Jenna Kernan by Gold Rush Groom Read Free Book Online Page A

flaps and out of sight. Lily laughed and followed her example.
    “He staying in your tent?” asked a man with a gray-streaked beard.
    She turned and rested a hand on her hip, looking down her nose at the man. “Your partner sleep in your tent, Bill?”
    “Well, yeah, but…”
    “But what?” she asked, daring him to say another word.
    He rubbed the toe of his boot in the mud. “It’s different.”
    She laughed. “Get your mind out of the gutter, boys.” She aimed her finger at them. “All of you. The only female Jack will be sleeping with tonight is Nala.”
    Jack pressed his lips together as the others laughed. With that she sniffed and disappeared into the tent after her hound. Jack suddenly worried over his bedding and the muddy dog that preceded him into the tent. He hurried to follow.
    Just as he feared, Nala had dragged his bedroll into a nice muddy mess on which she was now curled. Lily ordered her dog up and handed Jack his bedding, now streaked with dirt.
    “Don’t worry. If you plan on being a miner, everything you own will soon look like this.”
    Jack accepted the grimy blankets with dismay that lasted only until Lily’s next words.
    “Let’s get some sleep.”
    Jack stood as if petrified as she sat on her cot and removed her boots with a button hook, carefully placing the worn leather beneath her bed. Then shepeeled out of her coat, revealing a neat blue woolen bodice and matching skirt.
    She began to brush the mud off her coat.
    “Do you have a sweetheart, Mr. Snow?”
    He thought he’d prefer jumping back in the icy inlet waters than tell her about his former fiancée, Nancy Tinsen.
    “Never stayed with one long enough to call her that.”
    Lily pulled a face, and then unbuttoned her bodice. She stopped when the garment gapped, revealing the fine, soft swell of her breasts above the corset that cinched her in the middle.
    “Here is what will happen. You’ll excuse yourself and go for a walk. When you come back the lamp will be out and I’ll be in bed. If you try to crawl under my blankets, I’ll use my pistol.”
    “What if you try to crawl under mine?”
    That stopped her. She gaped a moment and then laughed. “Well now, then I suppose you have your choice to throw me out or keep me.”
    “I’d keep you.” He held her long stare. She looked away first.
    Her voice seemed breathless when she next spoke. “I can’t see that happening.”
    Now it was his turn to smile. “Can’t you?”
    He was gratified to see her flush. So he hadn’t imagined the pull between them. He didn’t want a full-time woman, not when he was still bruised andbattered from his failed engagement. But he wasn’t beyond taking what a woman offered.
    “You can take that walk now.”
    Jack lifted the flap but she called him back.
    “And Jack?”
    He turned, thinking her beautiful in the lamplight.
    “Hmm?”
    “Thank you for tonight.”
    He pinned her with a steady stare. “What are partners for.”
    Then he left her, before the temptation to stay caused him to do something he’d regret. He paused beyond the tent, waiting for his eyes to adjust. He could scarcely make out the dark silhouette of the figure across the road.
    “Toss you out already?” he asked.
    Jack could see little beyond the glowing tip of a cigarette, but he made his way over.
    “So it seems.” He walked to the man who offered his tobacco pouch. “No, thanks.”
    The man took another puff. “Thing about canvas is that voices carry. I guess folks know just about everything about their neighbors here, ’cept they aren’t neighbors, since folks come and go by the minute. Nobody really cares for anyone but themselves—and their partners, of course. The rest is all entertainment.”
    “Why you telling me this?”
    “Just to thank you for livening up this little corner of the swamp. I’m George Suffern.”
    Jack shook his hand.
    “When you two pushing up the Chilkoot?”
    “Sooner is better,” said Jack.
    “I suppose. The