Free Betina Krahn by The Soft Touch

decade of facing down bunkhouse bullies and cocky young kids with guns strapped to their hips had taught him the value of a good bluff. And there was nobetter bluff than smiling as if you knew something somebody else didn’t.
    As the men spread out across the library, loosened vest buttons, and reached for goblets of brandy, Bear found himself scrambling for mental footing.
    Why did his best hope for an investor have to be a woman? He never did well with women. Recalling the vision she made across the table, at dinner, he amended his thoughts; she wasn’t just a woman, she was a bona fide beauty. She had spun-gold hair that glowed in the candlelight.
Glowed
. Her skin was damn near flawless, her eyes were wide and blue as the Montana sky, and her dewy lips looked downright edible—until she opened them and reminded him that while he might have changed his approach to her, she certainly hadn’t changed her opinion of him.
    He took a deep breath, hoping to force some air to his brain. When the steam in his senses cleared, his thoughts had worked their way down his memory to her liberally bared shoulders and lusciously displayed—
    Cleavage. Diamond Wingate had cleavage.
    Loan or no loan, he had to get the hell out of here.
    He headed for the door, only to have Philip Vassar intercept him and thrust a cigar into his hands. “Treat her with respect, boy,” the banker cautioned. “Acquiring her took more damned effort than acquiring my wife.”
    “Beg pardon?” Bear blinked at him.
    “The cigar.” Vassar laughed and gestured to the tobacco Bear held. “It’s a Caruba Imperial. Come on. Light her up and I’ll introduce you around.”
    As Bear finished all he could stand of Vassar’s fancy cigar, he listened to the men he had just met talk about their business ventures. At some point or other, nearly every one of them mentioned the name Wingate in connectionwith a business dealing. When he had a chance to ask about it, Philip Vassar pulled him aside.
    “Oh, she’s
that
Wingate, all right. Provides the venture capital for half of what gets done in Baltimore these days.” Vassar chuckled. “She held a lottery at her quarterly board meeting and gave away a hundred thousand dollars to inventors and business people.” He leaned in and gave Bear a conspiratorial thump on the chest. “A real soft touch.”
    Bear tried to reconcile Vassar’s assessment with the woman who had jousted verbally with him during dinner. Soft? He thought of the determined glint in her eyes as she bombarded him with questions about his railroad.
    About as “soft” as a Baldwin Ten Wheeler.
    “What about railroads? Does she honestly know something about them?”
    Vassar took a puff from his cigar and blew a ring of blue smoke. “About as much as any man I know. And not just balance sheets and operations … she knows construction, too. She owns a smart piece of both the B and O and the New York Central, and votes her own shares. She was one of the ones who set up that fund to give railroad workers a pension when they get too old to work.” Vassar gave a huff of a laugh. “I told you … a regular soft touch.”
    As he strode from the library with the rest of Vassar’s inner circle, Bear found his thoughts in turmoil yet again. Diamond Wingate was not merely a headstrong beauty with a troublesome abundance of charms; she was a smart, opinionated woman who knew just too damn much about railroads to suit him.
    Imagine having her constantly looking over his shoulder … constantly … He spotted the pale peach silk of her dress across the drawing room, and realized she was being squired about by a tall, aristocratic-looking gent with a faintly proprietary air. As he watched her move and realized he was following the irresistible sway of her bustle, hecaught himself and forced himself to imagine it full of cash. She wasn’t going to do anything with that wad of cash, he told himself, but sit on it. Whereas he and Halt could put