breakfast at her desk.”
I can see why, thought Della, her empty stomach churning from the obnoxious kitchen smells.
“The tea’s probably cold by now,” the cook said with an edge of satisfaction in her voice.
Della swallowed back a request for a hot cup of coffee. She’d never liked tea, iced or otherwise, but she reminded herself that cold tea was a small price to pay to avoid a confrontation with the formidable cook.
Ignoring the woman’s pointed scrutiny, Della picked up the tray and left the kitchen. She walked down a center hall, peering into dark, shuttered rooms as she passed. The somber silent atmosphere in the house was oppressive, a sharp contrast to the bawdy noise and laughter that had filled it the evening before.
When she came to Maude’s shadowy office, she put the breakfast tray down on the small desk the madam had pointed out to her. A musty smell permeated the room. Della knew that she would have a headache in short order if she spent any time in the gloomy office. The room was like a closed box with no movement of air.
Going over to a pair of tall windows, she pulled back heavy green draperies, which allowed muted sunlight through floor-length ecru lace curtains. She broke two fingernails trying in vain to open a window to get some fresh air. The thick wooden frames looked as if they had remained shut since the house was built.
She looked out the window at a two-story clapboard house on the other side of a small alley running between the two houses. Gertrude Katz’s boardinghouse? Is that where Colin had spent the night?
A spurt of anxiety made Della bite her lip. He had told her to stay put until he found out what was going on, but what if he had disappeared and left her here? She’d always prided herself on her ability to solve her own problems, in any situation, but this was beyond anything she could have imagined.
Turning away from the window, she fought back an impulse to go running out of the house in an effort to find him. He was her anchor, her only hold on reality. She needed to tell him about the hostile presence in Vinetta’s room. Last night, he had handled an impossible situation with a deftness that was almost frightening. She had felt an intense pulsating energy radiating from him that both attracted and repelled her. Remembering how his dark looks had been enhanced by the old-fashioned clothes, a new sense of uneasiness brought a dryness to her throat.
She sat down at the small desk and lifted the damask napkin on the breakfast tray which held a small two-cup teapot, a matching cup and one slice of buttered toast on a plate. Nothing else. Either Miss Vinetta had been laced too tightly to eat anything more for breakfast, or she’d had the appetite of a bird, thought Della, her stomach rumbling with emptiness. She was tempted to take the tray back to the kitchen and demand a decent breakfast, but the impulse was short-lived. She wasn’t up to another exchange with Inga.
The day had just begun and already she felt bone weary. She sipped the lukewarm tea and had just taken the last bite of toast when a big rough-looking man sporting a full black beard strode into the room.
“I’ll be damned,” he swore with thick moist lips when he saw Della. He wore a gray-striped suit stretched out at the knees and slightly worn at the wrists. “What the hell we got here?” He strode over to the desk and leered down at her.
Della’s mouth went dry as he stood over her, his breath smelling of stale beer. She swallowed the last piece of toast, which seemed to grow in size as it went down her throat.
“Bet my britches you’re the new bookkeeper. Well, I’ll be damned.” His dark eyes took on a lustful sheen as he looked her over. “I haven’t seen corn-silk hair any prettier than that. A step up from that dried prune, Vinetta, aren’t you, sweetheart?”
“And just who are you?” Della asked coolly.
He fingered the gold chain of his pocket watch and stuck out his beer belly. “Maude’s ever-lovin’, Jack Gilly.”
“Her husband?”
“Husband?” He snorted. “Hell, no. If I’d married Maudie, she’d have hog-tied me long ago for sure. As it is, she has to keep me happy to keep me around. Gives me plenty of room to roam, you know.” He plopped a fat buttock on the corner of her desk.
His smirking smile was repulsive and his sour beer breath turned her stomach. She wanted to give him a shove that would send him tumbling off his perch. Everything about him was offensive, his looks, his crude manner, his thick wet lips and roving eyes. “I have work to do,” she said ungraciously and leveled her drop-dead look on him.
“We all have work to do, sweetheart.” He laughed at some private joke. “I guess you might say my job is keeping the old gal thinking she’s still a spring chicken. Been doing it for years…off and on. Oh, hell, I take off now and again, but always come back to dear old Maudie.”
For a second, Della’s curiosity won out over her repulsion. “You’ve known her for a long time?”
“Hell, yes. Ever since she had her place in Chicago…about seventeen years ago, I guess. Maude wasn’t bad-looking back then. Hell, I might even have married her, but she up and left her business and moved West. I guess she thought it was all over between us.” He gave a satisfied grunt. “A couple of years later, I surprised her and showed up in good old Denver. Been parking my carcass under her roof ever since.”
Della was even more repulsed than ever. He had verified her instinctive dislike. The smirking, foul-smelling Jack Gilly had opened his big ugly mouth and told her exactly what he was…a disgusting, sordid leech!
“’Course, I keep the boarders company. You know what I mean?” he bragged as if her silence meant approval. “Part of my duties as man of the house.” He reached out and pinched her cheek. “You stick with good old Jack and you can have the run of this place. Know what I mean? How about a little kiss—”
“Keep your hands off her!”
At the sound of Colin’s angry voice, Jack swung off the desk. He planted his stocky legs on the floor and balled his fists as Colin strode into the room.
“Leave her alone.”
Jack’s mouth spread in a smile above his dark beard as if a good fight was the perfect way to start the day. “Sez who?” He bounced on the balls of his feet, clenched fists ready to meet Colin head-on. Colin’s face was dark with rage.
“No…don’t!” Della cried. “No, Colin, he’ll—” She never got the next word out.
Without slowing his stride, Colin plowed right into Jack’s prizefighter stance. Apparently surprised by the rush that resembled a charging buffalo, Jack didn’t move fast enough. He staggered backward and Colin landed two hard blows to his stomach.
Jack’s eyes bulged and he gasped for air. While he was still off-balance, Colin gave him a shove that propelled him over a footstool and landed him flat on his broad back. Then Colin stood over him, his fists clenched, waiting for the burly man to get up.
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