Page 9 of For Love of Liberty

She chewed on the edge of her lip. “Do you think … it will stir things up? You know, as far as the plight of the Chinese?” she asked, desperate to expose the railroads for their despicable prejudice.

A deep laugh rumbled from his chest. “Oh, yeah, it’ll stir things up all right.” He tossed it back on his desk and chuckled. “And I have no idea about the Chinese.”

“So I … have the job?” Voice tentative, she peered up from the edge of her seat, on tenterhooks that felt like a nest of Mama’s knitting needles poking through a ball of yarn.

He studied her through pensive eyes despite the faint smile on his lips, elbows propped on the arms of his chair and hands folded. “Sure. Providing you’re willing to start at the bottom.”

If she scooted any closer to the edge, she’d be on the floor. “Oh, anything, Mr. Parks,” she gushed with hands clasped to her mouth. “Absolutely anything and anytime—I am at your complete disposal.”

“An apt choice of words, Miss O’Shea, because if you buck me on assignments I give, any ‘disposal’ will be yours—is that clear?”

“Oh, yes sir!” she breathed, hardly able to believe she had an honest-to-goodness job with an honest-to-goodness paycheck despite Papa’s efforts to blackball her from employment in Virginia City. Never was she more grateful that the owner of the Enterprise was one of Papa’s adversaries, untouchable by her father’s money. She fought the rise of a smirk. Let him put that in his pipe and puff it!

“Good.” Milo rifled through his side drawer for several seconds before producing an application, which he promptly slid across his desk. “Fill this out, give it to Viola at the front desk, and she’ll cut you a paycheck every week. Hours are generally 7:00 to 5:00 unless you’re on special assignment, then you stay till it gets done, understood?”

She nodded, quite sure she’d rather spend most of her time here than at Ponderosa Pines, where Papa bellowed nonstop over her “ungrateful suffragette ways.” Her spirits dimmed a hair. Even if she did sorely miss Mama.

“You’ll get paid 85 cents a day and 30 minutes for lunch.”

The adrenaline coursing through her veins slowed to a crawl. “Eighty-five cents a day?”

He glanced up from a stack of notes he was rummaging through. “Is there a problem?”

“Uh …” Her chin rose. “Even the Chinese laborers on the horrific Central Pacific Railroad were paid a dollar a day, Mr. Parks.”

His eyes narrowed despite the stiff smile on his face. “That’s right, Miss O’Shea, and each and every one a man, so let’s not get a bee in your bonnet.”

Her mouth sagged open, wide enough for a whole hive of those blasted bees. “Excuse me, sir, but are you saying I’m to be paid less for the same work as a man just because I’m a woman?”

His eyes bore into hers like one of those confounded rotary drills they used to mine silver, but she didn’t miss a twitch of a smile at the edge of his mouth. “Now you’re getting the lay of the land, Miss O’Shea. So do you want the job or not?”

She slammed her mouth shut, teeth ground tight to keep the piece of her mind from barreling out. Offering a curt nod, she jacked her chin even higher.

That infernal twitch of his smile bloomed like pigweed in a patch of petunias. “Good, then we have just one more business detail to cover.” With a decidedly evil glint in his gaze that somehow brought to mind an outhouse and a skunk, Milo Parks shoved a paper and pen across his desk.

“What’s this?” She slowly leaned in to study it, as if it were a scorpion about to strike. Her jaw dropped, near as wide as the mouth of the Comstock mine. As if starched by shock, her lashes rose in slow motion. “You want me to sign a contract?” she whispered, a tic fluttering in her temple, “to restrain my temper on the job?”

He nodded with a gleam of trouble in his eyes. “No matter the assignment, hour, or day. If you are on Enterprise business, you will keep that Irish temper under wraps or it and its owner will be out of a job, is that clear?”

Libby shot to her feet, her volume rising along with her. “This is blackmail! If I were a man, you would never do such a thing, Milo Parks.” She stamped her kidskin boots. “This is bald-faced discrimination, and I will not stand for it!”

“Then sit,” he said with a glare tempered by the ghost of a smile. “And it’s not discrimination, Liberty, it’s self-preservation, and you darn well know it.” He arched a brow when she stood there steaming. “I said sit. Or you can turn that mule-headed temper of yours around right now, Liberty O’Shea, and waltz out that door. Those are the terms—take ’em or leave ’em.”

Hands knotted at her sides, she stood there glowering right back, body trembling with indignation along with the feathers on her hat. Jaw like rock, she slowly sucked in a calming breath. All right, Liberty, just think of all the women you can help by holding your tongue … Huffing out her exasperation, she plopped back in the chair, her anger cooling enough for regret to set in. “I …” She swallowed the pride clogging her throat. “I’m sorry,” she rasped, gratified when Milo gave her a sympathetic smile instead of pulling rank.

“I know you are, Liberty. Back in school, I’ve seen you madder than a wet hornet with a headache when Finn and I pulled some crazy stunt to drive you crazy, but in the end, you always simmered down and did the right thing.”

“Till the next time,” she muttered, brows digging low.

Milo grinned. “Yeah, till the next time.” His chest rose and fell with a noisy sigh before he met her gaze with a truce of a smile that put her at ease. “The truth is, Liberty, I like you—always have—and Finn likes you too.”

An unladylike grunt parted from her lips. “Sure, Finn likes me all right—as long as I’m in another state.”

He grinned while he scratched the back of his head. “No, he does, really, it’s just that …”

Her eyelids narrowed. “It’s just what?”

“It’s just that he’s my best friend and more of a brother, you know? And with the V&T office just three doors away …”