Scandal at the Cahill Saloon - By Carol Arens Page 0,10

her slender fingers to the advertisement she had handed him.

The handbill invited any woman who wanted to change her life to come to Leanna’s Place.

He was mightily confused. If he’d placed a wager on the purpose of this establishment he’d have lost every last cent. Miss Cahill must have read his puzzled expression.

“Leanna’s Place is a gambling hall where gentlemen can come for entertainment that does not involve the purchase of a lady’s favors,” she explained.

“We are on a higher road now, Mr. Holden.” Cassie smiled brightly at him. “Working here with Leanna to teach us respectable ways, we’ll find the futures we’ve only dreamed of.”

Everything that he’d believed of the scandalous Leanna Cahill had just been turned on its ear. That didn’t mean he didn’t have business to settle with her; it just made it a hell of a lot more difficult.

Taking something of value from a scandalous vixen would be easy; it would be right and decent.

Very clearly, Miss Cahill was not a scandalous vixen.

The back door flew open.

“Mama!” a young voice called. A boy, not more than a baby, really, careered across the floor and grasped Miss Cahill’s skirt.

The memory of another baby’s face flashed through his mind and he had to remind himself to breathe.

Leanna’s child reached up his small sturdy arms. She caught him and spun him about, nuzzling her nose in his hair.

“There’s my baby Boodle,” she crooned into his neck. “I missed you so much.”

All of a sudden the world felt off-kilter. Nothing that he had believed of the woman had been true, with the exception of her beauty.

“I kept him away as long as I could, Miss Leanna,” a slender older woman said. Another whore, reforming, he supposed, looked him up and down. She seemed harder, more bitter than the others.

“He missed you something terrible so here we are.”

“Thank you, Dorothy. I missed my baby something terrible, too.”

The boy clung to Miss Cahill’s neck, peeking out at him. Cleve resisted the urge to reach out and loop a whirl of fine dark hair about his thumb. Instead, he greeted Mrs. Wilmont, who had been introduced as Miss Cahill’s housekeeper and nanny.

“He resembles you, Miss Cahill,” Cleve admitted because, quite honestly, he did. He was a handsome child.

“He’s got his uncle Bowie’s blue eyes and his uncle Chance’s temperament.”

“Play,” the boy said, or something like it.

Leanna let him down and he toddled toward the front door.

Cleve headed him off before he made it outside.

“You’re a busy little man.” He closed the door, then aimed him back toward Miss Cahill.

“Horsee!”

Miss Cahill stooped down to the boy’s level. Her skirt billowed out and wrapped him up.

“All right, my little Boodle. I did promise you a horse ride.”

“Boodle?” Cleve asked. What had the woman done, naming the child something so strange?

“It’s a nickname.” She stood with Boodle in her arms. He clasped his small arms about her neck and snuggled in. “His name is Cabe. C for Uncle Chance, A for…well, I needed a vowel to make sense of it. B for Uncle Bowie, E for Granddaddy Earl. His middle name is Quin for his uncle, my oldest brother.”

No initial for his daddy, Cleve noted.

All at once the boy reached out his arms, clearly wanting Cleve to hold him. He thought he could, so he reached forward and Cabe Cahill came to him.

The ladies went back to work on the handbill. He listened to the drone of feminine voices while he chucked the boy under the chin and made him laugh.

Cabe was a very happy child.

“He likes you, Mr. Holden,” Miss Cahill said, coming to stand beside them. She kissed young Boodle’s pudgy hand. “He doesn’t always take to strangers.”

“I haven’t always taken to babies, either. Looks like we’ll get along just fine.”

Miss Cahill laughed. Her eyes softened and he was done. She was everything she had been last night and more.

“I reckon you’ve come to discuss that business from yesterday evening.” She blinked at him with those lake-hued eyes and he nearly dropped little Cabe.

“Another time.” He gave Cabe a squeeze, then handed him over to Leanna.

He could hardly set straight what needed straightening with his mind in a jumble over who this woman really was. She wasn’t the seductress that the town said she was. Well, she was, but not in a tawdry way. She was a high-class lady who could make a man’s heart leap with a mere smile.

Any woman who did what she was doing, trying to save those who couldn’t save