Joe smiled at him. One of her girls did, too, eyeing him from head to toe. Degan knew that familiarity usually calmed people’s nerves, and he’d been to the brothel three times now because of Max—without killing anyone. So the women no longer saw him as quite as big a threat. They also seemed to view him as a lawman now.
“I’m beginning to think you like us, Deputy Marshal,” the madam purred. “Pleasure this time, or more business?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Whether your new girl is wanted by the law or just by your customers.”
Joe laughed and winked at him. “That sweet thing is as innocent as they come. If she’s guilty of anything, it’s being too pretty.”
“I’ll have her for the day.”
“She’s not ready yet. She’s still in training.”
“Then I’ll teach her a few things. I’m not inclined to wait.”
The madam frowned slightly as if she were about to argue, but changed her mind and shrugged, nodding toward the stairs. “Suit yourself. Second door on the right. But don’t complain if you aren’t satisfied.”
Chapter Sixteen
“YOU REALLY DO NEED teaching, don’t you, honey? You’re supposed to pull that down, not up.”
Max gave up trying to tug the tight, red satin bustier a little higher and glanced at Candy, who was leaning in the doorway, fanning herself with a long, pink feather. Candy loved pink. Her entire wardrobe was pink. The short, ruffled skirt Max was wearing now was Candy’s. The dark red bustier belonged to Scarlet.
The girls at Chicago Joe’s were like a big family. They laughed and teased and squabbled, but they cared about each other. And they considered themselves lucky. Not all brothels were as nice to work in. Some were rife with in-house fighting and cutthroat competition, but Luella had assured Max that didn’t happen here. All the girls had welcomed her, and many insisted that she borrow their clothes until she made enough money to buy her own.
Max enjoyed trying on the clothes. She’d never worn such bright colors or dresses with such high hemlines and low bodices, or foundation garments that emphasized her curves. They made her look like a completely different person, so different from who she really was that she couldn’t help but laugh—at herself. Many of the garments were either too tight, too loose, or too short; few of them really fit her. But she reminded herself she only had to wear them for a few days.
The girls didn’t only visit her to donate to her wardrobe. They also came by to offer advice on how to handle a man and please him.
“Don’t get them mad,” Scarlet had warned her in one of those sessions. “Occasionally, that can be interesting, but usually it won’t be.”
“And compliments!” a short, chubby girl named Sue Annie had added. “Men like to feel special even if it ain’t true.”
But Candy had snorted, “That can backfire on you, so don’t veer too far from the truth.”
Max had blushed. And a couple of times she’d blurted out, “Really?” Luella had tried to shoo the girls out of Max’s room, insisting she would teach Max the trade. But the other girls were just trying to be helpful because they didn’t know that Max was just using the brothel as a hiding place. So she couldn’t exactly tell them to leave her alone.
This was not how she’d wanted to hide here when she’d snuck in after she’d escaped from Degan. She’d been afraid he wouldn’t be distracted long enough by that beautiful woman who’d called him “darling.” But he must have been. Max had been able to slip out of the hotel again, but this time she’d grabbed a jacket from the employees’ coatroom, so she wouldn’t look the same when Degan started looking for her. Keeping her head down and sticking to the back alleys so no one would see her, she made her way straight to the brothel and entered through the back door and ran up the back stairs to Luella’s room.
Max had still been in a panic, certain that Degan would arrive at any minute, looking for her, but she needed to borrow some money from Luella so she could get out of town. Then Luella had started undressing her, telling her to put on a dress because she had a plan: Max would hide where the deputy marshal would never expect to find her—among Madam Joe’s girls. Max knew it was risky. But so would be anything else she tried in order to avoid Degan till he left town.
Luella had called in a few of the other girls to meet Max without telling them her plan. Luella timed it perfectly because when she heard Degan coming toward her room, she threw a ruffled dress over Max’s head so it looked as if she were in the middle of dressing, and it had worked. All he saw of Max was her legs! He didn’t even see Luella ducking behind the girls surrounding Max, so he must have thought it was Luella they were helping. And after he looked into her wardrobe, he moved on to search another room. When he finally left the brothel, Luella finished dressing Max and introduced her to Madam Joe as an old friend who wanted to get into the business. The madam was more than welcoming and even agreed to allow Max a few days of training before she put her to work and gave her one of the extra rooms to use.
With Max feeling so anxious about continuing to evade Degan, and the law in general, she found it disconcerting when the girls walked into her room without knocking as Candy had just done.
“Joe isn’t going to wait much longer,” Candy warned her now. “She’s already got men lined up waiting for you.”
Max paled. “I’ve only been here two days.”
Candy chuckled as she sauntered forward and yanked down the red bustier. “There, that’s better. And it doesn’t take a few days to figure out how to make a man happy. I don’t know what Luella was thinking to suggest you’d need that long.”
Max had wanted that long. She wanted to make damn sure Degan was gone before she left town herself. Maybe she ought to leave tonight before the madam called her bluff and actually sent a man up to her. But it was a daunting thought. She was going to have to leave on foot—and without any weapons. Even if her horse was still in town, she didn’t dare try to fetch him when Degan might have left a guard with him, hoping she would. Damn Degan Grant.
