For a Sister's Love by Paty Jager

Author:Paty Jager
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, historical, colorado, western, gambling, oregon, sternwheelers, silver city
Publisher: Paty Jager

Part Two: Maggie

by Paty Jager

Spring 1874

Portland, OR

One

It couldn’t be?

Maggie swallowed the lump of fear in her throat. She glanced at the hotel room door, placed the dust rag on the bureau, and reached a finger out to skim over the cool lavender stone in the locket on the bureau top. Lora Beth would never part with their mother’s locket. This had to be a different one.

Her hand shook reaching for the silver trinket. The cold metal mimicked the dread in her heart. Had something happened to Lora Beth? Would she never see her sister again? She’d spent ten long years dreaming of their reunion. Trembling fingers worked to spring the latch.

Frustrated, she chewed on her lower lip. “Danged thing. I don’t remember it being so contrary before.” It couldn’t be their mother’s locket, the one she gave Lora Beth after Indians ambushed their wagon train and killed their parents.

The locket sprung free.

Her blood froze.

Eight-year-old Loralei Elizabeth and ten-year-old Magdalena Ruth Holmes stared back at her just as Maggie remembered she and her sister looking before their family set off with the wagon train.

The snick of a key in the lock to the hotel room rang through the silence like a gunshot from the Silver Horn saloon on a Saturday night.

Maggie faced the door. She didn’t care if she lost her job for snooping. If she hadn’t noticed the locket while cleaning his hotel room she could have wasted more years trying to find Lora Beth. She had to know why this man had something that should have been in her sister’s safekeeping.

Maggie clutched the jewelry in her hand. The door swung open, and a man, nearly the height of the doorframe, strolled into the room. A self-satisfied smirk stretched across his handsome face. His light blue gaze landed on her, and he stopped, his grin tilting into a seductive smile.

“Well, what have we here? Were you sent as a congratulatory gift?” His gaze swept the length of her, and he stopped three steps away, a frown arched his dark brown brows. “You don’t look like a sporting lady.”

His slow drawl had a relaxing quality until he called her a sporting lady.

“Because I’m not. I clean the rooms in this hotel, not allow men to use my body for their pleasure.” Not only a gambler but a womanizer as well. How had her sister come to know this man?

She dangled the locket in front of her. “Where did you get this?”

“That’s mine.” His quiet, smooth tone belied the hand whipping out to snatch the chain. But she was quicker, pulling the item behind her back.

“I could have you fired for digging through my things.” His slow deliberate words were as irritating as the smirk on his handsome face.

“It was sitting on top of your bureau, in plain sight. Where did you get it?” She wasn’t about to back down. She’d lost touch with her little sister years ago and wasn’t giving up on her one chance to find her.

“I won it in a card game.

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