Fireblossom by Cynthia Wright Read Free Book Online Page A

have gone out of his plans for a wicked evening. However, he hoisted his bedroll and saddlebags over one broad shoulder and walked through the mud to the Gem Theatre.
    There were already a few dozen barrooms and many billiard and card halls in Deadwood, but the "theaters of ill repute" were best known: Gem, Bella Union, Melodeon, and Green Front.
    Most of the saloons looked as if they'd been thrown up overnight, and some of them were little more than tents. Their roofs leaked and the walls tended to come down during drunken fights or storms. Fox liked the sturdier look of the Gem, and of course, it had real rooms upstairs for privacy. The badlands was so crowded now that he began to wonder if he could get a bed without paying for a girl to go with it.
    Inside the Gem, exhausted and dirty miners were drinking, while the card tables were filling up with dishonest-looking types ready for a night of gambling. Fox approached the bar and stood next to a heavyset man who was pungently malodorous. He wondered if he smelled anything like that, then decided that Madeleine Avery would have given some sign of it, like delicately wrinkling her nose in revulsion. Annie Sunday had raised her son to perceive such hints.
    After a long wait for the bartender's attention, Fox ordered a double whiskey and downed it without delay. Perhaps it would banish the memory of the past few weeks and all the conflicting emotions that had been churning inside him since his final confrontation with Custer.
    "Want another, pard?" asked the bartender, a frail, bald man with a black mustache.
    Fox nodded. He took the second a little slower, but instead of erasing his thoughts, the liquor seemed only to intensify them. He'd always tried to conduct his life honorably, allowing for lapses into harmless sorts of masculine vice. He wasn't a saint, but he believed in the rights and freedoms upon which America was founded.
    Why, then, did his experience in Montana leave him with the taste of cowardice in his mouth? He'd offered to ride into battle, and he would have insisted on it if he'd felt the cause was just. Emotionally he continued to feel torn between his sense of duty as an American and his sympathy for the plight of the Indians. Which side was right?
    What the hell, Fox thought. It was a bigger problem than one person could unravel, so what did it matter what he thought or did?
    "I declare, I thought you'd forgotten me," a soft voice purred at his shoulder.
    Fox glanced down through burning eyes to discover the little raven-haired girl who had flirted with him from the balcony. Now she wore a dress of worn blue sateen, specially altered to reveal half her breasts. The fabric poufed over a bustle set high in back, then trailed down across the sawdust-covered floor. She smelled of toilet water and had a thin powder blue ribbon tied around her neck. Fox liked that.
    "No, I didn't forget." He touched a tanned finger to her cheek. "What's your name, sweetheart?"
    "Victoria." She couldn't believe that he was as attractive up close as he'd looked from a distance, but it was true. His eyes were deep blue, he had even teeth, a full head of hair, and a strong face. He looked like he could pick her up with one hand and lift her overhead. "My mama named me for the queen of England."
    Fox arched a brow, appreciative of this irony. "That was a fine gesture of faith on her part."
    "Folks say I'm prettier than Queen Victoria."
    "Well, I'd have to agree with that."
    Victoria asked for gin and bitters from the bartenderandFox paid for it, extending his own glass for a refill at the same time. He was beginning to feel the way he'd hoped to feel - numb and distant from the real world. It was almost possible to pretend that he had no problems, no guilt, no past, no future. All that the moment demanded of him was that he enjoy himself.
    "You look like you've wore yourself out getting to Deadwood," Victoria decided, leaning against his broad chest so that her breasts brushed against