The Gunslinger's Untamed Bride

“And yet my head is throbbing as though I’ve suffered an entire day of your takeover activities.”

Lily crossed her arms in disapproval as he poured a clear trail of spirits into his hot chocolate. He capped the flask and tucked it back into his jacket.

“I don’t need to see the outstanding payroll records to surmise that this company is about to implode.” Regi sat back, sipping his potent chocolate. “The accounting records reveal plenty. McFarland took out more than he put in and had nothing left to pay his employees, nor was he willing to dip into his personal funds to compensate for the loss.”

“Exactly. The company failure was due to his poor management. I didn’t walk into this completely blind, Reginald. The potential is there.”

“Darling, you hardly need another source of income. And we have enough work to juggle without taking on a camp full of filthy oxen men who haven’t been paid in weeks. This lumber business will be nothing but a drain on our time and re sources.”

“I’m keeping my new company. Success is the best revenge.”

Regi took a deep drink, his dark eyes shining with mirth. “This is why men cower in fear when you enter a boardroom.”

She didn’t appreciate his catty tone. “They do.”

“Yes, love, I know. I’m the one standing right beside you as they tremble. No one is questioning your success.”

“That’s not the point,” she said, straightening her posture. She tugged at the bottom of her fitted waistcoat, smoothing wrinkles from the black-and-gray pinstriping.

Reginald rubbed at his temple. “What exactly is the point, love? I keep forgetting. Could it be that you need another excuse to stay cooped up in this pampered palace of an office?” He splayed his hands toward satin-lined walls trimmed with gold moldings. “Look at you. Impeccable style, flawless skin, every strawberry-blond curl swept up in sheer perfection, and all of it going to waste.”

“I don’t care for your perspective. Looking my best is hardly wasteful.”

“I dare say ten years ago you’d have been the belle of every debutante ball, had you bothered to attend them.”

Unlike the rest of the Carrington women, Lily didn’t judge her worth by the size of her wedding dowry. She preferred to follow her mother’s example and shun tradition. It was, after all, what everyone expected of her, for poor orphaned Lily to adopt her mother’s reckless ways. She did hate to disappoint.

“If you’ll recall, I was banned from such festivities.”

Regi’s tittering laugh increased her annoyance. “I assure you, no one has forgotten. You did pull off your own ruin with certain aplomb. And for what? To spend your days intimidating stuffy old men in gray suits and looking over the shoulders of all our accountants? Every day you descend from your living quarters bound and bustled in San Francisco’s finest fashions. You need to get out once in a while, Lily. Strut your fancy wares.”

“I’m a businesswoman, Reginald, not a peacock.”

“You hardly need to be an exotic bird to get some fresh air. Take time for a social tea, a stroll through Ghirardelli Square for heaven’s sake. You need a lover, Lil, not more work.”

One brief interlude had been plenty to keep her focused on the finer things in life—business and chocolate. No one had been complaining about her social life while she’d doubled the family fortunes. Regi was the only one who’d made any attempt to understand her, or at least humor her ambitions.

“You socialize enough for both of us,” she said. “Someone has to run this place.”

“If your aunt Iris knew how I’ve aided and abetted your spinster ways, she’d turn over in her grave.”

Regi also knew how to get under Lily’s skin.

“Doubtful,” Lily said, her frown deepening at the thought of her late, harping guardian. “The old biddy could hardly be troubled to lift a finger in life, much less ‘roll over.’ And you are deliberately toying with my temper.”

“On the contrary, I’m simply pointing out the obvious. You already work nonstop. This isn’t a small undertaking, Lily.”

“A successful lumber company will be a perfect addition to L. P. Industries.”

“Yes, love, but we’re talking about a bankrupt lumber camp. According to the latest financial records, McFarland hadn’t paid his employees in over a month, which is why he was looking for outside funding. Are we to make good on those back wages? All we have is a list of names, with no hint of their position in the company or pay rate. We don’t even know if the camp is abandoned or filled with disgruntled employees.”

“We’ll gather a team to assess the situation and obtain the payroll files. We’ll send a messenger immediately with notices explaining the change of ownership and temporary freeze of financial assets.”

Reginald scooted to the edge of his cushion and braced his hands wide on her desk. “Just for a moment let’s be reasonable. What do you know of lumberjacks?”

“They chop down trees.”

Regi laughed. “Oh, bravo. And when these jolly beasts of labor, who ‘chop down trees,’ come tromping from the woods demanding to be paid, what then, my darling?”

Lily refilled her cup and smiled brightly. “Refer them to you, of course, my financial counsel.”

Regi arched a dark eyebrow. “I’d laugh if I didn’t know you have a streak of viciousness in you. I can hardly counsel a woman who does not heed my advice.”

“I’m neither naive nor inexperienced. Anything worth the effort is seldom easy.”

The glint in Reginald’s brown eyes told her he was quite aware of that fact.

“If they want their jobs they’ll have to be patient while we work through McFarland’s mess. Otherwise they’re welcome to take up banners with those obnoxious men of the labor unions and harping ladies of Women’s Suffrage, and march the streets. Goodness knows one can never please the masses.”

“You have never tried to please the masses,” Regi said. “So why not just please your cousin. Let this one go.”

“No.”

Regi’s gaze narrowed. “When this lumber-camp jaunt goes up in smoke, I will expect a full I-should-have-listened-to-Reginald apology.”

“I always listen to you, Regi,” she said as she began thumbing through the box of files. “You’ve been my trusted friend since I arrived in San Francisco.”

“Which says little of my sensibilities,” he muttered.

“We will split the list of employees and see if we can’t match them to job references buried in the rest of this mess.”

Reginald stood and snatched the stack of paper she held out to him. “You realize we do employ secretaries?”

“Yes. Tell Emily I’d like another pot of hot chocolate.”

“Right after I notify some of the staff that they’ll be taking a trip to the mountains.”

Lily slid her chair up to the desk and opened the file with rows of names listed in alphabetical order, management mingled with the most common of workers. It was no wonder McFarland’s company had gone under. The man clearly had no business sense.

Her gaze scanned down the first page. A name caught her attention, forcing her to reread the line.

Barns, Juniper. Juniper Barns.

The name slapped across her senses like a razor strap. A name she’d heard over and over in her mind since she was twelve years old, since the night her father’s business partner had stood on the front porch of her childhood home in Missouri, holding a hat and a gun belt.

“I’m sorry, Rose. Red won’t be coming back. He was killed in Mason by a gunslinger named Juniper Barns. Gunned him down with those pearl-handled six-shooters.”

Her mother had been devastated. Folks had said the influenza had killed her a few weeks later, but Lily knew better. Rose Palmer had stopped living that night on the porch. She’d let the sickness take her.