Wildstar

She stayed there all evening, too heartsick to contem­plate facing anyone. She hoped Flo would handle getting dinner on the table, because she couldn't move. All she could do was lie there, curled in a ball, and sob.

When Riley came home from the mine, she pleaded illness—which alarmed him considerably until she finally confessed that no, she wasn't sick, it was only that Devlin had come back and she had seen him, but she didn't want to talk about it and would Riley please leave her alone? With an odd mingling of concern and relief on his face, Riley tiptoed from the room and shut the door behind him, leaving Jess to her misery.

She couldn't sleep at all that night. Instead she pounded her pillow and hugged her pain to herself and cursed her stupidity for ever falling in love with that handsome snake. She should have known better than to trust any man who had his kind of wealth and power.

The next morning fury and pride took over. Exhausted but dry-eyed, Jess marched over to the boardinghouse and did battle with chores and dustballs. The first time Flo mentioned Devlin, though, Jess blew up, declaring she didn't want to have anything to do with that two-timing sidewinder, that she didn't even want to hear his name!

It was two days before she was calm enough to tell Flo what had actually happened. They were out back of the boardinghouse, cleaning carpets by beating them with brooms.

"I saw him kiss that woman right there on the street!" she gritted out through her teeth as she took her bitter jeal­ousy out on the hapless carpet.

"Maybe there's a simple explanation. Why don't you ask him about it?"

Jess gave another fierce swing, wishing it were Devlin she was hitting. 'There's an explanation, all right! He's a lecher. With absolutely no discrimination! He has to try and charm anything in skirts."

"Lord have mercy, gal, you can't expect a man like that to live like a monk."

"I can, too!"

Flo was a bit more practical. "A gorgeous fella like him must have dozens of women runnin' after him. He'd have to be a saint to refuse every one of them."

"That woman wasn't running after him. He was kissing her, confound it!"

"Well, it's not like he was married. Once he gets hitched he'll settle down."

"How can you possibly believe that?"

'"Cause a man like that only marries for two reasons, money or love. And Devlin sure as shootin' doesn't need the money. If he was to marry you, it'd only be because you got his heart all tied up in knots."

That mollified Jess to only the slightest degree. "He doesn't have a heart," she muttered. "And I don't want to marry him. I don't want anything to do with a man I can't trust out of my sight, one who can't be faithful even be­fore the wedding."

"Listen to yourself, Jess. You're not makin' a lick o' sense. Before the wedding is when a man is supposed to sow his oats."

Jess made a sound that was halfway between a sob and a shriek, and took her fury out on the carpets.

Flo shook her head. "Listen to me, gal. You love him, you better go after him and not leave him to some soiled dove who can only give him the pleasures of the flesh."

"I don't love him! I despise him! Oh, just don't talk to me about him!"

Jess meant it. She only wanted to forget Devlin so she could mend her shattered heart and get on with her life.

Trouble was, nobody would let her forget him. It was impossible not to dwell on her heartbreak when everyone around her seemed determined to remind her of it.

Flo was bad enough. In spite of Jess's expressed wishes, the widow found a way to bring the subject of Devlin into the conversation upwards of ten times a day. But Riley was worse. He rarely mentioned Devlin's name, but his el­oquent silences made it very clear he was disappointed in her. Jess began to feel like she was at fault for spurning Devlin.

She knew Riley met with him. That became rather ob­vious when Riley kept leaving various equipment receipts signed with Devlin's bold signature on the kitchen table in plain sight for her to find. Jess knew enough about mining to figure out they were expanding the Wildstar operation big-time, and that Devlin's money was financing it. Even with the mine's vast increase in silver production during the month since the strike, Riley couldn't yet afford on his own to invest in an expensive steam-powered hoist and headframe and all the other tons of hard-rock equipment it would take to bring the Wildstar up to a first-class opera­tion and enable it to compete with the huge consolidated mines.

Jess refused to ask her father about the expansion, though—which only made her feel left out. Until now Riley had always discussed every aspect of his business affairs with her, but this time he was proceeding without her, in league with Devlin. It hurt, knowing that her father was siding with that polecat.

She couldn't understand, either, why Devlin even con­tinued to remain in Colorado. Surely he didn't need to oversee every little detail of the Wildstar enterprise. Riley was more than capable of managing on his own. And Dev­lin had fulfilled his original purpose for coming to Silver Plume. Three of the train robbers were behind prison bars, while the other three had been sentenced to hang. The as­pen leaves turned gaudy gold and began to fall, but even after Devlin testified at the trial, he still didn't return to Chicago.

Jess had been called as a witness at the trial, as well. She'd performed her duty with as much expedience as possible, getting in and out in one afternoon. And yet see­ing Devlin again, merely being in the same courtroom with him, was sheer torture. He looked so handsome he took her breath away. In fact, he commanded the attention of everyone in the room, dressed as he was in a superbly tailored wool suit that spelled money, leisure, power.

He didn't make the slightest move to speak to her, or even approach her, though. Certainly he made no attempt to apologize for kissing that woman—which was the only way she could have forgiven him.

Her heart aching, Jess tried to ignore him, and yet she was aware of every move Devlin made, every person he spoke to, every occasion when he turned his head in her direction. He watched her sometimes, she knew that. It had been all she could do to sit there in the witness box with Devlin's shrewd gray gaze boring into her.

Her heartache was even harder to bear because she thought that the courtroom might be the last place she ever saw him. Jess braced herself for Devlin's departure after­ward. The weather grew cold, bringing chilling fr