceptiveness—and a little thrilled, too. “Well,” she said, “that puts you one boot ahead of Mr. Richter, doesn’t it?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well. I’m sorry. What I meant was—”

“I am at least two boots ahead of him,” the bagman corrected her with a teasing grin. “Give me time. I will show you this.” Convivially, his gaze dipped to the remedy bottle in her hand. “You are interested in curatives? In perhaps traveling far and wide, like me, and seeing all the wonders of the countryside?”

“I am!” At least this man hadn’t tried undressing her with his eyes, Olivia reflected. He obviously—amiably—appreciated her intellectual curiosity, too. “Most people in Morrow Creek don’t think much about what’s outside it. But I do. All the time!”

The bagman gave a wise nod. “That is two of us, then. But you do not need any remedies of this kind.” Gently, he touched the bottle in her hand. “This one is for—” he paused, offered a few words in an accented dialect she didn’t understand then translated “—old people. You are not old. You are...magnificent!”

He kissed his fingertips as he said it, then flung his showy kiss to the territorial skies in a grand, gallant gesture. His dark eyes sparkled with good humor and attentiveness. Olivia couldn’t help liking him—or being intrigued by him. His close-trimmed beard lent him a keenly romantic air. His tattered finery and unfamiliar European inflection gave him an exoticism that felt far too exciting for staid Morrow Creek.

Finally. Here was someone who’d speak seriously to her. Someone who’d respect her curiosity and her bookishness alike.

Heaven knew, most people in Morrow Creek couldn’t fathom either of those qualities. Annie expected Olivia to gush over dressmaking illustrations in Godey’s. Her father expected her to be helpful be quiet, and be in bed by ten. Nothing more.

“Thank you,” Olivia said, quickly dispensing with the bagman’s flattery. “Now. This nostrum,” she said eagerly, raising the remedy bottle again. “Can you explain how the magnetic properties survived the bottling process? Surely they’re too volatile to withstand boiling?”

The man laughed. “Ah! You are delightful!”

Delightful? “Thank you, but I truly am interested in the process,” Olivia explained, “and in magnetism in general.” Didn’t he realize that was what made her “special” in his eyes? “You see, Miss Fairfax Somerville’s experiments proved that—”

He startled her by clasping his hand, warm and weathered, atop hers. “There is no need for this pretense. I am here! You have captured my attention.” Like magic, the bagman deftly withdrew the curative she’d held. “You do not care about this.”

Momentarily captivated by the sleight of hand he’d performed, Olivia stared. Then she blinked. “Yes, I do.”

His wave dismissed her. “Women do not think of such things. You were pretending, to make me see you. And I do see you.”

With a charming manner, he gave her a bow to prove it. But this time, Olivia belatedly noticed he was using that chivalrous gesture to sneak a peek at her ankles. The rogue!

“Never mind. I’ll ask your employer for the information.”

Staunchly, Olivia marched to the peddler’s wagon and the circle of townspeople. She waited, feeling—and ignoring—the bagman’s flirtatious gaze on her all the while. When finally the peddler turned his attention to her, she was prepared.

“Good afternoon,” Olivia said firmly. “I do not want a proposal or a proposition from you. All I want to know is—”

“Yes!” The peddler widened his eyes. “You!”

“—how your curative with the bottled extractive magnetism was created. Are you the inventor? Or did someone else—”

But the peddler only cast out his arm to silence the waiting crowd. He stared raptly at her. He nodded.

“You are perfect!” he cried dramatically. “Perfect!”

Fully out of patience now, Olivia put her hands on her hips. “Unless you mean I’m perfect at asking questions you can’t wait to answer, I honestly don’t see what that has to do with—”

“You must agree to pose for me,” the peddler interrupted. He stepped nearer, then chuckled. “I mean, for a lithographer, of course. I need a model to grace the bottles of my forthcoming Milky White Complexion Beautifier and Youthful Enhancement Tonic. With your face on the label, I’ll sell thousands!”

She stared at him, astonished. A model? Her?

Rudely, he reached for her jaw. He turned her face to the sunshine. He gave an evaluating sound, then turned her face in the opposite direction. He laughed with outright glee.

Olivia jerked away her face. “Sir! I am not a horse.”

“Well, you are a mighty fine filly.”

She frowned. “And you are a rude man. I will not—”

“I’ll pay you,” he persisted, annoying her further by talking right on top of her. “I only need a few sketches.”

Olivia crossed her arms, feeling frustrated. Could no one see that she had a mind as well as a face and figure? Could no one understand that there was more to Olivia Mouton than frilly skirts, blue eyes and embarrassingly burgeoning bosoms?

She was accustomed by now to miners and railway men leering at her. But those men were outliers. They scarcely saw another living soul for weeks at a time while they were working. They could be forgiven for their resulting lack of social graces.

But this had been her chance—this medicine show and these well-traveled, experienced men—to be recognized as a kindred spirit, as a person who was interested in scientific progress, miraculous medicine and the world beyond her own small town.

“I’ll pay you handsomely,” the peddler persisted. “All I want is your likeness.” He spread his hands in the air as though envisioning rows of labeled bottles, an enraptured expression on his face. “In my line of work, a beautiful girl is...priceless.”

“If that’s the case, then you can’t afford me, can you?”

For the first time, the peddler seemed exasperated.

Olivia didn’t care. “I don’t think you know what’s in your remedies. I don’t think you are a man of science at all.”

The peddler frowned. “Watch your mouth, girl.”

“I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt,” Olivia went on, refusing to be cowed. “But the truth is, Mary Fairfax Somerville’s published work proves that magnetism cannot be used in extractive form. It cannot be bottled. So your remedy—”

The peddler stepped nearer, appearing ready to spit nails.

“—is nothing more than sheer quackery, sir!” Olivia finished bravely, fired up now. “And I would rather die than allow my image to grace bottles of your do-nothing ‘cures.’”

The crowd of her friends and neighbors gasped. But Olivia finally felt satisfied. She’d said her piece. She’d made sure the people of Morrow Creek would pay attention to her mind for once, instead of her face and figure. She was proud of that.

After all, she could have done worse—especially on a day when she’d been presented, at the tender age of thirteen, with one unwanted marriage proposal, one illicit flirtation and one tawdry offer to reduce herself to a mere image to sell nostrums.

Proudly, Olivia turned to make a triumphant exit.

Instead, she almost ran smack into her father. Henry Mouton had obviously come to fetch her. His kindly, knowing expression said that he’d expected to find her there. In the least proper place to be. Doing the least ladylike thing possible. Again.

To her dismay, he shook his head in disappointment.

Olivia’s heart sank. She so wanted her father to be proud of her. But however she turned, she seemed to misstep.

Swiftly, she reassessed the situation. She took in her father’s beloved face, his world-weary stance and the handful of posted bills he held in his grasp. He’d plainly been to the post office before coming here and had found several additions to their overall indebtedness waiting there for him.

They could use any money she could bring in, Olivia knew. Running their tent hotel wasn’t particularly lucrative. Theirs was a hand-to-mouth existence. Although her father had been seeking investors in The Lorndorff’s future, so far there had been no takers. As far as Olivia knew, they were on their own.

A windfall for having her likeness lithographed would go a long way toward paying their bills. Olivia had her pride. But compared with her love for her father, everything else paled.

“Unless...” she called to the peddler as he turned away, “you could assure me that your new remedy works?”

Obviously heartened, he grinned. “Of course it works!”

Belatedly, Olivia realized that the man wasn’t actually assuring her. He was assuring her father. Because everyone knew that a small-town girl like her didn’t have the mental capacity to understand scientific principles. Wasn’t that correct?

