so abruptly. “Don’t do that!” She straightened her hat. “There was a dime novel about you, didn’t you know? It came out close to a year ago, just after that case where you caught the ringleader of some bank robbery gang and shot him. They called you Magnificent Matt Davis!”
“I’m going to be sick,” he said, and looked as if he meant it.
“Now, now, it can’t be so bad to be a hero. Just think, one day you can show a copy of that novel to your children and be a hero to them, too.”
“I won’t have children,” he said shortly, staring straight ahead.
“Why not?” she asked. “Don’t you like them?”
He looked down at her evenly. “Probably as much as you do. Isn’t twenty-six about the right age to be called a spinster?”
She flushed. “I don’t have to get married to have a child,” she informed him haughtily. “Or a lover!”
He gave her a speaking look.
Odd, she thought, how that look made her feel. She swallowed hard. It sounded good at suffragist meetings to say such things, but when she looked at Matt, she thought of how it would be to have him as a lover, and her knees went wobbly. She actually knew very little about such things, except that one of her suffragist friends had said that it hurt a lot and it wasn’t fun at all.
“Your father would beat you with a buggy whip if he heard you talk like that!”
“Well, who else can I say such things to?” she demanded, glaring at him. “I don’t know any other men!”
“Not even the persistent soldier?” he asked venomously.
She shifted. “He never bathes. And there were crumbs in his mustache.”
He burst out laughing.
“Never mind,” she grumbled, and started walking again. “I’ll just keep my scandalous thoughts to myself until I can find a group of suffragists to join.” She looked at him from the corner of her eyes. “Do you know where they meet?”
“I never attend suffragist meetings myself. I’m much too busy with my knitting.”
She punched his arm playfully.
“I’m sure you’ll find them,” he said quickly.
“I expect they have a low tolerance for liquor, as well,” she mused aloud. “Do you have a hatchet?”
“Only Indians carry hatchets,” he informed her. “I’m a detective. I carry a .32 caliber Smith & Wesson double-action revolver.”
“You never taught me to shoot a pistol.”
“And I never will,” he said. He gave her a wry glance. “One day, the temptation might be too much for you. It wouldn’t look good on my record if you shot me. We’re here.”
Matt took her elbow and guided her up the steps of a brownstone house with long windows and a huge door with a lion’s head knocker. He escorted her inside, then paused outside a closed door and knocked.
“Just a minute,” a musical voice called. “I’m coming.”
The door opened and a tiny woman with gray-streaked blond hair in a bun looked way up at Matt and then at his companion.
“Why, Mr. Davis, have you found a wife at last?”
Tess flushed scarlet and Matt cleared his throat.
“This is my cousin, Tess Meredith, Mrs. Mulhaney. Her father has died, and she has no relatives except me. Is that room on the third floor still vacant?”
“Yes, it is, and I’d be delighted to rent it to Miss Meredith.” She smiled at Tess, a thousand unspoken questions in her blue eyes.
Tess smiled back. “I’d be very grateful to have a place to stay near Matt.” She looked up at him with sickening adoration. “Isn’t he just the sweetest man?”
“Sweet” wasn’t an appellation that had ever connected itself with the enigmatic Mr. Davis in Mrs. Mulhaney’s mind, but she supposed to a kinswoman he might be.
“He is a kindhearted soul,” she agreed. “Now, Miss Meredith, you can have meals with us. Mr. Davis will tell you the times, and there’s a laundry just three doors down run by Mr. Lo.”
Matt stifled a chuckle. “I’ll show her where it is,” he promised.
“Let me get the key and I’ll take you to your room, Miss Meredith. It has a very nice view of the city.”
She went off, mumbling to herself, and Tess lifted both brows as she looked up at Matt. “And what was so amusing about the laundry?”
“Don’t you remember? Whites used to call us Mr. Lo.”
She frowned.
He made an exasperated sound. “Lo, the poor Indian…?”
She laughed. “Oh, good heavens. I’d forgotten our jokes about that.”
“I haven’t,” he murmured. “You and I joked. Everywhere else being called Mr. Lo or ‘John’ most of my life was not funny.”
“Well, you’re anything but a poor Indian now,” she said pointedly, her gaze going over his rich paisley vest in shades of magenta and the dark gray suit and white shirt he was wearing with it. Even his shoes were expensive, handmade. For feet that size, she thought wickedly, they’d have to be handmade! She searched his dark eyes with a smile in her own. “You look filthy rich to me!” she whispered.
“Tess!”
“I’ll reform,” she promised, but hadn’t time to say more because Mrs. Mulhaney was back with the key.
Chapter Two
Chicago was big and brash, and Tess loved to explore it, finding old churches and forts and every manner of modern building. Lake Michigan, lapping at the very edge of the city and looking as big as an ocean, fascinated Tess, who had spent so many of her formative years landlocked in the West.
She rather easily got a nursing position at the hospital in Cook County. Her experience and skill were evident to a number of the physicians, who maneuvered to get her on their services. Since she wasn’t formally trained, however, she was classified a practical nurse.
The matrons who lived at the boardinghouse were less approving. They considered nursing a dreadful profession for a well-brought-up single woman and said so.
Tess took their comments with smiling fortitude, mentally consigning them to the nether reaches. They couldn’t really be blamed, though, considering their upbringing. Change came hard to the elderly.
Fortunately, she discovered a group of women’s rights advocates and joined immediately. She eagerly worked on every plan for a march or a rally aimed at getting the vote for women.
