Lisa Plumley - Notorious in the West

“Am I?”

Her annoyed gaze locked with his. “Yes.”

“Hmm. That’s interesting.” He observed her anew, liking her courage. “I bet you wish you’d left when you had the chance.”

He felt a smile sneak onto his face and was dumbfounded by it. It couldn’t be that he was enjoying her company, could it?

It seemed it could, Griffin marveled, and smiled afresh. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled twice in one day.

His pleasure only appeared to gall her further.

“I wish I’d clobbered you with your breakfast tray. That’s what I wish!”

He offered a tsk-tsk of sham politeness. “Come, now. That’s hardly the exemplary service the Lorndorff is known for.”

An unintelligible sound of frustration came from her. Oddly enough, Griffin liked it. He liked seeing her ladylike façade crumble. He liked knowing he could affect her. He liked … her.

The realization made Griffin falter.

Thank you for reading NOTORIOUS IN THE WEST! I’m delighted to return to the Arizona Territory, and I’m thrilled to share Olivia and Griffin’s story with you. If you had fun reading about them—and I hope you did!—please try another book in my Morrow Creek series. It includes THE HONOUR-BOUND GAMBLER, MAIL-ORDER GROOM, THE BRIDE RAFFLE and several others—including some short stories and an eBook exclusive—all set in and around my favourite Old West town.

If you’d like to try a few sample chapters, you can find first-chapter excerpts from all my books at my website: www.lisaplumley.com. While you’re there, you can also download an up-to-date book list, sign up for new-book alerts, read sneak previews of forthcoming books, request reader freebies and more. I hope you’ll stop by today!

As always, I’d love to hear from you! You can follow me on Twitter @LisaPlumley, ‘friend’ me on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/lisaplumleybooks, send an e-mail to lisa@lisaplumley.comor visit me online at www.community.eharlequin.com

Best wishes till next time!

Notorious in

the West

Lisa Plumley

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DEDICATION

To John, with all my love,

now and forever.

When she found herself living in modern-day Arizona Territory, LISA PLUMLEYdecided to take advantage of it—by immersing herself in the state’s fascinating history, visiting ghost towns and historical sites, and finding inspiration in the desert and mountains surrounding her. It didn’t take long before she got busy creating light-hearted romances like this one, featuring strong-willed women, ruggedly intelligent men, and the unexpected situations that bring them together.

When she’s not writing Lisa loves to spend time with her husband and two children, travelling, hiking, watching classic movies, reading, and defending her trivia game championship. She enjoys hearing from readers, and invites you to contact her via e-mail at lisa@lisaplumley.com, or visit her website at www.lisaplumley.com

Previous novels by the same author:

THE DRIFTER

THE MATCHMAKER * * Morrow Creek mini-series And in Mills & Boon® Historical Undone! eBooks: WANTON IN THE WEST Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk THE SCOUNDREL * * Morrow Creek mini-series And in Mills & Boon® Historical Undone! eBooks: WANTON IN THE WEST Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk THE RASCAL * * Morrow Creek mini-series And in Mills & Boon® Historical Undone! eBooks: WANTON IN THE WEST Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk MARRIAGE AT MORROW CREEK * * Morrow Creek mini-series And in Mills & Boon® Historical Undone! eBooks: WANTON IN THE WEST Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk (part of Halloween Temptations anthology) MAIL-ORDER GROOM * * Morrow Creek mini-series And in Mills & Boon® Historical Undone! eBooks: WANTON IN THE WEST Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk THE BRIDE RAFFLE * * Morrow Creek mini-series And in Mills & Boon® Historical Undone! eBooks: WANTON IN THE WEST Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING TRUE (part of Weddings Under a Western Sky anthology) THE HONOUR-BOUND GAMBLER * * Morrow Creek mini-series And in Mills & Boon® Historical Undone! eBooks: WANTON IN THE WEST Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

* Morrow Creek mini-series

And in Mills & Boon® Historical Undone! eBooks:

WANTON IN THE WEST

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter One

March 1872, Boston, Massachusetts

Even at the age of fourteen, Griffin Turner always knew when one of his mother’s “bad times” was coming on. First she’d quit cleaning the meager four rooms they shared. Dust would pile up. Dirty pans and plates would accumulate. Rats would saunter across the gritty floors, as bold as you please—as bold as they tended to be in the tenement building Griffin and his mother had moved into After Their Circumstances Changed—and chew their way into the few remaining foodstuffs in the kitchen. A good swat with a broom got rid of them, Griffin had learned, but he hated the way that smacking their furry bodies made his skin crawl.

He also hated how weak it made him feel to admit that. After their circumstances changed, Griffin had become the man of the house. The man of the house could not be weak. He knew that.

