Gold Rush Groom

chapter Two





Jack Snow rested one hand on the final crate and stared out at the water that had almost claimed his only chance. They had saved the lot. Together, and with her horse of a hound, they’d reached safety with all his equipment and tools intact. He had read about the tidal bores, of course, but that couldn’t compare to riding the mountainous waves that heaved through the narrow inlet. He’d never imagined having to fight one. Now that he and all his goods were past the high-water mark, he stared a moment, finding the phenomenon fascinating. His father would love to see this!

That thought dashed Jack’s exaltation as memories rolled in, relentless as any rising tide. There was no sense in looking back. If he was to be his own man, his future lay ahead.

The big dog whined, anxious to get under way. Jack glanced at the beast, happy for the distraction.

The black bitch was strong as any mule, she could swim better than a Labrador and in water as cold as an ice bath. He eyed the huge shaggy creature. How much weight could one dog pull?

The dog’s mistress stepped beside her, grounding Jack’s thoughts firmly in the here and now. Their eyes met.

Damn it to hell.

The permanence of their arrangement crept over him slowly like a thin layer of ice on a mill pond. He felt sick to his stomach as he thought of all the things that might happen to her while she was in his keeping. Another female in his care, the idea pressed down upon his shoulders, making it hard to breathe. But if he hadn’t agreed, then what would become of the two he’d left behind? His carefully laid plans had already begun to crumble like old masonry. He thought he might be sick.

To provide for the two at home, he had to save his gear, and that meant there really was no choice at all. The little hellion had entrapped him as neatly as any spider. With luck, she’d find someone better and drop him like yesterday’s news, just like his fiancée had done when she’d heard of his family’s ruin.

Why hadn’t the available information about the Yukon included something about this mayhem arrival? Jack had planned and studied, taking into account the cold, snow and ice, anticipated river travel and mountain-climbing. He had calculated his supplies and equipment with the excruciating exactitude of the mechanical engineer he had nearly become, taking in every eventuality but one. He had not, in his wildest dreams, imagined that the Pacific Coast Steamship Company would not have constructed a proper dock in Dyea on which to moor their vessel.

Sunk by unforeseen circumstances. Was he no wiser than his father, risking all on one wild venture?

Perhaps not, but he was stronger than his sire, for he’d not cut and run at the first sign of adversity. He might look the part of a dandy, as his new partner had assumed, but he was that man no longer. Circumstances had changed him. Now he needed to succeed just as badly as anyone here. More, in fact. Jack needed to seize the glimmering opportunity to restore what his father had lost—their good name, the respect of his peers, the ability to care for what was left of his family and the future that he still craved. He would reach that gold-bearing gravel in Eldorado Creek so he could try his invention, even if he had to carry this female all the way to Forty Mile.

He glanced at the woman—his partner—giving her a critical once-over. The lift of her pointed chin, the slight curve fixed upon her lips and the narrowing of her eyes made her look both beautiful and wary. No doubt she was trying to size him up as well. He knew she was surprisingly strong for one stricken with such a diminutive body, but she was still only a woman and so his physical and mental inferior. She stood motionless in her crimson coat. Her cuffs and hood were adorned with lush dark fur, possibly wolf. The tight fit showed her to be petite, curvaceous and trim, exactly the type of woman he’d like to bed, but not at all the kind he would choose as a traveling companion. The only thing about her that did not speak of feminine grace was the large Colt repeater strapped to her hip. It seemed impossibly large against her small frame as evidenced by the extra bore holes that kept the wide belt from sliding off her flaring hips. She wore it cinched at the narrowest part of her waist, entirely too high for a quick draw. He wondered if the ancient weapon even fired.

Jack raked both hands through his hair, stopping to cradle his head for a moment as he searched the beach for help. When his gaze finally returned it was to find her studying him.

The woman arrested him with her stunning blue eyes, framed by spiky dark lashes and raven brows that arched as she stared at him in silence. His arms dropped to his sides.

What was she doing here in the first place? Didn’t she have family or friends to shelter her? A strong wind might blow her off the mountain.

Surely he could make her see reason. He knew females had a knack for self-preservation and a proclivity to latch on to the best provider, at least that’s what Nancy had done, returning his ring and taking up with Jonathan Martin as quickly after his father’s death as propriety permitted. He was a good choice, all in all, with his family’s mills lining the Connecticut River from Hartford to Springfield. Was this one like her? If so, he need only find her a better partner to be rid of her.

