“I’m familiar with the complaint,” Will retorted dryly.
“Does she know they are staying down the hall from you?”
“She knows I’m staying in the room next door,” Will admitted, “but I have no idea whether or not she knows they’re here.”
“She knows,” Jack said. “Sorry. I accidentally let that cat out of the bag.”
“No need to apologize, Jack. She hasn’t breathed a word about it to me.”
“Probably because she thinks she’ll have to reimburse you for their salaries, room and board, and expenses.”
“How would she get a crazy idea like that?” Will took another sip of his coffee and waited for Jack’s reaction. Sometimes the man was honest to a fault.
“From the same person who let the cat out of the bag in the first place,” Jack confessed. “I was tired and frustrated, and I’m afraid I spoke when I should have kept my mouth closed. I’ve no excuse. I simply lost patience with her—”
“Easy to do,” Will confirmed.
“And let it be known that her window smashing had cost a great deal more than just the window.”
Will set his mug on the table. “No harm done. I’m not going to demand reimbursement from her for men for whom we had already decided to send, any more than I’m going to accept payment for the window or for Zhing’s services.” He snapped his fingers. “That reminds me. I stopped in at Montgomery Street Glass. They’ve agreed to install the window on Sunday, rather than Monday, so we can close.”
“Close?” Jack raised one eyebrow.
“It makes sense to use it as an excuse, Jack. If we close on Sunday in order for the workmen to install the storefront, we can move the new girls early Sunday morning, and we won’t need to send for the old man until Monday night. . . .”
“When the theater is dark,” Jack added. “And the actors are idle.”
“Right. And I changed my mind about the lettering on the window and decided to make a slight change in our hours of operation.”
“I’m all for it,” Jack told him. “Unless you’re adding hours; then I’m opposed.”
“Not adding. Subtracting,” Will told him. “No more staying open until four in the morning. From now on, we’re closing at one on weeknights and two on weekends. I arranged to have those changes made in the lettering we ordered.”
“Thank God,” Jack said. “I don’t know how much longer either one of us could continue keeping those hours along with everything else.”
Will winced. “It isn’t all good news. Part of the reason I shortened our hours of operation is the agreement I made with Julie—or rather, the bribe I used to convince her to stop pacing like a caged animal. . . .”
“Do I want to hear this?” Jack knew the answer before he asked the question.
“I promised to allow her downstairs, give her access to the piano, and teach her how to play billiards.”
“You’re joking!”
Will was startled by Jack’s reaction. “I’m afraid not.”
Unable to contain it any longer, Jack burst out laughing. “You’re going to put a pool cue in that woman’s hands and give her free access to the downstairs. Are you daft?” He didn’t wait for Will to answer. “We’re talking about Typhoon Julia. The reason the window needs replacing in the first place.”
“She’s going mad up there all day,” Will informed him.
“And you’re going soft. . . .”
“The opportunity to come downstairs is enough to keep her on her best behavior.”
“She promised to behave last time,” Jack reminded him. “And look how that turned out.” He glanced at Will. “Did you consider that you have an auction Saturday night? Are you going to allow her to have access to a pool cue once she hears about that? What if you return with girls? What if her missionary zeal returns in full measure?”
“If she plays ‘Bringing in the Sheaves’ on the piano, the deal is off.” He would have to remember to tell her that.
“If she plays that song on the piano, she may wind up dead,” Jack reminded him. “I hate to be the one to point this out, but, Will, the majority of the front of our building is glass.”
“Frosted glass.”
“That’s true, but if you get close enough you can see through it. And what if she plays that song and somebody hears it? It only takes one person, and before you know it, the whole of Chinatown will know that she’s not dead.” He got up from his chair and began to pace. “And that she’s staying here.”
“I ordered shades for the front windows. They’ll be put in right after the new window is installed. And she’ll be in costume.”
“You’re serious.” Jack was taken aback. “What’s she going to be? A Chinese laundry girl working at the Silken Angel Saloon after hours?”
“I thought she might be an anonymous woman who was part of an auction. If she wears her black wig and the dress of a Chinese lady whenever she’s downstairs, she should be safe enough after hours. Her disguise will protect her identity and add to the charade of our second-floor business.” Will gestured toward several parcels wrapped in brown paper and twine. “I bought several more cheongsams for her to wear.”
Jack conceded that the idea might work—that Julia might be able to leave the safety and secrecy of the second floor and live a relatively normal life as long as she pretended to be someone else. “You have given this a great deal of thought.”
“I had to,” Will admitted. “We can’t keep her locked up once she’s fully recovered, and we can’t send her back to the mission as Julie Parham. The only way she could possibly go back would be as her cousin, Jane Burke, or under some other false identity.”
“We could send her back to Hong Kong,” Jack suggested halfheartedly.
“If only she would go.” Will was torn between his desire to have Julie safe in Hong Kong, far away from the danger facing her in San Francisco, and his desire to keep her with him. “But the only way to get her to go back without finding Su Mi or finding out what happened to her would be to crate her up and ship her.” He wasn’t serious. He would never crate a human being and ship her on a cargo ship to a country seven thousand miles away. But there were people—men and women—on both sides of the Pacific Ocean who would do so without a qualm. There were men and women on both sides of the Pacific Ocean who shipped frightened women and girls in the holds of cargo ships from Hong Kong to San Francisco every month.
