Wildstar

He was also charming, smooth, and every bit a ladies' man. She had no business thinking about him in any way but a professional one—

The thought screeched to a halt as Jess suddenly real­ized what Devlin was doing. He had already taken off his elegant coat and vest and stored them in the trunk, and his long fingers were making rapid work of the buttons on his fancy shirt.

Her eyes widened as he pulled the garment off, baring his powerful shoulders and chest. Jess shot to her feet, nearly losing the shotgun that had been cradled in her lap. He was all lean muscle and rough curling hair, and the masculine sight made her pulse race.

Devlin merely gave her an amused glance, as casual about his nudity as he had been about threatening Hank Purcell. "You going to shoot me?"

"N-no, but . . . I th-think I'll wait outside," Jess stam­mered as she edged toward the door.

"Maybe that would be a good idea," Devlin said with the teasing silver fire of devilment in his eyes. "I'll join you when I've changed."

Averting her gaze, she practically threw the brandy glass on the bureau top and got herself out of that room, closing the door firmly behind her. Devlin's whiskey-mellow laugh followed her down the hall, making her cheeks burn.

She waited outside on the stairs in the August night, grateful for the pleasant breeze off the mountains that cooled the heat of her embarrassment. How could she have shown so little dignity, running off like that? Devlin must think her green as grass after all the fancy women he'd known.

But then she was green about men like him, Jess re­flected. She'd only just turned sixteen when her mother died. She hadn't minded in the least leaving that fancy school in Denver to take over running the Sommers Boardinghouse, nor had she minded the hard work; it only helped numb her grief over losing her mother. But having to look after Riley and two dozen other hungry miners had left her no time for pleasure or the pursuits other girls her age enjoyed. No time to think about marriage, either. There weren't enough hours left in the day to allow a man to pay her court, even if one had ever caught her eye, which hadn't happened. She'd scarcely ever noticed the opposite gender before, at least not in that way.

Certainly no man had ever affected her the way Garrett Devlin did. She'd seen bare male chests before, but none had ever hit her with a wallop like a kick from one of Clem's mules. Devlin's body was as perfect as his face, it seemed. But how had he gotten those muscles in his shoulders and arms? All the gamblers she knew of would have sold their mothers' souls before lifting a hand to do phys­ical labor.

Trying to dismiss her improper thoughts, Jess glanced heavenward. From where she stood, she could see the dark outlines of Sherman and Republican mountains, whose mines provided the livelihood for most of Silver Plume's twelve hundred or so residents. Silver Plume was situated some fifty miles due west of Denver, at the bottom of a vast hollow, hemmed in by the towering Rockies. A wide, rushing stream called Clear Creek ran through the middle of town and continued down the canyon, channeling be­tween high, precipitous walls of rock for two miles till it reached Georgetown, where Jess had been born.

Her father, Riley, had been lured there, along with thou­sands of other prospectors, during the Pikes Peak gold rush in '59. With its fabulous discoveries of silver ore, Georgetown had grown up almost overnight. Dubbed the Silver Queen of the Rockies, it was now the county seat, with a population of five thousand, making it the third largest city in Colorado.

A decade after the first rush, Silver Plume was estab­lished as a silver camp. Seeking greener pastures, Riley had moved his family there and played a small part in turning "The Plume" into a roaring, prosperous mining town.

The settlement had started with a single street and spread out in a ramshackle fashion, with hundreds of drab, hastily erected shacks crowded together on the valley floor of Clear Creek Canyon. Silver Plume now was no longer quite so shabby, though. Many of the shacks had been re­placed by small clapboard houses, and the commercial dis­trict boasted numerous stores, a dozen saloons and hotels, several eating places, a lumberyard, three Chinese laun­dries, two churches, and an office for the town's own weekly newspaper, as well as the stamp mills that were the lifeblood of any Western mining town and boardinghouses like the one Jess ran, which lodged and fed the hundreds of hard-rock miners of the Plume.

Thinking about how tough those early days had been, Jess managed to get her pulse rate under control by the time Devlin came out, but it quickened again as soon as she saw him in the moonlight. He had buckled on his six-shooters, and with the dual Colts riding his hips and a black, low-crowned Stetson shadowing his face, he looked like one of those hard men who lived by the gun.

Jess found herself staring, despite her best intentions. Devlin had one thumb hooked in his gun belt, while the other hand carried his carpetbag and a Winchester rifle. Below that belt, the rough denim of his trousers stretched across masculine contours, calling attention to creases only a man would have. Unnerved again, she looked away. It wouldn't matter what he was wearing, Jess decided—or not wearing, for that matter. He would always make a woman think forbidden, dangerous thoughts.

"Did you come to town expecting a war?" she asked in an unsteady voice.

"Never hurts to be prepared. Where do we go from here?"

"Home. Afterward I can take you up to the mine—that is, if you don't mind starting right away?"

He thought of the comfortable hotel bed he'd just walked away from and sighed inwardly. "That's fine."

"Good. I'm afraid of leaving the mine unprotected. I should have thought of it before, but if Burke means to try something, it might be tonight, when he knows the Wildstar's unguarded. Do you have a horse?"

"No, I came in on the train."

"You can use my father's for a while, and maybe later on you could rent one of your own. There's a livery stable near our place."

Jess led the way down the stairs and along the street till she came to the mare she had borrowed from Carson's Livery.

"We can walk to the house," she told Devlin. "It isn't all that far. I only needed a mount because I had to look for Burke."

Devlin hooked his carpetbag over the horn of the lady's sidesaddle and shoved the rifle in the boot. Politely taking the mare's reins from Jess, he fell into step beside her as she headed west, toward the residential side of town.

"Burke lives in Georgetown," Jess explained, "in a big fancy house, and I went there first. But his butler said he was here in Silver Plume. I had to go to two of Burke's other saloons before I finally tracked him down at the Di­amond Dust."

"That must have been an interesting sight if you stormed into his other places the way you did here."

Hearing the amusement in Devlin's tone, Jess flushed and didn't answer.

"What precisely does Hank Purcell do for Burke, any­way?" Devlin asked a moment later.