Wild Star by Catherine Coulter Read Free Book Online Page B

really, and she had no choice. “You saved me from a wretched existence with my father,” she said finally. “I will do this for you and Irene. The money you are sending him each month will protect my mother from his rages. Yes, I owe you a great deal now, Ira.” She thrust her hand toward him and he clasped it.
    “Thank you,” he said.
     
    Brent ruffled Celeste’s soft black curls and kissed her lightly on her uptilted nose.
    “Perhaps you remember my name now, mon amour? ”
    Before he rolled onto his back and pillowed his head on his arms, he gave her a glittering smile and said, “I know who you are, Celeste.”
    He felt her fingers glide over his chest, then downward. “Celeste give you everything, yes? Who is this other grisette whose name you bleat at me?”
    “Do French girls remember everything?” He tensed when her fingers closed over him.
    “I think it is not at all polite what you did.”
    “Forget it. She is nothing to me, a dream, a memory. Nothing.”
    “Ha! A dream that lives in your mind is not a nothing. But Celeste will make you forget, yes?”
    “In an hour, perhaps,” he said, his voice dry. “I am only a man, Celeste. Give me a while to garner my strength.”
    Brent still couldn’t believe that he’d shouted her name at the height of his passion. Why? She was only a vague memory, a soft phantom. He hadn’t lied. She likely wasn’t the grisette Celeste painted her, but nonetheless, she would sell herself in any case. To a rich man, a foolish rich man who wanted a beautiful young wife. His jaw seemed to lock until the tension made him wince. He’d pictured an old man’s hands stroking her. “Damn all women to hell,” he said deep in his throat. Was it his fate in life to be drawn to women like Laurel? At least he’d learned over the past nine years to leave them before they could hurt him. Furious with himself, he turned to Celeste and began to return the deep caresses.
    “Ah,” she whispered, drawing his mouth to hers. “You are not just a man, Brent. You do such nice things.”
    “Yes,” he said, “I do.”
     
    Maggie stood in the center of the opulent room, her gentleman’s receiving room she called it. Maggie’s was nearly completed, as was the Wild Star. Everything looked grand. She’d had the girls’ bedrooms done first, and the gentlemen hadn’t minded at all the smell of paint or the hazardous piles of lumber stacked about.
    She frowned suddenly, remembering that Lisette was still suffering from violent cramps. She must ask Saint Morris to examine the girl. In fact, her thinking continued, though she was careful to ensure that the men who paid the exorbitant price to spend the night in her establishment were as clean as possible, it wouldn’t hurt to have Saint give the girls monthly examinations. She wanted no syphilis in her house.
    She walked the length of the sitting room to the large black piano. She lovingly ran her fingers over the smooth finish, then sat down and began to strike a few chords.
    Major chords. Only happy sounds. I’m twenty-seven years old, Maggie thought, and I’m going to be very rich and I’ll owe it to no one except myself. She smiled at the thought of her stern-faced father, a blacksmith, stepping into her establishment. Self-righteous prig. Horny demanding bastard. Her fingers suddenly settled on a minor chord. Her poor mother, every year of her married life spent pregnant until she’d had the good sense to die, leaving nine children. Maggie had stayed until her father had remarried. She’d then willingly sold her virginity to a rich tobacco planter from Virginia. The money had gotten her as far as Mississippi, where she’d spent seven years of her life as a man’s mistress. He’d beaten her only rarely, given her gifts equally as rarely, and hadn’t made her pregnant. When she’d read about gold being discovered in California, she’d known that was where she was going, where she belonged. She’d saved nearly every cent