Lisa Plumley - Notorious in the West

The Boston Beast had arrived. Soon everyone would know it—beginning with the staff of The Lorndorff Hotel, his first and last destination, where Griffin meant to make his home for the foreseeable future. If he had to, he’d take over the place.

He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. But as a pair of ragged miners saw him coming down the street, gave a yelp of surprise when they saw his face then scurried to the side to avoid him, Griffin changed his mind. Suddenly, he felt in the mood to crush anything or anyone that displeased him...and he felt like starting now. Grimly, he shook out his wild, dark hair, pulled his flat-brimmed hat low over his eyes and took himself off to The Lorndorff Hotel, where—if they knew what was good for them—everyone from the merest maid to the most autocratic manager would be on their toes. Otherwise, he’d know the reason.

* * *

In retrospect, Olivia Mouton knew she should have realized something was amiss from the moment she finished breakfast in the sunny dining room of her father’s Lorndorff Hotel and heard the bellman chin wagging with the desk clerk as she passed by.

“I heard he’s the terror of Boston,” the bellman was saying in a scandalized tone, “with eyes like the devil and a fancy dark coat that drags along on the ground when he stomps by—prob’ly on his way to put some orphans on a chain gang or some such.”

“Pshaw. The way I heard tell, he could put grown men on that chain gang of his and get no guff,” the clerk replied with an offhanded wave hello to Olivia. “I ain’t the one who saw him, mind, but the night clerk told me he was about seven feet tall—”

“Seven feet? Holy moly!”

“—with a fully loaded gun belt and knives strapped to both legs. Dressed all in black, he was. Couldn’t scarcely see his face, ’specially with all that hair. Like a mountain man—”

“I heard he brung a huge ole bag of money with him.”

“—only fancier,” the clerk said with a nod, “but with that same no-good attitude. As if he’d sooner sock you than say hello. I heard he commandeered the train that brung him. Forced ’em to turn off their track and go his way to Morrow Creek.”

At that, the bellman whistled, apparently impressed. “Do you reckon he’s really him? I know Mr. Mouton got that telegram yesterday, but I thought Griffin Turner was practically a ghost.”

“Nobody’s ever seen him,” the clerk agreed, “so I’d say—”

Olivia cleared her throat. “Gentlemen,” she said gently, “you know we’re not supposed to gossip about our guests. This is a guest of the hotel you’re discussing, I assume?”

Both men met her inquiry with disbelieving stares.

“You haven’t heard?” the bellman asked. “I heard about him even afore I got to the hotel for work! The whole town’s abuzz.”

This did not enlighten Olivia as much as she would have liked. Patiently, she said, “Well, the whole town’s not been here, in the hotel where I live,” she said with a good-natured smile—one that the bellman, who’d proposed to her just last month, returned readily. “Not yet. So I haven’t heard a thing.”

“It’s The Boston Beast,” the clerk confided, leaning on his desk. He nearly smudged his guest register and upset his inkwell in the process. “The Tycoon Terror. The Business Brute!”

The bellman nodded vigorously. “It’s him! Plain as day! Or night, at least. He didn’t even take his own private train car. He just showed up, lickety-split, in the middle of the night!”

“Hmm. The Boston Beast, eh? You’ve been reading those tabloid journals from the states again, haven’t you?” Olivia guessed, shifting her gaze from one talkative employee to the next. She shook her head. “I’m going to have to ask the O’Malley & Sons book agent to stop bringing them with her.”

“It ain’t the press. It’s the truth.” Wide-eyed, the desk clerk turned his guest register. He pointed at the aggressive scrawl penned on the very last line. “See? There’s his name!”

“His name?” Olivia stifled a grin. She raised her brows. “Would that be The Tycoon Terror or The Business Brute?”

“Just look!” The clerk waggled his finger at the scribble.

Dubiously, Olivia peered at it. “That could be anything. It looks as if an especially tetchy chicken got a hold of a pen.”

The bellman guffawed. He traded glances with the clerk, then returned his attention to her. “You’re funny, Miss Mouton.” He hitched up his suspenders, then nervously wet his lips. “I don’t s’pose you’ve given any more thought to my proposal?”

Uh-oh. That was Olivia’s cue to skedaddle. No good could come of it when men talked about marrying her. She’d spent the past several years dodging proposals, having learned long ago that finding what she truly wanted—a man who’d value her for her genuine self—was as likely as finding gold in a guppy bowl.

“I can think of little else,” she assured the bellman with a kindly touch to his forearm. She smiled. “I promise.”

“I know you’ve got other offers.” The bellman stared at her hand as though transfixed. “I know that. Everyone does. But I would surely be honored, Miss Mouton, if you would choose me.”

The clerk only chortled. “Now, hold on, there. You know Miss Mouton is famously picky. She ain’t gonna be choosing you.”

“Well, she’s got a right to be picky!” The bellman gulped. Chivalrously, he came to Olivia’s defense. “She’s a famous beauty. She’s recognized in every single state and territory.”

He gestured helpfully—and unnecessarily—at the rows of bottled patent elixir lining the shelf behind the hotel’s front desk. Every last one poked at Olivia’s guilty conscience. She’d traded her hopes for the future for a lithographed likeness of herself staring out from those bottles of Milky White Complexion Beautifier and Youthful Enhancement Tonic. Now she was stuck.

