She felt a wave of excitement. “Like as in courting?”
He cocked his head, and a look of surprise crossed his face. “No, darlin’. I’m far too old for you. I’m thirty-one. That would make me, what? Twelve years older than you?”
“Thirteen,” she corrected. “It’s not that much older, Jesse,” she added.
“Regardless, you’re going to find a good man before a year from now because you’re going to stay away from places like this. Aren’t you?”
He asked the question sternly with a raised eyebrow, again addressing her like she was a child that needed to be corrected and set on the right path. Her heart sank. She wished she had the courage to tell him straight out that she didn’t want to find another man. She wanted only him, but she didn’t think she’d be able to survive the humiliation if he rejected her in that way. It was unbearable enough that he’d said no to her employment request, very clearly and very firmly too.
She decided that she would return to him in a year and remind him that he had promised to take her to dinner. Her bottom would likely stop smarting by then, so she would also risk asking again if he would employ her as a singer and dancer. She wanted him to court her, and she wanted to become an entertainer. One spanking over his knee, painful though it was, wouldn’t prevent her from pursuing either of her dreams.
*
After he sent Lily on her way with a sore bottom and a lecture, Jesse climbed the stairs to his living quarters, which was on the second floor of the saloon. He sat down on his armchair and slumped back. He rubbed his smarting palm against his trousers and replayed the event in his mind. His actions had surprised him nearly as much as they had surprised the girl, and he tried to wrap his head around what had compelled him to discipline her.
It had a lot to do with the look in her eyes, Jesse realized. She looked at him with such innocence and hope, and when he saw that, his heart ached. He recognized that look in a woman, and he would have done just about anything to keep it on her face. That included ensuring she didn’t work at a saloon, which he felt certain would break her or at least leave her disillusioned.
Lily wore the same hopeful look his late wife Sadie wore when he asked her to move west with him. In Springfield, he played piano and sang for pennies a day and was privy to stories of how men earned a hundred times that out west. He had grand plans for himself and his wife then. He planned to settle in California and mine for gold in the rivers, but they ran out of money before they got there. They found a small room in a boardinghouse in Weston, Arizona, and he instead mined for copper underground. Then a beam collapsed, pinned and shattered his left shin, and left him with a limp and inability to navigate the mine’s shafts. The hope faded from his wife’s eyes then, replaced by a worried frown. She worked hard during his recovery, traveling from neighbor to neighbor to wash their clothes and clean their houses. Returning home after dark with bloody knuckles and blistered feet, she’d then care for Jesse in his bedridden state.
Since his injury meant being unable to work for the mines, he did the only other thing he knew how to do. After he recovered enough to get around, he brazenly hobbled into Weston’s saloon and sat down at the piano. He sang and played soulful tunes, his wife sitting nearby listening along with the other patrons. He witnessed the hope returning to her eyes, and he thrilled when she returned the wink he sent in her direction. He sang and played upbeat tunes that brought rowdy drunks to their feet. He sang and played until the previous saloon owner walked up to him and said, “You’re hired.”
He and the saloon owner became friends and partners, and he learned the business inside and out, from entertaining guests to recording the money earned in the ledger at the end of the day. Sadie was just beginning to enjoy an easier life with the pleasures that came along with some money in the bank when she became ill and died of tuberculosis. Her life had been hard from birth to death. Jesse had never been able to give her everything he thought she deserved, and he felt more crippled by that than he did by his bum leg.