Gritting her teeth, Olivia made herself smile back at him. If downplaying her intellect was what it took to salvage this situation, then that was exactly what she’d do. For her father.

“Very well! If my father agrees—” here, she cast a cautious glance at him “—I’ll simply choose my prettiest dress and pose!”

At that, the peddler and the townspeople surrounding him released a collective pent-up breath. It was, Olivia discerned, as if they’d all been made wholly uncomfortable by her outburst. Including her father. Now, though, even he appeared relieved.

That was all the assurance Olivia needed. From here on, she vowed to herself, she’d never give him another reason to feel disappointed in her. She’d be prim. She’d be proper. She’d finance a piece of their future with her face and feel happy about it. Because she wanted to please her father. She wanted to know that their friends and neighbors approved of her. She wanted to belong somewhere. It was clear now that the only path to those goals was paved with ruffles and lace and rosewater perfume. It was overlaid with delicate fainting spells and crowned with an avowed interest in needlework. It stomped on her books and ignored her curiosity. It squashed her spirits.

The respect Olivia craved felt entirely out of reach.

Maybe it always would dangle beyond her grasp.

But at least she could choose another path for herself, she reasoned. At least she could step deliberately and wholeheartedly into her future. At least she could do that.

So that was how, on the day when she’d dreamed of being welcomed into intellectual and scientific society—however dubiously framed by a medicine show wagon and a saucy Romany driver—instead Olivia Mouton found herself being inducted into the ranks of the verifiably beautiful. For better or worse, beauty was her sole oeuvre now. No matter how much she loathed its fripperies, she’d simply have to get used to it.

Without her so-called beauty, it was clear to Olivia now, she was no one at all. And that was something she could not bear. So she put on a smile, raised her skirts and went to assume her unwanted role as the prettiest girl in Morrow Creek.

Chapter Three

June 1883, Morrow Creek, northern Arizona Territory

Shrouded by darkness, Griffin Turner stood alone on the train depot platform, surrounded by muddy planks and ponderosa pines and unlimited star-spangled skies, watching the westbound train that had brought him churn its way into the distance.

For the first time in a long while, no one rushed to help him, to kowtow to him or to take his baggage. No one hurried to curry his favor or to ask him to invest in one foolhardy venture or another. No one cared who he was or why he’d arrived.

For now, that was exactly the way Griffin liked it. He’d chosen this rusticated town with a drunken dart toss at a map of his acquisitions and holdings. From the looks of the place, he’d chosen correctly. No one would bother him here. No one would look at his face and laugh, the way she had.

You thought I would actually marry you? Oh, Griffin...

At least she’d called him Griffin, he reflected dourly as he shouldered his rucksack and adjusted his single valise. She could have called him much worse. She could have rejected his proposal with one of those detestable nicknames the press had bestowed on him—the ones they used in their scandalous stories.

The Tycoon Terror. The Business Brute. The Boston Beast.

He’d earned those nicknames, Griffin guessed. He’d earned them through years of scraping and fighting and doing his utmost to raise himself from his hardscrabble beginnings to his current position of success. His only mistake had been in believing that not everyone trusted what they read in the tabloids—in believing that she, most of all, wouldn’t swallow his legend whole.

It was ironic, really, Griffin decided as he surveyed the sleepy, shuttered town below through gritty-feeling eyes. Part of his fortune was based in publishing—in printing stories about disreputable figures just like himself. He’d recognized early on that people loved mudslinging. They loved gawking at strangeness. They loved feeling superior...to people like him.

To people like Hook Turner.

With the publishing arm of his business interests, Griffin gave them that. He gave them supremacy and entertainment and a break from tedium. In return, the press had given him a notoriety that bothered him not a whit. Griffin liked being notorious. He liked being hard. He like being intimidating. He liked knowing that—even though he’d assembled a profitable empire in manufacturing, real estate, publishing and various entrepreneurial ventures—his competitors still saw him as an eye-blackening scrapper from the tenements...as a man who’d give his all to win, because he didn’t have anything to lose.

The punch of it was, Griffin had had something to lose. Finally, he’d had something to lose, and he’d lost it. He’d lost it when he’d arrived on Mary’s doorstep and proposed to her in her family’s humble parlor and seen his longtime dreams dashed.

Oh, Griffin...

The pity in her voice had gutted him. He’d thought he’d finally had enough—enough to impress Mary with, enough to make up for his shortcomings with, enough to prove himself with.

Instead, he’d learned that he could never have enough. He’d gotten it through his thick Hook Turner head that he could never be enough, despite all he’d accomplished. So he’d drowned himself in whiskey. He’d thrown that fateful dart. He’d boarded a train westward with not much more than the clothes on his back, and he’d escaped from a life of hoping for more.

From here on, all Griffin wanted was to be left alone.

Alone to brood. Alone to forget. Alone to enjoy the luxuries he’d worked so hard to attain...and now had no one to share with. Not that he needed anyone to share them with, Griffin told himself. He did better alone. He always had.

He crossed the platform with his boots ringing against the lonesome sound of wind whooshing through the pines, then stopped at the crest of the hill leading to the single road to town. Morrow Creek lay before him, forewarned of his arrival with a telegram but nothing else, ready to welcome him with open arms.

At that sap-headed thought, Griffin gave a wry headshake. He’d never been welcomed by anyone except Mary and her family—and later, more grudgingly, his father—so he had no idea why such a sentimental notion would pop into his mind.

If given the chance, he knew, the people of Morrow Creek would turn their backs on him. Assuredly, they’d first find the wherewithal to point and snigger, but they’d turn on him all the same. The trick was, Griffin understood now, to not care.

Here, he’d be left alone. If he wasn’t, he swore as he strode toward town, he’d use his considerable leverage to change that. After all, he owned at least half the property that Morrow Creek’s citizens had built their saloons and shops and stables and houses on. Until now, Griffin had been a genial absentee landlord, but that could change overnight. His new neighbors would give him what he wanted. He intended to make sure of that.

The Boston Beast had arrived. Soon everyone would know it—beginning with the staff of The Lorndorff Hotel, his first and last destination, where Griffin meant to make his home for the foreseeable future. If he had to, he’d take over the place.

He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. But as a pair of ragged miners saw him coming down the street, gave a yelp of surprise when they saw his face then scurried to the side to avoid him, Griffin changed his mind. Suddenly, he felt in the mood to crush anything or anyone that displeased him...and he felt like starting now. Grimly, he shook out his wild, dark hair, pulled his flat-brimmed hat low over his eyes and took himself off to The Lorndorff Hotel, where—if they knew what was good for them—everyone from the merest maid to the most autocratic manager would be on their toes. Otherwise, he’d know the reason.

* * *

In retrospect, Olivia Mouton knew she should have realized something was amiss from the moment she finished breakfast in the sunny dining room of her father’s Lorndorff Hotel and heard the bellman chin wagging with the desk clerk as she passed by.

“I heard he’s the terror of Boston,” the bellman was saying in a scandalized tone, “with eyes like the devil and a fancy dark coat that drags along on the ground when he stomps by—prob’ly on his way to put some orphans on a chain gang or some such.”

“Pshaw. The way I heard tell, he could put grown men on that chain gang of his and get no guff,” the clerk replied with an offhanded wave hello to Olivia. “I ain’t the one who saw him, mind, but the night clerk told me he was about seven feet tall—”

“Seven feet? Holy moly!”

“—with a fully loaded gun belt and knives strapped to both legs. Dressed all in black, he was. Couldn’t scarcely see his face, ’specially with all that hair. Like a mountain man—”

“I heard he brung a huge ole bag of money with him.”

