Page 5 of The Saloon Girl's Only Shot

If you make your way here, we can provide you meals and accommodation for the duration of your stay, Mr. Gardner had replied. Our partner, Tom, knows these mountains better than anyone. Once the report is finished, I will purchase you a stage ticket for your travel home. Either I, or one of my partners, visit Denver City weekly. You’ll have no trouble finding us on your arrival. We’re all well known.

She was trying not to lose faith in this entire endeavor, especially since coming here as summer waned had been her idea. Her father had wanted to wait until spring, but she’d been desperate to prove she wasn’t a burden or a shame to her family.

She was a necessary assistant to him. She was a valuable contributor to the family.

Well, not at the moment. Despite her daily inquiries, she hadn’t been able to locate the Venturous Mining partners. No one had seen any of them since the end of September. Apparently, Temperance had arrived the day after Mr. Gardner had married his wife and took her back to their camp—which was some forty miles away.

Given how her luck was running these days, she presumed they’d all contracted cholera and perished, leaving her doomed to a similar fate.

She paused across the street from the Leavenworth and Pike’s Peak Express office, taking in the painful fact that her father wasn’t among those lingering on the boardwalk with trunks and other luggage. She hadn’t really expected him. That would take a small miracle.

A queue was forming, though, indicating the stagecoach and mail had arrived. She waited for a milk wagon to jangle past with its bed of empty cannisters before she crossed and took her place at the end.

She dug out her quarter while she waited, as though holding it pinched between her finger and thumb would ensure there was news from her father. Good news.

The queue moved in fits and starts as some men requested the postmaster read their letter to them to ensure it was really for him. It was a ruse many played. Some genuinely couldn’t read their own letter. Others wished to avoid paying for correspondence that carried bad news.

“Dear Francis,” she could hear the postmaster’s voice as she neared the window. “I write with the sorry news that your wife has taken up with the brewer at the public house?—”

“That’s not mine,” the man grumbled. He slapped his hat onto his head before storming off.

It was the third time she’d witnessed something similar.

Temperance touched the edge of her collar, waiting while the man’s companion stuck his head in the window to inquire about his own letters.

“Good morning, Buster. Can I buy your place in line?” a man asked behind her.

All the skin on her body seemed to tighten while a hot ball of sunshine burst within her. She knew that voice!

She snapped her head around to see Owen. He wore the faintest hint of golden stubble and his eyelids were heavy and lazy. He dominated her vision like those infernal, muscled mountain peaks, intimidating, yet somehow glittering and radiant. His eyes were bright blue, his smile knowing.

“Sure, Owen. Happy to.” The other man accepted the coins that Owen dropped into his palm.

“My business isn’t urgent.” Temperance tried to keep the ring of desperation out of her voice. “Why didn’t you ask me?”

“Then I wouldn’t have an excuse to stand here and chat with you, would I?”

Oh, she wished his deep voice didn’t rope her in so easily.

Him and his charm. She glanced ahead, hoping to be called to the window, but the miner there must have been happy with the contents of his letter. The postmaster was relaying the happy news that a baby girl had arrived safely.

“How are you today, Rose?”

Infuriated that Mr. Buster was walking to the end of the line with a dollar she sorely needed. The sound of his coins echoed in her ears while her face felt as though it was sunburned.

“So much better now you’re here.” She tucked a stray hair into the edge of her bonnet. “I hope I’ll see you later, as well?” She meant at the saloon where he would hopefully tip her again.

“Oy. Who’s that cutting in?” someone toward the end of the queue called out.

“Owen Stames,” replied the man behind Owen.

“That rounder! He was chasing skirt in the cathouse when I left it this morning. I suppose that’s why he’s too busy to wait in line like the rest of us?”

The cathouse. Temperance lifted her brows.

Owen Stames didn’t seem bothered by having his private habits made public. He was amused by the stir he’d caused and tried to turn Temperance into the embarrassed one by holding her gaze, daring her to remark on what she’d heard.

If she had been the virginal, upstanding woman of six months ago, she would have huffed with indignation and distanced herself. Instead, she was a woman who had fallen from grace and was now banished from her home and the decent society her family had raised her in. She was a saloon girl facing a man who suffered no ill consequence for his congress out of wedlock. It was deeply unfair and made her want to stomp on his foot.

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