Midnight Lover Read online

  Midnight Lover

  by

  Barbara Bretton

  Published by: ePublishing Works!

  www.epublishingworks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61417-066-2

  By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this eBook. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of copyright owner.

  Please Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The reverse engineering, uploading, and/or distributing of this eBook via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

  Copyright © 1989, 2011 by Barbara Bretton. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Cover by Kim Killion

  eBook design by eBook Prep www.ebookprep.com

  Thank You.

  Chapter 1

  Silver Spur, Nevada

  April 1876

  Aaron Bennett squinted down at his card and prayed he'd made a mistake.

  Ten of spades... ten of hearts.

  A bead of sweat balanced at the tip of an eyelash and he blinked it away.

  Four of diamonds.

  The stink of greed and whiskey filled his nostrils and flooded his brain. He shouldn't have finished that last shot of whiskey; what he should have done was folded like Big Red Morgan and Luke Foster had. There was no shame in calling it quits, in admitting you'd been dealt a bad hand and getting on with it, but when Jesse Reardon tossed that pile of gold coins down on the table, something inside Aaron had gone crazy and he found himself seeing Jesse's bet and raising it.

  "You got that kind of money, Bennett?" Reardon's tone was coolly sardonic and Aaron flushed an angry red at being so easily found out.

  "I own this establishment," he said, gesturing toward the Crazy Arrow with its gilt and rococo décor that passed for good taste west of the Mississippi. "And there's the old Rayburn mine." The younger man said nothing and Aaron swallowed hard. "Take it or leave it, Reardon."

  "I think I'll be taking it." Jesse Reardon fanned out his cards face-up on the table. A straight, ace high. Reardon leaned back in his chair and smiled. "Unless you got something better to show me."

  Aaron's gut twisted. How in hell was he going to tell Caroline he'd lost everything he'd come West to win? God knows, he hadn't been much of a father to her; she'd always taken back seat to his misguided romances and half-baked dreams of glory. When he left her behind in Boston he'd made a thousand promises to her, promises of a place to live, of money of position—of a chance to build a future. The look of pity in her blue eyes lingered at the edge of his memory.

  Anyway you looked at it, this was his last chance to make his daughter proud of him. To make him proud of himself.

  His hands shook so badly he had trouble picking up the two draw cards. The eyes of every man in the saloon were on him and for a moment he wondered why he'd ever left Boston.

  King of clubs... ten of spades.

  Sweat blurred his vision and he wiped his eyes with the back of his arm. His despair was so sharp, so intense, that for a moment he found it impossible to speak.

  "Take it like a man, Bennett," Luke Foster said. "We ain't got all night."

  The only thing left to do was bluff.

  "Of course you gentlemen don't have all night. I apologize for the delay." Aaron looked over at Jesse Reardon and smiled. "I was just savoring the sweet taste of victory."

  He leaned across and reached for the pot. The room fell quiet as Jesse Reardon pushed back his chair and stood up.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing, Bennett?"

  Luke and Big Red moved away from the table.

  "Claiming what's mine, Mr. Reardon, as you can plainly see."

  Reardon's hand hovered over the handle of his gun. "What I see is a man who should learn the rules before he plays the game."

  Aaron hesitated. "Are you asking to see my cards, Mr. Reardon?"

  "I ain't askin' nothing, Bennett." Reardon seemed bigger than Aaron remembered him, all lean, menacing muscle and threat. "I'm tellin' you to show your cards."

  Aaron drew himself up in his best Boston Brahmin fashion. "I'm a gentleman, Mr. Reardon, and I resent your implication."

  Reardon took a drag on a big fat cigar and grinned. "I'm no gentleman, Bennett, and I don't rightly give a damn what you resent." The grin faded. "Now turn those cards over."

  Aaron looked toward Big Red. "Can he do this?" he asked his bartender.

  Big Red looked from Aaron to Jesse then back again. "He can do anything he pleases, boss."

  Aaron's hands trembled as he reached toward the cards. "Damn whiskey," Aaron muttered as he exposed the ten and the king. The crowd around the table murmured and he was finding it harder to think clearly.

  Jesse Reardon bent forward and swept the pile of gold and paper toward him. "This'll do for a start."

  Suddenly Aaron was stone-cold sober. "I can't meet the rest of your bet, Reardon. You know that."

  "You already did." Jesse sat back down and gestured broadly. "The Crazy Arrow and the old Rayburn mine will do just fine."

  Aaron took a step backward, knocking over his chair. "Surely we can work out another, better deal." He couldn't lose the saloon; the Crazy Arrow was his last best hope to build a better life for himself and his daughter. He'd failed so many times—how many other chances would he get?

  "The Arrow and the mine," Reardon repeated, his dark blue eyes never leaving Aaron's face. "I don't see where you got a choice in this."

  Sweat dripped down Aaron's back and soaked his starched white shirt. "The saloon is my livelihood, Reardon. Certainly you could find it in your heart—"

  "A bet's a bet."

  "Back home in Boston, gentlemen work out their differences."

  "This ain't Boston, Bennett, and I already told you I'm no gentleman."