As soon as Candy left, Max looked down at her breasts to see what the girl considered “better” and snorted. Her nipples were almost showing! She pulled the material up once again, hard, annoyed that there still wasn’t much give. You would think leaving a little mystery would heighten a man’s anticipation, but, no, these girls thought blatantly advertising their wares was the best way to entice a man.
“Don’t do that on my account.”
Max sucked in her breath. She’d know that voice anywhere. She glanced up to see how angry he was, then drew in her breath softly.
Seeing Degan surprised speechless by that fancy lady at the hotel had been priceless. She’d chuckled to herself every time she remembered it because it had gotten her free. She wasn’t chuckling now, even though he definitely looked surprised again—by what she was wearing. And he was slowly taking it all in, her long legs, which were mostly bare since the pink skirt only reached the middle of her thighs. Her arms and shoulders were completely bare. Half of her breasts too. She’d experienced quite a bit of embarrassment the last two days with the girls teasing her and talking so frankly about sex, but it was nothing compared to how she felt now.
So her cheeks weren’t just hot because she was furious at getting caught again. But he had to be angry, too, that she’d escaped and evaded him for two days right here in town. He just wasn’t showing it because he was too busy undressing her with his eyes. If this weren’t Degan, she’d swear he’d just turned sensual on her.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “You weren’t supposed to come back here.”
“Come back?” He slowly entered the room.
She would have smirked if she weren’t so angry at him. “You walked right past me the other day when you were searching the place.”
He raised a brow. “Where were you hiding?”
She shouldn’t tell him. If he had any sort of curiosity at all, it might drive him crazy wo
ndering. But he didn’t, so she admitted, “I had a dress over my head. All you saw were my legs.”
He glanced down at her long legs. “I didn’t know yours were this shapely. You’re lucky you weren’t exposing your bare breasts because I haven’t forgotten what they look like.”
Max couldn’t deal with feeling mortified and angry at the same time, so she stopped covering her breasts long enough to take a swing at him. That didn’t work too well. He grabbed her. She struggled against his hold, still hoping to land a decent punch if she could get a little space between them, but that wasn’t working out well, either. Then they fell together on the bed, or he pushed her so she would land there and he just followed her down, she wasn’t sure which. But she immediately crossed her arms tightly over her breasts again—and that’s where his eyes went.
“No hiding the merchandise I’m paying for.”
She gasped. Did he really think she was here for that? She quickly told him, “If you want a woman, there’s half a dozen down the hall.”
“And if I only want you?”
Those words wrapped themselves around her like a warm breeze. It would be too easy to open her arms to this particular man. But he wouldn’t bargain! She’d tried that the night he’d captured her, and he hadn’t been interested. She’d been ready to cut a deal yesterday morning, and all he’d wanted was for her to take a bath so she wouldn’t be dirty when he turned her over to the sheriff!
But she could be just as clear. “Too bad.”
She pushed away from him so she could get off the bed. He let her, but before she could turn around, he was behind her, his fingers moving over her stomach in a slow, sensual circular motion, pulling her back against his chest.
“Raise your arms and put your hands behind your head,” he directed.
“Are you arresting me?”
“Later. Right now I want full access to your—charms.”
Before she could get beyond the shock of those words, his hands slid up over her breasts and stopped there to gently squeeze them. He did it again. Oh, God. Coils of heat shot right to her core, immobilizing her for a moment. Even her knees turned to mush. She had to take a few deep breaths. It took every ounce of will she had to turn around so he would stop caressing her like that, but looking up into his eyes and seeing the heat there just aroused her more. She stumbled backward and turned away so she wouldn’t see such raw sensuality. Again, he let her.
But then he said, “So you’re in training but not practicing with a man yet?”
She heard the humor in his tone. He wanted her to hear it. He’d just been teasing her? Or rubbing in her choice of hiding places?
Likely the latter because he added, “This is how you hide? By letting the madam advertise that she has a pretty new blonde on the menu?”
She turned to glare at him. “She wasn’t supposed to do that!”
“Why not? It’s good for business. But if I actually thought you were taking up the red light, I’d put you over my knee and spank the hell out of you.”
Now that was the Degan she knew, cold and heartless. “That’s not one of your options—ever.”
“Not your choice, Maxie. But now it’s time to go. You can put your own clothes on, or I’ll take you out of here wearing that. I really don’t care which.”
“I’ll change,” she grumbled. “Just step outside for a minute.”
“Not a chance. There’s a window and a door here. You aren’t going through either one without me.”
She’d had a brief respite from gnashing her teeth in the time she’d been away from him. But now she was back at it. The little room had no screen that she could step behind to change. It was a brothel. No one here hid anything. But she refused to give Degan a show.
She yanked open the little wardrobe and grabbed her hat and slapped it on her head. She felt like screaming. She’d been so close to avoiding jail. She’d even decided to leave town. She would have been gone by tonight.
She wondered if a scream would bring Madam Joe’s two bruisers upstairs to beat up Degan. They were always on the premises to keep the peace. She could slip away again while he was busy with them—no, he’d just shoot them and he could do that quickly.
