Texas Tiger

chapter 3





For the first time in her life Georgina had a goal, and she wasn't going to give it up without a fight. That factory was going to be hers, and she had every right to be there. She arrived at the office the next day to bring her father a special lunch she'd had the cook make, and she sat outside his door, chatting with his secretary while she waited for him. Her father wasn't the only person in this building who knew the business, and Georgina learned a fascinating number of things listening to Doris.

She could tell by her father's face when he came out that he wasn't pleased to see her. She jumped up and greeted him with a kiss, but the frown was still there as he held her in front of him.

"You shouldn't be here, Georgina. I thought you learned your lesson yesterday. Tell Blucher to take you downtown to buy a pretty hat. This isn't any place for young ladies, and I don't want to see you here again."

"But Papa..."

Gently but firmly, he escorted her to the door. "No 'but Papas' on this, Georgina. Your mother needs your help, not me. Now go on with you and I'll see you tonight."

Georgina bit the inside of her lip to hold back the tears as she found herself abruptly outside the plant and in the hot sunshine again. The factory had evidently shut down for lunch break, and many of the workers had come outside to eat the contents of their lunch buckets. She felt as if every one of them were staring at her and laughing.

As she climbed back into the carriage, defeated, she heard a particularly musical laugh in the street ahead. Clenching her teeth to hold back tears, Georgina sought the source of the sound, and felt all the air leave her lungs at once.

There on the side of the road, talking to the beautiful woman she had sketched the day before, stood the cowboy from the train. So entranced was he with his laughing conversation that he didn't even notice her.

Suddenly overwhelmed by the hopelessness of her goals, Georgina ordered the driver to go on. Tears of frustration stained her cheeks as she looked away from the laughing couple so evidently made for each other.

Perhaps love and romance were only meant for the poor.

* * *

Georgina was wrong about one thing. Daniel had noticed her. It was impossible not to see the elegant creature in flowing silk adorned in a hat that made him think of flower blooms bobbing in a garden. He could almost smell the subtle fragrance of her perfume again just by looking at her.

That was why he saw the tears. He was farsighted and could scarcely discern the print on the paper the woman in front of him was holding, but he could see distances with amazing clarity. Especially when he was staring at them with a fascination he had never intended. She was crying.

That discovery shook him. He had tried to dismiss her from his thoughts as a poor little rich girl with no need of his help, but those tears hit him hard. He was a sucker for tears, always had been. He resented that knowledge, knew it for the failing that it was, but he couldn't make the feeling go away. She was crying, and she needed a friend. He should be that friend.

He'd only been introduced to the woman in front of him the night before, but he'd already learned she was a fountain of information. "Do you know who that was in the carriage?" he asked.

Contempt replaced her earlier laughter. "Her father owns this factory. Why? Do you think her family would let you anywhere near their precious lamb?"

Daniel gave her a placating smile. "Now, Janice, don't let your claws show. I only asked because I saw her on the train and because she was crying just now. I'm curious about people. Why would anyone with all that wealth have a need to cry?"

Janice glanced over her shoulder at the departing carriage. It looked out of place among the water wagons and farm carts and dust-covered horses that made up the only modes of transportation on this end of town. She shook her head as she looked back to Daniel.

"I can't imagine it. She has everything her heart could possibly desire, and now I hear she's going to be married to the man whose family owns the biggest department store in town, so she'll have twice as much. It just doesn't seem fair."

The handsome fiancé with no sense of humor—Daniel remembered the conversation well. Perhaps if he just reassured himself that the man wasn't a total bastard, he would realize Georgina was no more than a spoiled child who didn't know what was good for her. That would put an end to his Don Quixote tendencies.

"What is the biggest department store in town? I haven't been here long enough to know my way around."

The end-of-lunch whistle squealed, and Janice grabbed her skirt, prepared to run back to work. Over her shoulder she answered his question. "Mulloney's. The biggest store in town is owned by Artemis Mulloney. Your girlfriend is going to marry his son Peter."

She was gone before he could comment. Daniel couldn't have replied in any case. Mulloney. It wasn't possible. There couldn't be two Artemis Mulloneys in Cutlerville, Ohio.

The merry Georgina Hanover was marrying his brother.

* * *

Daniel drained his fourth beer and wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. The tavern was dark and drab, and the noise level was growing as workers just off the line filed in.

He glanced around at his surroundings and felt the familiar loneliness creeping up on him again. This certainly wasn't Texas. These men were carrying lunch buckets instead of six-guns. They wore faded blue workshirts and khakis instead of spurs and ten-gallon hats. But they were the same men just the same—men with no families or homes or lives beyond the next beer. Daniel didn't want to be one of them.

