Wyoming Wildflowers: The Beginning by Patricia McLinn Read Free Book Online Page B

there was pressure to make it a proper town. One night, the roadhouse and bawdy house mysteriously burned — no injuries, and surprisingly little property loss, since the furnishings were out in the road for some odd reason.” He winked, and she grinned. “The next day, construction started on the building that’s the cafe to this day, and the woman who ran the bawdy house and her girls were respectable — just like that. Overnight.”
    “Everyone accepted them?”
    “Sure. There weren’t many women around. They couldn’t afford to shun any. After a while, there wasn’t a family that didn’t have a connection to one of Miss Jean’s girls.”
    “Including your family?”
    “Oh, no, none of Miss Jean’s girls were in my family tree. Miss Jean herself. Married my grandfather’s uncle.”
    She laughed. A genuine, true laugh.
    Their ships would pass. He would return to his Knighton and his ranch. She would move on to wherever next. But they had right now. Right this instant.
    That had to be enough.
    He put his arm around her, and she forgot everything else.
    “There you two are,” Lydia said, making a production out of coming around a back curtain. She’d have made less noise with a set of cymbals. “I’d’ve knocked, but there’s no door. C’mon, the bus is about to leave.”
    “We’ll walk back,” Donna said quickly.
    They had tonight
.
    “No, we won’t. Too late.” Ed stood, holding out his hand to her as if she’d need help getting out of the chair.
    “It’s not —”
    “Not going to have you out on the streets this time of night with only me to look out for you.”
    “Ed —”
    “Donna.”
    Looking up at him, she knew they were riding back in the bus, just as they’d eaten at the diner.
    She thought about that on the bus ride.
    Ed Currick was mostly a very easy-going person. Until he encountered something he felt was the right thing to do.
    Or not the right thing to do.
    So how would he react to her trying to get him into bed?

CHAPTER SIX
    Saturday
     
    “Flat.”
    Brad appeared out of nowhere and shot the single word at her as she’d trailed the others to the dressing room after the matinee.
    “No way. When — ?” she started indignantly. Then she realized she didn’t recall a single note of the numbers she’d performed.
    “Whole thing, beginning to end. No oomph at all.”
    He’d meant her performance. She released her shoulders back into a slump. “Sorry, Brad. I’ll do better tonight.”
    “Better.”
    He might have simply repeated her word. More likely it was an order. Possibly a threat. He was gone before she felt any obligation to find out which. She didn’t particularly care, because —
    “He wasn’t here this afternoon, was he?”
    Donna’s head came up at Maudie’s voice. The older woman stepped forward from a shadow.
    “Who wasn’t — ?”
    Maudie stopped the charade with a shake of her head. “Ed Currick of the Slash-C Ranch in Knighton, Wyoming. Is that because you had sex with him last night or because you didn’t?”
    “
Maudie
!”
    “Are you shocked I know about sex? Or that you want it. No, no, don’t answer. Go get out of your makeup and into your clothes, and come to my room down that corridor.”
    “I’m going to get some food with the girls —”
    “You need rest before tonight’s show, and reasonable discussion. Not chattering. Now, do what I say. Fifteen minutes, I will expect you.”
    ****
    Maudie’s room was surely as dingy and tattered as the rest of backstage, but that wasn’t what Donna saw after knocking and being invited to enter.
    Warmth and comfort and ease.
    A muted paisley throw formed a backdrop — pinned to a clothesline, Donna eventually realized. An oriental patterned rug warmed a rectangle of floor. A small lamp’s glow contrasted with the sharp makeup lights of the dressing room and with the dimness of the rest of backstage.
    “Maudie, this is . . . Where did you get all this?”
    “My special things travel