Just Once by Jill Marie Landis Read Free Book Online Page B

on her tongue.
    “Fronts the river. You might have seen it when you climbed out of your oil jar at the wharf.”
    She looked confused and then sniffed. “I was only in the oil jar until it was carried aboard ship.” Trembling as she glanced over at the still-inert gambler, she rubbed her arms and shivered.
    “There are some places to bed down, none of them decent, but you’ll be safer than you would be in the Swamp.”
    “The Swamp?” Her eyes were huge.
    Enough time had been wasted. He started to drag her down the street. “Plenty of other whores down there, too.”
    “
Other
whores?” She stopped abruptly, refusing to budge.
    “You heard me.”
    “I, sir, am
no
whore.”
    She had thrust her chin at him in defiance until he looked her up and down and had the satisfaction of seeing her quell beneath his glare. Giving her a tug, he started her moving again.
    “Then what the hell are you? This time I want the truth.”
    She sniffed. “How can you be so cruel? I’m a defenseless young woman alone … trying to … to get to her long lost father … and brother.”
    “And where might they be?”
    Her gaze touched on his and then quickly slipped away. “Where are you headed?”
    Her ability to turn the tables was giving him a headache. “Upriver, but what’s that got to do with anything?”
    “Aha! Don’t you
see
?”
    “Lady, I don’t see anything but two fools jawin’ out in the rain.” They were passing the cathedral. The river was not far away.
    “It just so happens that
I’m
desperate to go upriver too. Up the mighty Mississippi to join my father and … and my older brother. They are on a mapping expedition in the wilds of Canada. You and I are headed in the very same direction. That’s quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”
    “I don’t know what to think,” he mumbled.
    When they stepped out from behind the cathedral and started across the square, they were set upon by four policemen rounding the corner of the building. Shoving Hunter aside, one of the men quickly took his weapons while another held a gun on him. The second pair of uniformed officers grabbed the girl. Hunter’s stomach lurched as he watched an officer snatch the hood off her shining hair, grasp her chin, and tilt her pretty face toward the lamplight.
    “I swear I never saw her before.” Hunter struggled against the men’s holds, nearly broke free, and earned a sharp blow to his temple for his efforts.
    “She’s not the one.” The policeman abruptly let the blond go and then nodded toward Hunter. “Let him go, too.”
    As Hunter shook the men free, he couldn’t help but note the intense look of relief upon his petite companion’s face.
    “Who are you looking for?” she managed.
    “A girl named Celine Winters. Have either of you run into a black-haired young woman in a dark cape?”
    Hunter shook his head. The blond was trembling like a leaf. He threaded her arm through the crook of his.
    “We haven’t seen her.” He held out his hand to the men holding his weapons. “Now, I’d like to get her out of the rain,” he told them.
    He was handed his knife and he sheathed it, then he took his rifle. The officers quickly apologized and hurried off, headed across the square.
    “Thank you,” she said, then added, “Will you help me now? My God, there are murderers actually running these streets.” She frowned at the shadows around the cathedral and then glanced up and down the street.
    “As well as lunatics,” he mumbled.
    “I can pay you handsomely.”
    “You don’t look like you have a dixie on you.”
    “What’s a dixie?”
    “It’s a ten-dollar note that says
dix
on one side. That’s French for ‘ten.’”
    She probably wasn’t from New Orleans, he decided, or she would know that rivermen had named the place
Dixie
after the paper money issued in English on one side and French on the other.
    They were splashing along the quay now, headed toward the cheap hotels and floating gaming flatboats