“No. Of course not,” she replied. “I thank you for saving me from that, but if you hadn’t come charging half-clothed down the staircase as if the building were on fire, I wouldn’t have been taken unawares or thrown off balance in the first place.”
“You’re blaming me?” Will was taken aback by her audacity. He stood nearly three inches over six feet tall in his bare feet and was solidly built, while the top of her head barely reached his chest despite the two-inch heels on her boots. She was a tiny, auburn-haired spitfire of a girl standing toe-to-toe with a man practically twice her size.
A man whose hands, he recalled, were large enough to span her waist.
Yet she refused to be intimidated.
“Who else is there to blame?” she countered, glaring up at him. “You charged into me.”
“That’s because I didn’t expect to find you standing at the bottom of my stairs,” he told her. “I thought you’d be wreaking havoc in the saloon.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what all you Salvationists and Women’s Suffrage and Temperance women do.” He looked down at her, searching for an umbrella or parasol—the weapon of choice of nearly all the female crusaders. “You wreak havoc on private property. You sing at the top of your lungs while you smash bottles of liquor and mirrors and plate-glass windows.”
“I’ve never smashed anything in my life!” She was indignant at the very idea.
He gave her a wry look. “You must be new to the soul-saving business.”
“I’ve been a member of the Salvationists for nearly three months.”
“I don’t recall seeing you before. Who sent you to the Silken Angel?”
“No one sent me,” she told him. “I came on my own.”
Will snorted in derision. “How long have you been in San Francisco?”
“Two days.”
He snorted again. “In town two days and you manage to find your way from Mission Street to my establishment.” He looked down at her. “I don’t believe it.”
“It isn’t that difficult,” she told him. “The Salvationists warned us about Sydney Town and the Barbary Coast on the journey and explained that most of San Francisco’s disreputable establishments are located near the waterfront. I came by ship. I disembarked along the waterfront. Returning to it was simply a matter of going back the way I came.”
She was fairly boasting of her ability to navigate a strange and often dangerous city on her own, and Will was impressed in spite of himself. “Who the devil are you?”
She stiffened her spine and drew herself up to her full height. “I’m Julia Jane Parham. Who the dev—” She caught herself before she uttered the oath, took a deep breath, and regrouped. “Who are you?”
Will bit the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning from ear to ear as the little spitfire’s temper got the best of her. “William Burke Keegan,” he answered, offering her his hand to shake. “My friends call me Will.”
REBECCA HAGAN LEE
Rebecca Hagan Lee set out to make her mark in the world of television journalism but somewhere along the way, decided she was a small-town girl at heart and settled in a town where the media consists of a weekly newspaper and an AM radio station. Seeking a creative outlet, she turned to writing romance stories far different from the world of television news, but not that far removed from the hundreds of episodes of Bonanza, Big Valley, Gunsmoke, and The Virginian she had watched growing up. She decided to create stories where good guys win, bad guys lose, prostitutes have hearts of gold, and the heroes and heroines who fall in love and perservere are richly rewarded with incredibly bright futures and happy endings. In her world, heroines don’t die or get killed off to make way for the next episode’s new love interest; they get their men and help them become ideal husbands, lovers, friends, and fathers.
Rebecca Hagan Lee is the author of five bestselling romances, and has won numerous awards including a Waldenbooks Award for Bestselling Original Long Historical Romance by a New Author. She lives in south Georgia with her hero husband, three miniature schnauzers, a rat terrier, a cat, and a host of imaginary heroes and heroines waiting to be introduced.
Rebecca Hagan Lee, Gossamer
(Series: # )
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