Feeling a mild interest stirring, he toyed with the idea of doing just that. Two women—hell, maybe even three. With a bottle of expensive scotch to numb his senses, he could sink back on the downy mattress and give himself up to their ministrations. He was rich, for God’s sake. Anything he wanted was his for the asking. All he had to do was snap his fingers.
He’d done it plenty of times before. He could do it again.
So, why didn’t he?
That was the question that had lured him from the bed to the window, the question that had his belly knotted and his mind running in dark circles. Not that he was unhappy, exactly. How could he be when he had damned near everything he’d ever wanted? And yet he’d come to realize over the past few weeks that his life reminded him of a glass of ale left out overnight—flat, with all the fizz gone.
Making more money didn’t help.
Nor did the women he bedded. Blondes, redheads, brunettes…each more beautiful than the last. They didn’t seem to make a difference. Flat ale was flat ale, and no matter how much salt you added, sometimes it wouldn’t come to a head.
“Luke, love. Come make Gloria a happy girl, hmm?” The bed ropes creaked as she shifted her weight. He heard the covers rustle and guessed she was kicking them aside, the better to tantalize him. “Just look at what I’ve got for you.”
His throat tight with a sense of revulsion he couldn’t understand, Luke glanced over his shoulder. Gloria lay on the bed, her nude body seductively arranged to thrill and entice. Her dark lashes swept low over her sultry brown eyes as she cupped her large breasts, thrusting the twin mounds of flesh high and toying with her nipples. Luke watched the rosy peaks grow turgid as she tweaked and rubbed them.
He felt nothing…absolutely nothing. Except an urgent need to escape.
“Come do this for me,” she pleaded with a pretty pout. When he made no move to accept the invitation, she lifted her slender hips and spread her knees. “Or I can do this while you play elsewhere.” She caught the rigid peak of one nipple between her fingers, rolling the sensitive flesh and shuddering delicately. “Please, Luke. I need you, love. It’s lonely over here without you.”
Moving from the window, Luke began to button his shirt. As he thrust the tails into the waistband of his trousers and fastened the fly, he forced a smile. “Not today, sweetheart. For some reason, I’m just not feeling up to snuff.”
Gloria ceased the self-titillation, huffed with indignation, and jerked the bedcovers back over herself. “Anymore, you always say that. ‘Not now, Gloria. I just don’t feel up to it.’” She sat erect, holding the sheet to her breasts, her brown eyes snapping. “If you’re tired of me, Luke, just come right out and say so. I’m a big girl, and I’d rather that than have to endure this infernal beating around the bush.”
Luke sighed and raked the fingers of one hand through his hair. “I’m not tired of you, Gloria. Don’t be silly.” He stepped to the bed and bent to brush a kiss over her forehead. “You’re beautiful. How could any man in his right mind not want you?”
Looking mollified, she smiled slightly. Luke turned quickly away, grabbing up one boot and searching the floor for the other one. Jesus. What he’d just told her was true, absolutely true. She was beautiful, and only a madman would turn his back on the offer she’d just made him. In the past, Luke had been able to go for hours, exhausting his bedmate long before his own store of energy and sexual desire flagged. Lately, though, he seemed to be good for only one round. Then, almost immediately afterward, he felt this inexplicable weariness and an urgency to leave. To breathe clean air. To sink neck-deep into a bathtub of hot water.
He sat in a nearby chair to thrust his feet into his boots. As he bent to work the laces, he heard Gloria slip from the bed. Relief flooded through him when she stepped to the sideboard to pour herself some whiskey. He didn’t want to further offend her by pushing her away. He just wanted—
What? What, exactly, did he want?
Over the last year he’d developed a hankering—a nameless, indefinable craving he couldn’t appease. It had started out slowly, a subtle restlessness. Then it had gradually gotten worse, until recently nothing seemed to satisfy him.
Always before when Luke had begun to feel this way, he’d sought new and more exciting diversions. But at this point in his life, he’d already done it all. Women of all colors, shapes, and sizes. Deviant sex. Adventuresome investments. What else was there? Nowadays, he no longer even got much thrill from winning big at the gambling tables.