But he was. Laying his money down on the counter, he wandered toward the door. He had no head for drink and knew it, but there were times when a man just had to get outside of himself for a while. Tonight had just seemed like one of those times.

The smell of sulfur struck him as he walked outside. He had hoped for a blast of fresh air to clear his head, but the heat and humidity lingered, trapped between these narrow dark streets and towering old buildings. He would have to get out of town to breathe fresh air again.

His feet led the way. He had made inquiries earlier in the day with the thought of finding a hired cab and seeing how the other half lived, but he had never made it farther than the tavern. But now, without conscious thought, his feet were guiding him.

Riding was easier than walking with this leg of his, but he hadn't gotten around to buying a horse. Stabling it would be a problem in the city. He wasn't certain he was ready to take on the extra expense. But he was regretting his lack of transportation as he meandered through the city's main business district.

Mulloney's Department Store stretched the length of one block and the width of another. Daniel had never seen anything like it, but then, he wasn't in the habit of visiting cities. Houston had grown tremendously in the ten years since he had first seen it, but he couldn't remember anything quite the size of this store anywhere in its environs.

Daniel stared upward at story upon story of brick structure. Mulloney's wasn't satisfied with occupying just a block of land, but they needed a block of sky, too, it seemed. The amount of wealth needed just to build this monstrosity made him cringe. He didn't need to see the insides.

He could feel the rage replacing the loneliness, and he let his feet carry him on. He'd spent a lifetime learning to deal with this fury that hid behind his every action. He knew how to capture it, tame it, put it to work for him. Even Evie didn't know the depth of his deception. He wouldn't want to frighten her. But tonight the beers were working on him, and the fury was steaming through the cracks of his control.

His leg ached, and that helped to keep him in balance. Daniel went past the expensive stores—closed for the evening—and wandered into a comfortable residential district. No factory worker lived here, he wagered. Nor the clerks in those fancy department stores. The delineation of wealth was so much clearer here than back in Texas.

But he wasn't a stranger to those differences. He had grown up in St. Louis without ever considering the comforts at his command. It was only in these last ten years that he had become aware of the widening chasm between the haves and the have-nots.

There was a reason for that, but he wasn't prepared to dwell on it right now as his wandering took him farther from the business district and deeper into the bastions of wealth.

Daniel suspected these magnificent edifices gleaming with gaslights and crystal windows and hidden in the shadows behind trees and shrubberies larger than the city park would rightly be called mansions. He'd lived off and on in a mansion during these last few years, but it in no way compared to these. The mansions around Natchez, Mississippi, were falling into ruin and decay, destroyed by the war, the economy, the lack of manpower to keep them functioning any longer. Obviously, no such destruction had touched Cutlerville, Ohio.

Daniel leaned against a wrought-iron fence in front of the largest of these symbols of wealth. He could see a polished open carriage in the drive. The front door was open, and he could catch a glimpse of a chandelier glittering in the foyer. All the lamps in the house must have been lit, for light twinkled from every window. Back in the section of town from where he had just come, the cost of oil for a single lamp was prohibitive. Gaslights were unthinkable.

He had been told the house with the stone pineapples on the gateposts would be the Mulloney mansion. He could see the pineapples at the end of the street. The house and yard took up the entire block. This was it, then, the house where his family lived, the house whose portals he had been forbidden.

He had just enough beer in him to wonder what would happen if he walked up that drive and announced himself at the door. He liked to imagine the chaos that would ensue. Leaning his shoulder against the cold iron fence, Daniel remembered all those years of wondering, the years of waiting. To a child, a week was forever. He had endured years, the childhood equivalent of eternity. By the time he had learned some speck of the truth, he had developed a facade of indifference.

But curiosity had always been a strong component of his character. He couldn't help but be curious about a family that had so much it could afford to throw away one of its sons.

Just that much knowledge of the people behind this gate made him worry about the merry little imp he had met on the train. People who could throw away their own child wouldn't think twice about ignoring a bright and lovely woman whose only purpose was to bring them more wealth. Daniel hated to think of that happening. Even Evie would agree with him if she knew.

Straightening, Daniel shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the carriage, willing its occupants to descend from the house. He wanted to know at least what they looked like before he started digging into their lives.

But no one came out, and his empty stomach was beginning to protest. It was time to get back to the real world.

He was a journalist, had learned at the hands of some of the best. He knew just how to go about digging into the Mulloney family. He hadn't been certain when he came here that he would bother, but now he had an incentive other than himself.

He would make certain that Peter Mulloney was the kind of man Georgina Hanover ought to marry. And he would find out just what kind of people the Mulloneys were before he made the decision to acknowledge them as his relations.

Hands in pockets, staring through the iron gate separating him from the family he had never known, Daniel thought he might just ride out of Cutlerville, Ohio, without ever telling them who he was.