Lucky Penny Read Free Page A

the boardwalk in nothing but a—” David glanced at Miss Marcy and, like Brad, had a sudden urge to loosen his collar. Even worse, he plumb forgot what that pink thingamajig she wore was called. It had slipped farther off her right shoulder, and the brown of her nipple was playing peekaboo with him every time the breeze shifted. “Well, ma’am, no offense, but parading about in one’s birthday suit, even if it’s sort of covered, is against the law. You need to go back inside.”
    Wearing a jade dress that matched her eyes and sporting a belly as big as a Texas watermelon, Bess pointed a rigid finger at the prostitute. “Immediately!”
    “I’m goin’, I’m goin’,” Marcy replied with a seductive thrust of her hip as she turned away. “Don’t get your lacy little knickers in a twist. I ain’t never stole anybody’s husband yet and don’t plan to start. They come of their own free will.”
    Bess’s face turned as red as her husband’s. She reachedup to rest a fine-boned hand on Brad’s knee, and the man jerked as if he’d just been touched with a hot brand. David, who’d been courting Hazel Wright, the new schoolteacher, and was thinking about asking her to marry him, got an itchy feeling at the nape of his neck. If this was any indication, maybe wedded bliss wasn’t so blissful. Hell’s bells, all Brad had done was accidentally look, and as a result, he’d probably get burned biscuits for supper.
    Bess abandoned her husband to march across the rutted street, which was still muddy in spots from a recent rain. As she approached David, he wondered how a perfectly wonderful morning had so quickly gone to hell.
    “Marshal Paxton,” she said, using a tone that took David back in time to the classroom, when nuns had cracked rulers over the backs of his knuckles when he misbehaved. “We, the citizens of No Name, pay you well to keep this town respectable, yet you sat there on that dilapidated chair doing absolutely nothing while a harlot hawked her wares on Main Street at eight o’clock in the morning!”
    David rubbed his whiskery jaw and repositioned his hat. “You heard me tell her to go back inside, Bess. What else can you expect me to do, get her in a headlock and drag her back in?”
    “That is
not
the point!” Bess’s lips drew back over her teeth in a snarl so fierce that David cringed. Sam whined and crossed his snow-white paws over his eyes. “The
point
is that you
gawked
at her for a full three minutes before you said a single word.”
    “Gawked? I didn’t gawk.” Well, he guessed he had, but not on purpose. “I was just taken aback, Bess, and as the marshal, I can’t go off half-cocked. I needed to think of an appropriate way to handle the situation.”
    Judging by the flare of pink on her cheeks, Bess was less than mollified by his explanation. “Mark my word, I will attend the next city council meeting and lodge a complaint. You never hesitate to arrest a
man
who disturbs the peace, yet you fail to act when the perpetrator is a half-dressed female of ill repute!”
    David scratched beside his nose. “That isn’t fair. It’s different with a woman.”
    “How so?”
    David scuffed his heel on a plank. “Well, when a man breaks the law, I can go to fisticuffs with him if it becomes necessary—or shoot him if all else fails. It’s a whole different story with a lady.”
    “Marcy May Jones is
not
a lady!” Bess ran a molten gaze from the top of David’s head to the toes of his dusty boots. “Not that I’m certain you’d recognize the difference anymore. You used to be a fine, upstanding marshal. Now just
look
at you! A saddle tramp has better personal hygiene.” She jabbed a dainty finger at his duster. “That
thing
is absolutely filthy! And just look at your face. I’ll bet you haven’t shaved for the better part of a week.”
    David put a blade to his jaw every three days now, usually right before bedtime so he could sprout a new crop of whiskers before sunrise.