His life was lacking something, only he wasn’t sure what. Saloons, gambling every night, the tawdry trappings of the brothels. He was bored with everything—sick-to-death bored.
It was crazy, but sometimes Luke found himself thinking about getting married, about fathering children. The only problem was, there wasn’t a woman on earth he’d tie himself to for a lifetime. Not Luke Taggart. He enjoyed them until he grew bored with them, then moved on to new pursuits. He wanted to keep it that way.
Pushing to his feet, Luke hooked his jacket off the back of the chair. As he shoved his arms into the sleeves and shrugged the garment onto his shoulders, he met Gloria’s troubled gaze. God only knew why, but he felt obligated to explain himself, to assuage her bruised feelings. “Gloria, this has nothing to do with you,” he said softly. “I swear it.”
She stood there, completely comfortable in her nudity, one slender leg slightly bent, her nipples peeking out at him through curtains of flaxen hair. Raising the glass, she gave him a mock toast. “I’ve heard that one before. It always ends the same, with me getting the boot.” She took a mouthful of whiskey and tossed back her head to swallow. Then, with a wave of her hand, she said, “But that’s all right. It’s not as if you’re my only customer. And nobody else seems to have any complaints.”
Luke straightened the gray lapels of his jacket, then tugged at the cuffs of his silk shirt until a precise inch of white showed beyond the edge of each coat sleeve. “You’re taking this too seriously. Men have bad days, you know, just like women. Tell me you enjoy having sex every single time, that your heart is always in it.”
She gave an elegant little shrug. “It’s different for me. You’re the buyer, I’m the seller. Sometimes, when you come to see me, you’re the tenth in line. I’m not always as enthusiastic as I pretend to be, I admit. After ten times, who would be?”
Tenth in line? The words hung in Luke’s brain like slimy stalactites. Muttering something—he wasn’t sure what—by way of farewell, he let himself out of the room. Once in the hall, he hastened toward the landing, his one thought to get downstairs and outdoors as quickly as possible. Tenth in line? Just another piece of meat slapping into her. No wonder the room smelled bad.
A year ago, the thought of sharing a woman with ten other men wouldn’t have bothered Luke—hell, it was expected in a brothel, especially the good ones—so he wasn’t sure why it should bother him now. The girls he patronized were free of disease and kept themselves reasonably clean. Until now, that was all that had ever mattered to him.
Once outside on the street, Luke leaned a shoulder against a lamppost and hauled in a deep, cleansing breath. The crisp Rocky Mountain air carried with it the scents of early autumn—of fallen leaves, of fields gone fallow for the winter, of forthcoming snow. He filled his lungs, once, then twice, exhaling slowly.
As he cleared the scents of tobacco smoke and stale air from his nostrils, he looked up the street, his gaze fixed on a man and woman walking together on the opposite sidewalk. Mr. and Mrs. Prim and Proper, he thought scathingly. The woman had that buttoned-to-the-chin, “don’t touch me” look that some ladies worked so hard to cultivate, and the man carried himself with an air of superiority that made Luke grind his teeth. Why, then, did he feel a sense of loss when the pair stopped to admire a display in a shop window? The woman spoke and smiled up at her husband. Whatever she said made the man laugh, and he rocked back on his heels, shaking his head.
Luke imagined them walking home toge
ther. There would be a fire burning in their hearth and children sitting in the parlor, heads bent over their schoolbooks. The woman would remove the fitted jacket of her wool walking suit and slip on an apron to prepare the evening meal, which she’d serve later in a cozy dining room, the man holding court at the head of the table, king of all he surveyed.
Luke closed his eyes, trying to imagine himself seated at the head of that table, with a woman seated opposite him, her gaze filled with affection as he measured out servings on their children’s plates. A sturdy, mischievous boy with his eyes, a little girl with rosy cheeks and golden curls. A swaddled baby in a cradle he’d made with his own hands.
Madness, Luke thought with a hard scowl. He wasn’t the marrying kind, never had been and never would be. Yet, suddenly, with an intensity that stunned him, he wanted that picture in his mind to become a reality.
