Double Chance Claim [Badlands 3] (Siren Publishing Menage Amour) (12 page)

A sound from below startled her from her reverie.

“Maggie?” Wyatt’s voice echoed through the empty saloon.

“Yes.” She hurried along the hallway and down the long set of wooden steps leading down to the bar. “Did you call me?”

Wyatt came from the back and looked around the empty room before putting his gaze on her. “Is Wade already gone?”

Smoothing a wrinkle out of her dress as she took the final step down, Maggie nodded. “He left just a few minutes ago. Is something wrong?”

Wyatt’s calm face dissolved into concern. “It’s possible someone saw him leave.”

Maggie narrowed her eyes and shrugged. “Is that a problem?”

“Maybe. If the same person just saw me come back from the dry goods store a few minutes later.”

“Well, like you said before, I’m sure no one will believe that you are two men.”

Wyatt approached her. The scent of soap and man reached her before he did. “I don’t remember saying that. Are you sure it was me?”

Maggie laughed. “Maybe it was Wade. Either way, I promise I never said anything to anyone about my earlier suspicions.”

He smiled. “I believe you.”

“Can I help you get the bar ready today?”

He rubbed the back of his neck with a hand. “Actually, I wondered if you wanted to go get married?”

Maggie felt her mouth fall open. “You really want to marry me?”

“Very much.”

“But why?”

His eyes strayed up to the second floor. “I’d think it was fairly obvious, but perhaps you don’t feel the same way. I love you.”

“I do feel the same way.” Was she ready to marry again? At least this time it would be for love. “And Wade brought it up this morning before he left.”

Wyatt hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his pants and caught her gaze. “Would you rather marry Wade?”

She shook her head. “Getting married again just wasn’t what I had on my mind today. Actually, I planned to ask you for a job.”

Wyatt moved in closer. “Well, as wife to us, you’d be welcome to work here. In fact, I’d insist if it made you happy.”

Maggie sighed as the realization of all her shortcomings as a wife surfaced. “The problem is I’m not really very good at anything domestic. But I’ll certainly do what I can to help if you’ll show me what to do.”

His eyebrows narrowed. “So is that a no to my marriage proposal?”

Maggie released a sigh. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to marry him, but so many things in her life remained up in the air. She didn’t have any money. She didn’t have anywhere else to go. She loved them too much to allow them to marry her out of pity. “I don’t know. It’s not that I don’t care deeply for you. In fact, you’re perfect for me, but what about Wade? He’s perfect, too.”

“Doesn’t matter which of us marry you. We’ll both do everything to see that you want for nothing.”

“And how would we live in this town? What if someone finds out there are two of you? What if they discover I slept with both of you?”

“It’s no one’s business what we do in our private lives.”

Maggie tilted her head to one side as something occurred to her. “Are you going to stay in Campbell’s Valley from now on? I hadn’t ever planned on living in the middle of South Dakota.”

His eyebrows rose slightly. “What did you have planned?”

She pursed her lips and sent her gaze to the ceiling. “My plans have changed constantly since I left Philadelphia. The only thing I seem to be able to count on is my life changing.” There was no plan in place currently for her lonely life. She was stranded with no money and no prospects of getting any in a strange town. Was it wrong to marry a veritable stranger? And his brother? In her heart, she knew they were perfect for her. They loved her. But they lived in Campbell’s Valley. Did she want to remain here?

“If you marry us, we can strive to keep things as steady as you want them to be. Or we can try to surprise you every day to ensure change continues to be your way of life.”

Maggie laughed. “Very funny.”

“Don’t change the subject to my amazing sense of humor.
 
Now about my marriage proposal. What do you say?”

The life Caleb planned in Montana wouldn’t have been much different. She would have been living with two men in that scenario, as well. Only this time, the two men would be sleeping with her instead of each other.

She tilted her head to one side and didn’t hide the amused grin. “Wait just a minute, mister. I need to know a few things. Do you have any prospects? I need to make careful decisions from now on. I don’t want to end up all alone and broke in the middle of nowhere…ever again.”

Wyatt moved closer. “I promise you won’t be all alone and broke. Wade and I have quite a few prospects. The saloon has been more lucrative than we expected.”

Maggie crossed her arms. “Then why don’t you both stay here and run it? Why the skulking out of here each week to go north?”

“The reason we’re hiding the fact that we’re twins has to do with the property we own a few miles north of here. And it’s a secret.”

“My, my, yet another secret from the Chance brothers?” Maggie grinned again. “I can’t imagine what other confidential information you could be keeping.”

He grinned and took a step closer. She could reach out and touch him if she wanted. “Good. Then our plan is working.”

She narrowed her eyes. “So you aren’t going to tell me?”

He shrugged. “I’d tell my wife, if I had one. Want to reconsider my proposal?”

Maggie laughed out loud. “You’re very amusing.”

“I told you I could be funny. Everyone thinks Wade is the fun, loving one, but obviously I can make
you
laugh. Think about it.”