“—only fancier,” the clerk said with a nod, “but with that same no-good attitude. As if he’d sooner sock you than say hello. I heard he commandeered the train that brung him. Forced ’em to turn off their track and go his way to Morrow Creek.”

At that, the bellman whistled, apparently impressed. “Do you reckon he’s really him? I know Mr. Mouton got that telegram yesterday, but I thought Griffin Turner was practically a ghost.”

“Nobody’s ever seen him,” the clerk agreed, “so I’d say—”

Olivia cleared her throat. “Gentlemen,” she said gently, “you know we’re not supposed to gossip about our guests. This is a guest of the hotel you’re discussing, I assume?”

Both men met her inquiry with disbelieving stares.

“You haven’t heard?” the bellman asked. “I heard about him even afore I got to the hotel for work! The whole town’s abuzz.”

This did not enlighten Olivia as much as she would have liked. Patiently, she said, “Well, the whole town’s not been here, in the hotel where I live,” she said with a good-natured smile—one that the bellman, who’d proposed to her just last month, returned readily. “Not yet. So I haven’t heard a thing.”

“It’s The Boston Beast,” the clerk confided, leaning on his desk. He nearly smudged his guest register and upset his inkwell in the process. “The Tycoon Terror. The Business Brute!”

The bellman nodded vigorously. “It’s him! Plain as day! Or night, at least. He didn’t even take his own private train car. He just showed up, lickety-split, in the middle of the night!”

“Hmm. The Boston Beast, eh? You’ve been reading those tabloid journals from the states again, haven’t you?” Olivia guessed, shifting her gaze from one talkative employee to the next. She shook her head. “I’m going to have to ask the O’Malley & Sons book agent to stop bringing them with her.”

“It ain’t the press. It’s the truth.” Wide-eyed, the desk clerk turned his guest register. He pointed at the aggressive scrawl penned on the very last line. “See? There’s his name!”

“His name?” Olivia stifled a grin. She raised her brows. “Would that be The Tycoon Terror or The Business Brute?”

“Just look!” The clerk waggled his finger at the scribble.

Dubiously, Olivia peered at it. “That could be anything. It looks as if an especially tetchy chicken got a hold of a pen.”

The bellman guffawed. He traded glances with the clerk, then returned his attention to her. “You’re funny, Miss Mouton.” He hitched up his suspenders, then nervously wet his lips. “I don’t s’pose you’ve given any more thought to my proposal?”

Uh-oh. That was Olivia’s cue to skedaddle. No good could come of it when men talked about marrying her. She’d spent the past several years dodging proposals, having learned long ago that finding what she truly wanted—a man who’d value her for her genuine self—was as likely as finding gold in a guppy bowl.

“I can think of little else,” she assured the bellman with a kindly touch to his forearm. She smiled. “I promise.”

“I know you’ve got other offers.” The bellman stared at her hand as though transfixed. “I know that. Everyone does. But I would surely be honored, Miss Mouton, if you would choose me.”

The clerk only chortled. “Now, hold on, there. You know Miss Mouton is famously picky. She ain’t gonna be choosing you.”

“Well, she’s got a right to be picky!” The bellman gulped. Chivalrously, he came to Olivia’s defense. “She’s a famous beauty. She’s recognized in every single state and territory.”

He gestured helpfully—and unnecessarily—at the rows of bottled patent elixir lining the shelf behind the hotel’s front desk. Every last one poked at Olivia’s guilty conscience. She’d traded her hopes for the future for a lithographed likeness of herself staring out from those bottles of Milky White Complexion Beautifier and Youthful Enhancement Tonic. Now she was stuck.

Her father, finally and evidently as proud as punch, had purchased a whole case for himself. He’d used it to decorate the entire hotel—and to distribute to the other businesses in town, as well. No place she went was free of that blasted bottle.

She only wished her father had been proud of her, not her face. She wished he’d recognized what was special about her.

On the other hand, maybe there wasn’t anything special about her, Olivia reasoned. Maybe she was just as useless and as needlessly celebrated as those bottles of elixir were.

After all, she’d looked into that peddler’s remedy shortly after it had debuted. Its ingredients were scientifically ineffective at best. All Milky White Complexion Beautifier and Youthful Enhancement Tonic had going for it was the unreasonable hope it could engender in otherwise rational people.

That bestselling remedy was just like her in that regard, Olivia realized as she caught another besotted look from the bellman. Somehow, she made people believe she had something they needed...when she knew she didn’t have anything tangible to give. She knew she was a fraud. She’d been hiding her nonbeautiful, less than prim, intellectual-stimulation-craving qualities for so long that she wasn’t even sure they existed anymore.

In truth, that was why Olivia had turned down so many marriage proposals. That was why she dallied with answering them, the way she’d done with the poor bellman. She didn’t want to disappoint anyone...but she did want to be more than an ornamental wife to a beauty-loving husband. She wanted everyone to see her as more than a beauty on a bottle first...and a person last.

The trouble was, Olivia didn’t know how. She didn’t know where to begin, or even if she could begin. And as she glanced from the bellman to the desk clerk, registering their expectant faces and alert postures, she understood that trying to change her life now was a fool’s errand. It was set already.

“I’m sure this—” she peered at the scrawl in the guest register again, could not decrypt it and decided against using the heinous nicknames the hotel employees had used “—guest will be no trouble at all. In fact, he’s probably quite a gentleman.”

With that, Olivia said her goodbyes and sailed upstairs to The Lorndorff’s seldom-used top floor, mentally preparing herself for another busy, stultifying day of needlework, ladies’ group meetings, afternoon teas and outings to perform good works. On the staircase landing, she sighed.

Her dutiful daily routine was almost enough to make a lady wish for a dark, dangerous, seven-foot-tall, gun belt–wearing, train-commandeering, masculine mystery guest to come into her life and cause a stir—and a few pulse-pounding moments, too. But since that fanciful line of thinking would certainly go nowhere, Olivia would simply have to go on with living her own ordinary life...no matter how straitlaced and unsatisfying it might be.

Chapter Four

Olivia had stepped onto the hotel’s top-floor landing, headed for her living quarters in The Lorndorff’s cozy garret, when a rough male voice roared down the hallway.

“I told you to get out!”

Olivia froze, staring in the direction of that unexpected sound. Ordinarily, no one stayed in either of The Lorndorff’s optimistically named “luxury suites,” which were located on either side of the top floor hallway. In Morrow Creek, most people couldn’t afford such fancy accommodations. Her father had once muttered something about necessarily “reserving” one of those suites for his distant investors’ use, but Olivia hadn’t given much thought over the years to either those unknown investors or those suites. Those lavish, empty rooms were just doors she passed without noticing on her way to her own comfy rooms beneath the eaves at the far end of the hallway.

A resounding crash interrupted her musings.

Olivia looked up, saw what appeared to be a shattered vase of flowers lying in smithereens on the hall floor and hastened forward. As she did, someone backed out of one of the suites.

Annie. Olivia’s best friend stumbled backward, both arms held up in a defensive posture of appeasement. Her gaze stayed fixed on someone in the suite she was exiting. Her upswept blond hair was disheveled, her uniform’s apron askew, and as Annie glanced down at the broken glass, crumpled flowers and spilled water at her feet, Olivia discerned that she was crying, too.

“I said I didn’t want to be disturbed!” came that male voice again, its gravely ire twice as loud now. “Ever!”

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that I...” Obviously at a loss to cope with the situation, Annie hesitated. “I was told to pay special attention to your room while you’re here, Mr.—”

“Stop staring at me.”

The sudden hush in that unknown guest’s voice was twice as chilling as his outright shouting had been. Feeling gooseflesh prickle on her arms, Olivia hurried forward to help her friend.

