Free Nan Ryan by Silken Bondage

up and saw her. Their squeals and shouts were loud enough to be heard all the way downriver to New Orleans. They crowded excitedly around Nevada, all firing questions at once, dying to know everything that had happened between her and Johnny Roulette.
    It was Lilly, her arm around Nevada’s slender shoulders, who said truthfully, “We are all green with envy, Nevada. My God, I’ve been trying to get Johnny in my bed since the first night I saw the handsome devil some four, five years ago.”
    The others concurred, all in awed agreement that she, Nevada Marie Hamilton, was to the best of their knowledge the only Gambler gal who had ever spent a night with Johnny Roulette.
    “Was he as good as he looks?” Belle asked.
    “Is he highly passionate?” quizzed Julia.
    “Is he as pretty without his clothes as he is in them?” Betsy asked, then went into peals of laughter.
    Nevada’s only replies to their embarrassingly candid questions were knowing smiles and the lowering of her dark lashes, until Lilly asked the one question that demanded an answer. “Will Johnny be coming back to see you?”
    Desperately needing to retain some small trace of her bruised pride, Nevada did the only thing she could do. She lied to Lilly.
    “Johnny Roulette is mad about me,” Nevada heard herself saying with cool assurance. “Of course he’s coming back. I’m expecting him tonight.”
    They didn’t believe her for a minute.
    His dark face set in rigid lines of pain and self-loathing, Johnny squinted angrily in the glaring afternoon sunshine. Stone-cold sober now, he walked hurriedly from the levee, his destination firmly in mind.
    Hands shoved deep into the pockets of his black trousers, he walked briskly, though every time his heels struck the wooden wharf, pain exploded behind his hooded eyes. With his soiled white shirt open at the throat and his disheveled dark hair falling onto his furrowed forehead and his face badly in need of a shave, Johnny looked sullen and dangerous.
    Dock workers scattered to get out of his way, sensing that the big gambler who was generally so friendly and good-natured was in no mood to be messed with. Everyone gave him a wide berth.
    Back on the city sidewalks, Johnny intended to go at once to see a dentist. If he had done so yesterday, he reflected miserably, he wouldn’t be the world’s biggest heel today.
    Far too stubborn to return to the Plantation House to ask the steward for his dentist’s name, Johnny walked the streets for several blocks until he saw, painted in gold letters on a wide window of frosted glass: J. T. McClanahan, Dentist. Painless and affordable.
    Johnny stood before the dentist’s closed door. The old pervasive fear returned and the shiny perspiration on his face quickly dried. He felt like a scared little boy and considered turning to leave. Then he reminded himself that little boys didn’t do what he had done last night.
    Johnny barged in the door, startling the dozing dentist. The small man sputtered and blinked and jumped up out of the patient’s chair.
    “Yes? Is there something I can do for you, sir?” he asked, unconsciously backing away from the big, fiercelooking man backlit by the sun.
    Johnny stuck a forefinger into his mouth, pointed out the throbbing wisdom tooth, and said, “Pull it!”
    “Well, yes, certainly, ah … sit right down and I’ll have a look,” said the dentist. Johnny slid into the chair while the dentist washed his hands. Then the little man, who smelled of peppermint, poked, probed, shook his balding head, and finally told Johnny, “You’re right, son. That tooth’s got to come out. I’ll just bring down a bottle of whiskey so …”
    “No liquor, doc,” said Johnny, shaking his head.
    “But it will hurt like the devil,” protested the dentist.
    “I deserve it” was Johnny’s reply.
    Pale and shaken, Johnny stumbled back out onto the street a few minutes later, the offending tooth having been extracted.
    After a bath and a shave