Rainbows and Rapture Read Online Free Page A

screamed.
    His wife hurried to pick up a few shards of her ruined possessions. “My treasures! I brought them all the way from Virginia, and now they’re ruined. I’m going to die! I’m just going to die!”
    “We certainly don’t want your wife to die, do we, senor?” A cheroot clenched between his teeth, Santiago threw a roll of bills at the angry man, then stared down at the distraught woman. “Buy more treasures.” Without another word, he turned and walked toward the stairway that led to the rooms upstairs, his dagger bouncing against his calf.
    Russia followed.
    “And just where do you think you’re going, might I ask?” the hotel owner’s wife demanded. “We don’t allow your kind in here! Get out!”
    Russia turned and glared at her. “My kind?”
    The woman lifted her head high. “You know perfectly well what I mean.”
    Russia did, indeed, know what the snobbish woman meant, but she wasn’t about to ignore the cruel remark. “Lady, your nose is so damn upturned, I reckon when you sneeze you blow your hat off. Jist where the hell do you git off tellin’ me I ain’t allowed in here? I got business with that Zamora feller.”
    “Precisely my point!” the woman snapped. “My husband and I run a respectable establishment, and we’ll not have you doing that kind of business in our hotel!”
    At the renewed shouting, Santiago sauntered back into the lobby. “The girl is here at my invitation. I trust you don’t have a problem with my taking her to my room?”
    The woman’s eyes widened. “But she’s a…a—”
    “I’m fully aware of what she is.”
    The hotel owner drew himself up to his full height, his head reaching Santiago’s chest. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Zamora, but my wife is right. We cannot allow—”
    “I advise you to rethink your decision, senor.”
    The man began to sweat, unable to decide what was more frightening—the gunslinger’s fathomless black eyes, his flashing Colts, or the almost tangible sense of danger that radiated from him.
    Santiago turned from the withering man and faced the girl who’d caused the uproar. “What is your name?”
    Though he asked the question softly, Russia nearly jumped out of her gown. His voice didn’t match his menacing aura at all. It was so smooth. It made her think of deep brown velvet. “My name?”
    “You do have one, don’t you?”
    Clutching handfuls of her dress, she nodded.
    “Then what is it?”
    “I— Um…” Her mind went blank. “My name’s— It’s…”
    With one finger, Santiago pushed the rim of his hat off his forehead. “Don’t you know your own name?”
    “I— ’Course I know my own name. It’s jist that—well, I believe in real long introducements, and I’m draggin’ this one out so it’ll be longer.”
    “Introductions,” he corrected her.
    “Whatever.” Good Lord, she thought. Why did the sight of him erase the memory of her own name! “It’s—Russia Valentine! Yeah, that’s me, Russia Valentine!”
    Scowling, he took her hand. Ignoring the speechless hotel owner and his wife, he led her to the stairs. “As you said, Russia Valentine. We have business. Let’s attend to it.”
    She decided she had no reason to fear him. After all, she wasn’t a criminal, so he wasn’t dangerous to her. That worry taken care of, she began to ascend the stairs, tripping several times. Each time she stumbled, he increased the pressure on her hand until he was holding it so firmly her fingers began to ache. She winced with both pain and the thought of his strength. “Typhus and tits, Zamora, you’re about to break my damn hand! Lemme go!” When he complied, she shook her throbbing hand and took a step backward, gasping when her foot met thin air instead of solid stairs.
    Santiago grabbed her by the waist and hauled her next to his own body. “Have you ever gotten through a single day without an accident? You don’t fall out of bed, do you?”
    “Bed?” She skipped a breath. The feeling of his