“I wasn’t staring!” Annie protested, but a telltale redness stained her cheeks and made a lie of her words. So did the way she kept on staring, unblinking. “I only wanted to bring you—”

The suite’s door slammed shut, cutting off her words.

Booted footsteps stomped across the floorboards and then fell silent, muffled by wallboards and distance and the outraged pounding of Olivia’s heart as she contemplated the scene.

She had not been raised by her compassionate, fair-minded father to stand by while someone else behaved unkindly! Swiftly, Olivia charged forward, ready to do battle...

Only to reconsider as she caught closer sight of Annie. Her friend stared despairingly at the sodden flowers and broken vase at her feet. Her slumped shoulders and downturned mouth reminded Olivia that comforting her friend was more important than confronting a quarrelsome guest, however significant he might be to her father’s business interests. She could deal with Mr. Fancypants’s harrying behavior later. She would, too....

With a sigh, Annie dropped to the floor, plainly intent on cleaning up the mess their guest had made.

Oh, no. Not if Olivia arrived there first. She knelt, then began plunking glass shards into the single largest piece.

“Olivia!” At the sight of her, Annie burst into fresh tears. Looking annoyed, she dashed her palms over her eyes. “Why must I cry when I’m most angry?” she wailed. “I want to bash that rude beast with the remnants of this vase, not bawl over him! That man is the most horrible, the most domineering—”

“Don’t trouble yourself. I do the same thing.” Olivia gave Annie a comforting smile. She paused in her cleanup work long enough to squeeze her friend’s shoulder. “We’re women. We can’t help that the only acceptable means of expression available to us are crying, swooning and embroidering toss pillows.”

“Well, sometimes those pillows are very inspiring,” Annie said, brightening as they cleaned. “Pithy, but rousing.”

The suite’s door swung abruptly open, startling them both.

A huge figure appeared in the doorway. He towered over them, wearing black clothes, black boots and a broad-brimmed black hat, somehow appearing both wild and noble at the same time. The mingled scents of whiskey and tobacco smoke emanated from him, as though he’d passed the predawn hours drinking, smoking and contemplating which vase to throw next from his room. Looking up at him, Olivia had a confused impression of costly masculine suit fabrics, uncompromising authority, and unexpected...vulnerability?...before he unleashed another barrage.

He hurled something else. This time a covered tray of food. It clattered to the hallway floor in a fury of silver and cutlery and cold scrambled eggs. Then he glowered down at them.

“I heard you.” His gaze raked across them. “In my hotel, there will be no gossiping about me right under my nose!”

Olivia couldn’t move. She felt...mesmerized. Helpless. Also, vexed by her own peculiar reaction. She didn’t understand it.

What had he meant by my hotel? This wasn’t his hotel.

During the shocked silence that fell, Annie cast a fearful glance at the man’s face. A helpless chortle burst from her.

Olivia would have sworn it grew fifteen degrees warmer in the hotel hallway. The wrath emanating from their guest felt palpable. And dangerous. Making matters worse, Olivia couldn’t help staring at him, too, just like Annie was doing.

Because all at once, it was beyond obvious why Annie had felt compelled to laugh at this man’s terrible choice of words.

There will be no gossiping about me right under my nose!

His nose was, quite simply, huge and hooked and startlingly prominent. Olivia had never seen its like. She doubted anyone ever had. As she cast him a wary glance, she suddenly believed he’d chosen those words on purpose. He’d known full well their likely effect on Annie. As tests went, his was...casually cruel.

Realizing her mistake, Annie widened her eyes. Too late.

“I’ll see you dismissed for that,” he promised in the same eerily quiet voice he’d employed earlier. He didn’t so much as glance in Olivia’s direction. He simply slammed the door.

Left alone in the increasingly sloppy hallway, crouched awkwardly beside puddled water and scrambled eggs, Olivia and Annie frowned at each other. Annie’s lower lip began trembling. Her hands shook. A tear dropped on the teacup she picked up.

“Annie.” Olivia touched her arm. “My father won’t think of dismissing you. He won’t! He knows you need this job, and we need you, too! Without you, The Lorndorff won’t keep running.”

“No, Olivia. Even you can’t fix this.” Annie dried her tears on her sleeve, then kept on cleaning. “I laughed outright at a guest of the hotel! Mr. Mouton would be right to fire me.”

“Impossible. I won’t have it.” Decisively, Olivia stood.

So did Annie. “Oh, no! I recognize that impetuous look in your eyes.” She tugged on Olivia’s sleeve. “Please, Olivia! Don’t do anything crazy. Not on my account. I know how impulsive you can be. I know how you love a good fight, too. Remember that medicine-show man? You practically tarred and feathered him in the town square. The last thing we need—”

“Is a no-account cad making trouble for our staff,” Olivia concluded resolutely. She straightened her skirts and her posture, then rapped firmly on the suite’s door. “I’ll handle this.” She cast a sidelong glance at her friend. “Besides, that girl who lambasted that peddler all those years ago is long gone. My father told me that’s when he knew I’d been spending too much time at The Lorndorff, socializing with miners and miscreants and lumbermen. He knew he’d been remiss in letting me do so. Since then... Well, I’ve been a perfect lady.”

Annie pursed her lips doubtfully, but Olivia couldn’t let her friend’s skepticism affect her decision. She pounded again.

“Hello in there! Open this door at once!”

Annie widened her eyes. Her mouth formed a surprised O.

“I demand satisfaction!” Olivia announced next.

Annie gave a frantic giggle. She elbowed Olivia. “Doesn’t that mean you’re challenging him to a duel? Are you crazy?”

Olivia shrugged. “I can do this. I have nothing to lose.”

Annie took a step back, shaking her head. “Of course you have something to lose!” she said in a harsh whisper. “Everyone loves you! Half the men in this town want to marry you!”

But strangely enough, Olivia felt that she’d never said truer words. She really didn’t have much to lose. She wanted to help Annie, too. If that meant confronting a loudmouthed oaf...

She pounded harder on the door. “Listen to me and open this door! I can stay here all day, if that’s what’s necessary.”

It would be an improvement on my scheduled quilting bee, she added to herself silently, and the tea party that’s arranged for afterward. She felt entirely uncharitable for the thought.

The door opened. Olivia almost fell headlong into the suite. Instead, she wound up standing toe to toe with its occupant. His eyes were bleary and blue, his jaw stubbled with an incipient beard, his expression forbidding. He glared at her. Feeling wholly intimidated—and strangely exhilarated—Olivia nonetheless refused to back down. She couldn’t. She...liked this. A little. She liked the challenge of this. It enlivened her.

No. She had to persist because Annie was depending on her. Because Annie was...hightailing it down the hallway, her uniform’s bustle swaying with her rapid footsteps, a hasty “I’ll go fetch a mop and bucket!” on her lips, leaving Olivia all alone.

Alone with The Boston Beast. The Tycoon Terror. The Business Brute. How had he earned all those nicknames anyway?

Olivia swallowed hard. She sent her gaze up the man’s black boots and trousers, over his perfectly fitted vest and shirt, across his broad shoulders to his expensive-looking suit coat and then up to his rugged, rough-hewn face. It was almost obscured by the collar of his coat and his hat brim’s shadow.

Purposely, she thought, remembering his earlier words. It couldn’t have been an accident that he’d called attention to his nose just when Annie had been staring at it. However perverse it was, Olivia had the sensation he’d been daring them to laugh.

What kind of man dared people to laugh at him?

What kind of man could withstand it, if he succeeded?

Having made her assessment based on the available evidence, the information she’d been privy to downstairs and a great deal of intuition, Olivia lifted her chin. “Mr. Turner, I presume?”