When he failed to remember it, his mother reminded him.

A day or so after she stopped cleaning up, his mother would pull all the tatty draperies tightly shut, so that not even the tiniest sliver of wintertime sunlight could penetrate their home’s dank interior. Then she would abandon whatever piecework job she’d grudgingly taken on. Finally, she would take to her bed.

Griffin wasn’t sure how that was supposed to help anything. After all, nothing happened in bed except dreaming. Dreaming didn’t exactly put food on the table and kindling in the fireplace. But he knew better than to say so.

At least he knew better than to say so twice.

Most of the time, Griffin managed his mother’s bad times without too much hardship. He learned how to dust and sweep. He figured out how to light the stove and how to inveigle a few grocery items from their careworn neighbors when things got desperate. He learned to leave crackers by his mother’s bedside while she was asleep, but never to mention having done so the next day. He learned the precise time to bring a bracing cup of coffee into his mother’s room. He learned that doing so made her smile at him...but only if he got the timing right. So he learned well.

During the bad times, Griffin tiptoed a lot.

Overall, he didn’t think about his mother’s moody spells much. They came like the weather; they went for reasons that were as inexplicable and as evergreen as springtime in the city. They were a fact of life—like his growing body, his work tending the fiery furnaces at the glass factory and his knowledge that the only way to get by was to toil until sweet oblivion took him at the end of the day. Sleep was good, even if he didn’t remember having any dreams of his own. Work was good. He earned money to support his mother and himself. He kept busy. He had every Sunday off to do as he pleased—which wasn’t, by the age of fourteen, to attend Sunday church services alone, as his mother believed he did. It was to revisit their old town house, which still stood in the neighborhood where they’d lived before their circumstances changed, and try to figure out how to get it back.

Generally, life was shambolic but manageable. As long as you didn’t count on anything, Griffin knew, you would be fine.

Sometimes, though, enough time passed between bouts of tidying and tiptoeing—and treating his mother with the same care that the glassblowers at the factory handled their bottles and pitchers and glasshouse whimsies—that Griffin forgot about the bad times. That was dangerous. That was when he was blindsided.

He came home on one such day, full of verve and vinegar, puffed up on the thrill of having spent his Sunday with a girl he liked—a girl who worked at the glass factory as a sweeper. He’d met her after church. They’d spent all day roaming around the city, going to Griffin’s old neighborhood and sharing a single precious gooseberry tonic at the soda fountain. The girl—Mary was her name—had taken Griffin home to meet her parents. They’d invited him in for some Irish stew and brown bread. They’d sent him home high, with a freshly barbered head of hair—courtesy of Mary’s mama—and a care package of leftover stew.

He hadn’t wanted to think why they’d given it to him. He knew he was thin, on account of the meals he missed or gave to his mother, but he was also tall and broad shouldered. He didn’t look sickly enough to warrant a gift of potato-filled stew.

But they gave it to him kindly, so Griffin didn’t refuse. He was carrying it when he breezed into the tenement building and clomped up the rickety staircase—daydreaming about Mary’s winsome face, mentally placing her in the fancy town house he meant to own someday, dressing her in finery fit for a carriage ride—and came inside to find all the draperies drawn.

Too happy to abide the gloom, Griffin opened them.

“Leave them shut,” his mother snapped from her chair.

But this time, Griffin didn’t want to. He’d had a nice day. He’d felt content. He didn’t want his mother to ruin that.

“Are you hungry?” Deliberately leaving the window curtains as they were, Griffin strode through the beams of sunlight and presented the care package—wrapped in newspaper and secured with butcher’s twine—to his mother. “I brought you some stew.”

Suspiciously, his mother squinted. “Where have you been? I’ve been here on my own all day long. The fire went out.”

Her peevish wave indicated the woodstove. Undaunted, Griffin set aside the stew. He took off his coat, went through the practiced motions of laying a blaze then dragged his mother’s favorite quilt from a nearby chair. He laid it on her.

She clutched it, frowning. “Only the most selfish boy leaves his mother alone on the Lord’s day. You should be ashamed of yourself! Sauntering in here, flaunting your friends and your strength and your stupid, stupid stew.” She cast it a disgusted glance. “It smells like Irish slop. I wouldn’t want that.”

He knew his mother still considered herself above the life they had in the tenement building. He knew she didn’t mean to offend. This was the point where, ordinarily, Griffin would have apologized. That was what worked best to keep the peace. But today, with Mary, Griffin had glimpsed a brighter future—a future that didn’t involve endless toil and smacking rats and accepting handouts from neighbors. A future that held the promise of laughter and plenty...and genuine smiles that didn’t need to be coaxed into being but happened all on their own.