Her father, finally and evidently as proud as punch, had purchased a whole case for himself. He’d used it to decorate the entire hotel—and to distribute to the other businesses in town, as well. No place she went was free of that blasted bottle.

She only wished her father had been proud of her, not her face. She wished he’d recognized what was special about her.

On the other hand, maybe there wasn’t anything special about her, Olivia reasoned. Maybe she was just as useless and as needlessly celebrated as those bottles of elixir were.

After all, she’d looked into that peddler’s remedy shortly after it had debuted. Its ingredients were scientifically ineffective at best. All Milky White Complexion Beautifier and Youthful Enhancement Tonic had going for it was the unreasonable hope it could engender in otherwise rational people.

That bestselling remedy was just like her in that regard, Olivia realized as she caught another besotted look from the bellman. Somehow, she made people believe she had something they needed...when she knew she didn’t have anything tangible to give. She knew she was a fraud. She’d been hiding her nonbeautiful, less than prim, intellectual-stimulation-craving qualities for so long that she wasn’t even sure they existed anymore.

In truth, that was why Olivia had turned down so many marriage proposals. That was why she dallied with answering them, the way she’d done with the poor bellman. She didn’t want to disappoint anyone...but she did want to be more than an ornamental wife to a beauty-loving husband. She wanted everyone to see her as more than a beauty on a bottle first...and a person last.

The trouble was, Olivia didn’t know how. She didn’t know where to begin, or even if she could begin. And as she glanced from the bellman to the desk clerk, registering their expectant faces and alert postures, she understood that trying to change her life now was a fool’s errand. It was set already.

“I’m sure this—” she peered at the scrawl in the guest register again, could not decrypt it and decided against using the heinous nicknames the hotel employees had used “—guest will be no trouble at all. In fact, he’s probably quite a gentleman.”

With that, Olivia said her goodbyes and sailed upstairs to The Lorndorff’s seldom-used top floor, mentally preparing herself for another busy, stultifying day of needlework, ladies’ group meetings, afternoon teas and outings to perform good works. On the staircase landing, she sighed.

Her dutiful daily routine was almost enough to make a lady wish for a dark, dangerous, seven-foot-tall, gun belt–wearing, train-commandeering, masculine mystery guest to come into her life and cause a stir—and a few pulse-pounding moments, too. But since that fanciful line of thinking would certainly go nowhere, Olivia would simply have to go on with living her own ordinary life...no matter how straitlaced and unsatisfying it might be.

Chapter Four

Olivia had stepped onto the hotel’s top-floor landing, headed for her living quarters in The Lorndorff’s cozy garret, when a rough male voice roared down the hallway.

“I told you to get out!”

Olivia froze, staring in the direction of that unexpected sound. Ordinarily, no one stayed in either of The Lorndorff’s optimistically named “luxury suites,” which were located on either side of the top floor hallway. In Morrow Creek, most people couldn’t afford such fancy accommodations. Her father had once muttered something about necessarily “reserving” one of those suites for his distant investors’ use, but Olivia hadn’t given much thought over the years to either those unknown investors or those suites. Those lavish, empty rooms were just doors she passed without noticing on her way to her own comfy rooms beneath the eaves at the far end of the hallway.

A resounding crash interrupted her musings.

Olivia looked up, saw what appeared to be a shattered vase of flowers lying in smithereens on the hall floor and hastened forward. As she did, someone backed out of one of the suites.

Annie. Olivia’s best friend stumbled backward, both arms held up in a defensive posture of appeasement. Her gaze stayed fixed on someone in the suite she was exiting. Her upswept blond hair was disheveled, her uniform’s apron askew, and as Annie glanced down at the broken glass, crumpled flowers and spilled water at her feet, Olivia discerned that she was crying, too.

“I said I didn’t want to be disturbed!” came that male voice again, its gravely ire twice as loud now. “Ever!”

“I’m sorry, sir. It’s just that I...” Obviously at a loss to cope with the situation, Annie hesitated. “I was told to pay special attention to your room while you’re here, Mr.—”

“Stop staring at me.”

The sudden hush in that unknown guest’s voice was twice as chilling as his outright shouting had been. Feeling gooseflesh prickle on her arms, Olivia hurried forward to help her friend.

“I wasn’t staring!” Annie protested, but a telltale redness stained her cheeks and made a lie of her words. So did the way she kept on staring, unblinking. “I only wanted to bring you—”

The suite’s door slammed shut, cutting off her words.

Booted footsteps stomped across the floorboards and then fell silent, muffled by wallboards and distance and the outraged pounding of Olivia’s heart as she contemplated the scene.

She had not been raised by her compassionate, fair-minded father to stand by while someone else behaved unkindly! Swiftly, Olivia charged forward, ready to do battle...

Only to reconsider as she caught closer sight of Annie. Her friend stared despairingly at the sodden flowers and broken vase at her feet. Her slumped shoulders and downturned mouth reminded Olivia that comforting her friend was more important than confronting a quarrelsome guest, however significant he might be to her father’s business interests. She could deal with Mr. Fancypants’s harrying behavior later. She would, too....