To Love a Scoundrel Read Free

colors?"
    There was a warning in his words and manner, but she couldn't be sure what he signaled. She proceeded with caution. "Maybe... maybe not. I've been thinking I could use a little time off. What's up?"
    "You're a hard one to corner, Miss Flannery." He laughed. "I've got a special little job for you in Kansas. Topeka, to be exact."
    Jewel draped her elbows across the arms of the chair and collapsed against the cushion, bustle be damned. "Oh, Allan," she groaned, "I don't want to go west to the land of dust storms and failed crops. I want to go east. Can't you find an assignment for me in New York? I hear the town is jumping with parties and celebrations for the centennial."
    "I can certainly understand that, but I've received word that Jesse James may be back in business. He's been spotted all through Missouri and Tennessee. In fact"—Allan straightened in his chair, and his color rose—"in Nashville the scoundrel had the guts to enter his horse in the state fair. He rode the beast himself and won first prize."
    "Then why wasn't he arrested?"
    "Because," Allan grumbled, his rosy cheeks darkening, "the sheriff was the idiot who awarded him the prize. It wasn't until later, as he sat staring at a wanted poster, that he realized what he'd done. I tell you, Jesse's flaunting his lawlessness, and I'm going to get him if it's the last thing I do."
    Jewel flinched as her boss's fist slammed down on the desk. Then she shook her head. "If you don't calm down, it very well may be the last thing you do."
    Allan's smile returned, and his eyes sparkled. "I like to get my man, that's all."
    "Me, too." She laughed. "But why can't I look for him in New York?''
    Relaxed again, his color back to normal, he said, "Tell you what. You take this job in Kansas just long enough to find out if James has really been spotted in the area and I'll make sure you're in Philadelphia in time for the opening of the Centennial Exhibition on May tenth. What do you say?"
    "But that's only a few weeks away."
    Allan shrugged. "Shouldn't take a sharp operator like you more than a few days to sniff out a skunk like Jesse James."
    Frowning, Jewel avoided looking across the desk. As usual, Allan Pinkerton knew her answer would be yes, but she kept her silence, too stubborn to admit it just yet.
    Allan decided to help her verbalize her decision. "While you're thinking about taking the assignment, add this to the pile of kindling—I have it on good word that Handsome Harry Benton may show up in the same general region."
    "What?" Jewel sprang out of her chair. "Why didn't you say so in the first place? You could have saved us both some time." She pressed her palms against the glass-topped desk and leaned over. "Spill it—all of it. Where's he been seen? What game is he up to? Is he working alone or is—''
    "Hold it." Allan laughed, his hands stretched out in front of him. "Now who needs to calm down?''
    "I'm calm," she murmured, self-conscious. Jewel straightened her spine and centered the brown velvet hat in her thick auburn curls before she trusted herself to speak further. "Fairly calm, anyway. I don't know what came over me, sir."
    "Oh, I think I do." Allan squinted one blue eye at her. "Same thing that comes over you any time Handsome Harry is part of the conversation. He's getting to be an obsession with you, Jewel," he said, more seriously. "Better watch it before it gets you in the kind of trouble you can't get out of."
    "Thanks for your concern, Allan, but it's really not necessary. I can take care of myself, and the day I can't, I won't be taken down by a lop-eared mongrel named Harry Benton."
    "Make that Handsome Harry."
    "Says he." She sniffed. Says he and any widow or spinster over her own twenty-five years, she grudgingly acknowledged to herself.
    Allan shrugged. "Whatever. I just thought his name would sweeten the pot. If that's still not enough to send you packing, I've also got reason to believe you couldn't find those certificates because