“Okay, I’ll marry you.”

“Excellent. Now I can reveal all the Chance family secrets.” He opened his arms wide as if waiting for her to hug him.

She stepped forward into his embrace. Burying her face against his chest, she added, “You don’t have to tell me all the secrets. I was just joking. See, we have that in common. We can both be funny.”

Wyatt laughed. “I’m glad we have something else in common.”

He hugged her tight before whispering in her ear, “The secret is we’re mining our land for gold.”

Maggie stiffened in his arms. “You found gold?” Never in a thousand years had she expected him to say that.

He grinned. “Yep. As soon as we get all we can, we’ll sell it all at once and move wherever we want to go.”

“Are you sure you want me as a wife?”

“I’m positive.”

“With all that money, you could acquire a fine wife from an upstanding family anywhere in the country.”

“
You
are
from an upstanding family, and we both want you.”

Maggie flung herself against him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Yes. Yes. Yes. I’d love to marry you and Wade.”

“Let’s go over to the church and take care of it. I don’t mean to be unromantic, but I have a fake business to run so I can keep up appearances. And to that end, I need to get the locals off my back about making an honest woman out of you.”

She took a deep breath. “All right. Let’s go get married.”

“Do you want to change clothes?”

She gestured to her skirt. “I’m already wearing my best dress.”

“I’d be willing to buy you a new one.”

She scrunched her face. Six months ago she would have jumped at the chance for new clothing. Today, she wanted to marry a man she loved, and the clothing she wore didn’t matter one single bit. “No, I’m ready to go now.”

“I’ll promise for both Wade and myself that we’ll love you from now on. No matter whether you’re domestic or not. I meant it when I said I fell in love with you the moment you stepped inside the bar that first time.”

“I love you, too. I just don’t want you to have regrets. I’m not gifted in cooking or cleaning. I want you to understand the extent of my limited domestic skills.”

“No regrets. I want a wife, not a maid.” He lowered his head and branded her mouth with a quick, passion-filled kiss. “If we hurry, we can get hitched and be back in time to open the bar.”

She grinned. “How very romantic you are.”

Wyatt laughed. “Well, perhaps we could open a little later and spend some time alone time together in an hour-long honeymoon.”

She pressed her lips together in mock ire, but then failed to hide her amusement. This gorgeous man loved her, and she felt warm all the way to her bones with his proposal of marriage.
 
“Make it two hours, and you’ve got a deal.”

“Done.”

Less than an hour later, Maggie stood next to Wyatt, clutching his fingers, and repeated vows to love, honor, and cherish until death parted them. And moments later, Maggie Altman became Maggie Chance. She was a wife again. Only this time, she was madly in love with her new husband—and his brother.

On the way out of the church, a tall man wearing a sheriff’s badge stepped in their path and blocked them from moving back to the bar.

“Wyatt? Can I have a word, please?” The stern-faced sheriff glanced at her once and added, “In private.”

“Whatever you have to tell me sheriff, you can speak freely. This is my new wife, Maggie. We were just married. Maggie, this is Sheriff Vanguard.”

Sheriff Vanguard tipped his hat and gave her a curt smile. “Ma’am.” He turned his attention back to Wyatt. “To the point then. I got a report that someone stole your horse this morning.”

Chapter Ten

Wade rode to their property on the quiet, barely-existent trail through pine-scented wooded landscape. The mid-morning sun broke through the trees with different sized shafts of light spilling on the various shades of green and brown along the path. It was a beautiful ride to their land, but he’d done it in the wee hours of the morning so many times, he’d never known how pretty the trip was in the light of day.

Today, he took his time, set a very slow pace for Lucky, and extended the trip to measure and enjoy the land around him. He hated leaving Maggie behind alone but needed to get back and get working on their vast financial future. This was the first time he didn’t want to hurry up and get to the mine. It usually took two hours in the near dark, and at his leisurely pace today, he would likely add half an hour to his familiar trip.

The slow journey gave him time to think about their immediate future.

And Maggie.

Their brief discussion the night before on the future relationship with Maggie made him smile.

Wade knew Wyatt was deeply in love with Maggie. At the end of the week when he returned, Maggie and his brother would likely have already tied the knot as a part of their permanent trio. That arrangement suited him just fine. Maggie was perfect for them.

From the very beginning of this secret gold seeking venture, Wade knew Wyatt wanted to take the gold they’d accumulated and sell if off to their pre-arranged contact in Rapid City as soon as possible. The contact assumed they were headed to a property near Deadwood to stake a claim, and as most knew, all that land had been claimed.

Once they brought all the raw ore they’d mined, to their Rapid City intermediary, it would be melted down and the gold extracted. They’d always planned to sell the property to someone in Campbell’s Valley. They wanted to leave it to someone deserving of a boon. Wade’s first choice was Joe Stanton and his brother Frank or perhaps even Sheriff Vanguard. All three were decent men who’d been friendlier than most when they’d moved to town.