Su Mi had been one of those people. And Will thought he might have found a record of her arrival—or someone who remembered her arrival and knew something about what happened to her after she disembarked.
Before he knew it, Will was relating everything he’d learned to Jack.
“Are you going to tell Julie what you’ve discovered?” Jack asked when he finished.
“Not yet,” Will said. “It’s better to wait until I have more information than to disappoint her.”
“I agree.” Glancing at the clock on the wall, Jack asked, “When do you intend to put our new operating hours into effect?”
“No time like the present,” Will said. “I made a date with Julie to escort her downstairs after we close tonight.”
“We’ll need signs to post alerting our customers.” Jack was thinking aloud. “And we need to do something about our regular poker players—unless you’re willing to trust them with the secret. . . .”
“I’m not.” Will was adamant about that. He didn’t doubt for a second that the regulars could be trusted with the liquor supply above and below the bar. They could be trusted with the cash drawer and the kitchen larder, but he hadn’t trusted them with the secrets of the second-floor business or the wine cellar. And Will didn’t intend to trust them with the knowledge of Julie’s identity. “I’m thinking the private dining room would work very nicely.” The private dining room had never been used for its original purpose. “It’s adjacent to both the kitchen and the bar, and furnished with a table and chairs. It’s perfect for the poker regulars. It’s close en
ough to the bar, the kitchen, and the facilities for their convenience, but far enough away from the billiard room and the piano that she should be able to grab a bit of freedom.
Jack nodded. “Especially if we screen the piano and the billiard room from the grand parlor and the bar.” He took a few minutes to think everything through. “We should be able to make it work. I’ll get started as soon as Luis comes in.” He drained the last of his coffee and placed the mug in the sink. “Now that we’ve got that settled, you’d better get upstairs and surprise her with her packages.”
“Is Zhing still here?” Will hefted the tin of chocolates.
Jack shook his head. “She left about an hour ago. She delivered your shirts, looked in on Julie, and left. Zhing said Julie was napping. You should think about doing the same,” he reminded Will. “You’re going to have another long night ahead of you.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”
—PLATO, C. 428–348 B.C.
She was a ferocious competitor. She played billiards the same way she did everything else: with all her heart.
Will stared at her as she bent over the table attempting to line up a shot. The gold cheongsam Julie had chosen to wear from the dresses he’d left in her room pulled, cupping her bottom as she leaned forward.
“Am I doing this correctly?” she asked, measuring the angle from billiard ball to corner pocket, before stepping back again to reassess.
Fascinated by the play of silk over her rear end, Will didn’t realize she was speaking to him until she poked him with the end of her cue. “Huh?” He glanced at the dot of chalk on the sleeve of his jacket. Jack was right about the pool cue: Giving one to a girl who wielded a parasol like a cricket bat was probably asking for trouble. But at the moment, it was worth it.
“Oh, sorry.” Julie apologized for the chalk, not for poking him. “You aren’t paying attention. . . .”
He was paying attention. He knew every shot she’d made, but he was a man, and at the moment he found the play of silk over her derriere a hell of a lot more intriguing than the angle of a ball to the pocket. “Problem?”
“The problem is whether or not I am lining this shot up properly,” she repeated.
“Your form is excellent.”
“Oh?” She paused to look at him, then beamed. “Jolly good.”
“Your angle might be off slightly, but your form is excellent,” he drawled.
He thought for a moment that she might swing her cue at his head as she turned around. “My angle is off?”
“Slightly,” he admitted. “But as I said before, your form is excellent.”
“Show me,” she demanded.
Will stayed where he was, leaning against the adjacent billiard table, arms crossed over his chest, watching her, wondering how she expected him to show her that her form was excellent. It had almost killed him to show her how to hold the cue and approach the balls on the table the first time.
Will had demonstrated the proper way to rack and break the balls for a quick game of nine-ball first. Then he had handed her a cue and showed her how to hold it, with the object of the game being to knock the numbered balls into the pockets of the billiard table in numerical order. She’d scratched on her first attempt, nearly scarring the felt of the table, before he moved behind her, put his arms around her, cupped her elbows in his hands, and positioned the cue to make the shot, then helped her make it. But he hadn’t counted on having her backside against his groin. . . . He’d made the billiard shot of his life by landing the first numbered ball in the pocket despite the feel of her soft bottom nestled against him, almost more than he could stand.
He remained where he was because he couldn’t sit or walk without causing himself considerable discomfort or drawing attention to his burgeoning erection.
“Will!” Julie stomped her foot to get his attention.
“Yes?” He stalled for as long as he could, trying to recall every bit of information he knew about the game.
“You were going to show me how to properly align this shot so I can send it into the pocket.”
The time for stalling had run out while he was busy battling the urge to take her upstairs and show her an entirely different sort of way to pass the time. “Was I?”