Pushing away from the lamppost, Luke struck off up the street. Not for the first time over the last few weeks, he found himself wondering if taking a live-in mistress might not be the answer to his dilemma. Such an arrangement would give him exclusive rights to the woman’s favors, as though he’d taken her to wife, but it would leave him with the option of getting rid of her once the new wore off, a far safer proposition than legally binding himself to anyone.
Only who? He took a fast mental trip through the list of his female acquaintances. The prostitutes he patronized were beautiful, certainly, and experienced at how to entertain a man behind closed doors. But they lacked that certain something he yearned for—wholesomeness, for want of a better word.
A virginal young miss would be more to his taste. Someone who at least looked sweet and innocent. Not that he believed, even for an instant, that such traits actually existed in the female gender. In his estimation, all women were born calculating and manipulative. It was simply that the prim-and-proper types were more adept at concealing their true natures. Like a velvet sheath over an ice pick.
“You little guttersnipe!”
The angry roar of a man’s voice cut into Luke’s thoughts like a well-honed knife through softened butter. He spun to scan the street. His gaze came skidding to a stop at the front of the general store. The storekeeper, Elmer Myrick, stood on the sidewalk next to a potato barrel, to which was affixed a sloppily printed sign advertising a spud sale, the paper flapping in the wind. Caught by the scruff of his neck in Elmer’s brutal grasp, a skinny boy of about ten twisted and kicked, trying frantically to escape.
“Steal my spuds, will you, you little bastard?” Elmer gave the child a hard shake. “We’ll see how enthused y’are about stealing while coolin’ your heels in the hoosegow!”
“No, mister, please!” the kid cried. “I wasn’t gonna steal ’em, I swear. I was just admirin’ them. Honest!”
Luke cut quickly across the street, dodging a speeding wagon en route. As he gained the opposite curb, an irrational anger surged up inside him. Idiot. Couldn’t Myrick see that the boy was half starved? Under a tattered, filthy shirt that was more holes than cloth, the youth was little more than skin stretched over bone, the ladder of his ribs pathetically visible.
Just as Luke reached the struggling pair, Myrick drew back his arm to backhand the kid. Luke snaked out a hand to grab the stout man’s wrist. “Don’t do that, Elmer. I’d hate to have to stomp your ass.”
Keeping a firm grip on the child, Elmer whipped around to see who’d had the effrontery to interfere. When he saw Luke, his angry red face went suddenly pale. “Mr. Taggart, sir.”
Because Luke held the mortgage on the storekeeper’s business and could foreclose any time the mood struck, Myrick’s expression went from angry to ingratiatingly respectful in a flash. The man released the boy with an unexpectedness that sent the kid reeling. Luke reached out to clamp a hand over the starving mite’s shoulder to prevent him from escaping. His guts lurched with a wave of nausea when he felt nothing but sharp bones and stringy muscles beneath his palm.
Releasing Myrick’s wrist, Luke dove a hand into his pocket, fished out a dollar, and stuffed it into the storekeeper’s shirt pocket. “That should cover your potatoes, you stingy son of a bitch.”
Elmer fell back a step. “You’ve no call to say that, Mr. Taggart. The boy has been stealing me blind. Every time I put a display out here, he sneaks by to help himself. Yesterday, he took apples! The day before, carrots. How can a man make any profit?”
Luke cut a scathing glance at the storekeeper’s fat belly. Then he curled his hand over three large potatoes, lifted them from the barrel, and thrust them at the child. Hugging the unwashed vegetables to his chest as if they were gold, the boy clutched one in his grubby fist and began to eat it ravenously, clumps of dirt and all.
Drawing the child into a walk, all the while keeping a firm hold on his shoulder, Luke headed toward a nearby alley. Once there, he drew to a stop next to a reeking trash barrel, watching as the street urchin tore at the raw potato meat with teeth gone yellow from malnutrition and lack of brushing. Wind whistling down the alley whipped the scrawny youth’s brown hair. Between swallows, he darted wary looks up at Luke, but he was clearly so hungry, fear took a second seat to clawing need.