His assent was nothing more than a tightening of his mouth. Olivia accepted it all the same. In for a penny, in for a pound.

“Somehow,” she mused, remembering the employees’ gossip at the front desk, “I thought you’d be tougher. And taller.”

* * *

Olivia stepped boldly past him, swept with her skirts rustling inside his darkened suite and surveyed the scene. Her hastily calculating glimpse told her that Mr. Turner was a light traveler and an even lighter sleeper. It told her that he did, indeed, carry a gun belt and two knives. It also told her that he despised sunshine. All the suite’s draperies were pulled tightly shut against the bright territorial dawn. It was...gloomy.

Although... Were those philosophy books spilling from his valise? And was that a biography of a European industrialist on his bureau? What kind of man traveled without much clothing—because her view informed her that he hadn’t brought much more than the custom-fitted duds on his back—but with a big pile of books? Did the dictatorial Mr. Turner actually read when he wasn’t upbraiding well-meaning people for disturbing him?

Suddenly, Olivia was dying to find out. It had been ages since she’d read a new book herself, owing to her vow to be more amenable, less headstrong and less academically minded. She still regretted that foolish vow. It was awfully difficult to keep when the book agent came to town. It would almost be worth getting to know this man, she mused absurdly, if only to have access to his book collection. But then all her thoughts fled as she sensed the hotel’s orneriest new guest following her into his private suite. Her goose bumps returned anew. Her heartbeat pounded. Her palms grew damp. Her throat grew tight.

Heavens. Now what?

She’d simply have to improvise, Olivia decided.

His voice boomed out. “Who are you?” he demanded.

How like him, Olivia considered, not to question her correct guess at his identity. He probably assumed everyone knew—and cared—who he was. The ever so important Mr. Turner.

His hubris was remarkable. But so was her determination.

She turned. She could not falter now. Annie was relying on her. So, brightly, Olivia said, “I am your new chambermaid!”

Chapter Five

Griffin was still mentally grumbling over his unwanted visitor’s earlier outrageous comment—I thought you’d be tougher. And taller—when she gave him a haughty look—the kind beautiful women specialized in—stepped into the center of his private suite of rooms and offered yet another ridiculous declaration.

“And you won’t be having Miss Holloway dismissed,” she went on briskly, “because I’ll be fulfilling her duties from now on.”

Griffin gave her his most coldhearted look—something that came much too easily to him now, the way money and deference and loneliness did. He hadn’t known that making people respect him would also make them keep their distance from him. He did now.

“What makes you think I won’t have you both dismissed?”

A careless wave. “You won’t.”

Her highfalutin tone suggested she was sure of it—sure of her inevitable rightness, the way Boston architects were sure that their newfangled bridges would span the river waters safely. Griffin wished he felt that certain of anything...anything except the inevitable snickering that came his way. He watched her study his suite, keeping his arms crossed, still feeling a little bit drunk on whiskey and self-pity and exhaustion.

He’d passed a largely sleepless night. He didn’t want his own company, much less hers. No matter how appealing she might be. And she was appealing, to be sure. Dispassionately, he examined her perfect profile, her delectable figure and her graceful, feminine movements. Then he disregarded them all.

Beauty left him cold. Understandably so.

Against his will, though, her gumption stirred him.

So did her curiosity about his books. He’d noticed her interest, of course. A drunk, blindfolded bat would have noticed it. It did not fit with the frivolous-looking rest of her. Neither did her avowed intention to be his chambermaid fit with her ruffled, floral-sprigged pastel dress and delicate hands. Those soft hands had never scrubbed floors.

But those obvious contradictions could wait. In his current dark state of mind, Griffin reckoned, they could wait forever.

“You are not a chambermaid,” he said with certainty, shaking himself into reason. “And you are not staying.”

He took her arm, intending to herd her to the door. In his grasp, she felt like a willowy, wiggly wisp of a thing. She looked like a black-haired, blue-eyed, fine-featured China doll come to life. She smelled of roses and toast and coffee, and the fragrance of his favorite brew made Griffin’s head swim.

At that moment, he heartily regretted pitching his breakfast into the hallway. But he’d needed to make his point somehow.

A man began as he meant to go on. Griffin’s father had taught him that. If he wanted to be left alone, he needed to be...

Alone. Completely alone. With no one...and no coffee.

Unexpectedly troubled by that minor facet of his new solitary existence, Griffin faltered. Just for an instant.

His new “chambermaid” noticed his moment of weakness—and undoubtedly his grumbling belly—and handily exploited both.

She wrenched free. “But I have to stay! For one thing, you must regret not having breakfast. I can help you with that,” she exclaimed, her pert face coaxing him to agree. Likely, most people did. Even Griffin, with his longtime solitude having inured him to charm, felt pulled toward her somehow. “It’s a long journey from...well, everywhere to here,” she nattered on. “Morrow Creek is remote. From what I hear, train-car victuals don’t have much to recommend them. You must be starving.”

Her words called to mind...everything he wanted to forget. “No.” Tensely, Griffin stared at her. “I don’t need anything.”

“Nonsense. Everyone needs something! Even you,” she cajoled. Her dimples flashed. “Take me, for instance—”

“Are all The Lorndorff’s maids this chatty? Or just you?”

At his harsh interruption, she shut her mouth.

She looked wounded. Confused, too, as though most people loved hearing her ramble on nonsensically, the way she’d been doing—as though most people were immediately charmed by her and her beauty. Likely, they were charmed. Charmed and besotted and willing to set aside common sense for her company. Not for the first time, Griffin was reminded of the unfair privilege that the beautiful—and the consequently virtuous—enjoyed. They didn’t have to watch their words. Now, at long last, neither did he.

He was a success. That helped to balance the scales.

Before he could exercise his hard-won influence, though, his “chambermaid” found her voice.

“Chatty? Only when waylaid from their work by chatty guests.” She gave him an irksomely buoyant look. “Now. What would you like from the kitchen? I’ll see that it’s prepared to your liking. All you have to do is apologize to Miss Holloway.”

Griffin blinked. He must have misheard her.

She saw his bewilderment. “You were rude to her.”

He could think of nothing to say to that.

“You threw a vase at her. You destroyed an entire breakfast tray. You shouted and scowled and behaved quite menacingly.”

He still wasn’t sure how to address her complaints. Those actions had been necessary, given his situation—given his pain.

Gruffly, he defended himself. “She wouldn’t leave me alone. I requested to be left alone.”

“Well. I’m afraid that won’t be possible here.”

“It will be possible,” he disagreed, unable to believe they were actually arguing about this. “Or I’ll know the reason.”

He expected compliance. Usually—and forever after—he got it. Instead, from her, Griffin merely received a smile. Her smile was steeped in patience, glowing with a sunset’s worth of prettiness. It confused him into silence. She had to be the most sought-after woman in Morrow Creek. Why was she there, with him?

And why did she look so...familiar to him?

“Mr. Turner, The Lorndorff Hotel enjoys a fine reputation in the Arizona Territory and well beyond.” Her peaceably clasped hands did not entreat him to listen, the way Miss Holloway’s outflung palms had earlier, but rather suggested that this “chambermaid” took for granted Griffin’s full attention and eventual cooperation. That was...unusual...in an employee. “Certainly you wouldn’t have us endanger that reputation by ignoring one of our most important guests while he’s here, would you?”

Pleasantly, she awaited his response. For a heartbeat, Griffin could not fathom who she was talking about.

Then he realized. It was him.

Hell. He hated when that happened to him. When would his success and security finally sink into his bones?

Bothered that she’d made him remember both his hungry days of skipping meals and his days of clawing for success during the same few minutes’ conversation, Griffin frowned. This ended now.

