Wildstar

"He's the mine superintendent for the Lady J. That's the claim next to ours, the one Burke wants to link up with the Wildstar."

They both fell silent then. A buggy went by in the street, its wheels rattling. Afterward, the only sounds were their footsteps and the gentle clop of the mare.

Jess cherished the quiet. Tomorrow Silver Plume would be teeming with buckboards and ore wagons and mules and rough men, but tonight the town slept in the dark shadow of the mountains. She found herself looking around her, trying to see it through Devlin's eyes. The double row of wood-frame stores and saloons, many of which had false fronts to make them appear two stories tall, looked like a hundred other main streets in the West. Nothing special, but it was home.

She would have liked to say Silver Plume was attract­ive, but it still held the raw simplicity of a frontier town. The hard-packed dirt streets turned to a sea of mud when it rained, and there were no trees to speak of—very few of the evergreens and quaking aspens and big cottonwoods that lined the residential streets of nearby Georgetown.

Silver Plume couldn't compare to Georgetown in size or sophistication, either. Miners and working-class folks lived here, while the wealthy silver barons and powerful railroad magnates built their mansions there. Georgetown boasted numerous attractive Victorian buildings, including an opera house and several first-class hotels, the premier one being the fancy French Hotel de Paris. The residential sec­tions were filled with neat clapboard dwellings ringed by white picket fences and brightened by colorful flower gar­

dens.

The entertainment in Georgetown was far more elegant as well—concerts and singing societies and theater per­formances, rather than the rock-drilling contests and wres­tling matches Silver Plume usually offered. Jess wondered what had drawn Devlin here.

Oh, yes, gambling.

She stole a glance at him. What would Clem say when he learned she'd hired a smooth-talking stranger—a no-account gambler, at that? Clem would take one look at Devlin's sleek good looks and suave manner and dismiss him as a dude.

But Devlin had agreed to help her protect the mine. Even if she didn't think much of him personally, she was willing to overlook his faults—and Clem would just have to as well.

She turned south at the next corner and led Devlin down a quiet back street for two blocks, between dozens of small, closely packed miners' cottages of similar design. It was darker here, away from the few streetlamps Silver Plume possessed, but the moonlight was bright enough to outline the large, white, two-story frame building fifty yards down on the right.

"That's our boardinghouse," Jess said, directing Dev­lin's gaze. "My grandfather was a doctor who made a good living. Before he died, he had the place built for my mother so she would always have an income."

"I take it your father's mining ventures weren't too profitable?"

"Mining is a chancy business, Mr. Devlin."

"So I've heard."

At his wry drawl, Jess realized how defensive she must have sounded. His comment hadn't been an accusation against her father for being unable to support his family. She softened her tone. "Taking in boarders provided my mother gainful employment. There aren't too many good jobs for women hereabouts, and she had me to raise."

"She seems to have made a success of it."

"She did well enough. She managed to put by a little for emergencies and to send me to school in Denver, even though I didn't want to go."

She could feel Devlin's gaze searching her face. "And you took your mother's place," he said finally, his tone oddly gentle.

Jess nodded. "I'm not as good a cook as she was—she was the best in all Colorado—but I'm still good. And at least we're always full up. I offer room and board to min­ers and pack a lunch for their shift."

"And you've been doing this for how long?"

"Five years."

Devlin came to a halt suddenly, which made Jess stop, too. She was a bit startled when he placed a finger under her chin and tilted her face up to his, studying her intently. "You couldn't have been more than a child. That's a large burden for a girl to handle alone."

She couldn't prevent the warm flush that seemed to flood her entire body. Devlin was regarding her with an admiring expression, as if she had done something special. But then running the boardinghouse had been a big re­sponsibility back then. She was getting pretty good at it now, but some days she still felt like she had when she was sixteen—small and inadequate and scared. Scared of letting her father down. Riley depended on her to keep things going, and she couldn't fail him. Other times she felt annoyingly female. A man could do so much more than a mere woman could. Like walking into a saloon, or challenging a powerful silver baron like Burke.

It was odd how Devlin seemed to understand what she'd been up against. Odd and disconcerting.

"Oh . . . I don't do it all alone," Jess managed to say a bit breathlessly. "I have help. I told you about the Chinese couple, and there's a widow neighbor who waits on the ta­bles and cooks on Sunday. That's my day off."

"Today."

"Yes."

He let her go and resumed walking. "Your day off didn't turn out too pleasantly."

"No." Quelling a shudder, Jess fell silent again, remem­bering the terror of this morning when they'd brought her father's bleeding body home. But he was going to be all right. And so would his mine, if she had anything to say about it. She wouldn't allow Burke to destroy everything Riley had worked for.