  Reardon bit off the end of another cigar then reached inside the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a match. Aaron watched, mesmerized, as Reardon touched the point of flame to his cigar and inhaled.

  The gambling room was crowded three-deep with miners in their silver-dusted clothes, fancy women in velvets and plumes, full-time gamblers with crisp black suits and well-waxed moustaches. Reardon turned to them, working the crowd like one of those snake oil salesmen Aaron had seen in Kansas City. "You heard our friend make the bet, didn't you?"

  The crowd mumbled in affirmation and Aaron laughed out loud. Even if Aaron had never bet the saloon and the mine, every man in Silver Spur would have sworn on his poor, dead mama's grave that he had.

  Jesse Reardon had that kind of power and he wasn't afraid to use it. Aaron Bennett had been on the wrong end of that kind of power all his life. In New York, in Boston, and now in Silver Spur, the same damning luck still followed him. He could go to hell and back and never shake free of it.

  He turned and faced Reardon. Damn the man. How could he sit there so cool and calm while all of Aaron's dreams tumbled at his feet?

  "You win," Aaron said, turning his hands palms up in surrender. There was no point
in delaying the inevitable. "The Crazy Arrow is yours."

  "And the mine," said Reardon.

  Aaron closed his eyes for a second. "And the mine, for whatever good that may do you. Just please, Reardon, if there is the slightest drop of humanity in you, when my daughter arrives, don't—"

  What was that noise? Aaron glanced around; everyone seemed to be staring at him.

  "Is something wrong?"

  No one answered.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?"

  He drew a deep breath and pain tore through his middle. Looking down, he saw a bright red stain spreading across the starched linen front of his shirt.

  So that was the way it ended, taking a bullet meant for another man. How splendidly ironic—second-rate, even in death.

  His legs gave way but Jesse Reardon was there before he hit the ground.

  "Get Doc Willoughby!" Reardon's voice echoed in Aaron's head. "Move!"

  The room was spinning on its axis and Aaron closed his eyes to quell the nausea. He tried to pull some air into his collapsing lungs. "Tell Caroline..." he began.

  "Caroline?" Reardon asked. "Who's Caroline?"

  "My daughter." He hesitated. Why was it so hard to make the words in his head come out straight? "Tell her I'm sorry."

  "Where's the doctor?" Reardon bellowed. "We're losing him, damn it!"

  Aaron opened his eyes and smiled. Didn't they know? He'd been lost a long, long ago.

  ***

  Death didn't mean a hell of a lot in a town like Silver Spur. Men lived by the gun and expected to die the same way. If you took count of how many bullets meant for one man found their mark in the hide of another—well, most men in Silver Spur couldn't count that high.

  Jesse Reardon was no exception.

  The poker game in the back room of the Crazy Arrow stopped only long enough for the undertaker, old man Johnston with the plastered-down hair, to cart Aaron Bennett's lifeless body over to the funeral parlor on the other side of town. Jesse was back to dealing himself aces before Chang Lee had the floor mopped up.

  So it came as a big surprise to Jesse when he couldn't get Bennett out of his mind. All that night he kept seeing Bennett's face in front of him, seeing that look of pure terror in the Easterner's eyes when he realized he'd lost the Crazy Arrow and the mine.

  Even later when Jesse went over to the Golden Dragon and found Jade, the proprietress, as warm and willing as ever, he still couldn't quite shake the memory of that look. Bennett was better off dead. That expression on Bennett's face when he realized he'd lost the Arrow had given him away. Once they saw your weaknesses, you were a dead man, any way you cut it.

  "Leavin' so soon?" Jade stretched her slender arms overhead and looked up at him from the bright red satin sheets. Jade owned the Golden Dragon, the most popular sporting house in eastern Nevada. She was small and perfectly-made, with silky dark hair and the dark green eyes of a cat. Her exotic Chinese-American beauty drew men from as far as St. Louis to sample her charms and the charms of her girls.

  From the first, Jesse had known they shared a certain outlaw mentality and reputation to match. They both knew what they wanted and weren't ashamed to take it. Jade was the only woman in Silver Spur who didn't ask more of Jesse than he was willing to give. The Golden Dragon was a means to an end for Jade. One day she would gather up her money and go back to Hong Kong or whatever exotic place it was she whispered about when the lights were low and the nights were long. She didn't want anything from Jesse and that was the way he liked it best.

  She patted the empty spot next to her on the big brass bed. Her dark almond eyes held both fire and promise and for a moment he was tempted, but Bennett's face, lost and terrified, still haunted him. There'd be no rest for him until he went back to the Crazy Arrow and packed up all of the Easterner's things so they could be shipped back to Boston along with his body.

  He yanked on his white shirt and held out his wrists so Jade could fasten the cuffs. "Got some things to do."

  She tossed her sleek black hair over one bare shoulder and kissed the inside of his wrist. "At midnight, Jesse? Should I be jealous?"

  He laughed at the thought. Jade was a businesswoman, pure and simple. That was one of the things he liked best about her.

  "You, jealous? You got more men panting after you than a bitch in heat. I'd be surprised if you noticed I was gone."