Roughly, he strode to the bureau. He rummaged through his things, came up with his money clip and counted some bills.

He strode back to her with a handful of cash on offer.

“Take it. Consider your work here done,” Griffin said. “I’ll never say a word to damage The Lorndorff’s reputation.”

She frowned at the money, plainly as much at a loss for a response as he had been during her demand for an apology to the maid. Even with her brow furrowed, she somehow looked tempting.

All the more reason, he figured, to have her gone.

He knew exactly the means to managing that. Quickly, too.

“Surely this isn’t the first time a man has offered you money.” Griffin nodded coldly at the cash. “The difference is, this time, all you have to do to earn it is leave.”

Her face jerked upward to meet his, giving him the fleeting and unfamiliar impression that she didn’t care a whit about his nose or his tenement life or his poor abused heart. No one had ever looked past his nose long enough to pierce his soul—not the way she did. It was almost enough to make Griffin regret goading her. Almost, but not quite. Not when she struck back at him.

“You should be ashamed, sir! I am not for sale.”

“Are you sure about that?” He waggled his money, belatedly realizing why she looked familiar to him. “I saw a whole passel of cheap elixir bottles downstairs that say otherwise.”

Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened. “That was— It was—”

“It was proof you can be bought. There’s no shame in that, as far as I’m concerned. Hell, I approve.” Griffin sent his gaze over her face and figure with newfound respect, seeing beyond her fine features and evident decorum to the real, raw woman beneath. “After all, you can’t pay bills with virtue, can you?”

“I am virtuous!” Her cheeks pinkened. “And you are wrong.”

“Am I?”

Her annoyed gaze locked with his. “Yes.”

“Hmm. That’s interesting.” He observed her anew, liking her courage. “I bet you wish you’d left when you had the chance.”

He felt a smile sneak onto his face and was dumbfounded by it. It couldn’t be that he was enjoying her company now that he knew she wasn’t some uptight, righteous type—could it?

It seemed it could, Griffin marveled, and smiled afresh. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled twice in one day.

His pleasure only appeared to gall her further. “I wish I’d clobbered you with your breakfast tray. That’s what I wish!”

He offered a tsk, tsk of sham politeness. “Come now. That’s hardly the exemplary service The Lorndorff is known for.”

An unintelligible sound of frustration came from her. Oddly enough, Griffin liked it. He liked seeing her ladylike facade crumble. He liked knowing he could affect her. He liked...her.

The realization made Griffin falter.

He didn’t want this. He didn’t want her.

He’d come here to be alone. He’d set out to make his supposed “chambermaid” leave, not to become smitten with her. He was not a man who failed to achieve his objectives. Not anymore.

“That sort of outburst really does call for dismissal,” he reminded her. “You shouldn’t push a man like me too far.”

“Asking for an apology is not going ‘too far,’” she averred. “I insist you ask for Miss Holloway’s forgiveness.”

Impressed by her determination, he considered it. Then he came to his senses. “No. But you’re gutsy. I like that.”

She gawked. “You’re mad. But I should have expected that!”

Irately, her gaze whipped over his black clothes, his hat and his dark hair, as though their combined qualities entirely proved her assertion. Griffin figured they probably did, to most people. He wore black to avoid attention. He wore his hat to hide his face. He wore his hair long to distract from his hated nose. He’d done what he could, just as he’d sworn he would years ago, to make the world see a man when they looked at him.

He reckoned he’d done pretty well hiding the Turner curse. But this woman... She looked as if she saw every inch of badness in him. As if she saw him and didn’t approve of what he’d become.

Well, that made them even, then, didn’t it?

He’d become a man, it was true. But not a good man. Not entirely. He’d been counting on Mary to make that transformation complete. Now, though, Griffin was lost. Probably for good.

That made holing up at The Lorndorff a fine plan. The devil didn’t deserve a heavenly choir. Griffin Turner didn’t deserve sunshine and smiles and the friendly company of good people.

“I should have expected no better,” she declared, breaking into his ruminations, “from a man who would belittle a maid, manhandle a woman and offer a bribe, all before breakfast!”

Her outraged tone suggested that she actually objected to his actions, not his appearance. Griffin knew that could not be the case. It never was. Especially not while she was, at that very moment, avoiding looking him straight in the face—avoiding looking at his nose. Avoiding looking at pitiable Hook Turner.

His temper flared. This was why he needed to be alone.

“If you’re hoping to be ‘manhandled,’ as you say, you’ve come to the wrong room,” he informed her coolly. “I’m not interested in empty-headed women with nothing more on their minds than posing prettily and being paid handsomely for it.”

“‘Empty-headed’?” She gawked at him. “You dare call me—”

“Although you did help sell thousands of bottles of that complexion concoction,” Griffin went on smoothly. “I hear it’s even more successful than Lydia E. Pinkham’s tonic. I offer you my congratulations, miss, from one entrepreneur to another.”

Sardonically, he offered her a sharp salute.

She did not appreciate the gesture. “You gravely misunderstand me, Mr. Turner. Worse, you underestimate me.”

“No.” He contemplated it. “I don’t believe I do.”

“I am more than an image on a bottle!”

“Really? What else are you?”

Rather than answer him, she paced. Then she whirled, sending her skirts swaying. “You truly are beyond the pale.”

“That’s not an answer to my question.”

“What else am I? I’m unimpressed with you, that’s what else I am. You’re hopelessly rude. Purposely boorish—”

“I’ve been deemed much worse.” By my own mother, for one. “Although not by anyone as wholesome as you.” He gave a civil nod. “I’ll take your attentiveness as a compliment.”

“Don’t. All I want from you is a bit of contrition.”

“Ah. You’re angling for an apology for yourself now, too?”

“You are the one who’s empty-headed, Mr. Turner, if you believe I would ask for an apology for myself.”

“You only crusade on behalf of your friends?”

“It’s not a crusade.” She gave him an uncomfortably comprehending look—one he didn’t care for much. “It’s decency. Something you’re not on very close terms with, evidently.”

But Griffin knew that already. She couldn’t hurt him by pointing out the truth, any more than she could wound him by asserting grass was green. He hauled in a breath, intending to tell her so. “I’m sorry,” he surprised himself by saying.

Her eyes widened in surprise. But she didn’t speak.

“That’s not good enough for you?” he groused, unaccountably piqued by her unsatisfying reaction to his concession. “You want a prettier apology than that? I don’t have one for you.”

“Mr. Turner.” Delicately, she placed her hand on his arm. He realized, to his unwelcome dismay, that he didn’t know her name—and, to his further consternation, that he wanted to. “An apology isn’t only for the person who receives it. It’s also for the person who gives it. It’s for the person who needs to see what he’s done...and to try his hardest not to do it again.”

Griffin frowned. Would she never quit saying things that confounded him? Something about her made him feel that she had...something...he needed. Something important and inexplicable.

Something he shouldn’t allow himself to have.

“You shouldn’t casually touch a man like me,” he warned in a low voice. “Especially when you’re alone with him in his private hotel suite, and he’s still a little drunk.”

“Drunk?” She peered at him. “That explains a great deal.”

It didn’t explain enough, Griffin knew as he moved beyond her reach to stand nearby. It didn’t explain why he’d apologized to her...except that he’d felt a cad for not doing so. In the past decade, few people had roused a true sense of remorse in him.

That she had was all the more reason to avoid her.

“Don’t make excuses for me,” he said. “You’ll regret it.”

“I doubt it,” she disagreed with surprising sanguinity. “Folks generally live up to people’s expectations of them.”

“Or down. I’ll likely stay drunk for weeks to come.”

“Is that your plan? Is that why you’ve come here?”