Finally, the boy seemed to have eaten enough to stave off the hunger pains, for he lowered the spud from his mud-ringed mouth and regarded Luke with suspicious green eyes. “You gonna have me tossed in the hoosegow?”
Suddenly aware that he towered over the kid, Luke hunkered down in the hope that he might seem a tad less intimidating. After gazing toward the street for a moment, he turned back to regard his prisoner. “You’re going about that all wrong, you know. It’s little wonder Elmer Myrick caught you.”
Bewilderment flashed across the boy’s dirty face. Luke bit back a smile. “You got a name, son?”
“Tigger is what folks call me.”
“Well, Tigger, when you’re going to steal, you need a distraction,” Luke advised with a chuckle he couldn’t quite suppress. “Though I don’t recommend a life of crime, because you will eventually wind up in jail, let me give you a couple of pointers, just in case you have to steal again out of necessity. Do you know anyplace where you can catch rats?”
The boy nodded and gestured at the alley with a toss of his head. “There’s lots of ’em right through here.”
Luke had already guessed that the trash-lined lane was crawling with rodents. “You catch one of the buggers. A nice fat one. Hide it, if you can. Some old newspaper will work if you don’t have a blanket. Take care it doesn’t bite you, and then stand on the sidewalk, watching that store until mid-morning, when all the fancy ladies are out and about to do their daily shopping. When there are a bunch of them inside, you sneak in and turn the rat loose. Do it at the back of the store, so the rat can’t make a quick getaway. I guarantee you, every woman in the place will go berserk. While they’re screaming and trying to climb the shelves, you load up on food and hide it under whatever you had the rat wrapped in.” Luke inclined his head at the half-eaten potato. “Get something decent to eat, while you’re about it. Raw spuds? You’ve got no class, kid. If you’re going to steal, steal something worth your while.”
The child regarded Luke with traces of fear still in his eyes. “You’re Mr. Luke Taggart, ain’tcha? The rich bloke.”
“I haven’t always been rich.” Luke smiled slightly and reached up to ruffle the kid’s grimy hair, which he felt fairly certain was crawling with lice and undoubtedly a few fleas from those rats he probably slept with. “Where are your folks, son?”
“My ma died this winter past, and my pa skedaddled. I took my little brother and sister over to them nuns at the orph’nage, but I didn’t want to stay. I’m too old to be recitin’ Bible verses and prayin’ on them beads. There ain’t no such thing as God, anyhow, so why learn all that tripe?”
Luke shared the sentiment and completely understood the youth’s abhorrence of winding up a charity case in a nunnery. “You did the right thing, taking your brother and sister to the nuns,” he said. ??
?It’s too rough out here on the streets for little kids. Now we just have to figure out what should be done with you.”
“I ain’t goin’ to no orph’nage,” the boy stated.
Luke nodded. “I understand that.” He studied the kid, making a great show of sizing him up. “You look old enough and strong enough to turn your hand to honest work. Have you tried to find a job?”
“Ain’t nobody hirin’.”
“I was just wondering,” Luke said thoughtfully, “because I’ve been looking for a good man. You probably wouldn’t be interested, though.”
“Yes, I would!”
Luke narrowed an eye and shook his head. “Nah. It’s probably not what you’re looking for. It’d be really boring work for an adventurous young fellow like you. Just a position as night watchman at my offices. There’s a cot, of course, in the back room, and a place to wash up if you’ve a mind. Nothing fancy. And all you’d have to do is sleep there, keeping one ear open for intruders. Definitely not exciting employment.”
“It sounds grand!” the kid asserted eagerly.
Luke kept his expression carefully blank. Then, after a moment, he reached inside his jacket for one of his calling cards and his fountain pen. He jotted a brief note on the back of the paper, then handed it to the child. “You know where my offices are, those brick buildings midway down Diamond Street?”
“Yessir!”
“You take that card to my man of affairs, Mr. Brummel. He’s a tough nut to crack, so look smart while he interviews you. He does all my office hiring.”