She leaned forward and he was unable to prevent himself from doing the same. She drew him to her as surely as a magnet draws iron and he could not resist her allure. Her voice was sultry and low, as her breath brushed his cheek like a summer breeze off the Narragansett Bay.

“Don’t even think about reneging on our agreement.”

He straightened, affronted by her accusation, until he realized he had been thinking that exactly. He’d made an agreement, given his word and yet here he was trying to wiggle out of the deal. He knew what his father would have done in similar circumstances and that made the choice easy.

He met the accusation in her gaze.

“I won’t. I’m yours until Dawson.”

She laughed. “That’s fine then.”

What could the little minx possibly think to do inland? She couldn’t hope to be a miner—could she? The work alone would kill her before the ice even froze to the river bottoms.

“What is there in Dawson for you?” he asked, considering that she might be more than she appeared, for here she was alone on a beach making her way without help. If the circumstances were reversed, could he have done as well? He gave her a grudging respect for her pluck.

“Adventure and gold, of course.”

Why was he not surprised that she was after riches?

He narrowed his eyes on her, wondering what kind of a woman he had partnered with.

“Adventure?”

She nodded.

“But what will you do there?”

“I can sew or cook or sing. I’ve done all those and more to make my way here.”

“A singer?”

Could he possibly have found a woman who would be more useless on the trail?

“Aren’t you the sharp tack? Bet you graduated first in your class.”

He hadn’t graduated, though he’d been in line to be valedictorian. Likely be Francis Cobbler now. No, don’t think about those days, back when you had everything ahead of you, before the world crumbled beneath your feet.

If she noticed his sour mood turning icy cold, she gave no sign, merely laughed, a musical tinkling sound that made the muscles of his abdomen tighten.

“Gold is quite difficult to extract.”

Her smile turned his insides to oatmeal. “Oh, there’s more to life than gold. And anyway, I’ll not starve.” She placed a hand on her hip and smiled coquettishly. “And I’ve a life to live, if I can get over those fool mountains.” She gave him a direct stare, reminding him without a word of the promise he had made. He’d never met a woman like her. And what was she talking about, life being more than gold? Obviously, but most of those here were not arriving for the fun of freezing in the passes. He could not figure her.

She gave him a questioning look, her sculpted brows lifting. “We will make it, won’t we?”

He couldn’t think when he looked at her. Why was he thinking about kissing her? Perhaps it was the nearly irresistible temptation of her raspberry-colored lips.

As the woman waited for some response, she rested her hand easily on the grip of her pistol as if it were a walking stick. Did she not expect him to uphold his end of the bargain? Well, he would.

He couldn’t keep the growl from rumbling in his throat. “We’ll make it.”

That made her smile.

“Yes, we will.” She stroked the black dog’s head. The beast closed its eyes to savor her mistress’s touch and Jack found himself suddenly and unreasonably jealous.

“I’m Jack Snow,” he said.

“Lily Delacy Shanahan. And this,” she indicated her hound, “is Nala.” She nodded and then pressed both fists to her hips, regarding him as if he had just tracked mud onto her clean kitchen floor. “You’re shivering.”

Her expression was so dark he found himself resisting the urge to tremble, succeeding momentarily, before the jerking spasms sent his teeth knocking together again.

“Follow me.” She tugged at the dog’s harness and set the cart in motion.

“What about my things?”

She turned away from Jack and let loose an earsplitting whistle, which brought a scrappy young man to her. “Watch these.” She told him as she pressed something into his palm.

“You betcha,” said the lad.

Lily looked back at him and then set off again, bringing less than half of his gear along. He stood for a minute torn between following and remaining with the rest of his belongings. Could this be an elaborate scheme to rob him?

In the end, his shivering got the better of him and he hurried to catch up. They followed a hard-packed trail up over the rocky beach. Everywhere, men stacked bags and boxes of their belongings. Some had even staked their tents right there where the rock met the scrappy willow. As they continued, the hum of eager conversation and shouted orders drowned out the crashing waves that had almost destroyed him.

The road widened as they crossed through the willows. Her dog strained to pull his things up the incline. Lily glanced back at him.

“Well? Push!”

He scowled, far more used to giving orders than taking them. But he did as she bade, and together, he and the hound managed to crest the rise. The dog received all of the praise, while he did not even gain a backward glance. He frowned, more at the realization that he wanted her attention than from the lack of it. That would not do. He refused to become bewitched by a little firebrand like this. He was stuck with her, but he didn’t have to like it.