“No. I came here to confide all my secrets to a suitably nosy chambermaid.” He gave her a deliberately bland look. “I’m lucky you’re here. You’re exactly what I need.”

Her uncomfortable expression told him all he needed to know. She was no more a chambermaid than he was a saint.

“You’re making fun of me. I see.” With abundant poise, she put her palms together. “I guess I’ve overstayed my welcome.”

She offered Griffin a wobbly, unpracticed chambermaid’s curtsy. Despite his best intentions to remain unmoved by her, her awkward gesture amused him greatly. Her stubborn pride endeared her to him, too. They had that much in common—that, and a love of difficult books. He didn’t want to see her leave.

He also didn’t want to admit it.

It would almost have been worthwhile to agree to being pestered by maid service while he was here, Griffin reckoned, if it would mean seeing Miss Milky White every day during his stay. Having her attend to him would mean he didn’t have to endure one rubbernecking dunderhead after another as various members of the hotel staff found reasons to “help” fulfill his requests.

This was not the first time he’d been the subject of prurient curiosity during a hotel visit. It wouldn’t be the last. The difference was, Griffin now knew how to inure himself.

“I hope you enjoy your stay with us.” Her gaze lingered tellingly—yearningly—on his books. With evident effort, she transferred her attention to the door. “Good morning to you!”

Griffin tried not to watch her leave. He did. But there was something positively entrancing about the way his “chambermaid” moved. It wasn’t overtly sensual. It wasn’t even especially ladylike. Her movements, it occurred to him, were appealing not because of their grace but because of their inherent liveliness. Here was a woman, he understood as he watched her stride across his suite, who was interested in everything life had to offer.

Why that should appeal so strongly to him, Griffin didn’t know. He only knew that it did. And that he still wanted her.

“Wait,” he blurted.

She turned, characteristically inquisitive...and far too decent for the likes of him. “Yes?”

“I...” Hellfire. All at once, he felt as bumbling as a green youth of fourteen, all thumbs and stutters. “What is your name?”

“Hmm.” Her eyes sparkled. “You want to know my name?”

Was she teasing him? Incredibly, her tone suggested as much, yet Griffin knew that couldn’t be possible. No one teased him. He’d become far too influential—far too fearsome—for that.

“Tell me your name.” A beat. “Please.”

This time, it was her turn to smile. “If you want to know that—if you want me to come back—then you’ll have to apologize to Miss Holloway first,” she declared. “She’ll let me know when you’ve done so to her satisfaction.”

“No.” Griffin could scarcely believe her audacity. She couldn’t order him about. “Tell me now. I demand to know.”

Her laughter rang out. “Mr. Turner, you are in the Arizona Territory! I don’t know or care what you’ve done back in the states. Here, everyone starts fresh. Before you start expecting folks to kowtow to you, you’ll have to prove yourself.”

He frowned. “I’ll do nothing of the kind.”

A shrug. “Suit yourself. But our coffee is mighty fine. Everyone in town says so. I can promise you that you’re missing out on a wonderful brew. And a tasty breakfast, too.”

She opened the door to his suite. Griffin stopped her.

“Wait.” He couldn’t help admiring the steely strength of her posture and the shininess of her elaborately upswept hair. He couldn’t help admiring her. Unfortunately, that impulse was in opposition to everything he knew he ought to want. “Do you really have nothing to lose?” he asked, reminded of her words in the hallway. If that was true, it was something else they had in common. “With your friend, Miss Holloway, I heard you say—”

“I’m afraid that’s not something I intend to share with you, Mr. Turner.” She cast him an indomitable over-the-shoulder look—one that, again, diligently avoided his nose. “Remember, if you begin feeling peckish, just ask for Miss Holloway at the hotel’s front desk and get busy making your amends to her.”

“I’d rather eat wood chips. I’d rather wear skirts!”

“I think that could be arranged. There’s Mr. Copeland’s lumber mill at the edge of town. He has wood chips available. As far as skirts go, well, Mrs. Crabtree—the newspaperman’s wife—is a fine seamstress. I’m sure she could accommodate your request.”

Her mischievous expression poked at his pride and his wish for seclusion alike. Suddenly, the notion of spending his days alone in the dark didn’t hold quite as much soul-salving appeal as it once had. But if she thought he was going to beg...

“I’d rather shut down this hotel altogether,” Griffin told her mulishly, “than be ordered about by a chambermaid.” He didn’t understand why she believed him capable of apologizing to Miss Holloway in the first place. Or why she believed him interested in doing so. The tabloid press who wrote about his ruthless business practices expected nothing of the kind from him. Unlike his “chambermaid,” they showed Griffin due respect for his reputation. Unreasoningly, he wanted her to respect him, as well. “I can do it, you know.”

Her smile flashed again, full of patient indulgence. “What I know is that you’ve had too much Old Orchard, Mr. Fancypants.” Breezily, she raised her hand in a farewell gesture. “Enjoy your solitude, sir. You know how to reach me, if you need anything.”

Then she curtsied again—nearly toppling over in the process—exited his suite and left Griffin on his own to brood.

Chapter Six

It took less than three and a half hours for everything in Olivia’s life to change. She popped over to Miss Violet Benson’s church-side home for her quilting bee—late, flushed and inattentively toting a parasol instead of her sewing supplies, having been rattled by her encounter with Mr. Turner—only to return to The Lorndorff later to find the whole place in tumult.

Outside the hotel, a pair of guests were hastily piling into a waiting wagon. A carriage stood behind it, obviously awaiting more departing guests. From the corner livery stable, taciturn Owen Cooper, the owner, strode toward the hotel while leading two saddled horses, undoubtedly delivering them to some out-of-town visitors who’d stabled their mounts with him.

Confused, Olivia picked up her pace. That was when she glimpsed the hotel’s employees clustered worriedly in the lobby. Annie was there, along with the other maids. So were the desk clerk, the bellman and the dining room staff. Through the open doors leading inside, an unfamiliar, well-dressed man was visible, too. He stood on the lower steps of the hotel’s oak staircase, addressing the staff from that elevated position.

Olivia ducked inside, feeling—as she always did—gratefully enveloped by The Lorndorff’s cozily familiar furnishings, fine upholstered settees and sparkling crystal chandeliers.

Oddly enough, her father was nowhere in sight.

“...the future of the hotel is as yet undecided,” the stranger was saying in an assured tone. “The Lorndorff may remain a hotel, much as it is today. Or it may close to guests and become Mr. Turner’s private residence in Morrow Creek.” He gave the hotel employees an amiable shrug. “If you don’t want to work for Mr. Turner in either capacity, you may accept your final pay envelopes and be on your way. Or you may remain here, on staff, to fulfill Mr. Turner’s wishes. It’s your decision.”

Galvanized by his words, Olivia stopped cold, surrounded by bewildered employees, gossiping guests and the workaday sounds of industry going on in the lively street outside the hotel.

Mr. Turner’s wishes? As far as Olivia recalled, the cranky, hard-drinking Mr. Turner’s wishes had extended to exactly three things: being left alone, making sure no one gossiped about him—especially right under his nose—and shutting down the hotel if he didn’t get his way in the first two instances.

I’d rather shut down this hotel altogether than be ordered about by a chambermaid, she recollected him saying before she’d left his suite. I can do it, you know.

Oh, sweet heaven. Could he possibly have truly done it?

She hadn’t dreamed he’d actually had the wherewithal.

The hotel seemed to still be functioning. But it was doing so perfunctorily, Olivia realized as she took an observant look around. It was doing so without her father’s guidance. Without her father’s heart and attentiveness and care. Without the very qualities that had made The Lorndorff legendary in the West.

