the tie from beneath the starched white collar with such incredible speed that Libby thought she caught a whiff of smoke from rope-burned skin.
A second after that, Shadrach Jones was looping the black silk around his own neck and grinning down on the stupefied maćtre d’.
“We’d like a table for two,” he drawled.
The little man swallowed audibly. “Oui, monsieur.”
You wanted fancy, Amos? Here’s your goddamn fancy. Shad yanked at the silk noose around his neck and let his gaze travel around the room as he forced himself to cool off. Actually, he thought, he’d acted with considerable restraint in just relieving that snooty horse’s ass of his necktie when what he’d really wanted to do was take the man’s life for looking at little Miss Libby like she wasn’t good enough to shine his shoes. Prissy, pointy-toed French shoes, too. Good thing he—
“Mr. Jones?”
His eyes flicked back to the lady across the table. Hell, he’d been so steamed up he’d almost forgotten she was there. And what the hell was she smiling about?
“Ma’am?”
“You’re either grinning or you’re grumbling, Mr. Jones.” She cocked her head to one side, causing the silk flowers on her hat to sway. “Do you have any neutral expressions?”
Shad laughed, and he felt the heat of his temper dissipate and his whole body relax. “I guess not. I apologize, ma’am.”
“There’s no need. But thank you. I suspect it’s something you don’t do too often.” She tilted her head the other way now and the silk posies followed along while her smooth brow wrinkled and her fine eyebrows pulled together. “You remind me of my father, Mr. Jones.”
From her tone, Shad couldn’t tell if she meant that as a compliment or not. He didn’t know how to respond, so he just kept looking at her. He caught himself wondering what she’d look like without that silly garden of a hat, then dismissed the thought. What did he care anyway?
“How is my father?” she asked him now. “Is he truly dying, or was that just a ruse to draw us to Texas?”
“He’s dying.”
She winced and sucked in a quick little breath, making Shad immediately sorry he’d been so blunt. But, hell, she’d asked, hadn’t she? He sighed roughly.
“Your father’s had a good life, Miss Kingsland. A long one, too. I don’t know for a fact, but I think he’s ready to go.”
“I imagine he’s in a great deal of pain.” Her lips drew together, wavering just a bit.
“It’s tolerable,” he replied.
She nodded, letting her gaze fall to her clasped hands. Damnation! She wasn’t going to cry, was she? Shad felt a fine film of sweat glaze his skin now. Oh, hell. Don’t cry, lady. Please.
He was almost relieved when the snooty little Frenchman appeared at the table just then and distracted her by putting a menu into her hands. When she thanked him, her voice was solid and her eyes were dry. Lord! Thank you.
Along with sweet relief, Shad suddenly felt hungry enough to stick a fork right into a steer. He reminded himself he needed to keep his strength up for the night ahead, too, once he ditched Miss Libby. He opened his own menu, muttered a gruff curse when he saw that it was written in French or some prissy language, then closed it and slapped it on the table. “I’ll have whatever you’re having,” he told the lady glumly.
Her sister hadn’t been entirely wrong, Libby thought. Mr. Jones’s conversation during dinner had been largely limited to “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am.” Of course, she didn’t suppose her own was any more scintillating, unaccustomed as she was to dining with men.
She had ordered two thick steaks, and when he was finished, she offered Jones what was left of her own. As they exchanged plates, their hands touched. Just a touch. It barely lasted a second, and yet it had such an immediate and potent effect on Libby that she nearly dropped the plate. She could feel the color rise in her face until her cheeks were burning. And her stomach once again began that infernal fluttering.
Touching her wrist to her forehead, she wondered if she wasn’t coming down with a fever of some sort. But her skin was cool, or relatively so considering it was summertime in Texas. Her water goblet was empty, so she took a healthy sip of the champagne she had ignored earlier.
Her dark companion winked at her now, which didn’t do a thing to dispel the butterflies inside her. “Go easy on that, Miss Kingsland. I wouldn’t want your daddy to think I’d gotten his daughter drunk.”
She had felt a little drunk even before swallowing the pale champagne, Libby thought. Shula ought to be the one sitting here, sipping the bubbly liquid. She was the one who loved fine wines and elegant settings, who conversed easily and thrived on the warm attentions of the opposite sex.
What in the world was she doing even thinking about a man’s warm attention? Her father’s foreman had paid more attention to his steak than he had to her. But that was just the way Libby wanted it. Didn’t she always dress in dowdy, dull-colored clothes specifically to avoid such attentions? And wasn’t she always secretly glad to hide in Shula’s gaudy shadow?
You best remember just who and what you are, Libby Kingsland, she reprimanded herself sharply. Then, deciding her cheeks had cooled off sufficiently, she raised her face to meet the dark eyes of Shadrach Jones.
“What time will we be leaving for Paradise, Mr. Jones?”
“Oh, about eight o’clock.” Shad was making some quick mental calculations, beginning with the wee hour he’d finally get to sleep tonight upstairs at the Steamboat. “Best make that nine.”
She nodded. “We have a great deal of luggage. I hope that won’t be a problem.” She paused then—just long enough, Shad noticed, for her little pink tongue to make an appealing pass over her lower lip. “Also, I believe I forgot to mention that I have a child traveling with me.”
Shad blinked. She had a child? Little Miss Libby didn’t look as if she’d ever been within spitting distance of a man, let alone close enough to make a baby. He narrowed his eyes now, seeing her suddenly in a whole new light. “Yours?” he asked.
“Well, yes. In a way.”
He leaned back and crossed his arms. Hard to imagine such a prim little lady rolling in the arms of a man, he thought. And that thought nettled him for some reason. Irked the daylights out of him. “I didn’t realize you’d ever been married,” he said almost gruffly.
She looked surprised. Even the posies on her bonnet looked wide-eyed now. “Oh, no. I’ve never been married,” she said.
Now both her little hands flew up to her face like sparrows flushed from cover. “Oh, no. I didn’t mean…not that. Not ever.” Her face got about as red as a sunset. “What I mean is…”
Shad would have liked to find out exactly what it was she meant, but just then a hand gripped his shoulder and a big voice boomed, “Shadrach Jones! As I live and breathe. And this must be one of Amos’s pretty daughters. How do, honey. I’m Hoyt Backus. Just call me Hoyt.”
The man was burly as a bear. And, if bears smoked fat cigars and drank rye whiskey, Hoyt Backus smelled like one, too. A gray-haired grizzly with a roar like a wounded bull. A big arm that finished off with a meaty paw angled across the table now, scooping up Miss Libby’s little birdlike hand.
While that arm was working Miss Libby’s like a pump handle, Shad pushed his chair back and rose. “You’re a long way from Hellfire, Hoyt.” What was the old coyote up to? he wondered.