Wildstar

She didn't reply.

"Jess, I know what I'm doing."

When still she didn't respond, Riley carefully got up from the table, clutching his chest and avoiding his daugh­ter's accusing gaze. "I'm going up to the mine."

That gave Jess a start. "Riley you can't, your wound—"

"My wound's fine. It only hurts like the devil. And it's about time I got back on my feet and did something for myself, instead of letting you and Devlin carry all the load. Somebody has to check out the damage and figure out how it can be fixed, and I'm still the best one to do it. It's still my mine."

His low tone held stubbornness and pride and left no room for argument. Jess knew better than to try.

He walked over to the wall by the door where coats and hats were hung on pegs. Taking down his hat, he put it on and let himself out quietly.

Hearing the door close, Jess felt the raw ache of tears prick her throat. Why did it suddenly feel like her whole world was collapsing around her?

When Jess showed up at the boardinghouse twenty-five minutes later, Flo scolded her for getting out of bed so soon after her ordeal. But she wasn't about to laze about all day, not when there was work to be done, and not when she had only her own despairing thoughts for company. The only way she could get through the day without dwelling on the past week's disturbing events, Jess fig­ured, was by keeping busy.

There was a good deal of household work that had failed to get done in her absence. All the dusting, cleaning, dishwashing, laundering, airing bed linens, ironing, mend­ing, baking, ordering supplies, carrying out stove ashes, trimming lamp wicks and filling the bases with kerosene— all the thousand and one chores that were required to care for two dozen rugged bachelors—were too much for Flo and Mei Lin and Mr. Kwan to handle alone. Jess plunged in with a vengeance, grateful for the occupation. At least here, in her own familiar domain, she could exercise a small amount of control over her life, something that was sorely lacking in the rest of her existence.

It was perhaps two hours later that a delivery wagon from Greene's Drugstore in Georgetown pulled up at the back door.

"Since when do you order from Greene's?" Flo de­manded, peering out the kitchen window.

Jess pulled her hands out of the pie dough she'd been working and wiped them on a towel, a puzzled look on her face. Greene's was altogether too fancy and expensive a store for her to patronize. In fact, the last time she'd shopped there was seven years ago when she was hunting for a special Christmas present for her mother.

The delivery boy came to the door, carrying two pack­ages, each tied up in a red bow. He couldn't, or wouldn't, say who had commissioned the purchases, but both were for Miss Jessica Sommers.

When the boy had gone, Jess sat down at the huge wooden table to open the packages. One turned out to be a large crystal jar of bath salts that smelled of lavender. The other was an elegant bottle of glycerin hand lotion scented with roses.

"Jess, you sly thing," Flo said, grinning. "You got you a new beau. That handsome devil Devlin is sweet on you."

"No, he isn't," Jess protested automatically, staring down at the gifts.

"A man doesn't give presents like this to a girl who's not his sweetheart."

"No, you don't understand. . . . He's only keeping a promise he made when we were trapped in the mine. He said if we got out alive, he would buy me something to put on my hands."

"Uh-huh." Flo's grin didn't waver one bit. "I understand all right. That gorgeous fella is courtin' you."

Jess didn't know how to answer that charge. She'd never felt more confused in her life. On the one hand, Devlin had walked out of her life without so much as a by your leave, and then gone behind her back to strike a deal with her father to buy into the mine.

On the other hand, he'd given her these expensive presents. The crystal jar alone had to have cost at least ten dollars—enough to pay two full days' wages for a miner, or cover the cost of room and board at her place for nearly a week. He shouldn't have done it. It was sinful, spending that kind of money on something so frivolous. But still . . .

She touched the delicate crystal timorously. It gave her a strange, warm feeling inside to think Devlin cared enough to give her something so beautiful. She'd never had a present so lovely.

"I say he's taken a fancy to you," Flo declared again. "The question is, do you fancy him back?"

Could she answer that question? Did she fancy Devlin? Was she actually falling in love with him?

No, it was impossible. She would be a fool to follow that dangerous path. She had no business harboring such tender feelings for a gambler, a professional gamester who made his living wagering on men's ill luck. Besides, he wouldn't want her love. He'd already made that plain enough.

She didn't want to fall in love with a man like him, ei­ther. She wanted a man she could look up to, a man who was dependable and honest and hardworking.

And yet she couldn't deny the hot, flushed feeling she got every time she remembered Devlin's kisses, his ca­resses. Or the rapid quickening of her pulse when she re­called how it had felt to have him moving inside her. Or the soft glow in her heart when she thought of how protec­tive and caring he'd been.

Warm, insistent memories tugged at her constantly . . . Devlin keeping her calm in that awful crushing darkness. Devlin making her laugh. Devlin turning her inside out with his magical touch. If she wasn't in love with him yet, she was dangerously close.

That gentle, bewildering feeling lasted only an hour. Jess was still trying to make sense of the turmoil in her heart when a small band of Chinese laborers showed up on her back doorstep—three women and two men, all dressed in wide-sleeved tunics and straight trousers, flat wide-brimmed straw hats, and glossy black pigtails. None of them spoke much English, and the words they could say didn't make a lick of sense. They seemed to think they were to be employed at the Sommers's board-inghouse.