She frowned, puzzled. “I thought you were.” She looked up at him, saw the color darken in his eyes as his pupils expanded to hide the golden brown irises. “We are playing a game of billiards, are we not?”
He gave her a warm, rather mysterious smile. “We are playing a game,” he confirmed. “But I’m not sure what it is.”
“Pocket billiards.” She was nervous all the sudden and very much aware that she was out of her depth with Will Keegan. She knew he was attracted to her. She was deeply drawn to him, but she didn’t know where to begin. “I’m a novice. You’re the expert. And you’re teaching me how to play the game.”
He moved forward then, took her by the shoulders, gently turned her and her cue toward the table, and helped her carefully align her shot. “Now tap the ball into the pocket,” he instructed.
She did. The ball rolled across the table and fell into the corner pocket. Julie was so excited she wanted to squeal her delight, but her bruised vocal cords wouldn’t permit it. She whirled around and threw her arms around him. The cue hit him in the back of the leg. “I did it! I did it!”
“You did indeed.” He smiled.
“I made my shot,” she boasted. “I’m playing billiards with you. After hours. In a saloon.”
“Yes, you are,” he said.
“If we had champagne it would be perfect!” Julie exclaimed.
“We have champagne,” Will told her. “It’s a saloon.”
She smiled up at him and Will smiled back, taking note of the stitches above her eyebrow and the bruising on her face that was beginning to turn from blue to greenish yellow. “I can make it perfect. Would you like me to open a bottle?”
“Could we?”
“Would that make you happy?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” she told him. “It’s positively scandalous!” And she was almost giddy at the thought.
Will knew she was excited because she’d barely escaped being killed, had been badly injured, cooped up for days, and finally allowed a measure of freedom tonight. She was twenty-two. He was thirty-one and more experienced and should be the more circumspect of the two of them. He was a gentleman and had always behaved in a gentlemanly fashion, but tonight he was feeling a little scandalous himself. “I’ll just be a minute.”
He left the billiard room and went straight to the icebox beneath the bar where Jack always kept a bottle of champagne on ice. Will pulled the bottle out, grabbed two champagne glasses and a bar towel, and carried them back to the billiard room.
Julie gave a little start as the champagne cork exploded out of the bottle into the bar towel Will had wrapped around it. Streams of foaming effervescent wine poured out of the bottle and onto the towel. Tipping the bottle over Julie’s glass, Will filled it to the rim before filling his.
Will lifted his glass in a toast.
Julie raised hers as well.
“Here’s to you, Julia Jane.”
She took a sip of her wine, smiling at the bubbles that tickled her nose and tongue. Her eyes sparkled. “This is the most wicked thing I’ve ever done!”
“This is the most wicked thing you’ve ever done?” Will wasn’t overly fond of champagne, preferring a good Irish whiskey or a mellow Scots whisky to bubbly wine. The best thing he could say about champagne was that half the wine poured out of the bottle whenever you popped the cork. But he took a drink of it so she wouldn’t be disappointed.
She took a sip of champagne, touched her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue, and nodded.
Will swallowed his gulp of wine, set his glass on the closest table, and stared down at Julie. “Does it hurt?” Reaching out, he touched her bottom lip with
the tip of his index finger.
“Not so much anymore.” She drained her glass.
“Good.” Will’s voice was low and husky and full of emotion as he took her glass out of her hand and set it beside his before dipping his head, touching his lips to hers. “Because I think we can be a bit more scandalous than that. . . .”
Julie would never have thought a kiss so gentle and tender could leave her breathless and wanting more, but his kiss did. His lips were cool and tasted of champagne, the touch of them a mere sweep against hers, like the brush of silk against her mouth. It was an exchange of breath—hers for his and his for hers—and the most erotic thing Julie had ever felt. Or dreamed of feeling.
Will knew he should pull away and put distance between them, but he didn’t. He couldn’t think of moving away when everything in him urged him to bring her closer. Will forgot about releasing her and allowed himself to luxuriate in kissing her. He touched the thread of the two stitches in her bottom lip with his tongue before he traced the seam of her mouth, entreating her to open it and grant him access.
She did.
Will broke the first kiss in order to change the angle of their mouths and kiss her more deeply.
Julie’s heart pounded against her ribs so fiercely she was afraid her ribs wouldn’t be able to take the abuse. She gasped at the heat and the pleasure his kiss gave her.
She was a complete novice. She tasted of an enticing mix of innocence and eagerness. Will knew that she had never been kissed before. What she lacked in experience, she more than made up for in warmth and enthusiasm. Will had kissed a number of women over the years, but he couldn’t recall any kiss that affected him more than Julie’s innocent one. Not even his first—a thrilling, heart-pounding, rather hesitant, wet affair with a girl named Eleanor from his father’s church, who was a year older than he and more experienced.
Though it hurt to lift her arms for any length of time, Julie ignored the pain and placed them around his neck. He swept his tongue inside her mouth and began to taste its warm recesses. She gasped and he repeated the sweep—once, twice, three times—before nibbling on her bottom lip, careful to give nothing but pleasure and not to nip at her stitches.