Keeping her back to Degan, she stepped into her pants and pulled them all the way up before she unwrapped the little skirt and let it drop to the floor.
“Mind if I borrow that?”
Max recognized Scarlet’s voice, and for the briefest moment she thought the girl was actually referring to Degan. But when Max glanced around, Scarlet was already picking up the pink skirt, though her eyes were admiring Degan, even when she whispered to Max, “Good job! When you’re done with him, send him to my room.”
Max protested, “He’s not my customer!”
But Scarlet just chuckled as she sauntered out of the room with the skirt in hand, her eyes still all over Degan. Max tried not to gnash her teeth yet again and finished dressing, putting her shirt on over the bustier, then unfastening the tight, red garment and letting it fall, too, before buttoning up her shirt and tucking it in. The rest went on fast now that she was completely covered. She picked up her saddlebags before turning to face him.
“Now that was disappointing,” he said as he took the bags from her.
More teasing? But dressed in her own clothes, she felt like herself again and wasn’t going to be carted to jail without a fight.
But then Luella suddenly rushed into the room, and like a mama hen she stepped between Degan and Max and started yelling at him, “How can you do this? She’s not a criminal! You can’t let her hang when she’s innocent!”
His inscrutable expression didn’t change, which might have been why Luella figured out she was wasting her breath. She grabbed Max and hugged her and started crying, so loudly that it drew a few of the other girls into the room. Max tried to comfort Luella, but she was on the verge of tears, realizing she was never going to see her friend again. And the tears were contagious because the other girls started crying, too.
Degan looked pretty exasperated and grabbed Max’s arm to tear her away from Luella and lead her out of the room. But all the women followed, crying even louder. Then Max heard Luella shout, “Don’t you dare hurt her!”
Degan didn’t pause, but his tone was ominous when he said, “Don’t worry. Miss Dawson will get exactly what she deserves.”
Chapter Seventeen
“WE’RE GOING TO BUTTE,” Degan said by her ear.
We? They were a block away from the brothel. Max stopped struggling instantly, but she sure as hell didn’t understand what he was up to. And why couldn’t he have told her that sooner? Like two days ago when they’d left his hotel room? His lack of communication was going to be his downfall one of these days.
And he wasn’t just feeding her hope to get her to stop struggling. He took her straight to the stable to get her horse. But she only got a moment to hug Noble and to be happy to have him back before Degan grabbed her hands and wrapped a rope around them again. She was surprised he’d waited so long to tie her up. Having eluded him, she knew he wasn’t going to trust her out of his reach now. She was still able to mount by herself, and with him holding her reins again, he led her out of town along the southern trail, the one that extended all the way to Utah and was used to freight supplies to Montana Territory from the far west.
She waited until Helena was far behind them before she let her curiosity loose on him. “You and the sheriff back there don’t get along? So you’re taking me to another one?”
“We’ll be in Butte by tonight.”
“That’s more’n a hundred miles from here!”
“Maybe half that, give or take a few. If you had read the marshal’s notes, you would know that Kid Cade was last seen around Butte.”
“So you are going to collect all three of us before turning any of us in?”
He didn’t answer that one, but she realized, he wasn’t answering her other two questions, either. If she had her own reins, she’d stop rig
ht there. But she didn’t have that luxury. And she was beginning to figure out that talking to him was not only more aggravation but more trouble than it was worth. So she stopped and just enjoyed that, for whatever reason, she wasn’t in a jail cell yet.
He had been pacing the horses between some brisk cantering, some annoying trotting, and a little walking, so they were making good time without tiring the animals and didn’t turn off the road to rest until midafternoon. Her stomach had been rumbling for the last hour, but she’d continued to hold her tongue and was going to keep that up until he got around to asking her something, so she could have the pleasure of not replying. Best-laid plans . . .
Degan took them to a small knoll with quite a few shade trees and smaller flowering trees and bushes scattered around it. It wasn’t so far off the road that they couldn’t still see it below them. They had only passed a few other riders so far, mostly to and from the gold camps that were south of Helena, a few wagons, an oxen-driven cart, and beyond the camps a couple cowboys who looked more like drifters and left the road to go around Degan. Max snickered as she watched them. Degan didn’t seem to notice.
After Degan untied her hands, she dismounted and stretched her legs by walking in circles around the knoll so Degan wouldn’t think she was about to run off. In the sunny parts, the ground was covered with purple lupines and yellow black-eyed Susans. Max saw a stagecoach racing down the road below them. Luckily, she and Degan had just missed getting doused in its dust. She wondered about the passengers inside the coach. This was a major route for settlers entering the territory. The stage ran between Virginia City to the south and Fort Benton on the Missouri River up north. They’d already passed the little town of Boulder less than an hour ago, which had grown up around one of the stage stops. Boulder had marked the halfway point to Butte, so they just might reach it by nightfall after all, since the sun didn’t set until around nine o’clock at this time of year.
Degan was untying a sack from his saddle. She might have offered to hunt up some food if she wasn’t still determined not to talk to him anymore. She smelled the fresh bread before he pulled the loaf out of the sack. He broke it in two and tossed her half. He brought out a round of cheese next and broke that in half, too.