The Gunslinger's Man by Helena Maeve

Author:Helena Maeve [Maeve, Helena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Erotic Romance Fiction
Publisher: Totally Entwined Group Ltd
Published: 2016-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

* * * *

The saloon doors swung creakily in Asher’s wake. His hands itched from sweeping and digging out the tiny screws scattered all over the shop floor. He blamed hard labor for the twitch in his fingers as he hoisted himself onto a barstool.

The last time he’d been here, the saloon had been all but empty. The Red Horn Riders had walked in and everything had changed.

“A bit early for you, isn’t it?” Romero drawled from behind the bar. Months on and she was just as nonchalant as she’d been that day. Her black hair had a little more gray in it, perhaps, but her features were just as severe when she reached for the rye.

“Just beer,” Asher said.

Romero cocked an eyebrow. “New man, new tastes, huh?”

Asher hunched his shoulders into a noncommittal shrug. He wasn’t sure what kind of man he was, old or new, and his tastes had never interested anyone before.

He settled his palms into the grooves of the bar as if reclaiming lost territory. His fingernails knew every nick and crack in the wood. The heels of his boots anchored effortlessly onto the brass footrest. He wouldn’t have thought it possible to miss this place, or Sargasso as a whole. But timber walls and hardened faces was the closest thing Asher had to a home.

“I hear Octavian bit it,” he volleyed.

Romero’s expression gave nothing away. “He did. Damn tragedy.”

“How?”

“Didn’t your Redemption buddies say? He was ambushed on his way to meet the train. Burned to death.”

Asher suppressed a shiver. He would’ve struggled to imagine it before he saw Redemption go down in flames, although he would’ve felt gratified to know Octavian had suffered in his last moments. But now he had seen what fire brought to Octavian’s kind.

He couldn’t revel in that knowledge.

Something else niggled at him. “How do you know it was Redemption what did for him?”

Romero slid a glass of piss-colored beer down the bar. “Who else could it have been?”

“Octavian wasn’t exactly Mr. Friendly. He rubbed people the wrong way.”

“Humans,” Romero corrected. And they didn’t matter.

Asher picked at a divot in the bar. “Town mayor didn’t sound like he’d just knocked one of Ambrose’s knights off the board.” If anything, Redemption had been a harried place just trying to survive in the face of Sargasso’s attacks.

“You’re overthinking it,” said Romero and resolutely turned her back to attend to another customer.

“Did it happen when Octavian went to meet the doc?”

The fingers of one hand would’ve sufficed to help Asher count the number of times he’d seen Romero show fright. He added this one to the tally.

Her shoulders squared, Romero clenched her fingers around the bottle. “What did you say?”

“Nothing.” Asher dropped a few coins to the bar and hopped off his stool.

He was halfway to the door when Romero called after him.

“What about your beer?”

His thirst had evaporated, but he made a point of snatching up the glass anyway and peeling off the contents with a few deep gulps. Unlike whiskey, there was no immediate burn in the pit of his stomach, no satisfying kick in his knees.

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