This hotel was her home. Its staff was a family to her. She loved...all of them. Now, possibly because of her—because she’d accidentally pushed ornery Mr. Turner into making a rash and foolhardy decision—the hotel’s operations were threatened.

Queasily, Olivia remembered her earlier, unfortunate reaction to Mr. Turner’s threat about closing The Lorndorff.

You’ve had too much Old Orchard, Mr. Fancypants.

Her flippancy had been unwise, to be true. Still, that didn’t explain who this man was or how this was happening to the hotel. Only one of her father’s wealthy investors could have...

Oh, dear. Mr. Turner was one of her father’s wealthy investors, Olivia realized, and she’d offended him. Why had she let her father convince her to step away from the hotel’s day-to-day business? If she’d been aware of Mr. Turner’s identity—and less incensed at his treatment of Annie—she might have avoided this. She might have placated him instead of riling him.

“You do realize that you must make a choice today,” the stranger called out when the staff remained in their places, muttering unhappily among themselves. “You can’t have it both ways. Mr. Mouton no longer runs The Lorndorff. The sooner you come to terms with that, the better things will be for you.”

A swell of fresh dissent met his announcement. One of the bellmen grumbled. A maid wrung her handkerchief in her hands, staring up at the stranger through disbelieving, defiant eyes.

Olivia didn’t know who this man was, but he’d have to go through her before assuming control of her family’s hotel.

“Excuse me!” She made her way to the front, then came to stand directly at the foot of the staircase. She stared up at him as determinedly as she could. “I am Olivia Mouton. My family owns this hotel. I don’t know who you think you are, but—”

“I am Palmer Grant.” He extended his hand. “Mr. Turner’s associate.” A smile creased his youthful face, making him appear far more likable than he deserved to, under the circumstances. “I was expecting to see you earlier in the proceedings, Miss Mouton. Given what Mr. Turner told me about you, I’d thought you’d be in the fray straightaway. He said you’re a fighter.”

“He doesn’t know me.” Baffled, Olivia rejected the very idea. As far as she’d been aware, Mr. Turner hadn’t even known her name. Yet in the space of a few hours, he’d learned her name and accomplished much more, besides. Resolutely, she clutched her parasol. “But he’s right about one thing—I am a fighter. And I’ll fight to keep this hotel in my family, where it belongs.”

The staff gathered around her, nodding and murmuring among themselves. They seemed to realize that Olivia knew something about this dire situation that they did not. Annie, in particular, sidled nearer. She stood staunchly beside Olivia.

“I’m afraid it’s too late for fighting,” Mr. Grant informed the crowd. “Mr. Turner owns a very large share of The Lorndorff Hotel. Furthermore, he owns one hundred percent of the land it’s built on and the neighboring properties. The management of the hotel is his decision. It’s my job to make that decision clear.”

“Is he incapable of doing that himself?” Olivia asked. “Why doesn’t he come downstairs to attempt this coup on his own?”

At her questions, the crowd of staff members shifted in anticipation. But Palmer Grant merely gave a knowing grin.

“Mr. Turner is more than capable of doing...whatever he wishes, in whatever fashion he wishes, to whomever he wishes.” Mr. Grant gave her an unnervingly perceptive look. “You, of all people, must realize that by now, Miss Mouton.”

Olivia lifted her chin. “And my father? What about him?”

A shrug. “He disappeared into his office an hour ago.”

Olivia felt her heart turn over. She cast a worried glance at Annie. Had her father given up on the hotel, just like that?

She knew he could be...retiring at times. Despite having founded The Lorndorff, Henry Mouton had never been the most aggressive of men. At heart, he was a genial host—a friend to everyone. He wasn’t overly ambitious, but Olivia didn’t mind that. She considered her father easygoing and loved him for it.

But surely even he wouldn’t have surrendered the management of his hotel—his pride and joy—to Griffin Turner. Would he?

Exactly how formidable was Mr. Turner anyway? He hadn’t earned all those nefarious nicknames for nothing. In this instance, at least, he really was behaving like a beast.

There was only one manner in which to handle this, Olivia decided. Courageously. And quickly. She turned to the staff.

“Everyone, I’m sorry about this confusion.” Nervously, she stared out at their expectant, hopeful faces. “Clearly, there’s been some sort of gross misunderstanding here. If you’ll all just be patient, I promise I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“It’s not a misunderstanding,” Mr. Grant objected easily. “The Lorndorff Hotel is under new management. From now on, Griffin Turner’s word is law. The sooner you fall in line with that, the happier you’ll all be.” He cast an amused look at Olivia. “Or you can allow a woman whose greatest achievement is having her likeness appear on a nostrum bottle to ‘lead’ you.”

As one, the gathered staff members turned to Olivia. She had never felt stronger—or more ready to take on a challenge and win. For her father’s sake. For her friends’ sake. For her home’s sake. For the sake of what was the right thing to do.

The desk clerk cleared his throat. “I don’t suppose Mr. Turner has asked you to marry him yet, has he? If he has, well...then we might have us a fighting chance of winning.”

Everyone seemed plumb perked up by the possibility. Olivia almost hated to disabuse them. “No. He hasn’t.” In fact, he’d seemed unaccountably unmoved by her looks overall. “But I—”

“That’s it, then. We’re done for!” the bellman moaned. “If he ain’t able to see how marriageable Miss Mouton is, I reckon he ain’t right in the head, anyhow. There’s no winnin’ that.”

A general murmur of assent rippled through the crowd.

Aghast, Olivia looked out at them. These were her friends and neighbors. They were practically her family. Yet even they didn’t believe she could take on Mr. Turner and win...at least not on the merits of her intelligence and ingenuity and fortitude.

Dismayed, she shifted her gaze to Mr. Grant. He had obviously read the situation as astutely as she had, because he’d already withdrawn a stack of pay envelopes from his valise.

“Do you all quit?” Mr. Grant asked, raising the envelopes. “Or will you get back to work under Mr. Turner’s management?”

Breath held, Olivia waited. But it was no contest at all. One by one, all the staff members made their way dispiritedly back to their posts. They began dealing with guests, carrying baggage and refilling oil lamps...in the new Lorndorff Hotel.

The one that didn’t feel like Olivia’s home anymore.

Left alone with Palmer Grant, she watched him return the pay envelopes securely to his valise, his head tactfully bowed.

“For a man who just won,” she said as she glanced at him, “you don’t seem particularly happy about your triumph.”

But Mr. Grant only shook his head. “This wasn’t a triumph.”

“Not for you, perhaps, but for Mr. Turner—”

“Not for him, either.” Mr. Grant lifted his solemn face to hers, then mustered a halfhearted smile. “But if you’re really as special as Griffin seems to think you are, you’ll find that out for yourself soon enough.” With surprising affability, he shook her hand. “Good luck, Miss Mouton. I think you’ll need it.”

Then Palmer Grant hefted his valise, cast one final look at the now bustling hotel and took himself off—leaving Olivia alone to figure out how she was supposed to regain her father’s hotel...whether anyone believed she could accomplish it or not.

* * *

Any minute now, Griffin figured as he lay in the darkness on his hotel suite’s bed, he would start to feel better.

Any minute now, the crushing weight on his chest would ease. The urge to grip a whiskey bottle would lessen. The compulsion to draw the curtains would disappear and the need to forget everything and everyone would vanish. Any minute now, a sliver of hopefulness would nudge its way into his hardened heart and carry him toward the next day and the next conquest, the way it always had in the past. The way it had to do today.

Under most circumstances, exercising his authority made Griffin feel better. That had been true for years. After his forced takeover of The Lorndorff Hotel yesterday, however, he felt...worse, if anything. He didn’t understand it. Flexing his influence and power and wealth had always improved his outlook.

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