Cowboys 08 - Luke Read Free

hallway, with its wood floors, stucco walls, and exposed beams, was nothing like the marble halls of her home, its walls covered with silk, tapestries, or handpainted wallpaper from France or China; its ceilings painted with pastoral scenes and highlighted with plaster or gold leaf. The beams here were so low she felt they might crash down on her head. She was certain she saw a cobweb dangling from one.
    The stairs were so narrow her dress caught on a splinter. She paused while her maid pulled it loose. The floor didn't appear to have been swept recently. She'd been told towns like Leadville, Colorado, or Virginia City, Nevada, had grown up around rich gold mines. She'd been assured the wealthy mine owners lived in great houses with electric lights, steam heat, hot water, and many other conveniences. She wondered where the rich people in Bonner stayed. Obviously not at this hotel.
    "This is the room, your highness." Otto pointed to a door with the number 8 on it. The quality of the roughhewn wood didn't encourage Valeria to expect much. Dark brown paint served merely as a relief to the redbrown walls. It was almost dark as night inside the room, where a single oil lamp provided the only light.
    Her maid held the door as Valeria swept into the room, only to be brought up short by the sight of a roughlooking man sitting in a deep, leather-covered chair by the window. Valeria stifled a frisson of fear, a gasp of surprise, then replaced them with a hiss of anger. Except for being absurdly handsome in a rough, unkempt sort of American way, he was exactly the kind of person Valeria was sure would kill her for anyone willing to pay his price.
    Valeria had met half the rulers of Europe, danced and dined with villains who stole countries, emptied treasuries, caused whole populations to be destroyed. From the coldness of his ice-blue eyes, the frigid feel of his gaze, Valeria knew this man could be just as ruthless. She turned to Otto. "Who is he?"
    "I don't know," Otto replied, looking nearly as uneasy as she felt.
    "Who are you, and how did you get into this room?" His gaze might be icy enough to chill her blood, but she was a princess. A hundred generations of warriors stood behind her. She would not cower before this American intruder.
    "I'm Luke Attmore."
    Just that. No explanation of what he was doing there, no apology for unnerving her, no excuse for invading her privacy.
    "I've never heard of you."
    He didn't reply, just continued to sit, looking as if he'd come straight in off the desert. His boots might once have been black, but time and use had rendered them a creased brown even a peasant in her country would have been ashamed to wear. His pants hugged his body like a second skin. She didn't know how he managed to sit down without ripping a seam.
    His shirt was of the same brown as the adobe, unadorned, and open at the throat. He wore his hat low over his eyes-wearing a hat inside was a breech of etiquette no European would have ever committed!-but not so low she couldn't see his eyes. He had a square jaw and wide, full, sensual lips. Bits of moonlight-blond hair hung down the back of his neck.
    Cleaned up and wearing decent clothes, he would be devastatingly handsome. But even in his deplorable condition he projected a sensual aura that reached out and enveloped her like a cloud of warm air in a cold room. Valeria had known many handsome men, but none had ever affected her so strongly by merely being in her presence. She couldn't understand it. She disliked it, and it made her angry.
    "Make him leave," she said, turning back to Otto. "And if the hotel can't keep strangers from wandering into my room, we'll have to go to another hotel."
    "This is the only hotel in Bonner," Mr. Attmore said. "At least, it's the only one suitable for you."
    "You call this suitable?" Valeria said, rounding on him, angry he hadn't left, angry he still appeared to feel more comfortable in her presence than she in his, angry her attraction to the