Ahead lay Dyea, a large tent city with stripped logs for street posts and only a few timber structures. Cold, dark mud turned the streets to quagmire and crept up the canvas that passed for buildings here. Some of the tents were large enough to hold a circus, but instead of sawdust and prancing white ponies, they held rows of rough-hewn tables with hungry men eating in makeshift restaurants. They passed Brackett’s Trading Post, singular for its two stories and five glass windows, though no one had yet painted the exterior, which had already weathered to a dark gray. A steady stream of stampeders picked their way along with horses and mules. He wished he could trade places with any one of them.

Each of the tents had a stovepipe poking from the roof like the stem of an apple. He was glad he had one himself, a very light efficient stove that burned nearly five hours on just two split logs. Lily turned down this road and up the next until he was thoroughly lost in the maze of identical canvases.

She stopped before an unremarkable tent that looked hardly big enough for one, let alone two.

“This is it,” she said.

He frowned.

“You’re not much of a poker player, I imagine,” she said.

He glanced at her, trying to understand the cryptic comment but she only laughed and patted him amiably on the shoulder, then began unloading his gear. She was so petit. How would she endure the journey? In a few moments they had his belongings stacked beside the tent flap.

“You have clothes in here?” She indicated the pile.

He stared in mute astonishment as he realized his duffel with all his personal belongings lay back with the unknown lad. He could not fathom the oversight. Jack needed to do better if he was to succeed. The Yukon would be no more forgiving than the banks back home had been. He gritted his clattering teeth. There was no way to recapture what was lost. His only choice was to start again.

His mother disagreed. This expedition terrified her. She had told him that having lost her husband she could not bear the thought of losing her only son, as well. It pained him to worry her and he did fear what would become of them should he not return. Were it up to his mother, he’d be safe at home looking for a wife with a fortune. The thought turned his stomach. He would be his own man, despite the risks. Her latest telegram had reached him in Seattle, begging him to reconsider. He’d written that he was pressing on. He’d earn his fortune and return to have his pick of the New York debutants. He’d have his old life back or return like a whipped dog.

He looked up to find her staring at him.

She shook her head in dismay. “Go on in and strip out of those things. Take a blanket off my bed and heat the coffee. It’s in the pot. You do know how to rake coals and start a fire?”

“Of course.”

She made a harrumphing sound as if she did not believe it. It occurred to him suddenly that he might not be her ideal partner, either, though he could not see her objection. She turned the dog cart and stopped. “Leave the flap open or your crates will likely walk away on you. You have a pistol?”

“Not on me.”

“I find they do more good when they are carried in plain sight.” She patted the handle of her Colt. “You’re not at Yale now, college boy. There are thieves everywhere here.”

With that she set the cart in motion, as he wondered if she were among the thieves. Was this even her tent?

“Princeton, actually.”

She shrugged and continued on.

He shouted after her. “And how do you know I went to college?”

She called back without stopping. “Only an educated man would be fool enough to carry a crate of books to the Yukon. Might make good tinder, I suppose.”

He looked at the broken crate, lid askew. On top lay his copy of The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, edited by Jean Paul Richter. The woman acted as if it were a box of dumbbells or some other useless fodder.

Eventually his shivering forced him into retreat, but he kept the tent flap up. The woman was shrewd with the kind of knowledge that did not come from a classroom, he’d give her that.

The inside of her tent was much more spartan than he had anticipated. In his experience, women shared a pack rat’s propensity for dragging home bits of glitter and fluff. Lily Delacy Shanahan’s tent looked as if it belonged to a new cadet. Her bed was made with sharp corners. Her wood supply was ample and well away from the stove. She had a small, neat kitchen area all set up, including the coffeepot. He sloshed the contents and found it still half-full. Jack stoked the coals and added kindling, sighing in relief as the flames lapped around the slender branches. She had one crate beside the bed and a sack, sewn from a piece of canvas, hanging from a tent post. He shrugged at the oddness of her private quarters. His shivering made it difficult to unbutton his sodden coat. Jack’s trembling fingers looked ghostly white from lack of blood as he wrestled with his sweater and flannel shirt. Then he peeled out of his union suit, bringing it down to his waist. Only when he was holding his soaked garments did he notice the clothesline stretched tight over the stove. He added organized to her list of attributes as he threw his things over the line and then held his hands out to the stove. It was no good. The shaking was worse and his skin was as puckered-up as a plucked chicken’s. A glance at his nail beds startled him. The blue tinge had him doing as she had instructed, removing the red Hudson’s Bay blanket from her bed and wrapping it over his shoulders. The coarse wool grazed his damp skin as her scent reached him and he paused to inhale—cinnamon. The shivering brought him close to the stove. He set the coffeepot on the top and then jumped up and down until his numb feet began to tingle.