  "I notice, Jesse," she said as he headed for the door. "I always notice."

  It was an odd thing for Jade to say, but he forgot her words by the time he hit the street. Music floated up from the King of Hearts at the other end of town and he wished he were sitting in his office in the back room, counting up his receipts. The town was changing quicker than he could keep up with. Pretty soon frilly white curtains would be hanging from every window and the sounds of children playing in the dirt road would replace the tinkle of Black Jack at the piano as he played The Blue Juniata.

  It wasn't that long ago that traveling theatre troupes made Silver Spur their first stop on their western tours. The Streets of New York, Under the Gaslight—actors with slicked-back hair and actresses with painted faces and feather boas tossed over creamy shoulders were showered with gold and silver coins tossed by miners with money to burn.

  But now most of the bonanza kings had headed up to San Francisco and the pleasures of the Barbary Coast while Jesse had stayed behind in the town he'd strangely grown to love.

  The Crazy Arrow was still and empty when Jesse unlocked the front door and stepped inside. The gas globes and chandeliers had been extinguished but even without their bright yellow glow, the brass fixtures and bright red flocked wallpaper leaped out at him.

  Bennett might have been a citified dandy but he damned sure knew how to furnish a first-rate saloon. Why, even the spittoons were all polished and shiny, no matter if half the cowboys and gamblers at the gaming tables missed them by a mile.

  What the man had needed was a good partner, someone used to Silver Spur and the way things were done here. The Crazy Arrow could've made Bennett a fortune, if only he'd been smart enough to know his limitations. A Boston snob couldn't walk into a town like Silver Spur and expect the men to start dancing to his tune. Things just didn't work that way.

  If Bennett had been smart, he would've unsnapped that stiff white collar of his and gotten down to the business at hand: gaining the acceptance of the townspeople. Too bad Bennett had to run roughshod over everyone, talking that Eastern talk, waving his credentials under everyone's noses until not one of his employees had seen fit to yell "Duck!" when the bullet meant for Jesse came whizzing through the back room.

  Face up to it, Reardon, his conscience screamed. You're glad Bennett's bound for Cemetery Hill. He was the first competition to appear since the big fire of '72 that marked the end of Silver Spur's glory days.

  None of that made any difference now. Bennett was dead as yesterday and now it was up to Jesse to collect all the papers and paraphernalia stashed in the big rolltop desk and make sure they got shipped off to Bennett's kin.

  Everything, that was, except the deed to the Crazy Arrow and the old Rayburn mine. Not that he'd send them on to Bennett's daughter even if he had been able to find them. The saloon and the mine were his, thanks to a handful of ladies, and no piece of paper could tell him otherwise.

  Jesse was thinking about how shit-scared Bennett had looked when he drew that last ace—and how some men should never play poker—when he came upon the picture tucked in with some of Aaron's records.

  Miss Caroline Louisa Bennett, pretty and blonde-haired and all of six years old, smiled up at him from the scratched Daguerrotype and for a split second Jesse was sorry Aaron had taken the bullet meant for him.

  He hadn't won his reputation as a hard-dealing, dangerous man by giving way to bouts of sentimentality, but there was something about that little girl that reached way back into his memory and made him understand what had been pushing Aaron Bennett.

  From the moment he'd been turned out to gra
ss, a scared kid with a gold piece pinned to the inside of his shirt and the words, "Sorry, son," a burning stone inside Jesse's heart, he'd known how it would be for him. Loneliness had been carved into his soul from the first breath he drew at the breast of his angry mother and nothing had been able to change the inevitable.

  He grew up fast and he grew tough and when the Civil War broke out, he joined the Union Army and fought side by side with boys from the Pennsylvania town he'd left far behind.

  After the War ended, Jesse started riding for the Pony Express and met up with one of his cousins who told him that Jesse's mother and stepfather had been killed right after Appomattox, leaving behind an eight year old half-brother he'd never known existed. Jesse was already on his way to earning his fortune. He wanted to toss the cousin a twenty-dollar gold piece and push the boy from his mind but, unfortunately, Jesse's heart was the last part of him to grow tough.

  "Son of a bitch." Jesse reached for the brandy on the shelf next to Bennett's desk and poured himself a slug.

  If there was one thing he hated, it was looking back. Looking back only brought up feelings that clawed at his chest like a wild animal fighting to break free, reminding him that he was one step away from nowhere, the same lonely kid who learned to use a gun while other kids were learning their ABCs.

  Looking back only reminded him that not even his money had been enough to help Andrew when he needed help the most and now his brother lay under the Pennsylvania earth, his promise as dead as Jesse's dreams of glory.

  But still he couldn't shake the feeling of kinship with the hapless Bennett's orphan and because he was tired of thinking about things he couldn't change, he pulled out a sheet of foolscap and dipped the pen into the inkwell and slowly, carefully, told Miss Caroline Louisa Bennett that her daddy had seen fit to leave two hundred dollars in gold for her welfare.

  He'd send it out on the stage with the rest of Bennett's belongings and then he'd do his damnedest to forget Aaron Bennett and his blonde-haired daughter ever existed.