Banner O'Brien by Linda Lael Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

put out her tongue.
    He laughed as they reached the bottom of the hill and turned the buggy toward Water Street. “I’m sorry I asked,” he said, with a shrug.
    And I’m sorry I ever met you, mourned Banner, who had thought that she would never want a man again, after all she’d suffered with Sean Malloy.
    But she wanted this man, and she cared for him, too. Worse, one day she might even love him.
    A shudder rocked her, and Adam reached out, impatiently, to pull the lap rug up around her waist. The contact made that strange melting sensation start up again, and Banner was so annoyed by this that she slapped away his hand and barked, “Don’t touch me!”
    Adam stared at her, shook his head, and passed all the brothels and saloons Banner had noticed the night before to drive the buggy down over a hill, toward the water.
    Her eyes popped open when she saw the beached clipper ship there. It had been put into dry dock, and there were steps leading up its side to the decks. At its ornately carved bow was the legend, Silver Shadow.
    Along the railings of the vessel, prostitutes lounged, looking down at the approaching buggy or gazing off into the snowy skies. Somewhere on board a tinny piano was playing and exuberant voices were singing, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”
    A brown-haired, lushly curved woman near the bow smiled, patted her outlandishly styled locks, and shrilled, “Hey, Doc, did you bring Bessie her Christmas present?”
    Adam laughed and shook his head as he halted the rig and tossed back the lap robe to alight. For a moment, it seemed that he’d forgotten Banner existed, and no wonder. “Not now, Bess,” he called back. “Can’t you see I’ve got a lady with me?”
    Bess pouted. “Mind you don’t give her my present, sweetness.”
    Banner reddened and her back stiffened and she would not have gotten out of that buggy at all if Adam hadn’t rounded it, taken her arm, and forced her to step down.
    “You wanted to practice medicine, O’Brien,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, “so stop acting like an offended missionary wading into the heathens.”
    “D-Do you visit that awful woman?” Banner whispered back furiously, and though she pulled with all her might, her arm would not come free of his hand.
    He flung a look of evil mirth at Banner. “What the devil do you care?” he retorted.
    “I don’t!” lied Banner with spirit.
    “Good. The sweet young thing in room four has a boil on her backside. You go and lance that while I—er—while I examine another patient.”
    “Bessie, for example?”
    The perfect white teeth flashed in another dazzling smile. “O’Brien, O’Brien,” he breathed. “When will you learn? When I want a woman, I don’t have to pay.”
    For weeks afterward, everyone on Water Street talked about the way one doctor had slapped the other, right in the middle of the Silver Shadow’s boarding ramp.

Chapter Three
    T HE DECKS OF THE S ILVER S HADOW WERE SLIPPERY with snow and the spittle of tobacco-chewing patrons, and Banner held her skirts above them, curling her upper lip.
    “People get sick everywhere, O’Brien,” Adam reminded her dryly in a crisp undertone. “Even in nasty places like this.”
    Banner stiffened. She’d been in worse places during her training—tenements and shanties where rats roamed free and broken windows were stopped up with wads of damp newspaper. Hospitals where alleged physicians smoked cigars over open wounds and sported a coating of horse manure on their shoes. “Thank you very much for that enlightening remark,” she retorted.
    Bessie, the prostitute, was sidling toward them withwell-oiled hips, her thin taffeta dress leaving much of her body bare to the biting cold. She patted her hair again and dragged slumberous eyes from the toes of Adam’s boots to the top of his head, pausing once, with sympathy, at the flaming mark Banner’s hand had left on his face.
    Adam thrust an appalled Banner forward, in introduction.