Slow Hand (Hot Cowboy Nights, #1)(11)

“Why?” she asked. “Why have you gone out of your way for me like this?”

He grinned. “Technically speaking it isn’t that far out of my way.”

“I’m not talking about the drive. I mean the airport, picking me up, feeding me, and giving me a place to stay.”

“Maybe because it’s the right thing to do…or maybe it’s because I like you.”

“Like me? You don’t even know me,” she insisted.

“I know enough”—he shrugged—“and I like what I see.”

Ditto, cowboy. She’d been taking a subconscious inventory of him from the moment she’d met him and was hard pressed to find anything not to like. On top of all that, one kiss had scattered her wits to the four winds. Her attraction to Wade was growing worse by the hour. Some way, somehow, she needed to get away from him. Nikki closed her eyes, drifting off on those dangerous thoughts.

“Here it is,” Wade announced. “Don’t blink or you’ll miss it all.”

Nikki opened her eyes to find they’d arrived in Virginia City. She almost gaped when they drove down the center of town. Lined with false front buildings with clapboard siding, it looked like the set of Gunsmoke. “This is it? There isn’t even a traffic light.”

“Nope.” He chuckled. “The onetime capital of the Territory of Montana, and now the seat of Madison County, has fewer than two hundred full-time residents.”

“It’s surreal. I’m half expecting to see horses and stagecoaches…and a saloon.”

“All that happens in the height of summer when the town becomes a living museum. If you’re looking for the saloon, the Pioneer’s right over there.” He jerked a thumb to indicate a building beside the old Opera House. “This community thrives on the tourist trade now. The rest of the time it’s still pretty much a ghost town. I only come here when business requires, generally no more than once a week, sometimes less. Hard to believe this was once a thriving metropolis.”

“What happened? Was there some kind of disaster?”

“You might say that. It was all built up around a single gold strike, the biggest one ever recorded in the Rockies. Within a week of the discovery, hundreds of prospectors and nine mining camps cropped up along the fourteen-mile stretch of Alder Creek. The first real settlement was built up here at the midpoint of the Alder Gulch. The town grew to ten thousand within months, but when the gold dried up so did the local economy.”

“Why is it named Virginia City? It’s nowhere near Virginia.”

“The original name proposed for the new town was ‘Varina,’ after the wife of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, but the territory’s judge was a staunch Unionist and refused to approve a charter with her name. He crossed it out and wrote in ‘Virginia’ instead.”

“Wow. I had no idea of the Old West history here.”

“There’s tons of it. We even have a boot hill. If that kinda thing interests you, I’d be happy to give you the ten-cent tour later.”

“Yeah.” She smiled. “I think I’d like that.”

He parked the truck on the street, hopped out, and came around to offer his hand to help her step down from the truck. For a moment she hesitated. She couldn’t recall the last man who’d opened a door or helped her with anything. Even in the South, chivalry seemed a rare commodity these days. She found his old-fashioned manners flattering, although peculiar.

“My office is right here.” He inclined his head to the false front building. “It was once Miss Ruby’s boardinghouse.”

“Boardinghouse or bordello?” she asked.

“Probably one and the same.” He grinned. “Half the reason I signed the lease was that I liked the irony of practicing law in a former bawdy house.”

She stepped up onto the ancient-looking wooden boardwalk and gazed down the neat row of authentic nineteenth-century buildings lining both sides of the street. He opened the door with Evans & Knowlton, Attorneys at Law etched on the glass, and gestured for Nikki to precede him inside.

“Mornin’, Iris,” he greeted a plump middle-aged woman. “This is Miz Powell. She’s up from Atlanta and will be using the office to take care of some personal business. Please allow her free rein to the computer, fax, et cetera…”

“Sure thing, Wade.” Iris smiled at Nikki. “Nice to meet you, Miss Powell.”

Nikki extended her hand with an apologetic look. “I’m sorry to impose on you like this. I’ll try not to get in your way any more than necessary.”

“Get in the way? A little bitty thing like you?” Iris waved her hand with a chuckle. She then gave Wade an assessing once over, her brows meeting in a frown. “You look like you could use some coffee.”

“That rough, eh?” He rubbed his bristled jaw. It was a particularly nice jaw, strong and square with the sexiest dimple in the middle of his chin. Why did he have to have that? She was such a sucker for dimples. Nikki wondered what the ones above his ass looked like. She’d noticed that part of him too but acting on her physical attraction to him could only lead to trouble.

What was wrong with her? One moment he was aggravating as hell and the next she was checking out his ass? Her intense reactions to him bewildered and annoyed her. She’d been around a number of hot cowboys before—more than she cared to remember and certainly none worth wasting brain cells thinking about. What made this one any different? He’s your lawyer, nothing else, she reminded herself.