A few minutes later the coffeepot steamed and he poured himself a hot mug. He inhaled the aroma and hummed in pleasure.

“Take off your boots!” Lily harped from the street.

Jack nearly dropped his coffee. He glanced down at the ground and saw it was hard-packed earth, making her request totally illogical.

“You can’t track dirt onto dirt,” he said, thinking that reasoning with a woman was as productive as explaining physics to a cocker spaniel.

“Your feet are wet. You have to warm them or you’ll get frostbite.”

She was correct again, though he wouldn’t say so aloud. She knelt before him, muttering as her agile fingers worked the laces from the eyelets. Then she slapped his calf as if he were a horse needing his hooves picked clean. He shifted his weight, giving her his foot and trying very hard not to drop the hot coffee on her head. She pulled and the boot came away.

“I was about to get to those,” he muttered. Just as soon as I can feel my fingers again.

She cast him a displeased glance. “And leave a toe or two here in Dyea? Now that I’ve got you, I’ll be damned if I’ll let your toes turn black.”

“It’s barely below freezing.”

She ignored that and returned her attention to his feet. He’d only wanted to warm his hands a moment first and then she’d blown in like a March wind. His jaws now tapped like the signal key of a telegraph.

“The other,” she ordered and repeated the process.

But this time the blanket slipped to the floor. He placed the cup on the top of the stove and then stooped to recover it, just as she did the same.

They nearly banged heads and came up standing face-to-face with the blanket stretched between them. It was only then that he realized she was staring wide-eyed at his naked torso. His impulse was to grab the blanket and cover himself, but something about her startled expression stayed him. Her cheeks flushed and her lips separated as she inhaled. He recognized the look of carnal desire and couldn’t move now if he tried, for she had arrested him. His entire body tensed. Her azure eyes lifted from his chest to stare up at him. She inched closer.

The cold that had gripped him like an icy fist melted in the heat of her gaze, warming him inside and out.

She lifted her free hand and reached for him. His heart galloped into a wild pulsing rhythm, sending fountains of blood to his groin. Dear Lord in heaven, she managed to arouse him without so much as a touch. The touch came an instant later when she used her index finger to stroke his chest, as if skimming cream from a bowl.

“You’re cold,” she whispered, her voice a second caress.

His mind filled with all the ways she could warm him and he took an aggressive step in her direction, lifting his hands to capture her shoulders, needing to bring her against him. But she resisted and he let go. She stumbled back, now gripping the blanket with both hands. Her expression had changed in that instant, going from an open invitation to one of ill-concealed horror. Her fists clenched, holding the coarse wool before her as if it were some kind of magic shield that would protect her from him.

It wouldn’t.

“We’re not that kind of partners,” she said.

His brain knew it, but his body was still beating the order to advance. He listened to his body, stepping forward, reaching again in an effort to recapture what was already lost, that heat she had given him with her flashing eyes and that one single touch.

She stepped back. “No.”

Even with his blood pounding through his ears like hoofbeats, he was gentleman enough to understand that. He halted. His current befuddlement had nothing whatsoever to do with the cold. No, this was all to do with this woman. He wanted her.

She shook out the blanket and then held it up.

He turned and she wrapped the red wool about his shoulders, her arms encircling his neck for just an instant before she retreated again.

Jack turned, now cloaked in his cape. She blew out a breath as one does after a narrow escape. But she had not escaped yet. Why had she done it? Had his nakedness precipitated her rash action? It gave him a sense of power he’d never felt before and filled his mind with possibilities.

“Lily?” He had no idea what to say beyond that. How did a man express such a physical desire to a woman he had met scarcely two hours earlier? He couldn’t. His heartbeat returned to a more normal pace and the erection, which had sprung to action like a soldier to the signal to charge, now returned to at-ease. He began to shiver again.

“Drink your coffee,” she instructed.

He didn’t. Instead he held her gaze.

“Why did you touch me like that?”