Notorious in the West. Lisa Plumley
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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